Page 324 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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As Tony Abbott said in his book Battlelines, conservatives are not against change but they do not change anything unless they are genuinely convinced that the new option is absolutely and definitely better than the current system.
Unintended consequences of well-meaning but poorly thought out policies must be avoided where possible. But as politicians, we need to be mindful that we are only human too. We are not necessarily the first people to try and solve the many concerns that human nature creates. One well-known political thinker I was pleased to come across during my studies was Frances Fukuyama. He asked the question, “Are we done yet?” Do we have enough laws? We set up a legislature to set some rules and parameters by which citizens can co-exist without overly impacting on each other’s freedom. After 25 years of the Legislative Assembly, are we done yet? Do we just increase the number of regulations, the dos and don’ts by which we are allowed to live? Does it really improve our lives?
I am suggesting not that we all go home, but that we do not fall into the trap of always believing that more is better. We have to continually ask ourselves the question: is a law really necessary? Will it achieve the intended outcomes? Are there unintended consequences? Is the outcome we are trying to achieve more important than the freedom we are curtailing?
Fukuyama explains that the nature of government, if not constrained, is, over a period of time, for it to continue to increase its influence in areas of interest, further and further into our daily lives, like an oozing behemoth with tentacles now reaching into the homes and bedrooms of its citizens.
The government is no better and more capable of deciding what is best for people’s families and lives than the people are themselves. What makes those in the legislature better or smarter than those on the street? My premise is that we have a preference on our side for fewer laws because more laws equal a curtailment of human freedom. More laws mean less freedom.
Some on the other side of this place believe that more laws make people good. It simply is not true. Humans have a certain nature, and it is best harnessed for social good by the incentive of self-improvement, on the whole—a natural human trait—rather than by curtailment. I am sure we can all imagine that if we tell someone they cannot do X, human nature dictates that they are very likely to react in a resentful manner to being nannied and controlled. However, if they are told that X will give them more opportunity, they are far more likely to jump at the opportunity—that is, one to benefit them or their families. This is the carrot rather than the stick. It is called harnessing human nature rather than squashing it, and it is one of the fundamental differences between this side of the chamber and the other.
On this side of the chamber, we have a philosophical preference for harnessing the drive and motivation that people naturally hold for their lives and those of their families. On the other side, perhaps the temptation is to legislate people into submitting to their will. One of the key problems with a very long term Labor government is the natural tendency to want to keep rolling out laws to prove that they
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