Impressions

[Mugwump]

Back in Melbourne for a few weeks, and I am struck forcefully by a few things in the last three days:

1. The level of violence accepted as part of everyday life. Emergency workers assaulted every day, 120 deliberate rammings of police cars in six months, and every day incidents of violence reported on the headline news (today it is a gentleman using a baseball bat to destroy property in Myer). No one seems overly concerned about the pattern this represents.

2. A union leader threatens to hunt down and harass Federal inspectors in their homes and embarrass their children, and the State Premier equivocates and mildly tut-tuts when asked about it.

3. Police warn that drug use in Australian schools is out of control with addiction rates from ice - including at primary school level - rising dramatically.

4. Illegal immigrants are awarded $70m of taxpayers funds in compensation. Whether technically justified or not, and one struggles to imagine why this should be the case, no one seems concerned to bring anyone to account for this abominable waste of public money.

I have long thought that British society was in crisis, and it is. By comparison, however, it seems ten years behind Australia in terms of the level of everyday violence and destruction of social capital.

[stui magpie]

Welcome back home.

John Setka and the CFMEU could have their hand further up Dandrews backside, except that Lisa Fitzpatrick and the clown from the firefighters union are in the road.

[Mugwump]

^ cheers mate. Sometimes you have to live away to see things in perspective. I've been back twice in the last five years, and I notice how quickly things seem to have deteriorated in that time. That $70m is really interesting. That's about 100 teachers for ten years, yet everyone seems to consider it a shoulder-shrug. I think that would have caused a resignation of someone in an accountable system, but it just caused a round of parliamentary barracking. Very interesting.

[stui magpie]

You mean this?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-14/c ... on/8616672

I had to google it. I'd normally be aware of something like this from the feral left on twitter, but it completely slipped under the radar

[Dave The Man]

Society and Country is Simply F**ked

[Mugwump]

Yes indeed. $70m with $20m in legal costs to the leeches at Slater and Gordon, for people who are here illegally. Whatever convention allows illegal immigrants to sue the Australian government for $70m as a result of deliberate policy, it is the responsibility of our parliamentarians to legislate away from it.

[Wokko]

Residents in Western Melbourne arming themselves against violent ethnic gangs too. Guy who runs a sports shop out that way called into a radio station and said he can't keep baseball bats in stock even though nobody plays the game

[think positive]

You mean this?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-14/c ... on/8616672

I had to google it. I'd normally be aware of something like this from the feral left on twitter, but it completely slipped under the radar

Really? I read about it in Seattle! Or was that anchorage? Are yes, Facebook! Travels the world with me!

[thesoretoothsayer]

Yes indeed. $70m with $20m in legal costs to the leeches at Slater and Gordon, for people who are here illegally. Whatever convention allows illegal immigrants to sue the Australian government for $70m as a result of deliberate policy, it is the responsibility of our parliamentarians to legislate away from it.

I'm guessing that the folks in Canberra would say:
"It's taxpayers money, so who cares?"

[Mugwump]

^ yes, few people make money as easily as the government, and so few people spend it so carelessly. Nothing is as easy to dispose of as other people's money.

[Culprit]

I am sure everyone loves parking inspectors and speed camera operators as well. The new SS Building inspectors will be employed to support a Government anti union run agenda and one of which I disagree with. This goes back to Peter Reith days. Sure they are just doing a job but they will be employed based on their views and not qualifications. I don't agree with what Setka said and I would suggest he will have to face charges or should face charges and in saying that, this won't stop the inspectors being ostracised, that's the nature of the beast/job. For every person that is anti union there is another person pro union and it's the same old divisive politics from the LNP.

[Skids]

[Pies4shaw]

Unlawful imprisonment and torture? In what universe we wish to inhabit would that be non-compensable?

[Mugwump]

^ Interesting definition of unlawful imprisonment when the person concerned arrives unlawfully, having passed by many other countries en route, and is then freely allowed by the Australian government to go anywhere in the world except Australia, and an interesting definition of torture where those government (or private contractor) officials who abuse their position are acting unlawfully and subject to prosecution. Still, if elastic definitions net Slater and Gordon $20m in fees, they have their uses, I guess. Much better way to spend money than on teachers and hospitals.

In any event, whatever legal sloppiness allows this cynical bonanza on behalf of people who invited themselves here and the ambulance-chasers, it is the reponsibility of our parliamentarians to get rid of it.

[Mugwump]

I am sure everyone loves parking inspectors and speed camera operators as well. The new SS Building inspectors will be employed to support a Government anti union run agenda and one of which I disagree with. This goes back to Peter Reith days. Sure they are just doing a job but they will be employed based on their views and not qualifications. I don't agree with what Setka said and I would suggest he will have to face charges or should face charges and in saying that, this won't stop the inspectors being ostracised, that's the nature of the beast/job. For every person that is anti union there is another person pro union and it's the same old divisive politics from the LNP.

The partisan point is secondary. What shocked me was that a union leader threatened intimidation and harassment of public officials and their families in front of thousands of people and the state premier barely demurred. That is amazing, and yet somehow reflective of the undercurrent of violence people seem to take for granted here. I used to say that Australia was a hybrid of US and European culture, with of course its own uniqueness as well. It seems to be becoming more like the US, however, in its resigned acceptance of violence and its cynically litigious culture.