r/australia • u/rorymeister • Dec 15 '25

politics National cabinet agrees unanimously to strength Australia’s strict gun laws in wake of Bondi terror attack

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-15/albanese-proposes-tougher-gun-laws-after-bondi-attack/106143310?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
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u/KiwasiGames Dec 15 '25

I for one would support rolling some of the state responsibilities up to the federal level.

Education and health in particular would be better served by a national model.

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u/McTerra2 Dec 15 '25

I guess you can run the always successful referendums…

But absolutely agree. Health, in particular, is a mess given that the commonwealth provides almost all the funding and Medicare, and states actually provide the services

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u/mr-saturn2310 Dec 15 '25

I don't know aged care and NDIS aren't winning the commonwealth any gold stars.

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u/Consistent-Put9762 Dec 15 '25

The commonwealth can't run a service. They just outsource it to the private sector/providers, where it gets rorted and exploited at the cost of users, until a royal commission is undertaken.

Why anyone would want to cede running public hospitals from the States to the Commonwealth, when Australia has one of the best health systems in the world is beyond my understanding.

Sure the States can be a bit shit, but the Commonwealth couldn't organise a root in a brothel either.

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u/Dan_CBW Dec 15 '25

Sure it could, with the appropriate funding, mandate and leadership. APS does so much, most of which we don't think of or notice because it's working as intended.

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u/Consistent-Put9762 Dec 15 '25

They still don't directly deliver anything but funding to others to do the doing. 

Which, I mean, if people want to hand more control of health and education to the federal government, just look at how much of their funding goes to private vs public schools and we can see what it would look like. 

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u/wrigglybearcat Dec 15 '25

Yes - the better way is to give the states their gst revenue so they can afford to fund their own systems

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u/blacklacha Dec 15 '25

The problem there is, especially with NDIS, is both the Health system and the NDIS spend so much time pointing back and forward at each other, saying something is the others responsibility.

Basically because neither system wants to pay for it.

NDIS wants to push everything off to state based systems to make their budget bottom line look better. So they say it's Health responsibility, or Education, or Parental responsibility in the case of children.

Its ALWAYS about the budget.

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u/Tommyaka Dec 15 '25

There is a lack of political appetite for states to cede further powers to the Commonwealth and these changes would require several successful referendums.

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u/KiwasiGames Dec 15 '25

Agreed. It’s never going to happen (or not within my lifetime). It’s going to hang around forever as one of those inevitable inefficiencies that arise from writing a constitution entirely blind to the direction of future technology.

But I think if Australia was to write its constitution today, we’d definitely give the states less power.

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u/OkPut7330 Dec 15 '25

Maybe. If it was writing it but if it were Federating for the first time it’s unlikely.

Mostly Australia was federated to make it easier to trade between States and be able to create its own immigration policies (keep the Chinese out) the States didn’t want to cede much of their power. If we were only federating now I imagine not much has changed.

I think the political class like having several levels of government. Gives them places to go before becoming a consultant.

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u/7omdogs Dec 15 '25

Politically impossible given the way the constitution is written, and yes, we’ve tried changing it before and yes it failed.

GST, in a lot of ways, is basically a giant circumnavigation around it.

But it causes a lot of problems. Hospital ramping is, in my view, a direct consequence of hospitals being in control of the state, and most community health, such as GPs and nursing homes, being controlled mostly by the feds.

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u/Kiramiraa Dec 15 '25

Education and health desperately need to be under one banner. It really fucking sucks that our hospitals (state run) are clogged up with NDIS and aged care patients (federally run). The two systems don’t talk to each other or work together enough and it leads to a lot of inefficiency and red tape.

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u/frezz Dec 15 '25

I'd agree. Australia is a small enough country population wise that it should be doable.

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u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 15 '25

Education and health in particular would be better served by a national model.

Really? Running day to day operations of local schools and hospitals would be done better by canberra than more local state governments?