In yet an otherwise excellent essay, (2017: West challenged in a digital world, The Weekend Australian 23/12) Paul Kelly makes the point that:
“people seem to distrust, even hate, politicians yet are chronically addicted, whenever a problem arises, to asking government to solve more and more problems when the system is manifestly overloaded.”
Kelly overlooks the fact that in many cases the public simply wants the political class to fix the problems THEY, the nanny state, political class created.
More often than not, they over promise and under deliver or simply backslide and don’t deliver at all.
In other cases they stuff up and make a non existent or a not so bad situation worse.
Energy policy, the NBN and 18c are just three standout, top of the head examples of governments intervening where they shouldn’t, creating laws for problems that don’t exist in the case of 18c, making our once affordable energy unaffordable and unreliable and in the case of the NBN delivering speeds slower than we had before. This is why “people seem to distrust, even hate politicians”
As Ronald Reagan observed: “Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.”