Smaller government is desirable when the government services no longer meet the needs or become politicised. We need smaller government but from experience when government spending is reduced it is not always in areas that are of little value (ie. the high profile 'feel good' but make no difference programs). It very much depends on internal politics and culture rather than the public good unless there is direct intervention by politicians and politicians don't like to be seen to be telling senior bureaucrats how to run their ship.

Once the decision to cut spending is made politicians generally disconnect from the process and there is little responsibility and in some cases little knowledge of where cuts are made. Cuts are nearly always at the delivery end of services. The other tendency is to hide staffing costs under consulting fees or outsourced labour usually paid at less per hour than their permanent counterparts. Yes, we are talking about government here not some backwater construction company.

There is much that government could hand over to individuals and the private sector however, the benefits of our social democracy are in the social welfare supports for the aged, carers, disability, unemployed (with training) etc that separate us from the developing world where no such infrastructure exists and where bigger families replace government assistance.

We all have a different view of what governments should provide but most people are happy to pay taxes for universal care in health, education, law enforcement, emergency services etc where there is an organised and structured bureaucracy rather than some haphazard citizen militia replacing law enforcement(for example)with little accountability or governance.

Government involvement in essential services and utilities would ensure that any wage disparity does not result in real disadvantage for poorer people. We have already seen the results of privatisation in the energy sector.

The rest can be provided by private sector or individuals but you will see from the comments that ensue that there are many differing positions on the role of government.

Interesting concept, but how then does the government provide necessary services such as roads and health (I'm assuming they still should?)?
One of the issues I see with that argument is how far does it go, and from that we can see the problem in the US context is what exactly is the government there for? Is it there to provide law and order, infrastructure, etc? Or is there a more complex requirement to provide for in the areas that the free market cannot (or will not)?

A rather good article from one who will be welcomed with open arms by the so called 'drys' of the Libs. I was never an advocate of small government until I worked in the public service and university sector. I saw so much double and triple handling of work, so much sheer blithering incompetence, that I, like Matthew, see the wisdom of having a small government.

Even so, as Pelican has pointed out, there are some caveats.

I half jokingly think that the role of government is to be the whipping boy for a plurality of groups such as anti-pops, enviro groups, unions, community groups, who have no idea how government works. In the main, their requests for change have nothing to do with government policy or they are beyond the power of government to fix.

Cheryl
Don't forget to add the pro-growthists to that list. :)

Actually on this we do agree. Your experience is similar to mine.

The duplication of work in the APS is ludicrous and the executive bonus scheme only exacerbated the problem, encouraging senior bureaucrats to manipulate changes or new programs (often unnecessary) to justify their existence and their bonus. You end up with puffed up sections within the bureacracy with little to do, while the boffins who have been cut to smithereens drown under a pile of work, public abuse and management ire at why the work is not kept up to date despite massive staff cuts.

Mathew, what a great article. having lived through a period of small government in Australia I know how individuals and the country generally prospered.

Putting aside the economics (which is not my forte) I think about how much pleasanter life was without constant interference and direction from government, without listening to this and that pressure group or minority screaming about how the majority should live and attempting to force government to change things to suit their viewpoint. All too often they succeed, which is pretty much an indictment on the majority that we let this happen.

I might be wrong, but perhaps this may be the aspect of government Mathew had in mind. Government is always necessary in areas of health, taxation,education (perhaps) and to provide public infrastructure and so on.But it is not necessary, nor should it have the right to run such constant interference in the lives of its citizens.

We are vastly overgoverned in Australia and it is well past time some serious thought was given to how this might be reduced in order to get some of the burden of government of citizens backs and allow us to keep more of our hard-earned money for discretionary spending instead of on rapidly rising rates, utilities prices driven up by government bungling and so on.

In my opinion, government should set the guidlelines for how, for e.g., the health system should work, the outcomes it should achieve and let the professionals get on with running it, which they would do superbly without the constant interference of endless bureauracrats duplicated at every level and gobbling up scarce health dollars.

In his article Mathew wonders why Australians allow government to interfere mightily in their lives, why big government is seen as a panacea for all problems. This, it seems to me, points to a malaise in our culture.

"Yet we sit blindly by and allow our freedoms to slowly
diminish, for what is claimed the "greater good."

Where I am able I constantly write about this erosion of our freedoms and it is frustrating that it is not taken up and pondered by others. People, in general, don't seem to understand that this reduction in freedoms is occurring until some aspect is pointed out to them. But they are quick to see the stupidity of some government behaviour - constantly changing speeds on city roads - now surveiled by cameras and costing drivers millions of dollars.

This is justified as the "greater good", saving lives and so on while putting dollars in the pockets of big government.

One of the most insidious aspects of our continuing loss of freedoms is, not just that we begin to "lack personal strength", but that our sense of self and social discipline has been eroded to the point where it is barely a squeak. This allows for bad behaviour which government then runs interference on and regulates - usually at a hefty cost - for the "greater good."

Why, as a culture are we so accepting of this? Maybe we can trace this back to our convict roots, but for historical reasons outside the scope here, I don't think so.

Could it be that the millions who migrated here from "authoritarian European regimes" after the war, in the end accepted government interference in their lives as natural?

It is probably controversial to say this in today's world, but having lived a goodly span across small and big government, I think much of the malaise stems from too many rights and not enough teaching about the flip side - responsibilities.

Self and social discipline is a natural regulator which could do away with big government in certain aspects, if encouraged and allowed to flourish.

Matthew, you make me revise my thoughts on the youth of today.

The fact that one so young can talk such sense does my heart good. Keep up the great work.

Even some of the agreeing posts are still short of the truth however, particularly with health care.

We did not have public health in NSW in the 50s, but as the average wage earner paid only 7.5% tax, & medical/hospital benefits were cheep, everyone was better off, with much more of their earnings to support themselves.

About the most inefficient way to pay my doctor’s bill, is to pay some bureaucrat to take money out of my pay, & another to part pay my doctor, leaving me to pay the balance.

Matthew, I wish you joy, & hope you can draw enough support to make some headway in reducing government, but I have some worries.

I think we may now be at one of those tipping points, so loved by the global warming brigade. We now have so many public servants that, if they detect a threat to their comfort & unite, they can actually control the result of elections in a very large number of seats. I believe our Labor governments have helped this to happen, & coalition governments have been running scared of upsetting them, & loosing too many seats.

We can take heart perhaps, by the recent results in the UK, where their Labor government had for some time, pushed up the public sector employment to help control unemployment, & maximise their vote. That they lost gives some hope.

With their new government cutting many gravey train jobs it will be interesting to see the public response.

As Gerald Ford said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." But the converse isn't true. A government big enough to take everything you have doesn't need to be big enough to give you everything you want. It only needs to be big enough to hire a carload of armed thugs to break down your door and take you away. If it weren't big enough to do that, it wouldn't be a government at all.

That's why the Right-Wing mantra that smaller government means greater freedom is always merely asserted and never supported by rational argument. It is actually based on the deliberate and malicious confusion between the how big the government is, and what the government is constitutionally allowed to do. Young Mr Lesh has swallowed it hook, line and sinker, and regurgitated it to perfection. In so doing, he has undoubtedly endeared himself to his right-wing mentors and assured himself a long and lucrative career.

In truth, freedom consists not in limiting the size of government, but in limiting the ways in which the government is allowed to throw its weight around. (If that *in turn* tends to limit the size of government, so be it.) But anyone who proposes limits on what the government is allowed to do is immediately denounced by the Right as an enemy of the people and a defender of an unaccountable, out-of-control judiciary. (Explanatory note: if you want to attack independence, you call it unaccountability; if you want to defend unaccountability, you call it independence.)

[Continued...]

[...Continued.]

"Every single day government borrows a 100 million dollars," says Mr Lesh. That's about a sixth of what the private sector borrows to keep housing prices pumped up -- not to build new houses, just to inflate the value of the existing stock and the underlying land to keep 30% of people locked out of home ownership. And anyone who advocates tax reforms that would direct more borrowing towards new construction, so that people can more easily afford housing, is denounced by the Right as another defender of big, property-confiscating, freedom-destroying government. But when the bubble caused by the lack of such policies eventually bursts, the Right has no objection to bailing out the lenders at taxpayers' expense.

The right loves to proclaim that Hong Kong has "little or no natural resources," conveniently forgetting the most valuable natural resources of all: land and space, which together account for much of what are called "property values". The smaller the land area into which an industrial economy is crammed, the greater the value of that land and space per unit area area and per unit volume, and the more obvious the opportunity to tax property values rather than productive activity. Hong Kong indeed has a high reliance on recurrent property taxes, hence a low reliance on income tax. But the Right never points out that aspect of Hong Kong's success, because the Right's business model consists in capturing value created by other people's work and enterprise -- e.g. the locational value of land and space.

"In a democratic society," says Mr Lesh, "power should be with the people not with the government."

Never mind that power is wielded by private cartelists under the guise of landed property, and by private monopolists under the guise of intellectual property. Never mind that such property rights, together with their maximalist interpretations, are creatures of government. Because the Right never had a problem with big government as long as it works for the rich against the poor, for the strong against the weak, for those who don't need the government against those who do.

Ahem... Of course the 2nd sentence in my 2nd paragraph should read: "It is actually based on the deliberate and malicious confusion between how big the government is, and what the government is constitutionally allowed to do."

The free market has sucked the life out of our comunities on the more local levels of society, so that now we all get in our cars to drive to work for some privately owned company. We don't talk to our neighbours and our neighbourhoods and villages are economic vacuums.

Rather then pursuing a free market, I suggest that we would be better off encouraging interdependence and local self-reliance within our societies; on the larger scale and the small. Encouraging people to buy locally is central to this.

Economic growth is not a good measure of progress. Let us say that we reach the point where we have to employ a huge fleet of earthmoving equiptment to build dykes to keep out rising sea levels: The economy will be growing all the way, but all we are spending our money on is mitigating against the negative effects caused by the previous activities of unrestrained industry. - uneconomic growth - as Herman Daly says. The vacuous nature of our communities is another example of the negative results of the free market/economic growth mantra.

A well written article I thought, especially for one so young, but as grputland pointed out, all you have done is "swallowed.......the right wing mantra..... hook, line and sinker, and regurgitated it to perfection."

This article is written by a 17 year old school kid, and it shows. It almost looks like an essay one would show to their teacher to get a minimum grade- complete with a simplified view of the world divided between "Tea Party" people and a mismash of liberals, socialists and hippies; and governance being nothing more than being "Bigger" and more expensive and more commie-like, vs "Smaller" and cheaper and more freedom-like.

"Every single year government grows by two percent; government will be bigger tomorrow then ever before"
Something would be bigger if it grows- Outstanding!

"Government borrows 100Mil a day"- what, every government? Because memory serves that the Liberal Party managed to maintain funding for public services (no thanks to NSW Labor trying hard to sabotage them) while taking the Australian public sector OUT of debt and making a surplus.

Of course, it's easier to pretend that "big government" immediately corresponds to communism (China).

The bottom line is that "Big government" is a stupid term that simplifies the various functions a government to how much it costs- which is why the Tea Party movement is overwhelmingly composed of illiterate uneducated rednecks with limited perceptive skills..

I am now taking note of anyone that was actually impressed by this article (how OLO would even pick it), and memorizing who I would not have to take seriously.

Having been to the US a couple of times I'm not so convinced about the culture of small government. The prevalence of the military and celebration of government symbol's don't reflect a culture of small government. It seems to be more about priorities of government than about size of government.

Have a look at http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/1426 (Davis-Monthan Air Force Base) and try and fit that with a culture of small government.

Whilst I agree with the concept of small government especially minimization of the level of interference in individuals lives I've not seen anything which suggests the Tea-party is at all representative of what I'd look for in that direction.

R0bert

Well written RObert. Not small government but smaller government with better targeted programs. There is too much waste which only draws revenue away from more essential infrastructure.

Your point about interference in people's lives is apt. Less red tape to get things done would also be a good start. And the recent current affairs program attention to the council obsessions with grass mowing and exhorbitant fees for not mowing the lawn and other minor matters is laughable.

Speeding fines are less than the woman who got charged $300 then another $500 for not mowing her lawn (the latter a fine for ignoring the first given she was OS at the time).

grputland seems to take a mish mash of arguments and bake them into a right mess. Constitutional guards against government interference is one thing, but allowing a 'constitutionally correct' huge and growing government doesn't guarantee good governance, or even competent government.

Large government impacts on individual freedoms simply because it taxes the general citizen for little or no productive good.

An unwieldy public service is expert at defending its own growth, regardless of productivity.

Methinks your faith in institutions is an expensive and misplaced faith, putland.

I am heartened to see the author seeing through the tripe of our cultural love of 'big government'. It gives me faint hope for the future.

In spite of our current massive bureaucracy and continued growth, we can't even look after our foster children, our disabled or carers properly.

Giving our people the power to look after themselves and their own, by reducing taxes and churn and encouraging self-sufficiency, would be a huge step forward for this country.

Perhaps bringing public service superannuation benefits in line with net taxpayers' would be a good starting point for increasing government productivity?