Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

If there was any further proof required, today we got conclusive evidence that cooperative federalism is nothing more than a political slogan—there is no substance to it; there is no commitment to it—when you listened to the partisan political response by the Leader of the Government in the Senate and he essentially attacked the Treasurer of the state of Western Australia. I asked the Leader of the Government in the Senate today whether there had been any discussions or any representations to the Commonwealth in preparation for the COAG meeting on Saturday as a result of the pre-COAG strategy meeting of Labor state and territory treasurers. The answer he gave me was, ‘Of course; I don’t really understand the question—that is what normally happens.’ And when I asked him, ‘What is the Commonwealth’s view? Does the Commonwealth believe that it was appropriate that the Treasurer of Western Australia was excluded just because he is a Liberal?’, what did the minister say? The minister said, ‘He probably wasn’t excluded because he was a Liberal,’ and in not so many words—I know we are going to get a ruling from the President—the minister essentially said that the Treasurer of Western Australia was excluded not because he is a Liberal but because he is a bad bloke. I happen to think Troy Buswell is a good bloke, but that is not why he should be invited to a pre-COAG strategy meeting. Troy Buswell is the duly elected member for Vasse in Western Australia. He is the duly appointed Treasurer of the state of Western Australia. If there was any substance to ‘the spirit of cooperative federalism’, if the Prime Minister was serious in his commitment to cooperative federalism, he would discipline and reprimand his minister in this chamber for the statements he has made today.

This is what Kevin Rudd said shortly after the election on 6 September:

The dream of cooperative federalism will not be diminished when Liberal leader Colin Barnett is sworn in as Western Australia’s new Premier.

…            …            …

Fixing a federation goes well beyond party politics and therefore I’m looking forward to working with the new WA premier and his government …

That was a good start, but a month later all of the state and territory Labor treasurers met for a secret little meeting. The Treasurer of Victoria, John Lenders, gave Troy Buswell a call and said, ‘By the way, we are having this meeting, but don’t you dare turn up, because you are not welcome.’ The state of Western Australia, the people of Western Australia, are not allowed to be part of a meeting that is going to essentially set the scene, organise strategies and plan for what is going to be discussed at the COAG meeting this Saturday. Is that the new spirit of cooperative federalism? Is cooperative federalism only applicable if you are part of the Labor Party? Is it cooperative federalism as long as the people across various jurisdictions do not dare to elect a Liberal-National Party government? I am sure that is not what the people of Australia understood before the election about how the Prime Minister would proceed. Quite frankly, I would urge the Prime Minister to have a very close look at, firstly, what the minister said in this chamber today in trying to justify why the Treasurer of Western Australia has not been invited to this meeting—trying to justify the unjustifiable, quite frankly—and, secondly, the reflection by this minister on the Treasurer of the state of Western Australia.

Look at the way the Commonwealth has approached its relations with states and territories over the last 12 months. We had the episode of the Medicare levy surcharge, putting huge pressure on state and territory budgets and not even consulting with the states and territories. We had the issue of the government saying, ‘We want to take over public hospitals if the states don’t perform, but we won’t tell the states and territories the targets that they have to meet’—even though the deadline that the Prime Minister put out there is only six months away. Do senators remember before the last election, when Kevin Rudd had this love-in with all the state and territory premiers, who were then all Labor. When commissioning the Garnaut climate change review, he said:

Federal Labor and the states and territories have today commissioned the Garnaut Climate Change Review—

That review was funded by state and territory governments. Taxpayers across Australia funded what was essentially a party political exercise at the time.

We had a committee inquiry hearing in Perth last week, and what did Treasury in Western Australia tell us? They now want to get access to Treasury modelling to be able to reach some conclusions about the impact of the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the state of Western Australia, but no access has been provided beyond what is publicly available.

To sum up, this slogan of cooperative federalism has been exposed again and again as nothing more than a political exercise before the last election. It was there to minimise and manage the risk of wall-to-wall Labor in terms of how it was going to be perceived by the people across Australia.

Question agreed to.