Police Try Common Sense ... And Gain Respect

In a liberal democracy, it is the province of the (adult) citizens to decide not only the laws by which they wish to be governed, but also the manner in which those laws should be policed. By this last statement, I mean: should a particular law always be enforced to the letter or should the police be given (and expected to use) the discretion to ignore minor breaches in certain circumstances?

So what is an example of how we do want to be policed?

This afternoon, I was unloading the shopping from the boot. It was a fair bit, as it was New Year’s Eve and people were coming over. No parking spots were available in the strip outside my house as several had been taken by non-residents wanting an easy walk down to the beach (fuck off, you arseholes). So I put the hazard lights on and pulled up in the no standing zone on the corner.

As I was unloading, the police drove past. They looked at me. I gave them a wave and shrugged my shoulders. They just nodded and drove on. I noticed them driving back past as I was parking the car about 100m up the street a couple of minutes later. If I’d still been there, I’d probably have gotten a ticket, but they’d seen I am a local resident and given me some leeway.

This is the type of law enforcement the vast majority of citizens want and expect: mature police with an interest in being part of the local community, using common sense and discretion for small events; technically illegal, but doing no material harm.

Other examples of such small breaches of the law I’m referring to are: driving at 5 - 10 km/h over the speed limit, puffing on a joint around the corner from the pub, having a piss behind a tree, two blokes (both at fault) getting into a fight where neither was seriously hurt, some people getting drunk at a party and going for a nude run.

All of these examples are the types of events where most people would consider a fine or an arrest neither fair and proportionate to the act nor a sensible and effective use of police resources. They would expect the police to tell the perpetrators to stop because their behaviour is illegal and just move on if their instructions were complied with. If instead the “persons spoken to” mouthed off and / or continued, most people would also agree that they brought the fine or arrest on themselves.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you think smoking a joint should be legal. It currently isn’t and the police are put in a difficult situation if they encounter people doing it. There is however a view amongst much of the community that given the trivial nature of the offence, if you are polite to the police, comply with their instructions and don’t antagonize them in such situations, they should in turn leave you alone.

I’ve seen examples of exactly this occurring. I’ve also seen the police being heavy handed in similar situations and thus losing trust and respect.

Citizens expect police to see themselves as part of the community. Part of this is understanding how the public expects to be policed and acting accordingly. If the police service does this in a mature way, in return they will find a respectful and co-operative community.

Why Should She Pay Anything To This Loser?

The law is an ass. Well, in this case, the law is inadequate and the judge is an ass.

How is it in any way fair or reasonable that a couple separates, agrees on a property and custody settlement, then seven years later, one of them is allowed to claim money from the other because they have since made a mess of their life?

That’s what has happened to a woman who separated from her husband who, according to the evidence presented was violent, smoked dope and drank to excess almost every day during their marriage. By mutual agreement, she kept the mortgaged home and the kids, he kept an investment property, a car and his super.

In the ensuing seven years, the husband not only drank and smoked more, but developed a gambling problem, lost his job and eventually was declared bankrupt. He’s now an “invalid pensioner”.

Incapable of working are you? Really? Too fucking lazy and busy feeling sorry for yourself to clean up your act and get a job, more like it. The pension is for people who can’t hold down a job because they genuinely cannot work. This is either because they are disabled or chronically ill, not because they won’t stop drinking. Excessive drinking and drug abuse are not such chronic maladies that people cannot stop.

Now this grub thinks that he has some right to ask his former wife to give him more money because his life is such a mess … and the judge agreed with him, despite offering the opinion that he had perjured himself as to their initial agreement.

How was this absurd piece of judicial activism able to occur? Because she never got around to actually divorcing him. The 12 month time limit on challenging settlements did not apply because they were still technically married.

The biggest problem with this ridiculous ruling is that it sets a precedent which is clearly at odds with the views of the majority of the community. It is the community who should decide what is right and just in areas like family law, yet Justice Philip Burchardt seems to believe that the law should or in fact does require one spouse to continue to support the other, years after separation, because they did not formally divorce.

No, they shouldn’t. If a marriage breaks up and one person hasn’t been working, they will obviously need some support while they get back into the workforce. But there is clearly a time limit beyond which each person’s circumstances are their own responsibility and not a consequence of the marital arrangements. That time is far less than seven years.

The judge should have thrown this case out. The husband is a loser who has brought his own life to this point. His wife is not responsible for his maintenance. Instead of grifting, how about some mature self examination, cleaning up his act, getting a job (any job to start with) and being a man his children can respect?

With such a precedent set, other bludgers may well use it to try to make claims for undeserved support long after a de facto relationship ends. Since there was no formal marriage and hence no formal divorce, would the 12 month time limit on claims also not apply here? Why not bring a claim, then settle beforehand, effectively using the threat of costs as blackmail?

Did you think of that, Justice Burchardt? I’ll bet you didn’t.

How is it that a couple who do not formally marry can be considered de facto married in law, yet a couple who are clearly de facto divorced are not considered so when it comes to maintenance claims?

One might also ask how this claim ever reached court. It could only be because the husband was receiving legal aid or some speculative solicitor took the case on a no win, no fee basis.

If the former, whoever approved legal aid for this case should be severely censured. This loser is already bludging off the taxpayer and scarce legal aid budget is allocated to funding his undeserving claim, when people facing excessive and often false charges are unable to adequately defend themselves because they are poor?

If the latter, the case should have been thrown out and the wife’s costs awarded against the husband’s solicitors as a warning to other scumbags.

It will be interesting to see how many women need to be stiffed in divorce settlements for them to join the fight to make divorce law more equitable. Since the 1970’s, there hasn’t been much incentive for women to support such changes, as they tend to end up with the house and kids and / or be the beneficiaries of undeserved and excessively lengthy maintenance awards. Now more women are coming into marriages with significant assets and are working and earning more than their husbands, how will the feminist lobby react?

A final lesson from this case: If you separate from your spouse and don’t want to get back together, divorce them as quickly as possible, lest they drink and gamble everything away, then come slithering before Justice Burchardt.

Sack and Charge This Idiot

What sane society allows a train driver to stop the train and call the police because passengers would not stop singing?

The worst thing about this incident is that we have become a society in which it is possible for a train driver to form the belief that not just is it reasonable to tell singing passengers to stop, but it is also justifiable to call the police and so grossly exaggerate the events that 15 to 20 officers turn up with sniffer dogs and the train is stopped for a significant period of time.

According to the article, Queensland Rail says that "neither the driver, nor the guard called police". Who believes that without corroboration?

How come 15 to 20 police, plus dogs were waiting for the train at the next station?

Reading quotes from the article, passengers were simply singing loudly. No swearing or bawdy songs, nothing yobby; just happy people enjoying themselves. There were children on the train. None of their parents reported concerns about any of the behaviour.

The police made no arrests.

There is one person who should be arrested: the driver. There are plenty of possible charges: public nuisance, wasting police resources, making a false report to police. There is no way 15 or 20 police would turn up to a train station unless the driver had grossly exaggerated and possibly even fabricated events.

Now the passengers are probably thinking what aggressive dickheads the police are. This may be very unfair. How do we know the driver didn’t report a violent disturbance by a large group? The police would have had to respond in force to a complaint like this. Which is precisely why they should throw the book at this turd.

Additionally, the driver should be sacked by Queensland Rail. If the union tries to bung on an act, take them to court. Any union bloody mindedness in a situation such as this is precisely why we need legislation preventing strikes by vital services such as public transport, fire brigades and hospitals. For such highly unionized, public service industries, the Fair Work Ombudsman should be equipped to handle legitimate grievances (and dismiss illegitimate ones).

It has always been the case that some people in positions of authority have misinterpreted a sense of entitlement as a licence to abuse their power for personal reasons. Free societies recognize this and censure it.

It appears a more recent development is for absolute peons such as train or bus drivers, bar staff, council workers, clerks etc. to believe they actually have some meaningful authority. Those with a sufficiently weighty chip on their shoulder seem increasingly bent on trying to include the rest of us in this delusion by making absurd requests under the guise of pretend rules.

If we tolerate this, they will not only keep doing it, but become emboldened to even more bullshit. Make formal complaints, find out their names and publish them wherever you can. Make sure they are aware that the consequences of trying it on with you will not be worth it.

Perhaps this more recent development of shitkickers believing they can get away with bunging on acts is a symptom of Western society’s increasing emphasis on rights over responsibilities.

To the train driver: Your responsibility is to drive the fucking train and stop it at the stations. It’s not hard. That’s why you don’t get paid as much as say, an engineer or an airline pilot. Your right is to collect your pay each fortnight and have a work environment free from violence. You do not have a right to stop passengers from singing loudly and in particular, you do not have a right to hold up 400 passengers while you make a false complaint to police because you are unhappy with your pathetic, loser life.

Hopefully the police will charge this idiot and the press will publish his name and address. Maybe some of those inconvenienced passengers can tell him personally what they think his rights and responsibilities are.

Council Oxygen Thieves Ban Cricket

It could be from a satire: Boroondara Council in Melbourne has banned 20/20 cricket from many of its grounds after a “risk assessment”, prompted by a broken car window.

Not two day and 50 over matches; just 20 overs a side. One can only presume the survey found that the number of sixes hit per 20/20 game was unacceptably high, but the number hit during other forms of the game was not.

This is exactly the kind of Kafkaesque bullshit, promulgated by public service oxygen thieves that citizens need to vigorously oppose.

I shudder at the thought of the scientific shoddiness of the “risk assessment” procedure used, as well as the useless jobsworth who conducted it and the idiot local councilors who voted in favour of the ban (if a vote was even required).

There are balls hit over the boundary in all forms of the game. Fingo even hit a big six last weekend (followed by a catch to deep mid on).

A simpler way to mange council liability is to require all clubs to have appropriate public liability insurance, which all registered clubs have anyway. The insurance companies will work out the premium from the estimated number and severity of claims. This is how it’s always worked in the past, with no meaningful problems, so the council can just get on with its real job: mowing the outfield and preparing the pitch.

Instead, we have someone who probably knows nothing about cricket making an unreviewed and ignorant decision to ban only certain forms of the game, thus affecting a large number of people playing a traditional Australian sport.

Another possibility is that this decision is the first step in a secret agenda to remove the cricket pitches from these parks permanently so the council does not have to incur the expense of maintaining them.

The people who make decisions like this are worse than merely lazy. They don’t just eat up wages, doing nothing useful: they actively ruin the amenity of citizens. They hide behind anonymity and bogus “regulations”, made up by themselves for their own protection.

The way to deal with them is public exposure. This is what they most fear.

The cricketers affected should identify the council employee who has made this recommendation and the local councilors who have made the decision and distribute their contact details to all affected parties. Make sure they are acutely aware of your opinion of them and whether they should continue in their positions.

Let the councilors know that a vigorous campaign will be conducted against their reelection.

It is not enough for people to merely be angry but take no action. Look at the UK, with its jungle of ridiculous regulations, stifling an enormous number of what sane citizens see as reasonable civic freedoms. The same thing is starting to happen here. If we don’t want this trend to continue, we must have the types of people who make these decisions removed from any positions of influence and dismantle the self perpetuating structures they have put in place to ensure their survival.

These are not people who can be reasoned with, because they would not listen even if they could understand the counter argument. They are a cancer, consuming public funds and destroying public amenity, inventing idiotic rules and procedures in a failed attempt to justify the unjustifiable: their own existence. If they are not weeded out of all positions of any authority, they will continue to destroy our quality of life and freedom to enjoy ourselves with their inane regulations.

Update:

If we do end up with a referendum on recognising local government in the constitution, do not vote Yes, unless you want to greatly increase the power of local councils and hence have much more of these bullshit decisions.

The proponents of the Yes vote will mostly be Greens, local governments and their supporters. They will tell you recognition will have no unintended increase in local government powers, but they will be either deluded or lying. It only takes one activist judge.

Why Lock Someone Up For 14 Days?

A juror who pulled a sickie to go to London and see the musical Chicago with his mother has been sentenced to 14 days in a “young offenders’ institution” for contempt of court. Presumably this comprised 7 days for pulling the sickie and 7 days for choosing such a lame way to spend his day off.

How clearly were the requirements of jury duty explained to the jurors, particularly that the defendant’s future is at stake, so being off sick isn’t an option unless you can’t get out of bed?

I know that’s obvious to many of us, but given the abject fecklessness of the majority of modern youth, this little twat probably viewed his actions as akin to ringing in sick to skive off from a low paying job he hates anyway. His mother’s response: “We thought he’d get a slap on the wrist” shows were he gets it from.

Yes, you’re right, love. He was only helping decide whether or not someone accused of a criminal offence is actually guilty. But don’t worry, it’s not a big deal if he skipped off to London with mummy for the day to watch some poncy musical and wasted dozens of people’s time, not to mention a day’s extra legal fees for the defendant. How old is this little cunt? 14?

I had to laugh at his mother’s other comments: “He wanted a career in government but now he’s got a criminal record.” Probably fortunate for the citizens of Britain that’s no longer a possibility.

It’s not the harshness of the punishment that is the problem: it’s the type. What possible net benefit to the community is there in a 14 day custodial sentence, for this or any other offence?

How is there any restitution derived from serving 14 days in prison? What is the cost to the community of housing and feeding someone for 2 weeks? What requirement is there for the community to be protected from the anti-social behaviour of this dangerous thug?

I was under the impression judges were required to take the above into account in sentencing. Britain is struggling with massive debt and a judge wastes public funds on a short custodial sentence for a first time, non-violent offender who makes Morrissey look like a cage fighter?

Surely there is a large amount of graffiti and refuse needing removal in the Greater Manchester area. How about a boot in the arse, a fine equal to the day’s jury service fees for the 11 jurors who had to be sent home, plus 50 - 100 hours of community service?

No, we’ll waste taxpayers’ funds locking him up for 14 days instead. Nice work Judge Rudland, you dunce.

Contempt of court … is it really so strange?

Virtual Battles, Real Twats

How much of the negative response to the Red Cross’ pronouncement that game play in computerized war games violates international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention was an overreaction by people who hadn’t clearly read what was actually said and how much was well founded suspicion of the motives of lefties who would impose their agenda on yet another area of our lives if they could?

Reading the comments below many internet articles on this topic, there is plenty of the former. Reading some of the quotes by the Red Cross, there is genuinely some of the latter as well:

The International Committee of the Red Cross says they may ask developers to adhere to the rules themselves or "encourage" (the article’s emphasis) governments to adopt laws to regulate the video game industry.

Ask the developers to adhere to “the rules”. And if they quite reasonably tell you to fuck off? You’ll organise a campaign against them will you? Try to damage their business until they give in to your demands?

Evidence of a far more dangerous mindset is: “encourage governments to adopt laws to regulate the video game industry”. Yes, let’s make laws banning game play which allows gamers to without penalty do things which you find offensive or which would be illegal in reality. While we're at it, let’s ban Grand Theft Auto and Mafia and not let anyone play the bad guy.

The two quotes below leave little doubt that this is more than just academic chatter:

“There is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL (International Humanitarian Law) … Exactly how video games influence individuals is a hotly debated topic, but for the first time, Movement partners discussed our role and responsibility to take action against violations of IHL in video games. What should we do, and what is the most effective method?”

"While National Societies shared their experiences and opinions, there is clearly no simple answer. There is, however, an overall consensus and motivation to take action."

Add this guff from anti war crimes organisation TRIAL, with their incredibly tweely titled paper Playing By The Rules and we can detect the seeds of an organized campaign to control gaming content in order to pursue leftist political agenda:

"It would be highly appreciated if games reproducing armed conflicts were to include the rules which apply to real armed conflicts. These rules and values are given by international humanitarian law and human rights law."

"One possible course of action could be to encourage game designers / producers to incorporate IHL in the development and design of video games, while another could be to encourage governments to adopt laws and regulations to regulate this ever-growing industry."

Yes, we must ensure we teach our children to always “play by the rules”, even in games. Your rules, of course.

“No! No! These are rules agreed by all civilized societies via the Geneva Convention. All our military must obey them or face prosecution as criminals. We must ensure realistic games reflect this so that our children learn what is right and wrong.”

Yes, the Geneva Convention is indeed an agreement between some nations regarding rules of engagement and how they will treat each other’s military and civilians. Soldiers are definitely bound by it and prosecuted if they violate it.

But why would it be incorporated in a game scenario like WW2 on the Russian front, or a Roman siege campaign?

What if you want to play the bad guys? Many people like to play the insurgents.

What I mean by “your rules, of course” is that the types of lefties who support government regulation of war gaming rules are also the people who believe our troops should behave according to the Geneva Convention even in conflicts where the enemy clearly does not, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why should a game not put forward the political view that maybe the rules of the Geneva Convention are only to be obeyed when we are fighting enemies who accept them? Why should a game not have the ability for the player to turn on and off the Geneva Convention in the settings?

Why should the Red Cross be allowed to make political statements, but not game developers? Actually, organizations like the Red Cross and TRIAL are actively encouraging game developers to make overt political statements, but only ones with which they agree.

“Encourage game designers” is fine if it means working with them and showing them evidence of studies linking violent behaviour with playing certain types of violent games. There is nothing wrong with making suggestions to game developers such as if you play as certain countries, then you lose benefits or are directly disadvantaged if you violate the Geneva Convention.

These types of rules already exist in some games. For example, in Civilization, if you raze cities or use nuclear weapons, you can end up fighting a coalition of all the other nations on the planet.

More insidious is the campaign to have governments legislate and regulate game play. This is the epitome of the leftist agenda: rules governing not just every aspect of social interaction, but now private behaviour in a virtual world.

If you have enough rules constraining behaviour, most people will obey and we can weed out the troublemakers and reactionary counter-revolutionaries. Eventually, we’ll have a society where all citizens think and behave “correctly” because everyone will have been brought up believing anything else is wrong.

The response I’d like to see from game developers?

Put the Geneva Conventions in as a rules option in Game Settings, but make sure that certain enemies ignore it. Turning it on for the player would help show people just how difficult it is for our troops to fight such an enemy when hamstrung by a fifth column of left wing lawyers, journalists and activists, waiting to accuse them of war crimes if they put their own safety above that of enemy civilians … and yes, many of those civilians are as much the enemy as conscript soldiers. Turning the setting off and flattening a mosque full of Taliban just adds to the satisfaction of the overall gaming experience.

Conversely, if you’re playing as a militia, allow them to take Red Cross or aid workers hostage.

Have scenarios where you can play the army of a brutal dictator or rebel insurgents. Round up civilians and shoot them. This would of course turn the population more against you, to which you could respond with more brutality.

Or why not a scenario where you have left wing activists helping the enemy? You could have the option to round them up with your security service.

Let’s see how realistic these lefties really do want gaming to be.

David Cameron Not Into Wife Swapping

David Cameron’s refusal to sign an amendment to the EU financial treaty was likened by one French source to “a man attending a wife-swapping party without his spouse”.

If that’s an apt description, then it’s a good thing he didn’t sign. How typical: a coterie of slippery continentals all fucking each others’ wives while their households crumble around them. Britain, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland are the only ones who apparently think that a bunch of frogs, krauts, wogs and dagoes fucking your wife is not something they’d be into thankyou very much … but they might have a look when the Dutch put it on the internet.

Why would Britain sign a treaty which gives significantly greater control over its financial sector to a cabal of lefty Eurocrats, some of whom who have commented negatively about “Anglo-Saxon free market influence”? Britain has already abrogated control over much of its agricultural policy and its social laws to Europe, to the point where citizens can be extradited to foreign countries on corrupt charges or on accusations of "crimes" which would not even be offences in Britain. Many of its citizens are of the view that their government should be taking some of these powers back, not giving away sovereignty over one of their nation’s few remaining competitive advantages.

The treaty amendments are really a device to transfer as much of London’s financial influence as possible to Paris and Frankfurt anyway. Britain must now be breathing an enormous sigh of relief that it kept the pound. Norway of course would never have been stupid enough to expose its very sensibly accumulated sovereign wealth fund to the slippery, incompetent Eurocrats and the lazy, corrupt economies they wish to subsidise.

One of the new financial treaty proposals is that:

To prevent excessive deficits, countries in the treaty will have to submit their national budgets to the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, which will have the power to send them back for revision.

Umm … I thought part of the original agreement when creating the Euro was that member countries would limit deficits to within a certain percentage of GDP. So are they now saying that this rule will actually be enforced?

What has happened until now? Was a country’s internal audit simply believed? Tell me which of these governments’ word you would take at face value: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Estonia.

Countries were meant to be properly audited prior to being allowed to join the Eurozone. Greece has clearly obtained its membership by fraud. An auditor would have to be completely incompetent not to pick up Greece’s debt problems when it joined the Euro in 2000 – 01. They have not suddenly materialised in the last 10 years. This then leads to the conclusion that the problems were known, but covered up for political reasons; all the more reason for Britain to stay out of this corrupt system.

It is typical of the left’s dishonesty to call what is happening in Europe a crisis of capitalism. The crisis is the financial contagion caused by imposing a common currency and set of fiscal rules on culturally and economically disparate countries. If countries like Greece had not been allowed to join the Euro, they could have defaulted as has happened historically. Lenders would have taken losses, but there would have been no need for bailouts and the consequent debt contagion and massive increase in instability.

The Eurozone is an invention of academic, socialist technocrats, who usually call themselves Social Democrats or similar. It is the forced linking in pursuit of political ideology of parts of the European economy which should never have been joined, coupled with the cover ups of fraudulent state accounting to achieve these political ends which is overwhelmingly the driver of the severity of the current European problems.

“Free market” economic policies do not imply the absence of regulation any more than a free and open society implies the absence of laws. Regulation is needed to ensure access to market information, as well as to guard against anti-market activity such as pricing below cost to strangle a smaller competitor or criminal activity such as collusion and other forms of market manipulation.

The scale of Europe’s financial problems is not a crisis of free market economics: it is a crisis of technocratic socialism and its egregious rule making enterprise.

Migrants and Australian Values

A letter by Asif Qazi published in the SMH on 22 Feb, 2011 reveals the attitude of many more recent migrants which angers citizens of Western countries.

He suggests: “Migrants live with whatever values they are comfortable” and “They should not be expected to follow or practice any lifestyle that is in conflict with their values and beliefs”.

WRONG. Where there is no material conflict between Australian laws and social customs and the behaviour ensuing from migrants’ values and beliefs, they can behave how they like. Where there is conflict, OUR laws and customs take precedence.

If their adult daughter wishes to live with her boyfriend prior to marriage, or not to marry at all, that is her right here. Most women wear bikinis on the beach in this country. If their daughter wishes to do the same, that is her legal right.

It does not matter that they are offended by criticism or even parody and satire of their religion. The freedom to criticize through all devices from academic discourse to polemic to satire and mockery is a core Australian value.

It is not acceptable for migrants to demand a special, segregated swimming area for “their” women at Australian beaches because of their religious or cultural values. It is totally unacceptable for aggressive, Muslim men to attempt to create a de facto one, particularly since the overwhelming majority of them don’t even live anywhere near the beach and do not pay rates to the local council. This behaviour should be met with vigorous opposition by local residents and the local police.

There are not and should never be special laws for community groups such as sharia for Muslims who do not agree with Australian court decisions. Alien cultural values are secondary in such cases.

It is precisely the support of such “we’ll live how we want” attitudes under laissez-faire interpretations of multiculturalism by the left that has led to the separatist agenda of many Muslims in Western Europe, now that they feel they have the numbers. Given European evidence, it is not unreasonable that Australians are suspicious of Muslim immigration.

The analogy with British migrants remaining connected to their heritage is absurd: modern Australia is founded on British culture. That foundation is overwhelmingly the reason why Australian society has its current structures.

The dominant culture of modern Australia is north western European and Protestant. Other cultures have enhanced Australian society by adding to this core, not creating copies of themselves as competing alternatives.

Protestant philosophy is about far more than religion and has been from its very beginning. At its heart are its tenets about the relationship between individuals and institutions. When John Wycliffe translated the bible into English, it was a political statement fundamentally about the right of individuals to read, discuss and hold a public opinion on not just matters of religion, but matters of government.

That a society founded as an outpost and penal colony only 220 years ago has developed into the free and prosperous modern Australia is testament to the strength of this philosophy.

One may compare the histories of Canada and Argentina as further evidence: two countries with large land area and abundant mineral and agricultural resources. Argentina was in fact colonized and began to be developed long before Canada. The overwhelming reason for the great disparity in current prosperity: Argentina’s history of Catholicism - its discrimination against prosperous, educated northern European migrants, its eschewing of scientific and technological education and development and its cultural acceptance of centralised authority, which helped prevent mass land ownership.

I suggest that common and deeply held beliefs regarding the relationship between individuals and between individuals and institutions and the consequent nexus between individual freedom and civic duty is the crux of “core Australian values”. It is what has made Australia a destination for so many migrants.

These “values” are learned from experience. You must integrate with Australian society to understand them. The more alien the culture from which our migrants come, the more imperative that this idea is impressed upon them.