If we develop the 30 regional Cities in NSW, instead of continuing to overcrowd gridlock and pollute Sydney, we have much more chance of becoming an economic powerhouse in the Asia Pacific region reaching through to Europe. We will have space for our businesses to grow freely, the health of the wider community will be infinetly better and less stressed and society will again be able to enjoy the undoubted benefits of this wide brown land. Is this the future for NSW or would it be better for us to build more and more smaller units and concentrate the society and our businesses within the confines of the ocean on the east and the mountians on the west, leaving the rest of NSW for those braver souls who come from overseas or our ever diligent, but mostly unprofitable farmers? Let's have a discussion and take the initiative to guide government in the wise development of NSW and other states.

Voterland, you make a sensible suggestion…. in part.

But there’s one huge factor missing – continuous rapid population growth.

For as long as we have this, even the best efforts at decentralising businesses would only result in a little bit of lowering of the growth rate of Sydney!

What we need is a zero net immigration program, so that the size of Sydney can be capped.

Then, with a concerted program of encouraging businesses to relocate in regional centres, we might actually achieve something!

Ahh Voter, your suggestion is certainly nirvana for NSW.
However it can only be done if we have a significant increase in GDP.
That would require an equally significant increase in growth.
It will not happen for the long time period that it would need.

We have just a few years available before our energy imports will be
too expensive.
We could perhaps do it if we stopped export of coal and gas.
We would need to install large scale coal to oil plants to replace our
import of diesel and petrol. With the current set of Greens it would
probably be a process too far.

Over the time it would take it is impossible due to lack and cost of energy.
Oh, is there enough water ?

Voterland,
I actually agree with Ludwig, we need to cut immigration back to net zero and then have a look at where we are going.

Your ideas are not new as we used to have a policy of 'decentralization' in NSW. In fact there was a department and a Minister who's job it was to assist businesses relocate to regional areas and state departments as well. But a Labor government changed that and withdrew government departments back to Sydney and regional towns lost a lot of people. My regional city lost about 1500 state employees which with families was about 6000 people.

Anyway i am happy for my town not to grow as it suits me fine. Do you know that many working people in regional towns can actually go home for lunch, which is unheard of in Sydney. Most take all of ten minutes to get to work. So why do you want to impose the problems of a Sydney lifestyle on us?

We like it as is, no big city problems and not ethnicity issues to speak of, little traffic problems and no drive by shootings. Yeah, I am happy to have a couple of malls and a few restrauants, a few cafes and a couple of chinese restraunts and a Thai place. We have three clubs and 5 pubs, who would want more?

You can keep your big cities. it is bad enough that I have to negotiate 2 sets of traffic lights to get to my shops now.

Yes it was luck, a bit of geography & history, but US settlement caused their wealth, & our settlement restricted ours.

Just look at the size of most states in the US. They are small, miniscule compared to Oz.

Each state has a state capital. It also has the US offices required in any state capital.

So what does this do, it spreads government out, through out the country. It gives a reason for growth in each area.

Look at Oz. all the bureaucrats are stuffed into about 6 spots. There is just a little in Darwin & Hobart, luckily, or these two, & even Adelaide would be villages not cities.

So yes Voterland, a good idea, just you'll have to quadruple the number of states, to make it work. Can you imagine how good it would be to live in the Bowen basin, if one of those towns was the capital of a wealthy state. With mining funding the area, rather than Brisbane & Canberra bureaucracies, it might even get some infrastructure.

So Hasbeen, you think we haven't enough politicians ?