Law And Order

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" »

According to the office of NSW Corrective Services Minister John Robertson between 1200 and 1400 people are granted parole in NSW each month.

For the first time yesterday Mr Robertson, egged on by a frenzied shadow attorney general and a public baying for blood, demanded a parole ruling be “vacated”.

Eighteen years ago on November 11 Phillip Choon Tee Lim was sentenced to 24 years in jail, with a non-parole period of 18 years for his part in the murder of heart surgeon Victor Chang.

At a recent hearing the State Parole Authority, considering reports of his good behaviour, granted his parole application and ordered he be released from Parramatta Jail on that date. John Robertson says “I don’t think it’s enough,” and in doing so has tried to change the rules forever.

Continue reading "Chang decision based on outrage, not logic" »

TO a graffiti vandal, it’s the equivalent of a madman running through the Louvre with a knife at night slashing the Mona Lisa and other canvases. A secret squirt squad is systematically defacing illegal “artworks” daubed along Melbourne’s train lines by painting the letters “CTCV” over the top.

The anonymous vigilantes are bombarding hundreds of sites across the rail network with their simple tag, prompting cries of foul play from graffiti crews.

Outraged vandals have accused employees of train operator Connex, and also the transit police, of somehow orchestrating the blitz as some sort of bizarre “tit for tat” campaign to wipe out street art.

Continue reading "Are Victorian authorities fighting graffiti with graffiti?" »

In 2006, I was driving out of Beirut airport in the backseat of a taxi when I had a horrible thought. Around me, cars were driving in and out of lanes, zipping past one another in dangerous manoeuvres and in disturbing excess of the speed limit, over packed with passengers sticking their arms, legs and even their heads out of windows.

Some were even joy riding on the roof of the vehicles in question, though this had more to do with a bizarre system of car pooling than anything else.

But my horrible thought did not in fact revolve around this chaos, but in the fact that in the midst of this was a lone police officer, driving along in relative calm as if blissfully unaware of the throngs of madness around him, but doing so because the scene I just painted was simply a part of the everyday and he no longer had a role in it. Would life in Australia ever be the same?

Continue reading "Why we should give our police a proper payrise" »