Page 2567 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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Premiers met once a year, essentially to talk about finance and budgetary matters. They met for a day or a day and a half and then they went about their business. But during last year a couple of things occurred which I think are quite significant for Australia today and in the future.
The first was that the Premiers and the Chief Ministers who attended the normal Premiers Conference in May of last year rebelled against the Commonwealth and the procedures that it had used up until that time for negotiating with the States on financial matters. That process up until then simply consisted of the Chief Ministers and Premiers arriving in Canberra and on the morning of the Premiers Conference somebody thrusting under their door an envelope that said, "This is the offer that the Commonwealth is going to make and we will discuss it at 10 o'clock". The debate, of course, was pretty thin and the arguments put forward by the Commonwealth were virtually non-existent. They just said, "This is the case; take it or leave it".
In May last year, May 1990, it was quite revolutionary because the Premiers and the Chief Ministers said, "We no longer are willing to operate under these terms and conditions. This is essentially our money that is being returned to us and we do not like the way the Commonwealth is treating us in this matter. We want some negotiation; we want some information; we want time to consider it before we sit around the table and discuss it". Around about the same time the Prime Minister enunciated his policy of the new federalism. To give him his due, I think that that enunciation of the new federalism is a forward looking concept that was deserving of consideration. Out of those two things grew the first Special Premiers Conference and, of course, we now have seen the second. The third Special Premiers Conference is scheduled for November.
The Special Premiers Conference considers two things. It is considering the way in which the financial relationship between the Commonwealth and the States shall change, such that it becomes a more participatory, consultative process, and so that the States themselves can have much more control over the taxation power, the money that is raised, how it is spent and what it is spent for. To put it in jargon terms, the intention is to remove the financial or fiscal vertical imbalance; in other words, to give back to the States much more of the power that used to reside with them decades ago to decide for themselves what revenues they will raise and how they will spend them. That is the first thing that is happening.
The second is that for the first time at the premier and prime ministerial and chief ministerial level they are looking at the national economy as an entity and saying, "How can we make the national economy better; how can we create a better infrastructure that will produce greater efficiencies, all of which will translate into a better lifestyle for all Australians?". As part of that agenda
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