Tosspot of the week

Well clearly it's been a while between posts. I do have some things from the cycling world to post as soon as Photobucket recovers from it's current functionality phobia. In the meantime, this story caught my eye because it's yet another example of that Australian tradition of holding responsible people accountable for the actions of the irresponsible. Incidentally, some of the recent economic policies implemented in this country fit the same description, but I digress.

Apparently the New South Wales government has decided that after the violence at Sydney airport last week, everyone in the State who WASN'T involved now needs to be governed by draconian laws governing who they can or can't associate with, while doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to ensure that those who actually carried out the violence (or at least those that they managed to catch) are removed from society. Can I ever so respectfully ask just how the government conclude that certain people are going to comply with these laws if the same certain people are happy to break the current laws governing assault and indeed murder?

Wouldn't it be more effective and indeed fairer on the people these laws are supposed to protect if the government actually got serious about enforcing the existing laws? How about simply making the penalty for any assault (unless acting in self-defence or defence of the weak) a mandatory minimum five year prison sentence, and the penalty for murder a mandatory minimum 20 year sentence -- with no possibility of parole or a reduced sentence except in providing information that directly leads to the prosecution of other criminals. How about making our prisons into real prisons by removing access to things like TV, computer games and the Internet?

But no, instead of doing things like this that might actually get people to stop (or at least reconsider) committing crimes, the NSW government have decided that it's far easier (at least for them) to simply give criminals one more law to flout, safe in the knowledge that almost never have to face the penalties actually written in the law thanks to the wannabe social workers who call themselves "magistrates". In the meantime, the responsible members of society are left with yet another restriction on their personal freedom so that a few government officials can be seen to be "doing something" about the irresponsible.

I suppose we can take some solace from the fact that all the trumpeting and self-congratulating of the NSW State government isn't going to help them in as much as they are still almost certainly dead meat at the next election. On the other hand, that feeling is subdued in itself by the knowledge that the opposition are almost certainly just as incompetent. Incidentally, I regularly share the road with motorcycle clubs on my weekend rides in the Gold Coast Hinterland, and find them to be among the friendliest road users in the area, unlike the drunken yobbos on the coast who, incidentally, can flout as many laws as they like without ever incurring any kind of penalty, even when caught by the police. One wonders who will be the scapegoat when a government official needs to win some votes from a lobby group out of that scenario.