Rudd stated:
"What I'm signalling firmly, strongly today is it's time for the buck-passing to end and it's time for the real work, with sleeves rolled up, to begin," Mr Rudd said yesterday. "These are huge challenges for the nation," Mr Rudd said. "The time for buck passing has come and gone. I think the Australian people are tired, just sick and tired of all the excuses which their politicians have served up for so long as to why progress can't be realised in these critical areas of public policy need."The only reason buck passing is possible is because the national government has delved so deeply into the states' revenue stream and responsibilities. We have a broken federal system which has been smashed through successive anti-federalist Governments and High Courts. A government is only supposed to raise enough revenue from taxes to support itself and no more. This is not the case in Australia as the national government does 85% of all taxation in the country. Half of the state budgets are dependent on nationally raised taxation revenue such as the GST and Grants. The quickest way to fix federalism in Australia is dump the GST and Grant system. States would become responsible for meeting their own budgetary needs. This would force them to revisit their agreement allowing the national government to tax income exclusively, curbing the national government's fiscal power by eroding their monopoly on income taxation.
Federalist systems are built upon the principle of their being unique levels of problems and solutions at differing levels of local government. Australia has too much government, but we have too much government at the national level. It is the national government which needs to be restricted and taken down several pegs.
