John MacDonald: Enter your local mall at your own risk

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Every time something terrible or tragic happens you hear people trot out a line which, I think, is totally meaningless.

Maybe I’ve just become too cynical in my old age. But it was trotted out again on TV last night by a reporter talking about the appalling knife attacks at the mall in Sydney at the weekend.

He was talking about an investigation that’s being launched to look into what happened in the lead-up to the attacks, the guy’s mental health history, all of that.

And there he was, this reporter, and he just couldn’t help himself. Right at the end of his live report, he came out with it. He said the investigation was being done so that “this sort of thing never happens again”.

I mean, think about it. Never happens again? Tragically, it will happen again. Because that’s just how society is these days. It is impossible to stop this sort of thing happening again.

Not that Westfield —the crowd that runs the mall in Bondi— thinks so.

Because it’s announced that at its malls in Australia and New Zealand, it’s going to be beefing-up security. So, in Christchurch, there’s going to be more security at Riccarton Mall after what happened in Bondi.

My question is: why? If the answer is to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again, then forget about it.

The other question I’ve got is: how? Because, as far as I’m concerned, whatever they do will just be a band aid that won’t make us any safer than we have been up until now.

Unless, they really go full bore, and start x-raying our bags before we’re allowed in. And start checking our ID.

More security guards aren't going to make any difference. Because, as you and I know, all security guards can do these days is walk around pretending to look tough.

Some of them wear all sorts of vests and things —just like the cops— but, at the end of the day, they can’t do anything. They can just walk around looking tough.

Which is why I think that this talk from Westfield about beefing-up security is just PR. It’s just marketing. Because if a mall company thinks it can stop this thing happening again, then it’s dreaming.

And you’re dreaming if you expect outfits like Westfield to keep you safe.

I reckon the only realistic thing Westfield and other mall operators could do would be to stick a sign up at the door saying: “Enter at your own risk”.

And that’s not only because I don’t think beefing up security can stop tragic events like the one at Bondi at the weekend from happening, but also because I think we have to accept that we go into places like malls at our own risk.

I think what Westfield is doing is it’s giving-in to this expectation that seems to be out there that we need to be protected from every possible bad thing that could happen to us. That we deserve to be protected from every possible bad thing that could happen.

Because it's an impossible task. Just like it’s an impossible task to prevent things like the knife attacks at the Westfield mall in Bondi from “ever happening again”.

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