Ferguson shown the door by media and the mob

The Rees government’s decision to evict child-sex offender Dennis Ferguson from his public housing unit at Ryde in the western suburbs of Sydney to pacify outraged local residents is a terrible example of mob rule and media-driven politics.

This is typical of the way politicians try to avoid bad press by refusing to take responsibility for any decision that may be perceived as unpopular. Managing the media takes precedence over dealing with controversial issues in an honest, open and effective manner.

There are no easy answers in the Ferguson case. He has a long history of sexual offences against women and children. Since his release from his latest prison term in 2004, he has been the subject of intense media interest wherever he attempted to live in numerous locations in Queensland. He has made regular appearances on tabloid current affairs TV and is known for lashing out at reporters in a highly disturbed and frightening manner.

Media hounding, community uproar, and the resulting political embarrassment led the Queensland government to decide it was impossible to settle Ferguson anywhere in the state. So a deal was made with the Rees government, which agreed to house him somewhere in NSW under what was hoped would be a cloak of anonymity.

This incredibly short-sighted strategy has now blown up in the NSW government’s face. Ferguson was bound to be identified sooner or later and the public made aware of his presence by the media.

The government maintains that Ryde residents were not informed that Ferguson was being relocated to their suburb to avoid provoking the fear and loathing that drove him out of Queensland. This is disingenuous. The goal, right from the start, was to keep Ferguson’s new home a secret to try to avoid stirring up local opposition and the inevitable negative media coverage this would generate.

The government’s strategy has proven entirely self-defeating and counter-productive. It is no wonder that public housing tenants feared and resented the way a convicted pedophile was dumped unannounced into their estate. The government paid scant attention to child-safety concerns.

Paedophiles abuse positions of trust, not only as teachers and priests but as friends and neighbours. Some argue that informing the public of their whereabouts only encourages vigilantes. But due to the insidious predilections of child-sex offenders, the public has a right to know who lives next door to ensure children can be properly protected.

The reality, though, is that Ferguson has to live somewhere. Those who say he has done his time and the best outcome is to settle him permanently are correct. Continual harassment can force paedophiles to flee underground and lose contact with the monitoring and support services in place to prevent re-offending.

A public housing estate is the logical place to house the likes of Ferguson. Public housing is publicly owned, and the government decides to whom these properties are leased.

If the government believed that relocating Ferguson to Ryde was necessary, it should have dealt with the issue in a proactive fashion. It should have publicly announced the decision and properly explained the rationale. The public should have been informed that Ferguson was moving in and moving in to stay.

The government should then have been prepared to weather the public reaction. If the price of firm, transparent, and accountable decision-making was some collateral political flak and a few bad headlines, then so be it.

Instead, the government’s response to the street protests at Ryde splashed all over the nightly news was to convene a special cabinet meeting. Extraordinary legislation was then rammed through Parliament tearing up Ferguson’s lease and stripping him of his rights as a public tenant.

Kicking Ferguson out hasn’t solved anything. But it is mission accomplished from the government’s perspective because the controversy has been temporarily taken off the front pages.

The government has rightly been accused of pandering to media pressure and caving in to the threats of violence and retribution made by angry residents. The political power of the media and the mob combined is bad news for good government.

The whole fiasco reveals some very depressing truths about modern politics. When politicians are addicted to media-driven politics, mob rule is inevitable. And when governments care most about what will and won’t generate good or bad media coverage, they are incapable of implementing tough solutions for difficult problems.

Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.