Bert Kelly, “How the strident pressure groups beggar everybody else,”
The Australian, July 21, 1986, p. 9.

In his Enemies of Progress lecture to the Centre of Independent Studies in Sydney on July 4, Lord Harris said that the chief offenders were the pressure groups who demanded and frequently got particular privileges for themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

We know that there is no such thing as a free feed, that someone or some group always has to pay for particular advantages given to particular people. But the advantages won by the first group are concentrated and easily seen, so that group will fight furiously to obtain, and retain, its special privileges.

But the people who pay, usually the consumers, are spread throughout the community, so it is hard to weld them into an effective pressure group to oppose the first. And politicians are easily influenced by the strident voices of the pressure groups.

Asking governments for particular privileges is now seen as the natural way to behave. At the recent Australian farm management conference held at Albury, Mr Maimo, a representative of the dairy industry, when discussing the problems and opportunities of intensification in dairying said:

Therefore, in the future I see intensification coming mainly in two fields. Efficiency in production to maintain our viability, and political lobbying to retain a dairying industry in Australia.

So, even farmers, we paragons of independent virtue, have come to rely on our pressure group to do our special pleading.

Eccles says that asking for government intervention began when the convicts in 1788 found themselves at inhospitable Port Jackson.

They almost immediately demanded that the people who brought them there should care for them.

This trait was foreseen by the Brigden Committee when it reported on the tariff in 1930. It said:

The most disquieting effect of the tariff has been the stimulus it has given to demands for government assistance of all kinds, with the consequent effect on self-reliant efficiency throughout all kinds of production.

Harris thinks that there may be a more recent historical reason for our reliance on pressure groups. He said:

In a recent book, dramatically entitled The Rise and Decline of Nations, Professor Mancur Olson has proposed a grand hypothesis that the longer any society continues without the shake-up of revolution or war, the more it will fall prey to collusive organisations and pressure groups and so lag behind newer, more dynamic societies in its economic growth and capacity to adapt to changing needs and opportunities.

I believe this analysis provides a large part of the explanation for the superior performance of Germany, Italy and Japan after defeat in 1945, compared with the economic sclerosis which became known as the British disease.

The enemies of progress are thus revealed as all those organised obstructionists imbued with the myopic trade union mentality which seeks prosperity, not through competition in open markets, but by importuning government for beggar-your-neighbour restrictionism which ends up impoverishing the whole society.

So, because of our convict and more recent history, and the reliance of our secondary industry on governments for tariff assistance, we have become a country where pressuring the government has become one of our chief industries.

Even the farmers are at it now, as Mr Maimo admits. What has been the result?

That it has weakened our economy is obvious. We have put off making necessary but painful adjustments because of fierce, often almost hysterical opposition from affected pressure groups.

This happened in 1981 when the Fraser government gave in to the pressure generated by a GM-H and union advertisement threatening the loss of the jobs of 200,000 people if the IAC report on cars was adopted, when there were only 70,000 people employed in the industry.

The textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) group scared the Fraser government from adopting the IAC TCF report, again claiming the probable loss of more jobs than people employed in the industries.

They are at it again now but Senator Button seems to have more guts than the Fraser ministers had.

So, pressure groups are able to prevent, or at least delay, desirable change. They are particularly active and influential in Australia where we have been brought up to believe that this is the natural way to behave.

Old Adam Smith said:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.

But they were only learners compared to us — we are experts at it.