David noted :

> Saw two articles on TV recently.  One Wednesday night (ABC, about 1945)
> and one Friday morning (Today show?).  Both had people saying that a
> large part of Australia's electricity supply problem was that supply
> needed to transfer responsibility to the federal government.  The other
> were supposed to have by now.

Mark commented :

> National competition policy generally - with power perhaps most
> obviously - has failed to yield its potential benefits indeed because
> optimum market sizes extend beyond state borders.  There's immense
> horizontal duplication here - part of the $billions per annum on the
> private sector side of things that can be improved upon if state
> governments (and the public sector side of things as well in terms of
> bureaucratic regulatory functions).

Simon says its more complex :

> But this is partly due also to the historical urbanisation within state
> borders.  There are very few large towns - let alone cities - that are
> close to state borders - Albury-Wodonga being the one remarkable
> exception which is of interest to us "state-abolitionists" as an example
> where inter-state rivalry has hampered development.  The states have
> historically built cities at convenient coastal locations (mainly for
> fresh water supplies I suppose) well-within their own frontiers and the
> electricity supplies have followed that trend on a state basis.

> Of course both reasons are due to the historical existence of states,
> but its still a worthwhile point.

Klaas comments on competition policy :

> Mark's point about maximum sizes makes a lot of sense.  However, the
> failure of Competition Policy is not just a question of small size -
> there are many other reasons.  I have written a couple of submissions to
> Senate Inquiries for the PLP to argue against Competition Policy which
> highlight these several reasons.  If size was the principal problem we
> might even have Competition Policy supporters argue for the abolition of
> states!!  Certainly, there are some enlightened corporate chiefs who see
> the states as a major hindrance for other reasons as well and want to do
> away with them eg.  they want one national legislator to deal
> effectively with corporate law rather than six state legislators.