Dr Mark Drummond did a Phd in how Australia could save $50 billion a year by abolishing State governments!

http://members.webone.com.au/%7Emarkld/PubPol/GSR/gsr.html

Only by creating a truly National and Local government model can we act fast enough to prepare for the climate and peak oil challenges ahead.

Power creep is already happening as the Federal government slowly takes over the collection of taxes and powers of the States. It’s time to discuss other methods of installing checks and balances lest our Federal government become the all-powerful monster that pro-Federation philosophers fear anyway! The States are gradually be taken over by default.

They don't properly serve as a check and balance, yet cripple our country. COAG has failed to deliver on climate or the Murray Darling.

Everyone blames everyone else for health, and not having a National education policy for a nation of only 21 million is a joke. Indeed, policies for police and welfare and child protection could all become fairer and more efficient across the whole country. Why do families that move interstate have to watch children suffer adjusting to a new curriculum? Why do we have 8 State websites on diabetes?

And the local governments are not even described in the Constitution! They are the kicking boys of BOTH the State and Federal governments. Australia is atypical in geography. Far from being "more local", some of our States are so large you could fit a few European COUNTRIES in them!

Instead, we should admit we have a large geographic area anyway, and save money and confusion by having clear National government policies and LOCAL service delivery. Let's have local governments making local decisions about Zoning, Parks, etc. Local school boards should plan the school buildings, the hiring and firing of teachers, etc. Imagine local elections MEANING something again!

It’s time Australia had the public debate about how to streamline the National government and make our National Politicians truly accountable, while also guaranteeing certain local government powers in the Constitution.
http://www.beyondfederation.org.au/

Dr Drummond’s "Australia United" plan details how rolling State governments into a more streamlined National legislative model with local government service provision could be “all carrot and no stick” to State government employees. After 5 or so years we could finally have a democracy where the responsibilities of 2 tiers of government were obvious, there was no more buck-passing, and more money for local governments than they ever dreamed of.
http://members.webone.com.au/%7Emarkld/PubPol/GSR/AusUplan250609.pdf

It is well and truely time that all our political leaders took as serious look at the benefits of restructuring our broken, multilayered, federal system of government. Benefits include one law for all Australians, a national drivers licence, lower taxes and less red tape.

What? No huge debate? No arguments that I'm some kind of totalitarian dictator craving more power (which could only be true if I were already snugly installed in Canberra, dang! Forgot that bit in my plan to rule the world! Ha ha!)

OK, looks like we have a consensus so self evident that people just shrug their shoulders and say, "Meh, it'll happen one day, too busy right now to do anything about it."

As a (self educated) CONSTITUTIONALIST who entered Australia as an alien it is really remarkable who so many Australians with far better education in the English language then I ever had (none – as English is not my native language) know so little about what the federation is about.
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Rodney Crisp might be right about the kind of politicians were are attracting but then this is because we let them to be as they are. If for example we were to vote out major political parties and for once voted on INDEPENDENTS then the political party members will shudder and realise their game is up and they better act appropriately.
While Rodney goes on about the 1922 abolishing of the Queensland Senate, I for one, assisting a person in his litigation, in a CONTEMPT case on 9 March 2009 filed an ADDRESS OF THE COURT that was extensively dealing with the issue of that constitutionally the Queensland Senate actually was never constitutionally validly abolished and remains applicable. Well, on 16 March 2009 Her Honour ordered a PERMANENT STAY of the proceedings. No surprise to me there. The issue is too complicated to set out in this post.
Constitutionally “local government” is the State Government! And the ADDRESS TO THE COURT also challenged the validity of Municipal/Shire Council as a “local Government". And, the council already were ordered to leave a hearing, so their lawyers, when I submitted they had no legal standing to participate in the hearing.
On 19 July 2006 after a 5-year epic legal battle I defeated the Commonwealth in both cases on all constitutional based submissions, including that it could not compel me to vote in federal elections and the CEA Section 245 purporting compulsory voting was unconstitutional.
Again, I defeated the Commonwealth on this.
So, lets get down to the real constitutional facts!

Thank you for defining my argument for me so clearly! The fact that "local government" in Australia is larger than 2 or 3 European nations is an appalling state of affairs. No wonder local communities feel powerless, they have 2 almighty powerful and distant levels of government that can overrule their sovereignty! What does some Latte sipping bureaucrat in Perth know about conditions up in Derby, 2200km away? Drive that far in a straight line in Europe and how many countries do you drive through?

Those ARE the constitutional facts that I am appalled by, you have described them perfectly! Thank you.

However, you haven't justified why we need 8 different driver's licences, 8 different websites on diabetes, 8 heads of departments instead of 1, 8 different sets of legislation on various business practices, and all the duplication and waste.

Instead, lets save 50 billion dollars a year (Mark Drummond's PHd) and have a unitary government with real LOCAL government service delivery and decision making. We need consistent, clear, and streamlined National laws. We need service delivery and important planning powers at the local level.

And there are far better democratic "checks and balances" than the old outdated, bureaucratically dead, unaccountable, buck-passing, antiquated, progress-defying Federal system. In the age of the internet, it's time for this massive dinosaur of waste to finally go extinct as we enter a more streamlined, efficient, ACCOUNTABLE National / Local model of politics where local government elections will finally mean something again!

Eclipse Now, you seem to totally misconceive what the federation is about.
The Commonwealth of Australia is a POLITICAL UNION like the European Union. You do not call for France, Germany, The Netherlands, England and all other States to get rid of their own Parliaments and government do you?
The Commonwealth never was a “dominion” like Canada and New Zealand but exist by agreement (POLITICAL UNION).
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Hansard 2-3-1898 Constitution Convention Debates
QUOTE
Mr. SYMON ( South Australia ).-
In the preamble honorable members will find that what we desire to do is to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth -that is the political Union-"under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , and under the Constitution hereby established."
END QUOTE
And
QUOTE Mr. SYMON
That is, for admission into this political Union, which is not a republic, which is not to be called a dominion, kingdom, or empire, but is to be a Union by the name of "Commonwealth," and I do not propose to interfere with that in the slightest degree.
END QUOTE
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The States are so to say countries in their own rights.
Laws that might suit one part of the continent may not serve the opposite part of the continent.
It appears to me you do not understand the federal structure at all.
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Overlapping of legislation can only occur if a Parliament legislate unconstitutionally.
Federation was not to deny each State (former colonies) its independents but merely under the federation have mutual laws for external matters mainly while as much as possible maintain each State sovereign position.

So what percentage of taxation does the European Union collect of the taxes of those nations? That's where your analogy breaks down. Australia is a nation, not a collection of nations paying a certain small percentage fee to a larger Federation.

"Power leak" is happening to the Federal government anyway. What was the original tax collection break down just after we Federated... wasn't it something like 80% taxed by the States, 10% taxed by the Federal government and the rest local? I can't remember from the IQ debates in town a few months ago, but Senator Barnaby Joyce raised this issue. Now the almighty powerful Federal government collects something like 85 to 90% of the tax and the States have to go beg for their money back.

States do NOT have "sovereignty" in this regard, and arguing for them as some sort of "local" representation TOTALLY ignores my previous point that our local governments have no true powers. Local people and local communities are the best people to make local decisions about how their school should be built, who to hire, how their township should be planned, etc.

All your arguments demonstrate "the way things are". I'm saying yes, but there is a much better National / Local model for the way things could be! And there's a growing movement of people like me, especially in politics.

If you read and considered my previous post then you should know the Commonwealth is nothing more but a political union.
Municipal councils are not a “government” at all. State governments are constitutionally “local government”.
Queensland’s purported abolition of its upper house was unconstitutional and so in reality never took place, albeit this is being ignored.
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CoAG is not a constitutional body at all!
The Inter-State commission (s101) was specifically created to assist in dealing with specific issues for some states.
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For years I claimed that s96 was misused by the commonwealth to so to say terrorise the States, and in recent times the High Court of Australia in the Pape case made clear the Commonwealth cannot fund whatever but is bound by the limits of s96!
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You will find that if the constitution is applied to how it should be many problems will no longer exist.
It are the politicians that are causing many problems. “Backdown Barnaby Jones” is in my view one of them with his back flip on Telstra!

A couple of points on the federation. A perusal of the speeches and papers of the founders of the constitution shows that for many of them (including Inglis Clarke, Kingston, Parkes) the federation of the colonies was seen as part of an evolutionary process with a constitution that could be changed by the people. They saw the constitution as one that would evolve to suit the times.

The other point is that the federation does not suit the times, based as it is on inappropriate boundaries, with at least five unnecessarily centralist governments, an inappropriate distribution of powers and costly duplication, overlapping activities and all at an unecessary cost.

A system incorporating one national and a local sector, eliminating state governments, would improve efficiency and democracy and would reduce the cost.

I have never claimed that the constitution was not to be amended as time progresses but what I am against is to have by default the High Court of Australia or politicians doing so.
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If the electors by way of a valid referendum amend the constitution then so be it.
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The point is that we have a Central and a local government in place, for the Central Government is the Federal government and the local government is the State government. As such, abolishing the State government to recreate a new local government is not too helpful because all the current councillors be seeking more pay, etc, and then the claimed 50 billion dollars saving actually may blow out by hundreds of billion dollars. Only a fool would accept that councillors were to stick to their limited pay. More then likely the replacement of so many councillors for Members of Parliament will ensure they will seek the same remunerations as current parliamentarians have. Then you find that Law and Order will be centralised and as a Commonwealth Parliament can only legislate for the “whole of the Commonwealth” it for example means the difference between a hot northern part of the Commonwealth and the cold southern part cannot be having a different law applied, even if needed.
Did you know hundreds of laws purportedly enacted never were so legally, because they failed to be passed in the same session they were introduced. As such if they cannot even manage what they have to do now the last thing you want to do is to give them more powers.

We're not talking about the local councils turning into mini-states with their own legislature. We ARE talking about boosting some of the pay to local councils, but not by a lot. One figure I remember reading on the list was maybe 1.5 billion in costs doing that. But the $50 billion saved by abolishing State parliaments as modelled by mathematician and statistical analyses Phd Mark Drummond was VERY thorough and proved the point.

Local governments would have clearly defined constitutional powers to do a few extra things, but the whole point of the national local model is to have ONE parliament and ONE house of review, not 9 at the National & Federal level, and definitely not 600 or so at the local level.

You seem to forget that the federation was set up to have all parliamentarians getting the same allowance and now this has been changed that in effect (albeit unconstitutionally) their allowance has been increased astronomically and on top of that they get additional allowances that were to be in the original allowance. As such forget about councillors accepting peanuts of $30,00000 or so as the mayor is already on $65,000.00 and going up.
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Constitutionally you cannot get rid of the States and anyone proposing this is advocating to abolish the federation all together.
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This post doesn’t allow the set out that is needed to explain it all but you can forget about this $50 billion dollar saving nonsense.
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Do you really think the federal Parliament is going to be lumped with all State legislation and then not ask for any more pay? Come on be realistic, they already now are screaming about not getting enough.
People who are talking about abolition of the States do not understand what the Commonwealth stands for. They are ignorant to reality and to the federal compact.
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If they want to make sense about their claims then let them explain in details how they propose to achieve it all, but I have no doubt their claims are idealist and lack proper foundations because they do not understand what the federation is about.
The same with this “Republic” referendum a sheer and utter constitutional nonsense. Not constitutionally achievable as it is beyond Section 128 referendum powers!
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Hmmm, *England* (not the UK) has how many citizens? And how many legislatures?