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Note: The opinions expressed herein are entirely those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the views of his employer or any of its other employees. It’s not uncommon to hear business leaders bewailing the costs imposed by Australia’s federal system of government. A study for the Business Council of Australia by Access Economics put it at ‘nearly $9bn a year ’ (BCA, 2006). Business leaders and others, including most recently the Minister for Defence (Fitzgibbon 2007) routinely decry Australia’s federal system as making us ‘the most over-governed country in the world’. There is even an ‘Abolish the States Collective ’ which holds that ‘state governments are … an enormous cost burden generally which Australians can ill afford in an increasingly competitive world’ (ASC 2001). Such views are, not surprisingly, more commonplace in Sydney or Melbourne than in other parts of Australia. It’s pretty easy, if you live in either of those cities, as most business leaders do, to imagine everything being decided in one of them – as it almost inevitably would be if the States were abolished. However i