So the Qld Parliament votes on Lockout Laws this week. Go ahead! Close every pub, bar, club and restaurant. Stop all festivals and sporting events. Close every movie theatre and shopping centre that sells wine. Shut every chemist and pharmacy that sells drugs.

Will that stop violence? No of course not. The violence is fuelled by the people. Take away the drugs and the booze and you are left with the people who make the choice to drink or sniff or smoke or swallow. You are left with the people who punch, kick, push, smash, destroy and kill.

The question is why are some people so disconnected that they make those violent choices to the detriment of others around them? What’s the foundation for the disconnection to human reason and bad choices? Education? Poverty? Community? Government? Culture?

I believe that everything begins and ends with the family. Your parents got together and make a baby. Great. It’s what happens next that counts – Mum and Dads relationship, safe loving protective family home culture, value education, common sense, sustainable community creative collective culture and growing balanced intelligent healthy human beings.

We are talking about the most important job on the planet. What kind of upbringing did those latest coward punch perpetrators. have that led to them thinking what they did was ok? What foundation was laid for them in their childhood that led to these choices?

Make the people who make the choice accountable.

This issue of alcohol fuelled violence cannot be solved by parliament. It is a multi faceted challenge that needs a multi faceted response. If you enforce lock out laws, do so across the board and include casinos and sports stadiums. If this solution is all that they say it is why exclude some venues?

It needs to be said that public money was already spent on the very comprehensive intelligent Safe Night Out Strategy in 2014. It was ready to be rolled out when Labor won the election early last year.

So what do Labor do? Shelve one of the most important social programs in the history of QUEENSLAND. I’m assuming this was for political reasons because there is no other logical reason for such waste.

Entertainment precincts are war zones like Boxing Day sales, Kids weekend Soccer matches, Suncorp Stadium after every game event and any music Festival in any location. Anywhere you find human beings you have the potential for violence and utter stupidity.

Lockout Laws are not the answer. They will cause untold problems. I pray that our government isn’t that naive. We need to address the culture of violence in our midst. What is its unrelenting source? Where are the societal controls that measure behaviour? Visit any bar in Europe at 2am and you will see a diverse age range consuming just as much alcohol but with nowhere near the level of violence that you see here in Australia.

That’s a question that we all need to consider.

Two years ago my husband and I were violently assaulted in our own yard by four pissed thugs leaving a State of Origin game at Suncorp Stadium. Why? Because we asked them to not urinate on our house. Would Lockout Laws have prevented this from happening to us? Hell no.

Pissed idiots will be pissed idiots no matter what. We have a bigger issue here folks.

I hope intelligence will prevail in parliament this week.