The success of Labor at state-government level is often remarked upon, and as something more than voters playing it safe by having governments of different stamp at different levels of politics. It is worth contemplating the converse proposition—the dismal failures of conservative coalitions at state level while John Howard’s star has increased, and his own revolutionary shifts in the federal compact.
John Howard has ever been a centralist, even in the Fraser years. He is a political realist, and has at times—in government as an excuse or in opposition as a tactic—accepted the old nature of the compact and its notions of reservation of powers to the states. But he increasingly sees the old division as a significant brake on Australia’s capacity to develop as a market economy.
Teasing him while in political exile about 15 years ago—at a time when it seemed unlikely that he would return to any sort of political leadership—I commented that Deo volente I would probably still be on the game when he died. What would he want me to say in the obituary, I asked. His answer was immediately that he was a centralist and had never adopted any reverence towards the divide.
I must confess a little astonishment, given his background. He first became closely involved in politics during the 1960s, in the NSW machine, and was an observer, if not a participant, in the developing antagonisms by that branch (and Victorian branches) against John Gorton, particularly over Gorton’s centralist tendencies. There were a host of reasons, including Gorton himself, why Gorton fell. The primary reason was the antipathy of the NSW Premier, Robin Askin, and Victoria’s Premier, Henry Bolte, over federal-state finances and increasing commonwealth reach into areas that the states regarded as their own. Gorton’s successor, Billy MacMahon, for whom Howard briefly worked, paid appropriate obeisance to the federal compact. After all, the raging centralism of the Whitlam government in almost all areas was one of the wickednesses to which Liberals would point. It seemed to become accepted wisdom that Labor was centralist, and given its druthers would abolish the states as well as the Senate, while the conservatives saw in the federal division of powers an essential check on the unbridled ambitions of socialists.
There is one respect in which John Howard has helped the states as Prime Minister, even if he is now making it clear that this also gives him power he