One issue of debate is how we divide the nation up into regions. Should
they be regional government, or local government ?
Max makes the following comment about putting 250,000 - 500,000 people in
one region, and its impact on country Australia :
> Even with 500,000 people in one province, Sydney is divided in 8
> provinces and the Sydney region is only the size of my shire. Even with
> 250,000 people in the province for my area it would be the size of
> Victoria. So what is the benefit of still have an administration that
> is so far removed from many of the people.
> Leaving out Canberra, the large cities in 500,000 population to include
> my town would be Wagga, Albury, Leeton, Griffith, Mildura, Swan Hill,
> Broken Hill, Deniliquin, Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo, Parks, Hay,Wangaratta,
> Shepparton, Bendigo, Ballarat, Stawell, Horsham, which is nearly twice
> the size of Victoria.
Bob Buick makes the following comments in support of regional governments :
> As the object is equality and fairness, and there is a point where to be
> effective in being self financing a minimum and maximum population is
> needed, 500,000 is a number I chose to explain my ideas. Brisbane CC is
> greater population and budget than Tasmania, it to big and too powerful
> in lobbying for monies etc, even when looking at its neighbouring
> councils. Similar problems would be created in the local
> I am promoting not the geographical size of the province, rather it's
> population and ability to sustain itself; most local governments I think
> are about 25,000, give or take a thousand or two, each of these have up
> to 12 councillors and they has little control over anything except
> sewerage and gutters.
> If Sydney was to have 8 local councils to replace their present, what I
> suppose 50 in the greater Sydney area, then there is a greater saving
> and higher collections of moneys with what I feel would be a better
> service to the ratepayers.
# The powers of regional governments
Max asks :
> I'm unable to find anyone who can tell me what powers regional
> governments will have, how we would then have a better system, if they
> have powers anything like the present states then we have only spread
> the present problems over more borders, with more anomalies. If they
> are just going to be large councils, then how is the work of the present
> councils going to be done over even bigger areas, and still be close to
> the people.
The last line of this paragraph outlines the view, expressed elsewhere as
well by Max, that rural shire councils do "work" and provide worthwhile
services and accessible government.
> There is going to be no 'standard' population defining a region, as by
> the statistic that Mark has just shown, we have 200 towns ranging in
> population from 3,276,207 down to 4884. To have Albury Wodonga in a
> region of 350,000 it would include all those towns I listed before and
> would be twice the size of Victoria, So please explain how it is close
> to the people and good for government services.
> What powers would these provincial administrations have? Will it
> eliminate the border anomalies?
Charles has put forward a provisional outline of the responsibility for
different government services. "Not an exhaustive list, put an
illustration of principle" This follows :
----****-----
Responsibilities for Policy and the Delivery of Government Services
Government Activity Responsibility for
Policy Implementation
Federal Regional Federal Regional
Defence * *
Environment * * *
Street Naming * *
Foreign affairs * *
Fiscal policy * *
Monetary policy * *
Customs * *
Immigration * *
Quarantine * *
Post and telegraph * *
Statutory law
-------------
Criminal law * *
Road law * *
Corporations law * * *
Industrial Relations * *
Vehicle registration * *
Human rights * *
Health * *
Hospitals * *
Water * *
Aged care * *
Mental health * *
Education * *
Media * * *
Research and development * * * *
Information technology * *
Prisons * *
Coinage * *
The judiciary * * *
Law enforcement * * *
Garbage collection * *
Street cleaning * *
Beach cleaning * *
Parks and gardens * *
Wildlife protection * * *
Domestic animal registration * *
Tree clearing * *
National Highways * *
National roads * *
Airways and airports * * *
Railways * *
Waterways * *
Local roads and streets * *
Town planning * *
Building regulations * *
Welfare * *
Exports * *
Imports * *
Shipping and ports * *
Manufacturing * *
Primary production * *
Mining * *
Land rights * *
Heritage * *
Taxation * *
-----*******---------
Which is certainly an attempt to define the powers of the regions.
With regard to Max's point about population, Charles writes :
> If a 350,000 pop of a region such as around Albury/Wodonga is twice the
> size of Victoria, then we need to delineate a region with practical
> boundaries that will obviously have a smaller population. (Regions do
> not have to be the same size in area OR population.)
> Max, are you saying, "let's just eliminate State Gov'ts and leave
> everything else as it is"? The problem with that approach is, what
> happens to all the powers and functions currently exercised by State
> Gov'ts? If they go to Local Govt we will end up with 629 states. If
> they go to the National Gov't we will have everyone complaining that
> government is even more remote than it is now.
This last sentence by Charles must be balanced against the fact that
government as put forward by Max would be simpler and therefore less
imposing, even if also more "remote" as Charles describes. Just what it
would be like, on the balance, is open to debate.
Mark makes the following general comments :
> Getting up to around 100 regions provides all sorts of opportunities
> that simply won't be there in a model of much less regions.
> David, in his 17 May email, refers to 14 or so large urban areas which
> account for some 12M population (Though there are some problems in the
> stats adding up to 19M population, this does not affect the thrust of
> the argument) , so if we had around 100 regions to cover the areas
> beyond large urban centres, these 100 regions would cover 7M people and
> so have average populations around the 70,000 mark, which, in practice,
> would enable the more remote areas to be part of regions with smaller
> populations.
> Most people expressing Max's general concerns are worried about remote,
> smaller towns remaining on the outer/periphery as they are now with a
> (say) 30 or so region model - to me this is clearly a very valid
> concern. Still, obviously as the number of regions goes up, the
> opportunity to address these concerns diminishes.
> My preferred model remains one where regional governance is achieved by
> means other than regional governments - as per my earlier email today,
> however, if regional governments are to be followed, I think lessons
> from here, the US, Switzerland and elsewhere support a number of regions
> at least around the 100 mark.
Bob talks about the powers of the groups in his regions :
> These local governments would have the same powers as before with a
> possible loss of some controls and the addition of others. For example
> let us consider the enforcement of national traffic regulations, every
> region would have standard national rule but these could be enforced by
> the regions traffic coppers. All crime would be handle by the Federal
> Law body. Rivers and lakes etc would be under the control of the feds
> although in some regions managed by local government with all costs
> against the federal ministry.
David and Arthur Chesterfield-Evans exchanged views on the how to
divide seats up in NSW. ACE marked as >, David with no indenting :
> I suggest that New South Wales, which currently has 50 Federal
> lower House seats, could be divided into 10 regional electorates.
> These new 10 electorates would return five members each-still
> 50 members but from 10 regional areas.
Any rational description of NSW has to include the fact that
Sydney has most of the population. You're presenting the idea as
"divide up the map of NSW into ten pieces" but it's really "divide
Sydney into six or seven pieces and the rest of the state into
three or four" (I've no demography data handy). The country areas
might be: everything inland; Newcastle and North Coast; Wollongong
and South Coast. At least the NSW part of the Murray-Darling basin
(more or less) would fit well as an electorate.
It's far from clear to me that a system of representation and
government that works well in the metropolitan area will work well
in the country or vice versa. For instance, many people will be
commuting across regional borders within Sydney, which isn't a
serious issue in the country.
> problems like the Murray-Darling basin would be sorted out both
> by regional electorates and more open statutory bodies
The regional electorates are therefore serving in two ways:
governmental regions at a regional level, and electorates at a
state level. I'm not sure I like this: I lose some of my ability to
vote one way federally and another locally. Not the end of the world,
but a bit unfortunate.
> Legislatures should be judged by how democratic they are, that is
> how well the percentage of the voters correlate with the number
> of seats
Interesting idea, can it be justified? Seems to me that representative
democracy involves taking many opinions (the people) and gradually
winnowing them down to a decision (legislation and executive decisions).
In between there are multiple sieves, that take in many opinions and
put out one, perhaps formed by compromise. We can adjust how harshly
an individual sieve bites, but any change will be compensated for
somewhere else along the line because we know the total reduction is
a constant.
So can we argue that democracy is enhanced by making the first sieve
weaker? After all, the US chief executive is de facto elected by a
single maximally harsh sieve: is that the best we could ask for, or
the worst? Maybe democracy is enhanced by having most of the sieving
process happen at once and before the sieving gets too remote from the
people ... i.e. before too much sieving has happened. Or by having a
small number of sieves.
# Some reference material on regions, found by Mark
> I always found Riverina one of the hardest regions to properly work out
> when I was dead set keen on the idea of a model of 30-60 regions or so.
> For reference, here's figures from the 1996 census, from
> http://www.abs.gov.au/852563C300810973/0/1D091946AE083C09CA25659B00041E60?Op
> en we can see that the 200 largest urban centres, from the most populous
> down, are as follows - a question for which I have no answer is: how far
> down the list (or an extension thereof including more smaller towns)
> should we go to find a settlement which is NOT entitled to be governed
> by some autonomous unit that cares principally for that particular
> city/town?
Rank Urban Centre Persons
1 Sydney (NSW) 3,276,207
2 Melbourne (Vic.) 2,865,329
3 Brisbane (Qld) 1,291,117
4 Perth (WA) 1,096,829
5 Adelaide (SA) 978,100
6 Canberra-Queanbeyan 322,723
7 Gold Coast-Tweed Heads 311,932
8 Newcastle (NSW) 270,324
9 Central Coast (NSW) 227,657
10 Wollongong (NSW) 219,761
11 Hobart (Tas.) 126,118
12 Geelong (Vic.) 125,382
13 Townsville-Thuringowa (Qld) 109,914
14 Cairns (Qld) 92,273
15 Toowoomba (Qld) 83,350
16 Darwin (NT) 70,251
17 Launceston (Tas.) 67,701
18 Albury-Wodonga (NSW/Vic.) 67,316
19 Ballarat (Vic.) 64,831
20 Bendigo (Vic.) 59,936
21 Rockhampton (Qld) 57,770
22 Maitland (NSW) 50,108
23 Rockingham (WA) 49,917
24 Mackay (Qld) 44,880
25 Wagga Wagga (NSW) 42,848
26 Bundaberg (Qld) 41,025
27 Maroochydore-Mooloolaba (Qld) 36,406
28 Mandurah (WA) 35,945
29 Port Macquarie (NSW) 33,709
30 Hervey Bay (Qld) 32,054
31 Shepparton-Mooroopna (Vic.) 31,945
32 Tamworth (NSW) 31,865
33 Orange (NSW) 30,705
34 Melton (Vic.) 30,304
35 Dubbo (NSW) 30,102
36 Lismore (NSW) 28,380
37 Caloundra (Qld) 28,329
38 Kalgoorlie-Boulder (WA) 28,087
39 Gladstone (Qld) 26,415
40 Tewantin-Noosa (Qld) 26,053
41 Warrnambool (Vic.) 26,052
42 Bathurst (NSW) 26,029
43 Geraldton (WA) 25,243
44 Bunbury (WA) 24,945
45 Cranbourne (Vic.) 24,752
46 Mildura (Vic.) 24,142
47 Nowra-Bomaderry (NSW) 23,823
48 Whyalla (SA) 23,382
49 Alice Springs (NT) 22,488
50 Devonport (Tas.) 22,299
51 Coffs Harbour (NSW) 22,177
52 Sunbury (Vic.) 22,126
53 Mount Gambier (SA) 22,037
54 Mount Isa (Qld) 21,751
55 Armidale (NSW) 21,330
56 Richmond-Windsor (NSW) 21,317
57 Goulburn (NSW) 21,293
58 Maryborough (Qld) 21,286
59 Broken Hill (NSW) 20,963
60 Albany (WA) 20,493
61 Burnie-Somerset (Tas.) 19,134
62 Traralgon (Vic.) 18,993
63 Katoomba-Wentworth Falls 17,700
64 Caboolture (Qld) 17,571
65 Cessnock-Bellbird (NSW) 17,540
66 Taree (NSW) 16,702
67 Grafton (NSW) 16,562
68 Kawana Waters (Qld) 16,264
69 Ballina (NSW) 16,056
70 Forster-Tuncurry (NSW) 15,943
71 Kwinana (WA) 15,674
72 Wangaratta (Vic.) 15,527
73 Moe-Yallourn (Vic.) 15,512
74 Gawler (SA) 15,484
75 Cairns Northern Beaches (Qld) 14,768
76 Nerang (Qld) 14,467
77 Griffith (NSW) 14,209
78 Port Augusta (SA) 13,914
79 Helensvale (Qld) 13,823
79 Morwell (Vic.) 13,823
81 Kingston-Blackmans Bay (Tas.) 13,746
82 Port Pirie (SA) 13,633
83 Sale (Vic.) 13,366
84 Sawtell (NSW) 13,240
85 Deception Bay (Qld) 13,163
86 Crafers-Bridgewater (SA) 13,027
87 Craigieburn (Vic.) 12,919
88 Port Hedland (WA) 12,846
89 Murray Bridge (SA) 12,831
90 Horsham (Vic.) 12,591
91 Kurri Kurri-Weston (NSW) 12,555
92 Singleton (NSW) 12,519
93 Echuca-Moama (Vic./NSW) 12,483
94 Buderim (Qld) 12,458
95 Raymond Terrace (NSW) 12,332
96 Palmerston (NT) 12,233
97 Nambour (Qld) 12,205
98 Kiama (NSW) 11,711
99 Port Lincoln (SA) 11,678
100 Lithgow (NSW) 11,441
101 Broome (WA) 11,368
102 Bacchus Marsh (Vic.) 11,279
103 Ocean Grove-Barwon Heads 11,272
104 Bongaree (Qld) 11,166
105 Warwick (Qld) 10,947
106 Bairnsdale (Vic.) 10,890
107 Gympie (Qld) 10,813
108 Busselton (WA) 10,642
109 Muswellbrook (NSW) 10,541
110 Parkes (NSW) 10,094
111 Karratha (WA) 10,057
112 Casino (NSW) 9,990
113 Colac (Vic.) 9,793
114 Ulverstone (Tas.) 9,792
115 Victoria Point (Qld) 9,760
116 Portland (Vic.) 9,664
117 Lawson-Hazelbrook (NSW) 9,605
118 Batemans Bay (NSW) 9,568
119 Dalby (Qld) 9,517
120 Pakenham (Vic.) 9,512
121 Swan Hill (Vic.) 9,385
122 Inverell (NSW) 9,378
123 Emerald (Qld) 9,345
124 Moree (NSW) 9,270
125 Hamilton (Vic.) 9,248
126 Warragul (Vic.) 9,011
127 Innisfail (Qld) 8,987
128 Bowen (Qld) 8,985
129 Charters Towers (Qld) 8,893
130 Yeppoon (Qld) 8,810
131 Bowral (NSW) 8,705
132 Ayr (Qld) 8,697
133 Esperance (WA) 8,647
134 Kempsey (NSW) 8,630
135 Benalla (Vic.) 8,582
136 Cowra (NSW) 8,544
137 Morayfield (Qld) 8,394
138 Ulladulla (NSW) 8,384
139 Gunnedah (NSW) 8,315
140 Mudgee (NSW) 8,195
141 Wangi-Rathmines (NSW) 8,106
142 Katherine (NT) 7,979
143 Mount Barker (SA) 7,908
144 Deniliquin (NSW) 7,816
145 Murwillumbah (NSW) 7,657
146 Forbes (NSW) 7,467
147 Bridgewater-Gagebrook (Tas.) 7,451
148 Maryborough (Vic.) 7,381
149 Victor Harbor (SA) 7,343
150 Lara (Vic.) 7,338
151 Collie (WA) 7,194
152 Cooma (NSW) 7,150
153 Somerville (Vic.) 7,028
154 Kingaroy (Qld) 7,013
155 Nelson Bay (NSW) 7,001
156 Coolum Beach (Qld) 6,999
157 Ararat (Vic.) 6,890
158 Mareeba (Qld) 6,874
159 Young (NSW) 6,798
160 Burpengary (Qld) 6,774
161 Castlemaine (Vic.) 6,690
162 Clifton Springs (Vic.) 6,651
163 Leeton (NSW) 6,615
164 Moranbah (Qld) 6,508
165 Narrabri (NSW) 6,419
166 Healesville (Vic.) 6,368
167 Carnarvon (WA) 6,357
168 Northam (WA) 6,300
169 Seymour (Vic.) 6,294
170 Stawell (Vic.) 6,272
171 Nambucca Heads (NSW) 6,253
172 Crib Point (Vic.) 6,198
173 Byron Bay (NSW) 6,130
174 Moss Vale (NSW) 6,108
175 Glen Innes (NSW) 6,101
176 Mittagong (NSW) 6,088
177 St Georges Basin-Sanctuary Point (NSW) 5,988
178 Torquay (Vic.) 5,984
179 Blackwater (Qld) 5,931
180 Tumut (NSW) 5,915
181 Hastings (Vic.) 5,906
182 Wonthaggi (Vic.) 5,887
183 Cootamundra (NSW) 5,879
184 Camden Haven (NSW) 5,823
185 Corowa-Wahgunyah (NSW/Vic.) 5,785
186 Roma (Qld) 5,744
187 Kyabram (Vic.) 5,738
188 Australind (WA) 5,694
189 Atherton (Qld) 5,693
190 Leopold (Vic.) 5,491
191 Gatton (Qld) 5,328
192 Lemon Tree Passage (NSW) 5,316
193 Medowie (NSW) 5,294
194 New Norfolk (Tas.) 5,286
195 Lakes Entrance (Vic.) 5,248
196 Biloela (Qld) 5,161
197 Yarrawonga-Mulwala (Vic./NSW) 5,028
198 Ingham (Qld) 5,012
199 Wellington (NSW) 4,920
200 Kununurra (WA) 4,884