By Jaidyn Kennedy
Underworld identity Mick Gatto has backed Werribee by-election candidate Aidan McLindon’s plan to push for self-defence lessons in schools if he is elected to state parliament.
Mr McLindon launched his policy alongside Mr Gatto on Sunday, February 2.
According to Mr McLindon, the program would introduce self-defence disciplines in primary and secondary schools as part of a 12-month pilot program to commence in term three this year.
Mr McLindon, who is also fighting calls for him to resign from his position as Whittlesea mayor, said he dealt with troubled students as a teacher and the introduction of such a program was well overdue.
“Boys and girls of all ages need to be equipped to have the capacity to defend themselves should the need arise,” Mr McLindon said.
Mr Gatto said he agreed that the discipline of self-defence was a subject which would add value to the Victorian education curriculum.
“As a young lad I was a bit of a knockabout and it was boxing that channelled my energies towards something useful,” Mr Gatto said.
“If we get McLindon into state parliament, we can genuinely start re-engaging our young people again.”
If adopted, the pilot would run as an ‘opt in’ program that would allow students who are unwilling to physically participate to study the theoretical side of the program and various disciplines of self-defence.
The program would also require students to have permission from a parent or guardian before engaging in any form of contact sport.
If elected as Werribee MP, Mr McLindon said he will also table the ‘Tough Love Act,’ a crime and rehabilitation bill designed to deter young offenders.
The proposed bill would implement a three-tier approach to dealing with offenses.
Minor offenses will result in offenders being rostered on a graffiti clean up; the first serious offense will mandate a minimum of one week attendance at a boot camp; offenders aged 17 and older will have to undertake a mandatory 12 months of national service.
Mr McLindon said the criminality among youth he has witnessed in outer Australian suburbia was “an indictment to the Australian way of life,” and had the markers of a low-trust society more comparable to Texas than the Australia he grew up in.
“Werribee has effectively been handed over to unruly youth who have very few boundaries knowing there are little consequences for their actions,” he said.
