Gillard and Swan should learn from Rudd's mistakes

Comments on Paul Sheehan “A blunder to top all the others”, 27/12/2010, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-blunder-to-top-all-the-others-20101226-197tz.html

Rudd tried to further centralise power to Canberra and failed.

His successor and some federal politicians still continue that unfortunate trend. They, and some of their supporters, think that Canberra can do a better job than its states counterparts in delivering services, whenever services by the states are not satisfactory.

They forgot the history of failures of Canberra in services delivery, as the past three years have showed.

More importantly they neglect an important factor, that is the states face stronger competition than the federal government in terms of services delivery, not only the comparison and competition between the federal and states governments in terms of performance, but between the state governments as well in delivering the same services.

The stronger competition, besides and beyond the fact state governments are closer to their respective residents and naturally understand better their needs, keeps each state government work harder than just one Canberra government to do all the services with no alternative horizontal competition.

The competition between state governments works in the same way as business competition to bring out innovations and lowering costs.

I hope those people having the view that power concentration to Canberra and weakening the states should think again and carefully, because they will be very disappointed if that really happens and the costs will be very high.

Abandon those unrealistic wishful thinking and strengthen the Australia federation, please!