Daniel Hurst, political correspondent

theguardian.com, Monday 23 June 2014

Shorten says prime minister's cuts to health and education funding are 'dramatic and reckless' and his views on commonwealth responsibilities are stuck in 1901

Bill Shorten says the government's cuts to state funding for health and education set the clock back on more than a century of change. Photograph: Dave Hunt

The Abbott government’s decision to rein in health and education funding to the states reflects a “reactionary, hyper-literal interpretation” of the constitution, Bill Shorten has argued.

The opposition leader used a speech to the Committee for Economic Development on Monday to mount a strongly worded attack on the prime minister’s “alarmingly narrow view of the role and responsibility of the commonwealth”.

In an address focused on the state of the federation, Shorten castigated the government for launching a “surprise attack on the state governments of Australia” through the $80bn in long-term budget savings, which represented “a dramatic and reckless destabilising of our federation”.

The government has argued states and territories have primary responsibility for running and funding public hospitals and schools. In its budget overview document the government said its decision to adopt “sensible indexation arrangements for schools from 2018, and hospitals from 2017-18, and removing funding guarantees for public hospitals” would achieve “cumulative savings of over $80bn by 2024-25”.

It also announced plans to “reduce or terminate some commonwealth payments that are ineffective or duplicate state responsibilities” including national partnership agreements on preventive health, improving public hospital services and certain concessions for pensioners and seniors card holders.

The moves provoked a backlash from state and territory leaders, including those from the Coalition side of politics, and the government subsequently downplayed the impact by insisting that the raw amount of funding continued to increase each year.

Shorten took issue with Tony Abbott’s declaration that health and education were traditionally state responsibilities and that states should be “sovereign in their own sphere”.

He said the prime minister’s view turned the clock back “on more than a century of change and evolution in favour of a model that is fundamentally at odds with the reality of governing modern Australia”.

“It is true that when our constitution was drafted, the colonies retained responsibility for a range of front-line services, and yes, in 1901, there was no Commonwealth Department of Health or Education,” Shorten said. “But there was also no Department of Finance, or Transport, Industry, Communications, Indigenous Affairs, Arts, Sport, or Environment.”

Shorten said the Australia of 1901 also had no social safety net, no minimum wage, no accessible higher education, no universal healthcare and no superannuation and was “a country where women were disempowered, where migrants were distrusted and Aboriginal Australians were counted as ‘fauna’ and deemed destined for extinction”.

He said Australia had changed for the better, and governance had also evolved and improved.

The commonwealth, as the dominant collector of revenue, would inevitably play a role in funding the delivery of essential state services, especially in health and education, Shorten said.

He pointed to Abbott’s comments in the book Battlelines that “any withdrawal of commonwealth spending in these areas [health and education] would rightly be seen as a cop-out”. Shorten argued the government’s actions in re-writing agreements and tearing them up indicated the commonwealth now posed “sovereign risk to the states”.

In a broader attack on the budget, Shorten said the $7 GP tax, “cruel cuts” welfare payments, the overhaul of higher education and the “abandonment of Australians looking for work” represented “the most radical social experiment in Australian history”.

“It assigns the heaviest lifting to the weak and only the lightest touch to the strong,” Shorten said.

The opposition’s argument that the budget’s impact is unfair appears to have resonated with voters. A Fairfax-Nielsen poll published on Monday showed just one-third of respondents believed the budget was fair while 61% believed it was unfair.

Abbott and senior ministers have repeatedly defended the budget, arguing it was the tough medicine needed to address Labor’s “debt and deficit disaster” and that future large earmarked spending in health and education was “pie in the sky”.

Earlier this month the treasurer, Joe Hockey, delivered a speech in which he dismissed claims the budget was unfair as resembling “1970s class warfare”.

“Our first budget is based on the premise that it is fair to expect those who have the capacity to pay, should accept more personal responsibility for their cost of living, the cost of raising their children, their health services and their education,” Hockey said.

The government has promised two processes that will affect the role of the states: a white paper on the reform of the federation and a white paper on the reform of Australia’s tax system. These white papers are due to be completed by the end of next year.

Abbott taking 'hyper-literal' view of constitution, Shorten says | World news | theguardian.com