A conversation starter, by Tim D

A few weeks ago I attended a really interesting talk at The Ethics Centre on the ethics of bans. Afterwards I reached out to Tim Dean (who facilitated the session and is also a member of TTA) to see if he might write a conversation starter for us. Thank you Tim for sharing this with us.

"Australia is on a roll with bans: children on social media, vapes, protests, firearms, to name but a few. Many people support the government stepping in to put a stop to potentially harmful behaviour. But when are bans ethically justified? And who gets to choose? Are bans just the government imposing its own moral views on the community? Certainly, that's how governments used to behave, when all sorts of things - from alcohol to sunbathing - were prohibited.

When we discussed the Ethics of Bans at The Ethics Centre on 11 March, our guests, Cam Wilson and Anastasia Radievska, raised some really thought-provoking points. Cam suggested that good bans are ones that don't necessarily prevent an individual from harming themselves but that prevent a negative impact on others, and have weighed that impact up against any rights that are restricted - like the gun ban imposes a cost on gun owners, but that's far outweighed by preventing gun violence. But that makes me wonder how much of a cost are we willing to impose, such as the need for age verification for adults due to the social media ban.

Anastasia was more critical of the protest bans that some state governments have imposed, arguing that they're trying to almost social engineer away the uncomfortable parts of civic discourse - namely the strong differences in views within the community - aiming for some kind of frictionless society, but that's not the world we live in. Instead, the answer is not to ban forms of political expression, but make them easier to do in a way that doesn't impinge on others' rights. But this raises big questions about 'safety,' what it means and who has a right to be safe, that I don't think we've resolved as a society.

There are still things I'm comfortable banning, but that doesn't make me entirely comfortable with the power of the government to ban!"

Lani

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Apr 7, 2026

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I keep noticing that bans often act less like solutions and more like a compass, pointing to where fear is driving the system. They show us the places where institutions don’t quite trust themselves, or the community, to stay in relationship with complexity long enough to build capability.

I’m also sitting with the tension between wanting safety and recognising that governments don’t always represent the community’s intelligence. When we outsource too much to bans, we risk weakening the very muscles, discernment, negotiation, shared responsibility that make a society resilient.

I’m curious how others here read this. Where do you see bans functioning as protection, and where do you see them functioning as avoidance? And what capacities do we need to strengthen so we’re not relying on bans as our primary tool?

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