THE choice facing us on   July 2 is a simple and straightforward one. Do you want Australia to be an Asian-style nation or a Euro-style one? By Asian, I mean, a forward-looking, dynamic nation with great prospects for the future, a growing economy, and the opportunity for exciting and innovative career prospects.
And by European I mean the exact opposite: a backward-looking, ossified nation living off fading memories of a glorious past as it slips into a twilight zone of mass youth unemployment, bloated bureaucracies, gargantuan debt and dead-end economies. 
Take your pick. They are the only two options on the table. And by the way, there's no turning back. This time it's for real. There's no changing our minds like we did with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and going "Oops we made a terrible mistake". This time we really are determining what Australia will look like for our kids and their kids.
That may sound melodramatic, but it's not. Climate change enthusiasts used to warn about the "tipping point"; that moment at which the sheer weight of numbers tips you over the edge and there's no going back. The same theory applies to our national prosperity. We are at that economic tipping point where half the nation is earning all the money that pays for the other half.
So, in essence, Australia is now poised at that very point where either we can have an Asian-style future, where the majority work hard to support the small minority who for whatever reason can't fend for themselves, or we have a Euro-style future where a growing army of layabouts and bureaucrats are supported by an ever-dwindling minority of wealth-generators. Under this system (check out Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium etc) governments keep pumping more benefits to an ever-growing welfare-dependent public who keep demanding more entitlements from them.
There's only one catch - the price for this "magic pudding" national lifestyle is there for all to see: chronic debt and mass youth employment. In such nations, including Portugal and Croatia, youth unemployment sits anywhere between 24.8 per cent and 48.9 per cent. Many of these kids will never have a real, productive job. (In Australia, youth unemployment reached a high of 20.22 per cent in 1992 and a record low of 7.61 per cent in 2008. It currently sits at 12.2 per cent.) In Asia, economies are growing, jobs and opportunities increasing, and an expanding middle class who had limited opportunities in the past now enjoy wealthier lifestyles, sending their kids to universities and travelling the world. Meanwhile, over in Europe more and more families rely on faux jobs like tourism or public services to replace the great enterprises and industries of the past that have disappeared under Brussels-led socialism and welfare. The cost of this failed socialist experiment is an entire generation of bored kids sitting on the sidewalk twiddling their thumbs.
In 1787, Alexander Tyler, a history professor at The University of Edinburgh wrote about the collapse of the Athenian Republic 2000 years earlier: "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits." The Coalition is trying to take us down the Asian path of innovation, fewer handouts, an economy where the majority of people actually work for a living. Social Services Minister Christian Porter has reduced the number of people claiming the Disability Support Scheme, for the first time since 2010, to under 800,000. Finally we are heading in the right direction.
Yet Labor's Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen, with every breath they utter, promise to increase taxes by hundreds of millions with no serious cuts to spending. To vote Labor or Greens on   July 2 is to condemn Australians to a Euro-nightmare of ever-increasing taxes, more and more bureaucracy and rocketing welfare.
Non merci.
Twitter @rowandean