Time for tough love or Australia will go to the dogs

Michael de Percy I 29 July 2024 I Spectator Australia

From Thimphu, Bhutan: To ‘go to the dogs’ is an idiom that means an organisation or a country is ‘deteriorating shockingly’. Apparently it originates from the 16th Century and refers to criminals or outcasts expelled from cities who lived among the rubbish – and the dogs.

Bhutan is a beautiful country full of spiritual, generous, and beautiful people. It has the same palpable, spiritual quality about it that I have only ever experienced in Jerusalem.

But Bhutan also has a problem with stray dogs that live on the streets. The cities and the environment are not spoiled, but the predominantly Buddhist country lives by the creed of doing no harm to living things.

Although almost all of the stray dogs have since been sterilised, and there is a noticeable decline in the number of dogs on the streets since I was here last year, they can still be found sleeping on the side of the road or even in the doorways of shops. The hotel I stay in provides earplugs for guests because packs of dogs roam the streets and often bark all night.

Let me be clear. Bhutan is still a developing nation, and I am very fond of the country and its people, some of whom are my good friends. But the absence of tough love has been a double-edged sword for Bhutan’s tourism industry. It’s hardly the place for a relaxing holiday and walking the streets alone at night is not recommended.

I regard Bhutan’s dog problem as a metaphor for Australian society. As we are increasingly weak on terrorists, criminals, juvenile delinquents, and border control, we are creating a rod for our own backs.

Australia handles plague proportions of wild animals rather differently. In Canberra years ago, a kangaroo cull made international headlines. The story was that the kangaroos were endangering native grasses and other native species and some 17 per cent of Canberran motorists had collided with a kangaroo at least once.

In Cairns, however, the places I swam as a kid are now no-go zones due to crocodiles. How it ever got this way makes no sense. But back to tough love.

Queensland LNP Opposition leader David Crisafulli recently referred to the ongoing crisis of youth crime in Queensland as being committed by ‘a generation of untouchables’.

Referring to this generation, Gemma Tognini wrote in a recent article in The Australian that many of us Gen Xers have stories about our parents telling us, ‘I’m not here to be your friend, you’ll thank me one day.’ Tough love was about parents performing their societal roles responsibly. Today, schools can hide children’s ‘gender transitions’ from their parents. This overrides so many values it is unconscionable.

Bhutan, however, has managed to make an appropriate compromise between its religious values and the practical dangers to public health and safety caused by street dogs.

Meanwhile, Australian policymakers tend to flap about in the wind of public opinion, and often the opinions of those who don’t have Australia’s best interests at heart.

I am not suggesting that we bring back corporal punishment. God knows I would be quite perplexed if I ever came face to face with those power-hungry control freaks who belted us with the cane, the one metre ruler, or the feather duster for their own sick pleasure when I was in school.

And where’s our compensation? (But we probably deserved the punishment.)

On the other hand, culling crocodiles in suburban areas of Cairns might not be such a stupid idea, even if the mainstream media disagrees.

But where we have ‘gone to the dogs’ is in prioritising some values over others without adequate debate and consideration. As anyone who has studied ethics knows, prioritising conflicting values is par for the course. There is no simple solution to ethical problems.

Bhutan won’t go to the dogs because their policy is working.

Australia’s social cohesion policy, however, is on the ropes. We have elected representatives refusing to swear or affirm allegiance to the Crown, which is central to our Westminster constitutional parliamentary democracy.

We have an Assistant Minister for Defence and Veterans Affairs who is also the Assistant Minister for a Republic. (If anyone can tell me how officers and warrant officers who have the King’s commission or warrant deal with the cognitive dissonance, I’m all ears. And I’m yet to meet a veteran who was a republican.)

We have terrorist flags and emblems being displayed in our streets, and Hamas target markers on our sovereign Parliament, with the perpetrators allegedly charged for trespassing rather than terrorism or hate crimes.

We even have a Greens mayor in Sydney ranting about Israel killing babies while refusing to acknowledge that Israeli hostages are still being held by the proscribed terrorist organisation, Hamas.

We even have a situation now where the Department of Defence, not the courts, will be able to compensate entire Afghani villages whose residents ‘may’ have been subjected to ‘unlawful killings’ by Australian special forces personnel.

Not one cent of taxpayers’ money should be used in this way. This is admitting guilt without natural justice for the special forces members who risked their lives in Australia’s defence. Why would anyone serve in a military with weak leadership like this?

In many ways, we are going to the dogs.

But it’s not too late. As in Bhutan, smart policy debates can help us find a suitable compromise between competing values. Unless we become a republic (God help us!) or the Wokerati win and bring about the ‘end of empire’ scenario they so desire, we need to reign in the anti-nationalist politicians, the militant unions and protesters, and the activist public servants who do not support Team Australia before we really do need to be neutered.

Dr Michael de Percy@FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is National Vice President of the Telecommunications Association, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022.