With Tasmania’s budget blowing out and the problem forecast to only get worse, we need to take urgent action to turn the ship around.
As Saul Eslake (TT HERE)has pointed out many times “Tasmania spends more per head of population, or as a proportion of the State’s income, providing government services than can be explained by our relatively small and dispersed population”.
This gives the government a real opportunity to reform the public sector and the start the remedial actions required to bring the budget back into surplus.
However, real reform requires action from the top, politicians must practice what they preach. I am therefore calling on all Tasmanian Parliamentarians to start the process of structural reform by simplifying the process of government by abolishing the Legislative council, and temporarily increasing the House of Assembly by the 15 councilors to 40 Members.
Subsequently at the next state election the former Upper house seats should then be reduced to 10, giving Tasmania one house of Parliament with 35 representatives, with all seats being up for election every four years. This would maintain the existing 5 members per existing lower house area, with 2 new one member electorates for each house of assembly electorate.
Unfortunately the red seats of the upper house have become an expensive comfort zone and not subject to sufficient scrutiny. This reform will bring into focus a number of Legislative councilors that year after year have gone under the radar and make them part of more robust parliamentary process.
Government should be given the opportunity to govern, too often governments are frustrated by vocal minorities or vested interests, removing one of the levels of government will speed up the process and allow governments to get on with the job of governing.
These proposed reforms will create a parliament of greater diversity and it will meet the desired aims of a better working parliament that Mr McKim, Hodgman and Ms Giddings were committed to up until recently.
By having only one level of government we can cut costs, improve democracy and reduce elections, a win, win, win for all Tasmanian voters.
Responsibility for this comment is taken by John Forster
www.TheReluctantPolitician.com
