Fanning "law and order" hysteria

Sydney's Daily Telegraph recently carried out a "law 
and order" survey. It posed a large number of questions based on 
threats to personal safety, but leaves virtually untouched the 
underlying reasons for the level of crime and other threats to 
personal safety in Australia.

Rigging the questions to get the "right" answers is a favourite 
method of governments and the mass media. This is what the 
Daily Telegraph survey did.

One question in their survey was "Should guns be legal for use by 
the general community (excluding law enforcement officers)?" This 
question was placed at the end of a series of other questions 
that dealt with threats to personal safety and actually 
encouraged respondents to answer, yes! 

The survey asked whether caning should be reintroduced into 
Australian schools. Simply asking the question encourages readers 
to consider this as a socially valid option.

The survey asked whether groups of kids loitering on the street, 
and/or wearing similar clothes, and/or of similar racial 
appearance, constitute a gang. It also asks whether gang rape is 
culturally or racially driven. The survey virtually puts a 
prejudiced answer into the mouths of respondents.

The survey includes a number of questions that deal with social 
conscience, but at a very superficial level. For example, it asks 
the reader whether some or all of certain workplace misdemeanors 
(such as using Cabcharge for personal use, or using petty cash to 
buy lunch) should be considered crimes. 

Perhaps the biggest failing of the survey lies in the questions 
that are not asked at all. There is not a single question 
concerning the need to overcome religious and cultural prejudices 
in order to unite the community and lower the crime rate.

The survey gave almost no emphasis to community action to 
overcome criminal behaviour or on unemployment as a factor in the 
level of crime.

It pays no attention whatsoever to crimes committed by big 
business such as the theft of employee superannuation 
entitlements, the marketing of unsafe products, or workplace 
manslaughter.

Despite the current level of threat to civil rights in Australia 
the survey doesn't raise the issue of opposing unjust laws as a 
matter of social conscience. 

Issues ignored

The issue of Iraq and the continued occupation of that country 
are ignored by the Daily Telegraph survey.

There is not a single question relating to the important issues 
raised in the "law and order" campaigns of State and Federal 
governments. Such campaigns are boosted by initiatives such as 
the Telegraph's "Law and Order" survey. 

Civil liberties in Australia are certainly under threat in the 
current climate. They include the right to remain silent, the 
right to legal representation, the right to remain at liberty 
unless charged with a crime, and the presumption of innocence. 
The Telegraph's survey is not the least bit concerned with 
such matters.

It is intended to help create a climate of fear in order to 
persuade the public that unjustified acts of war and the 
curtailment of civil rights are necessary and justified and 
supported by the public.