Australian federalism is unusual in being both so successful and yet so unsure of itself. That uncertainty, long a feature of Australia’s history, has become more pronounced in recent years, creating a climate of opinion in which the boundaries and balances that define our federal system—boundaries and balances that have always been somewhat blurred—risk being redefined without careful consideration of what might be at stake. Australian federalism, born more from the aspiration to be a nation than from either external threat or clear internal necessity, was always more poorly defined than its counterparts elsewhere. This has given it a fragility,…