In writing this book Tony Abbott, a former minister in the Howard Government who is now on the opposition front bench in the federal parliament, seems to have taken on the role of defining where the battlelines should be drawn in the approach to the next election.

One of the things Abbott is clearly trying to do in this book is to identify enduring values that will continue to bind the Liberal Party together. In the process he does a reasonably good job of minimizing the differences between Hayekian liberals and Burkean conservatives. At one point he writes: “Following Adam Smith, Liberals tend to think that government is necessary to keep the peace but otherwise should let people make mutually beneficial arrangements with each other” (p 82). If I believed that was a statement of conservative philosophy, I would not mind being called a conservative. In other places in the book, however, Abbott displays the contempt for personal freedom that is associated with traditional conservative values. For example: “The basic problem is that most Western countries have privatised the next generation. Having children tends to be regarded as a personal choice rather than a social good” (p 97).

Having now reminded myself why I am not a conservative, let me turn to Abbott’s views on federalism. The essence of his argument is as follows:

• When nothing else seems to solve problems, voters always expect the central government to ‘do something’.
• After more than 50 years of increasing federal government involvement in matters that were formerly the exclusive responsibility of the states, the federation has become dysfunctional. “There are few problems in contemporary Australia that a dysfunctional federation doesn’t make worse”.
• Current attempts to end the “blame game” between different levels of government are not going to work. Someone has to have the legal power to take responsibility.
• The only credible way to fix the problem is to give the central government the legal power to call the shots i.e. to over-ride the states.
• The argument that the states form a bulwark against the potential tyranny of the national government is “far-fetched”. Australia has states because this was the price of becoming a nation, not because the fathers of federation thought that an intermediate level of government was necessary to avoid tyranny.

I agree, more or less, with the first three points, but disagree with the last two. What reason do we have for thinking that a government attempting to run schools and hospitals out of Canberra would do a better job than one trying to run them from some office in a state capital? Absolutely none! And I think that Tony Abbott agrees with me. What he has in mind is that if the federal government was able to over-ride the states on health and education the most likely result would be for public hospital and school services to be “provided on a contestable basis by a range of independent and autonomous organisations as well as by state-government instrumentalities” (p 129). That sounds to me like a move in the right direction, but we can’t be sure that some control freak in charge of the central government would not attempt to intervene more directly in the management of hospitals and schools if he/she had the power to do so.

As I see it, the main problem of the federation arise from the stupidity of the central government in its choice of forms of intervention. The basic problem in both hospitals and schools prior to federal intervention was that people were unhappy with the services that state governments were providing from tax revenues. Instead of giving state governments more money to waste, the central government should have given people back some of the money they had paid in taxes so that they could purchase alternative services.

The central government does not need additional power in order to achieve contestable service provision. It just needs to stop propping up inefficient state bureaucracies and give power back to the people.

In concluding I would like to commend Tony Abbott for presenting his views in a forthright manner. It is nice to be able to disagree with quite a lot of the things he has written and yet still feel that, as politicians go, Tony Abbott is not a bad bloke.

It is quite evident that no two situations are alike. Someone who chooses to live in the desert will have certain resources that are available and specific limitations as to what he can produce. The same person doing the same thing in fertile valleys or in a rain forest or in the arctic tundra will have a different set of resources and limitations. Obviously, geographical location will give certain advantages and disadvantages, unequal productivity and unequal wealth for identical people in each of those situations. That is neither bad nor good. It just is. To say it shouldn’t be is like saying gravity shouldn’t exist.

When you consider the vast differences in intellect, native talent, size, dexterity and a thousand other attributes of human beings, the large differences due to geography are magnified. Some people are exceptionally bright, some are exceptionally dull. Again, that is not good or bad, it just is. It is nature, it is life.

Some people in society get to be surgeons. No matter how bright the individual is, that doesn’t happen accidentally or automatically. A surgeon becomes so by making a decision and paying the very high price to get there. While the economic cost is high, there are far more important costs to take into consideration. It takes many years of grueling study, hard work, long hours and unpleasant conditions to make it to the point where a doctor can excel at his or her work. That is true, to some extent, for almost any profession. There are many capable people who choose not to pay the personal price and, in so doing, choose a lower paying career.

Some unfortunate souls who have paid the price find out after the fact that the ongoing personal cost is not worth the higher pay. I know an engineer, for example, who was successful, but didn’t want the rat race. He gave up an engineer’s salary to become a farmer. His income was less and farming was harder physical work and required longer hours, but to him, it was worth it. He made a tradeoff because he believed that some things were worth more than a high salary. Not everyone agrees with him.

Thus, we can see that much more enters into the picture than just innate abilities or geography. All humans make tradeoffs in their daily lives which affect the future. Students at all levels of education take actions each day that affect their future, their careers and their lives. There are some who are not exceptionally intelligent, but they work very hard and become exceptional. There are others who have a high level of native intelligence and skill, but they choose not to use them for whatever reason. It is reasonable to expect that the economic results of those two will likely be significantly different. In general, those with higher intelligence, those with specific innate skills and those who work harder and longer will earn more money and be able to do things that those less intelligent or skilled or hard working will not. That is very good because it rewards people for being productive, and thus contributing to society.

What is bad is when someone takes something that does not belong to them. Theft and physical aggression, whether actual or threatened, are almost universally thought of as bad. Throughout history, morality has centered around respect for the life and property of the individual. Further, what is immoral for one person to do is also immoral for presidents, congressmen or any collection of people to do. The biggest, most effective predators in modern times are large centralized governments, who use the flag of equality to cover their sins and to justify massive legalized theft and interference in the lives of citizens. It is past time for thinking people to take back the high ground and recognize the inherent immorality of egalitarianism.