Uluru Central State - huge & tiny?

When you look at the map of Australia on the Home page http://bloggerme.com.au/ the first thing you notice is how huge one particular State is, as compared to every other State. The Uluru Central state is massive. This is because the desert of Australia takes up more than 20% of the land mass. But it is correct to view this massive area as a single domain.

The second thing you notice is that, when you click on that massive State, it appears that there is less than 120,600 people living there. This should not surprise us, because there is virtually no water there, there is no permanently flowing river system, just lots of empty, dry river beds, waiting for the next storm, months or years from now, all flowing into the Spencer Gulf.

But it is still a surprise how dramatic that difference is. If the population of Australia is 22,620,600 this means that there are 22,500,000 Australians living elsewhere! If 0.5% of the population is living in 22% of the land mass, surely this must say something to policy makers!?!!

Seems like it is much more realistic to focus on this area as a single State, with real needs and real opportunities, rather than to allow the area to continue to be owned by 5 states, WA, NT, QLD, NSW, SA, who are happy to own it, and be involved in any decisions in relation to its massive resources, but are also happy to forget about it in relation to quality of life or anything else, because there are so few electors residing there!