A caring state is no nanny, it is doing its job

Too often, the "NANNY STATE" argument is used as an excuse to legalize GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ADDICTION.

A caring state is no nanny, it is doing its job
Chris Middendorp


Those who want the market to rule often put profit before welfare.

British politician Iain Macleod is said to have coined the term ''nanny state'' in 1965. It's no surprise that he was a Tory; people from the conservative side of politics never hesitate in using the term as a derisive label for when government legislates in the interests of its citizens.

The recent debate about whether the gambling industry should be subjected to reform measures provides a classic example. People in favour of stronger regulation - those who work in the community and health sectors, and those concerned by the alarming rate of problem gambling in Australia - accept that government intervention is a necessary step.

Those on the political right generally do not. For them it's nanny state nonsense. Tony Abbott's position encapsulates it best. ''Gambling is ultimately a personal and family issue … thinking we can solve problem gambling by addressing the wider world, I think, is a fundamental mistake.''


It should be noted in passing that although many in the Labor Party favour pokies reform, the increasingly mercenary government itself has done little to curb problem gambling. The ALP even owns several pokies venues.

People who holler nanny state most stridently tend to speak for the alcohol, tobacco and gambling industries, gun association members, media proprietors and property developers, whose arguments appear to be grounded in self-interest.

Bodies that aggressively advocate free market economics are most vocal in their criticism of what they consider to be government meddling.

Tim Wilson, director of the Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs, professes ''deep reservations about nanny state measures''. For the institute, reform of gambling regulations are ''based on the assumption that government knows best''. Naturally, such reform will ''discourage individual responsibility''. They take the same position against the government's plain cigarette packaging laws.

This glib argument is a distraction. The central point is that human behaviour is often problematic. We cannot rely upon individuals to behave responsibly. If we could, we wouldn't need most of our road rules. The behaviour of drivers is bad enough with laws; can you imagine the chaos without them?

If people always behaved like responsible adults, we wouldn't need laws to protect children from abuse or laws to stop cigarettes being sold to nine-year-olds. We wouldn't need building codes and prohibitions on the use of asbestos. We wouldn't need laws to prohibit the mistreatment of animals or the dumping of waste into our rivers.

It's not as if the free market is going to protect the community from child pornography, for instance. There's clearly a big market for paedophilic material. And since the free market is driven by profit, not ethics or social justice, it offers no protection from predators.

Government doesn't necessarily ''know best'', but government can play a beneficial role in preventing people from making poor choices. People aren't always capable of doing this without help.

In a liberal democracy, our governments (exasperating though they might sometimes be) exist specifically to represent the best interests of citizens. And, unlike corporations, the best feature of governments is that if we don't like how they operate, we can vote them out.

Whenever the accusation of nanny state is made, people are effectively mocking a venerable tradition of beneficial state involvement, a journey that began with habeas corpus (which provided citizens with protection from unlawful imprisonment).

Those who are quickest to holler ''nanny state'' are generally people who believe that government should play a minimal role in human affairs, with business and the free market setting the agenda. This is the familiar neo-liberal or economic rationalist position: that the market must be the supreme arbiter of all human activity.

But markets are brutal, amoral places. When the sole aim is profit, values and morality are cheerfully bypassed. Thankfully, we live in a civilised society that was painfully, incrementally built over centuries. Unlike so many countries today, we have the benefit of the rule of law, a venerable corpus of jurisprudence that upholds people's rights, protecting us from arbitrary arrest, slavery and exploitation.

I'm sure many of us are glad there's a minimum drinking age and a maximum speed limit, that motorbike helmets are mandatory and that there are penalties for cruelty to animals. Most of us are thankful for federally funded education campaigns alerting us to the risks of smoking and exposure to the sun's rays.

If the term nanny state is useful at all, it might be better employed to describe government mollycoddling of businesses and privileged individuals. Wealthy Australians are able to evade billions of dollars in tax through tax breaks that allow them to grow wealthier without effort. Why? Elite private schools are given government funding. Why? In these areas nanna government certainly relishes spoiling her favourite grandchildren.

Chris Middendorp is a Melbourne community worker.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-caring-state-is-no-nanny-it-is-doing-its-job-20120312-1uwdb.html#ixzz1ozwtrePr