Redfern Riots & Parental responsibility

In response to ABC discussion convened by John Faine after Redfern Riots

The key difference between the present and the past is the huge loss of parental guidance in the lives of these children. Parents should be WITH their parents on many evenings, on other evenings they should be at adult supervised activities such as clubs and sports. The acceptance by parents and our culture that youth should be able to congregate unsupervised in public places is a recipe for disaster. The idea that we can construct some new frail structures (mentoring etc) that can redirect this inherently unstable and immature groups is a fallacy. The apologists for failure can be readily identified by phrases such as "in this day and age". As well as returning to parental responsibility and adult supervision, we need to regard the antisocial media influences on music video and advertising in general as health risks in the same way as smoking and aggressively control them. The only suggestions coming from the apologists for cultural collapse are more money from government and more "tolerance" of the loss of public freedom in public spaces. In summary, the key practical actions that would make a difference are: - public campaign reinforcing parents responsibility to know where their children are and what they are doing. Similar style to TAC & drug ads. - public campaign and perhaps "curfew" legislation to ensure children of different ages are at home or under direct parental supervision at certain hours - legislative changes to make parents legally responsible for children's supervision (i.e. parents supervises or ensures that child is involved in supervised activity) - directed financial assistance from local/ state / federal govt towards activities such all sorts of healthy socially beneficial supervised sporting and special interest clubs. Provide supervision for skate ramps etc. (dispensers of support have responsibility to be careful that sick elements do not get into this funding e.g. rap group = violence antisocial misogyny etc) - community leaders actively challenging the pop culture as antisocial and in many cases "sick" by almost any index. Local/ state / federal leaders identifying the execs in pop culture (music clothes etc) and advertising and making them responsible for using their enormous creativity for positive socially uplifting messages embedded with their sales pitch. Threaten c legislation but hopefully avoid. Treat them like the irresponsible road speed encouragers, the tobacco pushers, the alcohol pushers, the gambling pushers etc. - more if you are interested ....... In summary, the key actions that are great BUT won't make much difference BUT will look good on a local/ state/ federal govt action plan are: - expensive highly supported high profile pilot programs in a range of great ideas that just cannot be scaled up to make any significant impact e.g. mentoring, big brother - more youthful youth officers employed by local govt to run tiny groups that make a few newsletters with the involvement of either the better behaved and educated do-gooders OR some worst offenders who have "seen the light" (possibly literally). - more attractions to congregate without adult supervision such as nooks and crannies, seating, skate parks, ramps, etc etc.