The tax forum as a platform for a grand bargain?

In his Challenges of Federation speech we referred to in a previous article, Prime Minister’s Department Secretary Terry Moran said:

There are business leaders who hold the view that Australia can’t work well unless states cede regulatory authority to the Commonwealth, and that as much as possible affairs should be run from the centre. Proponents of this view often see government as a giant corporation, where everything is subject to the power of the CEO. This is not an arrangement for stable and effective democratic government. It is a recipe for authoritarianism, and would be a long way from the liberal democratic ethos we now enjoy.

Yet this is how the Australian federal model operates.

In an earlier article we referred to Peter Phelps’ maiden speech to the NSW Legislative Council.

In another part of the speech he said:

The problem (with the Australian federal structure) is compounded by vertical fiscal imbalance or, to put it in the language of humans rather than economists, the States have the attitude of teenagers:

"Come on, dad, give us some more money.""Why don't you just get a job, son?""Aw, dad, now you're just being mean".

This puts the situation well.

The Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations provides:

The Commonwealth will provide National Partnership payments to the States and Territories to support the delivery of specified outputs or projects, to facilitate reforms or to reward those jurisdictions that deliver on nationally significant reforms or service delivery improvements.

The National Policy and Reform Objectives underwriting the Federal Financial Relations IGA reads:

National Partnership incentive payments will be provided to reward the States and Territories which deliver reform progress or continuous improvement in service delivery.

These payments will be structured in a way that encourages the achievement of ambitious milestones or performance benchmarks.

Graduated benchmarks may be specified in National Partnership agreements to provide that States receive some proportion of funding for activity that has not fully achieved the reform or service delivery objectives but has resulted in partial attainment of the agreed outcomes.

The achievement of milestones and performance benchmarks will be assessed by the independent COAG Reform Council, in order to provide transparency and enhance accountability in the performance assessment process.

National Partnerships should set out clear, mutually agreed and ambitious performance benchmarks that can be assessed by the COAG Reform Council. These should be structured in a way that encourages the achievement of ambitious reform targets and continuous improvement in service delivery, and provide better outcomes than would otherwise be expected.

A practical example of a ‘reward payment is clause 32 of the National Partnership Agreement to Deliver a Seamless National Economy which provides:

32. The Commonwealth will provide reward payments to the States and Territories following CRC advice as to the achievement of key milestones, as set out in the Implementation Plan for the 27 deregulation priorities. The maximum distribution of funds to be paid is set out in Table 1 above.

And as we referred to in an earlier article, the NSW Parliament passed reforms relating to directors liability because they were reforms as they were COAG reforms for which reward payments were payable for ‘meeting key milestones’ - and the NSW Government was keen to secure passage to win ‘brownie points’ for making the necessary changes to the law.

If the state’s play up the Feds won’t pay up.

And, despite the wishes of Terry Moran the Commonwealth is hardly slowing down the areas of public administration in which it wishes to become involved.

The last article discussed the grand bargain that never was.

It was a pity a succession struggle within the federal ALP derailed an attempt of a grand bargain.

We remain of the view there should be a grand bargain establishing:

1. which level of government should have responsibility for particular public policy areas;

2. what taxation bases should be assigned to the states and territories; and

3. where it is appropriate for the Commonwealth to be the level of government determining policy outcomes but is an area where it has no clear constitutional capacity to act, whether it is appropriate to confer Commonwealth power either:

(a) indirectly, through an agreement made under section 96 of the Constitution; or

(b) through a reference of power by the states to the Commonwealth or directly by constitutional amendment.

Clearly, the proposed tax forum to discuss the Henry Tax Review to be held on 4 and 5 October 2011 would be the perfect opportunity

Except it won’t happen.

The forum will apparently:

....continue the decade-long conversation we started with the release of Australia's Future Tax System (AFTS) Review last year. It will focus on the broad sweep of topics in the Review, with sessions to discuss personal tax, transfer payments, business tax, state taxes, environmental and social taxes, and system governance.

But won’t discuss the GST, areas of the Henry Review the Government has already indicated it won’t implement and most importantly what elements of the federation will perform which function.

This is a wasted opportunity.