Dealing with thuggery in Australia

Ciudad Juarez, which shares a border with El Paso, in Texas, is the most violent city on earth. But you will not see smoking buildings or blown-up cars. What you notice is the deathly indifference in people’s eyes.

Since President Felipe Calderón launched his offensive against the drug cartels in late 2006, more than 50,000 people have been murdered in Mexico. Juarez, located in the northern state of Chihuahua, has hurt most in the drug wars, with 10,000 executions in the last four years.

Calderón’s crackdown has failed. In Juarez, where he ordered in the army and the federales to take over from corrupt police, all that has happened is they have brought one cartel, La Linea, to its knees, while permitting another, Sinaloa, to take its place.

Continue reading "The brave chronicler of Mexico’s deadly drug war" »

No. Anyone who would suggest so is a dill. And possibly also a lawyer.

Not since the freedom rides through America’s Deep South in the 1960s has there been such an emotionally-charged call for basic freedoms. Except in this case the call for freedom has been mounted by organisations which have links to drug crime, gun-running, extortion, assault, murder, not to mention a steadfast refusal to cooperate with the police, even if it’s one of their own members who has been bashed or maimed.

Organisations which, when it comes to civil liberties, are more likely to be depriving others of their liberties – such as the liberty to board a plane with your kids without seeing someone beaten to death with a bollard at the airport in broad daylight, or to spend the afternoon shopping at a Gold Coast mall without being shot in the crossfire of a bikie war.

Continue reading "The ban on bikie colours: are scouts and sports fans next?" »

If you want to run a profitable pub you can do worse than make sure it’s located next to a newspaper office. There are probably plenty of publicans who retired early due to the enthusiastic drinking habits of journalists. I know of one, however, whose business went under courtesy of a crazed bouncer whose violent actions towards a member of the press saw his much-loved media watering hole subject to an instant and highly effective boycott.

Some years ago I was drinking at this pub in Sydney’s Surry Hills with a bunch of colleagues. It was a quiet night, the right side of midnight, nobody was blithering, and another group of friends had arranged to meet us there for a quiet one before pulling up stumps. They had been down at Circular Quay for a Movember party, celebrating the end of the month where men grow facial hair to raise money for prostate cancer and depression. One of them had grown a luxuriant Eastern European handlebar number and was dressed as Borat in a dreadful beige suit, holding a vinyl 1970s travel bag and a Kazakhstan flag.

There was a newish bouncer at the pub that night who immediately took a set against our Borat chum, seeking him out on his arrival to say that he was too drunk to be served and if he tried to order a beer we would all be turfed out.

Continue reading "Gorillas and the pissed" »

On March 14 2012, the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted its first defendant Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, for enlisting, conscripting and using child soldiers under 15 years of age. It took Presiding Judge Adrian Fulford just over half an hour to deliver the verdict, although Mr Lubanga’s sober expression throughout the hearing suggested he saw the conviction coming before it was formally announced.

Watching the hearing, I was struck by how much of the Court’s politics could be read into the courtroom proceedings, or perhaps projected onto them. In their uniform black, the lawyers appeared as de-personified components of a system, while Mr Lubanga, all in white, stood out as the human in that system. The person on trial, the individual whose rights to a fair and impartial hearing are spelled out in the ICC Statute. 

The judges’ commitment to upholding these rights has been apparent over the six years of the trial. In fact, concerns that Mr Lubanga was not getting a fair trial nearly drove the judges to stop the trial on two occasions. First when the Prosecutor refused to disclose evidence that might have helped Mr Lubanga’s defence, and again when he refused to reveal the identity of an intermediary who had assisted with the investigations.

Continue reading "A landmark decision for international justice" »

It’s time to give Nick D’Arcy a break. The story going around today is that D’Arcy has been cleared by the Australian Olympic Committee to compete for selection at the London Games.

It’s a story I chose to run as part of our morning sport package on Sky News, but not discuss in our panel chat this morning on Sportsline. It’s an old topic and it’s time to move on.

It’s been almost four years to the day that D’Arcy’s Olympic dream was shattered and his life turned upside down. Up until that point in the bar late on that dreaded night, D’Arcy was on the cusp of realising his dream. All those training sessions, early mornings, long programs, strict diets, missed parties, big sacrifices and endless laps up and down the pool were about to be worth it.

Continue reading "Mr D’Arcy’s pride should come ahead of our prejudice" »

He rammed her head against the headboard. She tried to master the silent scream. She is left with a limp and her neck in a brace.

This is the ethical treatment of animals, PETA style. Watch the ad above. Then watch the Sourcefed lads’ excellent discussion.

It’s about a woman getting the ‘bottom knocked out of her’ by a virile vegan. But don’t worry, ladies, PETA also offers some tips on protecting yourself from his aggressive advances!

Continue reading "I wanna knock the bottom out of this advertisement" »

In I Spit On Your Grave, a young woman is gang raped in a remote woodland. She is beaten and tortured in a series of deeply disturbing scenes, before she hurls herself into a river.

She survives, comes back, and inflicts a graphic and brutal revenge on the men who so viciously attacked her.

I can’t remember why I picked up the DVD - although I love horror and was possibly overcome with swaggering bravado after seeing the ‘watch it if you dare’ sticker.

Continue reading "The humourless hysteria of the holier-than-thou" »

Fifteen years ago when one of your girlfriends had a few too many Illusion shots standard practice was to put her in a cab, give the driver her address and $20 and pat yourself on the back for being a responsible friend.

You wouldn’t do that now. Not if you cared about her well being at all. Trust between taxi drivers and passengers has been worn down to a new low, typified by comments yesterday from a Perth cabbie, who after being acquitted of involvement in a sexual assault said it was becoming more and more common for taxi drivers to be offered sexual favours in exchange for fares.

It’s one of those “trends” that’s impossible to quantify. No woman is ever going to admit to anyone that when she found herself $10 short of a cab fare after the work Christmas party she settled the debt with a quick sexual act. It is a highly unlikely response to a situation.

Continue reading "There’s no evidence sex-for-cab-fares is a trend" »

If badminton was the World Game there would probably be just as many riots as there are now with soccer. The graceful swoop of the goose-feathered shuttlecock would not calm the madding crowds.

If only badminton had the power to invoke the passion, it could rival the semi-religious fervour that soccer induces. If only. Then we could blame badminton for all violence in sport and stop making soccer out to be evil.

Soccer is, globally, inextricably linked to violence in people’s minds. But it’s not soccer’s fault. Soccer just happens to be the medium for the message. It is the excuse, the scapegoat.

Continue reading "Don’t blame the beautiful game for riot shame" »

Let’s not make any excuses for the morons associated with the Aboriginal tent embassy who sparked Thursday’s ugly events in the national capital. When they interrupted a medal ceremony for courageous emergency services personnel involved in the Queensland floods and Victorian bushfires, their behaviour was vile.

“Who f***ing cares? They’re not our heroes,” yelled one of the first protesters to arrive. Then, spotting the opposition leader, she screamed: “Tony Abbott, you f***ing big-eared Dumbo c***.”

This was followed by more obscenities directed at Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Things went downhill from there.

Continue reading "We need smarter security, not beefed up security" »

On Tuesday night, four shots were fired into the front of a Wetherill Park home. Inside a woman and her two children were sleeping. This incident was the ninth shooting to take place in Sydney in eight days. NSW Police have not laid any charges and have voiced their frustration, blaming the “wall of silence” in the community.

On Saturday, 25 May 2002, a man shot and wounded seven people including a child attending a wedding at a restaurant in Cabramatta. There were 140 witnesses in the New World Restaurant but no one was able, or willing, to give a clear description of the gun man.

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Continue reading "The great wall of Cabramatta" »

THE other day a stranger came up to me in the street and spat in my face. While this still put it in the top 20 days of my life so far, it was nonetheless an unpleasant experience overall.

As I pushed the strange man away from me and called him various names, it occurred to me that this is something they never taught me how to deal with in journalism school. Possibly because I never went to journalism school but I still blame the system.

The man’s grievance with me was unclear, as despite my best efforts I could not understand what he was talking about. The only intelligible sentence I could make out was: ``You made it sound like I made a sex video.’’

Continue reading "Why violence is the answer to all the world’s problems" »

In July 2008 I was shocked when I received a call from the police telling me that my parish church of Saint Mary’s, in Maryborough, Queensland, was a crime scene.

A man was found dead by parishioners as they arrived for a morning communion liturgy. It was devastating and shocking. I and my parishioners followed the case closely. Very soon, two suspects were caught. Our church security cameras caught the events of the terrible bashing.

I was appalled when it was claimed that an alleged homosexual advance was a reason given for the man being bashed and left lying overnight in the church grounds. I was likewise appalled when I found that an alleged or perceived homosexual advance (of even the most minor gesture or touch) can be used as a partial defence in a murder case in Queensland (and also to an extent in NSW). What reason could justify a bashing that leads to someone’s death?

Continue reading "An archaic defence that belongs in the dark ages" »

This is the second instalment in our 23-item countdown of the Biggest Moments of the Year. Each day until the Friday before Christmas, we’ll be counting down the events that marked 2011. Our list contains moments from politics, pop culture, tragedy, sport and more. This is one of the moments that had all of us talking this year.

What happened
On July 22, Andres Behring Breivik, 32, massacred 77 people and injured 151 in a pair of terrorist attacks on Norwegian officials and civilians. First, Breivik planted a car bomb in Oslo’s executive government district near the Prime Minister’s office. The bomb killed 8 and the PM escaped unharmed. Less than two hours later, Breivik arrived at the island of Utøya where a camp for Labour Party youth was being held. Posing as a police officer, he gunned down scores of people.

There was no light in the darkness of this story. The New York Times reported: “As soon as the shooting started… people panicked, running in all directions, tumbling down the island’s rocky hill in an attempt to reach the sea. Even after many made it into the water, the gunman calmly and methodically shot at those who were swimming.”

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #22 A massacre in Norway" »

As White Ribbon Day comes around again on November 25, I’m wondering what it actually does to address a culture that celebrates – indeed eroticises – violence against women.

Sure, men buy white ribbons. They attend events where they eat sausages and swear not to hurt women. They raise money (none of which goes into services supporting survivors of violence).

Of course it’s good that men stand up and pledge not to be violent and put white ribbons on their shirt collars. We need men to be engaged in the issue. But since the inception of White Ribbon Day, violence against women and children has continued unabated. And the culture that helps to makes violence against women permissible, even something to be celebrated, remains unaddressed.

Continue reading "Violence against women is endemic to our sick culture" »

Growing up in the 1950s and the 1960s I witnessed my mother being brutally beaten and verbally abused and belittled regularly by my father. For over 30 years Mum put up with this abuse and her health deteriorated over that time, so much so that she died in 1983 at the very young age of 49.

My father was responsible for her death, I don’t doubt it.

I will never get over the fact that during the many occasions Mum was being attacked by my father no one stepped in to help her. Neighbours saw and heard what was happening and did nothing to help her. I remember my brother, my sister or I running next door or across the road for help but there was none. People in the street would not stop and help when she was being abused or hit in public. Family friends would do nothing when they were around and saw the violence.

Continue reading "No-one lifted a finger as Dad raised his hand at Mum" »

Every bloke has a mother. Many of us also have sisters and daughters. Some of us have all three. When it comes to the question of violence towards women, our default position is that if anyone laid a finger on our mum, our sister, our daughter or our own partner, we’d probably want to kill them.

There is a gap, however, between this zero-tolerance rhetoric on violence towards women in the immediate personal setting, and instances of violence towards women in the more distant context of friends and acquaintances, neighbours and work colleagues.

One of the most powerful and moving programs of 2011 was the Australian Story profile on Catherine Smith, who over the course of 30 years was raped, bashed and tortured by her husband Kevin Smith. He choked her with power cables, attacked with her with a cattle prod and a fire poker, sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.

Continue reading "The price of male silence on violence against women" »

One of the many life lessons we have been taught by former South Australian treasurer Kevin Foley is that it is best to wear a disguise when buying hotpants for your girlfriend.

Earlier this year it was reported that Foley had bought some raunchy undergarments for his sheila du jour from an Adelaide boutique on his return from an overseas trip. The story emerged from the store where he made the purchase, proving that the bums who were happy to take the bloke’s money were equally happy to get straight on the telephone to a gossip columnist to peddle their invasive little story.

Despite being a very good treasurer and a likeable if flawed human being, it appears to be Kevin Foley’s lot in life that no form of ridicule or no level of rumour-mongering is off limits. His treatment by the public, sections of the media and his political opponents following his assault outside an Adelaide bar, even at the noteworthy hour of 4am, is something which we should reflect on now that the truth has emerged following the guilty plea by his assailant in the Magistrates Court this week.

Continue reading "One politician we’re all happy to belt around" »

Dear Comrades,  It is sadly not surprising that the freedom-fighters in London have been denounced as “rioters’’ by the right-wing media machine.

These brave revolutionaries have risked their lives or at least other people’s lives to create a new socialist utopia.

But, as always, the dark forces of capitalism have sought to crush their spirit and incarcerate their bodies _ at least for a few hours until they make bail.

Continue reading "An idiot’s guide to freedom fighting" »

Many Norwegian stores have removed violent video games from their shelves after Christian Fundamentalist terrorist Anders Breivik claimed he prepared for his attack by playing them. Yet there’s been no word from bookstores on when they’ll remove the Bible from their shelves.

What a load of bollocks. After all, Breivik claimed he played video games to prepare, but the only reason he had anything to prepare for was due to a truly twisted ideology that certainly didn’t come from game play.

Every time we suffer an atrocity like this, people immediately look for somewhere to place blame, while ignoring the fundamental causes. More often than not it’s heavy metal music or violent video games that cop the accusations, which is nothing more than lazy scapegoating.

Continue reading "Thrash metal and video games don’t make you a killer" »

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” the English lit great Samuel Johnson famously once said.

A whole bunch of people seem to be tired of London life lately. Or at least intent on mindlessly smashing the great city to pieces.

The past 72 hours haven’t been pretty. The Guardian is calling it the Battle of London. We’ve seen pictures of double-decker buses overturned and engulfed in flames. Looters smashing their way into stores. Rioters hurling planks of wood at bobbies. Buildings that survived two world wars destroyed by rioters.

Continue reading "The great ire of London" »

Why has the western media provided only a biased, incomplete view of what is going in Syria? Why have the steps taken by the Syrian government to answer the concerns raised by its citizens been ignored? 

I am not a Syrian government apologist (more on that later). I just want to read the whole story. If I can find a variety of news sources including the official statements made by government officials and pro-Syrian government supporters why can’t the BBC or ABC or any other well-resourced western media?

And I am not only talking about the bizarre twists in the Syrian conflict such as “Damascus Girl”. If you missed that one, a young Syrian lesbian blogger created an international outcry when she suddenly disappeared. The Syrian government was suspected of abducting and maybe even killing her. One of her great supporters – fellow lesbian blogger Lez Get Real was particularly upset.

Continue reading "Western media ‘disappeared’ half the Syrian story" »

About 10 years ago in southern California a young fellow by the name of Ryan McPherson hit upon the idea of bribing homeless people with bottles of bourbon to fight each other, and to film the ensuing brawls for a series of movies entitled Bum Fights. The movies, four of which were made, were hailed as just the latest example of a sick society in irreversible decline.

Homeless groups said the movies encouraged violence against people living on the streets, as well as dehumanising and mocking them. Amid threats of legal action, the producers agreed to stop making the films, and were forced to pay compensation to some of the homeless men involved.

The idea of filming a staged fight between the homeless as a form of entertainment would be regarded by a normal person as offensive to dignity and decency. In Australia this week we’ve learned that a depressing number of people – tens of thousands of them in fact – will have a hearty chuckle watching a couple of kids laying into each other in the schoolyard.

Continue reading "A dumb, webbed-up nation cheers on the fat kid" »

How convenient to caricature someone whose work you oppose by reducing them to a cartoon parody. Like I haven’t had enough Helen Lovejoy clichés to last a lifetime? Oh, and look, another media studies academic watching The Simpsons. Are we impressed yet?

Warning: Contains graphic violent and sexual images

Where Stephen Harrington sees “a graphic critique of post-feminist female sexuality”, I see Kanye West holding a woman’s decapitated head. Where those like Harrington see ambiguous, complicated narrative and linear narrative fantasy, I see semi-naked dead women swinging from ropes around their necks.

When I see Rick Ross in the ‘Behind the scenes’ You Tube clip tucking into a plate of raw meat before a spreadeagled dead woman on the table, I see the brutalization and degradation of female sexuality. I don’t think ‘check out that satire!’

Continue reading "Counterpunch: women aren’t playthings, slaves and bitches" »

A mate of mine went to the Big Day Out in Adelaide on Friday. It was a regular kind of day – plenty of good music, a few beers, just the one brawl where a young guy was king-hit from behind and left lying unconscious on the bitumen, his motionless head propped up with a bundle of T-shirts as his friends waited for medical staff to arrive.

The organisers and media declared the day “relatively incident-free”. And so it was, in a relative sense, as in Australia these days there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about someone being knocked out cold, being left with a permanent brain injury or even being killed, in a random fight with a stranger.

I spoke to my mate yesterday and he said he was so rattled by what he saw that he decided not to go out for beers with his friends on the weekend. He didn’t feel like drinking and he couldn’t stop thinking about the guy who’d been knocked out, and checked the papers that morning in vain for any reference to the incident. There was none.

Continue reading "A tale of two punches" »

I would like to propose a toast.

Here’s to the jerks that stabbed a Sydney bouncer in the neck and the partygoers who bashed four police who were just trying to do their jobs.

Here’s to the arsehole back in 2005 that chipped my tooth and broke my hand while I was out trying to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

Continue reading "Drunken idiots: here’s a toast to the douchebags" »

“Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”

These infamous words of Patrick Henry resonated throughout the Western world and described in a nutshell man’s yearning for freedom.

This is also true in Tunisia, where Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26 year old university graduate who could not find work nor feed his family, sparked ‘The Jasmine Revolution’ by setting himself alight in protest to the now former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime. This protest sparked action in Egypt, which is now facing its largest uprising in three decades. There are reports of dozens of deaths.

Continue reading "In North Africa they are fighting for freedom" »

On a recent trip the US I read journalist Dave Cullen’s book about the Columbine massacre. With a spate of highly-publicised suicides there apparently linked to bullying, and a subsequent rash of legislation in various states designed to “combat” the phenomenon, Columbine is a timely publication with much relevance to our own national debate on the subject.

In his book, Cullen demolishes one of the central and most persistent myths of the Columbine massacre: that a pair of misfits with artistic and intellectual tendencies were hounded by meathead jocks until they finally snapped. Instead he paints a chilling portrait of a malignant relationship between a psychopathic narcissist and his angry and malleable best friend.

Yes, the Columbine kids were picked on, argues Cullen, but not as badly as many others and they certainly displayed no ideological biases when it came to blowing away their classmates.

Continue reading "Bullying myths: Who are the real victims?" »

Kids are quick to make heroes of sports stars. 

Strong, fit, healthy and lucky enough to spend their days being the best at a sport they love – they embody all the qualities that healthy and active kids most admire.

Knowing that makes it harder to accept their often reckless social and public behaviour. And how disappointingly common were those types of stories in 2010?

Continue reading "Stephanie Gilmore, showing sport how it’s done" »

Hey you! Yes, you. Arsehole.

Thanks a whole heap for walking down our entire street in Erskineville, at 2am on New Year’s Day and keying every single car including my brand-new VW Polo.

You liked my Polo, didn’t you? You must have liked it a lot because you singled it out and instead of just going sideways along the car you took the time to dig your key all the way through the paint into the metal up and down, up and down, up and down.

Continue reading "You just don’t mess with another man’s vehicle" »

Here’s a great story in the spirit of the festive season.

Melbourne-based academic and human rights advocate Sekai Shand has spent the majority of the last 25 years working in various international disaster zones.

But she recently returned home to the African village where she was raised to perform her most important mission yet - helping the women of her village overcome poverty and violence through self-sufficiency.

Continue reading "A real story about self-sufficiency" »

Australians are bombarded with advertising and initiatives from governments educating the public about health risks. Smoking kills. Occupational health and safety regulations are law.  “Is gambling a problem for you?”

It makes sense, educating the public on health issues saves money in the long run, is preventative and reduces risks.  And yet one of the most pervasive, damaging and normalised threats to public health remains taboo and largely unaddressed.

Violence against women is a critical human rights and public health issue. One in three women will experience violence in her lifetime. It is normalised, domesticated and prevalent.

Continue reading "Ignoring violence against women costs their dignity" »

Overnight, the Federal Government issued a review of existing research into whether people who play violent computer games are at greater risk of aggression. Their conclusion? The same as mine. There is no link.

I’m not violent at all. Though I guess I am a murderer.

I’ve ruthlessly ended roughly 500 lives this week. Tall. Short. Loud. Quiet. Hairy. Fast. Slow. I’ve knocked ’em all off. It was mostly in self defence. A few were just for kicks, though. But seriously - you should have seen them. They were asking for it.

Continue reading "Killer by night, mild-mannered toiler by day" »

We all know there’s an election on in Victoria and we all know one of the major campaign issues is crime and violence – no surprises there.

This is not a piece on the rights, wrongs or otherwise of the respective election platforms on fighting crime – I’ll leave that for others to dissect.

What I want to contribute is a perspective on how Victoria’s often intense and sometimes heated debate about violence and personal safety has impacted on young people in the state and the potential knock-on effect for our community as a whole.

Continue reading "Fear of violence is killing Victorian culture" »

Three weeks ago, in a small town on the NSW coast, a man and his mate were both stabbed during a brawl.

The man died.

That brutal act sparked a family feud. The small, tight-knit community, sodden with anger and grief, was then faced with the violent fallout. Chaos reigned. Up to 50 people took to the streets, wielding weapons and venting their fury on cars, houses, people. For two days they raged.

Continue reading "The 100 desperate people Australia forgot" »

I’d never been too impressed with Matthew Newton. He always seemed like an arrogant upstart who’d taken a ride on Daddy’s coat tails to get ahead in showbiz.

There was no doubt he was talented, but then again, so are many actors who are waiting on tables around the country, desperate to get their shot.

And when allegations emerged that he’d assaulted Brooke Satchwell, my mind was made up. Only cowards hit women. Actually no, only cowards hit other people, full stop. It doesn’t matter what sex they are, no one “has it coming”, no one deserves violence. So it seems bizarre that here I am having a crack at Channel 7 instead of him.

Continue reading "Seven’s handling of Newton a bad look for the network" »

Sleepless nights, heartbreak and endless analysis and yelling at the screen have been an intimate part of many of our lives during the World Cup. With all the commentary, the goals, and the bad sporting puns ad nauseam there’s one thing that no one has really talked about during this world cup - violence against women.

It’s a horrible thought, that an event we love could have such a dark underside. Sadly it’s something we do need to talk about. During the 2006 Fifa World Cup the home office of the UK found a 30% jump in domestic violence incidents on nights that England were playing.

The interesting thing is it didn’t seem to matter if England won or lost as the 30% increase remained relatively steady during England’s win over Paraguay and its loss to Portugal.

Continue reading "Home violence and the dark side of the World Cup" »

Some like dialogue. Others go for the actors, the love scenes, the mood, the era or the style. But who doesn’t enjoy a good bullet?

Death by gunshot is a thing to treasure. It is almost certainly the most common cause of screen death, or injury, because a bullet can say so much.

The slowly raised pistol of the cornered woman as the sex-killer moves in. The bloke who, instead of being blown to the ground, is suspended in the air by a horizontal rain of lead. The panicked, scrambled reloading of weapons as all hope fades…

Continue reading "The 10 best gunshot scenes in movies" »

In two courts yesterday, two very different sentences were handed down, for two stomach-turning crimes which epitomise public disgust at random, life-destroying violence.

Did the courts reflect that public disgust in their sentences? Did they do their job in reflecting community standards? In one case, probably. In the other, most definitely not.

Both cases involved indiscriminate and unprompted violence, the kind of blink-of-an-eye brain-snaps which terrify every parent, where an innocent young man was jumped, king-hit and left for dead.

Continue reading "Two courts, two sentences, two types of justice" »

This Friday the Attorneys General of all our states and territories will decide whether to create an R18+ category for computer and video games.

We’re often told it is indisputable that a child watching the very occasional 30-second McDonalds’ advertisement will have their eating habits irrevocably changed. They are headed for a life of junk food. The games industry has of course lobbied hard, but if the attorneys decide in favour of R18+ games they will owe Ronald McDonald a huge apology.

Because amazingly the attorneys might decide this week that hours and hours of playing computer games with highly simulated and even interactive violence and sex won’t affect children in any way.

Continue reading "Feeding kids on a diet of video game junk" »

There’s a laundry list of reasons Melbourne could probably already be regarded as Australia’s most prestigious city over Sydney. It hosts the Australian Open, the Melbourne Cup and various other prestige horse races, the AFL Grand Final, and the Formula 1 Grand Prix. The last time Tiger Woods came to Australia, he was in Melbourne.

What has Sydney got to compete as regular international attractions? There are a couple of world-class restaurants with obscenely-priced menus and a rarely-used, difficult-to-get-to Olympic stadium. There is the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, though it should be noted that this features a bunch of people with lots of money and significant business connections getting out of the joint as fast as they possibly can.

If size does matter in the battle for status as the nation’s most prestigious city, it now looks likely Melbourne will be bigger than Sydney in the not-too-distant future. A spokesman for the developer lobby that commissioned the report remarked that Sydney had the hallmarks of “a global city in decline”.

Continue reading "Against Melbourne, housing the least of Sydney’s worries" »

The most terrifying moment of my life was about six years ago in broad daylight on a back street of Sydney’s inner-west when I was pushing my then baby daughter in the pram on a walk to the local shops.

We’d just turned a corner and were crossing the normally quiet street when a bloke in a souped-up Ford muscle car came fanging around the curve on the wrong side of the road, forcing me to yank the pram backwards with and jump on to the footpath.

As I did this I shouted “Hey!” at the top of my voice and waved a fist in his direction. He slammed on the brakes, reversed at speed, and pulled up right next to the pram. “Did you say something arsehole?” he asked.

Continue reading "Mass public support for the war on scumbags" »

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” - Abraham Maslow

I was driving through Sydney on Friday around midnight and found myself surrounded by cars filled with youngsters. I’ve never felt so conscious of my own space.

The drivers were like roosters standing over their nests: music pounding, windows down, making their presence felt.  I glanced over at one or two of the drivers, their glares were nothing short of threatening. It was a distasteful blend of “I’m out on the town with the boys” and “If you stare at me again I’ll have you.”

Continue reading "Everything rage: The spiral of anger in today’s youths" »

I don’t know Luke Adams. Chances are I never will. But when I viewed the graphic, and much-publicised, video of the promising footballer (and his friend) getting bashed at a Prahran Hungry Jack’s last July, my heart skipped a beat.

It was incredibly disturbing footage. On Friday, two of Adams’ attackers were sentenced in the County Court.

Mark Bogtstra, 22, received intensive corrections order, requiring community work for nine months. The man who put Adams in a headlock and let him fall to the ground, bouncer Nathan Karazisis, 24, was sentenced to two years and four months in jail, and made to serve at least a year.

Continue reading "Soft sentences a king hit for justice" »

Besides the recurrence of violence among Balkan fans on the first day of the Australian Tennis Open this year being self-evidently stupid and embarrassing, it is perhaps above all really pathetic.

A really pathetic expression of half-baked nationalism from suburban mamma’s boys at the tennis.

Yes the tennis. Not a bad-ass crowd sport like European soccer matches where iron bars and pocket knives are common accoutrements among fans.

Continue reading "Ethnic violence at the tennis, it’s just so pathetic" »

It’s not hard to get a fight in Fred Brophy’s boxing tent – the last travelling tent left in Australia, or the world. It just gets hard when you get your fight. I wanted a fight.

I saw Brophy first at the Birdsville Races in 2008 but I knew about the tent – the round or two for a pound or two – to borrow a line from the other great boxing tent man Jimmy Sharman.

I talked about wanting a fight in the tent before heading up to Mt Isa for the rodeo, from the comfort of inner city Melbourne. No one believed me.  I’m a girl and I’ve never even done a boxing class.

Continue reading "How I started Ladies’ Day at Fred Brophy’s boxing tent" »

Yesterday The Punch went to Footscray in Melbourne’s West to talk to its people about crime and racism following the stabbing death of a young Indian student in their suburb.

Footscray is not a particularly nice place. That’s not to say it’s a bad place, but there’s a reason the yuppies in the “run rabbit run” Melbourne tourism ads didn’t play hide and seek around Footscray station.

Footscray is the kind of suburb that is pretty typical of outer urban suburbs throughout the world: a working class suburb close enough to the city that becomes a cheap base for brand new arrivals to live and set up shop. The suburb’s density and multicultural population means it often described in terms like “cultural melting pot” by people who see it as a great source of authentic Pho soup.
It’s also the suburb where 21-year-old Nitin Garg was stabbed to death on his way to work at the local Hungry Jacks.

Continue reading "Talking crime, violence and racism with Footscray" »

Impartiality is everything in journalism but at the risk of sounding slightly biased it’s fair to say that if the NSW Government were a dog you would take it down to the bottom of the yard and shoot it.

Discussing the innate and irreversible badness of the NSW Government is about the most banal thing you can do these days. If anything this may be its most evil legacy – the cruelling of casual political discussion.

It’s like the inspired Gary Larson cartoon featuring nerds in hell - “Hot enough for ya?” – where remarking that NSW seems to be in political strife is as profound and insightful as noting that Germany has a bit of a chequered history, the Cuban economy could probably be doing better, or that Afghanistan has historically under-invested in infrastructure.

Continue reading "Moral lectures from the ethically challenged" »

If you read the headlines, late-night violence in Melbourne is out of control.

To a degree this is true, but we have little chance of curbing the problem with illogical solutions.

Take some of the measures proposed in the past fortnight, for example. Firstly, there was the party promoter who banned “metrosexuals” from the Ding Dong Lounge.

Continue reading "Idiots are the problem, not alcohol" »

Did I read the story correctly? Now police can’t even fine a person for drunken behaviour in public places? Time to get serious with the idiots who drink to excess, befoul public spaces, wreck the ‘quiet enjoyment’ of others, and divert our accident and emergency teams…

Here’s the basic principle – if your drunkenness results in police officers, or ambulance officers, or hospital teams, having to deal with you, you pay the full cost of this intervention – call it the ‘abuser pays’ principle.

Now I’d be in favour of bringing back the charge of public drunkenness, but I suspect that the paperwork involved these days for police officers in processing someone charged with an offence deters them from doing so, and we probably don’t have the cell space available.

Continue reading "Abuser pays – make drunken idiots pay for their mayhem" »

If blokes are honest, most of us would admit to behaving differently when there are no women around. While the extent of the change varies from guy to guy, most of us do things and say things we wouldn’t dream of doing or saying in female company.

Usually it’s low-level yobbo stuff - drunken anecdotes, sexual innuendo, a sneaky wee on the lemon tree – but for a minority of screwed-up blokes it involves a complete personality transformation where they drift into a shocking moral orbit, their macho posturing cheered on by their equally boorish buddies.

In the context of sport, particularly in light of Brendan Fevola’s unravelling and the car crash quality of Wayne Carey’s memoir, it’s clear that for many of our sporting heroes, life has been one extended boy’s night.

Continue reading "The boys’ clubs protecting our sporting yobbos" »

Cities have personalities, they have a tone to their collective voice, and my former home town of Adelaide has a voice which can generally be described as courteous, civil, thoughtful, prepared to make a point, but also willing to listen.

My adoptive town of the past decade often finds itself at the other end of the register. Sydney is often so boisterous as to be uncouth. It can be pig-headed, abusive and rude. In its political and social discourse, Sydney’s general modus operandi is to start with a full-blown argument and work your way backwards towards civility from there.

But in the NSW school holiday fortnight just gone, which we passed happily back in SA, there was a very different edge to Adelaide’s voice. The normally sedate city sounded depressingly like Sydney at its unthinking and aggressive worst as its leaders and citizens dealt with a genuinely terrifying spate of crimes linked to the so-called Gang of 49.

Continue reading "Crimewave turns our most genteel city into a moshpit" »

On Friday week, October 30, the annual Reclaim the Night marches will be held in cities and towns around Australia. Find more information here. The Punch received this contribution from a young woman who has asked us to publish it anonymously to chronicle her story of surviving sexual assault.

Today I did something I never thought I would do again – I pulled out a figure-hugging outfit from my closet and put it on. I even made it out the door and to work still wearing it.

This particular outfit was a favourite for some years, but ever since an article in a newspaper four years ago I have been unable to wear it without feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable.

You see, I am a rape survivor.

Continue reading "Reclaiming the night: one woman’s story of survival" »

Victoria might well be the Garden State but the Premier, John Brumby lives is a state of denial and it’s becoming serious.

Not content with flying off to New Delhi to placate furious Indians who fear for the safety of their kids being educated in Melbourne, he managed to anger the Indian Government by cancelling a visit to Mumbai, citing security concerns, which it seems the Indians hadn’t heard about.

That was for starters.

Continue reading "King Brumby’s tin-pot Raj" »

As an old time supporter of Football (or Soccer, if you feel so inclined – which many Australians do), imbalanced and factually incorrect media reports of riots, violence and hooliganism in my code is nothing new.

The rise of the A-League may have been nothing short of spectacular, but unfortunately the same old boys (usually AFL reporters) that pooh-poohed Soccer in the now defunct NSL era continue to periodically rear their snarling heads and tell us that this foreign sport is full of thugs that are more likely to slit your throat than not.

The formula is just about the same every time, and Tim Hilferty’s Monday article on The Punch ‘The myth that soccer is a family-friendly sport’ was no different.

Continue reading "Bagging out Aussie soccer fans is a hoary old look" »

Conduct on the sporting field often reflects the values of our society.

As a young lad growing up in Western Sydney and attending Catholic Schools in the 1980s and 1990s it was almost pre-ordained that I would play rugby league - the game that the Patrician Brothers taught me was the game “they played in heaven”.

While the behaviour I witnessed on the sporting field was less than saintly, rugby league became a great training ground for me and many of my team mates as we sought to grow and develop as young boys on the road to manhood.

Continue reading "Some of the spectators are as bad as on-field thugs" »

In an effort to be seen doing something about alcohol-related violence in Melbourne, the Victorian Government is toughening up its enforcement of laws around security staff for venues.

Music venues around Melbourne are getting hounded by a group of almost 50 inspectors to enforce a 10-year-old law that says any live music venue needs at least two security guards for anything under 100 people.

While, superficially, this is the private venue equivalent for demands of “more cops on the beat”, the problem with private security is that they’re not cops and often they can cause more problems than they solve.

Continue reading "Can you call off security? Clubs’ bouncer problem" »

I was going to take my six-year-old boy to the soccer on Friday night, but I decided not to. After what I witnessed at the Adelaide United - Melbourne Victory game at Hindmarsh Stadium, I doubt we’ll go to a game together this season. And that should be a huge concern for Adelaide United and the A-League.

In the end, I decided to go with a couple of mates, and keep one eye on the match and one eye on the hardcore fans that are a giving the sport I love such a bad name.

I took a seat in the southern grandstand, behind the Adelaide ``ultras’‘. I deliberately chose that spot so I could keep an eye on any trouble, but there were many young families around me who just had the misfortune to be sitting near the idiots.

The first thing that hits you is the swearing. While you still occasionally hear older supporters at footy games telling young hotheads to ``mind your language’‘, that’s not the case at the soccer.

Continue reading "The myth that soccer is a family-friendly sport" »

Kung-Fu master, movie star and all-round whoop ass machine Bruce Lee found it hard to walk down the street in Hong Kong without being challenged to a fight by some bloke who’d watched too many of his films.

Lee would receive letters daily from other Kung Fu academies putting forward their best students for a chance to fight the master. Unsurprisingly Lee was not amused: “I find this sort of thing really annoying, I’m not going to fight with anybody.”

The bashing of AFL superstar Lance “Buddy” Franklin in a Perth nightclub (at least on the facts available) is further evidence of a less sophisticated Australian version of this ego driven phenomena.

Continue reading "You wanna fight? Why footballers get targeted" »

It was recently revealed that the Victorian Labor Government employs “a small army” of media minders and spin-meisters. But Brumby’s battalions of PR hacks cannot deny the undeniable fact that crime rages out of control.

The evidence is right there in front of us. Our TV screens and newspapers are filled with stories of the street violence that is seemingly an everyday occurrence in Victoria.

It has gotten so bad that even the police are intimidated by the marauding thugs who have come to rule our streets.

Continue reading "Mandatory minimums the answer to drunken thuggery" »

The bashing death at school of a 15 year old boy in Mullumbimby last week is a symptom of a much bigger statewide problem in schools.

Put simply teachers now have little control. The consequences for students of bad, even violent behaviour, are now so insignificant students simply don’t care.

A teacher cannot restrain a student at all, they can’t yell at students or else they will be accused of emotional abuse. A teacher must simply say “please don’t do this” and then hope they are obeyed. Step outside this rigid set of rules and you risk being “EPACed” - every teacher’s worst nightmare.

Continue reading "Teachers are powerless to stop schoolyard violence" »

By all accounts Jai Morcom was your average Aussie high school kid. The 15-year-old student had a good circle of friends who describe him as a peaceful and happy young man.

Last Friday, Jai found himself at the centre of what sounded like a fairly routine schoolyard squabble, a fight over who was allowed to sit at a lunch table.

The result of this squabble was anything but routine. Jai Morcom is dead. He was bashed so savagely – possibly because he was trying to break up the fight – that he died of massive head injuries on Saturday morning.

Continue reading "Should Jai’s death force a rethink of bullying strategy?" »

Look into the faces of those dozens of people glassed in violent incidents in our pubs and clubs in recent years and you’ll know that we have a problem. Those faces are worth more than any of the words I’m writing on this topic at the invitation of The Punch.

The images of our young people fighting on our streets with total strangers whose paths have they have crossed by chance, makes you wonder if we’ve got it right as a society. We shouldn’t live in a wowser state. I am clear on that.

Equally, we shouldn’t live in a state where our very human pursuit of enjoyment takes us down a darker path where alcohol becomes the end in itself.

Continue reading "We should not accept drunken violence as normal" »

THE classic bump has been knocked out of AFL footy.

The bump is the very thing that characterises Aussie rules, with all its gladiatorial stunts and aerial magic.

Hawk Lance “Buddy” Franklin’s “legitimate bump” on Tiger Ben Cousins was a split-second reaction. And it only takes a split second to swing fortunes in footy.

Continue reading "The night the AFL killed the hip-and-shoulder bump" »

I’m going to do something here that most pollies wouldn’t do and ask for help. Help in trying to address Australia’s $16bn alcohol toll. I want the readers of The Punch to leave a comment and share their ideas on how governments can address Australia’s binge drinking culture and the violence which stems from it.

Three years ago I took a 10 point plan to both John Howard and Kevin Rudd. It included advertising restrictions and health warning labels.

But with that plan shot down its now time for fresh ideas as this a real issue which this country as a whole needs to take responsibility for.

Continue reading "Our drunk nation" »

I used to be a cop. I’ve seen firsthand the damage that alcohol can cause when mis-used. Along the way I became a dad and, like most parents, worry about my kid’s safety. Now, I find myself as Managing Director of Brown-Forman Australia, proud makers of Jack Daniels. 

I’m not sure which role has given me the sharper insight into life as most of us know it but if you think that this country recently had a ‘debate’ about alcohol policy, you’re dead wrong. 

What was supposed to pass for a war on binge-drinking has turned out to be a well meaning, but badly aimed, paint-ball skirmish – messy, misdirected and ultimately without lasting impact.

Continue reading "Ban being drunk in public if you want to stop violence" »

There’s one civil liberty which is being glossed over In the debate over the response to street crime in the Melbourne CBD. The freedom to do your job without having the crap kicked out of you.

The sickening attack on a plain clothes officer in Little Bourke Street early yesterday - the copper had his jaw broken by a drunken yobbo who king-hit him from behind - has prompted calls from the Victorian Police Union for mandatory jail time for anyone found guilty of assaulting police.

The proposal will no doubt be criticised by civil libertarians as a draconian over-reaction.

Continue reading "Bash a cop, go directly to jail" »

Her voice was clear, eloquent and well-mannered. “I’d like to have the AVO cancelled, please,” she told the clerk confidently.

They see a lot, staff of local court registries and maybe this was nothing new. Curious, I turned to see who was speaking, not entirely sure of what I expected to see. Noting an appearance to match the voice - blonde, well-groomed and aged in her early-to-mid 20s - the young woman went on.

“You see, I was really drunk the other night, and I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

Continue reading "When an AVO is just a tactic in a lovers’ quarrel" »

Ask an Australian if crime is getting worse, and most will say - wrongly - that it is. Crime in Victoria, state authorities reported proudly yesterday, is down 25 per cent over eight years.

Yet they also announced another 120 police would be put on Melbourne’s streets with new powers to search for weapons, because - at least in Victoria’s experience - crime is decreasing, but the violence isn’t.

The public perception that crime is on the rise is understandable when you hear the shock and disbelief ringing through the words of Brenda Lin, in messages to her murdered family at their memorial service in Sydney.

Continue reading "No wonder we’re fearful amid crimes like the Lin killings" »

THERE are certain things you’re supposed to say when people ask what makes you proud of your home state. Nice things like the shimmering Harbour, the Opera House, the SCG or the Olympics.

I would trade them all for the bloodied grin that Brett White gave Justin Hodges in the moments after knocking out Steve Price on Wednesday night.
As the flashy Hodges ranted about payback, positioning himself behind bigger teammates, White simply poked out his bloodied tongue and smiled, mocking Hodges for the pea-hearted, adolescent sook that he is.

Continue reading "Savage dead rubber that breathed life back into league" »

My grandmother is 92 years old and lives in public housing in Adelaide’s southern suburbs. She is a custodian of wonderful old Australian expressions and a woman of firm and earthy convictions. One of her convictions is that Sydney is basically a dump, “a den of iniquity” as she puts it, its harbour wasted on spivs, tarts, crooks and hookers. A morally-bankrupt dive which has never really shaken off its uncouth convict past, and where no-one of sound mind would choose to live.

I’m starting to think she might be on to something.

This might sound odd given that it’s barely a month since I penned a sweetheart’s letter to my adoptive home of 10 years by listing the 40 things I love about Sydney.

This column is about the one thing I really hate, and am hating more with each passing day. It’s not the roads, it’s not the cost of living, heaven forbid it’s not even the State Government. It’s Sydney’s out-of-control gangster culture, which in the past few months has gone from a relatively controlled background phenomenon to a full-blown cult of violence and vanity, where the authorities have been made to look like fools as the lawless increasingly act as they wish, egged on - most alarmingly - by apparently sane people who come over all giggly and start twirling their hair in the presence of drug-dealers, bikie leaders and stand-over men.

Continue reading "Crims and their clique turn Sydney into an open sewer" »

As a long-time member of the Sydney Swans Football Club I have been seated in the outer at the SCG or whatever Stadium Australia is called this year for pretty much every game Barry Hall has played in the Harbour City.  He was a popular replacement for the retiring Tony Lockett and his move north seemed quite appropriate, considering that he had followed a very similar path as Plugger - a talented forward who had his troubles with discipline.  They even played at the same club prior to moving to Sydney. 

Hall quickly became popular with the fans.  Those of us who went to supporters days always found him kind, generous with his time and happy to chat to us. 

I take my son to the kids clinic every season and Hall was always out on the field with the other players coaching the kids.  When it came to autograph time, he was the one they all flocked to.  He patiently signed every one and never appeared to be anything other than genuine in his desire to be there.

Continue reading "A fan’s take on a fallen hero" »

It might sound a bit odd given that he was reported 15 times - and spent more than a full year of his playing life out of the game - but Barry Hall has probably done more than any other individual over the past 10 years to help expand the national code.

If you take your kids along to Auskick in Sydney, or talk to any Swans fans, the one constant which drives their love of the game, the person they associate most readily and passionately with the club, is not Brett Kirk or Leo Barry or Adam Goodes or Paul Roos, but the phenomenal, flawed, big, bad, bustling Barry Hall.
Now that he has quit Aussie Rules, the greatest hits packages will tonight run for several minutes as his contribution to the game is seen first and, sadly, foremost, through his many high-impact brain snaps, such as this textbook left-hook on West Coast’s Brent Staker which cost him seven weeks.

Continue reading "Barry Hall was a marketing knock-out for Aussie Rules" »

JAKE Friend will slip on the number 9 jersey and run out to play for the Roosters tonight. It will be just under a week since he, along with teammate Sandor Earl, allegedly assaulted a 31-year-old woman in a Sydney nightclub.

Despite being formally charged, they are free to wear the colours of one of rugby league’s foundation entities – and even the most ardent Roosters fan must see that there is something terribly wrong with a club that allows it.
It doesn’t take Jack Welch to point out that a badly managed organisation tends to rot all the way to the bottom.

Continue reading "Blind Freddy can see league has a leadership problem" »

Bashings, killings, rapes, shootings, stabbings, and murders – we hear about them every day, with alarming frequency.

Crime is so much part of our lives that the horrifying detail of them flits through our consciousness faster than it took me to type this sentence.

Rarely do we stop and think – properly – what these people, the victims of these terrifying stories, are actually going through.

We’re numb to their pain, and perhaps for good reason. But how do they do it?

Continue reading "First, get out of bed. How victims of crime keep living" »

With Swans coach Paul Roos all but saying he’d like forward Barry Hall to retire after landing another stray punch, the question is now being asked: how many chances should Hall get before he’s just sacked?

I’d ask another question. Is Barry Hall really as big and bad as he is being made out to be, or is the controversy just an indication of how soft football and sporting culture generally has become in Australia?

In short – and at risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw - are Bazza and the likes of Andrew Symonds really too hard or have we just become too soft?

Continue reading "The hard men that soft modern sport has left behind" »

We live in troubled times. The economy is scrambled eggs. The atmosphere is as full of hot air as the Rudd government. Chk Chk boom chick Clare Weberloff’s 15 minutes of fame is extending disturbingly beyond the 15 day mark.

What a relief, then, to wake after this weekend and discover that a familiar order has returned to the sporting universe.
Tiger Woods won his 67th golf tourney. Federer won his 14th Major. England lost the unlosable cricket game. And Barry Hall lost the plot.

Continue reading "Give Barry a break or his career will be cactus" »

Liberal MP Alby Schultz has just got into a physical fight with one his colleagues, frontbencher Chris Pearce, during a heated exchange in this morning’s Liberal Party Room meeting in Canberra.

Schultz, whose hatred of the National Party knows no bounds and once said that he’d “slaughtered better animals” than Barnaby Joyce, was at the centre of a fiery argument among MPs about three-cornered contests where Libs and National candidates run against each other. 

Schultz became so angry during this morning’s debate that he stormed out of the meeting and, as he left, fellow Liberal Chris Pearce quipped “have a nice day” - at which point Schultz turned and shirt-fronted him. Apparently three MPs had to restrain Mr Schultz.

Continue reading "Punchmania hits Canberra as Liberal MP shoves colleague" »

YOU know what I love about the Grand Canyon, other than that it is one awesome kick-arse hole in the ground?

It’s got no fences. You are free to fall into it if you feel so inclined. Sure, there’s the odd sign telling you that straying too close to the edge could bring a premature and permanent end to your holiday, but that’s the extent of the bureaucratic concern.

If the Grand Canyon was in Australia, it would have a fence around it.

Too dangerous, the nannas who govern us would cry, to let people just explore it in a manner of their choosing.

Continue reading "Wowser watch: the plastic beer glass is pure evil" »

Choc tops. Check. Obesity inducing fizzy drinks. Check. Two seven year olds. Check. Negligent parenting. Check.

Time to set school holidays brain to snooze. The film is PG and Disney: Race To Witch Mountain.

The plot concerns alien beings that take the shape of children and are gently helped back to their spaceship by Dwayne Johnson – exactly the kind of caring behaviour you’d expect of a former professional wrestler known as The Rock.

Parental nap rudely interrupted when the frantic gunfire starts.

Continue reading "Buckle up kiddies, it’s a Walt Disney gorefest" »