To get to grips as to how over-regulated we are, here in Western Australia the Government Gazette for 2005 had 6920 pages and 1004 pages so far in 2006.Take the five other states and the territories from the ACT to the Coral Sea Island Territory and add the edicts of the Commonwealth plus all the acts of these various jurisdictions and you run out of bookshelf space. All this to regulate the affairs of 20 000 000 people

When personal responsibility is not a virtue. Government must take on the responsibility of parent to society. Hence the thousands of rules and regulations governing our lives. What's the answer? How do you convince government that you don't need it to step in and do what a responsible human should do for themselves? More local control, less federal control. More local community involvement. If every citizen took their civic duty seriously and got involved locally then federal government would have less to regulate. So we're back where we started, personal responsibility.

Caspar, good start to this item, we are over regulated. We need less, not more. Lawyers must laugh themselves silly but they probably create it or the need for it.

Any time there is a "problem" our governments think that legislation is the answer. All extra legislation achieves is to create more offenders or criminals. For what? The behaviour doesn't change so I can only conclude the governments simply use any issue to gather more revenue through fines etc.

Does anyone really think that the terrorism laws will prevent a suicide bomber? What penalty would prevent them? The death penalty? The smoking laws in QLD where smoking on beaches is banned have had 8 charges laid since inception. Does anyone think only 8 people smoked on a QLD beach? Remember Schoolies?

Your issues re vehicles and beer at footy though are trite and mean nothing. What does 1 man having a beer in the UK at the soccer have to do with crowd behaviour? Nothing.

The amount of legislation is brought to notice by the increase in number of pages on tax alone. That number has boomed under the current government.

Police numbers are certainly insufficient to monitor all the laws. There are so many that most offenders never get noticed and this is perhaps why the majority contnue to ignore basic laws such as exceeding the speed limit, particularly in school zones.

For Faustino, what a ridiculous statement re you driving fast. You are exactly the sort of driver that causes the problems. You seem to think you are entitled to exceed the speed limit as you consider you are a great driver etc. What tripe. Speed limits have many functions, one of which is to create smooth traffic flows. Drivers such as you destroy that and encourage all others to "race" you.

Try driving at the speed limit in all zones. You will find you are often on your own as the packs race past.If you do drive at the speed limit you will notice that a high majority of drivers do exceed the speed limit regularly.

Their is an alternative to 'regulation'. Regulation, of course, is designed to 'regulate' behaviour that is not conducive to maintaining other people's rights in society.

This alternative is, instead of regulation, to hold people more accountable for the damages that their actions have caused.

For instance, say we get rid of all speed laws, so that it is up to the individual driver to decide on what speed they will drive: the other side of this is that if a driver is responsible for an accident involving death or injury he or she should be held completely responsible for the results of that accident, unprotected by insurance or being able to hide behind an excuse that they were driving within an imposed speed limit. This includes a death from a car accident being treated as manslaughter or murder, instead of the pitiful 'negligent driving occaissioning death.

And what happens if we get rid of all the 'parking' and similar regulations?

Well, it would be the law of the jungle when it comes to behaviour:

May I suggest that anyone who proposes ridding us of regulations and laws have a good read of Hobbes 'Leviathan': where he discusses what happens in a state without authority, law and regulation, that is a life without law and regulation is one where only the powerful (and in our society that includes the wealthy) thrive:

"continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

Ridding society of regulation will only benefit those whose power over others is limited by the regulation that they seek to get rid of.

Pegasus, Hamlet, I was supporting the argument that ”road safety is ensured by having capable drivers, safe cars and safe roads. Any government action should be directed at these goals.” And, as I said, I am aware of and courteous to other drivers rather than driving fast without reference to the driving environment. As for takng responsibility, I haven’t been involved in an injury accident since 1970 except for the odd occasion when I have been slighty hurt after, e.g., a driver drove into my stationary vehicle. That’s happened several times, due not to my speed – zero – but to their lack of awareness – close to zero. And I accept that I will on occasion be fined for my speed.

"where that point of balance is, in relation to all sorts of things" from Ludwig above.

We need to put the human face back into Ecological Economic Sustainable Development.

Otherwise, we create a cycle of Under-development where depletion within a system works against the value of what we already know, and that which has been passed down the history of previous gerenations.

A micro view.

We need to look at this at local and ground level.