Well Tristan and with all due respect, it cannot mean more tax and higher spending!

However, much of your more socially just outcomes would be more than affordable and able to be met by the simple expediency of eliminating state and federal waste, (all of it just not that which you and labor find politically palatable) and doing real tax reform which does at least three things to be real! Lowers the horrendous and time wasting compliance costs, makes avoidance by anyone an entirely impossible thing of the past!

And as the very first consequence, quite massively lower the tax burden on those currently paying all our tax!

Which if done (and very doable if very unpopular with a very powerful and extremely privileged few) would bring the budget back to an ongoing surplus; (70+ annual billions paying for non essential and waste personified middle tier state parliaments and as much as 60 annual billions escaping the tax net via multinational and offshored former australian corporation tax avoidance?) all while paying for the very social justice outcomes you and your side wax lyrical about!

Me I'd druther social justice and an affordable nation building rapid rail system Gonski, NDIS, etcetera, etc. Than the expensive roadblocks in the path of real progress euphemistically referred to as state parliaments.

We can have one or tuther, just not both!
Alan B.

Sure getting rid of state govts would save a lot of resources ; but what price democracy? And the Federal Govt would have to take over a lot of those functions - replicating many of the costs.

As I say in the article we spend about half what Sweden spends proportionately. We'd need to increase spending by $400 billion to match them!

Instead we're one of the lowest taxing and spending govts in the OECD. And there's a price to be paid for that as well.

Labor is not 'big spending'. Labor proposes saving only $7 billion on capital gains tax and superannuation concessions every year. In the context of a $1.6 Trillion economy ; and $400 billion necessary to match the Swedes.

Both Labor and the Liberals have held spending way down as a proportion of GDP compared with other OECD countries. They have pretty much always been within 1.5% of GDP of each other. Or thereabouts. It is a negligible difference in the international context.

But Labor's Negative Gearing Policy could at least make a difference to housing supply and housing affordability. A very good thing.

Well Tristan, much of the expected administration could be limited to just one army of bureaucrats, rather than seven, if it was limited to the fed.

Moreover, if both means tested patient centric health and means tested student centric education was rolled out as a formula based pro rata funding along with regional autonomy, much of it could be accomplished with existing and underutilized federal and regional councils staff.

Even so, and given the missing pragmatism finally prevails over folks just protecting a patch at all costs!

We could also ring in long overdue real tax reform that rather than increasing tax, just removes all the current and endemic avoidance, the very obvious reason why there's any revenue shortfall whatsoever!
Alan B.

Just wanted to note a spelling error: the correct spelling is L-E-E-C-H-E-S, not L-E-A-D-E-R-S.

Here is an instant money-saver. Link student achievement with teachers wages. That is to say Teacher wages going down year by year, saving!
Furthermore all state & Federal pensions have bto conform with my superannuation rules. Every year the pension decreases by five percent and the decrease increases to fourteen per cent when you are over ninety years of age.
These two measures would start reducing the "Black Hole" in government finances caused by far too generous schemes.
Oh yes Local Councils have to also do the same that will see our rates decreasing rather than increasing.