Extra Power No Solution

Illawarra Mercury

Friday October 24, 2008

Extra power no solution

As a young person, I find Bob Palmer's prescription of "zero tolerance" (Mercury letters, October 22) as a solution to "anti-social behaviour" to be wholly offensive and inadequate.

John Howard, for over 10 years, held a "zero tolerance" policy towards drugs - how far did that get us? Nowhere, because the problem with that solution was that it didn't at all address the root causes of anti-social behaviour or drug taking.

Why do some but certainly not all young people behave in an "obnoxious, violent manner", as Mr Palmer puts it? It's because they feel alienated from society.

Youth homelessness in this country is shocking. The National Youth Commission found that 36,000 people under the age of 25 are homeless, 22,000 of whom are teenagers.

Youth unemployment in the Illawarra is more than 20 per cent. It isn't because young people are lazy, but because there aren't enough suitable jobs around, while young people remain completely removed from the political system, with very little space for them to be involved.

Some "common sense" solutions to the problem, therefore, would be to provide public housing for homeless youth, provide more public space for youth and to lower the voting age to 16.

What won't solve the problem is to give police more powers.

This will just end up with more young people arrested, with nothing at all done to solve the actual, existing problem.

Tim Dobson, Figtree.

Penalties bring appeal

We have rules, regulations, laws and penalties for those who, for whatever reason, do not comply.

Yes, of course there are genuine cases of extenuating or mitigating circumstances. But when do we see a penalty imposed by a court, organisation, tribunal actually applied?

We see media reports of various alleged offences, be they sports personalities, corporate high-flyers, high profile criminals, even the judiciary, showing the penalties they could face.

Judgments are usually held over until the media spotlight has dimmed and the penalty then applied is considerably less than the maximum.

Then of course an appeal follows, more time for a softer penalty or none at all.

While ever this farcical process continues we will see an even further decline in the lack of respect for authority of any kind.

I would like to see some research authority collate some statistics on this, I am sure we would see some startling results.

Barry Hartley, Shell Cove.

Golf resort not wanted

The council is not the only one against the proposal purporting to be a golf resort, and a nine-hole one at that, not even world class.

The majority of residents from the Helensburgh district are against it as well, and support the council on this extreme blotch sitting in the middle of a highly sensitive biodiverse environmental area.

In fact locals have produced two video documentaries available on the internet showing what would happen to this beautiful biodiversity area, including one showing the extreme weather conditions in such an isolated area.

To say the activity won't affect the surrounding catchment areas is ludicrous to the extreme as I have read unbiased reports.

This is a proposal that was supported wholeheartedly by "corrupt" former general manager Rod Oxley and certain members of the former council who are no longer there. But the local residents still are.

The council just refused six 40ha lots, with one house each, in the area opposite for environmental concerns.

Why should 400 living quarters that are to be sold off - no matter how you describe them and making it an obvious real estate subdivision - be allowed on only 56ha, affecting the surrounding environment and without any guarantees from the developer?

Alan Bond, Stanwell Tops.

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

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