Bad news, people. While some of us whine about what seems like innumerable levels of government in this country, apparently we are a minority. Apparently the rest of us love it.

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The rest of us can blame the British says AJ Brown, professor of public policy and law at Griffith University and the full bottle on how we feel about our constitution.

Yes, it's the Brits' fault we have three levels of government - first the states, then the federation - and as a weak afterthought, local government.

"We were probably the first colonised country in the world, maybe the first country in the world, to actually have a federal system whose genesis was actually to be a system with at least two levels and and probably three levels."

But if we were to sit down today and redesign it, what would that look like?

My secret fantasy has always been to get rid of state governments and just have a federal government with beefed-up local governments.

Hold your horses right there, says Brown. His research shows over 16 years that while there was once a belief the feds would just step up and sort everything, "It is now less clear citizens have any level of government in which to place solid confidence."

Brown says the idea what we are over-governed is a myth. Local government is still weak in this country in comparison to most of the countries with which we compare ourselves to, in contrast to say the United States or Canada.

Here, says Brown, local government is just underpowered and underfunded and........

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