By
Jack Marx, news.com.au, 19 January 2011:
Everywhere one goes today, one hears the sound of regular people either outraged or bewildered by the leering presence of authority. There are cops with dogs at Newtown Station, making sure nobody’s got any fun in their pockets, faux cops at Sydney’s Luna Park, making sure nobody photographs the children, and uniformed baboons at your local pub, keeping alive the latter-day Aussie tradition that every peaceful night out must feature at least one ridiculous altercation with a bouncer. Just last week, a jog around my local athletics track was interrupted by a council worker, draped, naturally, in the harness of modern beautness, who demanded – I kid you not – that I cease my athletic behaviour lest I wear out the grass for others who might wish to engage in future athletic behaviour. With Australia Day approaching, it’s worth having a quick think about Australia’s apparent love affair with being told what to do.
Most Australians are proud of the fact that this nation was born of convict stock. But this most over-jerked take on our history overlooks a somewhat uncomfortable truth – that one in five of the “first Australians” were effectively cops. In all of history, there is perhaps no nation that began its life so top heavy with authority, a whopping 20 per cent of the population licensed to bully, dob and sticky beak on the others, their careers enhanced by doing so in a hierarchical system in which the only possibility for advancement was through brown-nosing to one’s superiors.
