http://www.thepunch.com.au/tags/violence/ Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. en Copyright 2010 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ethnic-violence-at-the-tennis-its-just-so-pathetic/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ethnic-violence-at-the-tennis-its-just-so-pathetic/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ethnic-violence-at-the-tennis-its-just-so-pathetic/#item2180 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/how-i-started-ladies-day-at-fred-brophys-boxing-tent/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/how-i-started-ladies-day-at-fred-brophys-boxing-tent/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/how-i-started-ladies-day-at-fred-brophys-boxing-tent/#item2155 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/talking-crime-violence-and-racism-with-footscray/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/talking-crime-violence-and-racism-with-footscray/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/talking-crime-violence-and-racism-with-footscray/#item2111 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/moral-lectures-from-the-ethically-challenged/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/moral-lectures-from-the-ethically-challenged/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/moral-lectures-from-the-ethically-challenged/#item2003 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/idiots-are-the-problem-not-alcohol/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/idiots-are-the-problem-not-alcohol/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/idiots-are-the-problem-not-alcohol/#item1849 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/abuser-pays-make-drunken-idiots-pay-for-their-mayhem/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/abuser-pays-make-drunken-idiots-pay-for-their-mayhem/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/abuser-pays-make-drunken-idiots-pay-for-their-mayhem/#item1641 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-boys-clubs-protecting-our-sporting-yobbos/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-boys-clubs-protecting-our-sporting-yobbos/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-boys-clubs-protecting-our-sporting-yobbos/#item1575 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/crimewave-turns-our-most-genteel-city-into-a-moshpit/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/crimewave-turns-our-most-genteel-city-into-a-moshpit/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/crimewave-turns-our-most-genteel-city-into-a-moshpit/#item1556 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/reclaiming-the-night-one-womans-story-of-survival/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/reclaiming-the-night-one-womans-story-of-survival/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/reclaiming-the-night-one-womans-story-of-survival/#item1545 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/king-brumbys-tin-pot-raj/ 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. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/king-brumbys-tin-pot-raj/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/king-brumbys-tin-pot-raj/#item1361 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:45:35 +0000 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.