Examinator. More money maybe required but NQ makes most of the money. Beattie himself said Brisbane could not survive without North Queensland. The south are thieves essentially because of this mindset. Why should they pay more ? because they wouldn't have anything without us possibly.

Then the environment. Always from south we hear we must pay for cleaner seas project, we must change farming habits, we must stop growing tobacco, we must stop fishing. we must stop loggin But never any payback for complying with the requests. We want you out of work essentially is what they say, we do not actually care about people.

Queensland needs to sepaaret for this reason. All take, take, take. demand. demand but never giving.

Pelican- I agree completely- especially about the independents, whom we need more of very dearly.

Hume:
As I already said- whatever "rights" or laws a society would live under will ALWAYS be thought of, and implemented by somebody- so it's only natural that the entire society which will be made to adhere to these laws has the right to actually say what they actually are- otherwise it's nothing but one person, or a small group of people dictating to the rest.

Now, when people vote on laws and rights, they would consider what actions they would themselves feel entitled to commit without breaking the law doing so, and those that they feel would
a) infringe upon their quality of life
and very importantly
b)feel no need to practice themselves

Now, the "who qualifies as the electorate" question is simply the nation- that would be the point of sovereignty of which the community itself and those outside consider no need to control beyond themselves- like how the Swiss vote not to enter the EU, compromising their own sovereignty in exchange for a greater say in the running of the federation.

Similarly, if in a fully-democratic nation, if a region wanted more sovereignty, and it was put to federal referendum, the rest of the nation would weigh if they personally wanted to interfere with the other region, or would rather have that region have less interference in their own policies- also weighing in security concerns- which can be debated.

Similar story to various other drawing up of national boundaries (including local referenda by each town/region asking which federation- or none at all- they would rather be a part of.

King Hazza,

I'm prepared to give the Greens a go.

Anything so serious as to require immediate competance from our government would require waiting for an election anyway, no matter who was in.

In the meantime, even if parliament took a three year holiday, I suspect that we could all just go on memorising all existing Australian law (ignorance is no excuse!) and getting on with our lives. Even in the event of military invasion (the Mussorians, say) there is no urgency. Upon reaching the mainland the aggressor would get mired in red tape and our boys (and girls, hat tip to Jacinta) will bayonet them at leisure.

Rusty

Nice one Rusty, I agree with that- nothing more needs to be said!

TheMissus

I thought there might be a renewed call for the statehood for north Queensland in the leadup to the Queensland's 150 birthday, which was a few days ago. But I've heard nothing.

A new state of Capricornia north from the Tropic of Capricorn or thereabouts does sound enticing. But when I try and find a significant reason for it, I can't.

I don't buy the under-representation or under-funding arguments. Our quality of life in the north is essentially just the same as that in SEQ and in the rest of the country. And it is just as well.

If it was significantly higher, there'd be all manner of discontent being expressed by southerners and there'd be as considerably larger population influx.

If it was significantly lower, we'd have a lot of discontent expressed the other way around, and we might have a population exodus.

Rapid population growth in NQ is a pretty good indication that things aren't significantly worse up here.

Of course SEQ gets the lion's share of the state's funding. But that's to be expected because that's where the big majority of Queenslanders live... and because that is where enormous funding is needed to just try an keep services and infrastructure up to a reasonable level in the face of absurd rapid population growth!

I don't think that more divisions, such as new states, would help us to improve representation or better equality in quality of life terms. We need less of this sort of division and a much more even rule of law and distribution of wealth across the country.

Stuff this business of different states having all manner of different laws. It all needs to be nationally uniformalised.

Yes, there may well be more wealth generated in the north. But it is much better to distribute this to the southeast and indeed to the rest of the country than to hog it to any significant extent in the north.