Social conservatism and limited government

There is a school of thought that says the Abbott government failed to achieve economic reform because of Tony Abbott’s social conservatism.

I discuss this subject in an article in this week’s Spectator Australia, and suggest Abbott’s political demise may in fact make it harder to achieve economic reform as the Left seems to have acquired a right of veto over any Prime Minister who dissents from their version of social and economic progressivism.

I would like to add an extra point. Those who describe their beliefs as economically dry and socially wet tend to think that social conservatism is antithetical to economic liberalism and a limited government agenda. I beg to differ with this trendy idea.

In the UK, the 500,000 most troubled families cost British taxpayers more than £30 billion — £75,000 ($147,000) per family per year in benefits and other services spanning areas including child protection, health, welfare, and justice.

There is no reason to think the situation is different in Australia. The 2015 Review of Australia’s Welfare System drew attention not only to the cost of welfare dependence to the Budget, but also to how it was linked to intergenerational family dysfunction and associated social problems.

‘Troubled families’ is a euphemism for the dysfunctional underclass of welfare-dependent households — in which problems such as drug abuse and single-motherhood are rife.

What this suggests is that the social revolution of the 1960s, and the associated liberalisation of social attitudes towards the family breakdown and drugs, have become a driver of bigger government.

The so-called moral issues social conservatives prioritise — traditional marriage and the war on drugs — are actually policy issues highly relevant to addressing the social chaos that costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year.

Rather than complain about the old-fashioned social values of conservative throwbacks, trendies might instead ponder the ways that being economically dry and socially wet can be self-defeating, given the links between social permissiveness and growth in the size of government.