Given the state of our economy, we must give greater scope to the market despite the government taxing and spending. Instead, we are stagnating and failing to maintain the living standards of ordinary people.

We should also publicly accept the beneficial nature of Western Civilisation and its values and abandon this systematic disparagement of all that made us comparatively successful.

The evidence overwhelmingly supports these first principles. Not that they are always easy to implement.

Again, applying basic principles, anything that cuts income tax, and provides scope for hard work and aspiration, should be supported. Assuming it can be paid for. Regulation that restricts the market must be rigorously reviewed and justified – not continued because of a lazy social consensus.

For 238 years, Australia worked, argued, and contradicted its way to remarkable success on every front, nearly. It was not a straight line but a Big Dipper. Great gambles were taken, some failed and some wildly successful. Overall, it worked – almost a straight line up, if you average it all out.

First, the economy. That was produced by ordinary people. A grey-faced official did not sit down in a room full of flunkeys with a quill pen and plan the new economy. People borrowed money, and took sheep, cattle, and ruffians out into the great unknown. They became Kings of Grass Castles and built agribusinesses. Some lost their lives. Others went broke.

Officials tried to stop them. Governor Darling set up a line of demarcation in 1826 beyond which pastoralism could not go in NSW. Except that it did go. Aboriginal stockmen travelled to join in and gain the rations. There was violence. Repeated efforts to stop and regulate it failed, until democratic land reform was forced through in the 1860s by new democratic parliaments.

These were parliaments set up using a great Australian compromise. There would be democracy in the lower house, and some form of conservative restraint, increasingly weak, in the upper house. Traditionalism was successfully combined with democratic initiative, and ‘the people’ gradually increased in power. Even though many were illiterate, a factor often overlooked.

This is not nostalgia, but our equivalent of the American revolution.

The new pressing problem is that of once again building an economic growth culture. People just could not be stopped in the 1820s, when the government was weak and limited.

Now we have regulatory fortresses beyond the scope of individual initiative to overcome. This is the modern Leviathan that threatens as much as it helps.

Does the current federal government understand this, and is it acting?

It is a bad sign that the government does not answer basic questions. How much are our power prices, and use of renewables, subsidised? There is no budgetary or government answer. One economist roughly estimates that without subsidies power prices could be one-third higher because of regulatory restrictions with the same energy mix.

Energy would be much cheaper and more reliable if industry was left to set its own energy mix. Even the government now concedes that the subsidies are unsustainable and have cut back or withdrawn entirely from some high-profile programs. A cut of at least $1.3 billion is one estimate.

How much wealth is lost through regulatory restrictions on mining, processing and export of our vast mineral resources? There is no budgetary or government answer. But just to begin with, our uranium mining industry earnings are kept artificially low through blanket legislative prohibitions.

The International Energy Agency says the world needs uranium for ‘clean energy’:

‘Nuclear power and hydropower form the backbone of low-carbon electricity generation. Together, they provide three-quarters of global low-carbon generation. Over the past 50 years, the use of nuclear power has reduced CO2 emissions by over 60 gigatonnes – nearly two years’ worth of global energy-related emissions.’

Australia has the world’s largest uranium deposits. But we have blanket legislative bans on production and earnings, because of past campaigns.

Following on, does the government taxing and spending work well? Only now is the NDIS under sharp review. We cannot assume review success. We gradually built a federal ‘safety net’ for ordinary people and workers, beginning with the old-age and disability pension of 1908-9. It was a joint Alfred Deakin (Liberal) and Andrew Fisher (ALP) effort, crossing the political spectrum.

The issue is not to attack the concept of a ‘safety net’, but to remind policymakers that you cannot just hand out money. Which is what they did since the NDIS was established. There is now a consensus that considerable fraud and overpayments resulted.

First principles surely raise questions about whether the government’s 2026 budgetary gamble on taxation of assets will improve access for housing for young people. Or reduce pressure on income tax. Or help a more productive economy. The Master Builders said, ‘By Treasury’s own estimate, the new restrictions on Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Tax (CGT) will deprive us of 35,000 new homes over the next decade.’ Other groups have said that ‘changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing will deter investment and add complexity’.

The crucial building and construction industry has a history of serious corruption and is comparatively costly, a drag on the economy.

We remain a fortress of impregnable paradoxes, impregnable because of baked in social attitudes. Why do we import goods manufactured with the cheaper coal that our own manufacturers cannot use? The answer in Europe is banning such imports. A byzantine approach of this kind will surely fail, both economically and in whatever climate goals are sought to be achieved.

This is a negative picture. What we need is another great Australian compromise, of the nature of the compromises that built our country. From colonial parliaments which were both democratic and traditional, and liberalism, through to land title which helped great agribusinesses, and mining. Even workable ‘safety nets’ like the old-age pension. The Leviathan of government must be restructured.

The Hon. Reg Hamilton, Adjunct Professor, School of Business and Law, Central Queensland University