A proposal to keep those convicted of terrorism offences in jail indefinitely after they have served their sentences has been given the green light by state and commonwealth governments, but a decision on changing the goods and services tax (GST) has been deferred until March.
State and territory leaders debated a number of issues with the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, during Friday’s Council of Australian Governments (Coag) meeting.
Turnbull had earlier flagged that the issue of post-sentence prevention orders to stop convicted terrorists from re-entering the community if they were deemed to be a risk would be high on Coag’s agenda.
Several jurisdictions already have preventative detention orders for sex offenders and other violent criminals, and all offered their in-principle support for extending the orders to include terrorism offences.
Turnbull told reporters on Friday the measures would help bolster anti-terrorism legislation, such as the plan to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship, which is vulnerable to constitutional challenges.
“There have been arguments made by learned authorities that would hit some trouble in the high court, it might not be upheld in the high court. There’s been other equally learned people who have said it would be [upheld]. It’s clearly an area of some contention,” Turnbull said.
The prime minister said giving security agencies such as Asio the power to detain convicted terrorists after their sentences were finished had “a greater certainty” of being able to withstand legal challenges.
“The principle has been considered and approved as constitutional by the high court so ... this is not entirely unfamiliar territory,” he said, adding that the new orders would be introduced “as soon as possible”.
The big ticket item on Coag’s agenda was tax reform, but no agreement on that contentious issue was forthcoming.
Turnbull and the first ministers settled on a timeline, saying that reform would be debated and agreed on at the next meeting in March.
Turnbull said the goodwill of all parties on the issue meant that “it’s unlikely that we won’t be able to reach agreement”.
The Queensland premier, Annastasia Palaszczuk, wants there to be a solid proposition on tax reform put on the table before the March meeting.
“The modelling must be presented at that next meeting,” she said. “There must be a clear path forward about how we are going to address this fundamental issue for families across our nation.”
First ministers praised the decision to enshrine the funding of health as a shared responsibility, ensuring that federal dollars will continue to flow.
“It’s a very rare position where all state and territory leaders will put down the political badge and say what is the number one challenge we are facing? And it is health,” the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, said.
“It gives us something to work really intensively over the next two or three months towards designing a system where we don’t quarrel about health funding so much as work together in partnership to deliver better health care,” the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said.
He said the agreement signalled a “new approach”.
“That is really important. I don’t think we can overstate just how important an agreement that is. The acknowledgment as well that this is our number one challenge and it’s one that each and every one of us must step up and properly respond to, all governments, I think that’s a really important development today,” Andrews said. “It certainly is a very new approach, prime minister, and I thank you for it.”
Palaszczuk said that the existing financial arrangement on healthcare were “inadequate”.
“It’s a difficult conversation and it’s one that we’ve spent a good part of this year discussing,” she said.
Premiers and chief ministers had raised vociferous objections to proposals to remove federal funding from hospitals altogether, an option put forward in a leaked document on federation reform.
Turnbull did not rule out putting more federal money into the health system, saying he is “certainly open to it”, but emphasised that states had a role to play, too.
“What is good at this meeting is that we’re recognising that shared responsibility. The states have agreed that their taxes will be part of the discussion,” he said.
After Thursday’s meeting of Coag treasurers, the federal treasurer, Scott Morrison, ruled out raising the GST unless all revenue went towards lowering the overall tax burden through cuts to other taxes.
The treasury department has done economic modelling on a number of GST options, including raising the rate to 15%, and broadening the base to include fresh food.
Some states, like Victoria, remain steadfastly opposed to changing the GST.
The Western Australian premier, Colin Barnett, wants a greater focus on how the GST is carved up by the states and territories, calling distribution “the elephant in the room”.
A proposal by the South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, to give all GST revenue to the federal government in return for a slice of income tax revenue, would also be considered, Turnbull said.
States and territories are pushing ahead with their plan to create a national domestic violence order scheme. They have agreed to change laws to recognise the domestic violence orders applied to perpetrators from other jurisdictions in the next few months, in line with a pledge to introduce a national scheme by April.
The federal government will offer police and state courts money to help facilitate information sharing on domestic violence orders.
Coag also agreed to a proposal put forward by Palaszczuk to have a national domestic violence summit.
