John MacDonald: Penalising parents for kids behaving badly not the answer

If I owned a dairy, I might think very differently. But I don’t and, maybe, that’s why I can’t say that I agree with what the Dairy and Business Owners Group is calling for.

They’ve had a gutsful of what they’re describing as “14-year-old ratbags” getting away with nicking stuff and ram raiding their shops. There’s all the violence involved too.

And so they’re saying that, if the kids are getting away with it because they’re not old enough to be charged, then attention needs to turn to the parents of these kids and they should be made legally responsible for what these ratbags are getting up to.