That’s it. We’ve arrived at what is officially termed the Dizzy Limit.
NSW Police, warming to their recent self-appointment as a freelance social policy think tank, trustee of public morality and holy rolling temperance society, have announced that Australia Day should be as dry as the Nullarbor Plain. Starting now.
They have reasonable cause. Shockingly, some people treat such occasions as an opportunity to get on the squirt and a small minority of those consequently get stupid and some proportion of those play up and a fraction of those become violent and commit felonies.
There’s an old-fashioned cynic in some of us who thinks, once things get to that final phase, it’s the job of the wallopers – well, sworn duty to be blunt – to step in and restore order, issue warnings, make arrests. It’s not a job I envy and I’d never sign up to do it. It’s tough, scary, dangerous and thoroughly distasteful. No, for that kind of task you need to call the coppers. Trained specialists.
Lately however, it has become fashionable for senior police to complain endlessly about such duty. They don’t want to do it anymore and have the solution. Instead of that six pack and barbequed chop you were planning to enjoy with your friends on a sunny summer public holiday, you can have a prayer meeting, a cup of herbal tea and a free lecture.
As night follows day, this will thwart the aforementioned minority whose natural inclination to nasty violence is only waiting for the provocation of large-scale picnicking by their fellow citizens to light them up into homicidal drunken rage. If only we all stay indoors and drink plenty of water against the heat, these lunatics will have no choice but to do the same.
This will free massive police resources for the important work of issuing parking fines, servicing the water cannon and reviewing security procedures for future APEC meetings till they’re so tight that Sportingbet won’t be able to offer better than even money that if the car really has Osama Bin Laden in it next time, NSW’s finest will twig before he gets to the door of the Presidential suite.
And the plaintive whinge goes further. It rewrites history. It claims we are awash in a toxic sea of binge drinking psychosis that materialised out of nowhere in the last 5 or 10 years.
There were never fights in pubs in the old days. Or outside them at closing time. Never violent misfits who were made even worse by alcohol while normal people were trying to enjoy a couple of drinks in company with the friends and workmates. There was never a truly disgusting ‘6 o’clock swill’ tradition of men furiously guzzling and regurgitating schooners in a race against the clock till they had to line saloon bars with ceramic tiles so they could be hosed out each night. Importantly, that hideous episode of Aussie history was a direct product of the last time the temperance crew had their pure white hands on the policy reins and forced pubs to close before dinner time.
Citizens, it’s time to take a stand. Well, in fact we should sit. On the grass. In Hyde Park. Next to our eskies. On Australia Day. All day.
And drink.
We should drink and tell stories. We should drink and eat chops. Drink and laugh. Drink and talk about our feelings and relationships (girls). Drink and ramble meaninglessly with no discernable point (boys). Drink and play music on our iPods (not too loud). Drink and throw footies to our kids and drop them when they throw them back. Drink and mind our own business and not disturb others or spoil their day or trample on their right to quiet enjoyment of the park too.
We should drink freezing cold, full-strength beer until the ice melts or the meat is cooked, then drag several corks out of some half decent shiraz to go with the snag sangers. But we should drink till we are bat-faced. Rolling, giggling, foolish, embarrassing, should-know-better-at-our-age, snot-flying shickered.
Then we’ll pack up our stuff, put our rubbish in the bins and decamp the scene in a homewardly direction for a couple of quiet ones in front of the tele. We’ll travel by taxi and train because, though half cut, we are nonetheless decent citizens and we are not criminals who would sling the kids in the back of the car and drive home while holding higher than the prescribed content of alcohol in our bloodstreams (like all our parents used to).
And if, on that train, we should come across some moron who thinks it’s okay not just to be drunk, but to be aggressive, anti-social, threatening or violent, we will hope that there will be members of the NSW police to step in, because we pay our taxes to support the biggest, best funded and best paid police force in the country and we’re entitled to expect them to act against criminal behaviour.
And so we will go safely and blamelessly home. And fall asleep in front of the tele. And wake up crook and drag ourselves to work hung-over. And be proud.
Because we’re Australians. And it’s Australia Day.
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