Choice

Here I go again, quoting Noel Pearson. I must love him almost as much as The Australian. His latest piece was an examination of the notion of 'choice'. Pearson is all about allowing Aboriginal people the freedom to make choices: "Choice is a power. It is a power for development and progress, starting with individuals and their families and adding up to social change because social change is ultimately the sum of a whole lot of individual and family changes . . . . It is the individual right to self-determination, the means of personal empowerment, means to what psychologists sometimes call self-actualisation: having control over one's life."

Yet this is not all:

The flip side of freedom of choice is an aspect I had not fully appreciated until we reflected upon it: choice is also a discipline . . . . That is why allowing people to make their own real choices is more effective than any other approach to individual and social change. When individuals take ownership the change will be sustainable and real. Because choice, properly understood, includes responsibility and discipline.

The problem with the traditional welfare paradigm is that libertarian welfarism proposed that people should have the right and freedom to make their own choices but not wear the consequences. Here is the social support, there are no conditions attached to it, you are free to do with it as you wish, and if you and your children come to grief we will make sure there is another safety net to tackle that fallout as well.

True choice would mean individuals are indeed free to choose, but the choice must be real. It must imply responsibility as well as right, freedom and discipline.

from N Pearson, "Liberal Thinkers are Right About Power of Choice to Help Close the Gap" in The Weekend Australian (May 28-29, 2011)