It is interesting that in 1951 average income tax was just 11% without the plethoria of other taxes we now endure,yet we cannot build a Snowy Mts Scheme,pay for roads or all manner of infrastructure.We did not have the machinery then or the computers,yet we seem to more impotent now than ever before.

If we taxed CO2 emissions instead of grandfathering emissions rights, we could significantly reduce the GST:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/green-tax-shift.html

Arjay, where do you get those numbers from?

I'd like to see a budget breakdown from 1951 too. What area of spending could possibly have increased so much since then? Certainly not education (which was almost entirely publicly funded back then), and I would doubt welfare. Health, perhaps, but's certainly not enough on its own to explain such an increase.

Obviously there are reasons that infrastructure becomes more difficult to build with time (e.g. the amount of existing infrastructure that you have to build around), but as you say, we now have much more advanced equipment to build it - tunnelling must surely be much cheaper now than it was 50 years ago.

Wizofaus,I knew a teacher who kept his first group certificate of 1951 and 11% was his tax.I think that they also had death duties then,but there was little or no social security.More tax means more Govt waste.The ADF have just wasted $1.4 billion on Naval ship modifications that won't work.Remember the billion dollar choppers,and the $4 billion Collins Class Subs.How many stuff ups don't we hear about?

Arjay you won't get any argument from me that most military spending is a waste of money (and worse, just fuels the never-ending arms race). And yes, there will always be inefficiency and wastage associated with government spending - but that on its own isn't evidence that we would be better off without that spending. One only needs to look at the healthcare situation in the U.S. - their mostly private system is far more expensive than any government-run system, and far less effective, when measured on basic outcomes such as infant mortality and life expectancy.

Social security in Australia was introduced in the '40s.

Needless to say, that one teacher was only taxed 11% of his income isn't much proof on its own that taxation as a whole was significantly less in 1951.