'Who's raising them?' – Zelić links rise in youth crime to modern parenting and lack of discipline
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On Sydney Now. You can't handle the truth. The Straight Shooters. She can handle the truth and she's of course our Straight Shooter on a Wednesday afternoon. The wonderful, the fabulous Lucy Zelich. Hello my friend. Good evening to you. How are you Clinton? I'm good, I'm good. Will you listen to the program on Monday?

No, I wasn't, with all due respect. Well... I've been called out. I made a declaration. Which was? Now, we were discussing the future of the Liberal Party. And in all seriousness, what I did say was in the search for a new leader, and we know the hunt is down to three. Susan Lee, Andrew Hastie's already pulled out, so Angus Taylor, Dan Tehan. Dan Tehan likely to be the deputy, and he'll be the kingmaker, apparently. Mistakes again across the board. Right.

My suggestion was what the Liberal Party needs to do is they need to find some people from the outside. Now, these candidates from the outside wouldn't be able to become a leader now, but they need to have some forward thinking and look to the future. Now, I think a female leader for the Liberal Party would be great because it would differentiate them from the Labor Party. Because the Labor Party is going to have male leaders for years to come. Because when Albo goes, you look at the front bench, likelihood it will be another bloke.

So I think they need a female leader. I did nominate you. Now, I'm not suggesting you take the leadership now, but they actually need some women with substance who are willing to say what they think, not necessarily just play by the rules.

Thank you for that generous nomination. I think I've been very clear about the fact that I have no interest in getting into politics purely because I can see from, you know, just my slight observations of what actually goes on since I've really taken a great interest in it.

that you have to play politics far more than what you can when it comes to actually doing your job and representing people's interests. And that part I really dislike. I think the Liberal Party have a tremendous mountain to climb ahead of them. And I know that the post-mortem analysis of this has gone on long enough and that people are probably very fatigued by it all.

But it's disappointing from my perspective that Andrew Hastie has put himself out of the running because I think he is the future. He is somebody, regardless of sex, because let's make this point very clear. I'm not as much invested in the sex of a politician as I am if they are good enough in a leadership position. Would it be great to have a female Liberal leader? Sure, we can go down that path. But I want the person that is the best for the job.

I don't advocate a female Liberal leader simply because they're female. I advocate a female Liberal leader because they're different from Anthony Albanese and his likely successors. And I think a lot of people simply vote on what the leader looks like, what comes out of their mouth and the way they speak, I think is very important. Policy, of course, and the depth, that is critical. But let's be honest.

A lot of people don't care about that stuff. No, they don't. A lot of people don't follow it. No, and they're walking into election day to their local ballot, looking at the posters and deciding who they're going to vote for based on appearance. I mean, these are just the facts. I don't agree with that. At this particular election, I did not vote for party or for the person. I voted for policies. And that's how I think that a fundamental democracy...

and a strong and healthy democracy should be run. And the fact now that we have such a sweeping majority when it comes to Labor is really bad for democracy, Clinton, because now what are the challenges going to look like when it comes to getting legislation and bills through that the rest of us on the other side don't necessarily agree with? And it's not good to be surrounded simply by your own echo chamber. You need people to challenge you on points. And this is not good for the country going forward. But

I don't think that any of those candidates who are putting their hands up in terms of nomination for the opposition leader are good ones because I think they've largely been a part of a very dysfunctional party, that it's distanced itself from what its core values and principles and policies should resemble and should look like.

And it's led them down this path where they've failed spectacularly. Anthony on the text line says, Clinton, why are you saying the next Labor Party leader will likely be a male when there are the likes of Penny Wong and Tanya Plebiscite lining up already? Well, Penny Wong can't be the leader because she's in the Senate to start with. The Senate can't be the prime minister. And secondly, there's a lot of speculation, even though she's denied it, that she's eyeing retirement herself.

Tanya Plebiscite would have leadership capability, but Albo hates her. And she's hopeless too, let's be honest. Look what she did to the salmon farming and all of this stuff concerning mining in particular areas, shutting it down because of Indigenous reasons. I mean, this isn't a strong leader for our country and doing what's best for not just the economy, but for the Australian people. She's hopeless. 131873 is our number. 20 minutes ago, I spoke with the police minister, Yasmin Catley, about the departure of Karen Webb.

As police commissioner, she's confirmed her resignation today. She will leave in September. And that's two years early, so before her contract has ended. And that does not usually happen. Police commissioners serve out their five-year contracts. Now, I asked Yasmin Catley politely, was she pushed? And of course, the minister denied that.

That's a load of hogwash. We know she was effectively pushed. And whether a conversation was had with her at which point they determined, look, it's not tenable anymore. I don't know if that was the case, though. Well, we're speculating. We're speculating. Governments are very apprehensive about pushing police commissioners out as well. Of course. But we all have to be very honest in our assessment and analysis of her time in the field. And I spoke to... I don't think she should have been police commissioner. No.

Of course not. And I spoke to a high-ranking police officer earlier today who said that this has been met with absolute jubilation, this news. Really? Jubilation? Jubilation. Amongst rank and file, when I spoke to this particular officer, they revealed that everyone is relieved to see the back of her. Not a single person that this particular officer has come into contact with, he said, has been able to say a positive thing about her. It was very much, from their perspective, what they believed, a political appointment and...

And that she was described, Commissioner Webb was described as an absentee landlord, right? As somebody who was more concerned with, quote, pandering to the media and very reactive and not proactive. As I explained a little earlier, the reason she was appointed, and this was back to my time when she was, when I was reporting on state politics very closely. It's quite a simple reason. It's wrong, but it's simple. Dominic Perrottet had just become the Premier.

He replaced Gladys Berejiklian. So a man replacing a woman. Here we go, getting into the sex conversation again. But this is the reason it happened. Paul Toole was the deputy premier. Matt Keane was the treasurer. So the coalition at the time, their leadership team were all men. So this is the thinking within the then state government was we need a woman in a senior leadership role.

Here's Karen Webb. I promise you, that's the reason. Okay, and it's a ridiculous reason, right? And this harks back to the conversations that we have around DEI, right? Diversity, equity and inclusion. Is the best person being pointed in the job? No. I've spoken to consultants that work in Sydney that have said how difficult the red tape is around just getting people employed in key positions now because of how much these organisations are bending over backwards, Clinton, to ensure that they are fulfilling these DEI requirements.

And she said to me over lunch one day, she said, do you know how hard it is, Lucy, to be put in this situation where you're having to find, for example, an Indigenous engineer? And she said, I can't find any Indigenous engineers. So what does that leave me with then? I'm having to fill quota in other... It is. And we're not saying it's ridiculous because this person is Indigenous. We're not invoking race in this. We're just saying it's ridiculous because of the emphasis that you're putting on the wrong things, which aren't leading to the right person

Straight Shooter Lucy Zelich is with me, 131873, and I'll come to your feedback in just a moment. Just further on from Karen Webb's decision to depart, this very much ties into the youth crime issue, and it's been a big problem through particularly regional New South Wales this year. Mm-hmm.

You've had a close look at some statistics. I had a look at some statistics. It was off the back of the conversation that I had with the police officer that I referenced earlier with relation to the police commissioner's incumbent departure. But I sort of asked him about what the youth crime situation was like and what his experience was like at the ground because you can see...

kind of conflicting reports emerge, some suggesting that, well, according to data obtained by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it's not a crisis as so many people are referring to. But oftentimes, a lot of these bureaucrats aren't the ones at the ground level who are experiencing this at the coalface and facing it

head on day to day. And the police officer said he's just seen a massive rise, you know. And part of the issue is that a lot of these are high level crimes, right? So these are, and some children as young as 12 years of age, stealing cars and engaging in high pursuit and significantly dangerous, dangerous pursuits as well, where we're seeing that, you know, this isn't just like doing 100 kilometres in a 40 kilometre zone. This is, you know, 200 plus.

Ks and children who clearly aren't trained or aware enough behind the wheel to know just how dangerous their actions are that are committing these offences and we've seen them particularly throughout Victoria as well they've seen the worst crime statistics that they've had in their state since 2016 but

Interestingly, youth crime offending is up by 16.3%, which is the highest level since 1993. And that year is significant. Why? Because that's when they first started obtaining electronic data. So we need to acknowledge there's a much broader point here to what we're seeing with youth crime. And a lot of people are calling out

that we need more harsher bail laws, et cetera, and we need to be far more responsible with those things and look at the justice system and what we're doing with relation to these kids. I know that Queensland has obviously under Chris a fully adopted the adult crime, adult time, which when I spoke to this police officer, he said he was entirely in support of measures like that.

But let's strip it all back. Why aren't we talking about the parenting involved here, Clinton? And this police officer actually said that a lot of the times these parents don't even know where their children are when they're offending. And it brings me to that next point around how are we disciplining our children these days?

What measures are we putting in place to teach them consequences? Because so much of this new generation, and I'm a parent of young children, has kind of beaten into us this idea that we have to err more towards gentle, so-called gentle parenting. Now, I'm not sure about you, but I certainly got the smack when I was young, and we knew when we did something wrong. And I'm not advocating that we go back to the bad old days where children were caned in school.

But we've moved so far away from these measures of discipline and consequence now that we are effectively creating a generation that don't understand and respect boundaries and that really are taking the law and certain matters into their own hands. And it's a real problem. So the big problem is, particularly in regional places like Moree, and I've spoken to police who've worked in those districts,

The parents themselves are criminals. And that's an issue. The parents themselves are either in and out of jail or they have drug and alcohol problems themselves. Let's get to some calls on the future of the Liberal Party and leadership. Clem in Foster has some views. Hello, Clem.

Hi. Firstly, let me say that I agree with Lucy about gender and race. It should not come into who gets employed to do whatever job. But I think Andrew Hastie is being very, very smart by not nominating for the leadership. I believe he's a future leader, but who would want to take over this job at this time with the Liberal Party in such a rabble?

I couldn't agree more with you, Clem. I think it's such a mess that I don't know and I'm certainly not convinced that they'll be able to get themselves out of this mess because they have been the perpetrators of said mess. But that's why I would have loved to see someone like Hastie who hasn't been embroiled in much of what has been going on. And I think he'd be a fantastic candidate in terms of his service to the country as a former captain of the army and someone

that presents well. He's young and he's someone that is, like you said, the future leader of this country and a fresh face. He would have had to be given a guarantee he'd still be opposition leader after the next election because just based on the pure numbers it's going to be very difficult for the Coalition to win again. Thank you Clem. Jean, hello Jean.

Hi, how are you? Good. Yeah, I just wanted to say about the gender and that, again, I've got two daughters, one in the UK and it happens over there. And here, I don't understand. They keep hiring these people, women who haven't got full qualifications and everybody else runs around, you know,

you know, virtually doing their job for them while they're on $600,000. And the same as with the race. They have to hire people and even if they don't have qualifications, you know, we've got to do it. It's a real problem, isn't it, Jean? And I think that ultimately one of the things that we have to include in this is that

I don't want it to be a complete all-out attack on women here because there are some truly credible, fantastically qualified women who deserve to be in the positions that they're in. But I think where people are finding fault now is that there is so much emphasis on gender or race or any other issues being placed ahead of the qualifications. Hey, Jean, I'm going to send you out a bunch of roses thanks to mrroses.com.au for Mother's Day. How about that, Jean?

Cool. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Mr Roses, they are delivering all week and all weekend.