There you have it ladies and gentlemen. According to a former Liberal politician, who were he not booted from parliament at the last election, might have been NSW Opposition Leader, Australia's problems are caused by too much democracy.
Stuart Ayres, the brains behind demolishing and rebuilding the Sydney Football Stadium, has written in today’s Daily Telegraph that too much democracy is a barrier to economic reform. Who would have thunk it. And Ayres’ solution is to implement a Gough Whitlam policy to have fixed 4 year terms for the Commonwealth plus aligning state elections.
Genius. Just genius.
If only his timing was different, he could have been a senior minister in the Morrison government.
Further according to Ayres, such a reform will fix the Vertical Fiscal Imbalance. This is problem that the Commonwealth collects more than 70% of tax revenue and then uses that power to force states and territories to implement its idiotic ideas.
Yes vertical fiscal imbalance is a problem. But please explain how extending and aligning electoral cycles will fixed that? The Commonwealth won’t ever voluntarily surrender it’s powers. These powers will need to be extracted by force.
Ayres reckons that:
The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition should jointly propose at the next election that subsequent elections should be on fixed terms.
Buffoon. What a buffoon.
There is this little document called the Constitution of Australia that defines such little matters and that changing that would require a ….. referendum. A choice left to the people.
He wants to do to the constitution what he did to the Sydney Football Stadium. The only problem — the ball is not in his hands.
Oh and lets not forget that 4 year fixed terms for the Commonwealth means 8 year fixed terms for Senators. That’s an extra 2 years for Lydia Thorpe, Mehreen Faruqi, and similar fools.
Can’t see people voting for that.
There is no evidence that longer fixed terms are a barrier to good governance and reform. Was not a problem for Hawke nor the first half of Howard.
The rules of the road have not changed. It’s the political class that has changed. And there lies the problem.
This is a small example of why this nation is soooo rooted. Mr Ayres managed to not just get elected to parliament but was also Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in New South Wales.
God help us all.
Readind Ayres' article he sounds like your typical centralist.
States should be more competitive than collaborative.
States are mendicant to the Feds.
A good start might be for the Feds to return tax raising abilities to the States and be reduced drastically in size.
As I understand it, we've moved too far from our Federation origins.
Ayres is not just a buffoon; he is also an idiot. The feds need to return some of the taxing powers they were given by the states for WWII. Then you would get some competition between the states. This is what happens in Canada and it works well.