The Bottom is falling out of the Law

We are living with flawed law, as we see it, and it is creating a number of bottle necks and blockages in our natural reactions and expressions of emotion so that we are now starting to fall into factional thinking and create excluded groups. None of this is going to be easy to talk about or manage. Talk is what we have to do ,though. If we don't bring this out into the open and discuss the merits or otherwise of what the law is doing, if we do not openly discuss how we feel and our reactions, then it will build up and it will come out in an irrational, unplanned way. The Victorian bushfores have highlighted a number of things which we hold dear as a community. We do not believe in kicking people when they are down. We do not believe in taking advantage and ripping people off. It is also clear we have got some social boundaries which are constantly being offended and eroded, as we see it. We are being forced to shrug our shoulders and put up with it and yet, our natural reaction is to get out there and put a stop to it. Too many of us have fallen foul of random attacks for quick cash, too many of us have been subjected to what is seen as petty pilfering. If we are not harmed and nothing is damaged then we are told we should be grateful. We do not think our personal belongings and our homes are there for the fundraising purposes of others. Our capacity to defend what is ours is quite diminished. So, we have to put up with it. There have been stories coming out of Victoria of arson, looting, people trying to buy land at cheap prices and then stories of people thieving the donations which pubs and clubs have been kind enough to organise. Of course the police are working on this seriously and we know they are putting their time into catching the offenders...and offenders is the right word. These people are sticking in the craw of even the most mild mannered and understanding citizens. When it comes to the people affected by the bushfires then there is a very strong sense of moral outrage that peolpe would start those fires, or would go scavenging when families have lost everything in such a gut wrenching way. Then there are stories of groups of boys attacking lone, young girls in a vicious way or someone viciously attacking old people. The sorts of stories where we feel this has gone too far. The law has to afford everybody justice and we believe in that too. The law has to afford some sort of possibility of rehabilitation as well. The difficulty we have is that we don't want to take any wounded . We don't want to put up with these hideous crimes against the defenseless and we do not want to allow people a second chance to do it again...because it might be your property and your family, it might be your daughter or your parents. It might be your son...and it might be yet another morning where you wake up and you find some swine has flogged all your bricks or stolen all your rose plants because they wanted them. We have got to talk about this. We are saturated.