What is with our terrible respect for the law?

Why do we tolerate the many situations where the law doesn’t match accepted practice?

For example, nude bathing is technically illegal in Queensland, but there are nudist beaches all up the coast.

Why don’t we strive to have the law policed at face value, instead of accepting fuzzy interpretations, especially where the law can easily be interpreted in totally black and white terms?

For example, condoning leeways on speed limits rather than having them policed accurately, or pushing for the speed limits to be raised by 5 or 10kmh in order to bring them in line with the fact that most of us exceed the speed limit by a few kmh practically all the time, with the sanction of the police.

Why are there so many laws that are not policed or only sporadically and very unfairly policed?

For example, many minor road rules.

Why isn’t every effort made to make law enforcement as uniform and as fair as possible, instead of the widespread acceptance that it is ok for the police to turn a blind eye to all sorts of infringements for the majority of the time and then nab someone for just the same thing that they let everyone else get away with?

Why are we told that we are innocent until proven guilty, when the opposite is often patently the case in our courts?

It seems to me that the very foundation of our legal system, and of a strong and coherent society, is crumbling.

Ludwig, its been a long time since I studied legal principles, but I do remember a concept known as the constables discretion. This basically said that a constable has a discretion applying the law. It means that minor issues (someone driving down a hill and watching the road conditions rather than the speedo) can be allowed for, rather than being forced to act on anything that they see or come across. I am not at all sure that the strict enforcement of each and every law and regulation is an ideal that is worth striving too. Most people at some stage have broken some law, in most cases the offence will be minor and also inadvertent.

In Victoria there is no discretion when it comes to speeding - 1km over and you're gone. Does this have a serious effect on reducing road accidents and fatalities? No, because drivers must spend more of their time watching their speedo's trying to adhere strictly to the law, rather than paying attention to the road conditions and the actions of the motorists around them.

Yes, if you are caught on the Hay plain doing more than the speed limit, you have little excuse, but if you are driving in a hilly area, it is very easy to have a quite a variation in speeds up and down. I would much rather the driver in front or behind me pay attention to the road rather than his speedo!

Rule of law,no common sense.
It make no sense to wait at traffic lights in the dead of night when there is no traffic around.
The french have a solution.Go if it is safe to do so. Even with a police car behind you.
The french also use a magistrate to investigate a murder scene.
The reason is evident,what if a policeman shot the victim.
Yes our Polititians should investigate the worlds legal system instead of making kneejerk laws that affect all of us but create less respect for the law,and our law enforcers.
David Hicks is the example of what goes wrong when knee jerk laws by popularist politicians.
Driving at what ever speed you are comfortable with across the Northern Territory highways is a right of law, but now the slow worried drivers who cannot control their Toorak Taxis Big Four Wheel drives, who do the shopping and pick up the kids from school have the say.
If a road train can travel at 100 kph why can't a small car travel at one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.
Wake up Australia it is a big country and the tyrany of distance is why the outback is the outback. No city people ventue out there but they are the people who dictate the laws.

e .e e

Whilst I do agree with the spirit of your post, you have perhaps chosen the very worst example to illustrate your point. Speed limits are applied not solely on the basis of engineering principles but are determined by a complex interplay of public opinion, politics and science. Many speed limits are more or less arbitrary and very often are posted well below the speed that a stretch of road and the vast majority of drivers could safely handle. Unfortunately, this is often done to maximise infringement notices rather than safety.

Speed infringement is perhaps the best example of a law that should be open to much on-the-spot discretion as there is very little evidence that speed over the limit is an important causes of road trauma. As the above post alludes, stringent enforcement of speed limits has led to a detrimental effect on driver behaviour whereby the priority of a journey becomes how to get from one place to another without contributing to your state governments consolidated revenue.

A greater good is not served by enforcing speed limits in the manner that the Victorian government has chosen and hence natural justice demands that it should not be enforced to the nth degree.

Ludvig, you ask

"Why do we tolerate the many situations where the law doesn’t match accepted practice?"

But do we tolerate it? If we didn't tolerate it, what form would our lack of tolerance take?

Occasionally we get the opportunity to express our discontent about something in a way that gets publicised, and maybe then the politicians take note. But if they don't, there's little we can do about it. In Queensland neither major party is promising to legalise nude beaches, so come next election, what can a voter do?

It would help if people were more willing to stand up to the authorities when laws get misapplied. Kenneth Wenzel has tried to do so in respect of a misapplication of the wilful exposure law relating to nude bathing on a defacto nude beach. Unfortunately he was found guilty, but I understand he is appealing.

It might never have come to that if people had been less submissive prior to the enactment of the Summary Offences Act. Previously, prosecutions for nude bathing were based on it being offensive behaviour. If it had been established back then that nude bathing on some beaches was not offensive, and therefore lawful, it's unlikely that the Government would have passed legislation that (may have) made it unlawful.

However, I suspect that the correct answer to your question is "apathy".

Sylvia.

Alright, there are a few people interesting in this subject. Excellent!

CG, police discretion is fine, up to a point. But it needs to be minimised and completely justifiable.

Discretionary powers get widely abused, with friends or associates of police officers getting preferential treatment, as do young females, locals compared to out-of-towners, and so on.

As one who has been fairly (actually, extremely unfairly) and squarely on the wrong side of the use of discretionary powers a couple of times, I assert that cops can and do abuse them, and with impunity to the extent that they have no qualms at all about making it obvious.

Of course it is very hard to know just how widespread this sort of thing is. But with such a lack of accountability, I suggest that it is very widespread.

This works to denigrate respect for the police and the law. Surely reigning in discretionary powers as far as possible would serve to increase respect for law-enforcers and improve law-abidance.

“It means that minor issues (someone driving down a hill and watching the road conditions rather than the speedo) can be allowed for…”

So, most of the time the police might allow for increased speed downhill…. and then they might go and put a speed trap there and nab everyone, all of whom have come to know that a few ks over the limit in that situation was alright.

That’s just the unacceptable sort of discretionary powers that I’m up in arms about.

“I am not at all sure that the strict enforcement of each and every law and regulation is an ideal that is worth striving too.”

I agree, as many laws are currently written. Bringing the policing regime in line with the law has got as much to do with law reform as it does with improvements in policing.

So if laws are on the books that are not policed most of the time, with no negative consequences, then obviously those laws need to be adjusted or abolished.

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