Only ‘cos we said…

This is just a light hearted observation…

I love reading the paper’s opinion columnists. More for the sheer spectacle of watching someone make a thriving living off stating the bleeding obvious. However, sometimes you can't help but feel a bit confused.

Recently one of these opinion columns I read over outlined the author’s disdain for breeding a society of dobbers as a result of the government’s campaign against insurance fraud. The author tiptoed along a fence bordering moral obligation and ruff n’ tumble aussie larrikinism, before plummeting over the redneck side of the threshold, and launching his scorn on reasons that dobbing isn’t necessarily the Australian way.

He makes a compelling point, by drawing parallels between reporting fraudsters being akin to dobbing in Ned Kelly because you know where he is hiding.

However, the link seems somewhat dubious as Ned Kelly was effectively rebelling against oppressive and extremely violent law enforcement, and the domineering powers that be. The idea that insurance companies go around knocking on people’s doors and asking them, “Do you mind renewing your annual policy, and whilst you forage for the dough do you also mind if we rape your mother and sisters and then shoot your dog?” seems somewhat doubtful. In fact, the last time I checked, the only thing that came close to a threat from insurance companies was the "Pay By" date in the corner of my renewal form. But even then, at least they had the decency to print “Thank You” at the bottom. It can hardly be perceived as oppressive, can it?

If this paper is so averse to dobbing people in, then I guess I’ll admit to being somewhat perplexed. I vaguely remember this paper printing stories some time ago about how rowdy schoolies kept residents awake until the small hours, and how these residents complained to police. The story was predominantly sympathetic to the residents’ point of view.

You may find my link between these two somewhat tenuous (not unlike the dubious one above), but I seem to read “Run to the authorities, but only if you’ve got a worthy reason that ties in with our individual opinion at the time” in between the lines here.

So, according to this paper, it is okay for people to dob in a number of underage drinkers to the police on the sole basis that they’re acting like a bunch of teenagers (which, funnily enough, they are), but to dob in the shifty guy next door who is loading up the heavy surfboard on the top of his newly purchased Land Rover, after he got a $100,000 payout for “injuring” his back, is somehow un-Australian.

I’d be interested to see if this particular columnist still “prefers a society of scallywags and rogues to a society of dobbers (excerpt from column)” the next time some rowdy teenage revellers disrupt his evening kip.

Or is this publication somehow advocating that ripping off large faceless corporations is somehow less of a crime than, say, petty vandalism and excessive noise? If this is the case, I’ll grab my large Hessian bag, a pointy stick and waltz on down to the offices of Microsoft, taking care to not wake their senior staff, and minding that I don’t inadvertently scratch their property.