Social engineering is for despots Natural evolution is the only way forward.

There is a saying in heavy industry...if you want to find safety problems, hire a safety officer.

I'm of the belief that most of our "modern" health problems have largely have always been with us, it just we have removed the bigger problems. in other words middle class westerns have time think about they abandonment issues and actually think their a big deal simple because they are absolutely confident that their next meal and shelter are assured.

When these basic needs are being met you simply haven't got time to be worried that you were taken from your mothers breast too early, or the Daddy didn't love you enough.

We really do need to get past them and us or divide and rule, master and servant politics!

Today we no longer confine folks and their ideas into boxes labelled left or right, just up or down, good or bad policy and stillborn outcomes; all too often forestalled by lack of fortitude, courage of conviction and the now missing bipartisan parliaments that are able to actually put the national interest ahead of purely partisan politics or patently puerile self interest!

We are not served by leaders in waiting with their inherent limitations and disruptive Machiavellian machinations! But particularly those whose hunger for raw power enables them to destroy the very vehicles that they would have, serve those ambitions!?

Good leaders are never selected by a biased self assessment and need to learn how to follow in order to lead!

Moreover they're inclusive consensus driven Team Captains and able to mount convincing and logical argument to take the doubters with them.

And the missing bipartisanship would eliminate endless counterproductive delays and decisions and their outcomes being overturned or reversed with every change of administration!

Much of that could be changed by an irrevocable bill of rights which just has to include a citizen's initiated referendum.

We here in Australia are hopelessly over governed by internally competing and massively wasteful state parliaments; and for those that claim we need as many hugely expensive counterproductive decision makers?

There are single cities that match our population numbers; administered far more competently by a single central administration; and or states that do far better with an elected governor and a personally hand picked staff of administrators that are fired with the boss with any change of administration.

This political paradigm eliminates the puerile tribal wars that aptly describe too many parliaments!

And given any administration is only as good as the advice it gets or relies on, essential and necessary remediation, whenever bad advice results in maladministration and waste.

Even so, all human progress has been accompanied by the robust or passionate exchange of countervailing or competing ideas.
Alan B.

Alan B, a stronger federal government sounds great until you live in any state other then NSW and Vic, then it starts to tail off.
I think the key is to have very clear understanding and accountability with no overlap of what role and services each level of government is responsible for.
Have longer fixed terms and have a good clear out at each term.
Perhaps a presidency for the federal government voted in a popular vote. Responsible for defense, international relations and agreements, border protection and tax collection. With a house of review made up by the state parliaments.

State governments responsible for all services other then the above, using local government. local services.

We would get variation /competition between the states which generally leads to better outcomes for all.

Health, education, industrial relations would all be state issues the feds would not need to get involved nor would they need their massive public service.

What unadulterated waffle.

Trying to quantify these touchy feely "measures" of well being is wildly subjective and is like trying to nail a jelly to the ceiling.

Yes Cobber, but do we the most over governed nation on earth bar one need all those layers of costly control and opposition? A model that was constructed to serve in older feudal times and by the way, by unpaid volunteers!

I see nothing that's dome by state legislators that couldn't be done by enlarged councils and the roll out of vastly more regional autonomy, and overseen by an overarching Federal government?

It is the 21st century and we need to move into it. Customary roles are not set in stone; and if management teaches just one thing, it teaches there is a better way to do everything.

Simply put, anything state governments do now, could be done in cooperative combination by the top and bottom tiers of government? And like removing the profit demanding middle man who adds very little but unnecessary cost to doing business or upward pressure to the price wage spiral?

It cannot take another national emergency surely to force pragmatism on the federation, we are one people and one nation, and just eliminating one entirely non essential tier of government could be done, without losing a single service or amenity but saving as much as 70 billions plus per?

I can think of so many other thing we could use the savings for; rapid rail, a nation building inland canal that allows the vast inland to be opened up to myriad development, a national nuclear powered fleet of roll on roll off ferries. In the knowledge and belief that bulk freight forwarding remains one of the most profitable business models any well lead nation could and should invest in?

If only to create a competitive advantage for our own exporters and quite massively by implication grow our economy!? And ultra expensive self serving anachronisms that prevent that need to be removed, and by the expressed will of the people if there's no other way? Alan B.