Violence

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" »