Inherited Baggage has got nothing to do with what's going wrong in the Newman Govt, Anglo. This is a fresh government with barely a few months in office that has been exposed as corrupt, nepotistic, lacking integrity and only held together by a dictatorial threatening band of 3. Other than sacking the only people that could help them achieve their reforms...they've accomplished....nothing. There's a reason Labor were in office for decades...these guys are hopeless.
Nepotism and Jobs for the Boys/Girls is fine and dandy according to Campbell. http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...-denies-nepotism/story-e6freon6-1226428519192
(Slightly off topic alert) And vest all power with Julia Lizzard? No thanks. Inefficiencies aside, the States provide important checks and balances. Add to that the States are the actual service providers. Eg Can you imagine a national RTA caring about servicing roads covered by a state RTA? Would the Federal Department of Transport do any better working on Oxford Street or St Kilda than they have on the Hume or Pacific Highways? Nope. Disclaimer - I am a States' rights advocate. If I lived in WA I'd be a secessionist.
^^^^ They already do Anglo. State Road Authorities build/maintain the National Highway's in their state border with Federal money often using local councils to actually do the work. Outside of their own responsibilites, (i.e. Oxford St, St Kilda) Local councils get contracted to look after the 'other' stuff for the state Govt. And the State Govt gets it's money from the GST revenue handed back from the feds. Whynot just bypass the middleman? Let the money go straight from the feds to the local councils? The reality is (particulalrly now in Qld) there aren't that many councils anymore... why double up having both State and Local Govt representation?
Abolish all tiers of govt you mean (or at very least state and federal). As much as I hate the additional waste of having state+federal have a quick look at Tom Woods Nullification book and there are probably more benefits to having the extra tier than not. If we could only remove one, I'd choose federal.
Local councils? Local councils in NSW are out of control. Giving them more power will go to their heads. Evidence by about 60% of the 169,505 City of Sydney Council electorate permanently voting in an anti-business and anti-transport Independent whose policies are always at odds with the majority of the 600,000 people who work there and more importantly try to maintain their businesses there. Do you think its' fair that any business in the Council/CBD area with parking spaces must pay a levy of $2,160 per parking space, even a 1-room strata title office like a friend of mine is forced to pay?
National Highways are built with state and Fed funding, yes, but in recent years the Federal funding has always fallen short of what was promised - its' the States who have to contingency fund works and deal with electoral repercussions of failed promises. Both Newman and O'Farrell said that this year regarding the Pacific Highway - Federal funding for bypasses has substantially decreased compared to what was promised. And in Sydney this is also a problem with the M4/M5 extensions and North West Rail link. I don't know that local councils retain the expertise to build multi million $ Federal highways, the actual constuction is contracted out, surely. Repaving the top bitumen layer in local streets is a different level of expertise isn't it. It's possible to go to local council meetings in this day and age. I once went to one on local street parking and traffic calming planning. The chief engineer of my council, when people had questions about certain streets, said: "That's an RTA street, we have no authority there." He would not even discuss RTA streets as it was a waste of time. Same for crossings, signals, signage bar for parking. There are still important boundaries of responsibility. I just did an internet search for funding to councils, I found a State govt graph from Victoria: About 9% of council funding is grants from State (GST) funding, 13% from "Grants Other". 78% of their funding the councils source themselves (rates, charges, fines) - it wouldn't be too different in other states? TheState middleman has a minimal role here, bypassing him entirely would not change much, just raise the costs of Development planning, again.
GST Revenue collected from the states has been increasing year after year. What the states do with the money returned to them is up to them. If they choose to divert road funding to special grants to unwed- pregnant teenage surfboard riders, they then can't blame the feds for not enough funding Each year they're given more money and still cry poor. Most of the national highway is just a basic seal job...no asphalt. But that isn't the point. If the state has to contract out to specialist contractors...or local councils... what's the point of a state road authority? Why not just let the feds organise the work..and write the cheques? Once again this is the trick that State Governments have pulled on the community...that only they have the know-how. It's the same trick that has given us 7 separate state road authorities, all building the national highways to their own standard. The same trick that has given us 3 different rail guages Different hospital care Diffent schooling curriculum the same trick that allows the Army, Navy and Airforce have their own Bands. There can't be a unique NAVY way to play the Bassoon? Well if they can achieve all that on their own..what is happening to all the GST money that the State Governments are recieving?!! How much better could things be with a little more money from the feds...or alternatively lower rates and fines from your local council.
I couldn't agree more! I didn't mean it to sound like i'm a fan of federal gubmint and despise state gubmints. i believe they're equally coercive, parasitic and useless! Federal gubmint should be disbanded altogether - bar their responsibility for defence. Local gubmints can take care of the rest (what few things that entails)... and gubmint can get back to what they were supposed to be for - and get the f.. out of our lives!!!
It's not about giving local councils more power. in fact they should have far far less powers, for example at least 99% of all so-called "by-laws" should be dropped all together. they should have no rights in prescribing to property owners what they can and cannot do with their own properties!!! In a nutshell - state gubmints should be dropped altogether. Federal gubmint should be stripped of 95% of what they currently stick their fat noses into... and local councils should also be stripped of 90% of their "powers" over property owners etc.. All in all - gubmints on all levels should be curtailed back to a point where they have a very small set of defined responsibilities (state = none) and the rest should be scrapped. Taxes can then be dropped by 90% and people can actually keep most of what they earn for themselves, and can then afford to support family members in need as well as pay for all the nescessities of life - which should be provided by PRIVATE companies with no barriers set up by gubmints to impede competition. TOTAL FREE MARKET CAPITALISM with all the benefits of competition - with NO GUBMINT meddling!! What a wonderful place that would be...
I support my State having a strong government as I am not a Queenslander and don't want to be governed in the same way they are governed. I also don't own the resources of Western Australia, the people of Western Australia do, and them having a State govt. stands up for their rights. And given the mess Tasmania is in, the less decisions involving me that also involve them, the better. We SHOULD all have different hospitals and education curriculums, this is a big country and we're all different. The needs of hospitals in Victoria and NT are vastly different, and their administration and decisions on funding should similarly be different. We're not a unitarian system like France where decisions are made in one place that affect the whole country, we are a Federation where the differences are recognised and responsibilities on many things are decentralised. And thats the way I like it. Plus there is the economic angle of why a federal system is beneficial. Don't like how things work in one state? You have the freedom to move somewhere where their systems and laws are better in issues that interest you. Imagine if the whole of Australia had the anti-business sentiment of Tasmania, the nanny state approach to driving as Victoria, the government incompetance of Queensland (no insurance on your bridges...imagine that!) and the corruption experienced in NSW. Australia would be a pretty crap place to live.
I'm talking about agreements made in good faith. One party (State) agrees to provide $X00 billion funding and the second (Feds) $Y0 billion for a motorway. The second party has an interest for the project (eg M5 tunnel enlargement) because the project connects to national infrastructure such as the main port and freight logistics warehouses servicing 7million taxpayers. The first party does their planning and budgetting on the agreed amounts. The second party then fails to provide their funding which wastes a lot of money already spent by the first party on planning and engineering and the whole plan falls short due to lack of funding. That is what has happened in the last year on three major infrastructure projects in Sydney alone. In this year! And consistently on the Pacific Highway. Special grants to unwed- pregnant teenage surfboard riders sounds like Centrelink - a Federal structure. Widening of the 'Federal' Highway between Canberra and Sydney has been undertaken for a few years now. I've driven up and down that road dozens of times for work in the last 4 years casually observing the crews and their plant. I'm no expert but you can see while they work that creating a new lane in each direction including moving the supports for bridges or even entire new bridge construction is outside the knowledge base of local councils. Levelling the base layers and laying the median concrete levels to sustain high speed traffic involves a lot more than repaving the surface bitumen layer. And the amount of plant involved is massive, why should we expect governments to own thousands of graders, excavators, rollers and their transport rigs. The free market contractors own then. And when they're not being used to lay highways, they are levelling ground and laying slabs at ports, warehouses, railways, mines, factories etc. If the State govt owned them, when there are no roads to build, the depreciation loss alone to the public purse would be tremendous. It's not know-how. Responsibility. As I said in a post above - we should have different hospitals and education curriculums. All the States are different, even our short histories are different. The children of South Australia should learn about their pioneering free settler German ancestors, and have secondary schooling tailored to the employment prospects in that states' economy. The children of NSW should learn about the Rum Corps and take lessons from them. School is a busy place, both states may not need or want to teach each others history. And the national curriculum probably ignores both! Military bands have a lot of history and culture. Plus taking the navy band to play in Afghanistan may take people to a theatre without proper qualifications. Pretty sure the Navy has little use for Pipes and Drums bands tailored to infantry regiments. Well that goes to the hospitals and schools you already mentioned, and at least the GST is in some form guaranteed to be received. As opposed to targetted federal funding that can disappear with no explanation like I described above on motorways. And they are too busy developing new ways to try and welfare us out of government debt. Plus they invent taxes on State owned assets (minerals) and declare they want to phase out state royalties but the tax ends up generating no revenue! What a bunch of success stories. I understand our posts are getting a little long. If we continue we should agree to limit how long our posts are...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-03/bruce-flegg-speaks-out/5790044 LNP doesnt reckon Newman will hold his seat according to Bruce Flegg. Lots of mentions of Clive Palmer in this zombie thread, before he invented the PUP. Should be an interesting State election. Disclosure: I live in Vic and all political options here are total crap atm.
Rumor has it that Sweeny is the driving force behind the LNP IN QLD. CAMPBELL is still in front statewide in the opinion polls but is behind in his own seat. Clive will swamp them with $$$..Should be a close fought election. Regards Errol 43
