WHAT DO YOU DO?

This is one of those days when I know I don’t have the right answer. In fact I don’t have any answers. Only questions. And it concerns a Victorian man who can only be described as ‘death on wheels’.

His name is Colin McPhee. A hopeless, reckless, irresponsible and dangerous drunk. He has been described by a magistrate as possibly  ‘Victoria’s worst drink-driver’.

With good reason. McPhee is 52 years old. He has 77 driving convictions including 27 for drink-driving and 31 for driving while disqualified over a 28 year period.

That means he has committed booze-associated road crimes every year since his first conviction.

In Horsham Magistrate’s Court yesterday he pleaded guilty to 31 charges including seven of driving while disqualified and six of drink-driving in the past year and a bit.

Five years ago he had his licence cancelled for 15 years. It meant nothing. He was refused bail last month after attacking a policeman with a metal pole outside his St. Arnaud home after refusing a breath test.

So he’s been jailed for a maximum of 3-1/2 years and banned from driving for another 15 years. Does anybody really think that will stop him when he gets out?

According to a psychologist’s report McPhee is intellectually disabled and his IQ is in the bottom one per cent of the population. Well, with his record then, can’t a court commit him to a psychiatric institution?

His defence solicitor Rebecca Healey said McPhee’s judgement was impaired. What all 77 times? And living in the country without a licence is difficult. Yep, even more so for the lives he threatens every time he gets behind the wheel.

And, as Magistrate Andrew Capel pointed out he wasn’t too dumb to fix false number plates on his various cars.

But what grabbed me in the Herald Sun report was an almost buried throwaway ‘by the way’ line about this useless but dangerous piece of human flotsam.

He also pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent acts with a child under 16 relating to offences committed between November 2005 and October last year.

Surely there’s enough in all that to get him behind bars cumulatively for five to eight years.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007