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.

Do be careful folks.

Local government is the most inefficient, incompetent & corrupt of the three tiers. I would not like to see any increase of power awarded to it.

One of the best things Newman has done is devolve hospital management to local boards. The people who live in the towns & cities will be sure there is never another Bundaberg hospital fiasco.

I have always been unable to understand how all the blame was laid on one incompetent doctor. The management, public servant career administrators, paid to manage the staff & the outcomes achieved were the guilty, & got off scott free. Until we make those we pay to do a job of government responsible for the result, no government is worth a pinch of you know what.

During amalgamation here we had an administrator, because the council could not get on and were sacked by the state.
When it was time to hand over to an elected reps; The cry was to keep the administrator, answerable to the state govt;
Why can't the states run that way, being answerable to the fed govt;
Do away with state govt; and towns carry on as before.

SM, you and Belly have lots in common, a couple of dyed in wool conservatives. in fact I thing Belly is even more conservative than you. On social justice issues I detach a bit of the 'radical' in you, but not in Belly. Its only cynical political interest that has you two calling for the abolition of the Senate, get rid of those that would oppose us.

Hasbeen said;
no government is worth a pinch of you know what.

At least it has fertiliser value !

22 million people, 3 tiers of government. Sounds wrong to me and in practice - too hard. A one third reduction seems a fine idea, now which one is the most trouble? We need national direction and good local infrastructure, anything else is a waste. So for me it's the Feds and bigger Councils. The senate can stay to keep them all in line.

Bye bye Barry, Campbell et all

Waterhole

Paul,

Belly and I come from very different places, our similarity is both of us have lived long enough to see the consequences of the woolly idealist and populist policies of which the greens are so fond.

Under our present constitution we can greatly increase the number of States, decrease their size in area and reduce their parliamentary structures to suit.

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT
CHAPTER VI--New States

Sect 121. New States may be admitted or established
Sect 122. Government of territories
Sect 123. Alteration of limits of States
Sect 124. Formation of new States

God, imagine if there was no Senate and the country was being run by The Mad Monk with Archy Pell working the glove puppet. Heaven help us!

Sense has made sense. I think I will change my mind.

Waterhole

We just had a 10-page thread about this topic, starting 17 days ago.
Must we repeat so soon?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14534&page=1

Sense, if Federal employment increased 10 times, it still wouldn't mean *more* public servants.
It would be the same number doing the same work.
Only their "employer" has changed.

In reality, there'd probably be a lot less, since you would eliminate duplications.

Shockadelic,

What a scary thought - the centralist Gillard takes the entire country, moving from commanding a mere 250,000 employees to nearly 2 million. The home insulation rebate scheme debacle is but a small example of how they would run things from Canberra. I hate to ruin her delusions of grandeur - but at the moment the NSW Premier runs a larger government than she does, commanding more employees than she.

I think the answer is to have smaller States with local government running our cities. The State governments can then concentrate on broader issues across the entire State.

At the moment for example in NSW, the State government administers the State as well as its largest city 'Sydney.' As opposed to Queensland where the Brisbane City council administers the city Ferries, the city buses, the city water & sewage systems and builds the city tunnels, allowing the State government to concentrate on broader State issues.

But because the Qld State government and Parliament are located at the very bottom of the State, others to the north feel that they are not represented as well as they could be. This is why I think we need smaller states, closer to where people live, but with obviously smaller Parliaments to suit.

Ditto for her male doppelganger alter-ego Abbott...

I would much rather no Senate, or a major party controlling the whole thing, than this ridiculous situation where tinkerbell & her fairies from the bottom of the garden have the balance of power.

When you have idiots typing the script, you are likely to get Shakespeare's comedies taken seriously.

Hasbeen,

Removing all of the Upper Houses including the Senate wouldn't be such a bad idea, as long as we had the States and their Premiers as a counterbalance against a bad Prime Minister and his/her centralist government in Canberra. I guess that was the whole idea of Federalism as a counterbalance of too much power being drawn to the centre.

Sense, if you have a problem with the current government, that's not a problem of centralism per se, but the specific policies of those people.

Unlike others here, who want the influence of minor parties eradicated, I think they should be a safety valve against irresponsible government.
But the Senate as it is, isn't really representative.
I'd like to see national PR, with no subdivision, partial seat elections or arbitrary thresholds.

You really need buses, garbage collection, road maintenance to be "administered" locally?
It's all just computer programs!
Who cares where the computer is located.
Or the call centre help/info lines.

Tiny multi-regional governments create the possibility of quite extreme parties winning power, as they could concentrate membership in a particular area.
National PR makes that virtually impossible.