The Australian’s editorial in favour of optional preferential voting (“An option worth pursuing”, 11/1) makes the lucid point that an electoral system should be chosen “not because of which side of politics it might favour…but because it would enshrine the sound principle of choice”. Yet almost in the same breath it argues against voluntary voting on the basis of imagined political outcomes, speculating that it “would result in parliaments unrepresentative of a large proportion of citizens”.

Similar criticisms are sometimes made against proportional representation (PR, generally regarded as the fairest type of system) on the grounds that it may fail to deliver an outright majority. Such arguments from hypothetical consequences are irrelevant to the purpose of an electoral system, which is to accurately reflect the people’s will, whether or not that happens to be convenient. On that criteria, each of the three modes, optional, voluntary, and proportional, is an improvement on the current system.

By pitting the rarefied ideals of classical liberalism against a straw man of authoritarian “progressivism”, Tim Wilson (“Both sides of politics should cease nanny-state meddling”, The Australian, 8/1) reduces complex issues of individual freedom versus social good to a simple black and white cartoon. So devoted to these ideals is Wilson that he indignantly defends even the freedom to sell addictive carcinogens. This is unsurprising since his employer, the IPA, is funded by the tobacco industry. But I wonder if his outrage extends to speeding and seatbelt laws, or restrictions on guns and explosives, or the prohibition on the sale of heroin. After all, as adults we all know the risks and responsibilities our actions entail.

In the real world, the very existence of society has always meant some restriction of individual freedom. In some cases it is because the individual may not be capable of a true choice, as in the case of addiction. In others, it is because the social consequences of a bad individual decision are too severe, thus gun laws. It is not as simple as black and white.