Playing the tricks on a NSW Electricity bill: Typical increase is $316 for climate change actions [red ink] and $392 [black ink – price revenue change $200 + price service availability change $162 + GST change $36] for other revenues. * These prices assume 7kWh per day consumption as written on the ‘red ink’ part of the bill.

CO2Land org is an advocate of necessary actions for the future of a sustainable world and disagrees strongly with the way politics plays the emotional card. If we strip away the emotion and look at the hard numbers of the viability of state finances we can understand the panic and scramble for revenue raising and shifting the blame and shame wherever for short-term gains – creating a radio shock jocks paradise despite distorting the facts.

The cold hard facts on state finances can be taken from this table:

	NSW	VIC	QLD	WA	SA	TAS
2011/12	-$940	-$811	na	-$178	-$120	-$80
2012/13	-$1000	-$635	na	-$284	-$400	-$120

Table: Estimated impact of GST reduction on State budgets, 2011/12 and 2012/13 ($m). Source: State budget papers

From what’s on the table, we can see that state budgets are in a mess that seems to be getting worse rather than better.

To quote The Conversation, 25 June 2012, on the parlous health of our state finances: “These financial woes are not because of reckless spending. The trouble stems from revenues, which are flat-lining and seem set to stay that way for the foreseeable future…We are only seeing the problem clearly now because the Rudd government’s recession-busting stimulus spending that was channeled through the states is coming to a premature end”.

CO2Land org asks is the problem, and the solution to be, to address excess bureaucracy and regulation that serves as cost drivers on the community. The idea is not new and the Council of Australian Government (COAG) meeting of 12 April 2012 announced it was “meeting the red tape challenge”.

How should we tackle the ‘real’ problem? Paul Keating favoured a reform of the tiers of government and was ahead of his time. Malcolm Turnbull pushed for a republic model and it to be truly representative – and recently concede vested interests would resist vigorously.  These two persons are selected at this point to illustrate that between them [one a former and the other a likely Prime Minister] they hold the answer to our problems.  We need to address the effectiveness of our beliefs and the efficiencies of how we use our energies.

CO2Land org proposes we examine the imposts on the community and review:

1. Tiers of government – the terms of reference being: the money waste of the structures for producing relatively ineffective practices; the effectiveness and efficiencies of parochial behaviours of state bodies; and the powers of federal government as an executive power.
2. The rights for every resident of this country to unfettered education and training in the most effective way possible (please note: this is not a guarantee for established practices, it calls for a complete rethink of how we teach and learn).
3. That the issues of Education, Environment and Immigration be judged by a jurist prudence principle and not in the hands of short term ambitions of any political party. If we consider this idea, we also consider the four primary schools of thought in general jurisprudence:

▪    Natural law is the idea that there are rational objective limits to the power of legislative rulers.

▪    Legal positivism, by contrast to natural law, holds that there is no necessary connection between law and morality and that the force of law comes from some basic social facts although positivists differ on what those facts are.

▪    Legal realism is a third theory of jurisprudence which argues that the real world practice of law is what determines what law is; the law has the force that it does because of what legislators, judges, and executives do with it. Similar approaches have been developed in many different ways in sociology of law.

▪    Critical legal studies is a younger theory of jurisprudence that has developed since the 1970s which is primarily a negative thesis that the law is largely contradictory and can be best analyzed as an expression of the policy goals of the dominant social group.

CO2Land org has in each is its previous postings set the theme of better practice and were it can illustrate how innovation is a trait of our human side. We have the power to control our future and all too often our willingness to get a result we align in an pluralist way to align with people we do not agree with for our own short term ends. If we look at community consultation businesses that influence, they are making their money by setting up community representative groups. These groups give comfort to the Minister of state that all is well on a certain issue. So the question then becomes why does our three tiers of government fail to give the Minister comfort? Answer, the truism is: Those that seek election are opinionated and not necessarily informed!

The matters that arise over education is the levels are tiered and try to be a fit of society as if society has a stable static requirement to conform to an ideal of more of the same. Education as funds become more scarce are tending to be generalised and specialising is seen as an elitist achievement. However, it is increasingly evident that high achievers are bored with convention and ceremony, good narcism could be the term best suited in saying a specialist position for the niches of interest will follow with them a need for a fit into the world rather than teaching to conform with alliances.

Combine all these issues and it becomes obvious that whenever a decision is made at a group level it is a political achievement. However, if the rule of law was to apply the rights of a better education, to protect the environment and law of god, we do remove the one real problem in the  ‘reasonable man’ principle being applied to protect the future from those that peddle misinformation. Our cliché being ‘better to have been educated and lost, than ignorant and foreboding’.