Julian Morrow, from The Chaser – obviously one of the main targets of the new law, along with Broken Rites and similar groups, has an opinion piece in the SMH, today. It’s a funny read, and spot on:
One easy way to identify a bad law, other than simply reading it, is to think about what types of conduct might fall foul of it. And it’s fun, too.
First, “inconvenience”. My preliminary list of things that could cause inconvenience to participants at World Youth Day includes being ahead of them in a toilet queue, obscuring their view of the Pope, or maybe just situating your convenience store too far away. Ironically enough, excessive security checks can also be a major source of inconvenience, as the citizens of Sydney may recall from the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last year.
It’s also inconvenient for participants to have to pay for things, or obey traffic laws or to have to rug up in cold weather. While solutions to the first couple are obvious – hand over your money and no-one gets hurt, and get out of my way as I speed away from the scene – the last is not so easily answered. Perhaps Morris Iemma and John Watkins want us all to walk around with giant heat-lamps making sure that the WYD participants aren’t cold because otherwise, you know, we’d be causing them inconvenience by letting them suffer like the rest of us 🙂
And while there’s some attempt to downplay the laws, with church officials saying that people shouldn’t be told what to wear, that’s exactly what happened to victims of abuse by the church; they’re being abused all over again – this time by the government.
Victims’ groups who met police in Melbourne on Tuesday were told they would not be allowed to protest in 40 designated areas, and that they must apply seven days ahead to hold a demonstration and their banners and T-shirts would be vetted.
Of course, it’s easy for such groups to make a come-back at police and the government:Â “We’re not anti-Catholic. We’re anti-abuse […] Who’s not anti-abuse?” Obviously Morris Iemma.
Interesting, on the news last night, no one, neither gov’t nor church, were taking responsibility for wanting the new laws, and the police say they were not consulted.
yeah – I can believe that the police weren’t consulted. So far, what I’ve seen on the govt. line is that the law is simply a reapplication of the law used to control crowds at sports matches. Of course, that law speaks of unruly, obnoxious drunken thuggery, yobbish behaviour that’s fairly easy to identify.
To target behaviour that is so much more subtle and indefinable is stupid. It’s like the old aphorism about hammers: if the main tool at your disposal is the ability to pass laws, you tend to think that passing laws is the best way to achieve every goal. While I can appreciate that both the church and the state want to maintain civility around the event, to cast a net so fine that everyone is now trapped in it is – there’s that word again – STUPID!