Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made an astonishing admission he “wouldn’t mind” scrapping Australia’s particular person states if he had been writing the structure at this time, suggesting bigger nationwide and native governments might fill the hole.
Mr Albanese delighted followers throughout an look on the Woodford Folk Festival north of Brisbane this week the place he took half in a wide-ranging Q&A session on Thursday.
He admitted Australians “might not have three tiers of government” if he was writing the structure at this time, voicing his frustration with how distant Canberra appeared with “most real world experiences”.
A member of the viewers had advised Mr Albanese state governments in NSW and Queensland had refused United Nations personnel entry to examine inpatient wards.
She requested if the federal authorities would implement legal guidelines to intervene.
In his response, Mr Albanese mentioned he couldn’t intervene to overturn each single determination made by ranges of decrease authorities.
He mentioned state governments had been accountable for their very own actions.
“If we were writing the constitution again today, you might not have three tiers of government,” he mentioned.
“But we do and often Canberra is the most distant from people’s real world experience compared to state and local governments.”
Mr Albanese’s feedback seem to comply with in the identical go well with as Labor nice Bob Hawke, who beforehand outlined a want to abolish the states in a sequence of lectures in 1979 – 3.5 years earlier than he grew to become Prime Minister.
Mr Hawke had described Australian states as a “dangerous anachronism” that had created problem, with completely different schooling, well being and legal techniques which “hurt Australians every day of every week”.
But he admitted abolishing states can be “almost impossible”.
Mr Albanese on Thursday mentioned he “wouldn’t mind doing it either” however conceded it was a system individuals needed to work with.
“I can also see you would need … some form of regional government that was a little bigger as well,” he mentioned.
