In Australia, we enjoy a considerable amount of personal freedoms and liberties, despite not having a bill of rights or any similarly concrete document. Our freedoms are embodied legally through the law set by courts - for example, the freedom of political advertisement (and speech) was declared “implicit” in the Constitution by the Political Ad Ban case of 1992 and thus it is now a legal right, despite not being codified by any parliament. This system works in this highly democratic, wealthy, first world nation, but as with all things, there are problems.
Australia, slowly but surely, is devolving into a nanny state. Without completely stripping people of personal liberties, the state is beginning to compromise them. This has been going on for a long time in the form of taxation of alcohol and cigarettes - the idea that punishing people for the consumption of things that are deemed bad for society (read: the state) are to be discouraged. Luckily, Australia has enough mindful people in positions of power that some of our more drastic nanny state legislation never was able to be passed. For example, cigarette packets are still branded and the government recently backtracked on pokie reforms suggest by independent MP Andrew Wilkie. It is these reforms that inspired me to write this little rant in the first place.
Some will say that a government’s job is to provide the best possible society for the individual to enjoy. This seems a noble enough purpose for a government to have and by all accounts the Australian government don’t do a horrible job. It is not the task of the government to dictate how the individual within society may or may not spend their time, money or any other commodity they own. Pokie reform legislation attempted to dictate how much money people could or could not put through a pokie machine. That is firmly outside the reach of the government. People should not be told by the state what is and isn’t an acceptable sum of money to be put through. It may seem initially noble - the law will help problem gamblers, it will help society by minimising the effects of problem gambling and so on and so forth - but that is not the state’s job. The individual, if they have a problem, should take responsibility for themselves and seek help, or at the very least be offered help by another, non-statist group of individuals. The job of the government is not to micromanage it’s citizens by telling them what is and isn’t acceptable amounts of money to be betting.
The state has become a crutch for the individual’s sense of responsibility and magnifier of their sense of entitlement. When something is going wrong in this country, people turn to the media and cry foul on the part of the government. Often times, it will be a government issue - if an arterial road is in a state of severe disrepair, that is a problem that the government must deal with. If a person is a problem gambler, that is not the fault of the government. If a person smokes, it is not the problem of the state. If a person drinks, that in and of itself is not a problem of society and should not be treated as one. If someone decides to use drugs that does not directly affect society in such a way that they deserve to spend ten years in jail. Over governance - nannying - has led to a nation of over-entitled and lazy individuals who firmly believe that they can have their cake and eat it, with the state doing it’s best to silently implement this cake eating policy while sliding away our personal liberties. This, unfortunately, should never be the case, but is creeping upon us slowly, while our backs are turned and we face the bright lights and colours of modern societal distractions.
