ABSTRACT
Federal framework Australia is a “coming together” federation (Weller 2000: 1). The powers of the FG are enumerated while the residual powers belong to the SNG. Despite this, a process of centralization has taken place over the years (Anderson and Fenna 2010: 2; Fenna 2007b: 298). This is notably due to Section 96 of the Australian Constitution, which gives strong spending power to the FG (Hueglin and Fenna 2015: 201-203). Still, the SNG have strong autonomy and can decide in their legal realm autonomously, which corresponds well to a dual or power separation type of federalism. Coordination among the government layers is mostly voluntary, as policies are often adopted in parallel. Many conflicts between the FG and the SNG are due to “squabbles mostly about money.”1 There are two recurring motives in such conflicts: on the one hand “Canberra’s creeping centralism,”2 and on the other hand demands for more “cooperative federalism.”3
