Note to readers: This post is one in a series using personal examples to illustrate why I continue to support both agitation for New England self-government and self-government itself. Agitation, because its very existence forces forces the Sydney Government to consider New England interests. Self-government, because there are some things that we cannot achieve without this.
Just at the moment, the NSW economy is a complete mess. However, there is a problem. There is no such thing as the NSW economy.
I say this for two reasons.
The first is the sheer dominance of Sydney in the statistics. If Sydney is sick, the NSW economy appears sick. And vice versa. You simply cannot see how the rest of the state is going from the numbers.
The second is a more fundamental complaint.
Talking about the NSW economy implies that there is such a thing. In fact, NSW is no more than a constitutional construct lacking any real form of economic coherence. NSW is in fact made up of a number of sub-economies linked to the national economy and international economies in a variety of complicated ways.
Does this matter? Yes, I believe that it does because the Sydney Government's economic policies are based on state aggregates, on the belief that there is a NSW economy. Further, it is almost impossible to form a coherent view on the state of economic activity in New England because
The first twists policy, the second ensures that there will be no specific focus on New England's problems and performance.
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