Ludwig,

The environmental standards are no secret, neither are the requirements for consultation and investigation. When the federal agency or the state agency look at an application, the rules are the same.

If the commonwealth has to check the state's evaluation, then the assumption can only be that the state is incompetent or corrupt. and vice versa. If neither are corrupt or incompetent, then two checks is a waste of time and money, which either kills jobs or increases costs that are passed to consumers.

Similarly, why does the commonwealth need a dept of education when it does not run a single school? Why do daycare centres spend as much time filling out paper work as looking after kids?

All the paperwork that labor loves costs business which either ends up as lower wages, higher prices or jobs moving overseas.

<< …the rules are the same >>

SM, no they aren’t! There are different rules/legislation/bylaws/etc that each level is beholden to uphold. And each level of assessment is only beholden to the particular rules that apply at that level, yes?

There are also different levels of interpretation of the same rules, by governments at the different levels and successive governments at the same level.

It would be great if all the rules were incorporated into one assessment and that this assessment was done by the Feds, in full consultation with the states, local authorities and communities….. if of course the Feds could be trusted to properly assess these things in an environment free of the bias of big business, property developers and the like.

But they can’t be trusted. So I will maintain that multiple levels of assessment is not simply the time-consuming expensive doubling- (or tripling-) up process that you so strongly decry, but rather that it does actually have a strong positive element to it.