The plurality that Ingliss-Clark is talking about can also be described as a vertical separation of powers. The horizontal separation of powers is between the branches of government – where Au fails it at both national and state level as parliaments don’t separate the executive from the legislative. Federalism is a vertical form of executive, legislative and judicature separation.

Why do both Rudd and Howard feel so confident in deriding federalism and seeking to bypass or lord it over the States?

Well centralism has always been a characteristic of the Labor Party, possibly because of a touching faith in the efficacy of central planning. So Rudd’s not really doing anything new. Howard on the other hand is, the Libs being traditional states righters, but I suspect that doctrine starts to look a bit threadbare when you haven’t been able to win a state election for years and have no prospect of turning that around in the foreseeable future.

But isn’t the bigger issue that ‘the citizens of a common country’ is no longer an accurate description of the relationship between the individual and the state? No matter whether it’s at the federal, state or local government level, the state is increasingly regarded as a mixture of service provider, for which individuals are grudging customers, and authoritarian overlord, to which unquestioning obedience is due. The notion that the state represents the considered collective will of the citizenry sounds curiously old-fashioned these days.