DrWho

Excellent topical question.

YES.

Vash the Stampede

After nearly three years of living under the British government, I am more in favour of the Australian system than I have ever been.

For a country the size of a teaspoon, the UK is awash with bureaucratic duplication on a truly staggering scale.

She has a Welsh Assembly which is little more than a highly expensive and largely irrelevant talking shop, a Scottish Parliament of similar stamp (housed in a massively overpriced building which cost nearly ten times the original quote) with limited powers, funded largely by the English taxpayer (who nevertheless has no say in the activities of said Parliament ), and a separate council for every county, every city, every borough and every district.

The differences are even more striking when we compare the administrative divisions of each country:

• Australia
  6 states and 2 territories
  
  
  
• England
  47 boroughs, 36 counties, 29 London boroughs, 12 cities and boroughs, 10 districts, 12 cities, 3 royal boroughs

Exactly why the UK needs so many layers of government, I am at a loss to say. (Did someone say "inefficiency"? Ooooh, I'll have two helpings, please!)

Yes, Australia's system has its own fair share of problems, ineffieciencies, inconsistencies and nepotism, etc. Every country does. I personally lived through the infamous years of WA Inc. and the subsequent Royal Commission, so I've experienced some of the worst that my country has to offer.

NKSK version 2's examples are depressing alright, but they are no worse than anything you'd witness from most governments around the world, and no more shocking than anything I've seen from the notorious Wallsall Council here in the West Midlands. (For many other examples of local government chicanery, click here).

Yes, Alannah McTiernan is a complete waste of human DNA (she is universally loathed, and has been since the days when I lived in WA) but failing to meet a cost projection is scarcely a hanging offence. After all, Tony Blair waged an illegal war on the basis of fabricated evidence and a network of lies... which rather puts Ms McTiernan's sins into perspective, wouldn't you say?

Oh, but I had to laugh when I read his comments about the alleged superiority of federal members! Australia has plenty of villains and idiots in Federal Government, as does the UK. (David Blunkett, Stephen Milligan, Peter Mandelson, John Prescott, Cecil Parkinson, Neil Hamilton, Ian Harvey... to name only a few.) Politicians are humans, and humans are greedy, selfish bastards all over the world.

Nevertheless, a few bad apples do not necessarily ruin the whole barrel, and the actions of its members are no reflection on the merits of the system itself.

I personally feel that the size of Australia renders her current system of government both sufficient and necessary. Obviously I would prefer it to be smaller (if only for reasons of efficiency) but not to the extent of eradicting the state governments. I believe it is essential for the citizens of each state to have the degree of independence and representation that only a state government can provide.

DrWho

Not wanting to turn this into yet another Oz/UK scrap... But I reckon the state system here is toast...

Yesterdays Australian had about 4 pages of stuff about the court case and the implications of the decision... The thing that sticks in my mind is the comments about how this effectively gives the federal boys the OK to stick their noses pretty much where they want... Examples given were Health and Education and I guess that's just for starters...

If JH and his troops get back in next election then why not wade in to the States big time...? There'll be an effective mandate and the opportunity to take control of some fundamental issues away from politically opposed factions may be too much to resist... And once the big stuff is gone from the States what's the point of having these big, expensive assemblies, etc...

All IMHO of course...

Westralia

Western Australia will become no more over my dead body. Thieving South-Eastern socialists are driving this. They see their power rapidly diminishing as the economy is being driven primarily from WA and QLD. It is nothing more than an attempt to ensure power and funding continue to prop up the faltering NSW and Victorian economies. When times were grand, WA in particular was the butt of their jokes and largely ignored due to our isolation. But as they say, every dog has its day.

The argument against states has zero to do with efficiency and everything to do with centralisation of power in the south-east. They want control over what is mined in WA and elsewhere, how it is done, what we charge and want state royalties from mining transferred to their coffers to maintain their bureaucracies that do not give a fig about anything west of Melbourne.

chels

I have experience of working for various levels of government in the UK and Australia, and based on that experience I would rate the quality of politician in Australia lower, and the states seem to be better run than the federal government.

The states do a lot more than the federal government, therefore they are scrutinised more (esp. by the media) and there will be more issues of mismanagement proportionally.

Also, I am pretty unimpressed with the media reporting of politics and that's where most people get their information from about what the governments are doing. But this is no surprise when the traditional media outlets are so limited and have very clear agendas most of the time IMO.

If everything was taken away from the states and put under control of John Howard, the Liberals and the Nationals, I fear there would be a bias towards regional and rural Australia to the detriment of metropolitan areas.

Vash the Stampede

I don't believe they'd have a mandate, even if the Liberals are voted back in again.

Yes, the federal government wants to claw back more power from the states. It always has. But abolishing state government altogether? That would be a mammoth task, even for JH and Co.

It would also mean scrapping the Federal Constitution, from which the states derive their rights and powers - and I can't see that happening any time soon, can you?

DrWho

OK, not a mandate as in stated policy in their election manifesto, but no one could complain that they got something they didn't expect...

I don't mean abolishing but substantially reducing their powers/influence and footprint/overhead...

Of course not but wasn't really getting at that. It'll be very interesting to see what happens... It wasn't many weeks ago that the federal government had a few scathing comments to make about the NSW education system was it...

Westralia

Rural areas in NSW and Victoria maybe.

Everywhere else will be told to get stuffed like they always have.

chels

Not very surprising, seeing as the federal government has a majority of Liberals and NSW has a Labor government. Can't see JH etc supporting any Labor run systems.

Wol

As usual Vash argues a well-researched post (Where on earth does he find the time?<g>)

In many ways I agree with him about UK governance - and he forgot to include the European Commission in his layers of government: they almost make the rest of his list superfluous!

The UK *does* have 3 times the population of Oz, though. Probably the size of the population is more important than the size of the country in terms of "amount" of government?

All I can say is that from what I have seen over some 30 years in Oz is a level of inefficiency, corruption, misgovernance and incompetence that is truly breathtaking at the state level.

At present here in NSW we have a minister (sorry, just-ex minister), a high official in his department IIRC accused of serial child abuse, procuring some of such with state funds. We have a government which colluded with a private company - the tunnel diggers - to in effect hand over control of part of Sydney's traffic management (lights, turns, one-ways streets etc) to them so as to make it almost impossible to negotiate the city without using the toll tunnel. We have had no investment worthy of the name in water harvesting since the Warragaba dam was built decades ago, with a huge population increase in the meantime. Health services, especially outside the city, are in places at crisis level of staffing and funding.

I could go on - and on - but you will get the drift.

For a relatively tiny population of some 20m, I personally don't think the federal system gives good value and dredges the bottom of the food chain to get politicians into the state parliaments - out of a pond which is pretty limited in size in the first place.

DrWho

My point exactly...

Vash the Stampede

Ah yes, I had forgotten about the EU (though don't ask me how!)

I don't see why it should. Can anyone explain why a larger population necessitates more layers of government?

Interesting that you say this, and yet your only examples...

...are all taken from one single state, one single state government, one single period of administration, and failures/abuses that are no more shocking or prevalent than those found anywhere else in the industrialised West.

This might provide a compelling argument against the Iemma government, but it does not constitue sufficient evidence to support your generalisations about Australia's state government system.

Vash the Stampede

Agreed.

Wol

I prefer to take examples from the area I am familiar with: WA for example is roughly as far away from Bowral as Cairo is from London and I have little knowledge of how competent/corrupt/inefficient its' state government is.

Certainly IMO the NSW state government is hardly a shining example of good governance by any standards.

MartinLuther

I think that the quality of politicians diminishes as you travel down the governance chain in both countries. However I think the Aus system makes it more visible.

Another bizarre feature in the UK is that local councils are allowed to raise tax but the (notionally) higher up assemblies are not (Scottish Parliament excepted).