COMMENT

Media organisations and newspapers are cowering under threat of prosecution by the Anti-discrimination Commission should they identify the ethnic origin of criminals when reporting their misdeeds. So much for the abortive attempt to rehabilitate Section 18c.

It matters not to the racist zealots of the loathed Anti-discrimination Commission that young Aborigines are by far the main perpetrators of rampant, serious assaults and other crime in the Cairns area.

Some white criminals exist but tourists bearing the brunt of robbery, assault and battery are taking home stories that a visit to Cairns is just not worth it.

If you go out at night, or now it seems even in broad daylight you are likely to be assaulted.

Worse still the average age and gender of assailants has shocked hardened policemen on the beat.

In the past week a 37 year old Japanese tourist was approached by three youths and asked for cigarettes but when he refused he was bashed with a tree branch. The juveniles then tried to steal his back pack without success. Paramedics arrived to find the man suffering “serious bleeding.”

Three of the four 13 year old muggers, some or all of indigenous appearance, have been caught and since charged but will be dealt with under the juvenile justice act. Police are still looking for the fourth offender.

Unravelling this media-speak means they will be given a stern lecture perhaps by a Magistrate and released into the custody of their parents or carers, who should have made them stay home and taught them how to respect others in the first place, instead of wandering the streets in the early hours of the morning.

Meanwhile a tourist remains seriously injured and is no doubt harbouring vicious intent against the hundreds of wandering, Aboriginal and white kids in street gangs who push pedestrians off the footpath because the Aborigines proclaim ‘white bastards’ are trespassing on their land.

In a separate and unrelated incident, a 19 year old female was taken to hospital after she was allegedly attacked by three youths during an attempted robbery in the Cairns CBD.

The trio demanded her phone but was punched and kicked unconscious when she refused to hand it over.

A Manoora boy and Bentley Park girl, both aged 12, and a 16 year old girl from Mooroobool, have been charged by police.

Police are frustrated by the Magistrates Court being unable to address the youthful crime wave across the region. The ALP can take responsibility for diluting existing laws and for failing to introduce harsher penalties to curb escalating youth crime.

At least 80 motor vehicles a month are being stolen throughout the Cairns and Tablelands district and police are discovering to their horror that some thieves who led them on car chases have been as young as 12.

Geoff Guest OAM, with his late wife Norma successfully rehabilitated more than 3000 youths and adults at their Petford Farm facility over 30 years.

In years gone by, courts would give young troublemakers two options in sentencing. One was to attend a state detention facility that provided much better facilities and tucker than that at home, or to undertake a period of attendance at the renowned Petford Farm rehabilitation centre, run by indigenous couple, Geoff and Norma Guest since the late 1970’s.

Located on a remote cattle and horse property 30 klms west of Dimbulah, the facility can claim outstanding success with more than 3000 attendees over a 30 year period.

Health authorities have boasted a 70 per cent non-recidivism success rate with Aboriginal and white youth after completing the Guest courses. Many adults also passed through the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program developed by Geoff Guest OAM. His wife Norma passed away last year after a long illness.

The Petford Wellness group in more recent times, rather than taking troubled boarders, has been developing a rehabilitation curriculum for implementation into Aboriginal communities, with the notion of prevention rather than cure.

Mr Guest wants to train trainers so they can instruct intending mothers, mothers and children about proper nutrition, removal of sugar from diets and food preparation methods. He believes in the adage, ‘we are what we eat.’

Now aged 90, the intrepid Geoff Guest still breaks in horses, which have played an integral part of his outstanding rehabilitation process.

The Queensland Labor Party recently ruled against the state’s youth boot camp apparatus, in effect the Guest legacy, claiming it was too hard on participants and ineffectual.

The crime wave apologists of the socialist Labor and Greens will continue to flay Far Northern tourism with their unauthorised United Nations Human Rights obligations, causing visitors to condemn destinations such as Cairns, being dangerous and a hazard to their itineraries. – contributed