A Senate Enquiry has been begun into laws forbidding behaviour that might better be left to individual responsibility. It will cover such things as marijuana use, cycle helmets, vaccination and gun laws. On such issues there is a kaleidoscope of different opinions fiercely contested and often changing.
Cycle helmets are a case in point. A cyclist since my youth, I was intensely annoyed when campaigners first tried to enforce cycle helmets. I loved the wind rushing through my hair, and believed my safety could be left to my responsibility.
Others might have wondered if I overestimated my sense of responsibility. It was hardly compatible with the practice of never applying the brakes when going down hills on country roads, or with the view that traffic rules applied only to cars, and that lights at night were a mere design feature.
After helmets became compulsory I first wore them reluctantly. But I soon came to look on those who went helmet-less with the censorious envy reserved for those who enjoy illicit pleasures of which we have reluctantly deprived ourselves.
I became committed to cycle helmets after being called to minister to a family in a hospital emergency ward whose son's face was totally unmarked, but who had suffered catastrophic brain damage. By then I had also ceased to see myself as indestructible.
My history suggests that we are more likely to feel the arthritic grip of the nanny state when we are prevented from doing what we want to do, and also that our resistance to law can run together with an inflated estimate of our own sense of responsibility. A regulatory framework that assumes we can all be trusted to act as responsible, ethical adults would be based on a false presupposition. Moreover, even the highest sense of responsibility will not always protect us from the consequences of our decisions.
Those who claim unfettered individual freedom will argue they are content to accept any consequences of their action, and should not be hindered. But in practice they will often not bear the consequences. If I am seriously brain-damaged as a result of not wearing a helmet, it will not be I who suffer grief. It will be my family and friends. My workplace will suffer the loss caused by my breaking of commitments.
Nor will I carry the costs of keeping me alive, sustaining, sheltering and supporting me. The state will underwrite these services. I may resent the impositions of the Nanny State, but I can rely on the ministrations of the Nurse State in my need.
No matter how strong our libertarian bent, most of us would be outraged if people who did not wear helmets were denied entrance to hospitals, received no medical care and were deprived of income support after an accident. We would insist such care be available regardless of their behaviour.
This suggests it is illusory to see human beings as self-reliant, self-made individuals who shape their own lives and so should be free to act as they please. We are shaped by our relationships and interdependence with other people. Even the freedom we enjoy depends on our relationships.
We did not invent our bicycles, build our roads, schools or hospitals, make contracts with other responsible adults for our own birth and education; we receive all these things as gifts. The way in which we act then should be appropriately regulated to secure the common good. And that good, of course, includes our personal freedom in the context of our relationships with others in society.
That means in practice that restrictions on personal freedom need to be shown to serve the common good. So enquiries that consider particular restrictions are worthwhile. They should consider the costs and the benefits in human terms to the individual and to society of restrictions.
In some cases, such as restriction on gun ownership and use, the case for tight regulation is close to self-evident. But here, as in other cases, the case for and against regulation must be based on evidence.
The most pressing questions about the Nanny State arise not out of the tension between individual desire and the good of society as a whole, but between the protection of individuals and the encouragement of social relationships.
Detailed regulation of the handling of food for example, has reduced death and illness. But some regulations have also limited the capacity of voluntary agencies to feed the poor, and the capacity of poor immigrant groups to share their food at school fetes and other social functions. They consequently lose the opportunity to make connections and to feel proud of what they can give back to society.
Individual freedom must be considered in its context of human relationships.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
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