Great suggestion.

This should also be considered in relation to the issue of forced council amalgamations in Queensland. I commend Scott Prasser's excellent article on this "Queensland's burning - local government amalgamations Beattie-style" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6435

The situation we have now, where, for example, developments opposed by most residents in the townships of the Blackall Ranges, are imposed upon them in secretive meetings by the remote Caloundra City Council on the coast is bad enough.

This will only be made worse if the Queensland Government's forced amalgamations are not stopped.

if we have the 12 to 15 states as you suggest we could have, within these states, appropriately scaled local government areas.

The actual number of new states are not important at this stage as they are rightfully the choice of the voters of each community. The simple facts of the current system are that a group of Doctors in Tamworth, Townsville or Mildura have to first explain their service delivery issues to an undefined group in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne and then hope those people were the right ones to place their trust in to then present their case to another group in Canberra. And they must do this in their very limited "spare" time whilst under a seriously dysfunctional work load.

It is this system of metropolitan middle-men, and the costs of maintaining them, that is the real source of gross waste in government. The locals know the problems, their local state and federal members also know the problems, but in most cases the metropolitan middle-men don't know and don't even care about the problems and can hardly be relied upon for effective solutions. They, alone, have the luxury of ignoring regional problems in the pathetic, indeed culpable, belief that they might go away.

The regions want self governance and will only ever achieve a sustainable future when they have full autonomy. And a state is the vehicle through which autonomy is delivered in this country.

But one must take issue with the Author's views on maintaining regional subservience to a city. Northern NSW needs governing from Newcastle like a hole in the head. The Riverina needs governing from Canberra like a burr in their underpants. Newcastle had its chance to be part of a new state in 1967. Earle Page simply could not get his head around the notion that a community could form an effective state without a dominant city, and he failed because of it.

Why would anyone bother to include a community that does not want to be part of the new entity? Why would a regional community burden itself with a clone of the existing failed metropolitan model?

All we need is just one new state. The rest will follow in due course.

"The answer is to create more states."

Ccccrhrrghh! (Sorry, just choked on my coffee)

The answer is a unitary national government.

The argument for federalism/decentralisation seems to consist of "checks and choice".

It's argued that a unitary government will be inflexible, authoritarian, distant.

Under the present electoral form of single-member districts, which inevitably creates a two-party system where one dominates, this might be so.

However, "checks and choice" would also flow from *proportional representation*.

If the dominant parties were out of touch, making inappropriate policy, people would simply vote for somebody else.

People could also vote for regionally-oriented parties like a "New England" party or a "Riverina" party.
So regional representation is possible under a national parliament, without any actual administrative subdivision.

People seem to overestimate the degree to which Australians can respond to regional governments' differentiation.
Most people and businesses can't just uproot themselves and move interstate, just because that State has better policies.

People debating "choice" are also ignoring that most, perhaps all, political and social issues are *universal*.

Should Queensland schools' mathematics curriculum really be different to Tasmania's.
Isn't maths the same everywhere?

Should Queensland hospitals treat influenza patients differently to Tasmanian hospitals?
Isn't influenza the same everywhere?

The "different strokes" argument rubs up against the strongly held belief in *egalitarianism* within Australia.
Nobody should have rights or benefits I don't have.

The argument also seems based on what other countries are doing.
So they're moving away from centralisation.

Well, we don't have to do what everybody else does.
We do what's right for us.
(Remember when you're Mum said "If everybody else jumped off a cliff...")

Australia started as just two colonies, New South Wales and Western Australia.
The only reason further subdivision occurred at all was because of the limits of the transportation and communication technologies of the time.

In the late 19th century, there were no telephones, aeroplanes, highways, computers, the internet.
Those administrative limits no longer exist.

With today's technology, and with proportional representation, there's really only a need for one national government, abolishing both state and local government.