Crime

When the Snowtown murder trial concluded in 2003 a prominent criminologist scandalised the good people of Adelaide by saying there was nothing surprising or remarkable about the case.

New Yorker Allan Perry, a lecturer in criminal law at the University of Adelaide, blamed what he called a subculture of degeneracy in the city’s most depressed and dysfunctional suburbs, defined by inter-generational welfare dependency, the daily abuse of alcohol and drugs, shocking levels of child abuse, child neglect and family violence.

Dr Perry said the only thing which shocked him about Snowtown was that people were shocked by it. And he really cut loose in his description of my hometown, sending talkback and the letters pages into meltdown, and prompting the then Attorney General Mick Atkinson to tell him to move back to Brooklyn.

Continue reading "A horror movie about poverty and welfare" »

It’s a sunny afternoon and I’m sitting on the grass, headphones in, leaning against a retaining wall in a busy Sydney park. Suddenly, while thumbing through my phone, it’s snatched from my hand, inches from the ground. It all happens so fast I just jump up and yell, “Hey!”.

My brain catches up with what’s happened. A tall man, in a white shirt, sprints away and I see two, thin, white headphone chords flailing behind him.

My phone has been stolen.

Continue reading "Is an act of crime ever too trivial for investigation?" »

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" »

The ugly Australian is alive and well and holidaying in South East Asia.

Right now he or she is probably bashing someone, taking drugs, or stealing stuff. 

Of course, it’s never their fault. It’s always the “harsh” or “draconian” laws of the country in which the crime is committed, which is inevitably described as “primitive”.

Continue reading "Meet the Ugly Australian" »

It doesn’t matter if these days they’re modern boardroom businessmen in Ermenegildo Zegna suits and Bally shoes. They’re still the Mafia, and they’ll still mug you.

This week the US Department of Justice and the FBI released a series of documents reminding us the Mafia – aka La Cosa Nostra, the Mob, or as insiders call it, “This Thing of Ours” – really are not such nice people, even if they know good meatball recipes and are nice to children.

The DoJ and the FBI announced indictments against 13 individuals, being a combination of mobsters, lawyers and accountants, most of who were arrested in coordinated raids on Wednesday morning. This particular scam allegedly worked like this:

Continue reading "Filthy murderous mobsters are no Goodfellas" »

In a perfect world, justice would be swift. Right and wrong would be black and white. Good people would feel protected by the law and bad people would go to jail. In reality, crimes like murder and rape are as complicated as they are common. Sound verdicts take time.

So a Sydney judge’s suggestion to do away with juries in these cases, in the interests of efficiency, presents serious risk to the way we understand and trust the law.

Speed in these decisions risks poor judgement. Worse, it can destroy people’s lives.

Continue reading "Don’t hang the jury" »

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" »

Welcome to a new semi-regular segment on The Punch, where we try to extract something meaningful from the week that was.

In yet another week dominated by the carbon tax and financial turmoil, the other big story was the guilty verdict on Michael Jackson’s personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who slowly poisoned Jacko with a toxic mix of anaesthetic and sedatives.

Jacko wanted a cure for insomnia so he could rest up for his imminent comeback tour. The thing is, why did he need drugs at all? According to the man himself, dancing could solve all problems. Let’s examine the video evidence…

Continue reading "This week’s lesson: Dancing will not solve your problems" »

At a guess you could probably assume that none of our seven High Court judges lives in Merrylands, in Sydney’s west, where the Nomads and Hells Angels are engaged in what the police reassuringly describe not as a bikie gang war but merely “tit for tat violence”.

It is also unlikely that any of these eminent jurists lives in Northmead, where an innocent woman had her house strafed with bullets while she was sleeping last week in a zany address mix-up by a bikie who was having trouble reading his UBD.

Presumably, none of the judges lives in Adelaide’s north-western suburb of Semaphore where an 11-year-old boy, the son of a former member of the Finks, was shot in the leg while he slept during a home invasion last month.

Continue reading "How the High Court exposed suburbia to biker mayhem" »

Today’s news that an Iranian actor faces a year’s jail and 90 lashes for starring in a South Australia-funded film is an affront to justice, artistic license and about 100 other things. It is, however, very good news for a certain K Rudd.

The man who was Prime Minister until he walked backwards into a very long scimitar has had a good week. Not since he confronted a jaded John Howard and his despised WorkChoices at the 2007 election has Rudd been presented with such a string of scenarios tailor-made for his popularity.

If politics is normally the equivalent of facing missiles hurled at 100 miles an hour, this week has been T-Ball for Rudd. First, he out-manouevred Gillard with the Kuta Kid, owning the news cycle and making Gillard’s phone call to the boy’s cell look like a desperate grab for attention. Now he’s got the chance to go into bat for Iranian actor Marzieh Vafamehr.

Continue reading "This must be a job for SuperKevin…" »

I grew up on the edge of a World Heritage region. It’s a twisted irony that these rainforests proved an ideal place for criminals to hide their activities. Where better to dump a dead body than in a remote wilderness?

This horrible truth was discovered by two little girls, who 40 years ago found the decomposed remains of a child in the bush. Vicki Barton was an eight-year-old local, snatched from the steps of a Blue Mountains shop in 1970.

Like murdered Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, there was a massive hunt to find the kidnapped girl. Grim-faced police spoke to us at school, well before the phrase ‘stranger-danger’ existed. Vicki’s body remained hidden for 18 months until the two girls, about Vicki’s age, made their gruesome discovery.

Continue reading "Killing the “closure” myth" »

There can be no doubt that Christine Nixon’s size played an unpleasant part in some of the public criticism she faced over her decision to dine with friends at a flash restaurant as the Victorian Bushfire inferno unfolded on the evening of February 7, 2009.

If Christine Nixon weighed 60kg she would have been shielded from the kind of snide public remarks about how, frankly, she wasn’t about to die of starvation anyway and could probably have made do with a quick sandwich as she liaised with and – crucially – led her team at the bushfire control centre.

That’s where any sympathy for Christine Nixon should end though. If her detractors have at times offensively used her weight as a vehicle to pile on the ridicule, the former Victorian Police Commissioner has probably been just as guilty of using the “fattist” issue (that’s her term) as a foil for her abrogation of responsibility on that horrendous night.

Continue reading "Sorry, but Christine Nixon deserves the criticism" »

First came the holidaymakers. Then came the high-rises. Then came the property spivs and assorted shonks. Then came the meter maids and the blue-rinsers from down south.

Then came more holiday makers. Then came schoolies. Then came the theme parks, more families and more blue-rinsers.

Then came the football stars. Then came nightclubs that were bigger and louder than the original Cavill Avenue lot, and then, inevitably, came the drug lords and violence.

Continue reading "The Gold Coast is in danger of losing its lustre" »

Boasting everything from alleged molestation, a mistress, a suicide attempt, a chlorophyll/chloroform Google mix-up, a concocted character “Zanny the Nanny” right through to fake employment at Universal Studios and at the very heart one very dead toddler, the Casey Anthony trial had it all.

On July 5, the jury, after deliberating for a mere handful of hours, found Casey Anthony not guilty.

Not quite the same as saying she’s innocent. Nevertheless, the jury’s verdict came from the leftest of left field. And it was on that not guilty pronouncement that the story got really interesting.

Continue reading "Casey Anthony and the thirst for crocodile tears" »

It can make you paranoid and irrational, prone to making stupid decisions with bad consequences, and can ultimately cause serious harm. Yes, it’s the moral panic over drugs.  The latest burning issue is synthetic dope.

Kronic (or Puff, or Voodoo, or Kaos) was happily crossing the counter of many a hippie herbal high store until the mining industry realised its employees were using it to rort their drug testing systems. Often sold as incense, it’s made from herbs sprayed with chemicals that mimic the effects of marijuana.

WA quickly moved to ban Kronic, so people in possession now face fines of up to $100,000 or 25 years in jail. Victoria is planning to follow suit. Then South Australian pollies, with a burst of speed so surprising it makes one suspect performance enhancement, managed to prohibit the drug the very day after The Advertiser published doctors’ calls to make it illegal.

Continue reading "Synthetic marijuana: Don’t believe the Kronic hype" »

Most of the time I use the internet to research stories, look up movies or stalk… errm, I mean keep in contact with friends using social media. If I’m feeling particularly exciting I might check out a YouTube video of a cat playing the piano or a panda sneezing.

My computer, on the other hand, is busy running around extorting people as part of an organised crime gang or working as a double agent for foreign governments. And in its down time it hires itself out as a mercenary.

And there is a good chance yours is doing this too.

Continue reading "Botnets: My PC is a zombified gun for hire" »

Is it ever OK to condone theft? A reader sent us in this doozy recently…

“I recently had an employee come and see me because he was struggling financially. A not so good lawyer had not only seen him lose custody of his 3 kids in the family court, but also during the divorce settlement gave his wife almost everything.

“She’s now a single mum with 3 kids and can barley support herself so his payments to her, set by the court, leave him with little to no money of his own. He has since found a new lady friend who has two kids of her own and they have moved in together. Although done for love, this does ease the financial burden caused by rent, utilities, etc.

Continue reading "Friday’s dilemma: sympathy for a broke thief or not?" »

There are three golden rules in life: Nothing works, everything sucks and everyone you meet is either an idiot or plotting against you.

Being an optimistic and sunny sort of chap I have no problem accepting that this is all an unavoidable part of life and may even play a valuable role in shaping the human condition by teaching us humility through suffering. All I ask is that somebody pays for it.

It’s about time people who indifferently ruin other people’s lives every day were jailed alongside the criminals who do it on purpose.

Continue reading "My feet are wet, life sucks, and someone must PAY" »

It hasn’t been a good week for disaffected fathers. Most weeks aren’t. Since Mick Fox disrupted half of Sydney to protest his custodial battle, we’ve seen the shocking case of Paul Rogers, who fatally gassed himself and his daughter Kyla, while the awful case of Ramazan Acar goes through the courts. Read the gruesome details if you dare.

As we all know, custodial battles over children are the common thread in these and many similar cases. But why do men snap? At what point does frustration boil over into mass scale public nuisance… or even to murder?

Let’s take a small picture view and a big picture view. The small picture, with a focus on the ass that is family law, comes from Barry Williams, president of the Lone Fathers Association. The wide view comes from social analyst Richard Eckersley, who regularly measures Australia’s pulse through a thing called the Wellbeing Index.

Continue reading "When good dads go bad, and bad dads turn murderous" »

The relationship between actors and the parts they play is an odd one.

Directors in the pursuit of authenticity in their production often cast characters pulled from the same streets, and sometimes with associations to the same criminal societies from which they draw their artistic inspiration. When these actors start getting into trouble for much the same things as their characters did, it poses an interesting question: which came first, the actor or the gangster?

Here’s a few notable examples of actors turned gangster, or is it the other way around?

The Wire’s Felicia “Snoop” Pearson

Continue reading "Bad things happen when gangsters play actors" »

I appreciate the high standard of human rights we enjoy in Australia just as much as the next person. But when it comes to the possession of illegal substances, I think it’s better to be presumed guilty rather than innocent, even if it intrudes on our basic right to a fair trial.

In 2008, solicitor Vera Momcilovic was convicted of trafficking ice found in her apartment, despite her claims that the drugs were her boyfriend’s and she knew nothing about it.

Now she’s challenging the legitimacy of the state’s drug laws in the High Court, claiming the Victorian Charter of Human Rights effectively invalidates them because they remove the presumption of innocence.

Continue reading "On drugs: Suspend rights and consider them guilty" »

Imagine heading off to Christmas lunch in a few weeks, having a few soft drinks and a big chunk of brandy-soaked Christmas pudding, only to have to get a taxi home because you’re over the drink driving limit.

Sounds a little stupid but that could be the reality considering the new drink-driving discussion points from the Australian Transport Council. And if you’ve been taking cough medicine at the same time then you’re really in trouble.

In the new National Road Safety Strategy it’s suggested that the legal limit for alcohol in drivers be reduced to either 0.02 or even zero. Not that there’s really any difference between the two.

Continue reading "How far is too far when fighting drink driving?" »

In the last 48 hours only one thing is definite about the Julian Assange sex assault case – the hyperbole surrounding it has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence.

The question of his culpability has been lost amid the spiralling, competing narratives about sex, the media, Sweden’s hyper-liberal legal system and even the CIA, that are all part of the fight to make sense of this case.

This story isn’t about a sex crime – it’s become about the culture of 24-hour news cycles, war, supposed US imperialism, and the renegade elements of the digiterati who seem willing to wreak havoc in the name of a man they see as a hero.

Continue reading "Assange has prompted a troubling double standard" »

Adelaide. It’s orderly, clean and quiet.

Maybe too quiet.

Because somewhere behind the odd mix of plummy accents and mullet haircuts, some seriously nasty stuff happens.

Continue reading "Adelaide. Eat. Pray. Kill?" »

This is an edited extract from the book by “Dumb and Dumber” bank robber Anthony Prince: Bank Robbery for Beginners – a story of criminal stupidity and its very serious consequences.

I entered the bank first. The two tellers were behind the counter chatting. The anticipated fear and adrenaline was vague – all I recall is wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible. I opened my mouth and out fell the words, ‘This is a robbery!’

I held up my pistol. I remember the two girls turning and looking at me, like they knew me. The older girl, Kim, stared at me with a peculiar smile on her face, like she understood this was a joke and she wanted me to stop mucking around.

Suddenly, Luke came storming in from behind me, doing the whole madman-robbing-a-bank thing – ‘Shut the fuck up and give us all the money!’ – and then the girls’ faces changed.

Continue reading "Holding a gun at a girl who looked like my sister" »

If Australian cities could be defined by an aroma, you might pick jasmine for Sydney, tropical rain for Brisbane, coffee for Melbourne. While Adelaide would probably stump for an earthy shiraz or a fragrant bunch of Ross roses, the sad reality is that for many Adelaide households the defining aroma is the sickly stench of bong water.

The do-nothing culture of Adelaide’s sizeable unemployed underclass has been defined in large part by one of Australia’s greatest public policy failures – the liberalised cannabis laws which normalised the daily use of marijuana. Equally, the explosion in the size and reach of biker gangs in the City of Churches was fuelled by those laws, which for a long time enabled a virtual franchising of backyard dope production through hydroponics.

Even today, now that the laws have been tightened, there are more hydroponic shops in Adelaide per capita than any other city in the land. One website says there are more shops here per capita than any other city in the world, including Vancouver, where cannabis is decriminalised. According to one pro-cannabis website I read this week, there’s about 40 of these stores in the metropolitan area alone.

Continue reading "How the 10-plant rule sent much of a city to pot" »

(Eds note: Peter Michael covered the Queensland abortion trial for the Courier-Mail)

It was like a morning after pill. That’s what Tegan said. That’s how they do birth control in Russia.

Except by the time she took them – five tiny pills over 48 hours – she estimated herself to be about five weeks pregnant. “I woke up with a period the next day. And other than that I was fine,’’ she told police brightly, in explanation.

It begs that hoary chestnut: When does life start? When sperm meets egg? When there is a heartbeat? When newborn child emerges from womb and opens eyes and lungs to the world? It does not matter. Not in this case.

Continue reading "This abortion trial should never be repeated" »

Just over 12 months ago, when the death toll from the drug war in Mexico was about to hit 10,000, I wrote a column for our website quietly commending Australia’s casual coke-users for playing their own small role in contributing to the violence.

It was a simple bit of supply and demand economics and one which was met with scorn by some readers, who disputed any link between their decision to rack up at a Sydney nightclub and the fact that Mexicans are living (and dying) in servitude and terror at the hands of cartels.

It’s unclear how they came to be such authorities on the provenance of their drugs, but these readers asserted that the cocaine you get in Australia has got nothing to do with the cartels which have gone close to destroying Mexico.

Continue reading "How our casual drug habits helped kill 28,228 Mexicans" »

If you’ve wondered why Channel Nine’s The Golden Mile painted such an endearing portrait of its leading “Underbelly” character, King’s Cross figure John Ibrahim, it might well be because he’s had a hand in how he was portrayed in the script. 

Ibrahim – who paints himself as a publicity shy businessman annoyed by the fame generated by the show – was so concerned about his portrayal in Golden Mile, The Punch can reveal he even confronted an actor who turned down the chance to play the lead in the Channel 9 hit series.

Young Australian actor Les Chantery - star of 2009 Australian film Cedar Boys about Lebanese-Australian drug dealers in Sydney’s Western suburbs - rejected the opportunity to audition for the starring role of John Ibrahim in The Golden Mile out concern of having himself and other Lebanese-Australians typecast as thugs.

Continue reading "Has the Golden Mile given Ibrahim a soft underbelly?" »

An unassuming bank manager who went missing in North Queensland is alleged to have made “full and frank admissions” to police about a missing $3 million from the community bank in which he worked.

The disappearance and subsequent arrest of bank manager Colin Carleton is a kind of crime story more fascinating than a heist pulled off by a gang of hardened criminals. The Courier Mail reports that Carelton is widely described as “quiet, down-to-earth, family man”.

Carleton’s alleged theft only came to light in the last few months, and is thought have taken place over a decade. He was due to meet with private investigators looking at financial irregularities at his Bendigo Community Bank when he disappeared on July 13, last seen going for a trail bike ride in the Herberton Ranges.

Continue reading "Election-Free Zone: the man who wasn’t there" »

It was the most sickening, traumatic moment any journalist could ever live through – waiting for three little boys, in the depths of a cold, black dam, to rise from the darkness.

“C’mon, c’mon,” I yelled, as I frantically waited for the news that the boys, aged 10, 7 and 2, would emerge from the dam near Winchelsea, about 100 kilometres south-west of Melbourne.

It was Father’s Day, September 4, 2005 and I was working the night shift on police rounds at Melbourne’s Herald-Sun. I got the dreaded call from Victoria Police that three boys were stuck in a car, deep in a dam.

Continue reading "A sickening wait for three boys to rise from darkness" »

Andrew Bolt, the man all lefties love to hate, has really done it this time.

Bolt’s a great opinion columnist. He is well researched, eloquent, and knows exactly which buttons to push to whip up indignation and outrage. That’s his job, and he’s bloody good at it.

But his latest effort treads a dangerous line. It fuels racist thinking. Even more than usual.

Continue reading "Sorry Andrew, you’ve bolted headlong into racism now" »

Tory is very quick to use the “racist” slur to disguise her lack of argument and of comprehension. It’s a dead giveaway these days.

But there is an even more telling sign that she is totally unable to refute, let alone understand, my argument.

It’s that rather than deal with what I actually wrote, she imputes to me sentiments I do not share and arguments I have never made.

Continue reading "Sorry Tory, you should try reading what I actually wrote" »

Just to be absolutely clear, smashing convicted paedophile and child rapist Dennis Ferguson over the head with a medicine ball is not the ideal way to respond to his presence in a city gymnasium.

That said, Ferguson’s presence in a city gymnasium is not an ideal situation either.

Especially when he just sits there, dressed in a business suit, not even exercising at all, but outside at the pool where he can gaze at dozens of primary school kids who are learning to swim. Especially when he times his visits to coincide with the swimming lessons, either the primary school kids in the mornings, or the high school students when he visits in the afternoon.

Continue reading "Watching the kids swim, with Dennis Ferguson" »

There’s something uniquely sickening about cases of animal abuse that outrages the community more than most crimes. To hear of a defenceless creature being brutalised by a cowardly attacker can get the blood of even the gentlest soul boiling.

This week we learnt of the shocking case of Snowy, a much loved family pet suffering horrific injuries at the hands of a torturer. The 18-month-old cat’s ears were mutilated and he had been set alight. Also this week charges against the man believed to have tortured Buckley, a puppy who had his ears and tail hacked off, were dropped amid fears that the case would not stand up in court.

In recent months there have been multiple cases of animals being tortured and killed in a trend that appears to be Australia wide. It seems no animal is immune from such callous attacks; pets, wildlife, even dolphins have been targeted by individuals who derive some sort of thrill from inflicting pain on an innocent creature. Despite the increasingly violent and sadistic nature of these attacks and the public’s growing disgust, offenders if caught can expect little more than a slap on the wrist.

Continue reading "Animal cruelty and the case for harsher punishment" »

Last weekend my heart sank as I watched the 60 minutes investigation into the horrific UK murder in 1993 of 2-year-old James Bulger.

The vicious murder of the toddler by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables is regarded as one of the most violent crimes of Britain’s modern history, particularly because the boys who committed it, were themselves only kids at 10 years of age. This story always leaves me deeply saddened and sickened to my stomach every time I hear about it – not just as a father, but as a human being. The fact that two young boys could be so calculated, violent and evil is hard to comprehend.

When you hear about terrible things like this, the last thing you expect is to discover is that they were carried out by children themselves. It’s terrifying. What’s equally hard to comprehend is the sentence they received – 8 years of detention and rehabilitation. Is that a suitable punishment?

Continue reading "Hard time may be the only deterrent for young offenders" »

The first story I covered as a court reporter was about the point at which life begins. It was a big question for the tiny Moe Magistrates’ Court. The year was 1989.

Every Friday night, one of the local lads would throw a sex party. One night his heavily pregnant girlfriend objected, so he punched her repeatedly in the stomach.

The eight-month-old foetus didn’t survive.

Continue reading "Baby Zoe: why can’t a foetus be a victim of crime?" »

“Please tell everyone South Africa’s not as dangerous as they think.” That’s how most of my conversations have started over the past 10 days as I travelled around the country that will host next month’s World Cup.

It’s just 16 years since Nelson Mandela’s election as president signalled the end of the apartheid era, and like a teenager going to her deb ball, South Africa is nervous about being the centre of attention.

Worried that the roads won’t be ready. Worried that the national team, known to all as Bfana Bfana, won’t perform well. But most of all, worried that the country’s reputation for violence will be the ever-lasting memory of this World Cup.

Continue reading "Nervous wait for World Cup in rainbow republic" »

This is, er, gold. Convicted killer and drug dealer Carl Williams - the crim who used to knock about in tracksuits - is being buried in a gold-plated coffin. There’s full coverage of the funeral here.

We can safely assume he’s not on one of those complete funeral packages advertised by earnest middle-aged people on daytime TV. Your sudden death as a result of an encounter with some exercise equipment could leave your family struggling to pay the bills. For as little as $1.50 a week you can have all the costs of your funeral covered, and for just 50c extra a week, we’ll throw in a comically gangsta gold coffin.

What has happened to this guy’s assets? What has been seized? And how much of his drug money is still sitting in a bank?

Continue reading "Where do I sign up for the Carl Williams funeral plan?" »

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" »

Carl Williams was a human being. But he was a human being in the physiological sense of the word. He breathed oxygen, had two arms and two legs, he had all the defining physical characteristics which qualified him for inclusion in the homo sapiens species.

But he was shorn of the emotional characteristics which define humanity – empathy, compassion and kindness, remorse, guilt and shame. He murdered three people - one of them a father in front of his children at a school football game – and sold drugs on such a massive scale that one can only speculate as to how many people were poisoned or even killed by using his products.

It’s been said this week by Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland and others that any death is a tragedy. But some deaths are more tragic than others, and like most people I struggle to feel any sense of sorrow at Williams’ death.

Continue reading "Our only regret is we didn’t get to murder Carl Williams" »

Carl Williams became a household name outside Victoria thanks to the first of the enormously successful TV series Underbelly, which is now in its third season on Channel 9.

Williams, a career criminal, died today as a result of head injuries inflicted in an assault by another inmate at Barwon Prison, where he was serving a minimum of 35 years for three murders.

Williams became something of a grotesque poster boy for Melbourne’s gangland war which came to national attention six years ago as tit-for-tat killings between rival drug gangs became increasingly daring and public. The brazen public murder of Jason Moran - shot dead along with a fellow criminal in a car park after attending a kids’ footy clinic - was something of a watershed moment in the war and it was masterminded by Williams.

Continue reading "Williams: part-time TV star, full-time crook, now dead" »

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" »

“Whadidya say?”

Thump. Her body lurches forward, her upper body, starting just below the shoulder where he had hit her, falls first, and then the rest of her body catches up and she takes two quick stumbling steps to regain her balance. The only noise she makes is the smallest of whimpers. She does not run or try to find help. She just keeps walking.

But so does he. “Were ya talkin’ to me? Is that what ya were sayin’ to me? He swings his left arm around, in a wide circular motion. Thump.

Continue reading "Witness to a sickening act of domestic brutality" »

Congratulations hoons: you are officially the most annoying people in Australia, by a statistical mile. Almost half - yes, half - of all Australians believe dangerous or noisy driving is a problem in their neighbourhood, according to data published today.

At first it might seem staggering that 45.3 per cent of Australians say hooning is a problem in their neighbourhood but when you think about it, how surprising is it really? How often are phone conversations or the break-up line in Sex and The City drowned out by some tool gunning his Subaru down the street? And for every single person in the street who has settled in for the evening, the experience is exactly the same.

(While we’re at it can I add to that the guys noodling about on their Harleys, not just the bikies who have an excuse but the middle managers from accounting firms who take out the Chopper after a stressful day of Excel.)

Continue reading "Great country, shame about the hoons" »

WHAT sort of a society breeds little bastards like these?

Thats what Britain is asking itself after the sickening details of how a ten-year-old boy and his 11-year-old brother tortured two other boys to within an inch of their lives were made public here last week.

The facts of the case, which has echoes in the killing of two-year-old Jamie Bulger in Liverpool in 1993, have provoked a storm of anger and re-opened the debate about Broken Britain and where it all went wrong for a once proud country.

Continue reading "Postcard from London: What society breeds these kids?" »

We should cut the coppers some slack as they grapple with the public handling of the attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.

Policing has long been a closed culture. Less than a generation ago the only way police reporters could get stories was to spend months or even years hanging around the Police Club, drinking with detectives and slowly building enough trust to get the inside running on big stories. These days, whenever a cat gets stuck up a tree there’s an expectation that an all-in press conference will follow within the hour to discuss its breed, name, and how the pesky little varmint got up there in the first place. 

There is no point in police complaining about this. It’s a reflection of the public’s legitimate conviction that information should flow freely from every arm of government. People have a right to know what is happening in their community and, these days, it is the job of the police to tell them.

Continue reading "Police credibility decamps in a northerly direction" »

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.

Continue reading "Sorry officer, but I’m drinking for Australia" »

Amid the so-far unfounded speculation over whether the murder of 21-year-old student Nitin Garg in Melbourne was racially motivated, it’s worth remembering what we do know: a brutal killer is at large in Melbourne.

According to his housemates who spoke to a doctor at the hospital hours after their friend was killed last weekend, the young man was slashed from the abdomen up to the heart.

“Whoever did this knows how to kill,” Sandeep Sandeep, who lived with Garg, told The Age.

Continue reading "Crying wolf on racism" »

What really defines these three aspects of our society: Its race or colour? Peace or violence? Street crime or racial crime?

You might have thought that race, peace and street crime are more commonly seen in our society. People generally do. But take a second to think about your answers. 

To my mind, every person who lives in Australia should be given a ‘fair go’, an ideal that many Australians aim to hold. Australia was built by immigrants, and the influence of immigrants stretches broadly throughout society.

Continue reading "We need to face up to the reality of race based crime" »

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" »

The Daily Telegraph ran the story today as its Monday lead, “Drug lords hit town – cartels get rich on Aussie hunger for cocaine”.

A “generational shift” the paper explained, has pushed the demand for the drug making Australia the world’s most lucrative coke market. 

While this was surely a shock for the few Sydneysiders who haven’t stepped out to a bar, club, trendy restaurant or party in the past few years, for the rest of us, the story was more a case of no shit Sherlock than shock. Because, if you live in Sydney and are under the age of 55, chances are you will run into the drug every day if you knew what you were looking for.

Continue reading "Sydney awash with coke" »

SHY Keenan (corr) doesn’t like to call herself a victim nor does she like the term survivor. Both imply a resolution to an issue.

But from the age of four she was systematically raped, beaten, degraded, filmed then, at the age of 10, sold to a gang of dockworkers in the UK for four more years of abuse.

In 2000 more than 25 years after the abuse, she armed herself with a small camera lent by the BBC and filmed one of her attackers boasting about his actions. Two years later she watched in satisfaction from the back of Liverpool Crown Court as three of her attackers, including a stepfather, were handed jail terms.

Continue reading "Abused as a child, with an angry message to Australia" »

A few weeks ago we ran a column here on The Punch examining the emergence of an angry core of Australian blokes who use cyberspace as a forum to unload on how women have done them wrong.

The piece documented how even the most innocent columns on breast cancer, maternity leave, childcare or body image become a vehicle whereby crotchety men can bemoan the apparent neglect of men’s health issues, the economic pressures which single dads face, the raw deal they get from the courts.

The article had the unsurprising effect of attracting, well, an angry core of Australian blokes who use cyberspace as a forum to unload on how women have done them wrong. There was a depressingly pertinent example of this mindset last week and it’s worth pinging the perpetrators over it, as it demonstrated all the nonsensical self-pity of the men-are-victims-too brigade.

Continue reading "Even White Ribbon Day is a sinister feminist plot" »

The ability of Prime Minister Rudd and his Government to “talk tough” has never been in question.  It’s the one thing Labor actually do well.

Remember that first heady year in office when they declared a war on virtually everything – from childhood obesity and whaling, to banker’s salaries, unemployment and even the global financial crisis itself?
Conveniently, the rhetoric has never had to bear resemblance to reality. 

Continue reading "Tough on crime is an empty slogan for ALP" »

On July 18 in the quiet leafy suburb of Epping, residents woke to find that their daily paper had not been delivered. The community would soon learn of the brutal murders of newsagency owner, Min Lin and his family who were found bludgeoned to death in their beds.

In the weeks to follow, a strong sense of community support and condolence for the Lin family was shown with cards and flowers laid on the newsagency shop front for the only surviving member of the family, 15-year-old Brenda.

On August 8, over a thousand mourners from the local community paid their respects to the five slain Lin family members at the Badgery Pavilion in Homebush.

Continue reading "Grief beyond words: farewelling a slain family" »

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" »

The kid’s “parents” - his “parents” are his mum and her current boyfriend - don’t give a stuff. He hates school, and teachers are relieved when he truants. He will not likely complete the school certificate.

He’s never learnt to control his tongue, and his is the discourse of the gutter. He’s already been before the children’s court a couple of times, and is not scared by the police – in fact one of his highs is the foot chase after a bit of rock throwing.

His security and identity are found in his small group of mates. He can look forward to a life, to quote Hobbes, which is poor, brutish and nasty. Unfortunately for the tax payer, it will not be short.

Continue reading "Failing kids, failing the community" »

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" »

There are plenty of normal Australians – normal being defined as prone to uncharacteristic lapses of judgment – who have a dark tale involving an incident of drink-driving where they could easily have killed themselves, a friend, an unsuspecting stranger.

Whenever I see former British Prime Minister Tony Blair I’m reminded of mine. Unlike most of my mates I got through my teens and most of my 20s without ever drink-driving, in large part because I didn’t bother getting my licence until I was 22 and escaped the road-related rattiness that comes with youth.

All except for the day of the 1997 British election, when with friends I’d attended a dawn breakfast at the National Press Club in Canberra to watch the BBC coverage, where we ate a hearty English breakfast laid on by the British High Commission, washed down with English beer. Lots of English beer.

Continue reading "Let’s stop taking the piss over drink-driving" »

Steal a helicopter. Dress like ninjas.

Show you have a sense of humour by placing a bag outside the cops’ helicopter hanger with the word BOMB written on it. This will stop the police chasing you in the sky.

Scatter small sharp objects on the roads around the bank you’re targeting to slow down approaching police cars.

Continue reading "Now this is how to rob a bank" »

Any minute now an undercover policeman is sure to phone. You see, I’ve put word out I want to hire a hitman.

Have you ever noticed when a normally law-abiding citizen tries to solicit a murder, they always end up procuring a covert cop?

It got me wondering - how hard is it to put a contract on someone’s head without entangling the fuzz?

Continue reading "How I tried - and failed - to hire a hitman" »

130 million.

That’s how many credit card details Miami resident Albert Gonzalez is alleged to have stolen by hacking into US companies over recent years.

Gonzales hasn’t been the only one busy stealing financial credentials from legitimate businesses who have collated data from our online and offline transactions, others have targeted home computers using malicious software (malware) or tricked them out of us via phishing or fraudulent websites.

Continue reading "When it comes to web safety, we’re going nowhere fast" »

Since the first caveman caved in the head of his rival with a sharpened rock, it hasn’t taken us long to use new inventions to be naughty.

And so it is with the internet and every fad it spawns. It seems it’s only a matter of time before some creative crooks find in every new popular website or net gimmick a new way to commit dastardly deeds.

Like Welshman Brian Lewis who was last week jailed for life for murdering his wife (and mother of his four children) because he noticed she had changed her status to “single” on Facebook. Sadly, it’s just the latest in a string of examples of the misuse of new inventions that should be bringing us together.

Here’s our top five:

Continue reading "If there’s a way to be bad, you’ll find it on the Internet" »

I’m trying to think of an intro that won’t make me sound like a Dirty Harry-style vigilante. But I can’t so I’ll just admit it – if serial paedophile Dennis Ferguson moved into my suburb I’d be out on the street with the rest of the neighbours demanding he be kicked out immediately, and asking why he was ever let out of jail in the first place.

With one exception, which I’ll deal with further down, all the wise-headed counsel against mob hysteria is coming from people who haven’t just discovered that their new next-door neighbour kidnapped and raped three children.

Or that he’s been charged with other aberrant or disturbing conduct since then too. And is still quite obviously as mad as a meat axe, a genuinely scary-looking weirdo who would probably be safer and happier if he were still in custody, rather than popping up in an endless series of new locations across our continent, on every occasion confronted by parents who become frightened and angry when they realise who’s just moved in.

Continue reading "In defence of the angry mob" »

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" »

On the current, sickening trends, the number of Mexicans killed in the drug-related bloodshed which has paralysed the country since January 2007 will hit 10,000 within the next few weeks, or possibly even days.

To put that in perspective, an estimated 3500 people died in the 30-year period of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It also eclipses the number of American troops killed in the War in Iraq, which at the latest count stands at 4333.

Australia’s sizeable cokehead community - even the casual users who had a discreet line in the loo last night at some groovy Sydney wine bar - should give themselves a quiet pat on the back for the role they’ve played in the deaths of these people.

Continue reading "How poseurs and clubbers helped kill 10,000 Mexicans" »

July and August have seen a lot of activity around the new National Broadband Network (NBN).  Three Tasmanian towns will be the first linked in the network that will eventually stretch all the way around Australia.  The Prime Minister has likened the NBN project to the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

The plan is for the NBN to bring 100 megabits of data, per second, to 90% of Australian homes - right to the front door - which is very different to today’s broadband experience.  Actually, it’s a bit like trading up from a ride-on lawn mower to a sports car.

Politics and the economic and technical hurdles of building such a national network aside, super-fast broadband will deliver economic and social benefits.  And risks.

Continue reading "Personal security forgotten in Rudd’s rush to broadband" »

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" »

What a sin! The National Press Club actually had the temerity to invite bikers and, an even worse devil, an academic, to address their members! After decades of weekly rants from pompous politicians and bloated businessmen they broke from tradition and dived into the dark side.

Even worse the bikers and academic questioned the wisdom of politicians making stupid laws. As if our moral and upright legislators would ever push the “lock them up and throw away the key button” just to win over the law and order vote.

But make no mistake the South Australian and New South Wales laws are particularly stupid. Forget about the blatant violation that these laws bring to the justice system and just think about their consequences.

Continue reading "Devils, bikers and the National Press Club" »

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" »

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" »

Australians are the biggest per capita users of ecstasy in the world, a statistic no one in their right mind can believe is one to be proud of.

Politicians routinely hatch solutions to the growing degradation of our collective intellect caused by the misuse of amphetamines but they routinely ignore a simple solution to the problem.

That solution will again be put to the nation’s police ministers and the new Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor when they meet in Perth tomorrow. It involves the very simple step of regulating the import of presses used to make ecstasy tablets.

Continue reading "One simple way to take ecstasy pills off the street" »

This graphic from news.com.au today:

In case you’ve been buried in spreadsheets or meetings all afternoon:

JUDY Moran is one of three people arrested over the murder of her brother-in-law Desmond “Tuppence” Moran.

You can read the story here.

And this from the Herald Sun:

Police say a 43-year-old man is expected to be charged with one count of murder, while a 64-year-old woman and a 45-year-old woman are expected to be charged with being an accessory to murder.

I would never presume to pre-empt the outcome of the Royal Commission into the Victorian bushfires, the worst natural disaster Australia has endured.

The speed and ferocity of the blazes that engulfed those quiet rural towns, and shattered so many lives and families remains beyond comprehension.

.

People who haven’t seen such devastation first-hand still find it difficult to imagine. Those who endured that day will find it impossible to forget.

My first experience as a witness to the devastation caused by bushfire was back in 1983, in the aftermath of Ash Wednesday

Continue reading "Bugging the firebugs: when safety trumps civil liberties" »

In the movies the “underworld” stays on the right side of uncivilised – law abiding citizens, other than small-business owners in the wrong part of town never have to see it, interact with it, or admit to their parents they may have been out on a date with it once or twice.

But in Sydney, the line between the “underworld” and the rest of has always been a bit blurred.

A couple of years ago it wasn’t a red carpet without at least two members of the Bra Boys. The big PR fish was big wave surfer Koby Abberton, but if you couldn’t get him any old Abberton would do, even Jai, who was tried, but found not guilty of the murder of Anthony Hines.

Continue reading "Sydney’s red carpet running redder than usual" »

Civil libertarians around the country have condemned my new anti-crime gang laws aimed at outlaw bikie gangs. Defence lawyers and pseudo-academics have lined up to tell the public that the bikie gangs are a harmless sub-culture comprised of grandparents who simply like a ride on big bikes.

Following the passing of our most recent law, we’ve seen demonstrations by hundreds of bikies from around the country converging on Adelaide in so-called “Freedom Rides”, an insulting reprise of the civil rights movement in the US.

But for outlaw motorcycle gangs, it’s a different kind of freedom.

Continue reading "Defending the right of bikers to bash, kill, steal, deal" »

ONE of the best columns of the year to date was this week’s hilarious, bang-on rant by former foreign minister Alexander Downer, who used his regular spot in Adelaide’s The Advertiser to get 11 years’ worth of fury off his chest about our more half-witted countrymen and women who get into scrapes overseas.

Under the pithy headline “Idiot Aussies: Grow up and take responsibility”, Downer condensed more than a decade’s worth of rage into a searing piece which dealt with everything from the taxpayer-funded exodus from Lebanon, to claims of Canberra’s neglect of convicted drug dealers such as the Bali Nine, and Schapelle Corby, who stars in the above YouTube video urging her release.

Downer used as his starting point Melbourne’s so-called “Beer Mat Mum” who, having been jailed for stealing a Singha-sodden terry-towelling mat from some Thai dive bar, is surely just as compelling a bogan pin-up as the chk-chk-boom girl.

Continue reading "Saving Australians from their own overseas stupidity" »

Silence was broken one night by sirens and the whirring of a low flying helicopter. The police chopper, with searchlights blazing, honed in on the lake-front park lands at Wattle Grove.

I grabbed my Police scanner and camera and went to see what was unfolding. The police chatter on the scanners told me the guy they were chasing was last seen in the lake waters and a mention of the nearby shopping centre.

Moving closer, I noticed a person creeping from the bird island bushes and into its murky waters.  Click, click, I had the shot, but the drama was far from over…

Continue reading "When a photographer has to get involved in an arrest" »