Ludwig
I think Perseus, may have a point re boundaries:

I come from a region in Northern NSW which originally had many small, local councils.The negative side of which was -duplication of services.However it also had a positive side - it enabled the rural communities greater control.

When many of those councils were amalgamated, the weight of numbers in the bigger cities meant the power shifted (forever) to urban dwellers & their carpetbagger friends.

Shortly thereafter, large tracts of bush & farm land were delivered to developers on a platter, through various ‘legal’ but dubious schemes.And strangely enough the(much touted) cost savings -if ever there were any -never showed in reduced rates & fees.

Actually the scenario went something like an old song:

'They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone'

Ludwig, I have repeatedly pointed out that the major advantage of regional states is that the proportion of state level per capita expenditure (15% of GDP) that is normally spent on head office overheads (about 1/5th, or 3% of GDP) is currently taken out of the circular flow of the regional economy.

This may not seem much to the economically illiterate but it essentially means that regional economies must grow by 3% each year just to maintain their current position. And as regional areas account for 1/3rd of the state population in both Qld and NSW, it means that the metropolitan capital region will grow by 1% each year even if they produce no increase in productivity.

And as anyone with even the most rudimentary exposure to economic modelling will understand, the long term consequences for rural areas are gradual decline, reduced investment and reduced services.

It is simple to model. Take out your calculator, key in the number 0.97, hit the "x" button, key in 100, and hit the "=" button. Then hit that "=" button 20 times and you will get the answer 54.37 which is the comparative size (percentage) of the regional economy in 20 years, compared to what it would be if these structural government leakages were not present.

But this is masked by the continual productivity increases in the regional economy that are twice that of metropolitan productivity increases. So we have more gradual declines in regional economies when the productivity figures should be producing robustly expanding ones.

And when we combine this regional subsidising of the metropolitan capital with increased interstate and overseas migration, that also heavily favours the expanding metropolitan economy, we get the completely unsustainable growth and serious diseconomies of scale that is now clearly in evidence.

Thanks Horus. Your point is well taken.

I am actually in favour of a two-tiered system of government, with national and regional governments. I have never been opposed to Perseus’ notion of more states or of a governmental system that separates large urban areas from predominantly rural areas.

But I have not been able to envisage just how such a setup could be significantly better than the current arrangement, especially when you factor in the costs and inconvenience of the conversion.

Perseus, if we have regional governments, whether they be called states or supercouncils or whatever, they will still be largely centred on population centres. So presumably there would be states centred on Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, etc.

This concept is up for discussion as part of Beattie’s push for local government amalgamations in Queensland.

I cannot envisage states that specifically exclude large population centres in order to be predominantly rural. There is no suggestion of this within the current Qld amalgamation debate.

As you know, I am seriously concerned about “the completely unsustainable growth and serious diseconomies of scale that is now clearly in evidence.”

So I am open to any possibilities of government restructure that might reduce or eliminate this. Please keep trying to convince me.

You make a good argument DRW. The price that a farmer receives as a percentage of the finished/saleable product is neglible. Its particularly bad in the case of wool, as there is an antiquated processing structure in place whereby a fleece may change hands up to 12 times before being purchased by the consumer - and remember that each of these 12 sets of hands wants to make a profit. There are currently some organisations trying to flatten the market out somewhat for wool, but they are up against a number of middle-men that dont want to lose their incomes either.

Certainly farmers should get double their income for most produce without driving up the final price too much. Consider wheat. Currently the price per tonne is $215. The price per tonne for bread at $3 for a 650g loaf is $4615 (rounded). If the famers return was doubled to $430/tonne, the total cost (and this assumes no other ingredients for simplicity) would come to $4830. This would equate to a per loaf price of $3.14 (or a 4.7% increase). Or course in real life it is more complex than that. The grain trader wants to maintain his profit margin, so it gets added onto the farmers price, the processor wants to maintain his margin, so it gets added onto the traders price, the manufacturer wants to maintain his margin etc etc etc.

Many countries in Europe have faced the problem that we face now. Their solution has been to subsidise their farmers, in some cases pay them NOT to produce a certain product. This decision was based on the premise that farmers add more to the value of the country than just produce. They are the main environmental custodians, so it was decided that the entire population of the country should contribute towards helping farmers to play that role (which is why we are up against a brick wall when trying to get these countries to drop their farm subsidies)

Don't be fooled into believing Don Burke represents many farmers in the western region.
The AEF has the agenda of pushing unsustainable cropping practices further out in a bid to gain more support for industrialised agriculture, and the promotion of GM.
There has been many thousands of hectares given the green light with PVP management plans. They were ok'd because the desired outcome & goal is more grass, not to grow a crop. Those landowners are obviously using better and more effective methods.
If Don's farmers honestly thought that to leave the country as is was environmentally incorrect then why "sacrifice" 15 percent to remain that way??
Woody weed encroachment isn't a result of poor fire management, its a result of poor grass management.

Ludwig, the issue of whether a regional state should be centred on existing provincial cities like Townsville, Cairns etc is not our call. That is up to the people in that region and, as things stand at present, support for autonomy is stronger outside the provincial cities than in them. So I see no reason why a new province MUST have an existing city as its capital. The New England referendum failed because Newcastle was included when they did not want to be in it. Many states in the USA do very well without one.

The cost in setting up new states is a natural concern but, on reflection, is overrated. Each community in the existing state is a part owner of every piece of existing state legislation, intellectual property or software. So when part of a state decides to form a new state they have every right to take a copy of all that material for their own use.

There would not need to be any wholesale rewriting of laws, for example, because the most prudent approach would be to take each existing law and pass a single ammendment stating that all references to the state of Queensland be changed to the state of North Queensland, in the same way Australian law evolved from British law

All the existing elected state members from the region would remain the elected members of the new state and meet to form their own parliament and government. And one would hope that the community has given them firm instructions to ensure that all service delivery standards are met before any additional changes are made.

The ratios of departmental spending are also well defined amongst Australian states and the few instances of serious failure within a department can be clearly traced to deviation from these budgetary norms. The key is to ensure that the allocation decisions within those budgets are consistent with regional community priorities. From there, it is then only a matter of directing the Feds to send the regions fair share of GST money to a new regional bank acount.