Sydney airport, 6.30 a.m. Having spent the past 22 hours on a plane, we are queueing with our bags to pass through quarantine, and I’m getting irritated. From the corner of my eye, I see a young woman approaching from the right flank, trying to nudge her trolley in front of mine. I resort to south London patois: ‘Go for it, luv! Get in there! Sharpen those elbows.’ She scowls at me, but gives way. The moral order of the queue has been restored, although I can feel her eyes boring into the back of my neck for the next 15 minutes.

••• 

I’ve always found the quarantine checks at Australian airports excessive. It’s hard to believe that my Marks & Spencer Eccles cakes really pose an existential threat to the snakes, sharks, crocodiles and killer spiders lying in wait beyond the airport doors. Eventually we get through. It’s a sunny winter morning.

••• 

I’m briefly back in Australia, after four years away, to speak at a series of functions organised by the Centre for Independent Studies, for whom I used to work. The CIS is a remarkable institution. Founded by Greg Lindsay in 1976, and initially run out of his garden shed, it has grown to be one of Australia’s most influential and highly-regarded think tanks. Yet it runs on the smell of an oily rag, for Greg refuses to accept government funding, not even research grants. He believes — rightly — that state patronage would compromise the organisation’s independence.

••• 

This principled stand means Greg spends most of his time building membership and soliciting donations from individuals, businesses and foundations which share his classical liberal beliefs in free speech and free markets. Critics on the left find this reliance on private money suspicious, but the CIS bows to nobody. If you like what the Centre stands for and want to support it, Greg will happily accept your money. But if you try to buy influence, he’ll show you the door. Greg is one of the most principled people I have ever met.

••• 

Moral principles are what I’ve come to Australia to talk about — specifically, the morality of the welfare state. People say the welfare state is a moral system because it helps the least fortunate, and that’s true. But there is a second moral principle which should also inform our thinking about welfare, and that is the principle of fairness. It is fair, for example, to insist that people who work should be better off than those on benefits, and that a claimant who is capable of working should be kept as busy as someone in a job. It is also fair that people who have worked and paid taxes for many years should be treated more generously if they lose their job than people with weak employment records. And that people who contribute to their own problems — rendering themselves unemployable as a result of drug dependency, for example — should not be treated in the same way as those who require help through no fault of their own.

••• 

In the land of the ‘fair go’, you would  think commentators would be alert  to this fairness principle, but many on  the left seem blind to it. They say we  must not draw distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, but they’re wrong. A fair and ethical welfare state must offer help to all who need it,  but this doesn’t mean all applicants should be treated the same.

••• 

I  try to defend this position on the ABC’s digital TV program, The Drum. Afterwards, one of the production staff accompanies me out of the building to find a taxi. ‘I’m a committed leftie,’ she tells me, ‘but I think you’re right about the drug addicts.’ We stand in Harris Street chatting as several cabs pass by. The left understands the fairness principle. It just needs reminding of what it means from time to time.

••• 

The next evening I’m debating social policy with David Hetherington, of the ‘progressive’ think tank Per Capita, and Rebecca Weisser from the Australian. The debate is in a city centre pub and draws a crowd of 50 or 60, packed into an upstairs room. During the Q&A, someone asks if we would support paying welfare benefits to writers and artists while they produce their work. It’s an astoundingly elitist proposition. The plebs should not only work, cleaning toilets or stacking shelves on the night shift, but they should also pay taxes so more creative, sensitive types can find their Muse. I tell her that if her book or painting is any good, people will buy it. If nobody’s interested, it’s probably a sign she should find a different line of work. My reply prompts the biggest cheer of the evening.

••• 

Leaving the pub, we’re offered a lift home by a man with a Porsche. Rebecca and my wife crawl into the back, and I stretch my legs up front as we cruise north over the Harbour Bridge. I’ve never been in a Porsche before. It’s another confirmation of my sense that Australia makes possible things that never seem to arise when living in the UK. I’ve seen Australia play (and thump) England at the MCG, for example, but I’ve never been to Lords. I saw Agassi play Sampras at the Aussie Open, but have never been to Wimbledon. I’ve been deafened at the Grand Prix in Albert Park, but have never been to Silverstone. My wife unfolds herself from the back of the Porsche. ‘What an uncomfortable, noisy car! Why would anyone want one of those?’ Another fantasy crashes and burns. Looks like I’m stuck with the Ford.

••• 

After a week of Aussie steaks and seafood, I catch sight of my profile in the bathroom mirror and resolve to go for a jog next morning around the Botanical Gardens. But come the morning, I am seduced by the aroma of coffee from  a nearby cafe. Sitting in the sun, sipping a macchiato, I am reminded that nobody in England makes coffee as good as this. Australia, it’s been great to see you again.