‘Karen Syndrome': Melbourne Lord Mayor suggests fines for walking on wrong side of footpath in huge case of 'nanny state overreach'
Lord Mayor Nick Reece took to the pages of The Age on Friday to complain about the state of 'pedestrian etiquette' on Melbourne's streets.
In a piece spanning almost 800 words, Mr Reece complained about people walking too fast, people walking too slow, and 'people drifting diagonally like bishops on a chessboard'.
Melbourne's Lord Mayor suggested fines could be used against people who failed to walk on the left of the footpath, while people who use their phones while crossing the road could have them confiscated.
'Foot-traffic numbers are soaring in the city again, and the new metro stations are about to deliver half a million more people every week – it's time we took action,' Mr Reece wrote.
'Given the chaos on our footpaths, perhaps it is time for less carrot and more stick. Less suggestion and more compulsion, in the form of a new keep-left law.'
Mayor Reece also took aim at the 'generation of zombies' always staring at their mobile phones or taking selfies, suggesting Melbourne should follow Honolulu in fining people who used their mobiles while crossing the street.
'Victoria has a road rule that bans phone use while driving. What about the same for pedestrians crossing the road? Perhaps we could seize offenders' phones for a day? For many, that would be harsher than a fine,' he said.
The suggestion was condemned by Brian Marlow from grassroots activist group CitizenGO, who said the Lord Mayor 'must be suffering form an acute case of Karen Syndrome'.
'Only someone fully embedded in the taxpayer-funded Karen Industrial Complex could look at Melbourne's foot traffic and decide what we really need is more laws telling grown adults where to walk,' he said.
'This is Australia. We believe in freedom. Freedom to walk where we please, not shuffle along in government-approved single-file lines like schoolkids on excursion.
'We don't take kindly to being scolded by Big Brother in a high-vis vest, especially not from a bloke who clearly fancies himself the self-appointed hall monitor of the CBD.
'Maybe next he'll be issuing citations for failing to smile politely at a tram driver.'
Mr Marlow said the proposal to regulate how people walk on the footpath perfectly encapsulated 'nanny-state overreach'.
'Reece's fetish for micromanaging public space isn't leadership,' he said.
'It is authoritarianism masquerading as civic virtue. And let's be clear: it is not about safety. It is about control. It is the same mindset that put health bureaucrats in charge of your freedoms during COVID.'
In finishing his op-ed, Mayor Reece called for Melbourne's to 'return order to our footpaths'.
'If we want to remain a beautiful walking city, then we need to brush up on our pedestrianising skills… Stay calm. Be kind. Keep left. Or we may need the strong arm of the law to fix things,'' he said.
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Sky News AU
a day ago
- Sky News AU
‘Karen Syndrome': Melbourne Lord Mayor suggests fines for walking on wrong side of footpath in huge case of 'nanny state overreach'
Fresh off banning e-scooters, Melbourne's Lord Mayor is now floating the idea of a crackdown on pedestrians who walk on the wrong side of the footpath. Lord Mayor Nick Reece took to the pages of The Age on Friday to complain about the state of 'pedestrian etiquette' on Melbourne's streets. In a piece spanning almost 800 words, Mr Reece complained about people walking too fast, people walking too slow, and 'people drifting diagonally like bishops on a chessboard'. Melbourne's Lord Mayor suggested fines could be used against people who failed to walk on the left of the footpath, while people who use their phones while crossing the road could have them confiscated. 'Foot-traffic numbers are soaring in the city again, and the new metro stations are about to deliver half a million more people every week – it's time we took action,' Mr Reece wrote. 'Given the chaos on our footpaths, perhaps it is time for less carrot and more stick. Less suggestion and more compulsion, in the form of a new keep-left law.' Mayor Reece also took aim at the 'generation of zombies' always staring at their mobile phones or taking selfies, suggesting Melbourne should follow Honolulu in fining people who used their mobiles while crossing the street. 'Victoria has a road rule that bans phone use while driving. What about the same for pedestrians crossing the road? Perhaps we could seize offenders' phones for a day? For many, that would be harsher than a fine,' he said. The suggestion was condemned by Brian Marlow from grassroots activist group CitizenGO, who said the Lord Mayor 'must be suffering form an acute case of Karen Syndrome'. 'Only someone fully embedded in the taxpayer-funded Karen Industrial Complex could look at Melbourne's foot traffic and decide what we really need is more laws telling grown adults where to walk,' he said. 'This is Australia. We believe in freedom. Freedom to walk where we please, not shuffle along in government-approved single-file lines like schoolkids on excursion. 'We don't take kindly to being scolded by Big Brother in a high-vis vest, especially not from a bloke who clearly fancies himself the self-appointed hall monitor of the CBD. 'Maybe next he'll be issuing citations for failing to smile politely at a tram driver.' Mr Marlow said the proposal to regulate how people walk on the footpath perfectly encapsulated 'nanny-state overreach'. 'Reece's fetish for micromanaging public space isn't leadership,' he said. 'It is authoritarianism masquerading as civic virtue. And let's be clear: it is not about safety. It is about control. It is the same mindset that put health bureaucrats in charge of your freedoms during COVID.' In finishing his op-ed, Mayor Reece called for Melbourne's to 'return order to our footpaths'. 'If we want to remain a beautiful walking city, then we need to brush up on our pedestrianising skills… Stay calm. Be kind. Keep left. Or we may need the strong arm of the law to fix things,'' he said.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
Progress thwarted by educational inequities
To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@ Please include your home address and telephone number below your letter. No attachments. See here for our rules and tips on getting your letter published. WESTERN SUBURBS Re ″ Young tradies like Dylan and western suburbs professionals have this in common ″, 15/8. Congratulations to Dylan D'Emanuele for his perseverance and determination to enter a trade, assisted by Youth Projects. It certainly shouldn't be so hard for young people to gain a foothold in their own society. Two adverse factors have primary responsibility for this. First, the Victorian government lost the plot in closing around 120 technical secondary schools, expecting high schools to somehow cater for academic and non-academic students, and ″warehouse″ unemployed youth to keep them off the streets. I'd previously observed teachers in a now-closed technical school in the inner-west, witnessing how engaged students were in mechanical, construction and myriad other tasks, supplemented by classes in basic skills. The students who flourish in technical schools need those educational opportunities to learn skilled trades which can take them straight into work. The second major factor disadvantaging today's youth is the exportation of entry level work to cheaper labour countries. Those jobs used to go to school-leavers after Year 10. High levels of youth unemployment are inevitably detrimental to those young people and to the society as a whole. Barbara Chapman, South Yarra New insights needed Accolades to The Age for co-presenting the upcoming 'West of Melbourne Summit', and its continuing advocacy by their journalists for people living in the west side of Melbourne. The spoken word cannot be ignored. New insights are desperately needed. Both sides of Victorian parliament need to listen. Addressing the various needs of people choosing to live and raise their children in the west could address problems facing the inner city Melbourne congestion. Christine Baker, Rosanna Melbourne infrastructure delays have history My heart goes out to those folk in the west who pine for improved transport infrastructure. I can only hope they do better than their brethren in Doncaster. Soon after World War II ended, it was proposed to extend tram route 48 from North Balwyn to Doncaster, thereby servicing the residents of housing replacing the fast-disappearing orchards. Successive political parties seeking to retain or reclaim the state's treasury benches eagerly supported the proposal. As is the fate of certain current infrastructure proposals, once elected, assorted reasons for deferment were trotted out. The latest is that the hill to Doncaster Shoppingtown is too steep to enable disabled access. Any suggestion that the route be extended further to Box Hill via Tram Road, thereby looping the city with a significant chunk of the eastern suburbs, can only be described as a figment in the imagination of those living there. (By contrast, Australia's first electric tram service existed in Doncaster from 1889 to 1896 when Victoria was a colony!) Jim Lamborn, Doncaster THE FORUM Buried report As reported by The Age this week, the government has refused to make the outcome of the 2022 Property Market Review″ public. According to both Premier Jacinta Allan and Consumer Affairs Minister Nick Staikos, the review is 'a cabinet document from the last term of government' and therefore does not have to be made public. What nonsense! Like many others, I responded to a personal invitation to provide a written submission to the review. My comprehensive submission subsequently included, again by invitation, a one-hour presentation to the Nous Group who were commissioned to conduct the review for the government. My submission concentrated on the need for auction rules to be reformed to stamp out the insidious practice of underquoting. This can be achieved by introducing a simple, new, easily policed rule that would require agents to publish their vendors' reserve prices in all auction advertising. The REIV this week has finally agreed, after 20 years' resistance and following exposure of underquoting by The Age, that vendors' reserve prices should be advertised before auctions and it has also called for the review to be made public. There's something very concerning about why the review is not being made public. Why should anybody spend valuable hours of their time preparing well-researched submissions on important issues of wide public interest, only for their input to be buried? John Keating, real estate agent and auctioneer, Woodend Rebalance tax system The articles ' We've worked hard ... but it's not enough ' (14/8) and ' Spender calls for new income tax system ' (14/8), highlight the gross unfairness of our tax system. Work, not property investment, should be rewarded by governments. Current property investor tax breaks are inequitable and they elevate house prices, further disadvantaging prospective homeowners. It's time for Labor to rebalance our tax system and give younger generations a fair go. Lyn Shiells, Glen Iris Bendigo festival no-show Re: ″ Authors ditch Bendigo festival over freedom of speech concerns ″, (15/8). As a Bendigo resident, the Bendigo Writers Festival is an annual event on my calendar. Claire Wright, Jess Hill, Thomas Mayo and Randa Abdel-Fattah are the very writers and thinkers I would be attending to hear, in expectation of respectful, intelligent, informed and balanced perspectives. I congratulate them on taking such a principled stance in withdrawing from a public forum which curtails their ability to do this, even though it means no writers' festival in Bendigo for me this year. Michelle Goldsmith, Eaglehawk AI flooding zone Two years ago, I was offered a free trial for one of the artificial intelligence (AI) content generation platforms. I tried it and immediately cancelled my subscription. Even then, I could see the dangers of this technology. The information delivered by the platform on the topic I gave it was just good enough to provide a viable alternative mechanism for busy professionals to generate documents. But it also contained numerous errors and pieces of misinformation. My colleagues laughed at my concerns. 'People will check the content and correct any errors before they use it,' they told me. And perhaps, initially they did. My concern was that after a while, everyone would just assume the information is correct and not bother to check any more. The content is so quickly and easily produced, it would eventually 'flood the zone' and drown out the work produced through careful research and due consideration. Fast-forward two years and we read that defence lawyers filed error-filled AI-generated documents with the Victorian Supreme Court (15/8). The lawyers were too busy to check the materials before they filed them and the prosecutors didn't bother checking either. Heaven help us if AI is the future of our society. Donna Cohen, Southbank
News.com.au
a day ago
- News.com.au
‘Comedy dictatorship': Melbourne mayor's ‘absurd' idea raked over the coals
Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece's new call for a 'keep-left' pedestrian law to pin distracted walkers and footpath zigzaggers has opened up a floodgate of criticism over the city's slide towards 'authoritarianism'. In an article published in The Age on Friday titled Pedestrian etiquette in Melbourne has reached new lows. It's time for a 'keep-left' crackdown, Mr Reece argues that the city has lost its civility on the footpath. 'Foot-traffic numbers are soaring in the city again, and the new metro stations are about to deliver half a million more people every week – it's time we took action,' he wrote. 'Given the chaos on our footpaths, perhaps it is time for less carrot and more stick. Less suggestion and more compulsion, in the form of a new keep-left law.' Mr Reece writes that the city is now flooded with a 'generation of zombies who are always looking at their screen' and that Melburnians need to 'brush up on our pedestrianising skills' or be slugged with a fine. At face value, most would agree that unaware and painfully slow walkers and those who walk three-abreast are a giant pain in the backside. The growing issue of food delivery riders choking up the footpaths has also become a thorn in the side of city-dwellers. But Melbourne lawyer Jeremy King says if you scratch the surface of Mr Reece's article, it paints a grim picture for the city moving forward. Mr King says the fact that Mr Reece was photographed being flanked by two private security guards for The Age story — now employed by the Melbourne Council to assist police in 'complex on-street behaviours' — is something regular Aussies should be concerned about. 'Pretty concerned at the way Melbourne City Council seems to be increasingly authoritarian in its approach to public order and how it runs the city,' Mr King told 'That's everything from this crazy proposed footpath law to the fact they're using private security to try and privately police Melburnians.' The City of Melbourne's own website revealed it had begun deploying private security guards alongside its Local Laws officers in March 2025. 'The establishment of this team follows a pilot program that has been in place since March 2025, where security guards accompanied our Local Laws officers when dealing with complex on-street behaviours.' the statement reads. But the so-called 'hybrid enforcement' model has left civil liberties advocates uneasy. 'It's hugely problematic because these are private security people,' Mr King continued. 'They don't have the same training as police, they don't even have the same training as PSIs and yet they're purporting to affect arrests and use force on people. 'It's hugely concerning, and this is a streak that seems to be coming out of the Melbourne Council at the moment … 'let's muscle up and take a pretty authoritarian line'.' He compared the situation to the highly controversial manner in which Victoria policed citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic, which some believe to be the darkest chapter in the state's history. 'The fact that someone wants to bring back laws on how you operate in a public area is just absurd. It's an affront to everything that it is to be a Melburnian. 'So many people copped fines during Covid — people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, people who didn't speak English well,' said King. 'If you bring in some sort of stupid footpath law, the same people are going to be penalised again.' 'Fining people for crossing the road — it's like something out of a dictatorship. A comedy dictatorship. It's got to stop, it's not what Melbourne's about.'
