Accounting for Gender: the Role of the COAG Reform Council in Tracking Outcomes for Women and Girls Across Australia

The COAG Reform Council has played a critical role in tracking progress, nationally and on a state‐by‐state basis, against the COAG reform agenda. The council has analysed and publicly reported on governments’ performance against outcomes, performance indicators and targets agreed by COAG. However, until 2013 gender analysis was not directly incorporated in the assessment of governments’ performance. The council's first report on gender, Tracking equity: Comparing outcomes for women and girls across Australia, redressed this omission. This article explores how taking account of gender greatly enriches our understanding of governments’ performance in critical areas, and enhances public accountability as a result. An understanding of gender differences also provides a better basis for government decision‐making on ways to improve outcomes.     

Managing Intergovernmental Relations in Australia: The Case of Agricultural Policy Cooperation

In June 2004, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) announced changes to the guidelines and protocols of some 40 ministerial councils and intergovernmental fora which comprise the web of intergovernmental consultative arrangements. This article examines the impact of the guidelines on the operation of the oldest of the sectoral ministerial councils, those relating to agriculture. The COAG guidelines aim to increase the strategic focus of the councils. However, in the case of agricultural policy there appears to have been a centralising of policy control, both within state governments and towards the Commonwealth, which undermines that objective and leaves the ministerial councils focusing on the more technical issues which they are more effective at addressing.     

Intergovernmental councils and centralization in Australian federalism

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how a high level of vertical intergovernmentalism and a low level of horizontal intergovernmentalism reflect as well as contribute to a high degree of centralization in Australian federalism and in the role and activity of intergovernmental councils (IGCs). Pre-eminent among the latter is the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), which sits at the apex of a system of ministerial councils and attendant agencies. Policy coordination is the principal motivation behind the Commonwealth’s use of COAG. The States established their own horizontal body in 2006 but that faded quickly in an experience that confirmed the underlying realities of Australian federalism.