There are two John Howard press conferences - of the hundreds I went to while he was prime minister - which I'll never forget.

The first, in early 2001, was the one at which he abolished the indexation of petrol excise - an unexpected and audacious move, and one so utterly surprising to me that I can still recall my heart actually beating faster.

I know. You don't need to tell me. The fact that my circulatory system actually responds to federal excise rates is worrying, much as I might justify it to you by arguing that Howard's decision that day has since cost the federal budget tens of billions of dollars in revenue foregone, even though motorists remain cranky, and Howard's inspired, mad, lavish gesture of self-preservation is long-forgotten.

The day Howard announced the federal intervention is the other one that sticks with me. I remember getting into the ground-floor lift near the PM's office and travelling back up to the press gallery on the second floor, furiously unable to fathom what I had just seen - a conservative prime minister, and leader of a party historically committed to small government, sending in the army to aid in the most profound and intimate invasion of individuals' lives imaginable.

Mandatory sexual health checks. Mandatory income management. In typically jut-jawed, unapologetic Howard style, he even called it "The Intervention".

What was this? I can remember gazing at the lift walls and wondering. Was this the rabbit that Howard loyalists had been hoping their ageing hero would pull out of his hat to arrest what seemed to be an inevitable slide out of government? Was it a hairy-chested but compelling new way of approaching Indigenous disadvantage (Australia's deepest shame for so long that both parties had come to a sort of rough consensus on it; keep shovelling in the money, hoping things would get better)? Was it the greatest political wedge of all time?

It certainly changed things. Neither major party, now, has any difficulty at all with the notion that a Federal Government can reach directly into the life of an individual and twiddle with the intimate process through which that individual decides whether to spend this particular $10 on beer, or food for his kids.

The Gillard Government yesterday announced that it would extend the intervention's income management provisions to cover school attendance, withholding welfare payments from the parents of chronic truants. Tony Abbott's Opposition, meanwhile, wants to extend the principles of income management more broadly across other welfare recipients. In a political system where points of consensus are presently hard to find, this area is an unlikely oasis of agreement.

But there are exceptions.

Tony Abbott, for instance, wants the Government to be more involved in the household expenditure of welfare recipients, but also wants it to keep its grubby mitts away from anyone pouring their pay down the pokies.

How can one party support such intimate interventionism on one hand, and yet - on the other - preserve its customary suspicion of the nanny state? How do the rights and freedoms of a problem gambler outweigh the rights and freedoms of an alcoholic person on the dole?

I suppose the argument is that in the case of welfare recipients, the money comes from the public purse and the Government is within its rights to stop any given beneficiary from spending it on booze instead of school lunches, whereas a low-paid worker starving his progeny in order to tangle at length with the Black Rhino is simply exercising his hard-won individual freedom to be an arse.

It seems hard on the kids, though, who get just as hungry in either case and could scarcely be expected to rationalise things along the lines of the public/private dichotomy.

In part, the Coalition's opposition to gaming machine restrictions is a politically-driven one; why step between a struggling adversary and a well-funded, loud, powerful lobby group determined to finish them off for you? And in part, it's a gut response to a government whose term in office has seen an unmistakable advance of the nanny state.

Under first Rudd and then Gillard, this Labor Government has increased taxes on bogan drinks and undertaken an internationally novel plan to remove all branding from cigarette packets. These crusades were driven by Health Minister Nicola Roxon, a woman of such saintly immunity to vices of any kind that the very glimpse of her face on television inspires, in your writer, the involuntary and mutinous craving for a gin and tonic.

Ms Roxon has not introduced fat taxes yet, but you can almost feel her wanting to; in the meantime, she has satisfied herself with an ad campaign entitled "Don't Stop It, Swap It!" - a heroically hopeful exercise in which fatties are encouraged to comfort-eat carrot sticks instead of French fries.

The Rudd Government wanted - but got horribly mixed up in the attempt - to censor the internet. The Gillard Government wants to stop people gambling. Labor has no problem with interventionism. But for the Opposition, it depends on who you're talking about.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.