The writing is on the wall when officialdom overlooks profanity

I left Britain nine years ago, but even after nine Australian summers, I still find Christmas in the sun a novelty. This is why every year I join the backpackers and tourists for a day on the beach at Bondi.

Bondi is far from Sydney's most beautiful beach, but it is the most famous. It is an Aussie icon, known throughout the world. So as family and friends back in Britain shiver through the misery of another winter, I send them emails and text messages from Bondi telling them how hot the sun is, and how big the waves are. Some of them refuse to talk to me for months afterwards.

This time round I got down there early on a beautiful day, parked the car on the esplanade and headed for the beach. And then I saw it, spray-painted on the sea wall in vividly coloured letters a metre high: "F— OFF BACKPACKERS".

Graffiti like this is obviously juvenile, and we generally just ignore it. I can imagine the perpetrator, baseball cap reversed on his head (for it is assuredly a male), cigarette at his lips, tattoos on his arm, a beer bottle in one hand and a spray can in the other, his tanned torso the only thing distinguishing him from those at whom he directs his hatred.

But even though it is juvenile, such graffiti is disturbing, not so much for its content as for the subliminal questions it poses. How was the perpetrator allowed to stand there long enough to spray-paint his slogan across a broad expanse of prominent sea wall? Did nobody see him? Did no passer-by report him? It seems this space is not policed or patrolled adequately; that the people who live here do not care for their local amenity, or else they go in fear of those who despoil it.

And what about those who are responsible for managing the beach? Aren't they offended by this language daubed on the sea wall? Evidently not, otherwise they would have scrubbed it off. Their inaction tells us profanity is now "normal", something we just have to tolerate.

Imagine a family with young children arriving for a day at the beach. The youngest, inquisitive about the world in which she is growing up, points to the wall: "Daddy, what does that mean?" It is clearly pointless telling her not to use language like this, for it is all around her. She can even hear it on television. Trying to hold the line against what we used to call "bad language" has become as hopeless as Canute commanding the tides.

You may say this is a trifling matter, but our physical surroundings constantly transmit messages to us about social norms. When we fly out of Sydney Airport, for example, and see official notices advising us to pack some condoms, the message we internalise is that casual sex with strangers is normal and acceptable (when even the government tells you to put condoms in your pocket, you are clearly expected to screw around).

Similarly, when we find there are no ashtrays in the pubs, it tells us this is a culture that frowns on smoking, and when we encounter needle-disposal boxes in the cubicles of public toilets, we conclude this is a culture where shooting up is condoned.

That untreated piece of graffiti on the Bondi sea wall is another part of this urban semiotic. It tells us that the old norms that used to govern public decency are crumbling, and that Authority isn't the slightest bit concerned.

This official indifference strikes me as odd, given that officialdom rarely wastes an opportunity to flex its muscle. Look at the Test match, where a "zero tolerance" was trumpeted. Look at New Year's Eve, with the extraordinary annual lock-down around Sydney Harbour.

I sense officialdom in this city loves New Year's Eve. Out come the wire fences and the security guards telling people where they can and can't go. The mobile electronic signs that are normally deployed distracting motorists with messages about "double demerit points" and "looking out for cyclists" get relocated to the foreshore, flashing at us that roads are closed, pedestrian access is denied, and no BYO will be allowed after noon (why alcohol is OK before noon remains a mystery). Eighteen hundred police officers ("fun police" they were called, a phrase worthy of Orwell) were on duty this year as more than a million people trekked to vantage points around the harbour to watch 10 minutes of official fireworks.

As we all gawped and oooed and ahhed, it seemed to me Authority was sending us another message. Forget the hourglass on the bridge, this was a latent message. It was saying: we will organise your fun for you.

The days when families or neighbourhoods let off fireworks have gone. The health and safety police put paid to that – you have to get a permit, now, if you want your own catherine-wheels and Roman fountains. Politicians light our bangers and rockets for us. Not content with giving us bread, they organise the circuses, too.

As civil society crumbles, officialdom multiplies. The authorities nowadays are perpetually busy organising fireworks, monitoring the behaviour of cricket crowds, installing needle-disposal boxes in public toilets and advising travellers to take condoms on holiday. But nobody thinks of removing the offensive graffiti from the sea wall at Bondi. Governments do so much for us nowadays, yet so often the basics are left unattended.

Peter Saunders is social research director at the Centre for Independent Studies.