Hi Michael,
While I agree that I'd like to see the states abolished, from the point of view of having too much government, it's less likely to happen than abolishing the federation. As I said above, the states give the federation its powers and states like Qld and WA are less than likely to allow the federation to take away their powers.
That is the most likely direction, although having several state bureaucracies makes matters difficult. People familiar with, for example, the competing state electoral commissions arguing over who has the most accurate electorate rolls, or uniform rail gauge, or even implementation of the Gonski report. A weird option in the Australian constitution allows states to cede land to the commonwealth. In theory a state could abolish itself ... :) -- Lev Lafayette, mobile: 61 432 255 208 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt