THE NANNY STATE
The Australian Nanny State
If there was a way out, across the shatters of the years, he said, grandiloquently, briefly, for he had written about it all before, and now, there weren't any sermons left. He knew all these streets so very well. Unlike the impression gained from the media-fueled epidemic of stories denouncing alcohol-fueled violence, the streets of the Cross appeared cheerful and well behaved. Images were everywhere. They swapped stories of bars long gone. Very long gone. I used to love watching the sun come up, off my scone, from a rooftop down there, he thought to say but didn't. Everything had been done before. The Harbour had been so beautiful. The Buddha appears not just as a bodhivista, but to some, as a drunk or gambler, the woman explained. She was nothing like the person he remembered.
Calm, methodical, it had to be done. A shower through the door. Change is difficult, he once again thought to say, but didn't. Thank God for empaths, he heard someone say, or thought he did. He could tell them any story they wanted to hear, a burnt out architect of dreams. If only there had been a Peak Experiences Anonynmous, he might have been amused. Dented in the hardest of places. An international city that wants to limit its trading hours. Dementia had set in. A heatwave had settled across much of the country, a summer a long time coming. Drenched, saturated in imagery, there wasn't any way to go but sentimental.
If we had been there, in body and in spirit, we might have been excused. Quoting the Buddha again, he paraphrased, a problem ignored will follow you forever, a problem turned and faced will disappear. There were sheets of laughter from those days, entirely present. From the old theatre opposite, where he had gone to see Hair in the late 1960s.
Whole currents of things had flowed from that night. And he looked out with curiosity, across a different crowd in a different time. The future was indeed... It was so easy to lapse into cliche. Better silence than a strange country. The headless chatter. The mad rabbit which would dash down the corridor and knock itself out against the wall, anything to achieve unconsciousness. Blessed oblivion. Well it's too late now. Might as well be happy.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Three years and the bikie laws are out, and “we can all move on with our lives”, the Premier has pledged.
Campbell Newman has renewed his government's promise to review its contentious anti-association gang laws in 2016, a condition which was written into the act last October.
There is no sunset clause to the laws, which would have given an end date to the legislation. Instead, the government legislated that the laws must be reviewed “as soon as reasonably practicable three years after its commencement” to decide “whether the act is operating effectively and meeting its objects”.
A “suitably qualified” person must undertake the review and a report tabled in Parliament detailing the outcome of the review.
Mr Newman now appears to be hinting the laws will be wiped from the books in 2016.
“Ultimately, in less than three years' time, these laws can disappear from the statute books in Queensland, because that's the intention of the government,” he said.
“There is a three-year review and they go. I said yesterday on radio in Brisbane, I said previously last year, that I didn't particularly want to see these laws implemented, but the sooner we can get rid of them the better. But it starts by seeing us get rid of the gangs.”
Mr Newman said he had the interest of Queenslanders at heart.
“All I want is a safe Queensland, OK? That's all I want,” he said.
“People are saying these laws are too much. I'm saying they're there for a reason. I don't particularly like them."
Acknowledging the criticism levelled at the government, Mr Newman reiterated comments he made on Monday during an interview with Fairfax Radio 4BC.
"If you're wondering, just again, I just refresh everyone's memory, I'm the guy who in 2012 who was asked about the New South Wales laws which bans people wearing their colours. I said that wasn't the sort of way I'd like to go," he said.
“Well, what changed? What changed was...