-- From above --

Lastly, your simple example: "Just as one example, look at the school halls roll out and then try to understand, if that's possible? Why the same hall rolled out by a, so called, state administration. Sometimes cost 30% more than the same hall, financed by private schools."
It doesn't matter which level of government paid for the hall it will always cost more than a private construction. There various reasons for this:
- Some of it is due to the fact for a government to do anything requires a lot more time and work to get it approved and budgeted.
- Some is due to the fact that those bidding and quoting for a government project (of any of the federal/state/local bodies) requires alot more paper work and stuffing around such as complying with stricter environmental/social/heritage etc.. requirements than private builds.
- Some of it is due to the fact governments in general like to spend big and have ostentatious grandiose costs involved (eg: such as having artists commissioned for painting/sculptural features).
- And lastly some of it is due to the fact that contractors add in a government bid factor, ie: they just quote more than they would for private jobs simply because it is a governement paying for it (a bit like it cost more to build a house in a wealthy suburb than a poor one or it costs more for lawyers to do a an office fit-out than it does for a charity to fitout the headoffice: as-an-aside, according to classical economics this shouldn't happen but it certainly does which shows that classical economics doesn't always work).

I think you may have missed a few South American cities thinkabit, and they lend critical weight to my argument.

It wasn't just one school hall, but many, with the worst examples of classic skimming, seeming to be in NSW?

Moreover, I just don't buy the excuses youve been so adroit at trotting out?

One wonders if you weren't part of that corrupt or incompetent Labor administration?

As for being over governed and we are, we have more politicians per head of allegedly represented populi than any other country, bar one!?

Wriggle and squirm all you can, but the raw numbers bear me out.

If you're looking for more reliable information, give Wikipedia a miss and try Google scholar?

As for what governments cost? Add up their entire revenue stream including all fees, charges, fines and duties etc, plus any deficit they add to last years numbers. Then match that against actual service and amenity expenditure. Then subtract the difference.

The latter numbers are what we pay for the privilege of buck passing, excuse making state governments. And at an average of 10 billion per per parliament. Thats 70 plus billions we just do not need to spend on them, to keep them and their veritable armies of bureaucrats in the privileged lifestyles they've become accustomed to.

And WASTED public money, whatever the larger or smaller number, better spent on the huge nation building, national infrastructure deficit!

Rapid rail, half a dozen carbon free thorium power projects, several space age desal projects, road and rail tunnels etc.

Moreover, there's significant savings to be had, by the rollout of direct pro rata funding and regional autonomy. Around 30%? And a lot of critical coal face funding!

Which will leave the states screaming about being circumvented and loss of control or reason to be!

The level of government that collects the tax should be the level of government charged with the responsibility of distributing it, without another arm of government with its fat little fingers in the till getting their cut!

It's just costly outsourcing by another name!
Alan B.

Governments and their armies of bureaucrats/civil servants are all part of any parliament! And all trying with every fibre of their beings to somehow justify an unneeded existence.

The essential ones, like Police personnel, emergency service, courts and judges can be transferred to federal departments or control? Or local regional councils?

Two levels of government, excellent scapegoats by both top and middle tiers, for the endless waste and snouts in the public money trough.

Just remove the middle tier and with that gone, so also are the endless scapegoats and excuses for failure to launch!

Infrastructure only needs to be delayed for a decade, for the roll out cost to double!

I don't separate ministers and their armies of civil servants, the way you try to?

They all cost public money, and largely, constitute a parliament.

Furthermore, we just don't need, what amounts to folk who take tax revenue, extract their wages, admin fees, expenditure, ultra generous pensions and perks, then hand the rest to, outsourced service, like the now extremely costly prison service, in many cases.

When we could have just gone to that same outsourced service provider directly, or the recipients, without the aforementioned unneeded middleman, unnecessary participation or costly, cost adding control!

And if we need a referendum and a changed constitution to make that happen? Then that's what we should do, must have!
Alan B.

thinkabit,
If you're going to use school halls as an example, at least base it on the reality not the Mad Monk's spin!

The best value was achieved in WA where the state government closely scrutinized the tenders. If anything cost more than it should, they demanded to know why.

The huge waste occurred in NSW and Victoria. In both of those states, the scheme was administered by the private sector as the government no longer had the capability.

Whether they work in the public sector or the private sector is not the determining factor for whether the staff can do their job well.

Alan B: You say, "I think you may have missed a few South American cities thinkabit, and they lend critical weight to my argument."

No, I didn't miss them and no they don't add weight to your "argument".

The largest population under the one local government in South America is Sao Paulo with about 12million which is only about half the size of Australia. Perhaps you're confused by the difference between the population a city proper (ie: the population under the one city government) and the population associated with a city's urban area (which will typically include more than one local government). Eg: Sao Paulo's city proper only has about 12million but about has about 40 million in its urban area.

But regardless of this, you seem to be missing a crucial point here: even if Sao Paulo had more than Australia's population its cizitzens would still subject to 3 levels of Government, specifically: The City/Municipality Government of Sao Paulo, The State Governemnt of Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo is the a city within the State of Sao Paulo, similar to how there is New York City and the State of New York in the USA) and lastly the government of the Federal Republic of Brazil.

3 or more levels of government is quite common among countries with populations in the millions and/or with large geographic size/dispersed areas, however there are exceptions: such as the UK-- the UK is a bit weird and I've never fully understood it but from what I understand different parts of it have different numbers of levels but much of England has only 2 levels I believe.

Also, for completeness it should be mentioned that some territories of Australia only have 1 or 2 levels but these are just corner cases. In general almost all Australians have 3 levels.

Thinkabit, the UK currently has the European tier of government on top of all the rest, though that probably won't last much longer.

Then there is the UK government in Westminster.

Then there is the government of Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland. England misses out on this tier.

Then (in England at least) there are two tiers of local government: County and District/Borough/City. But some of the latter have seceded from the former (and are now known as unitary authorities). And ISTR one district was completely abolished after its residents voted to do so.