Premium
Costing Constitutional Change: Estimating the Cost of Five Variations on Australia’s Federal System
Author(s) -
Drummond Mark
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8500.00298
Subject(s) - decentralization , subsidiarity , local government , federalism , activity based costing , state (computer science) , government (linguistics) , public administration , central government , economics , public economics , business , economic system , political science , economic policy , law , accounting , mathematics , market economy , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , european union , politics
Australia’s system of government is by far the most centralised of the four ‘classic’ federations, hosting extremely centralised states, exceptionally weak local governments, and little of the substantive decentralisation and subsidiarity often presumed to derive from a federal structure. Five variations on the present structure are examined to estimate the costs of improved decentralisation, including New States models as traditionally advocated, Regional States models based on the ACT combined state–local prototype, and a National–Local model comprising a strengthened national government and local governments in essentially their present form.[Note 1. This analysis extends on work carried out with Jim ...]1 Results indicate that the Regional States or National–Local models could deliver greater decentralisation while saving over $20 billion per annum compared to the present system. Generally, the analysis suggests that coherent modelling of alternative government structures may be more feasible than previously thought.