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