Some people are under the misapprehension that Australia has had a lot of prime ministers over the past decade.
It is true that four different individuals have held that office, but from the vantage point of Central Queensland, where I live, the change is much less than it appears.
We first had a prime minister from the northern suburbs of Sydney (Tony Abbott), next came a prime minister from the eastern suburbs of Sydney (Malcolm Turnbull), then a prime minister from the southern suburbs (Scott Morrison), and now we have a prime minister from the inner western suburbs (Anthony Albanese). We may have done a full revolution of the compass but we do not have representation from all over the map of Australia.
In that context I do applaud The Courier-Mail, with the sponsorship of Mrs Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, holding its annual Bush Summit. The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader are attending the one in Townsville on Friday.
These meetings at least get our Sydney prime ministers away from the view of the harbour to hear the issues facing those in the rest of the country. There is always great coverage of bush issues in the lead up and aftermath of the events too.
But there is only so much a newspaper can do to bring proper political representation to our country areas. One reason that The Courier-Mail has begun this series is to fill the chasm of mistrust that has built up between the Australians that live in regional and rural areas and their leaders who often make decisions based on the proclivities of the more populous capital cities.
We have seen stark examples of this phenomenon this week. The Government’s Minister for the Environment placed new and unexpected conditions on a proposed gold mine in western NSW at the behest of one Aboriginal group, even though the local Aboriginal Land Council, and the rest of the Orange region, supports the mine. So much for the Voice of Indigenous Australians being listened to.
On Monday night the Prime Minister made a joke, at a Rural Woman of the Year event no less, about his shutting down of the live sheep trade. Thousands of West Australian farmers face ruin because of a decision made in Canberra, not Western Australia, and the Prime Minister in the Lodge is laughing about it.
All of our premiers and the prime minister are from capital cities. When the Council of Australian Governments meets (or now called the “National Cabinet”), there is no representation from regional Australia.
The House of Representatives is based on population so two-thirds of its members are from capital cities. In the Senate, which is meant to represent the least populated parts of our country, it is even worse. More than 80 per cent of senators live in capital cities.
Bush Summits are good, but what would be better is a Parliament with real decision making power based in regional Australia. The way to get that is to create new states. Our Constitution already has provision to allow the creation of new States. Indeed, our founding fathers expected that we would create new states just as the United States did as it grew and developed.
We now have developed areas of our nation that were previously sparsely populated. More than one million people now live in North Queensland, double the number in Tasmania. North Queensland generates 25 per cent more economic output per person than southern Queensland. Yet we are ruled by a government focused on 50c fares and an Olympics to be held thousands of kilometres away from us.
Some people say that new states would just mean more politicians, but if you do not like the current crop of political leaders, we need a way to make better ones. Creating governments closer to the people would meet G.K. Chesterton’s quip that we should “keep the politicians near enough to kick them.”
New states would reinvigorate our Federation and our whole nation. Australia seems to be coasting right now. We are living off the mines we developed decades ago but with iron ore prices declining our luck might be about to run out.
Any new state would have to make its own luck by cutting taxes and red tape to attract investment. Our capital city-based governments are groaning under the pressures of congestion and a lack of new land to develop housing. A new state of North Queensland would be hungry for development and population growth so that it can grow its economic viability. By developing new cities, a new state would help reduce the housing shortages in our capital cities.
We can’t keep Australia wealthy by just relying on being the lucky country. We have to make our own luck and new state governments would get into the business of making that happen for the benefit of all Australians.
