easons of cost and population viability, with the possibility of further subdivision in the future, when the population grows. This state would have initially a lot of pastoralism, a lot of mining, a fair amount of agriculture, some industry in Townsville, and a lot of tourism. Aborigines would be about a quarter of the population, and would therefore have sufficient political weight to defend their interests, probably in alliance with the labour movement in the urban areas of North Queensland.
Westralia. Western Australia would also give up to South Australia a chunk of desert territory running more or less straight up from a point a bit to the west of Eyre on the Great Australian Bight, to the Capricornia border. But it would retain the rest of Western Australia, including the Pilbara, the Hamersley Ranges and the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area. Westralia would be still a very large state and an economically diverse and balanced one, with Perth as the natural regional capital and focus. p> Centralia. South Australia would be renamed Centralia, and take in the desert area detached from Western Australia, the Centre from the Northern Territory, and a tiny bit of south-west Queensland. The reason for the transfer of the bit of Western Australia is that the whole of the Blackstone and Musgrave Ranges should be under one government for sensible land management reasons. There are few obvious mineral resources there and a small population. But it's crazy having a natural ecological region divided between two states.
The further border of South Australia should go on a line from near the present SA-NSW-Queensland corner, down just to the west of Tibooburra, across the Darling just to the west of the Menindie Lakes and go down to the Murray to the east of Wentworth and Mildura; and then should go on a line from there across to the sea at a point between Kingston and the end of the Coorong. The effect of this would be to transfer Broken Hill, the Menindie Lakes and the Wentworth and Mildura irrigation areas into South Australia, from NSW and Victoria, and to transfer the Mount Gambier area to Victoria.
All of these are entirely rational and democratic geographical and population transfers. Broken Hill, Wentworth and Mildura are all tied to South Australia by many more practical ties than to the states into which they are currently exiled and, conversely, the Mount Gambier area is really an extension, geographically, of the Western District of Victoria, with exactly the same social and agricultural set up as the Western District. p> A number of sociological studies of the Mount Gambier area have shown that in things like where people in Mount Gambier make phone calls to, and where they travel outside their home district, they have much stronger ties with Victoria than they do with Adelaide. The new, expanded South Australia - Centralia - would be a natural geographical area with a great deal of industry, and with the administrative tasks and problems of agriculture and land management having a unifying focus around the problems of arid-land pastoralism, low-rainfall agriculture and irrigation agriculture, with Adelaide as the natural centre. p> Tasmania would remain untouched, for the obvious reason that it is an island.
Mannix. In addition to the incorporation of the Mount Gambier area from South Australia, and the transfer of Mildura to South Australia, the Victoria-NSW border would be redrawn from a line just south of Hay across to a point just south of Holbrook, and from there to the existing border, and from there to the sea, thus transferring the southern Riverina to Victoria, a completely rational geographical and political arrangement, which the local population in that area has agitated for, off and on, in the periods when they weren't pushing for a new state. A new state of the Riverina would not be viable for population and geographical city/hinterland reasons, and I believe that the population of the southern Riverina would be happy with the alternative of a transfer to Victoria, which has been floated many times in the area.
The name of Victoria might be more appropriately changed to Mannix, to give the enormous Irish contribution to Victorian and Australian life proper recognition in the name of the most illustrious and revered Irish Australian, Archbishop Daniel Mannix. The state of Mannix would have about 4.75 million population and would be a compact and viable economic region centred on Melbourne.
Macquarie. The second new state should cover the only other area in Australia that lends itself easily to a viable state with a sufficiently large hinterland and population based on a major port, that is the New England-North Coast area of ​​NSW, with Newcastle as the capital. There is a longstanding demand for a new state in that region and it is entirely reasonable.
The boundary sho...
