Faith in political leaders collapses according to Newspoll survey
A TURBULENT period in national affairs has left Australians disillusioned with their federal system and increasingly cynical about the national tier of government.
Fully two-thirds of Australians do not believe federal and state governments are working well together, while confidence in the federal government as the most effective of the three levels at doing its job has plummeted from 50 per cent in 2008 to 29 per cent today.
Over the same period, the proportion of Australians who believe the federal system is not working has risen from 30.3 per cent to 38 per cent.
These are among the key findings of the third biennial constitutional values survey, conducted by Newspoll last month for Griffith University's federalism project, and reported exclusively in The Weekend Australian.
Briefed on the survey yesterday, former NSW premier Nick Greiner said it showed the public was "running ahead of politicians on all of this". Mr Greiner - whose report on federal-state financial relations, co-authored with former Victorian premier Steve Bracks, has been submitted to Wayne Swan - said voters were "saying what the political class is in denial about, which is that the federation is dysfunctional and due for a 100-year refresher".
The constitutional values survey tests how Australians feel about the federal system; their faith in how the federal, state and local levels are working; and their view of inter-government collaboration.
The crisis of confidence in federalism and increasing negativity towards the upper tier of government corresponds with Labor's period in office and has accelerated during the period of minority government since 2010.
It suggests the high ideals of Kevin Rudd to herald a new age of "co-operative federalism" when he took office in 2007 - and faced coast-to-coast Labor governments - have crashed and burned.
As Julia Gillard has faced increasingly hostile state governments in Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and NSW, she has not followed up Mr Rudd's declared wish to make the Council of Australian Governments the "engine room" of reform. As for the loss of support for Canberra, the deal-making and rancour from all sides of politics that have featured in parliament since Labor lost its majority in 2010 are cited by experts as likely to have played a major role, along with the mode of Mr Rudd's axing by his colleagues.
Griffith University's AJ Brown, lead researcher on the survey, said the declining faith in governments suggested Australia was headed for a "crisis of confidence" unless greater political priority was again given to issues of federal co-operation and longer-term reform.
"There are signs that citizens are declaring a 'plague on all your houses' when it comes to confidence in the future of governance - that with reduced faith in the federal level of government, they are being left with nowhere to turn," Professor Brown said.
He warned against reading the results too much as a judgment on Labor, and saw a positive angle in the level of "unmet demand" for reform of the system revealed by the survey.
"It's entirely possible that an Abbott Coalition government, whether elected in 2010 or in 2013, would be in much the same boat as the present Labor one," Professor Brown said yesterday.
"With such high public expectations about the importance of federal reform, it is only a truly co-operative reform effort across parties and levels that stands much chance of yielding long-term results."
The three surveys taken so far show that, while 81.6 per cent of Australians were satisfied in the performance of the federal government in 2008, by this year only 55.6 were prepared to say it enjoyed their trust and confidence.
Australians are now far less satisfied with their federal system than either Americans or Canadians, despite the fact there are 50 states to co-ordinate in the US, while Canada must deal with bilingualism and the special status of its largest province Quebec. The drop in support for Canberra as the most effective level of government to a mere 29 per cent of respondents means it has been overtaken by local government, which 30.1 per cent see as the most effective.
The states continue to languish in third place, with 23.6 per cent of support, despite the fall of a succession of unpopular long-term Labor administrations since the 2010 survey. Nevertheless, there remains about a third of Australians who would abolish the states, and four in 10 who would create regional governments in place of one of the existing tiers.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, Australians' faith in democracy itself is wobbling: those who believe democracy works poorly have risen from 16.4 per cent to 23.8 per cent since 2008, while those who think it works well have dropped from 80.8 per cent to 73.1 per cent.
One area where Australians seem reasonably content with the federation is fiscal redistribution, with 40 per cent believing their state received a "fair amount of money" from the system, a much higher level of support than in other federal nations including the US (26 per cent), Canada (24 per cent) and Germany (25 per cent).
University of NSW law professor and federal reform expert Andrew Lynch said the increasingly dim view of inter-government co-operation reflected the see-sawing approach by federal Labor towards the states.
"That is directly traceable to the distancing from the Rudd agenda under Gillard," Professor Lynch said.
"Under Rudd, COAG was supposed to be the workhorse of the nation, and there was a lot of unity, largely because the state governments were all Labor as well. He was closely identified with saying federalism needed to be fixed.
"The change of power in various states has meant that Victoria and NSW, especially, weren't going to buy into the co-operative federalism ideology that defined the Rudd era. "Gillard has met with COAG far less frequently and she doesn't see it as the vehicle through which commonwealth policies are best prosecuted."
Constitutional law expert George Williams, also from UNSW, said it was no coincidence plummeting faith in the federal level of government had occurred during the rancorous period of the hung parliament.
"Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have had historically low satisfaction ratings," Professor Williams said.
"If people are not satisfied with their leaders they'll attribute that level of dissatisfaction to that tier of government."
Mr Greiner said there was overwhelming evidence to support the public's view of federal-state collaboration.
"The COAG process is bogged down in motherhood and in far too many projects," he said.
"The best evidence is both the Gonski education reforms and the national disability insurance scheme. Everyone agrees between the different levels on the principle, and then literally within minutes of the agreement it breaks down into a puerile argument about who's going to pay."
The Prime Minister declined to comment on the survey.
