This document contains my Contract for real action for Australia.In contract law much of the document would be characterised as puffery ... we know that it is an airy nothing that is not legally actionable and the supposed guarantee is meaningless. Can you get your money (or vote) back if the Opposition Leader resiles from his promise? No. Claim damaqes for non-performance? Invoke protection under the Trade Practices Act (Cth)? No.
It comprises 12 realistic, modest and prudent election commitments that are achievable and deliverable over the next three years. I guarantee to take real action to deliver on these commitments because I believe that actions speak far louder than gestures, words and stunts. The Coalition will deliver on these commitments.
Contract item 10 - 'item' is presumably the preferred characterisation, rather than 'promise' (particularly as Mr Abbott's role model famously distinguished between core [ie 'real'] promises and the faux promise) - concerns CCTV.
Provide safer neighbourhoods.If only crime reduction was so simple, there were no concerns about fostering belief in technological silver bullets and no problems with the diversion of resources.
The Coalition will work with local councils and police to ensure that more crime-prone areas have closed circuit TV (CCTV).
There is no reason to believe that deployment of cctv will necessarily increase public safety and reduce crime in neighbourhoods that are "more crime-prone" or merely in more neighbourhoods. Is the coalition proposing to fund monitoring by local government personnel - or by their agents in the private security sector - using cctv, given that safety involves more than installing a cam and hoping that someone remembered to start the recorder? What of the role of state/territory governments, given that police are state/territory rather than local government agencies? Where does private sector cctv fit in? And does 'cctv policing' (as distinct from, for example, more police on the street, especially on foot rather than in patrol vehicle drive-bys) substantially increase public safety? Will the states be requisted to ban the wearing of 'hoodies'?
The Opposition would be advised to look at studies such as 'Open-street CCTV in Australia: The Politics of Resistance and Expansion' by Adam Sutton & Dean Wilson in 2(3) Surveillance and Society (2004) 310 and Surveillance, Closed Circuit Television and Social Control (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998) edited by Clive Norris, Jade Moran & Gary Armstrong.
Cold hard facts about safety are, presumably, less significant than statements such as "We stand for taking real action, seeing things through and getting things done. We stand up and take responsibility for our election promises".
