Originally Posted by
MickG0105
The only reason that I hadn't responded to that is that it is as utterly inane as the nationhood power you were touting. The notion that a Federal government is going to coerce state compliance during a public health crisis via withholding funding is ridiculous. For starters it would fail to pass the Senate, you know that arm of the legislature known as 'the States' House'. Same applies to Section 96.
It's just another version of a unicorn, very pretty in imagination but does not exist in the real world.
That sort of nonsense would only get a run in the sort of authoritarian state that most rail against. Or are you happy with authoritarianism just so long as those in authority do what you want?
It’s so telling when the self-proclaimed “numbers” person drifts into politics and starts using words like “utterly inane” and “nonsense” to describe matters other than statistics.
We are living in an authoritarian state, now. If you could get your head out of the numbers for a moment, you’d see that many Australian are being told, on pain of criminal liability, that they can’t visit their families and friends and can’t travel more than a specified number of kilometres from home. There are police and ADF members on the streets enforcing those restrictions. It suits Scotty that a lot of the consequent ‘blowback’ hits the state premiers rather than him.
The Commonwealth coerces the states, financially, all the time. And the government doesn’t need to make a law that can be stopped by the Senate, to achieve the outcome. And a spending bill that originates in the Senate can be blocked by the government in the House.
The Commonwealth has enough power to take over and run the response on a nationally consistent basis. Its failure to do so is a political decision, plain and simple. It’s probably a blessing in disguise though, because we can only speculate what a clusterf*ck it would be if Scotty or what’s-his-name on the other ‘side’ stepped up.