CRIME RISE NO SURPRISE

KEVIN Barry and every letter in Saturday’s Townsville Bulletin yet again portray youth crime as a Townsville problem and a problem created by politicians.

Many of the proposed solutions want taxes devoted to more police, jails, helicopters and recidivism.

Britain went down that path once and ran out of anchorage space for stinking prison ships moored on the Thames. A solution was found. Penal colonies in Australia. After the military went rogue and established an economy based largely on penal slavery with rum as the currency more enlightened administrations eventually fixed the problems caused by those dreadful convicts.

By granting them land and freedom the problems gradually abated. They collectively chose to give everyone a vote (not just landlords), even women eventually. They vowed to establish a ‘working man’s paradise’.

Through education and equal opportunity, poverty and crime were eroded. Fair pay and a living wage were fought for and eventually won.

Youth crime and youth unemployment and underemployment generally are not a ‘Townsville problem’.

Ipswich, Toowoomba, Capalaba, Logan, Mackay and Cairns, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne all have it. Youth

unemployment is a global problem in every developed nation.

It’s worse for the poor because they never get an equal education nor upbringing. If you are born poor and black it just makes your circumstances worse in most English speaking countries, even New Zealand.

Globalisation has shifted most of the low-skilled work to Asia,

Africa and parts of Eastern Europe. Here, flipping burgers and humping solar panels are growth vocations but don’t expect a pay rise or even 20 hours work a week. The Victorian era took advantage of similar circumstances and carried huge servant households as inequality grew grotesquely.

Do we want to go back there? We have a government that does not think housing affordability is a problem. Milliondollar homes are assets test and capital gains tax free and landlords can claim housing tax deductions against all other income.

No wonder we have rising inequality and resultant rising youth crime. It’s the price of ‘getting ahead’.

GLENN WHITE, Kelso.