Top advocates for federation reform say Scott Morrison’s national cabinet can’t survive

By Richard Ferguson 27 July 2021 The Australian

Advocates of federation reform say national cabinet is unable to survive the Covid-19 crisis or handle Australia’s future policy challenges, arguing it is an emergency body not bound by collective responsibility and crippled by a growing hostility between its members.

The warning was sounded as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and West Australian Premier Mark McGowan ramped up their attacks on the Sydney lockdown and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s push to have more Pfizer redirected to help stem the unfolding crisis in her state.

The collapse of national cabinet’s solidarity comes as former COAG reform council chair Paul McClintock and former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett warned there was no body capable of running the federation or securing major policy reforms.

Mr McClintock – a former chair of Myer who led the COAG Reform Council for John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard – told The Australian on Tuesday that while the national cabinet made sense in the early days of the pandemic, it was not a viable long-term option for the federation.

“Ad hoc meetings of federal and state leaders is no way to run an effective federation,” Mr McClintock said. “It is a questionable use of the word cabinet. The term cabinet sets up an image of collective responsibility. This body has none of that.

“It’s effective for the pandemic but I don’t think it can survive as a long-term structure.”

Scott Morrison officially abolished the Council of Australian Governments a year ago after premiers initially heaped praise on the less bureaucratic, more leader-focused national cabinet forum.

The national cabinet has seen premiers split on lockdowns, vaccines and border closures, and its members have attacked each other’s governments multiple times throughout the pandemic.

Last week, former prime minister Tony Abbott decried the “dog’s breakfast” of federal-state relations during the pandemic and said the national cabinet was making it worse.

Mr Abbott was the last prime minister to order a white paper into reform of the federation, but the structure of commonwealth-state relations had been largely untouched until national cabinet was introduced last year. Mr McClintock – a former chairman of St Vincent’s Health and NSW Ports – said the Prime Minister needed to devote more resources to national cabinet if it was to survive and a federal government division or minister should be put in charge of the federation. “In Canada, there is a whole section of the government devoted to federal-state relations. It’s hard to find anyone in Canberra who understands how the federation works,” he said.

Mr Barnett, who led WA from 2008 to 2017, also said the body could not effectively deal with issues beyond the pandemic, partly because of infighting between its members.

“It’s running out of steam and the acrimony between the federal government and the states, and the states with each other, is an issue,” he said.

“I think after Covid-19, it will just disappear. It can’t and shouldn’t be a permanent structure.

“Don’t get me wrong, COAG had its problems … but national cabinet is really limited in its structure to Covid-19 and not the other big issues the nation is going to deal with.

“It’s good to meet face to face and build those relationships, but it should only meet twice a year.”

A spokesman for Mr Morrison on Tuesday said the national cabinet would continue to operate.

“Australians expect their leaders to work closely to tackle the challenges our country has faced and will face, and national cabinet has brought leaders together in a way COAG was never set up to do,” he said.

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