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...