When Canberra cherry-picks responsibilities from the states it is anti-federalism. When the states take from the local councils there is no real name for it other than centralisation. Tasmanian Councils are defending their authority and responsibility over sewerage and water. It is a familiar pattern, a crisis appears, and a central authority uses that crisis or emergency to covet new powers. It has been a dominant force in Australian politics.
The issue is the State Government of Tasmania wanting to take over the power of water and sewerage; as the water crisis demands that the local councils can't be trusted with the responsibility in a time of emergency. Which isn't true. Decentralisation is a strength; especially in politics.
One of the reasons a representative democracy is stronger than a monarchy or dictatorship is because it decentralises political power. The opposing force is the desire of the executive to collapse all power into themselves - which leads to a monarchy or dictatorship, so representative democracy is maintained at a cost.
There was an op-ed in The Canberra Times by Greg Barns recently that argued for separation of service delivery between the feds, states and councils. One of the reasons a market economy is seen as superior to public sector service delivery is that it promotes overlapping services and products. We commonly call that consumer choice.
Yet we view overlapping public sector service delivery as waste. I would argue that the road system is an example of overlapping responsibilities providing a good outcome; Australia has federal, state, local and private roads. These go through all sorts of political boundaries and their overlapping regulations and laws. Probably the only way roads could be provided is through that method.
Barns writes:
And what of local government? Why is it, that there are, for example, 144 local councils in Western Australia, 68 in South Australia and 29 in Tasmania, when the total population for these states is just over three million people?Again; decentralisation is a sign of political strength. In a modern state innovation bubbles up from the most innovative areas; rather than the capital intensive industrialised nation-state who spends on the slow areas with capital accrued centrally in order for them to catch up to the faster areas. Australia is a good example of the capital intensive centre - the federal government does 85% of all taxation.
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