Irresponsible Children Become Irresponsible Citizens
'The Character Of Australians' by P Atkinson (1/2/2006)

How the Australian community's failure to make its children accept blame for their actions has created irresponsible citizens and a demented community.

Discarding Sense in favour of Nonsense
Responsibility, duty and justice are founded upon the value:

"You, and you alone, are responsible for your actions."

And to discard this value means discarding sense and embracing nonsense, which is what the Australian community is doing circa 2000.

Discard Kerb Drill
In the 1950s kerb drill was considered a critical part of children's education to prevent them being run-over and killed on the roads. In 2000 it is the adult drivers who are expected to take such precautions. This has been signalled with the imposition of drastic speed limits

Discarding Of Personal Responsibility
Inevitably teaching children that they are blameless creates irresponsible adults who blame others for all unwanted results.

Avoiding Responsibility By Throwing A Tantrum
In 1992 the media covered a demonstration of adult tantrums, which became known as the Rigg affair. On being apprehended by the police for his misdemeanours, a young thug tried to avoid penalty by repeating his nursery tactics; he performed a grown up version of holding your breath until you turn blue and attempted to hang himself. The result of this fit of pique was not a corpse, but a brain dead human. The previous success of such infantile behaviour was not repeated in the prison cell but, true to form, the mother tried to abet the nursery performance; she forgot about her little boy's crimes and concentrated upon his suffering. Though his fate was a direct result of his own actions, his deluded parent tried to blame someone else (like another deluded mother). She laid the responsibility for her offspring's condition upon the police and demanded government compensation. This was a denial of truth; the little horror got his just deserts at his own hand.

Avoiding Responsibility By Feigning Sickness
To avoid unpleasant consequences children don't just have tantrums, they also feign instant sickness. If such antics bring success, the child repeats the trick in adult life, no matter how much it strains credibility. Once, while acting as a junior manager at Sydney City Council, I was publicly berated by the Computer repairman. This was like being told off in your own home by the TV repairman. The gentleman had no authority to chastise anyone as he did not even work for the council, yet he felt able to dress-down all and sundry. He had probably escaped previous penalty because he was large and threatening, however my duty impelled me to confront him for his rudeness and to demand that he never again spoke to anybody on the staff in this fashion. Immediately the big coward had to go to hospital for his high blood pressure!

As with the Rigg case, the apparently injured party became the victim. The fact that his rudeness forced the confrontation that caused his rush to hospital, was ignored. This event generated sympathy and staff were informed that this big, lumbering, bully was not to be scolded; he was too sensitive. A triumph for nursery behaviour; the role of the doting mother had been assumed by the incompetent senior council management. As I was reprimanded by my manager, for my heartlessness, it was impossible not to envision him smirking behind their backs.

Avoiding Responsibility Blaming Others
Spoilt children never accept that they are responsible for their own misfortune, should something unpleasant occur they will invariably find someone else to blame; "He pushed me", "She made me so upset I knocked over the vase"; an attitude whose absurdity has not prevented it becoming become officially enshrined by our law courts. It is no longer just childish pretence but the law.

Blame Doctors
Doctors are human, and make mistakes. It is unfortunate but unavoidable that their errors can be fatal. Despite this, it has become fashionable for people to penalise doctors for being human. By trusting to the skill of the doctor, the patient is accepting the risk. Unless deliberate malice is proven, no medical practitioner should be punished for unfortunate results. The people who sue the medical profession are pretending they did not know doctors are fallible, an attitude enthusiastically abetted by the courts.

By Blaming Publicans The Courts Contradict The Idea Of Responsibility
On 9th July 1994 the front page of The Courier-Mail contained the headline "Publicans could be sued". A Canadian law professor pointed out that in his country following accidents involving intoxicated parties, bar owners were being sued, and that there was nothing to stop such legal action happening in Australia. On Saturday 13th December 1997 the headlines of the Gold Coast Bulletin heralded the courts rewarding Dallas Midgley, 36, with $277,000 for becoming intoxicated, then lurching into the path of car on April 24th 1990, in Ferny Avenue, Brisbane. Justice Derrington maintained the blame for this accident could be distributed between the victim, 45%, the car driver, 30%, and the Chevron Hotel, 25%; a decision that immediately makes the commission of every crime an act by multiple parties, diffusing guilt and marring innocence. Our law now claims that no one is solely guilty, not the thief, rapist or murderer; all can point to the aiding and abetting by some other agency — the taxi driver who dropped them at the scene, the householder who failed to lock up, the store that sold the knife, or even the firm that made the gun. This judgment is a denial that responsibility cannot be divided without destroying it, and so contradicts an essential foundation of law and order in the community. It is merely the irrational acceptance of the naughty child's defence—he made me do it.

Blame The Police For Attempted Suicide
Fourteen years after a bungled suicide attempt left a man crippled, his mother is suing the police and health authorities for negligence. The Sydney Daily Telegraph of February 10th, 1999 reported that Mrs Alice Quinlan, was suing the police and the central coast Area Health Service for negligence in that they failed to stop her son from attempting suicide in the N.S.W. Gosford police cells on October 30th 1984. Christopher Quinlan was in custody following allegations of assault upon his former de facto wife, Deborah Kelly, and he took this opportunity to attempt suicide by hanging from the cell grille.

Blame The Health Services For Murder
Odium for the crime of murder can be avoided simply by blaming someone else. On Saturday, 31st October 1998, The Courier-Mail reported the case of infanticide being blamed upon the South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service. A mother who murdered her child by throwing it from a second floor hospital window accepted an out of court payment after she claimed the Royal Women's Hospital failed to exercise sufficient care, skill and diligence and failed to diagnose her mental illness.

Blame Corporations
Thalidomide was a surprise to everyone, but making the company pay such huge amounts of compensation will not help the community. Undoubtedly drug companies should test their product, but no testing program can cover every possibility. Such punitive actions against the drug firm will only drastically slow, if not halt, the development of new drugs.

The situation is so ludicrous, that even when claims of injury are proved false, the drug company still suffers. Devondox was a drug that brought harmless relief to many. For personal reasons a Doctor McBride fraudulently manufactured a case against the drug. Despite the finding of the court and the subsequent punishment of the doctor, the drug was withdrawn from the market. The legal costs incurred in fighting the people who claimed damages were just too costly to justify continuing with supplying the substance.

The claimants who forced the drug off the market did not volunteer to pay damages to the company for their false claims. They offered no apology for denying the community the use of a medicine. By suing drug companies people are placing their selfish interests ahead of the common good. They do not care that drug research is being stalled, or that drugs are being withheld, only that they might collect a handsome pay out.

No Blame Means No Restraint
If there is no need to be responsible, there is no need for restraint, as the divorce statistics reveal. Marriage is a communal device invented to control and channel sexual libido. It was not meant to make life easy for the individual, only manageable for the community. Sexuality is a volatile emotion whose expression can destabilise any human organisation, with free licence resulting in pandemonium. The ultimate result of abandoning marriage must be social chaos, and this is just what is occurring. The terms husband" and "wife" have been replaced by the more accurate "partner" (1996); a word meaning the current lover. Clearly contemporary character can no longer support a vow, and love is now displaying a very similar nature to lust.

Impact On The Family
Making divorce easy has had an inevitable impact; the structure of the family is changing. The traditional model of the father, mother and their progeny, with the male providing support and control, is rapidly (1995) being displaced by a less rigid model. The new family consists of a mother enjoying a series of partners who may father one or more children. The woman controls and supports the household with the aid of the man, but he can only wield authority, or remain part of the family, at female discretion; behaviour that completely contradicts the traditional father's role.

Reduction in Wealth and Order
Women make mediocre bread-winners (refer "Wealth and Poverty " by George Gilder) and mediocre agents of authority — their maternal instincts contradict the desire to enforce discipline, and their lack of aggression inhibits their ability to induce fear and so respect for their authority. This new form of family is thus poorer and less ordered than the older form, and can only create selfish and irresponsible children, who must become selfish and irresponsible adults.