Klaas describes his model, > . Comments by David are included as >>

> I advocate a decentralised unitary form of state.  This involves
> the abolition of divided sovereignty and a federal constitution that
> list a series of selected federal powers for the limited national
> government (as created in 1901) - Section 51 - with all other powers
> left with the states as protected by their own state constitutions -
> even though they can be overridden by federal legislation in the case of
> conflict - only.

> A unitary state means that there will no longer be state or regional
> constitutions and no local government powers, or regional powers, that
> have the quality of being _sovereign_, protected in a federal
> constitution (in Section 128).  _Decentralised_ means that
> local/regional are outlined in the constitution and that these are
> normally exercised by the lower level units - and also that much of the
> implementation of national legislation is left with the lower level
> units powers, at the discretion of the national (not central)
> government.

> To reach this point we require a process of steps in a package which
> must be tied to becoming a Republic.  It cannot be achieved in one big
> change but this is not to say that a daring model is not achievable or
> that it will necessarily take a very long time.

> Sure, this has to be pushed along by many community groups but it is my
> view that one or more political parties have to bundle this energy into
> political representation for constitutional change.  Seen from this
> perspective the platforms of the Democrats and Greens, need to be
> sharpened and focused much more.  At present these aspects are still of
> secondary importance to them - as is, even, Proportional Representation.

> Position of Local Government and Regional Organisations.

> The second tier should be Local Government, more or less as it exist at
> present, minus the new City Governments, combined with regions which are
> built around the Voluntary Regional Organisations - many of which have
> been around for quite a few years (some 75) and are natural clusters.

> Max Bradley mentioned that there are actually a large number of other,
> functional regions which work well - are these regions associated with
> State Departments??  - and these may well continue to exist in a new
> organisations as part of national departments of state.

> In 1994 there were 53 of such regions and I don't really know whether or
> not this is still the number.  It is true that a lot of local government
> units are not part of these regions and that the idea of clusters in
> sparsely populated areas has little meaning.

> The principal purpose of such regions is coordination of local
> government functions across a fairly large area and, of course regional
> development.  These regions could take over some of the functions of
> state government on behalf of local government rather than as a
> delegated function by the national government.

>> Since the local governments are delegates of the national government
>> anyway, this would seem to be something that relies on the good will of
>> the national government from time to time.  The constitional change
>> needed to abolish the states is very separate from the pro-local
>> government lobbying: the former is mostly a terminating project, the
>> latter is maintenance, never finished.

> The tier is local government not regional government with its own
> elected parliament and civil service.  I would describe the regions as a
> _Mezzanine Level_ - there is new language for you!

> Over time this could change and the new Republican constitution should
> make flexible provision for that as a possibility: some regions may
> prefer that to a group of elected local councils.

> The administrative regions should of course be detailed in the new
> Constitution and be instrumental in receiving and channelling grants to
> the local government areas.  As Max suggests the Grants system works
> quite well apparently.  Regions could take the place of states.

> A big change would be the introduction of City Government all the larger
> cities and this would eliminate many traditional city-based local
> councils.  That should be an excellent move.  Of course there will be
> many detractors but many city-based local councils have very little
> community recognition as THEIR Council - quite different from the
> situation in country areas.  Almost certainly the opposition would come
> from vested interests of property developers who have their henchmen and
> women on Councils.  Most City dwellers will identify with a broadly
> representative City Council which could use the old State Parliament as
> its new home perhaps.

On a related topic, there were discussions about powers in the context of
a system similar to Klaas' :

Stuff from Anthony David, >, and David Bofinger,>> :

>> Can you give us some examples of things presently done by state or
>> national government (perhaps through functional regions) that should be
>> done by local governments?

> Trading hours regulation is an obvious example.
> Hospital, Schools and Policing should be locally administered within a
> national framework to ensure these institutions are tailored to meet
> the communities' needs.
> 
>> I'm still not sure what this means.  When you say police should be
>> administered by local government I have visions of the mayor telling
>> police whether or not they should bother to prosecute her daughter for
>> drunk-driving, or how many police should be allocated to her
>> neighbourhood and how many elsewhere.

> Of course that is an issue; accountability to prevent this sort of
> corruption would be important.

>> There are some jobs in government that should be controlled by people
>> they _don't_ affect.  In the case of schools I presume you mean that the
>> local government would decide how much money went to each school in
>> their district, ditto for

> That is a general but correct presumption.

>> hospitals.  Trading hours regulations hook directly to working hours in
>> awards, do we want to give local governments influence on that?

> I don't hear the Federal Govt getting up and talking about trading hours
> outside of the scope of awards and as far as I know the existence of an
> award is not a sufficient condition to allow a variation of trading
> hours.  I must admit that I am not sure whether it is regulated at a
> local or state level now in every state as my "state" ,the ACT, serves
> both functions.

> For example, however, in Queensland there is the TRADING (ALLOWABLE
> HOURS) ACT 1990 which makes allowance for Industrial Commission orders.
> There is also the SHOP TRADING HOURS ACT 1977 in SA.  These are both
> State Acts.  The SA Act for example refers to the "Glenelg Shopping
> District" as a special exemption.  It seems that in this case of trading
> hours, Local Govt should have the power to legislate within a National
> framework for shopping hours.

>> Maybe I'm confused about what "administer" means.

> To be honest, I am a bit unclear with the term as well because of the
> variations in responsibility across various powers.

>> One reason I'm comfortable with the minimalist version of state
>> abolition ("abolish all the state governments, transfer all their powers
>> to the commonwealth, and let the national government delegate to local
>> governments the same way it does now.") is that I understand everything
>> in it.  The "um, but, hang on, I didn't understand that bit" factor is
>> just about zero, and you can write it unambiguously on a business card.

> In Marketing there is a saying "Don't confuse sales with implementation"
> and on the point of keeping things simple, I agree.

> However, when I see the above Federal-centric statement I get Orwellian
> nightmares.

Mark and David's exchange, David, > Mark unindented

> Regional level is defined as any multi-function government level between
> state and local government.  So the current system of many parallel
> functional regions is ruled out.

Agreed but this is a matter of degree.  Health, education and law-making
should be national government powers and responsibilities, so the extent
of multi-functionality I'd like to see in a form of subnational
government would be nothing like the comprehensive state/territory
governments in their present forms.

> Please elaborate on protection of local governments.

We should have Constitutional recognition of subnational government
and a limited set of specified local government powers and responsibilities,
more or less what they are now, with the addition of some
form of community/local/regional development role and the right to raise
taxes and receive equity-based grants from the national government.  

The constitution should set out the basic ground rules for a Boundary
Commission, the Electoral Commission and a Grants Commission whose role
it would be to establish these equity-based (i.e.  equalisation grants -
designed to provide added funds to areas unable to raise own source
revenue).

In our present constitution the Commonwealth government powers are
specified with the remainder (known as the residual or plenary powers)
going to the states.  I'd want to see plenary/residual powers go to the
national government.  This would help address concerns about the
instability arising if localities constantly pushed for more and more
powers.

> What do you mean by a "community/local/regional development role" ? 

Industry assistance and economic development, as noted in the second of
my articles linked to the asc website :

Regional governments would be best equipped to focus upon specific regional
concerns if spared of powers and responsibilities that could be more
efficiently and effectively handled by the national government.  But in
order to address local and regional needs, they should be equipped with
powers and responsibilities for regional economic development (including
industry and labour market support elements) in addition to traditional
local government functions.  The national government would be assigned the
powers and responsibilities presently held by the states and territories
except for those assigned to regional governments as above, and would be
expected to assume a heightened sense of responsibility and accountability
as a result.

> You state "The system of government should be defined by a
> Constitution", but isn't that a given ?

There is a view that only federal systems need constitutions as
contractual statements of agreed divisions of powers and
responsibilities - though some non-federal countries also have them -
nevertheless, I think we'd benefit from one.