The Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Joel Gibbons have once again raised the silly notion of abolishing-the-States. Are they truly ignorant of the fact that the majority of work done by government in Australia is done overwhelmingly by State and local governments?

Excluding defence department personnel, the Federal government employs less than 10% of government employees in Australia.

Imagine increasing the size of the Federal government in Canberra by 10 times.

Some failures of governance that may end up being common-place here too if they were to get there way.

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2010/05/07/general-election-2010-voters-turned-away-at-p?link=related
http://www.news.com.au/world/voter-chaos-9-hour-wait-outside-booths-in-key-swing-state/story-fndir2ev-1226510684485

Refer ABS Figures.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6248.0.55.002

If they want leaner government maybe they should concentrate on the Old-Soviet-Style bloated bureaucracy surrounding greater Sydney's 450 Councillors and 39 Mayors, in contrast Greater Brisbane has only one Lord Mayor and 27 Councillors.

We really need to have an on the ground test. Organise a chook raffle & see who does better, the federal or the state mob.

I also shudder at the cumbersome and costly system that we inherited from the amalgamation of the states.

The system could be so much simpler if the following was done.

1 The senates were abolished,

2 A single 4 yearly election elected representatives from electorates around the country, Collectively they made up representatives for both the commonwealth and states,

3 Legislation that was common to all states such as safety, education, etc were passed at a federal level, and separate ammendments that were applicable only to particular states could be passed at separate sittings.

4 All separate state departments budgets would be amalgamated into one, and separate state departments would be for administration only.

5 Local government would be concentrated and given more powers. All cities and towns would have one mayor and one set of councillors, as well as one set of rates and taxes.

We could easily reduce the number of duplicated pen pushers with their noses in the trough, and actually spend the money on services and infrastructure.

I agree again Shadow Minister!
You won me over on line one, no senate.
In truth we need desperately to halt the decent in to an awful future, multiple rabbits running the place on behalf of ten percent of the population.
I doubt we yet are up to it.
No denieing if the last 4 years of NSW Labor had been in the hands of a federal government I could sleep at night.
Current inquiry is about to blossom, and many will have sleepless nights.
Any chance we can contract out councils too?
Not kidding they are home to politicians who are not up to it, observing managers who are the same, a contract well supervised could be the answer.

Should I assume that the writer of the article meant Joel Fitzgibbon?

The states have to run budgets that are constrained in the same way as a household budget; they have to have income from taxes and charges to match their desired expenditure or they have to compete in the borrowing market or get grants from the sovereign (currency issuing) Federal Government.

The sovereign FG does not face that budget constraint. Over a business cycle it can have growth in the total budget deficit at least equal to the growth of the economy in that cycle. In fact while ever there are underemployed resources in the country the FG can afford to pay the bills incurred putting those underemployed resources to work.

Until the government's demand for resources starts to cause inflationary pressure the FG's budget deficit is irrelevant.

Some local organization is necessary to assess needs and manage the filling of those needs on behalf of the sovereign government but we don't need that to be done by elected inferior grade politicians.

Belly,

Stop agreeing with me, you are ruining my reputation as a grumpy old bastard.

The senate's sole function was to block legislation and was installed to protect the interests of the states against the federal government. This organ of government's relevance has long since expired and it has become infected with the cockroaches of the political system who use it push through legislation for the interests of a tiny minority.

Government is supposed to be there to provide the services that people need, and too often this comes second.