TAKEN FROM
Minister for Hoons heads for the pits
Monday View with Mike O'Connor
24jun03
We can now repose contentedly behind our security screens and double deadlocked doors blissful in the knowledge that the hoons have been brought to heel. For barely a day passes when we are not treated to another thundering pronouncement from Police Minister Tony McGrady on the Taming of the Hoons.
Hoons, it seems, threaten civilisation, being a latter-day version of the Goths and Visigoths, hordes of whom will sack the city if left unchecked.
How reassuring it has been to watch the Minister walking in company with senior police as he inspects cars on the Gold Coast which have been impounded for various traffic offences.
Television cameras, summoned to record the enthralling sight of a politician nodding sagely as he looks at cars, record heart-fluttering images of thoughtful chin stroking and earlobe tugging and the pronouncement that yes, they are cars. Absolutely no doubt about it.
The sight of a politician attempting to look thoughtful can easily induce spontaneous tittering and giggling among the most serious and sober of souls.
The sight of one attempting to look thoughtful, forceful and authoritative while staring at an inanimate object and pretending – badly – that he is not being filmed can induce a reaction bordering on the hysterical.
But what about the hoons, you cry? The hoons are coming. The Minister says so.
To the barricades! There'll be rape and pillage. They must be stopped.
All hail the Minister, the saviour of our time. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
What we have here is government by image.
Hoons make good images, lots of library footage of tyres spinning and rubber burning. Shocking anti-social behaviour.
Why aren't they at home watching Big Brother like all normal people?
And the Minister can be seen to be doing something which in politics, as it's practised in this country on both sides of the parliamentary halfway line, is more important than implementing significant change.
Having been filmed inspecting impounded cars –"It's a car, Mr Minister." "Not any car, Humphrey. A hoon's car. Politically, there's a huge difference" – we then thrilled to vision of police raiding a car park where young men crazy about their cars regularly gathered.
Tickets were written. Some cars had been modified! More spluttering outrage by the Minister.
I'm not suggesting that anti-social behaviour be tolerated and that dangerous driving be encouraged, but this obsession with hooning by the Minister for Hoons should end – and end quickly.
My mates and I spent most of our money and time on our cars when we were young.
Watching the televised press release masquerading as news the other evening I recognised in the young men on the screen as my mates and I decades ago.
A lot of them weren't hoons – and I've yet to hear a coherent definition of the term – at all.
They were young blokes who loved cars and who'd come to talk to other young blokes who loved cars and check out their machines.
What the Minister's publicity-driven antics have done is drive a wedge between these young people and the police.
They turn up to indulge their passion for cars and get booked by police, paid extras in the ministerial media show, for having wide wheels or noisy exhausts.
Anyone who squeals a tyre, revs an engine or guns their vehicle away from the lights is now a hoon.
I still do it, myself. I admit it. Take me away. I'm a hoon, the oldest hoon in the country.
I presume that in keeping with his crusading zealotry, the Minister will request police conduct a mechanical check of every bus in the state, including those carrying our schoolchildren and which the Government doesn't even require to be fitted with seat belts for God's sake!
Let's also check all Queensland Rail rolling stock and locos for mechanical faults and the entire State Government vehicle fleet.
Do that, and leave law-abiding young blokes alone.
I have one final suggestion. A few years ago, an old lady was bashed to death on the footpath in broad daylight in Paddington, near where I live. Her killer is still at large.
Perhaps the Minister might care to redirect some of the massive resources expended in getting him on the six o'clock news towards finding her killer.
• Mike O'Connor's column appears each Monday.
