Tony Abbott has urged the fractious state governments which have been at each other's throats over GST allocations and railing against Canberra's $80 billion cut to future hospital and school funding, to leave political partisanship at the door in order to capitalise on a rare period without elections.
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Leaders from all states and territories met in Canberra on Friday to agree on a new $30 million national education and advertising campaign against domestic violence. The breakthrough followed a "powerful" breakfast address from Australian of the Year Rosie Batty on the scourge terrorising households and claiming the lives of at least one woman every week in Australia – 31 so far this year alone.
Leaders also received advice from the former Victorian Police commissioner Ken Lay on the ice epidemic and agreed to co-ordinate existing state plans to tackle the pernicious substance destroying lives and wrecking households.
Arguing the country now has a rare 12- to 16-month period in which there are no state or federal elections scheduled, Mr Abbott told premiers that together, they faced a unique opportunity for co-operative reform of the federation.
"I'm very conscious of the fact that for the next 12 months or so, Australia has an election-free zone and that should give us an unusual window of opportunity for significant structural reform if we are prepared to grasp that nettle," Mr Abbott said after the meeting.
"Eventually, all of us have to put partisanship back on again, but for the purposes of our discussions of reform of the federation over the next few months, we will have to leave partisanship at the door."
To that end he announced a special leaders-only retreat to be held in July the day before the next COAG meeting.
"One of the outcomes of today's meeting is an agreement to have what I believe is probably a first, a COAG leaders' retreat without officials ... so a COAG leaders' retreat to discuss this whole question of fundamental reform of the federation."
Despite ongoing bad blood over the GST and hospital funding, governments came together as one to commit to a national domestic violence order (DVO) scheme. It would make court orders automatically recognised and enforceable across jurisdictions and would see formalised sharing of active DVO information to police and courts, as well as uniform national standards to be agreed by 2016.
Mr Abbott's consensual appeal came despite the bitter dispute on the allocation of the $57 billion GST pie between the states and Western Australia's Colin Barnett, who is still fuming over both the deal and the disrespect shown his state which will receive less than 30 cents in each dollar of GST collected within its borders.
In a direct repudiation of Mr Abbott's repeated statements that the GST is a state tax and for the states to decide, Mr Barnett used the post COAG press conference to argue his case.
"It is not the premiers, it is the Commonwealth which distributes the GST on the advice of the Commonwealth Grants Commission. The Premiers have no role. We can bicker and argue but it's to no effect," he said.
"I'm sorry Prime Minister, but that was for me the issue and this will be an opportunity where I've got to say I was disappointed in my state colleagues."
In a win for other states, Mr Abbott advised the GST formula would not be adjusted this year although he will now enter into "bilateral" discussion with WA towards a possible special deal thought to involve bringing forward infrastructure funding to boost WA's flagging budget bottom line.
The meeting delivered no solution to the massive hospital funding shortfall faced by the states, but the leaders pledged to work together through the federation and tax white paper processes and to discuss health funding, along with structural reform of the health system, at a retreat in July.
Mr Abbott said there was time before the largest reductions came into effect in 2017 to develop "holistic" solutions which would improve the efficiency of the health system, "to try to ensure that we don't have the health funding crunch that many people fear right now."
"Plainly we can make the health dollar go further, if we are delivering services in smarter, more patient-centred ways that in every respect we currently are," Mr Abbott said.
NSW Premier Mike Baird said the most significant outcome of the meeting was Mr Abbott's acknowledgement that the long-term funding pressures in health could not be simply left to the states, and had to be a joint effort.
"It is a huge challenge. It is the number one challenge to our finances full stop. Commonwealth and State. The only way we can deal with it is together," Mr Baird said.
"We acknowledge there is a challenge ... but it's one we're up for," he said.
