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TONY Abbott wants voters to see him as firm in his views, a leader who means what he says. “This leopard doesn’t change his spots,” the Prime Minister boasted recently.






The truth, though, is that Abbott is a serial spot-changer. Take federalism, in the news because two state elections today could result in wall-to-wall Liberal state governments across the nation.

In his book, Battlelines, published in 2009, Abbott pronounced the federation “broken” and argued the only way to fix it was to give Canberra constitutional power to override the states in all areas of responsibility. He wrote that “the only way to sort out responsibilities in areas where the two levels of government are both involved is to put one level of government in overall charge”.

But he abandoned that position before the second edition of the book came out in 2013. He said in a new introduction that the idea of a referendum to give the federal government more authority over the states had been “the product of Howard-era frustrations with hostile state governments”.

Now Abbott believes he can sort out the issue via co-operation between the federal government and the states, starting with a White Paper setting out clearly which levels of government are responsible for what.

And he argues Liberal victories in South Australia and Tasmania today — leaving only the ACT in Labor hands — will make the process he has dubbed “pragmatic federalism” more likely to succeed.

Like-minded people, the PM says, are more likely to work constructively together.

Therefore, having two more Liberal premiers — Steven Marshall in SA and Will Hodgman in Tasmania — will increase his chances of cleaning up the mess that federation has become.

If the polls are right, Hodgman is a shoo-in, with Labor doing so badly in Tasmania that there is even speculation among Greens that they could emerge as the major Opposition party.

Marshall should win, too, though SA Liberals are nervous after getting almost 52 per cent of the vote after preferences last time but failing to win because Labor managed to sandbag key seats.

Abbott is mounting the same kind of argument that Kevin Rudd used for the approach he called “co-operative federalism” back in 2007 when Labor held power federally and in all states and territories.

As Abbott wrote in Battlelines, the Labor premiers were more polite to Rudd than they had been to John Howard in his final year “but no more inclined to take hard decisions at his request”.

He added: “Why would they? At present they are masters in their own house but can half-plausibly blame someone else when things go wrong.”

Exactly. And it’s hard to see why Liberal premiers would not behave in the same way towards a Liberal prime minister for precisely the same reasons.

“Responses to this dog’s breakfast of responsibilities often involve proposals for a new federal compact with clearer distinctions about who does what, ” Abbott wrote dismissively in his book.

But just such a compact is what he has in mind now.

All that being said, Abbott had good reason to change his federalism spots. The draft referendum proposal that he included as an appendix in Battlelines would never have won approval from an electorate notoriously reluctant to alter the Constitution.

And his second argument — that the Rudd and Gillard years were “a good antidote to the view that political wisdom mostly resides in Canberra”— will strike a chord with many.

The White Paper is not the only string to Abbott’s federalism reform bow. He is determined to make the Council of Australian Governments, made up of the prime minister and all state and territory leaders, more effective by streamlining its agenda.

The criticism that too many problems have been dumped on COAG, and too few solutions have emerged, is valid.

A CRUCIAL issue the PM wants COAG to focus on is the speeding up of federally funded infrastructure projects that are too often delayed by unnecessarily complicated planning laws, slow land acquisition processes and other state-level issues.

The idea is that COAG will monitor the progress of projects and the reasons for any delay.

But the White Paper is the biggie. Federal Cabinet will soon approve the terms of reference and Abbott will take them to his next meeting with the premiers in May.

Mending the broken federation remains for him the nation’s biggest political problem.

It is rare for Abbott to criticise his hero and political mentor, but in Battlelines he wrote: “Tackling the dysfunctional federation turned out to be a lost opportunity for the Howard government.

“Certainly it would have been a political objective worthy of a great prime minister.”

Abbott might have changed his mind about the means, but he still has his eyes fixed firmly on that objective.


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