Last week opinion was divided on public funding for smokers wanting to give up. Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced that the Federal Government would include nicotine patches in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This would dramatically cut the price of the treatment from $160 to $5 each month.
Some thought that smokers should take responsibility for their habit and pay the full cost of giving up. Others argued that the government would save billions of dollars in health care costs.
Those who would deny smokers this substantial assistance miss the point of society, which presupposes that the strong will help the weak and everybody will be better off.
We do not condemn people for decisions made in the past, especially when new understanding transforms a previously defensible course of action into a diabolical mistake. ‘It relaxes me’ becomes ‘It kills me’.
We take collective responsibility for society’s problems, which are often a consequence of past mistakes.
This principle is relevant to many areas of public policy. Many decades ago, farmers and agricultural corporations commited to water-intensive crops such as cotton and rice. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was profitable, and sustained many regional communities.
But climate science eventually taught us that large-scale investment in rice and cotton has catastrophic consequences for our rivers. Current floods notwithstanding, it hastens desertification. When the government talks of buying back water allocations and assisting the communities whose economies depend upon these industries, we all pay. That’s the way it should be. If they don't receive assistance from taxpayers, they will struggle.
Bad personal decisions force many people into poverty. That’s where they stay until their problems are solved by constructive action at the public level. The Federal Government is to be congratulated on the nicotine patch study. But it must keep its resolve to introduce measures to combat gambling, in the face of objections from vested interests and the new state government in Victoria. There is a temptation to engage in political spin – to do nothing beyond the cosmetic – or to manage rather than solve a problem.
As St Vincent de Paul Society National CEO John Falzon says in a forthcoming essay for Eureka Street, our collective problems need to be resolved rather than managed, and it’s actually simpler that way. He quotes from Dorothy Day’s associate Peter Maurin, who urges those with responsibility to tackle the present for the sake of