The headlines are predictable, aren't they? Yesterday's hero, a man who charged into gunfire at Bondi Beach, is today's cautionary tale. He has been charged with assault, and the British consulate, in a move that reeks of colonial condescension, has offered legal assistance.
The man saved lives, but the law is the law. We have seen this script before: the Roman Republic's saviours turned scapegoats, the Victorian gentleman condemned for duelling. The state's machinery grinds on, indifferent to moral nuance.
This is not justice; it is the theatre of bureaucratic vengeance. The consulate's involvement only deepens the irony: a foreign power intervening in a local matter, as if the Antipodes cannot govern themselves. The man's actions were heroic, but he is now a symbol of our era's decadence: the criminalisation of valour.
Where will we be when courage itself is a crime?
