Carlton Supporters Club

It's like most things technological. You can use it for good genuine purposes...or you can use it for bad deeds and evil.

I’m not sure that you can blame the courts EB; they have to apply the laws passed by parliaments and, in the High Court’s case, abide by a constitution that was written in the 19th century.

Indefinite detention was always going to found to be unlawful and I can’t believe that the previous government and the incoming government didn’t have a fallback plan.

I know that many asylum seekers destroy their documentation or have fake documentation and it can be difficult to determine whether or not someone is a model citizen or a serial killer.  However, once an asylum seeker’s past criminal record is discovered, why aren’t they just shipped back to where they came from?  I know that we won’t send people back to a death sentence but most of these coves have served their sentences and aren’t in line for execution.

I’m not sure what the answer is for people who will be executed if returned home …. but I’m not paid the big bucks to resolve such matters.

Bail is fraught.  There are benefits from not incarcerating people who haven’t been found guilty but community safety must come first.  If there’s a chance that folk charged with a crime are likely to offend then bail shouldn’t be an option.

Remember Dan Andrews criticising VCAT for being the ultimate planning authority but never having to face the electorate?  I think the same argument is applied to the courts.  If the electorate is unhappy with sentencing, bail, or other decisions, they will take it out on the government.  Governments therefore try to be overly prescriptive with mandatory sentencing, bail, etc or try to use ministerial powers for matters that the various constitutions don’t permit.

It’s a flawed and dated system but I’m not sure there’s a better one.  If there was, there’s Buckley’s chance of amending the Australian constitution.

Edit: I was commenting on EB’s post but it’s gone.  You should get the gist 🙂

Educational instability (I had many kids at 14-15 who couldn’t read)

Some councils have started banning gas, being completely dependant on one source of energy is poor risk management. You should have read some of the socials for our area today, all those EV adopters without something to plug into. One woman complained the kids had drained the last of the car battery recharging their phones, she couldn't even get out of the driveway, not sure if that's true or even possible but it was a good laugh!

However, I recall discussing parents' responsibilities with my late brother who was a barrister.  He said that there is a long established principle in English law that parents can't be held responsible for the actions of their children. In the American case, the mother was found guilty because her actions directly contributed to deaths.

And here lies the crux of the problem in my opinion, The responsibilities of adults, and the consequences of their actions,  just get kicked down the road. And who suffers? The families of the victim. If you locked up the parents/guardians along with child, people would start taking responsibility. I need to a licence to drive a car but not to raise/care for a child. These days, it should be the other way around I reckon.

But the problem is that the parents and guardians of the kids committing many of these offences are already locked up, have been, or are about to be.
If every one of these parents was a well off, middle class person with no drug, alcohol or domestic violence issues pervading their lives there might be some chance of imposing a parental responibility that impacted, but that's not the case for the families of most repeat young offenders.