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John
Howard loses another Federal Election!!
Now that the dust is
starting to settle after the recent federal election,
Australia is looking at a hung Parliament with no party
having a clear majority. We now wait to see what back
room deals will be done.
As the parties search
for answers for what they did wrong and what they could
have done better. I hope that the Liberal Party does not
continue to delude itself.
It is my firm belief
that the Liberal Party would have emerged from this
election a clear winner with a workable majority had it
not been for the legacy of John Howard.
When John Howard
engineered the “Gun Grabs” he alienated hundreds of
thousands of former Liberal voters.
Many years ago when
the Liberal Party had a different set of values and
supported peoples ownership of property, they had
defended Firearms owners against moves by the Labor
Party to move against firearm ownership.
I can remember
reading an article by a Senior Labor advisor at the
time, who when questioned why the Labor party had not
pressed harder admitted that it was a lose/lose
situation for any Party which tried to restrict firearm
ownership in Australia.
He went on to explain
that the real extremists who were calling for Gun
Control were not Labor voters and no matter what they
did in this arena, they would never get those peoples
votes. There was no gain there.
The firearms owners
in the main, were either Liberal or Labor voters. To
confiscate firearms he believed would not get them
support among the general mass of Liberal Voters and
would only make the Liberal voting Firearms owners a
little more resentful of Labor. The loss he conceded
would be among his own Labor supporters who would not
take kindly to losing their firearms. The reality was
that the end result would be a loss of Labor Party
support. In an age where every party is trying to
attract that small percentage of swinging voters at each
election, no one wanted to do anything that would
alienate any voters, particularly the ones you already
had.
Another article had
charted the demographics of firearms owners and the
findings were very interesting. The writer had come to
the opinion that the majority of firearms owners in the
country were most likely be conservative voters (Liberal
and what is now known as the National Party). The logic
being that many firearms owners lived in rural areas and
would have been National voters and that in the urban
areas, that being involved with firearms was an
expensive past time which would see people with greater
incomes and therefore most likely Liberal voters
attracted to it.
It is a pity that
this information was not available to John Howard when
he chose political opportunism over reality and decided
to take the firearms off the people who had not done
anything wrong. Or if it was available, that he chose
to ignore it! Worse still, he chose to ignore it for
ideological reasons, not party ideological, but Howard
ideological and the Howard ideology was embraced by his
co-conspirator Tim Fischer, despite furore from rural
areas.
Many firearms owners
(myself included) had felt secure (foolishly) in the
fact the Socialists were pragmatic enough not to want to
try any major attack on Firearms ownership and felt
confident that were they to try; that the Conservative
coalition who had always protected property rights would
come to their defence, irrespective of the fact that
conservative voters were by far the largest percentage
of firearms owners.
With that act of
betrayal. Many conservative firearms owners swore that
they would “Never vote for the Liberal party again”.
There is proof of this in the defeat of the National
Party in the 1998 Queensland elections and at the 1998
Federal election the Coalition was returned to power
despite a loss of over 800,000 votes compared with the
1996 election. Some of these firearms owners would have
also voiced their dissatisfaction by either joining or
supporting the new One Nation Party which attracted over
1 million votes in the Senate.
Many, of these quiet,
conservative, law abiding but badly hurt former Liberal
Party supporters have not rallied in the streets, have
not become politically active by joining other parties.
They have simply just voted with their feet.
The Liberal Party
still continues to proffer the blinkered argument that
those laws made Australia safer, despite several
reputable peer reviewed studies (Dr Don Weatherburn
2005, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran 2006, Dr
Wang-Sheng Lee and Dr Sandy Suardi 2008), all of which
concluded that the 1996 legislation had little effect on
violence and that the National Firearms Agreement did
not have any large effect on reducing firearm homicide
or suicide rates. As long as the Liberal Party continues
to deny the reality that Howard got it wrong; they will
continue to alienate people. The Liberal party has to
become big enough to move away from knee jerk populist
policies which are designed by spin doctors for the
evening news voice grab.
All that these laws
have achieved is a draconian process whereby law abiding
firearms owners are fined annually (licensing and
registration) and subjected to intrusive inspections at
any time of the day and night by their State police,
when the money being wasted on this futile exercise and
the time of the officers could be better directed
towards catching real criminals. Sadly, no street gangs
or criminal families seem to attract the same attention,
yet they are able to acquire the guns with which they
seem to shoot at and murder each other with, quite
freely. Criminals simply do not bother with licensing
and registration. Not to mention that nearly a billion
dollars was wasted on the two Gun Buy Backs. Bad laws
not only fail to achieve anything, they also alienate
law abiding people by causing them to lose respect for
the law.
Every time a law
abiding firearms owner is subjected to the humiliation
of being treated with contempt and like a criminal by
his State authorities they are reminded of their
betrayal by John Howard and the Liberal Party
I am sure that if
even half of the voters that are still alienated as a
result of the unfair treatment by Howard came back to
the Liberal party, that the result of the 2010 election
would have been considerably different and Tony Abbott
would have a clear path to the Prime Ministership and
would not be needing back room deals.
Will Tony Abbott be
smart enough to see what John Howard would not?
Knives
Recently there have
been similar populist policies attacking knives here in
Australia; during the recent election campaign, PM
Gillard promised to toughen up on a range of imported
knives (despite the fact that they are already heavily
controlled) and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony
Abbott countered with a tightening up of laws on hunting
knives (whatever he perceives these to be).
The great pity is
that none of these so called law and order initiatives
are evidence based.
We already have many
items that are on the Prohibited lists of Australian
Customs and the various State authorities for no good
reason other than they look nasty. Not because there is
any evidence that their existence has contributed to
crime. It is very sad, that when there is a problem,
that modern day politicians are so possessed by the
desire to look as if they care, that they will grasp at
straws in an attempt to look as if they were doing
something. Whatever happened to carrying out some
research to actually find out what the real problem is
and then, tackling it? Making laws about inanimate
objects are futile when the criminal acts are carried
out by people! Making laws that in reality, only
effect law abiding knife collectors are counter
productive.
The fact is, that the
Investment pieces, Artistic collectables and Museum
pieces are NOT the knives being used by the criminals.
Even if they were, it is unreasonable to punish the
people who did not commit the crime. Solutions to
criminal problems should be based on punishing the
offender, not by victimising the innocent. The truth
as, that the greatest source of edged weapons used in
committing offences are Kitchen Knives; freely available
in every household, department and hardware store across
Australia, then followed by screwdrivers, so called box
cutters or Stanley knives, broken bottles and other
items. It does not matter what security arrangements
are placed on the so called prohibited collectable, they
are simply outnumbered by such quantity as to make any
restrictions placed on them a futile exercise. It has
also been observed that mental health and drug issues
are significant factors in many of the crimes. A large
percentage of incidents also involved people known to
each other, such as family, friends and neighbours and
were not gang related.
It is alarming that
many young people see it as necessary to carry a knife
for self defence. It would seem to me that identifying
the threat that the youth live under and taking steps to
remove it, might be a more substantial way of solving
the problem. When there is no threat there will be no
need to carry a knife for defence.
I don’t believe we
need any new laws against knives. It is already illegal
to stab someone, to murder someone or to rob them. The
answer is simple, enforce the existing laws and punish
the criminal offenders.
Hopefully Australia
will not go down the same futile, repressive path with
knives, that it has done with firearms. Because that is
un Australian!!
John Kroezen
23 August, 2010
