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The Forum > Article Comments > The pros and cons of a Queensland senate > Comments

The pros and cons of a Queensland senate : Comments

By Rodney Crisp, published 20/8/2009

Having a senate in Queensland won't help the fact that two-thirds of Queenslanders think they are being over-governed.

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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.
Posted by Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 1:39:55 AM
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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.
Posted by Eclipse Now, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 8:40:18 AM
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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!
Posted by Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka, Thursday, 27 August 2009 12:17:15 AM
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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.
Posted by JimSnow, Saturday, 29 August 2009 4:05:40 PM
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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.
Posted by Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka, Saturday, 29 August 2009 10:52:14 PM
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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.
Posted by Eclipse Now, Sunday, 30 August 2009 12:26:54 AM
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