WEBVTT - Machete madness 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:04.720 If we crack down on cynical, greedy reptiles who sell 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:08.520 cheap and nasty weapons to bad kids, it can only help. 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:12.600 You could buy a handgun, a revolver, or a semi 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.960 automatic cult pistol for that matter, in a hardware shop 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.840 or any gun shop or anybody that basically wanted to 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:22.639 sell them. They stopped that, and obviously it didn't remove 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:26.479 every handgun from every street in Australia, but it cut 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:32.400 down the number of them. I'm Andrew Rule. This is 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.520 life and crimes. A lot of interest in recent days 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:39.000 about machetes and the machete ban, the attempt by the 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.120 state government to impose a ban on sales and machetes. Now, 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.040 I think we shall get a few things straight about 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:51.519 what this salesman is and what it isn't. It is 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:56.040 clearly a cynical and insincere moved by a literally and 0:00:56.160 --> 0:01:00.360 morally bankrupt government whose real attitude is revealed by the 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:04.679 fact it's done nothing about this in thirty odd years 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:09.800 since the late Les twenty men started agitating for controls 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.119 on edge weapons to cut down on gang violence. Now 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.679 Les twenty men, most of us will know, started up 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:18.880 as a youth worker out in the western suburbs. Back 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.440 in the eighties and certainly by the early nineties he 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:26.720 was calling for controls on eedged weapons because of the 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.520 increased use of knives and similar things by youth gangs, 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.400 mostly out in the West and the North and elsewhere, 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.039 and he didn't really get a big response from his 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:42.399 very good friends in the government, the state government. It 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.399 was only recently, in recent weeks that the state government, 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.680 this is the state government that has governed Victoria for 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:54.960 twenty two of the last twenty six years, that state 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.760 government has finally decided it would bring in a ban 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:05.280 on selling machetes or controls on selling machetes. And as 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.320 I've just said, I think it's insincere and to some 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:13.639 extent it won't be effective. But the government's motives and 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:19.079 perhaps lack of honorable motives, does not alter the fact 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.160 that this is a step in the right direction. So 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:25.440 we can bag the government for not acting for too little, 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.520 too late, for not really meaning it. We can beag 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.640 the government for letting repeat offenders out on bail, and 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:36.520 so we should. But a ban on the sale of machetes, 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:42.120 although it is doomed to some failure because the people 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.600 that use machetes to try and kill others and cut 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:48.240 their arms off and fingers off and so on are criminals, 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:52.440 and they aren't necessarily buying these things, they're stealing them. 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.640 But a ban is the right way to go because 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:58.760 in the end, it's the only way to start the 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.720 ball rolling. And let's look back at our own history 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.959 and see some other examples of that. So, as some 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:11.160 critics have pointed out, and I think they're largely right 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:16.200 as far as it goes the mere active banning sales 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:21.760 of machetes and edge weapons over twenty centimeters long, it 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:25.240 won't end the bad behavior that led to the ban, 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:30.079 because criminals steal rather than by because they're by definition 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.120 people who break the law. Otherwise, as one wag said 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.400 the other day, the Premier could just quote ban crime unquote. 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:41.800 That would be easier. But you know he was being funny. 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.880 Given that this government has run the state for most 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.520 of the last quarter century, it's fair to say that 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.880 when things are going wrong, perhaps it should be sheeted 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:59.000 home to that government. And this government has ignored this 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.120 sort of thing, this rising tide of violence and gang 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.960 warfare and so on, and they've largely ignored police views 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.400 for most of that time. Now know that the government 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:12.680 won't agree with that, and the Police Minister won't agree 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.760 with that, and possibly some tame police commissioners might not 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:21.000 agree with that. But it's fair to say that there 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.839 are people in cabinet and in the bureaucracy, and possibly 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:30.599 some in the judiciary who are deep down, if not 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.920 anti police, at least suspicious of police motivations and police 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.919 activities and police views of the world. Now, some of 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.120 those people have their reasons. Many of them have been 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.680 defense lawyers and have seen the dark side of police work, 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:49.800 let's say, But they and we should be careful not 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.880 to throw out the baby with the bathwooter, because the 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:58.200 police are, for all their faults, perceived alleged faults, they 0:04:58.240 --> 0:04:59.880 are at a sharp end of this. They are on 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:05.159 streets coping with people that are killed, people that are disfigured, 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:09.039 people that are put in hospital with terrible wounds from 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.760 all the violent things that happen, from gun crime through 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.599 to machete crime, and people driving cars too fasten running 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.159 over each other. And so their views should be respected 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:26.200 at many levels. Now, regardless of the government's lack of 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:33.440 conviction on this issue, it ultimately works to some extent 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:40.560 because it ultimately will get fewer large knives, machetes and 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.280 similar weapons you know, samurai swords, whatever they might be. 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.960 It ultimately gets fewer of them on the street. Because 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.120 if there are fewer of them in the community, there 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:55.120 will be a trickle down effect that will at some 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.840 point help us in our quest to make the streets safer. 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.640 If we crack down on cynical, greedy reptiles who sell 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.160 cheap and nasty weapons to bad kids, it can only 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.159 help chop it off at the sauce, chop off some 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.600 of it at the source. If we can get all retailers, 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.440 legit retailers of knives and axes and all those things 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.160 to have them under lock and key, that will cut 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:26.839 down theft opportunistic theft by lunatic teenagers who aren't deep thinkers. 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:30.960 They can't plan anything, they're not heavy thinkers. And if 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:34.000 you can block them at the spot where they might 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:36.440 steal something and then run outside and hit somebody with it, 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.800 that is a win. It's just like the big effort 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.320 that was made, it has been made and continues to 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:47.040 be made to cut down the sails and the theft 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:52.600 of spray paint cans to beat the graffiti boom. If 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:56.400 you walk into Bunnings or any big hardware shop, the 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:00.360 spray cans are locked up behind the mesh cabinets there 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:02.600 and you have to go over and ask an assistant 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:06.279 who makes an assessment of your age and propensity for 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.279 doing the wrong thing, and then unlocks it and you 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.960 buy what you want. But it means that a you've 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.880 been sort of looked at, and b you're not stealing 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:21.000 it because it's behind a padlock. This sort of restriction 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:26.000 makes it harder for essentially lazy, stupid kids who act 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.120 on impulse. Now let's have an example from the past. 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:33.000 It's about one hundred years since my great grandfather was 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:37.440 a policeman between the wars in Melbourne, and in that time, 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.200 in the nineteen twenties, post World War One, there were 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.160 a lot of guns around, a lot of handguns around. 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.640 And one reason, of course was that there'd been World 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.520 War One and before that the Boar War, and Australians 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.200 went to the war and they came home with servannirs 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.200 and many of them brought home army pistols. They brought 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.160 home pistols they'd servenired from the enemy. You know, we've 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.520 talked about this on this show before. I remember a 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:03.480 family in Gippsland that had, you know, half a dozen 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:06.280 lugers or something from World War One. This was a 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.720 pretty typical thing in the bad old days or the 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.120 good old days. Guys would come home from the war 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.640 with the pistols and all sorts of weaponry. And in 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.960 the twenties, the governments of the day around Australia, I think, 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:23.560 were a bit worried about certain things. They're worried about 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:27.640 the rise of communist activism and are worried I think 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:31.440 about probably a rising crime. Because twenties was a pretty 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:33.920 willing time. A lot of people who've been in the 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:37.840 war were disturbed by it. They were the prayers, They 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:41.440 were angry, they were injured, some of them were suicidal. 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.400 They were aggressive. And for those guys to have you know, 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.200 forty five caliber Webly pistols under their pillow was not 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.280 always a great thing because it could lead to many 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.720 bad things. And so the government said, okay, let's cut 0:08:55.800 --> 0:09:00.280 down on these, let's register handguns. And also they brought 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:03.120 in a law that said you can't go selling handguns 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.920 in hardware shops, which they used to be sold, you know, 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.040 from the gold rushes. Until nineteen twenty five or nineteen 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.280 twenty seven or something. You could buy a handgun, a revolver, 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:17.080 or a semi automatic cold pistol for that matter, in 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.880 a hardware shop or any gun shop or anybody that 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:23.959 basically wanted to sell them. They stopped that, and obviously 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:27.640 it didn't remove every handgun from every street in Australia, 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.800 but it cut down the number of them. It made 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.520 it harder to get them, and it meant that every 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:38.400 time the police arrested someone in the street with a handgun, 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:41.760 which was you know, it was then illegal to carry 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:44.640 a concealed weapon, they had the law to back them 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.760 to remove it and confiscate it, and that was one 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.520 less handgun on the street. We saw the same thing 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:55.959 applied seventy years later in nineteen ninety six post port Arth, 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:01.720 when the governments around Australia more or less held and said, okay, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.679 finally we're going to bite the bullet and we will 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.000 essentially ban semi automatic weapons and these sort of semi 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:12.160 military type weapons, which should become pretty common in Australia 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:16.560 posts World War Two right through to the nineties because 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:18.920 a lot of people weren't hunting and so on, and 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.680 you could buy semi automatic weapons, and so many people 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.560 had them. Funny thing in my own family, my mother 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.320 and my grandmother both handed in semi automatic twenty two rifles. 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:32.280 My grandmother earlier than that, back in the seventies, had 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:36.800 handed in several handguns because her father, the old retired copper, 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.920 had kept several that clearly he had taken away from criminals, 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:43.920 and he'd forgotten to hand them in, and so when 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.079 he died, she found an x amount. I don't know 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:48.800 if there were two or three or what they were. 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.360 She handed them into the police, and I suppose they 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.360 were logged properly and disposed of or else the police 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.880 just put them in their glove foxes. I don't know. 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:02.800 But anyway, the point is it did help remove guns 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.360 from the community. And if you cut the numbers down, 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:11.440 it means the opportunity for opportunistic theft is cut and 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.200 it means, yeah, sure, cashed up crooks they can buy handguns. 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.839 We all know that if you've got five grand, six grand, 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:22.160 eight grand, ten thousand dollars or more, you can contact 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.560 underworld sources who can obtain any sort of weaponry for 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.080 you at a price, and you pay the money and 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:34.480 you get the gun. That's true. However, every silly kid 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:37.680 from out in the burbs that's running around fighting each other, 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.160 they haven't got that sort of money and they can't 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:45.680 access that sort of firepower. What the laws did was 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:51.439 remove thousands of handguns and tens of thousands of long 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:56.480 arms from the community, so that it meant that every 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.360 idiot burglar, every idiot kid couldn't just push open a 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.319 shed door or somebody's back door and put their hand 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.200 on a weapon and steal it, because suddenly those weapons 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.640 were either handed it during an amnestem, weren't there, or 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.200 what's just as effective, probably they were locked up in 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.800 secure safes, which made it a lot harder to steal them. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.080 And therefore it's clear and this is not a popular 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.640 view among shooters because they get stirred up about these things, 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.680 but the reality is that the tougher rules have made 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:36.680 it harder for idiots and thieves to put their hands 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.760 on guns at the drop of a hat. It's made 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:42.240 it that much harder. It hasn't made it harder for 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:46.000 cashed up crooks, sophisticated crooks, no, no, no, But it 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:50.880 has at least made black market weapons extremely expensive, and 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.839 that in itself isn't a bad thing. What's better an 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.520 illegal handgun for sale for ten thousand dollars or for 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:00.839 sale for two hundred. Well, I think that ten thousand 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:05.640 dollars options better. It just reduces the numbers. Now, we 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.720 can't prove a negative. You never can, so we'll never 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:15.480 know how many lives have been saved by the laws 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.760 that have removed all those handguns and all those many 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:23.920 more long arms from the community, leaving thinner pickings for 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:29.160 the crooks. But have no doubt that it has saved lives. 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.080 It must have saved lives, probably scores of lives, in 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.280 some way or another, because we have a bigger population 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.199 than we ever had. We've got a pretty excitable population. 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:43.199 We've got ethnic groups that staying to dislike each other intensely, 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:49.360 and the easy availability of weapons would only tend to 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:53.439 accelerate our society into becoming more like America and South 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:57.040 America and various other places where there are too many 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:01.520 guns and too many angry people. There's another similarity between 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:05.680 those sort of band or semi band controlled weapons and 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:11.240 the machetes now they aren't essential. The reality is this, 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.760 regardless of what we all think our rights are. And 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.319 I mean, if I've got a semi automatic and I've 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:19.480 got a machete in the boot, I'm not going to 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:24.000 cause much harm because I'm a very respectable, middle aged 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.000 man and I'm not inclined to go, you know, down 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.840 the street chasing other people and entering into gang warfare 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.840 and trading in drugs and all the rest of it. However, 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:36.640 people like me are not the problem. The problem is 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.800 all the other guys that do the bad things, and 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.400 in the real world, we don't need to make it 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:47.800 easy for them by having all these things at their fingertips. 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:53.080 In the real world, semi automatic weapons are not that 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:57.080 essential to farmers or even professional shooters. To be fair, 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.960 of course, many farmers and professional shooters and other sporting 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.160 shooters did have semi automatic weapons back when it was 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:08.640 legal to have them. As I just said, my mother 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:12.760 and my grandmother handed in semi automatic rifles post nineteen 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:17.520 ninety six. Most families, farming families and others did do that. 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:21.240 Many truckloads of them were handed in. But were they 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:26.480 really needed. Well no, because you can use a bolt 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.960 action rifle effectively. You've got to kill a sheep or 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:32.600 a cow or a horse or something on a farm, 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.600 or shoot at kangaroos, or shoot it whatever it is 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:39.280 you're shooting at, you can use a bolt action rifle 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:44.480 very effectively. Really, is it vital to have a semi 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.920 automatic I have said they're back in the drought of 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:49.880 sixty seven. Ye oh, such and such a farm I 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.320 had to shoot three thousand sheep. And you know he 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.440 would have got tennis elbow if he'd had to cock 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.240 the rifle with a bolt each time. Maybe so, but 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.400 that is a once in a lifetime event. That isn't 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:05.160 really an issue for which you need an automatic rifle. 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:10.240 It's just not true. Really. Besides which, most good hunting rifles, 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.680 deer rifles and the like, most of them are bolt action. Anyway, 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:19.480 because semi automatics to some extent are derivative of military use, 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.120 one could make a sweeping assertion and say that semi 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:28.400 automatic weapons are derived largely from a military background, and 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.440 therefore to some extent are anti personnel weapons. Now, we 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.160 want our army to have those, we want some people 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.280 in our police force to have those, but we don't 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.960 want every Tom Dick and Harry to have them for 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:43.840 a good reason. But every Tom Dick and Harry should 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.480 be entitled to have a bolt action rifle or something 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.680 if they have a legitimate reason, if they're sporting shooters 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.680 or farmers or hunt you know, professional hunters, whatever, of 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:58.120 course they should. Now, what's this got to do with machetes, Well, 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:02.680 got a bit to do with the Machetes are no use. 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.440 Let me say this and I will argue with anybody 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.960 about this out in the real world, in Victoria, in 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:17.200 Southern Australia, in Tasmania, in New Zealand. Machetes are no use. 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.840 They are a nasty thing that is neither one thing 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.800 or other. It's not a farm tool. You go to 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.840 a farm where they've got trees and they've got bush, 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.439 and they've got all sorts of things to cope with. 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:36.960 They have full size axes. Yes, they have chainsaws. They 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.160 have hand saws. They have pole saws for cutting branches 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.240 that are above your head. They have shovels for digging. 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.040 They have fern hooks and to implement now, but I 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:49.680 grew up with them. Fern hooks and long handled slashes. 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:54.920 These are for cutting thistles, for cutting ferns, and they 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:59.960 have hoes for cutting thistles and things, but not machetes. 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:02.840 They just aren't much use. You want to cut kindling, 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.560 you use a real axe. Some little old ladies might 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.520 use the tomahook. But I can recall my father, who 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:14.280 was an expert axeman, saying tomahawks are no use except 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.520 to cut your fingers off or you know, maybe it's 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:19.760 the sort of thing that people who couldn't lift a 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.439 full size act can lift a tomahawk. But they're really 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.720 not much use. You could kill a chock with one. Yeah, 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:29.400 you can cut your fingers off with one accidentally while 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:31.880 you're trying to split kindling, because they're not particularly good 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:34.920 at that. They're not heavy enough. Machetes are even worse. 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.640 They've got this long, sharp blade that's effectively very dangerous 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.040 for you to use when you're handling it yourself. And 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:47.320 what do you do with it. Well, they're made for jungle. 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.840 They're made to slash your way through the jungle. They're 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:53.840 made for cane cutters. Cane knives we use for cane 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.919 cutters to cut cane. They're made to cut bamboo again 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.240 in the jungle. Now have been some use for them 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.560 are in the cane fields of course of northern Australia 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:09.800 and other places, and those sort of machetes bush knives 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.680 call them what you like, they are and were useful 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.920 in that sort of jungly setting where there's undergrowth that's 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:20.639 very thick and heavy and you've got to hack your 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.040 way through it and you want to something in your hand, 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.880 if there's snakes, et cetera. But I have to say 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.280 that in all these years of traveling around and seeing 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:35.280 other places seeing what people actually use, the only place 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:40.560 I personally have seen machetes alias bush knives in use 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.480 is in Papua New Guinea, and that is where people 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.239 use them for a lot of things. Really, they're a 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.040 very handy thing around the villages in Papua New Guinea 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:57.240 where there's continual undergrowth and where they like to hack 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:02.480 stuff away. Also I noticed another thing in Papua New Guinea. 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:06.239 Hundreds and hundreds of people have very nasty scars on 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:10.119 their heads and on their arms, and I saw a 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.320 lot of disfigured people who have been badly cut. And 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:16.760 there are also quite a lot of dead people there 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:22.119 who have been very badly cut. So even in those 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:26.240 few countries where those instruments, or those implements or those 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:30.200 weapons are in use, they're used more often for bad 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:36.440 purposes than good ones. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:40.080 is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:45.000 Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:50.800 go to Heraldsun dot com dot au forward slash andrew 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:56.880 rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.880 sold at news dot com dot au. That is all 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:05.720 one word news podcast's sold. And if you want further 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:10.320 information about this episode, links are in the description