Smaller Government

How the Coalition should prepare for government

• BY:GARY JOHNS 
• From:The Australian 
• February 26, 2013 12:00AM

"NO Gillard, no Gonski." Hey, sounds like a good deal. We get rid of the government and save $6 billion a year, beautiful. How about an alternative: "no Abbott, no advance". While Labor ministers and Labor members in marginal seats counsel their staff to take on no further personal financial commitments, it is time for everyone else with an interest in government to get thinking again about good government.

The legacy of five years of Labor is how not to govern. The Rudd-Gillard-Swan governments have trashed not only the Labor brand, but also the idea of competent government. While Hawke-Keating was an advance on the Whitlam government, and Howard-Costello an advance on the Fraser government, Rudd-Gillard-Swan is degeneration. It degenerated on three levels: it enhanced the commonwealth tendency to arrogance in relation to the states, it entrenched blind faith in stimulus, and it furthered the notion of government as nanny, sidelining individual responsibility and crowding out charity.

Labor has conspired with a huge and growing "caring cadre" whose role is to exaggerate problems for governments, but most of all carers, to solve. In light of the "expand the need for government" strategy, an Abbott government has some serious thinking to do about the purpose of government.

In the first instance, Tony Abbott has to be the stable boy to clean up Labor's detritus. Once the ledger is repaired, the carbon and mining taxes and the hate speech sections of the discrimination act repealed, it will be time to start work on the long term. What should the Coalition do to advance Australian interests?

In general terms, an Abbott government must appreciate that every federal government suffers from a major failing - a propensity to buy into every issue. Each minister in the incoming government must learn this phrase: "Previous governments have tried and failed (insert silly idea), we do not intend to waste your money making the same mistakes."

When an animal rights group shows some footage of cattle deaths in Indonesia or Saudi, insist they visit the local slaughterhouse in Australia, and remind the viewer that almost all Australians eat meat and that viewing animal rights through the eyes of an ideologically motivated vegetarian is not the basis on which to set policy.

When the scare stories of super trawlers arise, remind Australians that they love to eat fish and that the least harvested waters are around Australia. Stopping reasonable trawling in Australian waters requires our needs to be satisfied by the catch off the depleted Asian shores to our north.

When scare stories on climate change are aired, remind Australians that there is no hope of lowering the world's dependence on fossil fuels in the intermediate term and that the best course of action is to adapt using the best science. Australia must get beyond the climate change phenomenon. Clarify for the electorate the difference between the science of climate change and feasible responses to risk.

In specific terms, the Abbott government needs to work on three things.

Cede responsibility to the states for programs where the states have the overwhelming role in the delivery of the service: specifically, transport, education and health. The golden rule should be, if the commonwealth does not wish to deliver the service in toto, then leave it to those with the major responsibility.

When the economy slows, as it almost certainly will during the course of the life of the next government, do not announce a stimulus package. Keynes is dead; let him rest. Instead, announce a deregulation package - cut regulations to cut costs. In extremis provide a tax holiday. Lean towards getting out of the way, not barging in.

A huge apparatus now extends from charities to government, including the official statistical gathering bodies of the commonwealth, to create the politics of gloom. Charities should not be funded to enter public policy debate, including producing data that creates the next crisis. Charities are free to lobby and exaggerate on their own time and money, not on the taxpayers'.

How is the opposition preparing for government? Bob Hawke and others such as finance minister and later treasurer Ralph Willis were meticulous. The Abbott team must be the same. An Abbott government should start the way it means to end, as a smaller, though powerful unit. It should consist of a smaller cabinet, and it should administer fewer departments. Abbott will have the authority to pull this off. Currently, there are 21 cabinet ministers, nine ministers, 12 parliamentary secretaries.

On the opposition side, there are 20 shadow cabinet ministers, 12 shadow ministers, 15 shadow parliamentary secretaries. This is not a good start.

Eighteen cabinet ministers and 18 parliamentary secretaries should suffice. There are too many ministries for silly walks: consolidate. Make the government look and feel solid. That would be an advance worth voting for.

All animals are equal, but some want to tell us what we can say

• BY:MAURICE NEWMAN 
• From:The Australian 
• February 21, 2013 12:00AM

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"NAPOLEON, with the dogs following him, now mounted on to the raised portion of the floor where Major had previously stood, to deliver his speech. He announced from now on the Sunday-morning Meetings would come to an end. They were unnecessary he said and wasted time.

"In future all questions relating to the working of the farm would be settled by a special committee of pigs, presided over by himself. These would meet in private and afterwards communicate their decisions to the others. The animals would still assemble on Sunday mornings to salute the flag, sing 'Beasts of England' and receive their orders for the week; but there would be no more debates."
George Orwell, Animal Farm.

BY deciding on allegory, George Orwell disarmingly presented his morality tale in a way that would most resonate with his readers. Orwell believed that people often see in abstract what they fail to grasp in the real world.

Contemporary readers should find little difficulty joining the dots between Orwell's animal intelligentsia and their human counterparts. By undermining their society's values and institutions they cleared the way for Napoleon's rise to unchallenged authority. They determined what was politically acceptable, rewarding the true believers and punishing the nonconformists, just as things are evolving in our world.

Like it or not, we are accustomed to being lectured to, or hectored, by intellectual elites. Our children are conditioned to believe their country's history is dark. It is commonplace to have iconic anniversaries such as Australia Day and Anzac Day demeaned as celebrations of violence.

We are urged to celebrate diversity through multiculturalism but must repress feelings of outrage when recent arrivals show contempt for our way of life. We are often reminded that Christianity, the flag and the monarchy are cultural relics. Businessmen are portrayed as class enemies, to be reined in by more regulations and stiffer penalties. The green movement is lauded as our saviour for whom the rest of us must be reined in. The list is endless, but the narrative is consistent. Our values and traditions are sadly wanting and barely worth defending.

As in Animal Farm, on multiple fronts, these shortcomings are driven home by so-called progressive intellectuals who manipulate the language to denigrate the established order and to present the utopia they would impose on us. Little wonder that in a recent Lowy Institute poll, 60 per cent of Australians are now indifferent to democracy while only 39 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds believe democracy is preferable to other forms of government.

One of the remaining obstacles to the full realisation of the intelligentsia's utopian dream is obedience. If critics can be controlled through propaganda and having the law narrowly define what speech is legal, we will arrive at their promised land more quickly.

As the concerted attacks last year on Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt illustrate, progress is being made. Indeed, so ferocious was the furore over Jones's insensitive remarks, that a broadcaster with a lesser following would have been shut down by opponents who don't even listen to him. The findings against Bolt were straight out of Orwell. It is a reminder that if laws are created to limit freedom of expression, they will be used.

Determined to increase its control over the media and using the News of the World controversy as a pretext, the federal government established the Finkelstein inquiry into the media's codes of practice. The inquiry found that regulation of Australia's news media was inconsistent, fragmented and ineffective, in part, the consequence of technological change. But it was also based on the Press Council's lament that it can't do its job properly. This begs the question of how wide its remit should be?

Finkelstein seemed concerned by the public's loss of trust in the media. But neither he nor any future regulator can effectively deal with this. When editors and journalists do not report fairly, cover up the truth, or advocate values at odds with their market, it is unsurprising that audiences switch off. Clearly there is a large unsatisfied demand for balance and truth and, sooner or later, this will be recognised by proprietors, investors and better journalist schools. In the meantime the internet will be the default, not government.

A key Finkelstein recommendation was to replace self-regulation with a government authority. This confidence in government suggests that freedom of speech was not paramount in his deliberations.

The government's determination to control our lives did not stop at a media inquiry. The draft Human Rights and Anti-discrimination Bill 2012 seeks to further restrict our freedoms. While softened somewhat following strong criticisms, including from eminent retired judges, the reverse onus of proof remains, along with an expansion of victimhood.

The government says it never intended to restrict free speech, but the fact is, while it preaches liberty, it is about coercion. The bill is an ambit claim. We may ask, to whom is the government appealing? Since when has limiting our basic freedoms been advocated in an election campaign?

There is no popular groundswell. The government is responding to the collectivist instincts of those intellectuals who hold liberty in low regard. It isn't so long ago that an academic floated the idea that we "suspend democracy" to silence climate change sceptics. Authoritarian government appeals to these people.

All the while, the public has been detached from the consequences of the government's actions, accepting, somewhat gullibly, the well-meaning intent of minority protection without appreciating the erosion of its own rights. What it should know is that ceding freedom is never temporary. It simply leads to regular Sunday-morning assemblies, but without the debate. Far fetched? Believe that at your peril.

Maurice Newman is a former chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange and the ABC.