John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 105-10, under the heading “Government”.
To be governed is to be watched inspected, spied upon, directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked appraised, seized, censured, commanded, by beings who have neither title, nor knowledge, nor virtue. To be governed is to have every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorised, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.
P. J. PROUDHON, 1849.
We have stated elsewhere what we believe the proper role of government is — to protect the rights of all inhabitants within a country. We have stated that the government can hardly be said to be doing this if it is itself guilty of violating the rights of its citizens. We have further pointed out the fact that over the years, governments have gradually more and more power over us all, both socially and economically, and that today, governments function primarily as distributors of privilege.
There is no need to go further into the theory of government here. What we will do instead is point out some of the details of our governments, so that we can all see just how extensive their power and influence are.
- Look through the sections on Federal, State and local government in your telephone directory. If you live in the country, do it the next time you are in the city.
- Buy copies of the Budget papers when they are released each year.
- Buy copies of the Year Books — Federal and State.
- Look through the odd government report, for example, Taxation Commissioners Report, Jackson Committee Report on Manufacturing, Vernon Committee Report on the Post office, Henderson Committee Report on Poverty.
If you just look through a selection of these papers and documents, you’ll be amazed at what you find.
For example, this year (1976-77) our three levels of government, Federal, State and local, will spend about $30,000,000,000, most of which is raised by taxes. These governments will employ one and a quarter million public servants to sit around shuffling paper and to generally obstruct the business of decent and innocent people. Their activities in Sydney, for example, cover some nineteen pages of the telephone directory and, as anyone who has tangled with them knows, are scattered all over the city. Getting detailed information out of them is like getting blood out of Ayers Rock.
The 1975 Australian Government Directory lists some 374 Departments, Authorities, Commissions, Boards, Committees, etc., of the Federal Government alone. The old Department of Agriculture (now the Department of Primary Industry) for example, has listed under its heading three Bureaus, four councils, eighteen committees, two corporations, nine Boards, one Institute and one Authority. So much for our free enterprise primary industries.
This Department had the responsibility for administering some ninety-one different Acts of Parliament that relate to Agriculture — such as the Butter Fat Levy Act, the Chicken Meat Research Act, the Dried Fruits Export Control Act, the Egg Export Control Act, the Honey Industry Act, the Meat Industry Act, the Pig Slaughter Levy Act, the Processed Milk Products Bounty Act, the Tobacco Industry Act, the Whaling Act, the Wheat Industry Stabilisation Act and the Wool Industry Act.
It is also interesting to note that the Federal Primary Production tax estimates listed in the latest Budget Report for 1977 are as varied as follows: Apple and Pear Export Charge ($10,000), Apple and Pear Levy ($532,000), Butter Fat Levy ($1,572,000), Canned Fruit Export Charge ($155,000), Canning Fruit Charge ($108,000), Dairying Research Levy ($363,000), Dried Fruits Export Charge ($209,000), Dried Fruits Levy ($47,000), Honey Export Charge ($24,000), Honey Levy ($160,000), Livestock Slaughter Levy — Eradication of Disease ($7,800,000), Livestock Slaughter Levy — Cattle ($4,368,000), Livestock Slaughter Levy — Sheep and Lambs ($1,589,000), Meat Chicken Levy ($157,000), Meat Export Inspection — Overtime Charges ($2,002,000. Last year this was $15,915,160!), Pig Slaughter Levy ($420,000), Poultry Industry Levy ($11,500,000), Tobacco Charge ($523,000), Wheat Export Charge ($60,065,000), Wheat Tax ($1,650,000), Wine Grapes Charges ($1,080,000), and Wool Tax ($81,200,000) — a total of $175,533,000. The total estimated income for the Primary Industry Department is $213,762,000. Its total estimated expenditure is $351,254,000. Of this, $38,360,500 is allocated to pay the salaries of the 3112 people on the staff of the Department. It is difficult to compute just how much the primary industries actually receive back in the form of direct and indirect assistance to offset all the taxes that they pay, because both the taxes and the benefits are channelled through many different Departments.
However, we hope we have illustrated to some degree, the complexity of the industry situation, and the enormous degree of government-industry interaction. This is what is today called free enterprise by the National Country Party. It is blatantly obvious that it is, in fact, no such thing.
Federal Government Budget statistics for 1976-77 show that salary payments for an average of 218,071 staff are covered under Appropriation Bill (No. 1), at a total salary cost of $2,364,715,000. This includes 69,485 people in the Permanent Forces (army, navy, airforce) and 31,026 Civil Personnel in the Defence Department, with a total salary bill of $1,062,827,000. These figures do not include the expensive First Division Officers, Holders of Public Office, Judges, Parliamentarians, and a host of other Federal employees. Indeed, Forecast, an economic newsletter published by economist Roger Randerson, states that at 30 June 1976, government employment statistics were as follows: Federal, 458,000; State, 773,000; local, 121,300. Total of 1,352,800. This would indicate that the total salary bill for our army of bureaucrats would be over $14,000,000,000.
If we consider that $13,000,000,000 of this is non-military spending, we can get some interesting comparisons. Permanent naval forces number 16,241 (salary cost $174,428,000), permanent army forces number 31,648 (salary cost $342,032,000). Our non-defence bureaucrats, then cost the equivalent in salaries of around seventy-five of our navies, or thirty-eight of our armies, or fifty-three of our air forces.
Let’s hope the next war is a paper war. It’s our only chance.
The Australian Taxation Office will employ an estimated average of 12,580 people (7071 in Production [?], 1497 in Accounting, 2328 in Enforcement, 309 in Valuation and 1375 in Executive [Management], at a cost in salaries of $125,681,000. Costs of running the Taxation Office — telephone bills, paper costs, printing costs, etc. — are all extra on top of that.
The Federal Government has also made provision in the 1976-77 budget for the payment of $1,373,200,000 in Public Debt Interest. Just what the size of the Public Debt is is difficult to determine, but we estimate that it is around $20,000,000,000 and rising.
In his, as usual excellent article in The Bulletin last year, Peter Samuel detailed some of the more extraordinary expenditures of the then Whitlam Government: $8987 to surfriders association for the national championships currently held at Victor Harbour, South Australia; $9532 to the Parachute Federation for a trip to West Germany; $2695 for the Indoor Bias Bowls Association; $3200 for the Hockey Associations’ administrative expenses; $11,150 for archers to go to Switzerland; $1434 for yachting; $1202 for the Ski Patrol Association; and $33,224 for various Rugby events. As Samuel comments:
Labor certainly did not start it, but they have made the handout industry the fastest growth area in the Australian economy. With your money, taken forcefully out of your pay packet or added to the cost of the beer and petrol and household goods you buy, politicians are buying the subservience and political indebtedness of a whole range of community groups, and organisations. They are aided and abetted in this political operation by bureaucrats building their personal prosperity and careers on the tax-financed government departments, commissions, councils, authorities, offices, organisations, boards and committees, being spawned to advise, administer and generally exploit the national pork-barrel.1
Because the government apparatus is growing so complex, the old Department of Urban and Regional Development produced a book of fifty-seven pages called Australian Government assistance to local government projects — sources of funds and how to apply for them. Apparently, there were (are?) eighteen Federal Government agencies running thirty-five programmes for local government alone. Samuels goes on to quote the following:
- The then Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) listed six Federal Departments apart from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs which were (are?) running programmes for Aboriginal advancement involving nine interdepartmental committees.
- The then Head of the Industries Assistance Commission, Mr Alf Rattigan, identifying no fewer than twenty-six Federal Agencies significant in economy policy, compared with only eight existing in 1965.
- That there existed at least sixteen Federal Agencies involved in welfare, making cash payments, running research programmes, administering services, these being split on functional lines, client lines, and territorial lines. And things haven’t changes. Last year, as quoted by the Taxpayers Association Journal, Taxpayer, the Federal Government spent $100,000 on the anti-smoking campaign and $496,000 on tobacco research.
This is the Federal Government alone. Add to it the boondoggles of the State governments and the maze of local government rules and regulations and you begin to see what modern government is all about. It is also easy to see why the taxation levels have to be so high — the more government does, the more it costs.
If you look through the regulations governing any business — the Companies Act, the licencing requirements, health restrictions, standards, building codes, local government ordinances, trading regulations, the Corporate Affairs and Trade Practices restrictions, etc., etc., etc., and etc., you’ll begin to see that it’s amazing that we are able to do anything.
We are being drowned in a swamp of pettiness. Unless we decide to do something about it, this situation will continue to get worse. Our basic choice is to decide whether or not we want a still bigger government, or alternatively, a smaller one. If we want a smaller one, then we have to start actively campaigning to get it.
For anything to be done, however, more and more people need to be educated about the issues involved. As people become aware of the futility of expecting governments to solve problems; of the dangers of increasing the size, cost, and power of governments; of the enormous size and power governments have already; and the alternatives to the simple knee-jerk reflex, then we might start to get somewhere. We also might get nowhere. But it used to be Australian to give it a go. At least we should all do that.
The American newspaperman, H. L. Mencken, said what has to be the last word on government:
It (the Government) has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities, it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.2
