Bert Kelly, The Bulletin, February 17, 1981, p. 123.

Last week’s discussion about Malcolm’s Message ended on a sour note with Fred getting nasty about how he didn’t have any free choices when he tried to buy a header and a car. So this week I thought I should get in early, so I chose a quotation from the Message to which I knew no one would have any objections:

The government rejects the notion that the relationship between the people and the State should be like that between customers and the supermarket — that because something is considered desirable it should be assumed automatically that the State should provide it. The government rejects that notion for two reasons: first, the State is likely to be in many ways an inefficient and wasteful provider and because many services can be better provided in other ways — by voluntary action on the part of individuals joining together freely, and by the mechanism of the free market. Secondly, and fundamentally, the more you ask of the State, the more power you must give it. If your demands on it are unlimited, you must logically give it unlimited power. Liberalism is fundamentally opposed to this.

As our group are all non-socialists, this moving statement met with our approval and Mavis began to clap. Even Eccles admitted that he had no quarrel with the sentiments expressed; what was worrying him was how the precept squared with the government’s practise. He then launched into a long lecture, pointing out that all governments, even those who most eloquently proclaim their dedication to small government, seem to end up practising big government.

Eccles says that they do not behave in this way because they are wicked or are bent on deceiving people, but because they know that the electorate loves governments which intervene and people usually go round begging for even more and more intervention by governments.

It is true that, when the electorate has seen the fruits of government intervention, they become disillusioned about the way the government is going about it and its cost. But Eccles says that government interventions are not forced on us by governments who are determined to get their trotters into the administrative trough; they do it because they know it makes them popular.

Eccles says that the South Australian Government is a good example of the way governments drift into intervention. An important plank in the new Liberal Government’s election platform was its promise to cease interfering in commercial decisions. Ever since, they have been interfering in almost everything.

They are not doing this because they are beastly but because people are always asking them to do so and politicians love being popular. Most of them will quickly sacrifice their principles on the altar of political popularity.

Eccles then had a nasty dig at the Fraser Government’s behaviour in this matter.

Of the many examples of the government’s willingness to rush headlong into intervention, he chose its promises on expenditure on sport as the worst. He then read through the promises that the government made during the election campaign last year.

New South Wales: $9.6 million for an indoor sports hall.

Victoria: $2.5 million for an equestrian centre.

Queensland: $500,000 for a shooting complex.

South Australia: $6 million for an indoor aquatic centre.

Tasmania: $1.5 million for a rowing and canoeing course.

Western Australia: $3 million for a ballistic complex.

The Northern Territory: $1.5 million for a multi-purpose indoor sports hall.

The Australian Capital Territory: (wait for it) $2 million for a motor racing track!

When Eccles had finished reading there was a long and pregnant silence because the list made nonsense of the PM’s principles of self-help. But Mavis quickly came to her hero’s rescue. “These promises were made at election time when politicians will say anything,” she said firmly. “Mr Fraser has been to Damascus or somewhere and the scales or something have fallen from his eyes. From now on things will be different.”

They will be too, I am sure of that. Fairly sure, anyway. Perhaps hopeful is more the word, or fairly hopeful!