As we approach another Federal election, which I believe to be my 25th as a voter, this proud Old Bushy finds himself asking what it is to be Australian.

Was the Australia of my youth a better more egalitarian place than what we have today?

Has my 70 years of voting made my Australia a better place?

Is Australia a more ‘open-minded’ democracy than it was 70 years ago?

Is our democracy serving the Australian people better than it was or have we gotten slovenly in seeking better outcomes?

Were we more united and focused on our capacity to achieve a better future than the ‘Polly wants a biscuit now’ carping of many groups in our now disparate community? Groups who believe that government should provide for all of their needs.

Answering those questions takes me to a perusal of recent history. Certainly, in the period from the end of the second world war we transitioned from an agrarian British outpost to a modern industrial nation able to provide for most of its own needs. We built the Snowy Scheme and then with the abundant power and water this provided, we vastly increased agricultural production and built cars, trucks, and tractors and developed many new ways of improving efficiency in our manufacturing industries. We were industrious, creative, and successful. No longer were we reliant on Mother England for our needs.

By the time we completed the Snowy Scheme, homegrown engineering companies were among the world’s best and there was little in the way of nation-building infrastructure we were not capable of designing and building.

But we didn’t. We allowed most of that expertise to go overseas and build dams, roads and bridges in Asia. Meanwhile, here in Australia, the Upper Clarence Scheme, The Welcome Reef Dam on the Shoalhaven River, the Chowilla Dam on the Murray River, and the Bradfield Scheme in central Queensland have never been built. This failure to provide stored water for our growing population will hurt us badly in the next inevitable drought. While our population has grown by over eleven million people since we built our last dam which was Wivenhoe on the Brisbane River, no provision for stored water has been constructed to provide the annual needs of 1,220,000 megalitres of water required for this population growth.

We are facing severe water shortages in the next drought and the infrastructure required to provide it will take years to complete. So, what went wrong? How did the wheels fall off the Aussie construction truck?

Was it compulsory unionism?

Was it the loss of visionary leaders like Chifley?

Was it a failure of Unions to work collaboratively with government?

Was it cost increases as a result of the government selling off basic inputs like power, gas, and water?

Was it inter-state rivalry?

To this Old Bushy who lived through all of this, I believe it was all of the above and the very sad result is that we now import goods made from our raw materials, when they should be processed here. As an example, given our vast reserves of iron ore and coking coal, why is Australia not the biggest exporter of finished steel products in the world?

Given vision and enterprise we could be.

Happily, there are areas where Australia does lead the world. Our primary producers, that is our farmers, are world leaders in the efficient production of basic food crops. We are also leaders in plant breeding and agricultural machinery design to plant, care for and harvest our food crops. Australian farmers not only adequately feed our 26 million people, we export sufficient to feed another 40-odd million people offshore.

So, why can’t we proactively use our abundant resources and advantage of climate and habitat to lead the world in so many other obvious areas?

To this Old Bushy who is a third-generation ‘tiller of the soil’ and nurturer of the environment, the answer is obvious.

The government is never the answer, much less the seed of successful enterprise. Successful enterprises always commence their life from the ground of personal initiative. They gestate in the gut of digesting ideas and never are the result of political thought.

Bluntly, nothing happens from government down, it only flourishes from the ground up and that is why the Australian economy and our previous inventiveness have died. It has been killed by environmental activism and government regulation.

The knock-about larrikin entrepreneur of my youth has been suffocated by overpaid bureaucrats that lack his intellect and determination.

The growth of the so-called Public Service has killed-off enterprise in my country.

Luckily, but not necessarily likely, the coming election could be our last chance to correct this and again make my country the egalitarian but prosperous and united country which I grew up in and I know it can be again.

Maybe my 26 vote will make a difference.

A Patriotic Old Bushy.