All Power to the Regions? (speech)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, not strictly a speech, more some observations. I would like to keep ranting down to a minimum and to eliminate the dark forces of rhetoric that threaten the clear speech gifted to us by our forefathers and their forefathers and their forefathers forefathers.

First point; Regional government in this country is, on the whole, a cross between a sham and a joke. Regional government, of course, varies from Region to Region but can usually be described with by one (usually more than one) of the following:

1. totally dominated by a single active individual.
2. rather like a chamber of commerce or a toothless town council in a small town.
3. merely a ladder for future federal careers
4. dead

To illustrate my point, let us look at the careers of the last three people to be Governer of the Mideast. Polnut first ran for Senate then for President then for President again. Inks ran for Vice President and for Senate and is now running for Governer again. HappyWarrior is concluding his time as Governer with running for Senate. This is not an attack against any of these people (or even an attack on people running for federal office) but an example of what has become a fairly typical pattern (and of course it is not limited to the Mideast region).

Second point; Regional elections and referenda tend to have piss-poor turnout, regional politics is not something that either the media or the population have much of an interest in, regional legislation is both sparse and badly drafted, while most Regional governments have a whole host of utterly useless offices that tend to serve as lower rungs on the ladder to federal office or as a means of keeping defeated politicians on the gravy train. To put it another way; the very machinary of regional government has been reduce to a little more than a pathetic skeleton. And one with more arms than necessary.

Third point; but despite all of this, the Regions, in theory, wield great power here. Read the Constitution people; it's all in there. The Senate, and to a lesser extent the Executive, might be where all the power seems to be but, and I tell you this from personal experience, that's not really the case. The powers of the federal government are strictly limited here, far more so than in countries such as the United States. The current, awful, state of Regional government means that there is a great hole in the centre our our political landscape as many of the issues that people deeply care about are not federal ones. Because of this we must either change the constitution in order to abolish or weaken Regional government, or we must change Regional government from within.

Personally I favour the second option.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've tried to change Regional government from "within", as it were,

Yeah; I tried and failed at that as well, as have plenty of other people over the years. By change from within what I actually mean is smash to pieces from within and replace with something better (after all, not much could actually be worse).