On the dangers of the ever-expanding state:
The Big State is always a big problem. The Total State has proven to be perhaps the greatest threat there is to individual freedom, economic progress, and civil rights in general. Waste, fraud, corruption and inefficiency characterise the Deep State and bloated bureaucracy. That is why conservatives of all stripes have always championed small government, limited government, and less government.
Volumes penned about this from the past century or so include these 20 important works (presented in order of publication):
The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc (1912)
The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset (1932)
Our Enemy, the State by Albert Jay Nock (1935)
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek (1944)
Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War by Ludwig von Mises (1944)
Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises (1956)
The American Cause by Russell Kirk (1957)
The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek (1960)
In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo by Frank Meyer (1962)
For a New Liberty: A Libertarian Manifesto by Murray Rothbard (1973)
Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick (1974)
The Politicization of Society edited by Kenneth Templeton (1979)
Free To Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman (1980)
Freedom, Justice and the State by Ronald Nash (1980)
In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government by Charles Murray (1988)
Limited Government: A Positive Agenda by John Gray (1989)
Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism edited by Thomas Woods (2011)
Plunder and Deceit: Big Government’s Exploitation of Young People and the Future by Mark Levin (2016)
Live Free or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink by Sean Hannity (2020)
On Power by Mark Levin (2025)
Some of these titles might lead one to believe that I am just highlighting works by libertarians, if not anarchists. Yes, many titles are from that quarter, but certainly not all of them. Nonetheless, they all share a healthy distrust of big government and big bureaucracy. And note: most of these titles I simply culled from my 1990 book, Modern Conservative Thought.
With all this by way of background, my main purpose in this article is to share a helpful look at the current Australian situation. The Menzies Research Centre, based in Canberra, is one public policy think tank that has done a lot of work in this area. Its Executive Director, David Hughes, has just sent out an informative – and worrying – newsletter. It begins as follows:
The hefty travel bill accumulated by Australia’s Sports Minister has attracted the attention it deserved this week. But should we be surprised? There really isn’t much for a Sports Minister to do, other than fly around the country to attend sporting events.
We were already a great sporting nation before the Commonwealth Government decided in 1972 under Gough Whitlam to appoint a Minister for Sport. Prior to that, any decisions relating to “sport” that the Commonwealth had to make fell to the next most relevant Minister and portfolio. Before we had a national sports bureaucracy we had hosted an Olympics, developed our own national sporting identity and our national teams and athletes were defying the rest of the world. Bradman was averaging 99 without a Commonwealth Sport Minister to claim some of the credit.
At the time of Federation, Australia had nine Ministers with practical titles and responsibilities. This jumped to 27 under Whitlam, 30 under Hawke, and 40 under Keating. Albanese’s Ministry lists 72 different portfolio titles. We have a Tasmanian MP serving as Minister for Indigenous Health, and we have a 52 year old Minister for Youth. We have a Minister for Charities and a Minister for Pacific Islands. At times, we have also had a “Minister for the Asian Century” and a “Minister for the Centenary of Federation”. In the last term of Parliament, we had an “Assistant Minister for the Republic”, before the Prime Minister realised referendums are too hard and abolished the position.
The problem with this explosion in titles is that they all require new agencies and bureaucracies sitting behind them. And worse still, Ministers with new portfolios need to create the appearance of work — which more often involves new spending or new laws. Take our Minister for Sport. When not attending Grand Finals, she devised a $50 million grants program to help local sports groups deal with the impact of climate change.
Adding more titles, and the agencies and bureaucrats that sit behind them, creates an absurd level of complexity. This complexity not only makes it harder for citizens and businesses to navigate and interact with their government, but it also obscures reporting lines and limits accountability. It also means more taxpayer money funding jobs in Canberra. No wonder four out of every five jobs created in the past two years have been in the non-market sector.
He goes on to feature an intriguing chart on the convoluted labyrinth of “interactions between Government agencies, Ministerial portfolios and Ministers, and demonstrates how complex our Government has become.” It really is a mind-boggling chart indeed.
I have not been able to locate that chart on their website, although it may well be forthcoming soon enough. But a related article takes you to their site and offers more on our out-of-control big government behemoth here in Australia: https://www.menziesrc.org/latest-research/government-grows-growth-slows
We can be thankful that not all Australians have put up the white flag of surrender to the big government and big bureaucracy tsunami.
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