Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I oppose the Constitution Alteration (Local Government) 2013. Section 96 currently allows the Commonwealth to 'grant financial assistance to any state on such terms and conditions as the parliament thinks fit'. The referendum would amend section 96 so as to allow the Commonwealth to grant financial assistance to any state or to any local government body formed by a law of a state.

The argument put by the government early in the piece was that decisions by the High Court in the Williams and Pape cases meant that there was a lack of certainty in the Commonwealth's ability to directly fund local councils under section 96, so it had to be amended. Senator Ryan queried this on 30 May in the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, stating:

… one of the justifications for the referendum is that the Williams decision has put the funding power the Commonwealth has direct to local government not using section 96 in doubt …

The Minister for Sport, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister Assisting for Industry and Innovation, Senator Kate Lundy, replied:

… no, it is not one of our justifications at all.

Therefore Minister Lundy has expressly admitted that other and ulterior motives are behind this bill.

Similar referenda have been defeated before, in 1974 and 1988. However, two recent High Court decisions—the Pape and Williams cases—have elevated the issue. This whole debate should pivot on local communities being able to provide services based on local need, not Canberra's priorities. The 20 May edition of The Australian Financial Review reported a Nielsen poll showing 65 per cent in favour, but not actually in favour of the government's proposal—just in favour of 'recognising local government in the Constitution'. Back in 1988 the Hawke government went to the people. The Hawke proposal aimed to recognise local government but not to give the Commonwealth additional powers. The current question is completely different: there is no explicit recognition, but there is a new power for Canberra to fund local government directly, on such conditions as it sees fit. How can this not be an affront to the natural rights of the states?

It is not coincidental that the few referendum questions that have been approved—the last ones were in 1977—have generally been those that cannot be represented as increasing federal power. The bill in question is clearly not in that category. The government has said that the amendment would only add 17 words to the Constitution. Words matter. What of but one word, 'republic'? The changes being proposed to the Constitution are significant in both practice and principle. Whether it is the Gillard government's intention or not, this referendum will permit further federal government expansion into affairs where it does not have original formal jurisdiction. This change to the Constitution would create new opportunities for Canberra to impose its priorities on the states. To echo the words of former Prime Minister Howard, this enabling piece of legislation would:

… distort the Federal structure, give rise to unforeseen and unintended consequences and will lead to an eventual eclipse of the States and their eventual irrelevance as a balance against the centralist power of the Commonwealth.

Currently the federal government provides approximately $2.7 billion to local governments annually. Around 80 per cent of this funding is channelled through state governments, but the remaining 20 per cent is direct funding from the federal to the local level and is used to finance programs such as Roads to Recovery and a number of other smaller infrastructure projects. This proposed referendum is a naked and insidious play to increase the power of Canberra and the central government. It is the antithesis of what a Liberal at heart is about. A true Liberal cannot stand for the slow creep of regulation over the rugged individualism and reason of self-determination—local people making local decisions about issues of local importance. The question is: why is Labor doing this, and why now? Labor at its core is about big government, higher taxes and higher spending. Labor is about government running people's lives. Labor is about having a greater say in all aspects of society. That is not the Liberal way and that is not the Australian way. This bill in essence is un-Australian. This bill would enable the diminution of local sovereignty and democracy, and no Liberal member should, or can, respectably support less democracy.

There are several other issues to which I direct the attention of the House, the first being local knowledge and the present system of checks and balances. In my electorate of Tangney, we have two large councils. One council, Melville, works relatively well, whilst the other, Canning, has been endemically corrupt and is now under a commissioner. The major and indisputable advantage of having sole state responsibility for the council, apart from having a clear chain of command, is having a clear chain of control—a control that is strengthened by proximity to the councils and key stakeholders and actors, and unique local knowledge. I put it to any member of this place that oversight committees based in far-off Canberra will have no effective understanding or control of councils in my home state of Western Australia. Concomitantly, if I am to continue to represent Western Australia in this place then I must surely honour my contract with the people of WA. The people of WA have through the ballot box at the last federal election and the last state election voted overwhelmingly for a party that prides itself on telling Canberra to back off.

It was Thomas Jefferson who spoke of education being the first defence against tyranny. I oppose this bill because of the inadequate time given to the AEC to educate on the substance of the bill. The AEC has said that it needs 27 weeks minimum to properly have the argument for the yes and no cases. The reality is that we will have only about eight weeks to debate the issue, as this issue will be completely drowned out in the heat of the election campaign. It is my belief that, if the government is to go ahead with this referendum, the first act of good faith and good practice would have been to invest in a Senate inquiry. Let the Senate fulfil its constitutional role before seeking to dilute and erode the constitutional role of the states. Another act of good faith would have been to give equal weight and, as a corollary, equal funding to both sides of the argument. This is particularly clear given that it is clear—

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