Who can honestly say they’ve never contemplated murder? What red-blooded Australian can put their hand on their heart and swear they’ve never lain awake at night imagining a world without a certain bullying boss, or infuriating colleague, or interfering neighbour, or unattractive spouse? And who has not mitigated the boredom of a dull meeting or long train journey by wondering how that world might be brought about? Very few of us, of course, are inclined to take it any further. This is partly because the Australia we grew up in was moulded by Judeo- Christian values like restraint and mercy and self-denial. A society in which rather than make our homicidal fantasies realities we satisfy them vicariously; pinning pictures of our enemies’ faces to dart boards, or casting them as the victims in the TV crime dramas we watch, or imagining them succumbing to the lead pipe brandished by Miss Scarlet in the Library. But the main reason most of us tend not to murder other people is because we know we’d get caught. Which wasn’t the case even 30 years ago. Back then as long as you had a mate who was prepared to swear he saw you in the pub that night, and as long as you wiped your fingerprints off the knife, and as long as no one saw you throw it off the bridge, all the police would have to go on was motive. But today there are probably six CCTV cameras on that bridge and unless you also threw your smart phone off it, the GPS software it came with will contradict your alibi. While the Google search history on your laptop will show all the other knives and guns you considered buying. Most damning of all today would be the role of DNA profiling. All the police would need to be sure of a conviction would be the tiny bit of your skin they found under the victim’s fingernails, or the root of single hair they found on your car seat, or the invisibly small speck of blood their ultraviolet lamp revealed on the sole of your shoe. Unless, of course, you committed the murder somewhere in Queensland between late 2008 and the middle of last year. In which case even if your entire finger had been found in the victim’s mouth, and their entire scalp had been found in your car, and your bathtub had been half full of their blood, your case wouldn’t have gone to court and you’d have sued the police for wrongful arrest.

Like many Australians I am mystified by the Queensland government’s decision not to fire the people who oversaw the abject failure of its DNA testing protocols for so long. I am also very concerned that the resulting backlog of cold cases will take many years to deal with, and thus compromise the ability of state police and prosecutorial services to arrest and convict those who commit murder in the future – many of whom, presumably, will be the murderers they failed to put in jail before. But it is an ill wind. And I can’t help wondering if what now looks like a legal and governmental catastrope without domestic or international precedent could turn out to be a window of fiscal opportunity for a Queensland tourism industry which has still not recovered from Covid. In the last few decades many countries have established reputations for specialising in the provision of particular medical procedures and treatments.

Many Brits and French now go to Hungary for cheap dentistry, for example, while Singapore specialises in low-cost organ transplants, and Mexico provides experimental cancer treatments not covered by US health insurance. Most famous of all, Switzerland, thanks to its Digitas clinics, has cornered the market in assisted dying. Why then should Queensland not position itself as another kind of life-ending destination? Specifically, why should it not monetise its hopeless criminal justice system by advertising itself as the only English-speaking democratic state where you can end somebody else’s life with impunity? I’ve already written the tag line: ‘This summer, don’t just get away, get away with murder.’ for themselves.

***
Hello mother
Hello father
Here I am on
Intifada
Jihad’s very
Gratifying
If you’re into watching kids and old folks dying

In the kibbutz
We just burned down
Pleas for mercy
Were all turned down
Hope we’ll all be
Long remembered
For the babies me and my friends have dismembered

Guys are shooting
Guys are raping
Jews are dying
Few escaping
It’s my birthright
And sworn duty
To maximise the slaughter of Yehudi

God has helped us
On our mission
There’s been no real
Opposition
They’re not soldiers
More like farmers
Quite a few that I have murdered wore pyjamas
With my AK
Forty seven
I’ve secured my
place in heaven
And if I die
Mother father
You can celebrate because you raised a martyr

Collins – apologies to Allan Sherman’s Camp Granada Song.