It is simple,most of us don't give a rats about or local councils and let non paid secret agenda representives infuriate us to the point of frustration,yet we have not control over the system that manipulates us.The State Govts are useless.In NSW of the $21 billion we spend on the PS,we spend $7 billion on bureaucrats.For every working person in NSW ot costs $2,300.00 pa to keep them.This is why we have a run down state.Iemma/Carr have taxed us into submission and now wonder why they have less tax receipts on a shrinking economy.How these bunch economic vandals got back into power escapes us all,because no one will now admit to have actually voted for them.

Almalgamate the Councils,make them far more professional and responsible to the electorate.No more poorly paid micky mouse jobs for developers or single issue lunatics.

The only people you will find defending the states in NSW are the bureaucrats with their lazy lifestyles and fat salaries.Often we are paying one bureaucrat $100,000.00 pa to manage two front line workers.No wonder the Iemma Govt and its PS Unions had a totally false campaign of saying front line workers were going to be slashed.What they feared most was all the bureaucrats being sent to tend real patients and clean the bed pans.Coster said 15mths ago that they had too many fat cats and the Unions silenced him and made a deal with Iemma.What a bunch of gutless wonders!

Most of our Labor State Govts are a total farce.We can slowly eliminate the states by giving their responsibilities to both the Councils and the Federal Govt.Reduce duplicity,the blame game and waste of our taxes.

Well arjay you should read my post about council amalgamation, it is a complete failure here, our council is broke and we are saddled with underdeveloped towns from the other two previous shires, what amalgamation does is is dump crap shires in the lap of good ones and then they drag the lot down.

Alanpoi,local Govt is a disaster because ordinary people do not take part in decision making.Local Govt generally does not have professional people running it.The solution is is to take the State finances and pay professional people to run it.The Councils are starved of finances by the states so they remain chaotic and talentless.

Pay fewer talented people more money to run our Govts and we will all have greater satisfaction.

gonginalong (the article author, Patrick Baume) says in the 15th post to this thread " I fear that this sort of change could only ever happen in Australia by stealth over a long period of time, ...".
See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6297#92539

Patrick refers of course to, essentially, the removal of the States, and that necessary consequence of such, the removal of the Constitution and all that depends upon it. He speaks as if that change by stealth would as yet lie in the future.

Patrick may not realise it, but he is already proven right. This change by stealth over a long period of time is the very record of federation since no later than 1 May 1911. It may very well be that the now-obvious neglect of investment in necessary infrastructure by the States that Patrick cites as justification for their removal is but the end-game of the long-running fraud that has been Federation.

Selwyn Johnston's OLO article, "Water … a failure by successive governments", gives an excellent potted history of such deliberate end-game infrastructure neglect, see: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5477 . The Comments thread is: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5477#70515

Viewers interested in this discussion may find this post of mine on Selwyn's article thread thought-provoking: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5477#70863

The significance of the date 1 May 1911 is revealed in this post to the OLO topic "The Last Refuge of the Intellectual Weakling": http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=950#17049 . Viewers may have to read other posts on this thread to grasp the real significance of what may have been going on all these years.

What I am not prepared to cop is that this nation-debilitating change by stealth should go on to its intended conclusion under the oversight of either side of national politics, manned to the gunwales as the present ship of State is with unperceivers and sell-outs. Thinking about it, Your Excellency?

Australia’s GDP is about $US674 billion using purchasing price parity. Every country on the planet with a higher or similar GDP has at least three levels of government. Every one of the 45 countries with a GDP of more than $200 billion, a third of Australia’s, has at least thee tiers of government. Some have four; others have five.

Australia’s GDP per capita is about $US32,938. There are 37 countries with a GDP per capita of more than $US20,000. 31 of them have at least three tiers of government (including the EU Parliament). Of the six exceptions, four have a population of less than one million. Of the remaining two, one is Singapore, which has an area of 704 square kilometres. The other is the United Arab Emirates, which has an area of 83,600 square kilometres and a population of about 4.5 million people.

If this strange obsession with abolishing the states were to succeed, Australia would be the only country with a large population, the only country with a large area and the only country with a high GDP not to have at least three tiers of government. The only two-tier country which has any similarity in GDP per head is the UAE and its population is one fifth of ours and its area is not much bigger than one hundredth of ours.

Those who think that the abolition of the states would produce administrative efficiency are wrong. A national government would substitute its own administrative divisions and subdivisions for the states, just as government departments do now and just as private corporations do with their multiple layers of decision-making.

Those advocating the abolition of the states do not seem to have any facts to support their arguments.

Well lets see

40% of 100% the state government uses in red tape.

So schools miss out on the extra 40% funding due to states incompetence.

But hey people blinded by the fact that the unions say this must be right.

Unions only care for one thing labor in government.

One also has to look at how the states run incompetently.
It is a shame people do not say what they think but just pander to party lines.

This has caused us the most amount of grief.
Public transport being privatised
the unions knew before nsw state election who cared they didnt had to get labor in.

When you lot work out that government is about the people and not these hitler,communist parties then things will change.

You dont even have what it takes to make a stand without polls,unions,corruption,sexual abuse,physical abuse of children and peadophiles not including swansea.

So when it comes down to it if we where to do a check on these parties you wouldnt touch then with a forty foot barge pole.

But this is all ok as long as these people do not live next to you.
But its ok for these people to create policy for you and your children.

Who are hypocrites and predators

You keep voting them in.

Then therefore you get the corruption you deserve and less jobs no manufacturing.

You are all pathetic.

wake up to yourselves and have a really close look at what you vote for and stand for.