I was a big fan of P.J. O’Rourke, who sadly departed this world too soon. Who didn’t love his biting, satirical books and essays, poking fun at the ardent devotees of the trendy zeitgeists of the day?

He wrote a book entitled, Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind’s Struggle against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-free Beer. I wonder whether there is a publisher today who would take on a book with that title.

The thing about satirists like O’Rourke – I would put the Australian Financial Review’s Peter Ruehl, also sadly departed, in the same category – is that serious, sensible suggestions often lurk beneath their entertaining prose. Most of these wags have no formal training in public policy or economics, but the best of them seriously get it, including understanding the foolishness and ineffectiveness of most government spending programs.

My absolute favourite O’Rourke quote is this: ‘If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.’ The point is that when governments give away free stuff – of course, it’s not really free, just provided free of charge to the users – all sorts of negative consequences follow.

Sadly for us, the vast majority of politicians either don’t understand, or prefer to ignore, this message. They simply can’t wait to offer more free (or excessively subsidised) stuff in order to amass the greatest number of grateful recipients. While there will be various spins put on why free stuff is necessary – helping the disadvantaged, improving the environment, lifting education standards, yada yada – the reality is far too many government spending programs are simply a means of using the power of the government purse to hoover up more votes. And all sides of politics do it.

Before I cover some of the big free stuff, let me first outline one of my current favourites – free fishing rods and other fishing gear to Grade 5 students in Victoria. It will cost $1.5 million out of a $96 million package ‘to improve fishing, boating, piers and aquaculture’. There must be votes among anglers, obviously.

The blurb reads: ‘The Minister for Outdoor Recreation announced 60,000 kits will be made available to grade five primary students in more than 1,900 Victorian schools. The kits will set families up with everything they need to wet a line including a fishing rod and reel, line, tackle box, some tackle and a Kids’ Guide to Fishing that includes information and links to educational resources to learn the basics such as fishing safety, knots and rigs. The kits will help youngsters get active, learn about the aquatic environment and have fun in the great outdoors whether they be down the coast, on Port Phillip Bay or by a river in regional Victoria.’

You probably think that I am making this up, given the extremely parlous state of public finances in Victoria. But, no, this free fishing gear is currently being sent out to primary schools so the kids can nag their parents to take them fishing, even though this will prove highly inconvenient in most cases and most parents will have no expertise or interest in fishing.

By the way, most Victorians don’t live close to the sea or a river.

I’m only guessing here, but perhaps Dan the Man, current premier of Victoria, has fond memories of fishing with his dad and he wants to spread the love using other people’s money. The more likely outcomes are family disputes, a few nasty accidents as fishing hooks end up in the wrong places and all that hardly used fishing gear being left on front lawns to be picked up in the next rubbish collection. At best, some parents might make a few bob by selling it on eBay.

At a bigger level, free stuff is flourishing as an idea in the minds of many political leaders. One of the current popular ones is free kindergarten/pre-school. If you believe the promotional material, all three- and four-year-olds are guaranteed a certain number of hours per week in kinder/preschool with no charge to the parents. But, of course, the parents are perfectly capable of gaming the system to maximise the benefits for them.

In New South Wales, for example, parents of four-year-olds are entitled to three days of free preschool at any one centre. But go to another centre and you can get the other two days for free as well. The net effect is that the centres are full of four-year-olds and there are simply no spots for three-year olds, notwithstanding the commitment the NSW government made.

They’re called supply constraints which is clearly an alien concept to those who are designing and running these programs. Not only are there a limited number of physical centres, but there are also shortages of suitably qualified carers to work there. It’s all very well offering free kinder/preschool but the reality is it will simply not be possible to make good the promise, at least in the short term. In the longer run, it will prove very expensive.

Similar problems have arisen in Victoria where many kindergartens are run by local councils. According to the Age – don’t ask – ‘Knox City Council will stop running all but two of its 28 kindergartens from January 2025, affecting placements for 1100 children aged three and four.’ The combination of rapidly rising costs and inadequate funding by the state government has led to this decision.

Free TAFE courses and even free university courses have also become popular among politicians. The argument is that you just need to identify the skills in need and then lure students into the relevant courses by making them free of charge. Sadly, the evidence is that people don’t actually value highly something that they receive without charge: the completion rates of these free courses are wretchedly low.

And again, there is very little attention given to the supply side. The fact is that the providers of these free courses are often inadequately funded using inappropriate funding formulas. Moreover, the instructors often have weak incentives to provide quality courses because the students aren’t paying anything anyway.

Of course, free stuff can be very popular with the users as long as the stuff is available and deemed to be of acceptable quality. It’s why bulk-billed medical services have tended to be a hit with patients, even for those who clearly have the means to make a financial contribution to consultations.

But here’s the thing: if something is free, there tends to be overuse and runaway government spending. It is also the case that the quality of the service will almost always decline – superficial, single-issue six-minute GP visits, anyone?

Asking everyone to pay, say, the equivalent of a cup of coffee or two is surely not asking too much. In the meantime, politicians need to wake up and realise that providing lots of free stuff is extremely poor public policy.