Congratulations. You have picked a part answer to one of our large problems.
Another matter that needs to be raised is the centralisation of government.
My experience in a profession was that the right decisions were more likely to be reached by the person closest to the coal face. The best way to operate was to empower employees to make decisions while leaving open the channels for them to seek guidance. The wrong way to operate was to set rules from above without the intimate knowledge of the person actually handling the problem.

So much of the bureaucracies, public and private, spend time ticking boxes rather than making real decisions that governance is becoming extremely cumbersome and inefficient.

The prime example is the NDIS. Centralised to Geelong!. The decisions about who is disabled and what can be done to help them should be made as close as possible to the disabled people. -- at Local Government level or even ward or street level.

Huge waiting times and totally ineffective help at huge cost is the result of the present system.

Thank you for raising questions that nobody addresses and raising solutions that nobody , in power, ever thinks of.

First you would untax us or rather the big end of town, then tax land! Almost as if you believed this wouldn't be passed on to those who could least afford it, as higher rents!? And even more compressed housing density! (Look mum, tinned people.)

Diabolically difficult decentralization would be assisted by mandatory green belts and density limits not able to be bypassed by state and council, developer friendly town planning!

And by genuine tax reform manifesting as say, a flat tax rate everyone pays! And from all income earned here!

And given it was made unavoidable by law, with no tax reduction or tax breaks exclusions etc, included for any reason. A very generous 15% could be applied; and given current avoidance was not merely curtailed but entirely removed as a possibility.

Tax revenue could rise by 60-70 billions, even as counterproductive bracket creep and tax avoidance was rendered impossible!

Which in turn would eliminate entirely unnecessary, current tax compliance costs, which currently rip around 7% from the average bottom line?

Given this money would remain as a retained operating capital component, the adjusted tax rate would be effectively just 8% for businesses?

Decentralisation would be further assisted by the roll out of fibre to the kerb and resisted rapid rail!

Rapid rail would put huge ongoing downward pressure on house prices, particularly if the necessary rail corridors were resumed and quarantined now!

And likely to be resisted to the last developer/land agent and hand in our collective pocket, state governments!?

In which case the subsequent rezoning of adjacent land might well pay for much of it.

To that end, we must have affordable power and guaranteed reliable potable water! Not too hard if the recalcitrant roadblocks manifestly masquerading as our representatives and public servants were replaced by can do representation!

Thinking inside a fixed circle of ideas, Bryan, limits the questions. And if the questions are limited by, bereft of ideas, blinkered bombastic land tax ideologues!? So also are the (echo chamber) answers!
Alan B.

Bryan doesn't seem to understand how rates in the dollar are set.

We don't have a fixed rate in the dollar value of properties. Councils decide how much of our money they want, look at the value of rateable properties, then set a rate in the dollar to get that much money.

Thus they continue to increase rates at multiples of the inflation rate, & fill vast council temples with totally useless bureaucrats.

A much better idea would be to make it law that councils can not increase rates at more than inflation. In fact we should calculate what rates would be if only increased at inflation rate for the last 20 years, & force councils to charge only that.

Yes thousands of clerks would have to be sacked, which should speed up considerably the time taken to get a simple bit of paper through council processes. Thousands less in boxes to delay approvals would be a great improvement.

Decentralization is the process of redistributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or"A decentralized system is where some decisions by the agents are made without centralized control

One more important reason why people do not move out to the country: FIRES!

As bio-fuel builds up, every Australian village or town faces the eventual devastating big fire once in a decade or two.
What is the use of lowered taxes if all you have is going to burn down?

If anyone is serious about decentralisation, than the most important step would be to allow people to get rid of the oil-filled eucalyptus "natives", replacing them with other, less inflammable, trees and crops.