Comments on: Graphaturday – Regional populations

By: amphibious

amphibious — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:02:47 +0000

So instead of there being 90% of us within 100kms of the coast, it’s only 80%.
Imagine my relief. So decentralisation would be a big success if, rather than offering incentives to live elsewhere that the conurbations, we simply charged the true cost of living in them.
Little things like food,water, energy & raw materials from hundreds of kms away concentrated in realtively tiny areas.
Oddly Ireland (with its unique demographic history – until the 1980s barely half the population it has in 1845, the highest birthrate in the (white)Western world but virtually static population untin being flooded with EEC/EU cash and now IMMIGRANTS!?)is now banning further house building in rural areas, incl. family farms, in order to concentrate people where the services are.
The island of Ireland is about the size of Tasmania with just over 5M people.
And the country with the highest density of population in the world, excluding Singapore, is…not Bangladesh or India, but Holland.

By: Alexander McLeay

Alexander McLeay — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:25:33 +0000

NSW has 6.8 million people. Add in Victoria (5.1 million), you get substantially over half the population.

And based on the figures in Wikipedia, the proportion of the population living in the capital city for each state and the NT is:

NSW — 63% (6.8 m)
Vic — 73% (5.1 m)
Qld — 44% (4.1 m)
WA — 70% (2.0 m)
SA — 71% (1.6 m)
Tas — 41% (0.5 m)
NT — 51% (0.2 m)

Nationally, that’s about 65% in capital cities.

By: cam

cam — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:24:08 +0000

amphibious, The urbanoid/rural imbalance, thjough an old story is not as bad as Id supposed. Shall have to reconsider some long held precepts.

Same I was a little surprised at how large the non-urban population of NSW was. Though if you sum Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane you have half the population of Australia.

By: amphibious

amphibious — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:33:25 +0000

I was surprised to find that, according to your graph, that the population of NSW exceeds 6.5M, virtually a third of OZ.
The urbanoid/rural imbalance, thjough an old story is not as bad as I’d supposed. Shall have to reconsider some long held precepts.

By: cs

cs — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 05:56:20 +0000

Cam, you may be interested in John Quiggin's analysis of federalism and the "abolish the states" refrain, which I have summarised here (4th paragraph).

By: cam

cam — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:05:00 +0000

wmmbb, I dont think it is ‘conservative’ philosophy that has caused. Supposedly conservatives would be more respecting of the traditional constitutional constructs, but then the Liberal Party of the second half of the 20thC seems more enamoured with the UK model of national government and then local councils. The trend to the national government dictate policy and then the states disbursing those funds in pursuit of the national policy really picked up with Gorton. Labor on the other hand has been centralist through out its entire political life.

The High Court has contributed massively IMO. It has nationalised the process far more readily and more ably than parliament could alone; the high court approving the national government take over of income tax in 1942 was a big one that helped entrench the vertical tax imbalance. Though the states can take that function back if they want. But they havent as there is timidity on the states part too.

I think that is a big problem as the nationalisation of the Australian political system is not only bipartisan – it is all partisan. The Democrats, Nationals and Greens have policies for abolishing the states too.

I don’t think the referendum process in Australia makes a difference or is more hard than other mechanisms. If you look at what referendums failed they were all ones to centralise government functions. The government couldn’t nationalise through referendum so they found another mechanism.

By: wmmbb

wmmbb — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 02:49:39 +0000

Perhaps federalism is not so much broken as utterly confused. Surely it is not just the actions of of the national government, or the vertical tax imbalance have caused this to happen, but prevailing “conservative” political philosophy and exppediency in government, the decisions of the High Court, and the inhibitions to constitutional development mandated by the Constitution.

By: Jacques Chester

Jacques Chester — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:25:07 +0000

I’m of two minds about tags. On the one hand it seems a bit trendoid to me, but on the other hand it can allow some interesting self-organisation on sites. Even Slashdot has adopted tagging and are threatening to go all K5 with the Firehose project.

By: Cam

Cam — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:07:57 +0000

Jacques, Makes sense. It seems to be the fashion, but a good one. One of the reasons for moving from scoop was so I could make a tag focused app.

By: Jacques Chester

Jacques Chester — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:00:11 +0000

Yeah, WP 2.3 is going to have tags included.

By: Cam

Cam — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:57:39 +0000

Jacques, haha. Yeh I tend to forget to use categories in wp and mt. Tags ftw.

By: Jacques Chester

Jacques Chester — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:51:41 +0000

Did you not like the category I set up for your graph posts?

By: Cam

Cam — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:50:13 +0000

jacques, writing in wordpress. I used to write them in emacs first, but since firefox is able to recover textareas with the back button now, I don’t bother any more.

By: Jacques Chester

Jacques Chester — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:40:23 +0000

Cam, out of interest, are you using a blog client or are you writing these posts in WP?

By: Cam

Cam — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:07:06 +0000

Jacques, I agree. It would break the vertical balance of powers and let the national government run roughshod over the smaller regional governments.

By: Jacques Chester

Jacques Chester — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:03:16 +0000

It would make it worse. The populous states can fairly claim to be the government of millions, which gives them hefty authority when negotiating with the Commonwealth. Smaller regional governments would essentially deprive them of any standing.