The price of a life? Don’t tell me, at all costs

Many years ago, when I still entertained thoughts of completing my law degree, a law tutor made one of those simple but profound points that seems even more profound because you are hearing it for the first time.

He said that speed limits were an exercise in compromise between different social goals. We knew that at higher speeds more people would die, but as a society we had decided that convenience, or economic benefit, was worth those deaths.

Illustration by Jim PavlidisCredit:

With time, most of us let go of these thoughts, let them seep into life’s background. That is a mistake. Very often, in society, such compromises are reached; and then, over time, the original sacrifice is forgotten, the new standard becomes a norm, and soon we are ramping up the costs without even noticing.

So we are shocked when someone draws our attention back to the fact an equation does, in fact, exist.

Last week, Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “No one will allow us to starve two million people, even though that might be just and moral until they return the hostages”. On Saturday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong joined others in condemning this argument, saying there was no justification for a war crime.

The bleak fact is that, really, most of us know this has been the equation all along. The bleaker fact is that, for most of us, it is only when we hear such equations uttered that we allow ourselves to perceive their cold horror. Which must lead us to the confronting question: is it the equation itself we are repelled by, or the fact someone was impolite enough to express it?

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned for comments on starving people in Gaza.Credit: AP

Thirty years ago, Madeleine Albright, then American ambassador to the United Nations, was asked about UN sanctions on Iraq: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s answer: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” (The “sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice”, said novelist Arundhati Roy.)

Years afterwards, Albright conceded her comments were “totally stupid”. But in that same apparently regretful interview she was asked what precisely her apologies were for: “Were they because the statement was callous or factually incorrect or revealed something about the realities of foreign policy that you didn’t want to reveal?” Her answer to that was muddy.

It is true that articulating such equations can risk over-simplifying matters. There are, in almost any questions governments consider, an infinite array of factors.

But as political language has continued to evolve away from clarity, the risk is greater on the other side: that we forget the fact that such calculations are being made. The articulation of what is being sacrificed can make us think about these decisions honestly.

NSW Premier Chris Minns is against further speed limits on our roads.Credit: Dean Sewell

The words of my old law tutor came back to me recently, when the NSW Premier, Chris Minns spoke out against proposals to impose 30 km/h speed limits on more roads in Sydney city. What was the compromise we were overlooking?

As it happens, we can put some figures on this. (As could Minns; these numbers come from a NSW government website.) The difference between 30 km/h and 50 km/h may not seem much. But if you are hit by a car going 50 km/h, you have just a 10 per cent chance of surviving. If you are hit by a car going 30 km/h, your chances rise to 90 per cent.

To me, the choice seems obvious. But you may have a different view. The number of pedestrians killed in Australia each year may not seem that high to you, around 150. But I have used that word, “around”, to point to the great difficulty in thinking clearly about such matters.

In the most recent year I found, the number was 163. Is the difference between 150 and 163 significant? Obviously, to those 13 people and their families, it is.

Numbers can sharpen matters, but they can also confuse us. In May, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Anna Cody, spoke of women being trapped in violent relationships by poverty. If the government raised JobSeeker in the budget – it didn’t – women would be able to leave, which would “stop homicides”. In order to make the calculation more specific, we might ask, “How many?” But then what number would persuade you: five? Ten? Fifty?

What about just one? Would saving one woman’s life be sufficient reason? Put like that, I find myself persuaded. But how do our minds make sense of that question when we put it next to the thousands of deaths we are witnessing overseas?

It seems to me that in both directions we tend to dodge the problem. When the numbers are comparatively small, we dismiss the problem: well, after all, some deaths are unavoidable, we might say. But when the numbers are inconceivably large, we do the same: these are “intractable” conflicts, “wicked problems”.

It may seem foolish, perhaps even offensive, to speak of speed limits, unemployment payments and war in the same breath. Of course there are differences. And at the same time, it is essential to remember there is no obvious reason we should treat one life, or one death, as different from another.

There are not always answers to the questions that governments face, at least not answers that can be agreed upon. Too often, though, this knowledge stops us from asking questions in the first place. It is too easy for journalists, in particular, to begin to feel such questions are naïve: that they should grow up and join politicians in accepting the world as it is.

In fact, it is that very acceptance that is naïve: the failure to ask whether the world has to be exactly this way, whether our assumptions are just that. If a politician believes that, yes, this is exactly the way the world should be, that X is worth Y, then they should be forced to say so. And if we are outraged, then we should be outraged at their decisions, not just the fact they have finally admitted their reasoning.

Sean Kelly is an author, a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

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