Say 'no' to the Nanny State, paid for by you, for your own good



This was published 7 years ago


By Paul Sheehan

"If you see anything unusual or suspicious, please notify staff."

I'd like to give Sydney Trains an award. For months, it has been broadcasting this paranoid message on loudspeakers, randomly, routinely, intrusively and pointlessly at railways stations throughout the rail system.



I appreciate that Sydney Trains means well, but this message is pollution. It achieves nothing. It intrudes on travellers. It is the bureaucratic mind at its most pedantic.

It is bad enough that Sydney Trains, along with successive NSW governments, already charge a stiff premium for its worst service, the crowded peak hour trains, which carry the double indignity of also penalising those who have to be at work by 8 or 9am, which is most workers.

So I'd like to award Sydney Trains a Disservice Award for the paranoid, pointless nonsense it is broadcasting all day, every day.

This should also qualify Sydney Trains for a Nanny Award, instigated by the enemy of burdensome bureaucracies, the Centre for Independent Studies. It has just announced the 2014 "Nannies" for the most passive-aggressive impositions by government bureaucracies or their surrogates.

The CIS trawled through the excesses of our burgeoning, over-regulating, micro-managing, unsustainable nanny state and pointed to the worst excesses of pointless government intervention, giving each a Nanny.

The NSW Roads and Maritime Services is awarded a Nanny for the numerous illuminated roadside signs its puts up – it is by far the biggest visual polluter in the state, far ahead of McDonald's. The most irritating of all these big brother messages are the large, illuminated signs that say: "Distracted drivers cause accidents".

Then stop distracting drivers! Stop polluting the highways with pointless little lectures. Spend the money on something useful, like better road signs, or cut the budget.


The Nanny for the most belligerent act by government (and its monopoly surrogate) is shared by the NSW and Victorian governments, along with support from the Taxi Council, which have banned smartphone apps that enable private drivers to offer passengers a lift and charge for the service. The most famous such app is Uber, and it has been shown to slash the cost of fares by around 50 per cent.

Apps like Uber would have a devastating effect on the monopoly rents charged by the state governments and the taxi industry by disrupting this highly regulated and dysfunctional industry. Deregulation! We can't have that. It might not be neat and lucrative for government. The mantra of Your Safety will always be the argument given for this monopoly, as if the mantra of Your Choice was immaterial.

A Nanny went to the Western Australian Opera, a state-subsided, state-sponsored company which cancelled a performance of Bizet's Carmen that was to have been held in a tobacco factory because it may have sent the wrong message. Given that the fictional Carmen worked in a tobacco factory, the original decision was an inspired idea. But WA Opera was concerned it might offend a major sponsor, the West Australian Health Promotion Foundation.

So it cancelled Bizet's Carmen at the tobacco factory.

The Health Promotion Foundation is a branch of state government operating under the brand, Healthway. It describes itself as "a health promotion foundation with a legislated obligation to promote good health and encourage healthy lifestyles [and] empowering individuals, groups and communities to be healthier."

What is it about bureaucracies and "empowering" people? The WA government, which has a serious budget problem, would do better by fulfilling its obligation to fiscal prudence and de-legislating and disempowering this cliche factory.

The West Australian government scored another Nanny, via the WA Supreme Court, for its ruling that people trying to give up smoking cannot use nicotine-free e-cigarettes because the state law prohibits the sale of any product that even looks like a cigarette. Rather than amend the law, the WA government banned e-cigarettes.

Another government agency, the Advertising Standards Board, won a Nanny for banning an ad that showed a man cavorting in a warehouse, standing on the front of a moving fork-lift truck, throwing a box to someone in a bear suit, and walking along parcels. Apparently this fictional parody was an affront to occupational health and safety standards and must not be seen by the public.

Not every Nanny went to a branch of government. A group behind a website called No Gender December called for an end to gender stereotypes and "gendered" presents at Christmas. The website is full of excruciatingly earnest judgemental jargon such: "Gendered marketing informs children's feeling about whether it's socially acceptable to show interest in a toy. Some take the 'knowledge' into the playground, where they quickly chastise any child who demonstrates an interest in the 'wrong' colour or toy for their gender."

This presumptive, patronising, poorly-written sanctimony, wrapped in the hopelessly dated, lazy, inarticulate "inverted commas" of academic irony, may be a highly marginal ideological lobby group but it deserved a Nanny based on the its presumption alone.

No Gender December is, no surprise, supported by the Greens, the champions of the nanny state, funded by you, for your own good.

As Helen Andrews of the CIS said, in announcing the 2014 Nannies, "The Nannies will highlight the year's most abysmal examples of trying to prevent, shield and badger us in the clear assumption that we are unable to, or should not be allowed to, make our own choices."

Hopefully, the Nannies will become a December tradition. Australia is a nation of nearly 16 million adults yet we allow our governments to treat us as if we are 23 million teenagers.

Twitter: @Paul_Sheehan_

Most Viewed in National