Don’t like the lockout laws? Tough luck

Before we hysterically jump on the nanny state bandwagon, remember that governments are there to legislate on matters where an individual’s behaviour adversely affects others. That keeps us all safe.

Images of police at the scene of ugly drunkeness and booze-fuelled violence in and around Kings Cross and Sydney CBD early Sunday morning.

Over-regulated, coddled and scolded: we are treated like babies and the government acts as our wet nurse.

Nanny state? Sure thing. Compared to other similarly advanced nations, we take the cake. We can barely breathe without a regulation telling how much air we are entitled to suck in and expel.

Incoming Minister for Trade and Investment Steve Ciobo spoke on Monday night’s Q&A on ABC television about the ham-fisted way governments take away adult free will and choice. It really gets up people’s noses when the state inserts itself into spaces that really are the realm of private citizens.

In a pure and simple world, we should have the right to choose, for example, whether or not we wear a bike helmet. But we would also wear the consequence if we don’t, and don’t go running to our nanny — the government — to cover our medical bills when things go awry.

This is how rights and responsibilities, choice and consequences work.

Before we get all hysterical and jump on the nanny state bandwagon, we should ponder which pools governments should and should not be allowed to paddle in.

Surely, at the basest of levels, the governments should legislate on matters of public health, where an individual’s behaviour adversely affects others. That keeps us all safer.

It is vital to protect those not given a choice — the innocents.

Governments should be able to dictate where people can smoke in public spaces, for example, but not private homes.

If booze-fuelled violence has been shown to be broadly affecting those who are not sozzled or similarly violent, then I say we need help in preventing it and managing it to protect the blameless.

Those who bleat about the nanny state need to recalibrate their radars: The changes finally given the nod on the hours in which we can be served booze are good for all of us, even if we don’t like it much.

They are absolutely issues of social concern that the government should be involved in.

The consequence of lockout laws and any changes to when alcohol can be served to patrons affect far more than a single drinker — the consequence of serving booze at 2.30am ripples out, sometimes causing actual harm but also causing others to make different choices to keep themselves safe.

Quite apart from the fact that no person is lining up at the bar, asking for their first or second glass of Verdelho or shandy at 2am and that people already under the influence should not be served, this is a matter of public health — and we are all paying the price.

The reason for the resistance to the wave of decisions as governments walk arm-in-arm towards reducing our club and pub operating hours in the pre-dawn is that we don’t like change.

But industries adapt. New industries pop up in the spaces old ones leave.

And this is the first generation of adults to be able to start their nights out on the town at midnight, having pre-loaded at home.

It is the first generation for whom having someone in your group go to hospital because they drank too much and got hurt or dreadfully sick is so common it is barely worthy of a social media post. It is really that common.

The toddler-style upset over government moves to rein in the way booze can be imbibed in the early hours in public spaces is because we think it is our right.

If we were truly mature about the rules and regulations around alcohol, we would cop consequences for our own actions as well as holler about choices and liberties.

And because the effects of too much drinking at pubs and clubs are not just felt by the drinker, we have to accept it as a collective headache, a collective sickness.

Governments are right to act with legislation to help keep us all safer.

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Originally published as Don’t like the lockout laws? Tough luck