Lang Hancock, “The conditions for a revival,”
The Australian, July 10, 1984, p. 8,
as a letter to the editor.

SIR — I am encouraged by Mr John Sanderson’s letter (14/6) which shows that he is aware of the problems that have caused Australia to be no longer the “lucky country” but the “constipated country.”

Australia is bound up by excessive rules, regulations and laws and all forms of restrictions imposed by the three levels of government, working full time, to make it impossible for anybody to start up a new venture and thus relieve the unemployment situation.

The only room for expansion in Australia today is through the Public Service with the taxpayer footing the bill. In other words, the problem is “big government” which increases according to Parkinson’s law. Mr Sanderson rightly says this must be stopped, “but will somebody please tell me how?”

One method by which this disease could be cured would be to penetrate the selection committees of one of the major parties and make it known to all prospective candidates that a condition of them being selected is:

  1. They swear to pass no more legislation of any kind in either House.
  2. They start to unwind all legislation that has been passed over the past 20 years. This must be done on the basis of “the last to come, the first to go” so as to avoid lengthy and futile argument as to which, if any, legislation should be allowed to remain on the statute books.
  3. If the selected candidate failed to carry out either of the two conditions, then their pre-selection would be automatically cancelled.

If one cares to reflect upon the above I think the average person will find it hard to remember any Act of Parliament that has been passed in the past 20 years which has had any purpose other than to establish a new government department, or to extend an existing one.

In other words, it would be hard to find a law passed within the past two decades by which the country would not have been better served if it didn’t exist.

LANG HANCOCK
Perth