This Week with David Barnett | February 15

The new premier, Gladys Berejiklian, faces these enormous problems. They are also the problems facing other state premiers, and the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

We now have police who won’t shoot, despite their heavily armed swat squads, whose job it is to deal with situations like when a Muslim gunman of unbalanced mind invaded a coffee shop in Martin Place, just round the corner from the office that Gladys Berejiklian occupies.

A swat squad sniper had him in his sights and sought authorisation from senior officers before he pulled the trigger. He didn’t get it, and two hostages died, as well as the gunman. He doesn’t count as far as I’m concerned but he does as far as the police, governments, members of the Australian Defence Force, left wing lawyers and NGOs.

Policing is different. There are misgivings about the decision of the two senior police officers to go home while the siege continued.  The then premier Mike Baird, who might have told the police to do their job, escaped these mutterings. The handling of the siege was an “operational matter”.

Even more pathetic was the car chase in Melbourne. The driver was known to be violent and unstable. Police abandoned the chase because he was going so fast. In central Melbourne he drove his car in circles. If bystanders could film this, surely police could have shot him, as eventually they did, subsequent to the deaths. The risk was from the political Left, as in Sydney.

What about home ownership? Our cousins in the English speaking world have voted against immigration, running in Australia at 200,000 a year, all of whom have to be housed.

If we can’t fix the supply, we should look to demand, as they have in Britain and the US.

She might talk to the Prime Minister, and hope he doesn’t say that wouldn’t be politically correct.

Good luck, Gladys.