uld be from just south of Lake Macquarie, up the Dividing Range between the Hunter Valley and the south, a bit to the north of Mudgee, Dubbo, Narromine and Gilgandra, and a little to the west of Coonamble and Walgett, over the Darling River, and then back to the sea north of the Darling, a little to the north of Moree and Warialda, a little to the south of Tenterfield and to the sea north of Maclean and south of Ballina and Lismore. p> The new state would have about a million inhabitants and would be a viable economic area with a varied agricultural base, a lot of industry, a lot of mining and a lot of tourism, with a natural capital and focus in Newcastle.
Taking on the role of the state capital would provide a major economic boost to Newcastle in the face of recent industrial decline, and could even reverse the industrial decline. This is the only other region in Australia that lends itself easily to a new state if the criteria for a state are a combination of a viable hinterland with a major city as the focus. Macquarie seems a sensible name since it is that of the most progressive early governor of NSW, who happened to be in charge when the region was first developed.
Pemulwuy. The borders of a somewhat smaller NSW flow from all the other arrangements, with the addition that a further border should be drawn a bit to the north of the Darling River, transferring the area around Tibooburra and the Paroo into Queensland. The smaller NSW would still include Bourke, Dubbo, Orange, Bathurst, the Central Coast area, which looks to Sydney, Goulburn, Wagga, the Murrumbidge Irrigation Area, Wollongong and the Illawarra area, and the Snowy Mountains.
The ACT should also to be transferred back to NSW. It is really just a large administrative city, and there's no principle of government that says the national capital can't be part of a state. All of the areas in the smaller NSW are interlocked and to some extent focus around Sydney, even the bigger cities such as Canberra and Wollongong, and further subdivision of a natural economic area would be entirely undesirable.
The population of the smaller NSW would still be the largest in the country - about five and a quarter million - and the smaller area would be a natural economic unit with a varied agricultural regime, a lot of industry and a natural focus around the business of government. Sydney is already far and away the commercial capital of Australia, with the national headquarters of most firms, and associating Sydney and Canberra in the one state is really a practical recognition of this reality.
The possible objection from Victoria to this geographically realistic merger of the ACT and NSW should have been eliminated by the sensible trade-off of transferring Mount Gambier and the Southern Riverina to Victoria. An appropriate name for the new state of NSW would be Pemulwuy, commemorating the courageous Aboriginal general who resisted British conquest.
Queensland. Finally, the boundaries of Queensland should be north of the Darling River and north of Maclean and south of Lismore. The Lismore-Murwillumbah area should be transferred to Queensland in recognition of an already existing geographical reality, as should be the Paroo-Tibooburra area in the west. The new, more compact Queensland would still be a very large, diverse and economically viable state, with about three million population after shedding North Queensland and gaining the Lismore-Murwillumbah region. The name Queensland would be preserved. <В
Embrace New Zealand
At the time of federation, Western Australia almost didn't join, and New Zealand almost did. In fact, the Australian Constitution, adopted at Federation, still allows for New Zealand to join at any time. Two small sovereign states in the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, with very similar ethnic and cultural characteristics, and totally interlocking, similar economies, is a bit of an absurdity. While it's obvious that, with the passing of time, it has become harder to envision a merger between Australia and New Zealand, a moment of major constitutional change in Australia would not be a bad time to test whether a merger between the two countries could be a real possibility.
There are some obvious major advantages in such a merger. Some of these are: a larger more rationally integrated domestic market, standardised immigration procedures, broader cultural interchange and a unified currency. Under the arrangements outlined above, it would be administratively feasible for New Zealand to become two states of the Commonwealth, say, Northland and Southland. Northland would have a population of three million and Southland about 800,000, both sensible sizes for states under the new arrangements. The new Australasian Commonwealth of 10 states would have a population of about 23 million by the yea...
