Kevin Rudd's vision for the country is now starting to emerge. It's nothing if not ambitious. He has promised to change our health system, our education system, our industrial relations system and our tax system. Even our federal system and method of government is up for renovation.
However, there's one thing the Prime Minister won't be changing. The transformation of Australia into a nanny state will continue unabated. From what we've seen so far, Rudd is happy to accelerate that trend.
The issues that the Government now regulates and offers advice on range from the trivial to the significant. And it all adds up to the further erosion of individual autonomy and undermines the notion that we should be responsible for our own actions.
Last month an official Federal Government press release warned "grey nomads" travelling north during the winter of "the extra risk posed by the hotter and more humid climate when preparing and storing food". They were reminded they should have clean hands when preparing food.
Presumably a bureaucrat in the Department of Health and Ageing imagined that once they reached retirement age, they would forget the lessons of a lifetime. It's no wonder that citizens are sceptical of government, when ministers are reduced to issuing press releases urging people to wash their hands before dinner.
At the other end of the spectrum, government appears increasingly willing to intrude in areas in which just a few years ago we would have said it had no place. The Federal Government funds Family Relationship Centres that provide advice on personal and family matters. No doubt the centres meet a need in the community, but it's debatable whether this need should be fulfilled by government.
For one thing, government-funded and organised activities of this kind invariably crowd out privately funded voluntary activities. A more important objection is that advice on personal relationships is necessarily immensely personal. Any advice given either directly by the government or by an agency funded by it will inevitably be shaped according to a set of subjective value judgements.
By deciding which services it funds, there is enormous potential for government to impose its own assumptions and beliefs about personal behaviour. In many cases, counselling services might reflect community attitudes and standards. But there's a chance that services might on occasion reflect the views not of the community but of a government keen to impose its ideology.
Higher taxes on "alcopops" are just the latest instance of ministers imposing their opinion on the rest of the population. The Prime Minister did not justify the tax rise as an attempt to get more money. If he had, the public wouldn't have liked the decision but at least it would have understood the reasoning.
Instead Rudd said the tax increase was aimed at reducing teenage drinking. As so often happens with nanny state measures, the proposal was soon revealed to be arbitrary, contradictory and self-defeating.
Adults who enjoy ready-to-drink mixed spirits have been punished with higher taxes because of the actions of a small number of teenagers. And teenagers determined to get drunk may now turn to cheaper and more dangerous alternatives.
The Brumby Government is not immune from nanny-statism either. The proposal to prevent patrons from entering Melbourne's nightclubs after 2am follows a familiar pattern. The majority are inconvenienced because of the actions of a minority.
Of course the police are in favour of a 2am lockout. It makes their job easier. If the police had their choice, no doubt they'd prefer a lockout at midnight or even 10pm -- at the price of substantially reducing the amenity of the population.
At the moment there's a strange disconnect between Labor's rhetoric on economic and social policy. When they talk about business, ministers preach competition and deregulation. But when they talk about the rules that affect the way citizens live, the rhetoric changes.
We're facing a situation in the not-too-distant future when government will be more than just your nanny -- it will be your doctor, your marriage counsellor and your psychologist, too.
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