Why is it that GDP per capita in government outlays have risen steadily in the Australian economy since WW2 and very much under the "highest taxing government in Australian history" under Howard if the state had been so "repudiated".

What is clear is that we are reaching a tolerance point and balance between when the state promotes opportunity for most and where efficiency is maintained. Victory!

Where regulation has reduced is primarily trade liberalisation and competition policy. If someone can find an economic argument against these please feel free to enlighten me.

Corin
Peter's article may have been partially motivated by anti government sentiment, but his central point still has some validity. Politics should be about principles, debate, and ideas as well as improving standards of living. If we treat politics as a business and look at it from a purely economic viewpoint we see it is improving all the time, but businesses are not democratic and are only driven by one principle - maximisation of shareholder return. Politics should be bigger than that, and so we shouldn't just assess it in purely material terms like GDP, tax rate, greenhouse gas output, or square km of tree coverage.

Anomie - WTO has a standing system of review and challenges to anti-competitive behaviour – it is a feature it has had all along (if you bothered to listen to the news you would have heard how USA and EEC are constantly challenging each other protectionist measures).

Ultimately a market is a market, the agents of both supply and demand will always battle for a commercial advantage. Likewise, governments are national bodies employed to serve the needs of their sovereign nation first.

As for your assertion re cheap exports and protection for domestic industry – USA has been at the forefront of the free trade movement – and has suffered considerably from opening up its markets both from imports from Canada and Mexico as well as ex-North America. Of course the US Auto companies are facing such a decline there is a need for drastic restructuring – yet the US economy is buoyant and growing – so I guess something “good” must also be happening too.

The benefits of “freer trade” infinitely outweigh the hiccups it causes and dysfunction it reveals to the institutions built around the credo of protectionism –

Although their will always be a wailing from the luddites,

Basically, because their will always be luddites and that is all they know - how to wail.