E.Sykes,

Can you really imagine the practicality of having a Minister soley in charge of collecting all the garbage every week or one for maintaining parking meters and how effective those would be on a national scale?

It would certainly make for interesting Federal Election campaigns where every aspect of our lives is addressed, debated and ultimately controlled by a single political party, especially one with control of both houses.

The problem with State governments in Australia is the small number of states (does any other nation have just six/seven/eight administrative divisions at the second level?) and the skewed distribution of population towards NSW and Victoria. Here are the figures:

New South Wales 6,926,990
Victoria 5,246,079
Queensland 4,228,290
South Australia 1,591,930
Western Australia 2,130,797
Tasmania 495,772
Northern Territory 217,559
Australian Capital Territory 340,818

How on earth can it be fair or feasible to govern a country when over a third of the population is in one state and less than a fortieth is in another? (It would have been a hundredth if the NT had voted for Statehood.) If federalism is to work in Australia, new states need to be made with roughly equal populations; but given the distribution of people in the country it is clearly better to remove the State level altogether and concentrate on amalgamating local government areas.

However -- as a previous poster said -- it's not going to happen in my lifetime.

Sounds like you all want a theocracy. All you have to do is ask Jesus to be your Lord and Saviour and follow his commands and you have what you all seek, for you personaly. One Kingdom, one government, one God.

wobbles: every aspect of our lives is addressed, debated and ultimately controlled by a single political party, especially one with control of both houses...

yes..its called "politics" everywhere in the world bar silly little australia. look it up.

It seems some are advocating what essentially could become a Single Party State. Despite the prospect of democratic elections these are still potential dictatorships.

There are only a handful of these left in the world today. The last one of these to go was the USSR.

Imagine Rudd or Abbott with total political control and in charge of both the Army and the Police Force. If they went too far and refused to budge or declared martial law over some contrived matter the only way you could shift them would be by armed insurgence or a military coup.

Maybe duplication and waste are the price we have to pay to maintain what we have.

I agree with Chris C and -to some degree- JonJ.
If we were fair dinkum about reconciliation, the answer is right in front of us. Re establish the borders of the original nations on this continent.
A federal assembly of around 500 nations would actually solve a few problems, starting with decentralisation and immigration/refugee problems; about 99% of new Australians I believe, end up in our cities.
More than a few of those 500 nations would probably welcome a few newcomers.
The larger the nation/organisation, the easier it is to justify the egregious disparity between richest and poorest.