There is nothing in this piece other then a idea that the Author hasn't thought to hard about.How big would local Gov been? Why not get rid of the Fed government and just have State Government reps on a Fed board or something along those lines. These issues need to be explored this article doesn't

When you take a step back and think about it, there really aren't too many reasons to keep out current governmental arrangements.

The problem is that Australians are conservative and opposed to change and will find any excuse to oppose this sort of shake up, no matter how good an idea it is.

So, I guess we'll keep the state governments. Mores the pity...

As a longserving and senior Qld State bureaucrat I can only applaud Patrick's insightful observations. The amount of political corruption of government administration and the waste of taxpayers' funds on 'looking after' party hacks through 'enquiries' and 'consultancies' is enough to make me sick. State politicians are far too removed from individual consitituents due to geography and/or electorate population growth to really be accountable for failure to deliver on election promises anyway, and local governments and politicians are close enough to their consititents to make better informed decisions, allocate resources effectively and equitably, and be directly accountable for poor policy and program administration where Commonwealth $ fail to reach those they target. I'm ashamed to say I'm a State bureaucrat after all I've seen in my career, truly ashamed...

We could wind back the federal government so that its only reponsibilties were foreign affairs and defence.

We should also be looking at the existing state borders. As a city person, over the last 30 years my house has increased in value from $16,000 to $1.3 million. While in that time a relative's house in a small town 200 km away has increased in value from $8000 to $50,000.That is grossly unfair. There are 2 different Australias.

The current states should shrink to something a little bigger than their metroplitan areas and everything left over become the one state which would be made of up people in similar circumatances.

At a time when the Australian government has been taking a larger slice of GDP in the form of taxes, it has reduced the states revenue as a percentage of GDP. In 1996 state revenue was 7% of GDP, it is now 5% of GDP.

The states have less money to provide the same services as previously so either they skimp on recurrent expenditure - salaries or they skimp on capital works - infrastructure.

Whether people are moral or corrupt depends on their family background not on their current work environment. The most wasteful environments I have ever worked in have been large unaccountable private enterprises, in the top 100 enterprises in Australia.

It is true that the states are a terrible waste of resources in this time and age. I endorse what the author is saying.

But why stop there? It's not just the states that are redundant, but the State which is redundant too!

"Universal Rights, Common Wealth and Confederacy"

Presentation to the 11th Shed A Tier Congress, Gippsland, Victoria, 9-10 July 2005

http://au.geocities.com/lev_lafayette/0507shedatier.html