Today in Australia is Father's day, and it is a day to commemorate and memorialise the significant impact that our fathers and the act of being a father has on the lives of their children, their families and our own lives. My own father has for the most part been a model whose positive qualities I have feebly tried to replicate in my own life, but as is the redundancy and failing of all copies, after every generation the conviction, motivation and clarity of that vision fades. As with my own future children who will some day hopefully attempt to emulate the principles that I have based my moral compass on, I am sure that my own vision and hopes for them will somehow be diluted through the eyes of children and the passage of time.
There is however a short coming of this special day that no one tends to focus on though or is rarely considered. Fathers day on the whole fails to recognise, remember and offer compassion for those whose fathers were not positive role models, absent fathers, fathers who have passed, men who dream of being a father but for some reason cannot, or the fathers of children who are no longer with them for what ever reason - be it miscarriage, death, divorce, or difference of opinion. I suppose in my own way, I'm hoping to draw attention to the other side of the coin here and perhaps make those of us with fathers feel more grateful for the lives we were luckily born into, but also to reassure those who have no reason to commemorate a father, those who no longer have a father, or those fathers who no longer have children, that somewhere someone is thinking of them too.
It's easy enough for us all to get wrapped up in the emotion and celebration that occurs in our own lives. But when you raise your glasses to toast your fathers today, please spare a thought for those who the world may have forgot. If you think of them and it helps you to appreciate your situation more, then think of them for that reason. If you think of them only to become more aware that your special day with your father is not universal, then think of them for that reason.
But most of all think of them and feel for them. Because for so long no one has thought of them. Once a year on a day dedicated to all the fathers of the world, think of those children whose fathers deserve to be forgotten and don't deserve the right to be remembered, think of those whose fathers have disappeared from their lives, and think of those fathers whose children were so untimely ripped from their lives.
If only I were talking about the beloved MC from our child hood, whose time was marked by skittish sideways crab dancing, criss-cross inverted star jumps and the mandatory nappy-pant. The only person whose designer dream to bring man-nappies to the world was realised, though to be sure, "you can't touch this" level of perfection.
No. In fact I'm writing to you today about another untouchable which has suddenly become all the more appealing due to my favourite Magistrate, the Honourable Julie Huber.
Magistrate Huber, who recently piqued my interest in her management of the Jodhi Meares sentencing has once again seen fit to make a mockery of a system which should by every right be fighting to make those in the gaze of celebrity stand accountable for their actions.
Now don't get me wrong. I have every sympathy for those who suffer from drug addiction or whose lives have led them to feel that drug abuse is a reasonable escape. Having had my most dear childhood friend suffer with addiction and consequently be taken from us due to heroin, I have nothing but pure empathy for those who are afflicted by the disease of addiction and hope that they are able to be supported in seeking help for their addiction. But that's not the issue at hand here.
My issue isn't entirely with the fact that he was found with heroin, as his desire to take drugs and his free will to prevent himself from being in that situation may not be in his control. I don't know his personal situation and can't comment on that fact.
My specific issue is with the sentencing of quasi celebrities and what appears to be a difference in the standards they are held to compared to the rest of the general population.
"It is quite clear that you are a young man with a long, successful acting career and there is nothing to suggest that career won't continue," she said. - SMH
Well, at least his law breaking and negative role-modelling won't be affect his career. Good call by the Magistrate there. Priorities are definitely well aligned...
A higher standard...
Perhaps I'm being completely unreasonable in thinking that people of note should be held to a higher standard than the rest of "us". But as has been the case in recent years, professional footballers who have brought "the game" into disrepute for something as stupid and juvenile (but not criminal) as drinking their own urine have been relieved of their positions in their teams and shunned by the competition.
Whether they like it or not, the careers these people have chosen have given them a certain level of responsibility in the wider community. In the same way that young male and female teens look up to, admire, and model their own behaviour based on what they see professional footballers doing, I'm fairly certain that many younger impressionable young minds may look at Mr Corr's escape from what I would consider "justice" and think that a life of mediocre celebrity allows certain privileges - such as abuse of dangerous narcotics. The unfortunate side effect of this is that it also begins to celebritise the activities that people of note perform, rather than the abilities or craft they used to gain their notoriety in the first place. Meaning that the act of taking drugs, or specifically in this case heroin, becomes an act that people who are famous do and something that young impressionable minds look to, to model their own actions and behaviours on - "so to become famous I too should do heroin."
Is it any wonder that since the rise of the celebrity sex tape (Kim Kardashian) that there has been a rise in teens taping and photographing themselves and each other in the nude, sending them to friends, posting them online? Even worse and more dangerous when the person they are modelling themselves off is only famous for making a sex tape.
I could waste even more column length to this specific point. but fortunately Jack Gleeson of Game of Thrones fame sums up the crux of this problem incredibly thoroughly and articulately.
Magistrate Huber has once again lost an ideal opportunity for modelling to younger people who admire those like Mr Corr what the repercussions (e.g. rehab, community service, fines, gaol time, something, anything more than a slap on the wrist and kiss on the cheek!) of these actions are and what the accepted and tolerated forms of behaviour and conduct are in our society, and she has failed them most grievously by only reinforcing that if you only need to be moderately famous for this sort of crap to be fine.
Of course I'm not attempting to justify people being dragged over the coals for the sake of it either, because people in these situations still need our compassion and the love and the support of those around them - and simply throwing them up on the cross for all to see is just as bad as letting them go without any reprimand. But Magistrate Huber, in thinking she was being merciful was only being ignorant. She had an opportunity to be stern but compassionate. Showing a concern for both the person AND and acknowledgement of the harm of his actions.
Yes. Mr Corr pleaded guilty to possession of a narcotic, and in some way I suppose this as him accepting responsibility for his actions (read: plea deal), but at the end of the day the protestations of his lawyer against any charges being laid against him only show the disingenuous nature of the guilty plea.
His Lawyer Chris Murphey argued Corr's career would suffer if a conviction was recorded as he could be prohibited from entering other countries to work. - SMH
The only real lesson to take away from this is that if you admit your guilt, but don't accept responsibility for your actions or behaviour then you're probably on your way to stardom.
If you or someone you know is dealing with addiction or suffers from drug abuse, or you are looking to get further support or information relating to drug addiction or heroin substance abuse, I have put the following links below to further increase your own personal awareness to be there for those around you or seek the help you may need.
For further or more appropriate contacts in your area please look online or contact your local health professional for more information and pathways to assistance.
While the power of celebrity has always been ever present, it turns out that simply being a low list female celebrity with a great lawyer is enough to evade responsibility for your actions as well.
While I haven't really followed the case, learning about the bull-shit sentence that she received for a High Range alcohol related driving offence is bloody offensive to me. The fact that she was so drunk to roll her car AND blow almost 4 times the legal limit and get the absolute minimum fine is a joke! $1,100 fine and a 12 month suspension? Well, I suppose she'll looking for coins in the couch to pay for her driver for the next year...
Let me put it another way:
I could shove a paddle-pop stick into 2 parking meters and receive a fine only $60 less AND lose 14 demerit points.
I could display a damaged parking ticket/receipt TWICE and be fined $1,038 and lose 14 demerit points.
I could forget to remove my parents mobility parking card TWICE and be fined $1,246 and lose 16 demerit points.
Now the first 2 offences I listed would only incur a 3 month suspension and the second would incur 4 months compared to the 12 month suspension that Jodhi Meares will have to face. The above offences are also all related to parking... You know, when you are either not in a car or the car isn't even moving. But furthermore I would also like to add that none of the offences that I have listed had the risk of KILLING ANYONE!!!
Now according to my own moral beliefs, standards and what I think to just be a logical progression of thought (and yes, this is solely my own opinion here and in no way law or common knowledge), if I were to shoot a gun in the air in a fit of exaltation, regardless of if I'm aware of it or not, I'm potentially about to commit manslaughter. So when a person gets behind the wheel of a car drunk, I think the same logic applies. Regardless of the time of day, in a heavily populated area it would be sheer luck that I don't hit someone with my bullet, just as it would be pure luck that Jodhi didn't actually kill someone. But the weapon of ignorance and stupidity that caused her to get behind the wheel of her car intoxicated should not remove the responsibility of the potential cause for harm from her actions and decisions. This unaccountability effectively reinforces the sentiment or belief that people with money/fame are better than YOU, and therefore should not be held to the same ideals or constraints as the normal public.
Lets have a quick look at the possible sentences to see what Ms Meares' status aided her in avoiding.
PCA offence
Penalties
First Offence
Second or subsequent offence
High range PCA
(Blood alcohol concentration of 0.15 or above)
OR
Refuse a breath analysis, hinder or obstruct taking of a blood sample, wilfully alter the concentration in the blood.
Maximum court- imposed fine
$3,300
$5,500
Maximum gaol term
18 months
2 years
Disqualification
-minimum
12 months
2 years
-maximum
Unlimited
Unlimited
-automatic*
3 years
5 years
Immediate licence suspension
Yes
Yes
Wow... Just wow. The "Automatic" suspension for this offence is longer than the suspension the judge gave her. So if a "normal person" were unable to go to court with representation, it probably wouldn't be a question of how long you're suspended for, but if you should be going to gaol or not. Of course, poor Ms Meares has been hounded by the media in the aftermath of her lapse in judgement, but I suppose that's the consequence of being a complete knob jockey when it comes to good self governance when you're a person of moderate celebrity.
I suppose if she killed someone she might have actually been disciplined a little harder - you know, something along the lines of a good finger pointing from the judge or a light slap on the wrists instead of the blow job the judge tried to give her in her sentencing.
At least Magistrate Huber is setting a good example for all the young aspiring women out there...
If you work hard enough ladies, someday you too might be able to grasp just enough celebrity or status to get away with almost anything. So don't make good moral and social judgements regarding your lifestyle. As long as you can fake it - odds are you'll make it, and then you won't have to worry about what is right and wrong... Right and wrong are a little blurry after "4 1/2 drinks" anyway!
Frankly, I think the responsible thing for the Magistrate to have done would be to make an example of Ms Meares. Someone has to show the generations that follow that people of all standings are held to the same strict standards, and that regardless of ones social status if you fuck up on an enormous level you will be held fully accountable in the eyes of the law.
In 2007 our then Prime Minister pushed forwards towards a new mission.
The Education Revolution.
What was the revolution supposed to deliver, and what was so different about the plan that "revolutionised" the classroom.
Well, probably the most immediately noticeable difference would be the school issued laptops. Students who regardless of how much their family income was were able to all interact in the class room using technology to enhance their learning by being interactive. Also potentially allowing students work to be of a higher quality simply due to the ability to copy data in a lesson in varied ways, increasing their resources for study and personal learning.
A bold idea, a brilliant scheme, executed so inadequately that the only impact it had was to thrust laptops into the hands of children while not giving enough teachers the resources needed to know how to properly integrate them into their lessons. Rather than having tools at the ready to create collaborative learning, teachers primary instruction was to use the laptops as electrified binary type writers. The monotonous nature of this interaction in the classroom of course leading to increased Facebook time, or watching of movies during lessons.
Not to mention the quality of the laptops and the software supposedly expected to run on it. I remember back in 2011 I was loaned a "net-book" by a school I was at during university. The software suite included Adobe Creative Suite, on a laptop with the processing power of a IBM 386/25 (from 1995, or at least it felt my old 386 was quicker)... In no way would I have ever have been able to set any tasks for students that required more processing power than a word document, let alone have a projector in the classroom so that I could teach, model and scaffold computer based learning for them. Needless to say my own four year old laptop ($700 in 2007) was far superior to the budget laptop in every way. But that's beside the point. If I, as a student teacher, were unable to develop lessons and use the loan laptop as a tool for my classroom, how on earth were the students supposed to be able to use them for any more than a lag ridden type writer?
Well... It's 2014 and it's fair to say that there have been children left behind for a long time now. The current scheme for keeping technology in schools is that of BYO device. Which perhaps in some schools would work very well, but it isn't really feasible at many schools, where for families to spend $300 on a Chromebook would be an impossible amount of money to outlay.
But still, seven years on and many class rooms don't have digital projectors. So I suppose the students having a laptop wouldn't really be of any more use now than it would have been seven years ago.
We've come full circle on the revolution. Children had laptops and all seemed to be going nicely. But now schools are at times thrust back to over head projectors, CRT televisions and work relying solely on photocopies and what is written on the board.
The revolution that was, feels like it never really happened. Everything I was made to be excited by at university - all the possibilities and the dreams that were built up by my lecturers in regards to implementing technology in the classroom seems like lies.
On the surface things appeared to change... for a while. But now I have a generation of kids slipping through my fingers, thinking that no one cares about them any more because the revolution they were promised has fallen by the wayside and lives only in memory, and all they have now is a broken promise on the back of the failed revolution.
