ALIGNING a debate by Wagga City councillors about the issue at the intermodal freight hub at Bomen with urgent change to the Australian Constitution might be seen as drawing the long bow. The debate - much of it right on the mark - indicates the parlous financial predicament that local government finds itself in and which, particularly in NSW, demands the immediate revoking of the 1993 ill-prepared Local Government Act. It is just one reason why we need a new constitution via an apolitical evaluation by a modern-day Sir Henry Parkes of the current three tier system of government.
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Such reckoning should include greater recognition of local government; abandoning state governments and restructuring the Senate, not as a states house anymore but on metropolitan and regional areas, and adjusted every 10 years or so depending on a population growth or decline. In any reform the state governments need to go. They are a colonial relic. Why is it necessary to have six state and two territory ministers plus one federal minister for portfolios such as health, education, mines and transport. The debate emphasised the growing loss of decision making available to elected councillors. Councillor Andrew Negline pointed to the “distancing of councillors” from the Bomen project and using expensive consultants, although local government is not alone there. Pertinent comments came from councillors, Paul Funnell and Julian McLaren.
Regional administrations or territory-type governments to take over the powers and financing of local government and re-designing federal electorates, even if that means creating more federal regional seats for better representation once state governments go, are other ideas. State boundaries would be maintained for sports, cultural and identification purposes but abandoned for federal government electoral boundaries. Take two current local seats - Farrer and Riverina for instance. Farrer extends from Albury all the way down theMurray and then north along the NSW/SA border to Broken Hill. Would it not make more sense to have cross-border electorates like Albury-Wodonga and so forth down theMurray. In the case of Riverina make Wagga a separate electorate and Griffith and the MIA, including Narrandera in another.
Lifting the prestige, skills and status of a rejuvenated public service would top off a revamped constitution. - Graham Gorrel