Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to follow Senator Ian Macdonald in this debate. He has so eloquently put the case against this bill, and I commend his contribution to the Senate. Given the experience that Senator Macdonald has had as a former Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government, he does speak with great experience and knowledge of this area.

We are debating the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Amendment (Disallowance Power of the Commonwealth) Bill 2006, as proposed by Senator Brown. This is an intriguing bill because it involves a substantial diminution in the authority of the Commonwealth over the Australian Capital Territory. I notice it does not refer to the Northern Territory—it is a bill restricted to the power of the Commonwealth with respect to the Australian Capital Territory—but it does involve a very significant wind-back of the existing arrangements. For Liberals who, like me, are genuinely federalist in philosophical inclination, these sorts of debates are always not easy; indeed, my involvement in these matters has always tested my underlying commitment to a federal structure.

I do have a genuine philosophical inclination to subsidiarity—that is, the proposition that decisions should be made, in as many cases as possible, by those closest to the people most affected by those decisions. That is the essence of federalism, it is the essence of the Australian Constitution and the constitutional structure of which we have all been the beneficiaries. But that constitutional structure is a function of the six state colonies coming together to form the Commonwealth and by agreement. Their Constitution is an agreement under which the six state colonies agreed to hand over certain of their powers to a central government, the Commonwealth.

The Northern Territory was then part of South Australia. We South Australians sometimes regret that our forebears handed over the Northern Territory to the Commonwealth and wonder what might have been if the Northern Territory had remained part of the great state of ‘Central Australia’. But that was not to be, and now we have not only the Australian Capital Territory but the Northern Territory.

I made a contribution on the euthanasia bill, in which I distinguished a territory from a state on the basis that the Commonwealth had a very clear and distinct responsibility—ultimate responsibility—for the Northern Territory as a territory not a state. The Australian Capital Territory is very much in that vein. A clear constitutional responsibility rests with the Commonwealth for the Australian Capital Territory, and I think that would be true of every country in the world where there is a distinct governance arrangement for the capital city, whether it is the District of Columbia or the Australian Capital Territory.

Australia has gone a long way towards granting the elements of self-government to the seat of its capital city—further than many others. Certainly my party has been proudly involved in that. Many would dispute the arrangements that we have put in place for the Australian Capital Territory. Wherever I go, both in the ACT itself and around Australia, many suggest that the more appropriate arrangement for the Australian Capital Territory would be what you might call a city council type arrangement—for example, a Brisbane City Council type arrangement or some such other. However, we do have this form of self-government but always on the understanding and on the basis that the ultimate authority over the territory does, must and should continue to reside with the Commonwealth.

This is the capital city for all Australians; it is not just a city for its residents. It has had a huge investment in it by all Australians through the taxes that we collect. Many of the nation’s great institutions are in this city, so the proposition that the Commonwealth should absolve itself of its fundamental responsibilities through this act or any other act or bill that would seek to diminish those powers is contrary to the essential responsibility which the Commonwealth must have for the seat of national government—for the capital city that we in this country enjoy.

Having said that, it is worth going to the motivation for Senator Brown’s proposition. Clearly, as others have acknowledged, Senator Brown was motivated to bring this bill forward by the Governor-General’s disallowance of the ACT civil unions legislation. On my advice, this is the only time in which the authority of the Commonwealth over the ACT has ever been exercised. So what we are talking about here is a very rare, indeed singular, example of the exercise of this ultimate authority. It shows that self-government does work well and that, in the history of self-government, there has not been the need for the Commonwealth to exercise this ultimate authority. For Senator Brown to purport that we must immediately remove this authority simply because of the singular exercise of that authority in this one particular case is rather far-fetched. If we were dealing with a situation where the Governor-General was disallowing ACT bills at the drop of a hat—if this were the 100th time that it had occurred—then you might more closely examine the proposition that Senator Brown has put before us. But it is this one singular proposition.

The background to that proposition should be considered because we went to enormous lengths to work with the ACT to see whether a civil unions bill could be developed that was genuinely a civil unions bill. The point was made to the ACT repeatedly that anything that could properly and reasonably be seen to be a bill that impacted upon the Commonwealth’s prerogatives with respect to the institution of marriage would not be acceptable to the Commonwealth. That was said repeatedly. We gave the ACT every opportunity to restructure its Civil Unions Act to ensure that it did not contradict the Commonwealth’s responsibility for and its definition of the institution of marriage. Indeed, the ACT refused to accede to that. The bill says that a civil union is different from a marriage.