Lance Boyle, why is centralism automatically “dangerous”?

Efficiency is dangerous?
Accountability is dangerous?
Affordability is dangerous?

“they cannot be trusted”

The only danger is the biased electoral system, which effectively keeps the show a two-actor scene.

Proportional representation (e.g. without “states” the Senate could be elected with an Australia-wide vote) and/or direct democracy (CIR) would put the brakes on any excessive tendencies of the Tweedles.

"how dare you take it upon yourself to force a single solution on a diverse population in even more diverse circumstances"? Who the hell do you think you are?”

The only real population “diversity” (or perhaps “divergence”) in Australia *is* the NT, due to the large concentration of Aborigines.
Everywhere else is pretty much the same.

This isn't the USA, a collection of past British, French and Spanish colonies.
We started unified, *then* divided.
All the other states were once part of NSW (except WA, glitch in original land claims).

Any change wouldn't be forced.
We'd have to endorse it democratically.

You think democracy means "everyone gets what they want all the time"?
No, democracy means "disappointing somebody every fifteen minutes".

Just imagine for a moment, Bazz, if the current constitution had been drafted within the straight jacket of the 1890s recession. The whole point of a constitution is to produce a set of principles that will remain relevant through good times and bad. And anyone who seriously believes that the current recession is the new norm has a very limited grasp of history.

And the suggestion that NT is the only centre of diversity in the Australian polity is a classic case of metrocentric ignorance. Urban punters like to believe that they are representative of regional values. But the fact that they do so simply highlights the extent of their arrogant presumption.

Regional Australians have consistently voted, by significant margins, for their own conservative party for decades. It is only out of frustration with their minority status that they have experimented with independents. When polled, they also consistently, and overwhelmingly, support independence from metropolitan mismanagement.

They loathe urban waste and dysfunctionality. They have deep contempt for urban law and order policies. They have equal contempt for the manifest ignorance and callous disregard for fundamental legal principles that has characterised urban imposed environmental policies. And they despair at the urban media's total abrogation of their duty as unbiased reporters of public record in respect of regional issues.

Yet we still have metrocentric punters telling us it is all just hunky dory and how regional folk are just tickled pink to have the benefit of all that urban wisdom in all decision that impact on them.

Well Yuyutsu, no one can definitively say what effects will be the most
significant as our economy is forced into a different mode by higher
energy costs. That there will be change is certain and in the longer
run it could mean a new definition of what is capitalism.
Credit requires that there is a surplus of cash to repay debts and
principle and that cash comes from increased productivity which is
another name for growth.

Certainly we will be living a much simpler life and many more people
will have vegie gardens in their back yards.
When will this all start, well it has already to some extent as you can
see from the difficulties all governments are having with debt and
income. I think that as soon as the shale oil production goes into
decline, about 2015, it will unveil the crude oil decline which will
in turn increase our current $117 a barrel price.

Lance, your comments reflect the commonly held understanding that we
are in a conventional economic cycle.
This has been true for the last 150 years or so and so most people
accept it as just the way things are.
Well for the last 150 plus years we have lived in a cheap energy world.
That no longer applies, the cheap oil era has ended, coal also has
increased in price and quality has fallen, ie btu per ton.

This changes everything. Growth is dependant on energy and the new
normal is low to zero growth and contraction.
We live in a complex society and complex systems are at risk of
sudden collapse.

Your beliefs have been true for the last 150 years or so but the era
of expensive and restricted energy supplies is permanent.

Sudden impacts may be avoidable by planning, but that requires an
educated political scene and public.

There are a number of economic cycles, Bazz, but all you have provided is a few anecdotes on the supply and demand for energy. Do you have any plans to return to the actual topic any time soon?

The greatest social and cultural variation to be found in Australia is the distinction between urban and regional Australians. Regional aborigines have more in common with their anglo/Aus neighbours than they do with urban aborigines. Regional Italians have more in common with their Anglo/Aus neighbours than they do with urban Italians. Folks in North Qld have more empathy with folks in Albany WA than they do with Brisbane residents. And vice versa.

Regional Australians number more than 4 million but none of them have the simple right to be governed by their own community and make their own laws. In every case they are subjected to one-size-fits-all rule from a disinterested urban majority.

And it is a telling indictment of the metrocentric majority that they are willing to grant local government powers to enlarged regional governments (gee thanks) but refuse to accept that we might actually need the State level powers that urban Australians take for granted.

Lance Boyle “metrocentric ignorance.”
“The greatest social and cultural variation to be found in Australia is the distinction between urban and regional Australians”

I spent my childhood in a medium-sized country town and my adulthood in Sydney (both outer and inner suburbs).

I haven't noticed any significant difference between most country and city Australians.
If you took someone blindfolded to the town I grew up in, they'd think it was just a Sydney suburb.

So are you suggesting we throw one-vote-one-value away, and give regional/country votes greater value than city votes?
So we'll have a new aristocracy, a ruralocracy, eh?
Oh, won't the metros be unhappy about the power bias then?
You can't create *any* democratic system that will make everyone happy!

“Regional Australians number more than 4 million but none of them have the simple right to be governed by their own community and make their own laws.”

Make their own laws? WTF!
Oh, so you'd be okay with country folk recriminalising sodomy (after all, only decadent city folk do that kind of thing)?
Why are you promoting such arbitrary division?

“one-size-fits-all rule”

Are we one country or not?
Government is *always* “one-size-fits-all”.
Name a type of government that isn't.

Don't you mean three-sizes-fits-all, and that's just the problem: their tiers, confusing and conflicting.

“the State level powers that urban Australians take for granted.”

We have no such powers.
Our local councils can't “make their own laws”.
Their choices are frequently hindered by state or federal government interference.

One could argue city residents get a worse deal, with their arbitrarily drawn council boundaries, making two sides of the same street ruled by two different councils, different state and federal MP districts.
You don't get that nonsense in country towns.
One council, one state MP, one federal MP for the *whole* town.