Good SecessionWA folk,
History demonstrates that political unions are not permanent.
They are not.
Borders move.
Constitutions change.
Sovereignty shifts.
Federations fracture.
Empires dissolve.
Composite states split.
Some nations leave by referendum.
Some by negotiation.
Some by war.
Some, as with the Soviet Union, emerge by political collapse.
Western Australia would not be historically unique in taking its own path to full independence.
The real question is not whether such things happen.
They do.
The real question is ..
.. whether Western Australians are politically mature enough to think clearly about
self-government,
self-respect,
and
control of their own wealth.
Because once that question is faced honestly, a second question follows close behind:
why should a State as productive, stable and resource-rich as Western Australia
continue handing decisive financial and constitutional power to Canberra,
especially when the case set out in Secession by Western Australia is that a sovereign WA
can fund itself far more sensibly
and
with significantly lighter (near-zero) taxation?
It seems, on its face, a straightforward proposition.
Yet vested interests in federal politics, and even some circles here in Western Australia, plainly hope that fear, habit, and a cultivated sense of dependency will continue to do their work.
So it helps to step back and look at the record.
Not every case is identical.
Some nations seceded from larger states.
Some left unions they had once joined.
Some restored sovereignty they had earlier lost.
Some became independent almost by accident when a larger political structure simply collapsed around them.
But the message is clear enough:
History is full of nations that have moved to independence.
A short list of independence
United States — 1776 — left Great Britain.
Belgium — 1830 — broke away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Norway — 1905 — peacefully dissolved its union with Sweden. This is one of the clearest examples of a nation that entered a union and later left it.
Finland — 1917 — separated from Russia.
Iceland — 1918 / 1944 — became a sovereign kingdom separate from Denmark in 1918, then a fully independent republic in 1944.
Ireland — 1922 — most of Ireland left the United Kingdom and became the Irish Free State.
Singapore — 1965 — joined Malaysia in 1963, then left two years later to become an independent state.
Bangladesh — 1971 — broke away from Pakistan.
Eritrea — 1993 — separated from Ethiopia.
Czech Republic and Slovakia — 1993 — Czechoslovakia split peacefully in what became known as the Velvet Divorce.
Timor-Leste — 2002 — restored its independence after Indonesian occupation.
Montenegro — 2006 — left its state union with Serbia.
South Sudan — 2011 — separated from Sudan.
United Kingdom — 2020 — not secession from a country, but still an important sovereignty example: it left the European Union and resumed full legal independence from that supranational EU structure.
Then there are the larger break-ups.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, fifteen republics moved to independence:
Russia
Ukraine
Belarus
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova
Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan and Tajikistan
In the Baltic states especially — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — this was widely understood as a restoration of lost independence, not the creation of something new.
When Yugoslavia broke apart, multiple independent countries emerged over time:
Slovenia
Croatia
North Macedonia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Montenegro
Serbia, and later Kosovo in contested circumstances.
And behind all this sits the largest wave of all:
decolonisation.
After the Second World War, dozens upon dozens of countries across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific moved to full independence from European empires:
India and Pakistan,
Sri Lanka and Malaysia,
Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana,
Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Congo,
Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Fiji, Papua New Guinea,
and many more besides.
So the idea that large political arrangements
are permanent,
or
morally untouchable,
is simply not borne out by history.
Even today, the conversation continues.
In Alberta, Canada, the question of independence is not theoretical. It is being openly argued, organised, and tested through petitions, legal processes, and public debate.
That alone should remind Western Australians that
sovereignty
is not some museum topic from the nineteenth century.
It remains a live political question in serious democracies now.
What does this show?
It shows that unions are not sacred merely because they are old.
It shows that constitutional arrangements are human arrangements.
They can be remade.
They can be outgrown.
And
They can be dissolved
.. when enough people conclude that the existing structure no longer serves them.
Sometimes that happens peacefully.
Sometimes not.
Sometimes by vote.
Sometimes by political accident.
Sometimes by economic exhaustion.
Sometimes because a people simply tires of being told that dependence is virtue.
That last point matters in Western Australia.
Because for generations the Commonwealth — and the habits of thought that grew up around it — have encouraged Australians to believe that we can only survive and prosper if the federal centre leads in every important matter, especially economic life.
That is an illusion.
No responsible family would invite a neighbour from down the road into their home to dictate how the household income is spent, how the family assets are managed, or how the household’s most valuable investments are to be controlled. A sensible householder would say, politely but firmly: “.. thank you, but this is our home, our work, our future, and we will run it ourselves.”
The same principle applies to Western Australia.
When Canberra says,
“we are stronger as a union,”
or
“Australians have stuck together through thick and thin,”
.. the language sounds warm and noble. But slogans are not arguments. Much depends on the terms of the arrangement.
If one part of the country earns, produces, builds and exports, while others spend badly, borrow recklessly, and remain structurally dependent, then the permanent diversion of wealth and decision-making power from the first to the second is not some timeless moral good merely because it is wrapped in national sentiment.
At some point, one must ask whether this is truly a partnership,
or merely habit enforced by sentiment and fear.
None of this requires hostility towards our fellow Australians.
It is not about rejecting them — we are all fellows on the same continent.
It is about recognising that true political maturity means being willing to run one’s own household responsibly.
Western Australia has always been resource-rich, capable, and self-reliant at heart. The question is whether we are prepared to think of ourselves that way again.
History says nations leave unions.
History says peoples recover sovereignty.
History says old arrangements end.
The only serious question is whether Western Australians will one day decide they are ready to govern themselves fully, to recover what is theirs, and to build a freer and more rational future on that foundation.
Secession by Western Australia — because what belongs to us should work for us.
Julian Gillespie
The Authorship Team
Thank you for the continued elaboration and clarification of this important issue. On raising the subject with friends, family and acquaintances, it became clear that the word "secession" was not grasped with clarity and needed explanation. It may be beneficial to craft a solgan term similar to 'Brexit' to capture a broader community understanding in a shorter time.
Thanks Julian, good to give people insight into historical precedents. How is this proposal being received, is it gaining any traction?