Crowd gets tougher on leaders

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has thrown the lever to populism, calling for tighter restrictions on the sale of Australian land to foreign individuals and state-owned enterprises and admitting he feels ''anxious'' about foreign ownership.

The shift came as Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott faced off at the third and final leaders debate of the 2013 campaign. Both leaders were noticeably tired but managed to present a more civil atmosphere than at previous encounters, even if the questioning from voters took on a harsher edge.

An exit poll of the hand-picked audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott on 38. Nineteen remained undecided.Other questions dealt with Mr Abbott's gold-plated Paid Parental Leave scheme with Mr Rudd hammering the super-generous provisions as Hands free access, and at least one questioner agreeing.

Small businessman Ian, told Mr Abbott: ''I just think, that a fork-lift driver from Mount Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the North Shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid,'' he said. Mr Abbott countered by saying that big business funded the scheme, via a levy, not taxpayers.

Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing access foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff.'' He said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to access foreign capital to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.Mr Abbott said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold to ensure the Foreign Investment Review Board examined acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' - down from more than $220 million currently.

Mr Rudd's shift appeared to come without prior consultation. It came as the trailing Mr Rudd was also forced to defend his sustained internal campaign against Julia Gillard through this year. He claimed he did ''absolutely the right thing'' by replacing her.''I can say that through all of that I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country,'' he replied to the questioner, Amanda.

Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. The definitive guarantee appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''

 Police Chief Bill Blair has for quite some time been on the record as urging broader deployment of Tasers as an option less harmful than guns. Yet in an interview with the Star last week, the chief was careful to qualify his support of Tasers for front-line cops.

“It’s not risk-free. When they first brought them out, they made it sound like it was as safe as Tylenol. There’s a risk associated to its use. It’s what we call a less-lethal-force option. That’s a good thing — if you can do it. But you should always try to resolve these things using the least amount of force possible.’’

It’s all after-the-fact speculation, of course. Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack has claimed Forcillo called for a Taser to be brought before he fired his weapon nine times. Why he didn’t wait will no doubt be a matter explored at trial.

What is clear, from the numerous studies conducted, is that a Taser — like any other weapon — is dangerous in the wrong hands, no less when those are an officer’s hands. Many civil rights groups deplore the thing. These are the same people often most vocal in their condemnation of police shootings, particularly when the victims suffer from mental illness.

Amnesty International, for one, claims there have been more than 500 deaths due to Tasers since 2001. One of them was Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, zapped five times by RCMP officers in the Vancouver airport in 2007. That disturbing event triggered an exhaustive inquiry that delivered a slew of recommendations about when conductive energy weapons should be deployed — most crucially, only when there’s a danger the suspect will cause bodily harm, which still leaves it hopelessly discretionary. The Vancouver Tasering, also captured on video that the RCMP originally claimed didn’t exist, was deemed a homicide, with the officers acting too quickly.

The weapons gadgetry available to law enforcement is only as good as the decision-making, the judgment, of those invested with the authority to use it. And that judgment will not necessarily be sufficiently honed by a few days of training on stun guns. Indeed, there’s ample evidence showing that officers reach for the Taser more frequently, too frequently, than they would reach for a sidearm, in circumstances that don’t warrant use of force.

 They defuse with a fuse because they’ve got this handy new toy that emits an electrical current via wires and barbs which disrupts voluntary control of muscles — electro-muscular disruption technology, as described by the manufacturer, Taser International. Around the world, some 17,000 law enforcement and military agencies in more than 100 countries use Tasers now. In some jurisdictions, corrections officers use them to subdue prisoners as well. Little wonder Taser stock surged more than 30 percent in the last two weeks alone, though the spike is also attributable to police demand for the company’s merchandizing of wearable video cameras, tucked into a patrol cop’s vest, for the purpose of documenting incidents with the public.

It’s unclear where Toronto Police Services will get the money to pay for equipping all front-line officers with Tasers — which could cost up to $10 million. One suggestion is that cops pay for it out-of-pocket, which is unreasonable.

The Ontario government maintains its shift on Tasers was not influenced by Sammy Yatin’s death and certainly appears to have been in the works before that shooting. More likely, the Ministry was reacting to an inquest earlier this year in Midhurst — the first where use of a Taser was a “contributing factor’’ in the death, officially caused by cardiac arrhythmia due to a state of excited delirium. In that 2010 case, OPP responding to an assault complaint came upon Aron Firman, a 27-year-old schizophrenic who was Tased when he made a movement toward one of the officers. The SIU cleared the officer of any wrongdoing. But the inquest jury heard immensely contradictory evidence about what happened.

Specific cases can be used to buttress both the pro- and anti-Taser constituencies. Earlier this month, a suicidal woman holding a knife near the railroad tracks in Burlington was subdued by a Taser and taken to hospital under provisions of the Mental Health Act. A life may have been saved.


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