Lockout laws should be unwound, helmets should be voluntary, e-cigarettes containing nicotine should be legalised – and public health experts should back off.
Those are the views of Terry Barnes, the architect of the controversial GP co-payment, who has made a stinging submission to a senate inquiry on the “nanny state”.
Mr Barnes, who advised Tony Abbott as health minister in the Howard government, accused both sides of politics of caving in to health “activists” and public servants. A culture of prohibition in the public health sector has resulted in “zealous over-regulation” of people’s behaviour, he said.
“It’s all about stopping and prohibiting to protect people from themselves. That’s where practically I think policy in this space is arse over tit,” Mr Barnes told Fairfax Media.
He singled out Sydney’s 1.30am lockout laws, which he said were “turning Sydney into Wowserville”, and the requirement for cyclists to wear helmets, as examples of government overreach.
“Too many people love telling other people what to do. Those who love it most tend to become policy-makers or, failing that, public health experts. Or doctors,” Mr Barnes wrote in his submission. It reminded him of the Aristotelian notion that there is “an elite to tell us what to do and the rest of us to do it”, he wrote.
The senate inquiry into personal choice and community impacts will today hear evidence on the subject of smoking and vaping. E-cigarettes which contain nicotine are illegal in Australia under Schedule 7 of the Poisons Standard.
Mr Barnes, who is not a smoker, said Australia has adopted a “ban first, ask questions later” approach instead of giving e-cigarettes the benefit of the doubt, as Britain had.
“It’s clear they are a far lower risk to both users and people around them (than regular cigarettes),” he said. “If they are relatively safe, or if the risks are negligible, we should be giving them a go.”
He also praised the rhetoric of his old boss, Mr Abbott, who last week railed against Labor’s proposed tobacco excise hike as a tax on workers. “He’s right,” Mr Barnes said. “When you think about it, the people who do smoke tend to be a less well-off segment of society.”
In his submission, he acknowledged that his advocacy of a co-payment for GP visits in 2014 had put him at odds with what he called the “healthcare establishment”.
But speaking to Fairfax Media Mr Barnes said he was also “frustrated with [his] old colleagues” for being too willing to indulge the proposals of health lobbyists.
“Labor basically identifies with the activists and the Coalition’s too afraid to take them on,” he said. “I’ve seen no real interest in the Coalition since its election in changing public health policy settings.”
Mr Barnes maintained that his much-maligned GP co-payment was “a sound piece of policy” that had been disastrously modelled by the Abbott government without consultation and “unfairly attacked” by opponents.
The personal choice inquiry, chaired by Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, will also hear evidence from the New Nicotine Alliance, drug and addiction expert Gerry Stimson and the Royal College of Australian Physicians.
Senator Leyonhjelm is an advocate for more relaxed laws on gun ownership, helmets, drinking and other social issues. He has also derided elements of Indigenous history as “fairly tales”, and slammed staff at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital as “whinging doctors” for lobbying in favour of the lockout laws.