You could probably add to the list but apart from energy and education which various governments have totally trashed and vandalised over recent decades, who could forget the damage done by governments in other areas of public policy both state and federal over the last 30 or 40 years. Take the de-institutionalisation of the mentally ill with no support or backup and just left to roam the streets as but one example.
Then in NSW the masterstroke decision by Frank Walker, attorney general in the Wran government and his decision to abolish the summary offences act?
For those not very good at joining dots or threading needles, that is why we get the anti social behaviour on the streets that we do today.There’s no censure, opprobrium or deterrent and if it does get before a court there is not a great degree of deterrence in that either.
To a large extent, as in Victoria as recently as last weekend, we get those charged with and who actually took an oath to defend the community, just standing back and watching as a marauding gang trashed private and public property, their own police cars. Then we have the truly bizarre situation where students will be encouraged to paint bomb a local police station all in the name of community engagement. The lesson for the students and anyone watching is that providing that you think your cause is just and you’re on the politically correct, prescribed and approved side of an issue, its OK to break the law.
This is straight out of the Sally McManus playbook who said on the occasion of her appointment as Secretary of the ACTU, that if a law is unjust, its OK to break it.
It’s worth repeating the observation by David Flint that if these problems haven’t been created by government they have been made worse by government or to quote Ronald Reagan ‘..government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem’
Never a truer word spoken.