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Professor Margaret Gardner
It's a great step forward because all that flexibility provides opportunity for
people to think again, to try again, to be someone else at some different time.
Whether Ned Kelly would even recognise Melbourne or any part of it but I suspect he would be
utterly bewildered. What he would make of RMIT or the Working Men's College,
what he would make of all the familiar surrounds that we take for granted,
let alone the institutions and infrastructure well we just have no idea but it's a tempting scenario.
A very tempting scenario that we'll play some more with in just a moment as we discuss
here with the panel whether or not Ned Kelly might have been better reading rather
than fighting, Better Read Than Dead, and how would educational opportunity, if RMIT
existed before it was too late for Ned Kelly, how that may have changed
not only his but all of Victoria's history too.
We're in the Old Melbourne Magistrates' Court broadcasting on Channel 31
and to the camera and the screen at Federation Square for this
hypothetical sponsored by RMIT University.
Welcome back to the Old Melbourne Magistrates' Court where we're conducting
a hypothetical about Ned Kelly's future. I'm Jon Faine. You're on Channel 31 and
at Federation Square as well as our live audience here at the
Old Melbourne Magistrates' Court. Looking at the prospects of Ned Kelly having had a different
life if things had gone for him slightly differently, if RMIT University in its
then form as the Working Men's College had been open seven years earlier.
Lex Lasry, QC, as a barrister you've defended some pretty some desperate and
shady characters in every sense of the term, would an education have helped some of them?
Is there a correlation between educational opportunities and crime?
I think there's no doubt that opportunity to and a legitimate living is a disincentive to embark
on a life of crime and plenty of my clients have embarked on a life of crime
because the rewards came quickly. All you had to do was pull a gun in a bank, get
the $50,000 and there you were and then you conducted a war with the police
or they conducted a war with you. I think, by and large, if you looked at the figures,
and I haven't, Jon, but I think if you did you'd see that looking at crime overall
people who turn to crime, particularly these days, in a drug environment,
do so out of a sense of desperation and urgent financial need.
A lot of the biggest crimes are committed by people in suits, not boiler suits, aren't they?
That's a bit unfair, Jon, really [laughter]. They have to wear a suit to court but they're not wearing suits,
necessarily when they commit the offence.
I'm talking about white collar crimes for instance.
Yes, I know you're talking about white ... of course, yeah, of course.
I mean in the 20th and 21st century there's fraud, quite substantial fraud
committed by people in suits, as you say, but the sort of crime we're talking about with
Ned Kelly is a product, I think, of his environment and an ongoing conflict with
the police which was a conflict with this family as well as with him.
That's a sort of traditional type of relationship I think.
The grimmest view you can have of the criminal justice system is that it's really just a sponge
for mopping up societies flotsam and jetsam. How accurate's that?
I don't know whether they ... whether the criminal justice system mops them up
except to the extent that it deals with them and puts them in prison.
The criminal justice system is, and has been for a long time, overloaded and, look,
criminal activity by and large is a symptom of our community and as it increases I suspect
it underpins a problem with aspects of our community and the way we live.
In those days, and certainly in Ned Kelly's case, whatever else you might say he would
certainly say that it was victimisation of him and his family and that that in itself
precipitated criminal activity and then he wound up in the courts and was, I would say,
pretty harshly dealt with and of course, something dear to my heart, at the end
of the process he was hanged, an appalling punishment.
Simon Brown-Greaves, what's your view on the relationship between criminality, a criminal
state of mind, and educational opportunity?
Look, I think it's all about raw material, Jon, that in a case like Ned everything we read
and see would suggest that there is no evidence that there was an inherent
or born tendency to crime and indeed I suspect if he'd ended up in prison at the age
of 14 or 15 for his first stint he probably would have been assessed as a young man with
great potential and one who would have been, in this day and age, plugged into an educational
program very promptly in the prison system, probably with an opportunity to embark on a trade
and I know some people probably find that a bit horrifying but he probably could have got
a good education through the RMIT Outreach Program into Pentridge.
Yes, but all this business about university, the ... what is it, prison's the university
of hard knocks, the school of hard knocks, I'm not sure what you learn in prison.
Lex Lasry, what do you learn in prison if you're sent there at an early age?
Well I ... look, I think in Ned Kelly's case you learn he didn't want to go back there.
I mean I ... as I understand it he spent some time in Pentridge and at the end of that
was determined to live a legitimate life and I think a lot of young people, if they're treated
properly, realise that prison is not the place for them because the alternative
is that they learn a whole lot of other skills, which they're then tempted to put
into effect when they're released and that's the very thing you don't want to happen.
You want ... the problem, Jon, is that the real influence in sentencing ought to be
on rehabilitation, particularly with young people, and ...
And yet there's precious little of it in the system today let alone back then.
I think ... well, I think there was probably none of it then and ...
No, what you learned as how to commit bigger crimes from bigger crims.
Well, I think that's still true. I think that's the temptation, that to get on in prison
you pick up some skills that can be used for illegal rather than proper purposes on your release.
I think that's a problem.
Verity, can you give us an insight into what prison conditions were like back in Ned
Kelly's time?
Professor Verity Burgman, Australian Historian and Author, University of Melbourne
Oh, well, pretty awful. I mean the worst thing was deprivation of freedon and for
somebody like Ned that obviously he suffered that greatly. The conditions, as now,
are deliberately there as a deterrent.
It's a deterrent but at the same time it was a way of life for some people, recidivism was rife
and recidivism rates were even worse then than they are now, they're bad enough now but back
then they were nothing short of scandalous and as you learn now you go into prison
for a minor crime, you come out having graduated from the criminal university
or Pentridge University, as some used to call it back here in the old days.
Back then it must have been horrendous.
Well, certainly there weren't programs then to allow for the greater possibility of rehabilitation
but I mean I think Ned, if he'd been gaoled later on, might well have benefited from a social
sciences degree. I think he showed a great sociological imagination
that was far superior to his metalworking skills. For instance he made the point that
men are made mad by ill treatment. He also argued that the squatters would have better
controlled the problem if they had subscribed a fund to help the poor selectors
rather than giving rewards for policemen to capture cattle duffers and so on
and he also even, very astutely, made the comment that the police system had an interest
in outlawry and the sort of crime that comes from endemic social conflict.
Well, if he hadn't shot a couple of policemen I suppose the bottom line is he wouldn't be
in the dock here today. One reason for Kelly's social exclusion and advantage lay in his
Irish-Catholic heritage. Waleed Aly, back to you as a member of the Islamic Council
of Victoria and your book, People Like Us, you write about social exclusion, do religion and ethnicity
still act as barriers for newcomers in Australian society? Have we moved on?
Mr Waleed Aly, Social Commentator and Author of, People Like Us
Oh, no, not at all. I mean there's no doubt that they still act as barriers to inclusion.
But it's not ... I mean it's ... we've got a sectarian history in this country, you only need
to ask people of Catholic background what their parents experienced in this country
and they'll, I'm sure, tell you and be happy to do so. We've had experiences of exclusion
through race, through immigration and so on. We've got all these things in our history,
the question is to what extent they rise to prominence again and I would argue
that under certain circumstances, particularly politically active circumstances where there's
heat in the political conversations such as now, they come back up to the surface.
so it's about the conditions for them.
It's quite comical in fact these days to think about the sort of taunts that our parents'
generation and even some of us would have seen in the school yard. The fact that political
parties were divided over which version of Christianity, I mean given the
divisions in society now are over somewhat different schisms, it's amost enough to make you
just wonder whether we've moved much at all or just shifted around some of the labels.
John Rawlinson, if you go to prison what are your job prospects afterwards, even today?
Mr John Rawlinson, Managing Director, Talent2.
Look, it's ... it doesn't help but we ... and it certainly wouldn't have helped back then but
I guess it depends on what your crime was and depends on, you know, your ability to demonstrate
that you have reformed and I guess it sort of depends on your skills.
We are in an environment right now where we have extreme shortages of
workers and particularly skills and professions so I think that if ... that there's never
been a better time to have a criminal record and get back into the work ...
into the job market than there is right now and ...
Couldn't have been a better time [laughter] to have a criminal record, ladies and gentlemen.
And ...
That's something really to be reassured by.
And I think, you know, we would encourage any employer to perhaps look beyond
the past track record and look at future potential but clearly it's not going to help.
Well, they say if you do the crime you do the time but then you should be able
to get on with your life. Alan Montague, how hard is it to get an apprenticeship if you disclose a
criminal past?
It does ...