Working-class criminals
IAM so sick of the shameful hypocrisy of governments talking tough on crime while hiding their own secrets. On one hand, the Tasmanian Government trumpets mandatory sentences for those such as a 19-year-old Gagebrook boy who smokes a pipe of ice and assaults an ambulance officer, but when it comes to telling the truth about who paid $3 million of its $4 million in political donations in 2018, well, that’s kept well under wraps.
That $3 million helped create an election advertising campaign of such magnitude it made a mockery of our democracy, and those in power are happy to ponce about in suits, limousines and enjoy the spoils of victory.
What’s the biggest danger to us as a community – an ambulance officer with a black eye or a government flush with cash and inflicting tainted policies on a hoodwinked community?
Of course we should protect ambos, but we should protect democracy first and foremost. It is the foundation of any semblance of justice and fairness in our society.
We lock away a Glenorchy single mum for stealing $15,000 to pay off debts caused by her pokies addiction, while those in power and privilege benefit at the polls from a Love Your Local lobby group that funnelled untold millions into a campaign of support to keep gaming machines in the pub where the poverty-stricken mother lost her money.
The result? The single mum rots in jail, her wayward kids are divvied up among extended family, while parliamentarians swan about in luxury only dreamt of in poor suburbs such as Clarendon Vale and Rokeby.
The double standards are appalling and becoming starker by the minute.
The Government is happy to secretly breach the privacy of Tasmanian motorists by sending their photographs and addresses, without their consent, to a central database for national identity-matching and cross-referencing but is like a junkyard dog in protecting the privacy of those who bankrolled its election victory.
It’s difficult not to come to the conclusion that there is one rule for them and another for the rest of us.
The Federal Government has for a week now refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing in a government minister bypassing democratic safeguards and distributing the bulk of $100 million in grants to sporting groups in marginal and targeted electorates in a bid to get herself, her colleagues and the Coalition parties elected.
Incredibly, the PM tried to defend this. Grants should not be allocated according to the marginality of an electorate.
That’s nothing but a scheme to buy power. We all know it’s wrong. Watching the PM pretend otherwise is painful and disconcerting.
The minister who oversaw this still has her job. The worst-case fallout from the $100 million scandal is that she will get a holiday on the backbenches for a few months before re-emerging unscathed. The spin doctors have likely been well rewarded since ScoMo’s “miracle” election win, their reputations and pay rates boosted.
Meanwhile, the single mum who stole $15,000 off her boss in dribs and drabs over six months is still behind bars.
The Federal Government was dragged kicking and screaming into the banking royal commission and, even after its revelations, the bankers involved in many of the scams walked with millions.
It must be hard to gauge the angst out here in the suburbs when cosseted in the wealth and luxury of power and privilege, but mark my words there is a growing unease.
The “tough on crime” agenda should be renamed the “tough on working-class crime” agenda because it is targeted at blue-collar workers while white-collar miscreants are free to revel in the spoils of power and privilege.
It’s not too late to save our democracy from the volatility unfolding overseas in places like France and the US, but it will mean stopping the secrecy and that does not look like happening any time soon.