Politics STABLE POPULATION PARTY - Australia's sustainable choice ???

[Power Raid]

Politically it was a good idea, economically/socially it's crap.

Mind you, if the national capital had been in Sydney or Melbourne the centralisation in those cities (well, that one especially) would have been far worse.

politicians deserve to live in Adelaide

#strangeandunusualpunishments

 

[igon value]

De-centralising means detachment and self-sufficiency. If you're moving to Wollongong to commute to Sydney you're effectively just moving to an outer suburb and increasing the urban sprawl. It's no different to moving to Penrith. The only thing currently preventing Sydney and Wollongong just blending into one is dirty great National Park in the way.

The whole point of de-centralisation in this example is to get people out of the mindset of needing to be attached to Sydney.

No city is 'self sufficient' - do you expect each city to be an autarky? Look at the feeder towns of London - people commute from places as far flung as Brighton, Cambridge or even Bristol - but these towns are independent of their own means.

Starting a new city in Bourke or wherever is impossible without a reason for people being there.

 

[igon value]

Probably the most effective way to promote decentralisation is to push the public service out of the big cities, not least because it's something the government can actually control.

It's been tried in smaller scale moves (couple of hundred here or there), but once you start looking at moving the more senior public servants, a million 'reasons' why it can't happen come up.


I'd say no to moving them all to one place though (which is what would happen if Parliament was moved), because...Look at Canberra.

This is the model in most American states - few of the state capitals are those states major metropolises. Eg Albany in New York, Sacramento in California, Springfield in Illinois, Austin in Texas.

No reason why the state capital of NSW or Victoria need to be Sydney and Melbourne.

 

[GreyCrow]

This is the model in most American states - few of the state capitals are those states major metropolises. Eg Albany in New York, Sacramento in California, Springfield in Illinois, Austin in Texas.

No reason why the state capital of NSW or Victoria need to be Sydney and Melbourne.

Didn't Brazil do this as well?

 

[telsor]

Didn't Brazil do this as well?

Yes, Brasilia, although in their case it was more about opening up the interior of the country rather than politics (major cities competing) or decentralisation.

 

[telsor]

This is the model in most American states - few of the state capitals are those states major metropolises. Eg Albany in New York, Sacramento in California, Springfield in Illinois, Austin in Texas.

No reason why the state capital of NSW or Victoria need to be Sydney and Melbourne.

The US has a much smaller public service and the cities themselves have more autonomy, so the model doesn't fit nearly as well.

 

[igon value]

The US has a much smaller public service

Do they?

 

[telsor]

Do they?

In relative terms, yes.

US government employees (all levels) ~22.5Million or ~7% of the population.

Aus government employees (all levels) 1.924M or ~8%

I'll be honest, it's a lot closer than I'd thought it would be, but if Aus had US levels, that would be 244K lower, which is hardly an insignificant number.

https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet (US figures)
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6248.0.55.002/ (Aus figures)


As I said, the US system is more decentralised in it's nature (cities/counties have a lot more power than their equivalents here) which would encourage things to spread out more over there. There would also be a number of historical/economic reasons.

Edited to add...
A further look at those stats, broken down by level...

US
Federal: 2.8M
State : 5.2M
Local : 14.5M

Aus
Fed: 243k
State: 1.495M
Local: 186k


Clearly local governments provide a lot more of the services over there, leading to a naturally more decentralised setup.

 

[igon value]

In relative terms, yes.

US government employees (all levels) ~22.5Million or ~7% of the population.

Aus government employees (all levels) 1.924M or ~8%

I'll be honest, it's a lot closer than I'd thought it would be, but if Aus had US levels, that would be 244K lower, which is hardly an insignificant number.

https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet (US figures)
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6248.0.55.002/ (Aus figures)


As I said, the US system is more decentralised in it's nature (cities/counties have a lot more power than their equivalents here) which would encourage things to spread out more over there. There would also be a number of historical/economic reasons.

Edited to add...
A further look at those stats, broken down by level...

US
Federal: 2.8M
State : 5.2M
Local : 14.5M

Aus
Fed: 243k
State: 1.495M
Local: 186k


Clearly local governments provide a lot more of the services over there, leading to a naturally more decentralised setup.

Some cities are governed like states themselves - eg New York and Chicago mayors act effectively like state premiers do here, probably have more power and responsibilities if anything.

We'd probably be better off if our larger cities like Sydney and Melbourne abolished local councils and instituted city wide mayors. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of resistance to this, mostly from anti-development types.

IMO the biggest handbrake on Australia are the local councils - who do very little in provision of services but strictly control land development.

 

[Howard Littlejohn]

De-centralisation is a pipe dream.

Sydney and Melbourne are already cities of 4-5m and are still growing.

This is true. And the continued cebtralisation of all the big corporations and all the middle-high paying jobs into two cities is only going to make it worse and worse.
Unlike the US we don't have a thriving set of "small town". They still have some big companies in their original birth places. Medium sized businesses in this country have all been bought out by a few very large ones. There are a few exceptions, but everything is centred on Sydney and melbourne. And there is nothing that can be done polkitically about that. That ship sailed long ago by having such lax competition, takeover and merger laws (probably a good thing in a lot of respects, but helped lead to centralisation that no other nation of significant land mass* can match - maybe the UK, maybe).

*Obviously virtual city-states such as Singapore and the like are centralised.

 

[Fire]

Australia needs to revolutionise it's view population and how they handle it imo.

A bigger population is better; its better for security, culturally and and economically. The latter is not nessesary on an individual level; but a bigger population can support a more diverse economy, opening up many more career and buisiness opportunities for the population.

But the problem is we do it poorly. We accept immigrants into our major capitals when we should be focusing more on developing other cities. There is no reason why cities like Albury, Hobart, Townsville, Darwin, Canberra and many others can't support a million or more people, and act as major economic hubs to help compliment our existing majors.

There's also no reason why we can't open up the outback for development, using our existing water resources more intelligently as well as innovating new techs to create more like Israel does. It would require major investment but so did founding the country in the first place. We shouldn't be afraid to build it up from here.

"Stable population" is just a cop out.