Reforming Australia's Federal Framework: Priorities and Prospects

A narrative of failure permeates debates about Australia's federal system. A cursory review of analysis and particularly of media commentary, reveals a deep pessimism about this central and distinctive feature of Australia's governing framework (see, among numerous potential examples, National Commission of Audit 2014). Elite disdain towards Australia's system of shared powers and a tendency to overlook its many strengths, has limited the scope and ambition of federal reform processes. That these are usually initiated and driven by the Commonwealth perhaps accounts for complaints from sub‐national governments that the dynamics of these processes often mirror those that characterise Commonwealth‐State relations, with the result that it is difficult to transcend the tensions that are borne of the centralisation of money and power that reform needs to address.