Does Not Warrant A Jail Term

In yet another example of the absurd inconsistency in both the statute and application of Australian age of consent laws, a 28 year old woman has been jailed for at least 6 months for ... having sex with a 16 year old boy, which is legal in every state but South Australia and Tasmania.

I’ve written about this topic before, particularly in relation to S73 of the NSW Crimes Act, or its equivalent in other states. This stupid piece of legislation makes it a criminal offence to have sex with a 16 or 17 year old if the person is in a position of some “care or authority”, despite it being perfectly legal in the absence of this element of the relationship. Worse, the offence carries a jail term of up to 8 years, with accompanying registration as a sex offender for life.

It has led to tyrannical perversions of justice, such as the case in which a woman was charged for having sex with a 17 year old male student when she was 22. Worse, the charges were laid 7 years after the fact. It’s disappointing the boy (now man) in the matter didn’t have the chivalry to deny any sexual contact and refuse to testify.

To add an air of farce to the Tasmanian case, the affair was discovered by the boy’s father, who set up cameras to catch ghosts in his house, but instead filmed his live in girlfriend with his son. Corrrrrr-nuuuuu-tttoooo!!!!!

And how's the father's form? Calling the police in? You might hate your girlfriend for betraying you, but how is your son really going to feel about this sordid episode? How will he feel about you as a father, when he is an adult?

As in previous posts, I’m not saying the woman did nothing wrong. The question is whether it benefits society to have a law which can send her to jail and place her on a sex offenders’ register for life (effectively ruining that life), for having sex with a 16 year old boy, an act which would be legal in most Australian jurisdictions.

In this particular case, the woman contributed to her demise (and harsh sentence) by continuing the affair after she had been caught and formally spoken to by police. This is certainly extremely stupid, however I suggest it is evidence of immaturity and emotional problems, rather than predation. There is no evidence of a string of affairs with underage boys.

So, what is the benefit to society in jailing her? Putting her in a cage with abused, violent, mostly drug affected and often mentally ill prisoners; exposing her to a material risk of being bashed.

Will she be “rehabilitated”? Will society be better?

She probably won’t be fucking any 16 year old boys any time soon. But, she could well be largely unemployable and probably a drain on society for the rest of her life.

Is this the outcome most of us want for what is highly likely to be an immature and emotionally unbalanced woman having a sexual relationship with a boy who is a bee’s dick away from the legal age of consent?

Great piece of legislation, pollies and wise discretion in sentencing, Your Honour.

These are the sorts of outcomes we can expect if we allow legislation relating to social interaction to be framed by hypocritical, conservative religious people and frightened, middle class mothers.

This particular travesty occurred in Tasmania, but that doesn’t mean other Australian states don’t need to make changes to their own laws. I can well imagine a situation in say, NSW or Queensland whereby the boy was deemed to be “under the special care” of the woman, because she was his father’s de facto partner. The police (with prompting from a slighted lover) and the DPP may well have chosen to run such a charge as a test case.

The problem is that in every state in Australia, the age of consent is a “cliff” style law, which not only varies between jurisdictions, but is essentially binary.

The latter is the worse injustice. Have sex with a 15, 16 (or even 17) year old on the day before their birthday and potentially go to jail, then be registered for life as a sex offender. Do it 24 hours later without sanction. Other than an unsatisfactory ambit of discretion for the judge, there is no mechanism for distinction between predation and a consenting act between two parties of similar emotional maturity, albeit one materially older than the other.

Most people would assume they would never be in such a situation and they would mostly be correct. However, that is not a reason to ignore inconsistencies in our law.

Firstly, the injustice in such poorly framed legislation harms society by needlessly rendering some people unproductive. Secondly, acquiescence emboldens the minority who want to make more of such falsely moralistic laws, imposing their agenda on the rest of us. That is how each of us loses a little liberty each time unjust laws are enacted or enforced.

She IS a Collingwood Supporter

Sportsmen should be able to play the game without verbal “low blows” from either their opposition or spectators. That’s not confined to racist taunts. Sportsmen should not have to put up with some fat, unfit cunt in the crowd calling out things like “Ya fuckin’ poofter!”, “You’re fucking hopeless, you shouldn’t even be on the park”, “I fucked your sister! She’s a log!” or any other of the cornucopia of sledges I’ve heard from the sidelines over the years.

Having said that, there’s a reasonable limit to the response. I don’t see anything wrong with the player pointing out to the offender that they are a nobody, who nobody will ever even watch for free. But going off the field in response to taunts, racist or otherwise smacks of prima donna antics.

Adam Goodes’ handling being called an “ape” by 13 year old Collingwood fan Julia Surowka was certainly effective, if a little high handed, taking it upon himself to demand she be ejected from the ground as he did. Some letters in this week’s papers thought he made a mountain out of a molehill and were it an isolated incident, they’d be right. But he and other players regularly cop a barrage of very low brow sledging from the sidelines. I can understand a player turning around and saying: “Fuck this and fuck you! I’ve had an absolute gutful of this shit!”

He’s 100% right to say, in effect: “I come here to play footy. I do my best and give fans their money’s worth and this is what I cop in return? I’ve had enough and so have a lot of other people.” After he’d made his point and extracted an apology, Goodes didn’t carry it on. In fact, he publicly announced that the girl had apologized personally and asked people to support her.

The girl did get singled out for attention and she is only 13. She claimed that she didn't realise calling a black man an ape would be construed as racist. I find that a bit of a stretch, but it's possibly true. I've called big, dumb, white guys apes before.

Nasty, dumb abuse of the opposition players to unsettle them is the behaviour of a peasant. That’s not the same as having a bit of a laugh in their direction or making a wry observation about the standard of their performance.

There’s a world of difference between a clever, cutting sledge such as Shane Warne’s challenge to Daryl Cullinan: “Daryl, I’m going to send you right back to that psychiatrist’s couch” and a moronic spray like “You’re an ape” or “You black ape”.

There’s also a world of difference between repeated, cold sledging and for example, a bowler yelling in the heat of the moment: “You fuckin’ arsey cunt” at a batsman after his third edge through or over slips, as Fingerton may have occasionally done.

Some readers may recall a spectator releasing a pig onto the field at the SCG during the 1982-83 Ashes tour. It had “Eddie” painted on it, as a taunt to portly English spinner Eddie Hemmings. Maybe it was potentially hurtful, but it was extremely funny at the time, which is what ameliorated any insult. Hemmings took it good spirit and gained a bit of respect as a result.

What if someone released a monkey onto the field with Goodes or Symonds or Balotelli written on it? You fat pig! You black monkey! Not the same. Weight is something you can actually control, unlike skin colour. The latter has the added dimension of statements of racial inferiority. Even if the sledger believes what they are saying as ideology, or even that it is backed by scientific evidence, a sporting field is not the place to express this sort of political statement.

Given his behaviour toward Andrew Symonds during India’s 2007-08 tour of Australia, it would have been a valid statement had someone released a monkey onto the field with Harbhajan written on it. But that’s because it’s having a go at Harbhajan for being a liar and a hypocrite. It’s also pointing out the irony of him calling a fellow brown person a monkey, something which he quite bewilderingly was unable to grasp.

That’s the difference: there are some players who are genuine dickheads and bring crowd and opposition taunting on themselves. I think that’s fair enough, as long as the insults are specifically targeted at whatever it is about the player’s behaviour that pisses people off so much: arrogance, hypocrisy, lack of heart, cheating, being a general grub.

There are some sports and some teams whose fans have a reputation for low sledging, even violence. There is often a cultural element to the behavioural differences.

Where are flares most likely to be thrown onto the field? At a soccer match where at least one of the teams has lots of wogs as supporters.

Who are the football clubs with the worst behaved supporters in Australia? The ones whose supporters are either the biggest bogans eg. Collingwood, or have a strongly ethnic element from an aggressive culture eg. the Canterbury Bulldogs.

There won’t be any less racism in the minds of the home crowd at Chatswood Oval as the North Shore gentry watch Gordon play Wests or Parramatta. Many will be quietly pigeonholing the opposition’s multitude of coconuts as big and tough, but a disorganized rabble due to their low IQs, probably kept out of prison thanks to organized sport. However, more than knowing better than to call out something derogatory, they genuinely have no urge to do so. Perhaps the odd comment may be passed in select company over a quiet drink in the club afterward.

You may think this casual snobbery is every bit as bad as a bogan Collingwood supporter screaming racist epithets, but it’s not. The difference is in knowing how to behave. People will always hold any number of biased and insulting views. Some may even be to some extent justified. It’s impossible to change this by force, but what society can expect is an understanding of when such views can safely be expressed and when they should be kept to oneself.

It’s reasonable for players to complain about low acts of abuse from spectators or the opposition and have an expectation of an effective sanction. What should not happen is an acquiescence by administrators to ethnic lobbies or commentators falling over themselves to demonstrate their PC credentials, such as the Herald Sun’s Mark Robinson.

No, matches should not be abandoned because of racist taunts. Calling someone a monkey or a black cunt does not warrant a 10 week suspension (you get less for a dangerous spear tackle, which has the potential to maim for life). To call for stadium closures ie. playing to an empty crowd because of repeated, racist abuse is ridiculous excess.

Why is racism singled out?

Because it’s the new “black” amongst the white, middle class left.

Harassing somebody about their race is not worse than harassing them about a multitude of other characteristics which they cannot control. If sporting authorities are going to be serious about racist sledging, they should be serious about all low sledging, but with appropriately severe sanctions.

Being called a black cunt, or having a banana thrown at you is not going to ruin your life. It is not worse than an opposition player delivering repetitive, withering barrages about someone’s wife, sister, religion or IQ.

The referee / umpire is there to make a judgment on when on field “banter” has gone too far. They may put a player on report, issue a warning, an immediate sin binning, or in some cases, a sending off. Security are there to police unacceptable spectator behaviour. The rest of the crowd should help by letting a dickhead know they are heavily outnumbered. If an entire section of the crowd is repeatedly causing trouble, then maybe authorities can consider collective penalties on fans and the club.

Many black or brown people would be irate at the above assertions, with charges that I couldn’t possibly know what I’m talking about and what they have to put up with.

The latter is to a significant extent true, however I’m saying that it is not as relevant as they would demand it be. Black people should not get to control what other people can and can’t say to them, determine the level of offence and the sanction. Kevin Prince-Boateng can call for players who make racist remarks to never be allowed to play for the club again, but why should any white people give his self serving position credibility by considering it?

Here’s a dose of reality:

Racism might be top of your agenda, but it’s not near the top of mine, or most other white people’s. Nor is it for other people to tell me what should be most important to me. I see sin binning for racist sledging as fair, but not a lifetime, or even 10 week ban. If you’ve been called a black cunt or a monkey in the heat of the moment, it’s probably not the first time and it almost certainly won’t be the last.

Most people are to some extent not only racist, but bigoted in many aspects … and not just white people. Many Asians refer to black people as monkeys (without a glimmer of understanding of the irony involved). Many Arabs consider black people to be inferior. Arab enslavement of black Africans only ceased when the British and French occupied the former Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Added to this, many non-white people play the race card when it suits them. Aboriginals cannot credibly say “Fuck you, you fucking white trash” to an air hostess, then pretend they didn’t and sue for racial discrimination when they are kicked off the plane.

Is that behaviour going to ameliorate racism or entrench it?

Racist views are not going to go away any time soon. If sporting bodies want to effectively combat racism in sport, draconian penalties will not achieve this.

I suggest they will have the opposite effect. By turning people away from a game they see as now pandering to activists with an agenda they don’t support, blame for ruining the game will be sheeted onto the very people who want to keep playing it, without the racist sledging.

More sensible would be to try and remove the identity politics from sport and punish a broad category of nasty, low sledging.

On a final note, for those who value liberty, there is a particularly disturbing element to the reaction to the Adam Goodes incident and it’s not that a 13 year old bogan made a racist remark.

It’s the heavy handed response. Either warn her, or eject her from the ground and be done with it. Being 13, her family would have had to go with her. The collective punishment would have been worth something.

Instead, MCG security told the girl’s parents to remain in their seats while they took her away and the police questioned her for two hours. Being (it seems) poorly educated, the parents acquiesced. 

This is the typical type of crap security personnel often try to pull: concocting a bogus procedure to pretend they are not utter turds who are not even good enough to make the police force.

The parents should have told security very clearly that they would not be allowed to take a 13 year old girl anywhere without their permission and without them being present. Further, if any security guard touched her, they would see them charged with assaulting an underage girl.

That’s the only way to deal with scumbag security guards when they try to assert an authority which exists only inside their heads: remain calm and make it very clear they will end up with a worse legal outcome than you.

Additionally, the parents should have told their daughter to say nothing to the police and make it absolutely clear to those officers that the parents (or other adult family) must be present at all times while their daughter is being questioned, as is any minor’s right.

Even worse is Eddie Maguire’s statement:

"We've organised counselling services ... for her, her friends and family”.

I can see where this is going: down the UK path. Only when the accused has issued a pro forma, self-excoriating apology and satisfied some social engineering bureaucrat that they have acquiesced to the “correct” ideology, only then will they be allowed to re-enter society.

Update: Eddie McGuire subsequently joking on radio about getting Adam Goodes to promote King Kong, The Musical is more a result of a dumb person's attempt at irony than outright racism. It was certainly insensitive, but what do you expect from a dumb shit like Eddie McGuire?

Miranda Devine is right in her charge of rank hypocrisy, given his role in leading the pious in their public chastisement of a poorly educated 13 year old girl for doing much the same thing.

I'll Shoot Myself In Public ... That Will Stop Those Poofs Getting Married

Allowing homosexuals to marry will destroy civilization as we know it. I cannot bear to live in such a world. In protest, I’ll go to the biggest church I can find and shoot myself on the altar.

That’ll do the trick. My sacrifice will cause such an upwelling of support from the “silent majority” that a new kingdom of godly righteousness will be established and those gays and their filth will be consigned to the darkness from whence they came.

There are societies in which self immolation as a form of political protest is not condemned as lunacy and can even be successful. For example, the street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight and sparked the protests which eventually led to the overthrow of the Tunisian government. Some are less successful, such as the ongoing campaign in Tibet.

The societies in which such practice achieves some measure of legitimacy tend to be repressive, religious and place little importance on individual rights and liberty. Juxtaposed with a brutal regime’s remorselessness (and even pleasure) in harming its citizens while hoarding luxuries, a certain nobility is achieved by a shocking, ritual self sacrifice which eschews harming others, as opposed to a suicide bombing.

However, this is not the case in prosperous, largely open societies. It is more common to kill your literal enemies, or random representatives thereof, then kill yourself.

In societies without a strong subculture of martyrdom, only extremists or the emotionally unhinged choose ritual, public suicide as a method of making political statements. The shock value of political suicides in Western countries does often initially attract supporters to their cause, but such support often fades as issues of practical policy confront ideology.

Political suicide in open societies tends to alienate far more support than it gains, obscuring anything worthwhile that a complex, but troubled person may have said or done in their lives. So, yes, Marine Le Pen, Venner’s suicide was a political act, but in a Western country, an ultimately futile one.

Now that he has rendered himself a lunatic and idiot in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the population, Dominique Venner will likely only be remembered by most as the old, anti gay, reactionary who shot himself in Notre Dame Cathedral. His opinions on other matters will be wasted on the small fraction of the already converted. His reasonable warnings about Islamic immigration, their explicit refusal to assimilate and the left’s steadfast support of this destructive separatism will be easily painted with charges of right wing extremism, as will his decrying of the modern left’s program of destruction of pride in European cultural heritage. Worse, more moderate people who share such views are more easily dishonestly tarred with the extremist brush by the leftists who wish to stifle debate on such topics.

This is the problem when people with complex and often contradictory positions do acts which allow the media to use the act as a caricature of the person.

Having said that, I don’t think acts of political suicide such as Dominique Venner’s should necessarily be discouraged. As well as efficiently removing members of the opposition, such self culling enhances the position of moderate libertarians.

Perhaps fascists, socialists and general dickheads alike could make noble gestures of ritual self-immolation. Fred Nile could shoot himself in his own church. The Shooters could dress up as elephants and shoot themselves. Sarah Hanson-Young could sew her lips together and starve herself to death in support of the asylum seekers. Lee Rhiannon could hang herself in her yurt with a hemp rope (or maybe one made with hair from her armpits) in protest against, well, just about anything.

I would look forward to scouring the daily press for the latest activist to top themselves in some novel public statement.

It's Time To Scrap Parliamentary Pairing

Why is it necessary in a modern parliament for each member to be present in the chamber for their vote to count?

Why should an MP who is absent due to personal illness or family reasons, or even work related travel not simply be able to register their vote by proxy? This could be done either in writing, or via a secure email login, much the same as shareholder votes on company resolutions are now conducted.

In fact, absent MPs could use exactly the method employed in deciding corporate resolutions: appoint a proxy to vote either according to pre-arranged instructions or as the proxy decides.

Instead, we maintain the absurd anachronism of the “pairing” system, whereby for each MP who is absent for the vote, a member of the opposing party agrees by convention to abstain from voting. As we’ve recently seen, this arrangement can lead to farce or abuse and disingenuous point scoring, as in the current matter involving Labor MP Michelle Rowland.

The pairing system can only possibly work where parliament is dominated by two parties, which vote along party lines. Most MPs in Australia vote along party lines anyway, so what is the difference in outcome between proxies and pairing?

What happens when independents are absent, or in the Senate if one of the Greens is absent? What if we end up with a parliament similar in constitution to the UK’s, with three large party blocks, or more, as in Israel?

Do we rely on the formation of a governing coalition, which pairs with a de facto opposition?

The whole system is ridiculous and needs to be immediately scrapped in favour of members’ proxy votes.

MPs are elected to represent their constituencies. They can adequately do this without needing sit in a special chair.

Update: Ministers certainly should not be drunk in the public areas of parliament. However, NSW Finance Minister Greg Pearce would not be facing calls for his sacking if proxies were allowed for parliamentary votes, although it now appears that he should be sacked anyway (and possibly charged) for making false claims on his parliamentary expsense account.

The Greens have no credibility lecturing people on drinking or any other such behaviour. Who is going to accept being preached at by some soft shit like David Shoebitch or John Kaye, an oily spiv like Jamie Parker or a boot faced old harpie like Lee Rhiannon? Out of these four, she's probably the only one who could manage more than a couple of drinks without tottering about and falling over on the carpet.

As for John Kaye's comment that the public expect their laws to be made by people who are 100% sober: we also expect they will be made by people who are 100% sane.

The Hubris Of Conscience Votes

Periodically, the strength of public debate requires governments to legislate on divisive social issues. Often, calls to allow a “conscience vote” ensue. Added to that issue which is never quite laid to rest, abortion, and the more recent euthanasia, we now have same sex marriage.

These are salient examples because the naysayers generally come from a religious standpoint. Some are open about their motivations. Some attempt to hide them with flimsy denials, such as “It’s not about religion; I believe life begins at conception and every life is precious” or “I believe marriage is for a man and a woman to raise a family”.

The latter really do believe these statements, however their arguments are clouds. Such positions almost always derive from religious beliefs.

It’s usually social issues with religious dimensions which lead to conscience votes, because the religious elements divide both major parties. The United States is the only Protestant, Western nation which is not strongly secular and religious motivations are explicit in political debate. In Australia, we tend to keep religion out of mainstream politics, however it’s religion and its conservatism which principally drives parliamentary opposition to legalisation of abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and other “unholy” acts. It’s a pity the true motivations of the demurring MPs are not more honestly discussed.

In a secular polity, it is not the role of the state ie. the parliament, the executive and thejudiciary, to decide on issues of purely social philosophy. The state should not decide when an independent life exists or the nature of marriage any more than it should debate post-structuralism (although I’d watch Order In The House if Barnaby Joyce or Bob Katter had a go at the latter).

In an open society, the morality and allowability of abortion and euthanasia or the nature and meaning of marriage are matters for the citizens to decide via public debate. Politicians are installed to enact the wishes of the citizens they serve, not impose their own philosophical positions on the rest of us, under the guise of “moral leadership” via “conscience” votes.

This does not mean that each politician should always vote in line with the wishes of the majority of their constituency. If a position on a certain issue derives from a philosophical or political principle on which their party was elected, they should vote accordingly and explain why.

For example, suppose a politician is elected on a platform of true Liberalism. A fundamental tenet of Liberal political philosophy is the non-interference of the state in purely social issues or ones of personal morality, from which derives secularism.

It then follows that for a Liberal, the only role of the state in euthanasia is to ensure the death is genuinely voluntary, assisted or otherwise. That is because someone’s body and life are their personal property and they may do with them as they please, provided they are of sound mind and do not cause others undue distress.

Likewise, for a Liberal, given lack of evidence for societal harm, the only role of the state in marriage is as an interpreter and enforcer of contracts. It is up to individuals deemed capable of informed consent (in this case, adults) to decide on the nature of the contract, provided said contract is demonstrably absent of duress.

Consequently, any Liberal politician should vote in favour of these proposals on the basis of the philosophy on which they sought election. If they were against these proposals, then they should have run as a conservative.

Politicians who do not have clear political positions on a particular issue, perhaps because they were elected as independents or members of an interest group eg. Shooters should canvas the wishes of their constituency and vote accordingly.

Where all three elements of the state can add value and show leadership is in raising and perhaps helping to solve inconsistencies in the beliefs of the general public, particularly where such beliefs are contradicted by evidence.

Thus, in the case of same sex marriage, the state does have a role to play in gathering, interpreting and disseminating research into claims that the practice will harm society, especially children. If there is no evidence supporting such claims, then a liberal state should recede from citizens’ lives to a purely administrative function.

For politicians in an open, democratic society to believe they are in parliament to exercise their “conscience” is an egregious vanity.

You were not elected to exercise your personal conscience; rather to enact the wishes of your constituents, consistent with the underlying principles which your party espouses. If your views happen to match your constituency, lucky you. If they don’t, either follow your constituency’s instructions, or resign.

Suppose a political party’s supporters are split, say 60/40 on a particular social issue. If a position on this issue does not derive naturally from the party’s underlying principles, then perhaps it could arrange for its parliamentary members who do not agree with the proposal to be among the 40% voting against it. But that is as much of their personal “morality” as politicians should be allowed to exercise in government.