Why Australia's states are doomed

Walker's international comparisons of government expenditure have more to do with different levels of service, especially in health and education, than with different systems of government. His observation that the current populations of the States are large by comparison with the founding American states is yet another argument for breaking the States into smaller autonomous regions.

10. A competitive edge for the nation

Here Walker suggests that competition between States enhances national competitiveness. He says nothing about competition between autonomous regions.

Prognosis

Looking to the future, Walker endorses the myth that the GST "provides the secure revenue basis the states have long needed and is a step towards more balanced federal-state fiscal relations." In fact the GST revenue is distributed by the Commonwealth on the condition (s.96 again!) that the States abolish several of their own taxes, making the States more dependent on Canberra than ever before. In the same paragraph Walker refers to a national bill of rights. This is gratuitous and irrelevant because such bills can exist in both federal and unitary systems.

When fallacious arguments hold sway, it is usually because they are simpler and more easily reduced to sound-bites than the arguments that refute them. It seems that the defenders of the States do not have this advantage, in which case their only hope is to suppress discussion of the issue. But discussion will continue because so many vested interests, including the press, are burdened with the cost of complying with multiple sets of laws whose subject matter would inevitably be a national prerogative under a regionalist federal system. Regionalism is one issue on which the interests of big business concur with those of the masses, and this happy convergence will consign the States to the dustbin of history.