Voters right across the country should be concerned about plans to give the Commonwealth more power over how local governments spend their money, not to mention enshrining local government in our Constitution.

After all, how many more examples do we need of centrally controlled government schemes being either inefficiently run or downright dangerous?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of local government administrations. Most “politicians” who serve at the local government level are thoroughly unimpressive to say the least.

But at the moment they are entirely limited by the powers state governments bestow on them.

Constitutional recognition of local government potentially breaks that control while giving the Commonwealth yet another arm of local service delivery that it can stick its nose into.

Such a referendum was tried and failed twice before: in 1974 and in 1988.

But at least on those two occasions the government played fair when proposing change, funding both the yes and the no cases.

This time there is a $20 million (taxpayer) funded allotment for the yes case, with not one red penny going towards the no case.

That is a style of democracy more common in Russia than in Australia.

As outrageous as the approach from the Labor government has been on this issue, the opposition has been little better in the way that it has approached the matter.

It signed off in agreement on the referendum “yes” case before it had even seen the wording of the question, and before bothering to ask its party room what it thought about the issue (many MPs have a problem with it, incidentally).

The wording for the referendum question is not that which was thought up by the expert panel which looked into constitutional recognition of local government, nor is it the wording the Joint Select Committee settled on either.

In fact constitutional lawyers who usually disagree on most things are in unison in their opposition to this referendum question, suggesting that such change to the Constitution, if passed, will have a range of adverse unintended consequences.

The answer is simple: vote NO on September 14.

WHAT A BURKE

THE current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anna Burke, doesn’t seem to understand what the whole point of Question Time is. Let’s just think about it for a moment: to answer questions perhaps? Consider what she told the opposition this week in parliament when it complained that ministers weren’t answering questions: “Question time is not about the answers you are looking for; it is about ministers being relevant to the question.”

No wonder your average voter is so disillusioned with the politics of spin.

TERROR-FYING

SO a convicted jihadist terrorist was held in low security detention in the Adelaide Hills for several months before finally being moved to a more appropriate facility.

The opposition took great delight this week in pointing out that the facility was fenced off by nothing more than a “pool fence”. I’m no fan of the way that the opposition likes to beat up the issue of boat arrivals, but that surely is a pretty extraordinary situation, even if the terrorist never ventured out for a little wine tasting while he was there.

On one hand the poor security appraisal gives rednecks and racists the opportunity to (rather unfairly) tar all asylum seekers with the jihadist brush. On the other hand it was an alarmingly casual approach to how to handle a known terrorist.

SWAN BUSHED

EDUCATION reforms are laudable to say the least, so bravo to Labor for pursuing the much debated Gonski education package.

But perhaps the Deputy Prime Minister needs to sign himself up for a class focused on basic expression, assuming his home state of Queensland decides to sign up to the reforms.

In parliament on Wednesday Wayne Swan not so eloquently said: “We want to ensure that every child gets a good education and none is left behind.”

It reminded me of something that other great wordsmith, former US President George W Bush, once said: “Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning.”