Regional government can transform Australia

The liberation of these billions of dollars per annum in public and private spending capacity, through the abolition of the states and the formation of 40 or so regional governments, can enormously benefit Australia through diverse nation-enhancing and nation-building endeavours.

Such moneys could help pay off the national debt and fund industry, labour market and welfare programs that could simultaneously improve our trade performance, and reduce poverty and unemployment.

Payroll tax could be abolished and the private sector could thereby afford to employ more people even if tariffs reduced in line with APEC targets.

While overall income levels could be raised, many six-figure salaried public sector jobs would become superfluous, and the funds thereby freed up could fund the employment of many more people at average salary levels, providing sustainable reductions in unemployment and the rich-poor gap. We could at last establish uniform national laws and properly address crime, food standards, child protection, and care for the poor, aged and disabled.

Squabbles between state, territory and commonwealth governments, and the expense of resolving them in the courts, could be consigned to history and money would become available to boost education, healthcare and so on, compensate the stolen generation, address the Murray Darling crisis and other environmental concerns properly or fund a large-scale defence force effort if the need ever arose.

The idea of regional government system is not new and has strong public support

The idea to create regional governments is a pragmatic and principled (and not merely diplomatic) synthesis of the ALP's traditional state abolition and regionalisation objectives and the New States movements that were predominantly of Country Party origin and in some cases preceded federation itself.

A growing, albeit still rather loose, network of people is coming together as a formidable advocacy force in support of regional government. And with such strong selling points, who says it can't get up at a referendum?