Thompson flayed the Nationals, in particular Riverina-based State Government MPs, Katrina Hodgkinson and Adrian Piccoli, about the controversial local government Fit for the Future reforms and accused the Nationals of selling-out on country people and councils.

He went further. "The Nationals are there for country people. They should do what they set out to do; stand up for country people. Regionalism is a key tenant of their policy platform - their attitude is a complete contradiction of regionalism."

However, the real question could be: What is the end plan for local government. In short, what is the Baird Government up to?

Others point to Sydney's dozens of councils which are hopelessly over-staffed, poorly run, politically focussed and in some cases, to say the least, involved in shady dealings.

By all means bring the metropolitan councils to heel but there are much bigger issues at stake than amalgamations. What ought to be a priority is the necessity to overhaul the NSW Local Government Act, last changed in 1993 for the worst, and what the scope of local government ought to be.

More importantly, however, the so-called Fit for the Future reforms overlooks the much vaunted necessity (which has never been exercised at any level of government) for constitutional reform of all three levels of government. That's the real issue.

That may not come, unfortunately, because as journalist H L Mencken, known as the Sage of Baltimore, once wrote: "The government consists of a gang of people exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent getting and holding office".

This was followed by US President Gerald Ford: "The problem is making government sufficiently responsive to the people. If we don't make government responsive to the people, we don't make it believable. And, we must make government believable if we are to have a functioning democracy".

One state embarking on a mass amalgamations proposal of the so-called grass roots tier isn't necessarily the answer. We are massively over-governed in Australia and, it might be added, unfairly in favour of the metropolitan areas. The Baird Government might do us all a favour if it put its endeavours into revolutionising the three-tiered system of government including the Senate reconstruction from a states to a regional house.

The political journalist, Laura Tingle, this week launched in the Quarterly Essay magazine her article, Political Amnesia: How we forgot how to govern. She examines what has gone wrong with our politics and how we might put things right.

Among other things she questions the undermining of the once-great Australian public service "as a repository of ideas and experience"; the damage done when responsibility is contracted out; whether journalism is doing its job in being an active check and monitor of government or whether it is actually adding to the problem and, as Fairfax columnist, Jack Waterford, described it, the access of politicians to so much public cash via public relations and marketing staff to sell their ideological, pre-spun and slanted messages.     

Tingle's article is a commendable read.