Opinion: Power to the regions

How could they do this? By moving some mammoth public service departments out to the regions. Let’s pick on just one of the monsters – Centrelink.

If that behemoth was relocated to, say Newcastle or Wollongong, everybody would be a winner, except for those who preferred to say in Canberra.

But there’s always another public service job in Canberra so nobody would be idle for very long.

And in cities like Newcastle or Wollongong (or Geelong or any place you like) the boost to the local economy and employment would be massive.

Even those not directly employed by Centrelink would benefit from the increased services and housing required.

In fact, once there’s a seriously fast fibre optic broadband across the whole country why not shift all public service departments not directly connected to the running of parliament, out of Canberra and into the regions?

Let’s face it, Canberra is not a place anybody chooses to live in – it’s a place you have to go to because Sydney and Melbourne couldn’t agree on which of them should host the national parliament.

Canberra is insufferably hot in summer and miserably cold in winter. There’s no beach to visit in summer, and the lake is dead dodgy to swim in.

In winter it often snows but not enough to play in, just enough to make things soggy and cold. And the place is overrun by politicians and bureaucrats.

Who’d want to live there instead of in some nice regional centre – if only there were jobs there.

Well there can be if the feds do something with the NBN rather than just build it and hope we like it.