Get your priorities right America!!!!!!!!!

Great Debates
41

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear …

Irrefutable evidence that the Ugly Australian “We know what’s best for youse” attitude is precisely as obnoxious and profoundly unhelpful as the Ugly Anybody Else’s.

My apologies to US dopers for the effrontery, nea temerity of my compatriot.
Anyhow, a couple of clarifications to points raised during the refutation

** Australia abolished the death penalty in 1985 **
The Government of the Commonwealth of Australia abolished the death penalty in 1973. I couldn’t find any record of an execution being carried out under Commonwealth authority. This Act of the Federal Parliament also abolished the death penalty in the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory.

The State of Queensland abolished the death penalty in 1922, the last execution being in 1913; followed by New South Wales (1955 and 1940); Tasmania (1968 and 1946); Victoria (1975 and 1967); South Australia (1976 and 1964) and lastly Western Australia (1984 and 1964).

The NSW statutes did retain some residual offences (relating to piracy and treason) that carried the death penalty, though jurisdiction for these offences was passed to the Commonwealth Government on Federation. These anomalies were abolished in 1985, hence the published figure.

Since Federation in 1901, 114 persons have been legally executed in Australia. The last execution in Australia was that of Ronald Ryan in February 1967. IMHO, it became a case of political imperative overriding justice. I think there is a substantial body of evidence that Ryan did not commit the crime for which he was executed (shooting a prison warder during an escape from prison).

** Australia’s skyrocketing crime rate **
FWIW the most recent figures I’ve come up with are: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Recorded Crime, Australia 30/05/2001 and Homicide in Australia 1999-2000 Australian Institute of Criminology Feb 2001

For example from the AIC report in the year 2000 there 300 homicide incidents and 337 deaths
throughout Australia. A deliberately lit fire in a youth hostel in Childers, Queensland contributed almost 5% of the national total. Just under 20% of all classes of homicide (or 65 deaths) involved use of a firearm.

There is certainly an increase in property crime, predominantly drug related as in most of the western world. Oversimplistically, a substantial proportion of this results from gangs involved in the control of the heroin trade centred in a single suburb of Sydney.

Others might well think these figures represent crime skyrocketing out of control.

I don’t, but I just live here.

42

$10 says Ms Reality never returns, and a bunch of us feel like saps for even bothering to reply.

43

The fact that Reality is (apparently) Australian is largely irrelevant. She was not saying “As an Australian, ellipsis ellipsis ellipsis”, so I don’t consider your country-based assertion to be correct. Dragging the nationality of a poster into refutations of their post should not be done without due cause.

44

Everyone here is cordially invited to join me in my lobbying effort to enact the Line Drive Rule.

Any time a batter manages to hit a line drive that strikes the pitcher in the skull and makes it bong like a tam-tam, he is awarded a free run.

Write your congressman.

45

Some questions for the linquistically challenged OP:

First: Does Australia have an Army? Survey says: YES.
Second: Does Australia have police forces? Survey says: YES.
Third: Are both of the above organisations arms of the government there? Survey says: YES.
Fourth: Do both of the above organisations use their firearms in the performance of their governmentally sanctioned and legal duties?

I’ll leave the last for Reality to answer. And I pray that answer will be in some semblance of a language currently known and practised on Planet Earth.

IMHO, any country with an armed military, armed police, or both, regardless of laws striking down execution as a punishment, actually does have capital punishment.

46

Need I remind you, the police in England don’t carry guns. (They just beat you to death with those ridiculously large hats of theirs instead.)

47

And need I remind you that the linquistically ignorant OP posted (presumably) from Australia?

Or that the police in the United Kingdom do not routinely carry firearms but actually do have them issued on certain occasions?

48

And that some of the UK police have small hats - what do they use?

49

Clubs. And whistles. Fear the whistles.

50

You don’t think that “I’m lucky enough to live in a Country where capital punishment was banned over 30 years ago”, as well as pretty much every other statement in the OP is not “due cause”? Especially since it’s not true? Unless she means it in a very literal sense, in which case I live in a country where it was banned over thirty years ago as well.

51

I dislike how she attacks the church. I’m an atheist, and I don’t agree with any religion, but I live with it and accept it and appreciate it.

52

I did not know Capital Punishment was a religion…

53

I thought that posting style seemed vaguely familar!