The term ‘tipping point’ is much over-used, especially by the doomsday alarmist climate cult, to the degree where people have forgotten its original meaning: namely, the moment when you put that final item on a set of scales and the balance shifts from one side to the other.

Australia has now breached the tipping point from capitalism to socialism, if the terrifying headline in the Australian Financial Review this week is anything to go on: ‘More than 50 per cent of voters now rely on government for their main income.’ The story, by John Kehoe, explains how, ‘The federal and state government spending splurge has hit the highest level since the end of World War II, due to a massive ramp-up in outlays on disability support, aged care and childcare. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is the chief culprit, accounting for $52 billion in costs and making Australia among the biggest government spenders on disability in the world.’

As the article points out, more than half of all Australian voters are now financed by the remaining less-than-half. Putting aside the distortions of our ridiculous proportional representation system, basic maths suggests we have now passed the tipping point from capitalism into full-blown socialism and it is unlikely we will easily be able to vote ourselves back out of it.

It’s difficult to imagine a gloomier outlook for this nation. As was written, famously, by Alexander Fraser Tytler, the Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who lived from 1747 to 1813: ‘A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.’

Let’s hope he was wrong on that final point. But Australia has now strayed so far under Labor and Jim Chalmers from its economic heyday (see below) that we risk fast becoming the Venezuela of the South Pacific. It will be a long haul back.

John Stone, man of steel

John Owen Stone AO, who died last week aged 96, was the superman of Australian conservative economics. Fiscal discipline and market-driven solutions were his super powers, inflation was his sworn enemy and Big Government was his green kryptonite.

Born in Perth in 1929, John Stone went to Perth Modern School and then to the University of Western Australia, as did his contemporary Bob Hawke. Both, too, were Rhodes scholars, two years apart. But where Mr Hawke entered the trade union movement, John headed to Canberra where he rose rapidly through the Treasury ranks to become Secretary from 1979 to 1984. Indeed, along with Fred Wheeler, Des Moore, Ron Dean and others, John was a leading light of the Treasury Rat Pack who shaped the economic reforms of the Howard, Hawke and Keating governments that set this nation up for decades of prosperity.

John Stone served as a Nationals Senator for Queensland from 1987 to 1990, the first and only public service chief brave enough to put his money where his mouth was and enter parliament. A visionary, he advocated for lower taxes and less government spending and railed against excessive immigration. He helped establish not one but two conservative think tanks and became a prolific writer on culture and politics. In 2015, appalled by the Turnbull coup, he began his popular ‘Del-Con’ and ‘Dis-Con’ columns in these pages, where his razor-sharp mind and pen were employed in all the great political battles of the day, such as this gem from Dis-Con Notes, 23 October 2021: ‘What is this fuss over CO2 emissions all about? Is there any intellectual substance to it? – or is it now just a quasi-religious belief, indeed a genuine cult, with all the “Last Days” overtones that are the signature utterances of such worshippers? The answers to those questions are that no, the net zero push is essentially without intellectual foundation; and its adherents are driven not by reason, but by their cultist religious fervour.’

John’s much adored wife Nancy, a biologist and great mind, died two years ago. Their talented son, Dr Andrew Stone, sent us this note: ‘All who knew Dad are invited to join in celebration of his life at 10.00 am on Wednesday 30 July in Sydney, at St John’s Anglican Church, Ashfield. (Refreshments will follow at St John’s Church Function Centre; no flowers by request, but donations in lieu should be directed to The Salvation Army.)’