What sort of bugs me ...is why did theses institutions all work quite well and coherently in years gone by and now they are seen as a financial and beurocratic burden on society and the economy.
will we be more efficient without them? will it bring solid tangible benefis to each of us,or is this just part of the slash and burn that's taking place across the western world to balance the books?
No system works forever as is. It needs to evolve with the times and be continually adapted or parts replaced if need be. Our constitution was put together over 100 years ago for a very different Australian society and in a very different world. It made sense to have three tiers initially given the tyranny of distance of a large country, created as a federation of 6 separate colonies, with a small population and the lack of fast transport and communication systems between them. As a result, the roles of each tier were able to be very specific back then too with little crossover. Society has changed over the years but with the advancement of the digital age with its instant communication not only across the country but also over the world, it's changed the nature of Australian society and how we do things completely. The three tiers has been able to be adapted over the years to centralise things in an attempt to make things more uniform across the country but this has lead to significant crossover of responsibility across the three tiers with all its duplication and even triplication. It's just an unsustainable, costly, over-governed, inefficient mess now and we are paying for it both in terms of all the taxes and regulations to support all three tiers and outdated and missing infrastructure due to all the segmented planning/policies and buck passing of responsibility.
