The 'shock jocks' are in tune with the silent majority

When it comes to the events in Cronulla, the reality is that rank-and-file Australians have been long concerned about the problem they could see emerging, but which their state political elites refused to acknowledge. They have been raising this issue on talkback for years. They had strongly supported the Howard Government's firm policy of border control and the return to an immigration policy based on need and assimilability. But the problem was that in NSW, the state Labor Government had abdicated its responsibilities.

Cronulla was a response whose violence must be deprecated, and was deprecated, on talkback; it was never planned, called for or condoned. But it was a response that followed the failure of NSW governments for many years to perform their most basic function: the proper provision of law and order.

This resulted from a pincer movement. On one side, there was the progressive neutering of the police, which reached its zenith just as the most violent ethnic gangs emerged. On the other side of the pincer, the criminal justice system began to demonstrate an extraordinary bias towards the accused. The resulting and often unnecessary technicalities have made it difficult to obtain and confirm a conviction, or to impose adequate punishment.

The result was increasing no-go areas across Sydney, where the criminals and the drug dealers reigned supreme. The State Government even threw in its own heroin injecting rooms. All of this was reported, discussed and almost universally condemned on talkback for years. NSW governments took little notice, apart from the ritual of an appropriate expression of indignation by the premier or some minister at a press conference timed for the evening news bulletins.

After Redfern last year and Macquarie Fields earlier this year, there was widespread indignation on talkback. The bashing of the lifesavers was the last straw. In the vacuum of law and order that Bob Carr had bequeathed to the state, the young bloods revolted and chose the only course that seemed to be left to them: the path of the vigilante.

As the rank and file know, this will not do. Innocent victims will suffer, and law and order is the function of the state, not the vigilante. Only a policy of zero tolerance by an empowered police force and by the courts will bring the gangs to reason, and that requires not more spin, but true leadership.