As a “CONSTITUTIONALIST” is John Howard’s grandstanding to pay for a referendum in a State for which there is no constitutional powers. Neither for us all having to pay for what is an internal Queensland matter.
To me, John Howard’s grandstanding about the people have a right to vote isn’t shown where he announces that after all he is not going to have people voting if they do or don’t like to have a nuclear station in their backyard, so to say.
During the Constitution Convention Debates the Framers of the Constitution referred to “centralised government” being the “Federal Government” and “local government” being “State Government”, albeit on the last day of the Convention there was also a reference to “municipal councils” being “local government”.
The Constitution provides for a 2-tier government, being State and Federal Government. How the State conduct their own affairs, such as having another level of Government now generally referred to being the (State legislated) local governments should have nothing to do with the Federal Government.
As my blog at http://au.360.yahoo.com/profile-ijpxwMQ4dbXm0BMADq1lv8AYHknTV_QH makes clear we are conned with the ill-conceived 14-11-2006 WorkChoices judgment. We are conned with having to vote, despite that on 19-16-2006 I succeeded in Court proving there is no constitutional powers to force anyone to vote in Federal elections. Hence, people have to wake up to this rot and accept the following; PEOPLES POWER, reclaim our constitutional and other legal rights and hold judges and politicians accountable!

Tristan Peach has offered one good suggestion for overcoming the problems caused by large scale councils. Another might be to break up Brisbane City Council into smaller councils, but to have some inter-council cooperation which encompasses all of the region now governed by the Brisbane City Council. Yet another could be to have regional governments replace State Governments altogether, but within those regions have smaller local governments. Southe Eastr Queensland or possibly larger region which also comprises the Northern Rivers district of NSW is one possibility.

I think Brisbane provides many examples of how badly oversized local councils can govern. Again and again and again we have witnessed the large size of Brisbane having been manipulated to force local residents to accept environmentally damaging projects that they strongly oppose. The Brisbane City Council has been able to claim a mandate for having done so by claiming a majority of Brisbane residents comprising people in other areas not directly affected support given projects. An example includes the supposed 'consultation' about the Hale Street Bridge project (see http://www.stopthehalestreetbridge.com).

Whilst South Brisbane residents and teachers and students of State High school, and the parents of those students, strongly opposed the Hale Street Bridge, a lot of submissions which appeared to have been orchestrated by the vested interests who wanted to build the bridge were sent from outside the affected areas in 2006. The Labor 'opposition', which, in fact, comprises a majority on the Brisbane City Council and could have blocked the Hale Street Bridge, seized on this rigged consultation as an excuse to backslide away from its original half-hearted posturing against the bridge. Notwithstanding the rigged nature of the survey and the cowardice of the Labor Councillors, this, nevertheless illustrates Brisbane's problems of scale.

Prior to the Hale Street Bridge, the size of Brisbane was similarly used to impose the decision to build the North South Bypass Tunnel (see http://notunnels.org).

Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka,

I believe that we should not be so fixated on John Howard's motives for appearing to support democracy in Queensland even if it flies in the face of his stance over the earlier forced amalgamations in Victoria or, indeed, nearly all of his record in Government, as I have already noted.

Also, we should not be fixated on convoluted constitutional arguments about whether or not Howard's actions amount to interference in 'internal' Queensland affairs.

Beattie's enforced amalgamations remain an outrageous violation of the democratic rights of many ordinary Queenslanders. He has failed to provide a coherent logical case as to why they should occur. The only conceivable motive is to further take power out of the hands of local communities so that more decisions which favour property developers, land speculators and private tollway consortiums are made by larger councils over which local communities have little control.

Any Federal Government, whether Liberal or Labor, would be wholly correct in doing what Howard is now doing or, indeed, in going considerably further. That is why Kevin Rudd is correct to support John Howard on this question (even if he is wrong on many of his other points of agreement with John Howard such as the question of the Tasmanian pulp mill).

I also very much don't want to see John Howard win the coming Federal election, but simply opportunistically turning a blind eye to such dictatorial behaviour on the part of the supposedly 'Labor' and supposedly anti-Howard Queensland state Government is, at best, a very risky means to achieve this.

Daggett, anyone who is willing to ignore constitutional limitations and/or prohibitions is a fool. The Constitution is our ability to seek to control politicians from misusing powers. The moment you ignore this, merely because you have an interest in some issue then you have lost the plot.
Whatever a State Government may do wrong, if it is a State issue beyond the powers of the Commonwealth then no excuse in the world can justify an unconstitutional intervention.
In the courts, I have often encountered people to argue their rights and the hell with what is appropriately. If they are in breach of rules so what, as long as they can pursue their rights. But, then when the other party is in breach of the rules of the Court then suddenly they are singing a different song, so to say, as then they demand that their breach is not tolerated. Just that the breach by the other party has a more severe consequence!
Now, what this should make clear is that if you support a Federal Government to ignore constitutional limitations it might, so to say, bite you in the bum when the Federal Government were to, albeit unconstitutionally, lay claim on your water and charge you up to the hill!
No good then complaining about this or other constitutional limitations as you supported the breach of constitutional limitations in the first place.
I recall an incident some decades ago where I had been held by the court to have been in breach of the Rules. I did not complain but simply took it in my stride. Then a few months later the same occurred again, albeit now by the opposing party. Only they argued that the Court should ignore it as otherwise they would lose the entire case. The trail-judge, being the same as in the previous hearing, made clear he could not deviate from his previous decision where they had so much made an issue of it and now must suffer the consequences. The moral of the story is that at times accept something going against you as-in-the-long-run-it-might-end-up-in-your-best-interest!

Dear Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka,

Resepectfully, I fail to see how John Howard's legislation to over-ride Beattie's draconian anti-democratic legislation that would have seen councillors, who attempted to consult with their own communites over the effective abolition of their own local councils, face dismissal and fines, was in clear contravention of our national constitution.

An argument over this would consume bucketloads of ink, metaphorically speaking.

Why not, instead, just take a step back and look at the issue throught the broader and more easily understood principles of democratic rights?

For exactly whom do you believe Peter Beattie is acting? The plans to forcibly amalgamate local governments was not put to the Queensland electors in 2006.

According to former State MLA Cate Molloy, who was expelled from the Labor Party for opposing the Traveston Dam, the forced amalgations were planned in advance by the Property Council of Australia, who considered the Noosa Shire council an obstacle ot their plans to turn the sunshine coast into a wall of high-rise concrete buildings (see http://candobetter.org/node/169).

Since then he has made promises to a number of local govenments that they would not be abolished, only to have ignored those underatikings after the recommendations of his had-picked commission were handed down.

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Beattie has completely failed since then to put to the public any logical coherent argument as to why the amalagamations are necessary. He hides behind the reccommendations of the Commission as if he did not know in advance what the recommendations would be.

He argues that larger councils automatically equate to greater efficiency, which flies in the face of the evidence from amalgamations in other states from recent years.

In any case, if that is true, then why not follow that argument to its logical end and have just one 'local' government running all of Queensland? Clearly at some point the efficiency of local government will actually decrease rather than increase as the size gets larger.

Neither Beattie nor the commission have presented any case as to why existing local Government sizes were not already large enough, if not too large.

My issue is not the argument if consolidation of councils may or may not be in the interest of local communities. The issue is that it is not an issue concerning the Federal Government. The Constitution was set up that the Commonwealth would mainly deal with federal issues and so also external issues and the states would deal with their own internal matters.
Howard is no more but playing politics and try to use anything for his own political gain and some time later may use this very ploy then to argue that if you accepted his interference with municipal councils then he also then “TAKES” the rights with anything else he wants to interfere with.

It may be deemed to be inappropriate what the Queensland Government may pursue but it does not mean that two wrongs can make it right, and unconstitutional conduct then can be allowed. The difficulty Queenslanders are facing is not a federal issue and should not be born either by tax payers of other States who themselves were forced to have council amalgamations. Like it or not it is an internal Queensland issue and should be addressed as such by Queenslanders themselves.