Kenelm Tonkin
Kenelm Tonkin is an optimist.
Government.
It’s the exhaust fume in your nostrils, the pothole in your soul, the unflushable turd of modern existence.
Take my little jaunt up the freeway to Port Pothole, South Australia – a 3.5-hour hymn to freedom, right? Me, my car, the open road and a fleeting dream of outrunning the nanny state.
Fat chance!
The government’s there, lurking like a tax collector at a yard sale, slapping me with speed limits that drop faster than a politician’s approval rating. 110 km/h? Nah, 100. Wait, 90. Oops, 80. Any minute now, they’ll require me to push the damn car at 60 km/h while singing “Kumbaya” to stay alert.
Signs zip by – Stop, Revive, Survive – because apparently I’m too stupid to know I’m not dead yet. Every 20 kilometres, another government sermon: don’t litter, watch the rail crossing, hail the award-winning town (Best Paternalistic Overreach, 2025?). I’m drowning in bureaucratic benevolence and I haven’t even hit second gear.
The real town’s a hollow shell, puffed up by NGO handouts, medical clinics,
and ‘free’ legal advice – all courtesy of your wallet.
I crank some Bach on the radio, hoping for a shred of dignity, but five minutes in – bam! – the government’s ABC News barges through like a drunk uncle at Christmas lunch. Top story? Some departmental equity program handing out gold stars to clipboard warriors. Meanwhile, the PLA navy’s lobbing live rounds in the Tasman Sea, and that’s buried at #7 – like national defence is just a footnote to Diversity Day. I thought governments were supposed to shield us from foreign threats, not bore us to death with their HR triumphs. Guess I missed the memo.
Rolling into town, I’m greeted by a proud sign: This road brought to you by Federal and State Government synergy – a potholed monument to teamwork nobody asked for. At the intersection, the local council building squats like a Soviet architect’s fever dream, complete with a sloping lawn and a fountain gurgling away in a semi-arid wasteland. Genius.
I stop at the servo, where every litre of petrol comes with a 50-cent government tithe – $24 vanishes into the ether, probably to fund another fountain. I grab a drink and it’s plastered with nutrition labels so detailed I could teach a chemistry class. Less than 0.3 grams of fat! Three-digit codes for every ingredient! Thank you, Big Brother, for saving me from the perils of a rogue Sprite.
Parking’s a Kafkaesque riddle: not here, but one metre over? Fine. I pause to admire a colonial-era sandstone house, solid-as-a-rock and built-to-last without all the modern-day government building codes – vacant, for sale, stamped Department of Agriculture. Government’s pulling out, leaving behind a husk of history I’d love to buy if I weren’t broke from their taxes. I chat up a local, fishing for signs of life in this joint. “Prosperous?” I ask. “Hell no,” he spits. “Ferals run wild and the cops do squat.”
Right on cue, two government-issue bike cops pedal by – overstaffed, they admit, with four to six more badges than this speck of a town needs. Overstaffed? In a police force? I’d laugh, but my jaw’s already on the floor.
Government’s fingerprints are everywhere. Seven NDIS providers scream in purple neon (one in five Aussies need disability support, don’t you know), law firms multiply like roaches to untangle the government’s legal kudzu and a taxpayer-underwritten doctor’s clinic looms as a shrine to freebies.
At the intersection, the local council building squats like a Soviet architect’s fever dream.
Private enterprise? Good luck. I google the Chinese takeaway – insolvent, naturally. The pub’s still kicking, but it’s a temple to government meddling: poker machines throttled by regulations, licenses framed like diplomas for good behaviour. A grizzled barfly unloads on Albo and Dutton – “piss poor, the lot of them” – and I can’t disagree.
Sure, there’s a Woolworths, a Coles, a few cafes clinging to life, a hairdresser snipping away. But they’re the tomato sauce on a government-stuffed chunky roo pie. The real town’s a hollow shell, puffed up by NGO handouts, medical clinics, and “free” legal advice – all courtesy of your wallet. Just outside, the botanic garden beckons with its shiny visitors’ centre and wattle seed ice cream. Who paid for it? You, sucker – or rather, proudly brought to you by the government, the only growth industry left in this over-regulated wasteland.
Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming two centuries back: “The government’s arm stretches ever outward, smothering the people beneath its soft, suffocating grip” – and here we are, choking on lemon myrtle and goodwill, one petty sign at a time, in Port Pothole, South Australia.
Great people suffocated by government.
This article was originally published by Liberty Itch.
