Cronulla: finger pointing not the answer

The Mayor of Sutherland, Kevin Shreiber, is right to say that this could have happened anywhere. Progress certainly starts with a more proactive law enforcement approach that changes the environment, and sends a clear message that you cannot get away with this behaviour. It must, however, be coupled with messages of hope and a real investment, mostly in terms of political capital, in creating those opportunities.

Our community does not need to spend more money on welfare, nor can it afford to keep spending money recklessly and negligently, ignoring the consequences. How many generations of Aborigines have been destroyed by welfare, and the drinking it led to?

We will not make progress while claiming the gap between rich and poor is widening, when the statistical evidence shows the opposite. No progress can be made while claiming that one group’s problems and grievances can be blamed on another. And we will not make progress on this issue while community leaders leave unchecked and unchallenged, the irrational, reckless and self destructive claims of those who seek to spread nothing more than misery.

If you take away a human being’s sense of hope it leads to one of two things: depression or aggression; sometimes both. What we witnessed last week is the result of three decades of policies that deliberately removed hope, and then sought to deflect the blame elsewhere rather than facing uncomfortable truths and staring down vested interests. This is not progress, this is regression.