Why is federalism important

For example, some members of the same ethnic group might live in more than one region of the country. Or, some parts of the country might have several minority groups within one territory. For those, federalism alone may not offer sufficient protection.

These groups may need special minority rights and protections, as well as a strong independent court system to enforce these rights. Federalism can be expensive because it duplicates government functions at both the central and regional levels. Federalism can also be inefficient and inflexible.

For example, it might be more difficult for a federal system to coordinate responses to natural disasters or pandemics. If the different levels of government do not collaborate well it makes it harder for them to deliver on their policy promises. Some other possibilities include: giving cultural autonomy to particular religious or linguistic minorities.

Devolving more power from the centre to local governments, or establishing special autonomy for particular provinces. Nevertheless, in large, or diverse countries where different groups mainly live in different parts of the country, federalism might be a good arrangement and support social cohesion and sustainable peace. Workshop participants discuss Covid considerations ahead of the elections in Timor-Leste.

Skip to main content. Some of the key messages in the videos include the following: Federalism provides a way for different groups of people in different parts of the country to live together Federal systems have at least two levels of government, the central level and a second level that includes territorial entities into which the country is divided, e.

But federalism is not a panacea. There are specific challenges that federalism alone cannot resolve, e. Sometimes the different levels have difficulties coordinating policies or policy responses, such as to pandemics or natural disasters. Oct 07 A baseline for discussion: Unpacking recommendations for Covid-resilient presidential elections in Timor-Leste.

Queanbeyan has a different criminal law to Canberra, which is ridiculous. These immense discrepancies between the governance of states mean that it is going to be much more difficult to have states combining and being common in their approach to life and policy, so that in fact we are still left with the national differences that used to exist under kings, queens and emperors.

Do you concede that there is a need for more standardisation in the way states are governed? Geoffrey Walker — I don't regard diversity as a problem. I regard it as a basis for experimentation and a basis for people to get what they prefer. If South Australians want to experiment with making marijuana an infringement-notice offence, why shouldn't they? And if Queenslanders don't want to, why should they have to? I haven't looked lately at the drafts of the uniform criminal code. It might be a good idea or it might not, but it's not automatically a good idea, just as the legislation seeking uniformity of the laws of evidence has not turned out to be a good idea, it has just enhanced the power of the judge.

In a federal system, you should have uniformity if the benefits exceed the detriments; but you can't blame people for not accepting a uniform model if it is detrimental, as is the legislation seeking uniformity of the laws of evidence.

So I don't see it as a problem—I see it as a field for creative experimentation. Question — I would like to ask two questions. In places like India and Pakistan, which are federal nations, the chief body has power to dismiss the states, but that doesn't exist in this country.

That's one issue, and the second issue is the Commonwealth versus states issue, where in Australia there is a specific set of powers to the Commonwealth with residual power to the states. They are two different types of relationships—one has an ability to dismiss a government, and the other sort has different powers. Are they totally different forms of a relationship? Geoffrey Walker — There is no single definition of a federal system.

It's flexible enough to accommodate the sorts of variations that you indicate. Personally, I would not like to see a federal government with a power to dismiss state governments, because that dilutes the accountability of the state government to its people.

Why shouldn't it be accountable to the people who live in that area, rather than to people who don't live in that area? Still, you can have variations of all sorts. One thing you must have, is some sort of formal division of powers. In this country we have specific powers assigned to the Commonwealth and the rest to the states, although that's been diluted by some High Court interpretations of the Constitution. In Canada you have the opposite model, but it was decentralised by the Privy Council's interpretation.

So there are various models, but you do need some sort of constitution, otherwise you just have a shifting mass and nobody is clear on who's accountable to who for what. This is the problem with the European Union. And you have a European court that interprets loose, rubbery language invariably so as to expand the power of the Union, without democratic consent, without consultation and without constitutional conventions.

That is why many people are so resentful of it, not only in Britain, but in all the other countries, except the ones that have been subsidised most handsomely, like Ireland and Italy.

But with the advent of the euro, how long will the subsidies last? I've always favoured European integration in a lot of ways—in fact I did my Masters thesis on it—but it has to be integration with the consent of the people. It has to be a commitment to a clear charter, and not just a gradual takeover by a bureaucracy.

I understand that there is no longer such a thing as a British passport. The British found one day that, if you go and apply for a passport, it's not a British passport, it's a European Union passport. They are now citizens of the European Union. They are also citizens of the United Kingdom, but that doesn't mean much because the European Union effectively controls entry into the United Kingdom.

If they want a European Union passport, fine. We have to be very careful in Australia, with the APEC meeting coming up in September, that we don't slide into a similar pass. We may stand to gain from various forms of free trade in the region, but let's not fall for a supranational body with an open-ended charter that can spring surprises like that on us over the weekend. Question — I was interested in your comment about identity cards, and you seem to equate having compulsory identity cards with being centralist elitist, versus democratic federalist.

Australia, the United States and Canada don't have them, and are federal, but Germany and Switzerland do have them, and I think they come under your heading of very good federals. Geoffrey Walker — I didn't say that it was necessarily an anti-federalist institution, I said it was an elitist one, and I still maintain that. There have been attempts to introduce it in the United States, but they've failed.

They have also been attempted in the United Kingdom, unsuccessfully. Germany has a long tradition of these things. If it were starting off again in the nineteenth century before they had them, they probably would not adopt them. But with the history that they have, where European countries were almost continually at war, identity cards were effectively a wartime institution that did not go away. Even in this country it became the rule in wartime. What I was saying was that things like control of media and compulsory identity cards are unfailing litmus tests for elitism, other things being equal.

Question — Are you really not bringing out into the open the fact that the true argument here in Australia will develop into not unitary or federal , but what sort of federal? And isn't the worldwide problem—if your statement of history is to be accepted, as of course we do accept it—not that the move is towards federalism, but the question of what sort of federalism? Some of your own illustrations show the need for a strong central power. For example, your reference to the Trade Practices Act and the advantages it was able to pass back to states and businesses, where they could compete.

But the fountainhead of that was central action. In Australia we're affected by globalisation of industry. It's not simply a question of state and Commonwealth in competition, and citizens in competition across state borders.

That is important, but you have multinational companies operating across boundaries, you have criminal gangs so we're told operating across international boundaries, and there is in many cases a need for equivalent strength at government level. But the problem all the time, perhaps, is to know what sort of situation calls for what sort of answer. It may be too simple to leave here with the feeling that it is simply federation against unity.

It is what sort of federation, what sort of compromise, that's still being worked out in Australia, as one sees through the High Court decisions that you referred to. Is there something you feel you ought to say about that? Are you suggesting that our form of federation be freed up; that there should be more power in Australia passing from Commonwealth to state?

Is that a matter of devolution? Is it a matter of discussion and co-operation between state and Commonwealth, of which there seems to be a great deal? Is it a matter of re-writing the Constitution? Geoffrey Walker — Of course there will always be various models of any system of government, whether unitary or federal, and of course our founders looked at the available models when they were studying the problem in s, and other countries such as Indonesia are looking at a variety of models also.

So there's always a range of models to choose from, and one must always consider the need—and it is definitely a need—for central power on some matters, and the example of the Trade Practices Act is a very good one. That institution came into being as a result of the use of certain powers in the Constitution, particularly the trade and commerce power and later the corporations power.

I don't think one can simply say that in Australia we're only going to be talking about different models of federalism, because there are people who want to abolish the whole thing and have a central unitary system.

So I don't think one can ignore that argument. That argument is entitled to respect, and to be considered. We will of course have debate about what sort of federation we should have, but personally I don't think the Constitution needs to be re-done in order to bring about what I would consider a more effective and more decentralised model. I think the model is there already.

Problems such as what has happened in universities are the result of the Commonwealth exercising powers it doesn't have, through the use of the conditional grants power. Obviously the power is broadly worded, but the way in which it is exercised needs to be looked at again, and in fact there have been changes in emphasis in the way in which it has been exercised, not only under this government, but also, at one stage, under the previous government.

So, yes, there would always be a debate about what sort of model of government we should have—there should be a debate. But I don't see any need for any change to the Constitution. What I do see a need for is to look again at what it does do and how it is interpreted. Question — Can I ask what importance you would place on the constitutional recognition of local government?

Because there are many, I think, who would probably see that as the most accountable, flexible and innovative sphere in Australia at the moment. In New South Wales we're talking about voluntary amalgamations of councils. If this is not done in the context of a review of the responsibilities between the three tiers, it's very hard to tackle it at the ground level without seeing any hope of a shuffle going on between the powers and the three tiers.

Because at the moment there is more and more being dumped on local government, with less and less coming from the states or the Commonwealth to make that possible—which has certainly made us lean and mean and fast, but it's not going to work in the long term.

Would the start be constitutional recognition? Geoffrey Walker — I don't see any need for it. The Constitution gives the power over local government to the states, and the states can restructure it any way they like. It's not inconceivable, for example, that a small state—we don't have one this small, but say you had a state as small as Rhode Island or Delaware in the United States—a state like that might decide, like the Australian Capital Territory, not to have local government, just to have a state government, perhaps with direct democracy on the Swiss model.

The Swiss in fact do have the three levels, even though some of their cantons are very small. But, no, I don't see any need to recognise it. It can be done already. Question — It seems to me that you've built the whole premise of your argument on the fact that federalism equals more democracy, equals better government.

It seems to me it is like the paradigm that says: we just can't get enough of democracy; you can't have too much. But I'm concerned about this. I was just wondering how far one can stretch this concept—this essentially eighteenth century concept, at least in its modern reincarnation—to make it fit twenty-first century politics, before we run into the problem that its costs, in terms of political division and political instability, start to outweigh its benefits.

And doesn't that then get us all the way back to the fragmentary effects of feudalism, which is perhaps tied into federalism, and where it all began and where this whole need to have a political power centre to which all power centres gave their legitimacy.

This is where Britain started from, and doesn't this then lead us back into the full circle of where it all began. Geoffrey Walker — I think you've highlighted a central problem in the whole question of government, which is the question of the appropriate constituency. I'm not a political scientist and I can't really develop that subject very much, but it is related to the point raised in an earlier question in relation to the voluntary amalgamation of local government areas.

How small or how big is a suitable self-governing entity? Obviously some can be too big—I argue that Australia would be too big to be governed from one place—and some are too small. You can see this in some small municipalities, which don't have an adequate cross-section of interests and people, and that adopt very parochial rules, like sealing off all the streets so that you can't drive through.

Maybe that's good from one point of view, but it's a very inward looking and selfish rule adopted because it's too small a group to give an adequate interplay of different viewpoints. So, yes, I think it does go back to a fundamental question in the whole sphere of government, which is the appropriate size of a unit of government that can be accountable to a constituency. But I don't think we face that problem in Australia; I think our problem is the other way around, and I would prefer to see more democracy.

As I have indicated, direct democracy systems, especially at the state level, would do away with the need to have a ballot paper the size of this carpet. Question — I'm currently studying under Wolfgang Kasper, and I'm looking at the idea of competitive federalism in Indonesia. Can competitive federalism be imposed on a country such as Indonesia, given its problems?

What do you see as the difficulties for a country like Indonesia adopting something that is so alien to what they know? Geoffrey Walker — It is never a good idea to make policy on the run, and even less of a good idea to make constitutions on the run.

So really, they should have thought about this before, and it's unfortunate that they've waited until they've got secessionist movements in Timor, Iran and various other places, in order to start thinking about it.

But I believe the Indonesian people are perfectly capable of deciding whether they want such a system. I don't believe in imposing systems of government on anybody, but the Indonesian people on the whole are quite a well-educated people, and I don't see why they would not be capable of judging whether they want a measure of regional self-government, and, if so, what measure of it.

They are already asking for it in many instances, so I can't see why they shouldn't have it. Now the problem of course is, how much time have they got to decide on such a model?

It's unfortunate but the problem is brought about by the fact that they stuck with a rigid unitary system too long and didn't look at alternatives. An expanded version was published in the September issue of the Australian Law Journal , vol. See generally D. See A. Maddox, T. Coper, G. Morrow, New York, , pp. The paper was delivered shortly before Justice Einstein's appointment to the bench. Wood, C. Williams, C. Leonards, NSW, first published London, , pp.

Norton, New York, , p. Lucia, Qld, , pp. Walker, S. Ratnapala, W. Now it is somewhat over a third of that level, even though the judge's real salary itself fell during the inflation of the s and s. See also pp. Australian Parliament House is currently closed to the public. Geoffrey de Q. Advantages of a federal system To the extent that the one-sided nature of the debate in Australia is the result of unavailability or lack of information about the proper working of a federal system, it may be useful to look at some of the main benefits of a federal system.

The right of choice and exit When we think of political rights in a democracy, the ones we normally think about immediately are the right to vote and the right of free speech.

The possibility of experiment The second advantage one could call the possibility of experiment. Accommodating regional preferences and diversity The third advantage is the accommodation of regional preferences and diversity. Professor Sharman says that those propositions are unfounded, and he gives these reasons: To begin with, a sense of political community can exist quite independently of social differences between communities.

Participation in government and the countering of elitism The fourth advantage is the greater ability to participate in government and the potential for countering elitism. Federalism, he explains: simply makes visible and public differences which would occur under any system of government.

Better supervision of government The sixth advantage is better supervision of government. The most broad-ranging power of the federal government has become the Commerce Clause. Do you think the federal government has too much power? Watch these interview clips with legal scholars Jody Freeman and Randy Barnett. Should the federal government tell us what to do?

Jody Freeman explains the benefits. Why have an "indivisible union"? Philadelphia and the Constitutional Convention. E Pluribus Unum?

A More Perfect Union. Monk, Constitutional scholar. Explore More Federalism Topics. Enumerated Powers One way to limit the power of the new Congress under the Constitution was to be specific about what it could do. Learn More. State Powers In the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution also recognizes the powers of the state governments. The Commerce Power The most broad-ranging power of the federal government has become the Commerce Clause.

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