Lang Hancock, The Australian, August 3, 1978, p. 8, as a letter to the editor.

SIR — Congratulations on your efforts to help bring to public notice the many-sided monster, taxation, which is devouring at will enterprising Australians, and to awaken us to the destructive effects of over-government and government wastage.

Increasingly, people from all walks of life are beginning to realise that a person should be rewarded — not discriminated against — for initiative, effort and achievement. The taxation monster feeds off the end result of these, namely the reward. In doing so, the taxation monster erodes and destroys the desire many people have to produce worthwhile results.

The solution does not lie in the comfortable alternatives of joining the bureaucracy (one in three Australians now employed have done so) or the ranks of the subsidised unemployed. (The remainder are forced to “produce the goods” and, at the same time, pay the cost for the others.)

The solution does lie in immediately reducing and, for the most part, finally eliminating the army of bureaucrats and their pet programs.

Most importantly, by placing the taxation monster on a starving diet — and giving people a new lease on life — capital would be attracted, new business opportunities and new jobs would be created and incentive and productivity would return.

It’s time for a Californian-style tax revolt, and time for all of us to make our governments realise Australians have had enough of paying higher and higher taxes. Congratulations to all those individuals and head of organisations who are taking a tax stand, for without people taking a stand the taxation that we all pay will only get worse and the Government’s power, size and resulting wastage bigger and bigger.

Instead of the present Constitution Convention being entirely barren, it could call for an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit any government or official from increasing existing taxes or imposing new taxes unless the move had the prior approval of the people at a referendum.

May I suggest to your readers that they all write letters to their State and Federal MPs, also to their local government, asking these people for details of what they are doing to cut down taxation and government wastage, and if they are doing nothing, then ask them to resign.

I suppose there is one possible good point to be made about government wastage of the taxpayers’ funds, and that is, we should be happy that we are not getting as much government as we are paying for.