On the eve of the historic meeting of the Federal Government and representatives of Australia’s 565 local authorities Senator Barnaby Joyce, Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, has restated his call for direct appropriation of Federal funds to councils for the delivery of services.

“There should be a move towards the constitutional recognition of local councils and the formulisation of direct appropriation to regional government from Federal Treasury,” Senator Joyce said.

“State governments over time have been putting themselves out of business with their absolute incompetence. The farcical operation of the NSW Labor Government has done little to endear the relevance of State governments. Queensland has managed to find a mountain of debt that pole vaulter Steve Hooker could not jump over. Unfortunately the Federal Labor Government is starting to emulate this financial ineptitude, but two wrongs don’t make a right so let’s try to get rid of one of the wrongs.”

Senator Joyce said if the states were abolished the question of what becomes of the Senate is easily answered. States should be divided into regions with two senators elected from each. In Queensland, the state could be divided along geographic lines, such as Gold Coast region, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, North Coast, Far North Queensland and Inland. Two senators would be elected from each region at every election to give a geographically representative vote. There is a precedent with the territories already electing two Senators at each election.

An independent candidate could still get a distinct vote in a region but they would have to be directly relevant to the constituency. This would give the Gold Coast, which has the same population as Tasmania, two senators from its constituency. At present it has none but Tasmania has 12.

“I am surprised this idea was not raised at the 2020 summit. In fact I am trying to think what did come out of the 2020 summit, especially now that Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is not going to finance any of the ideas because they have spent the surplus on Christmas presents.”

When we look at the history of the states we see arbitrary lines on a map. They were based on the historical context of a certain boat arriving on a particular part of the coast a couple of hundred years ago. Australia has now developed a distinct regional ethos that has outgrown State borders. The towns of Moree and Goondiwindi have more similarities with each other than either town does with its state capital. The fact of the matter is State Labor Governments have made themselves irrelevant, so let’s formalise their irrelevance and get rid of them and have a strong network of regional government.

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