Alchemy

10/19/2023

The Australian Constitution …

115. States not to coin money

“A State shall not coin money, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts.”

So the goal here was that the states don’t print money, so they can’t then pay debts by just printing money, which would be inflationary (unless you’re American).

It’s effectively the states handing over the monetary system to feds when they federated.

But that’s not what it says.

In actual fact the states pay their debts by electronic funds transfer, using money raised by all sorts of nefarious means (stamp duties, speeding fines, etc), which is in breach of the constitution.

They can live in breach because no one is offended by it enough to take it to the high court.

If it were taken to the high court, my guess is the judges would ‘interpret’ the intent of the original clause and let things go on as they are.

Which begs the question, why not just interpret the constitution any way you want, for example to allow for the Voice without having to change the thing?

For fuck sakes, they’re just guidelines, mate.

Recently, in a majority ruling in Vanderstock & Anor v State of Victoria, the High Court found the Victorian Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based charges are invalid under Section 90 of the Constitution as it imposes a duty of excise.

Section 90 apparently says only the Commonwealth Parliament, not the states nor the territories, can “impose duties of customs and excise”.

See, they just make this shit up as they go. A road user charge is deemed an excise by the high court, because they’ve got special interests to protect. Namely their mates in federal parliament and the electric car industry, aka the car industry.

Not a single lay person in the country would have guessed correctly that a distance based road charge was an excise.

If they really wanted to they could have slipped the Voice into section 90 without bothering us at all. After all it was an excise on common sense.