TAKING THE BLAME

In a few hours Barack Obama will be inaugurated in Washington as the 44th President of the United States. And somewhere in the middle of his much-anticipated inaugural speech I bet he will use two words: ‘personal responsibility’. They have been used a lot before by his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and were implicit in John Kennedy’s famous demand that you should ask what you could do for your country.

But I want to bring it closer to home. When do people start taking responsibility for their own actions? When do you stop blaming other people?

There is a classic and ominous court ruling out of Tasmania with the Supreme Court ruling that a publican who gave back the motorbike keys to a drunken and aggressive patron – who then crashed his bike and died – had failed in his duty of care.

Now, on the surface this is a victory for people campaigning about the responsible serving of alcohol etcetera. After all the dead man Shane Scott had a blood alcohol reading of .253. That’s’ five times the legal limit. And there was evidence than Scott had drunk seven or eight cans of bourbon and Coke.

Scott had ridden his wife Sandra’s motorbike to the pub, the Tandara  Motor Inn. A workmate suggested that the bike be locked in the hotel’s storeroom. Publican Michael Kirkpatrick agreed and Scott gave him the keys. It was decided someone would call his wife later to pick him up.

The publican told Scott he’d had enough, that it was time to leave, but a witness said ‘Scott started getting stroppy’.

Kirkpatrick then offered to call the drunk’s wife to collect him and was told ‘If I want you to ring my effing wife, I’d effing ask ya’.

Later Scott asked for his keys back. The publican asked him numerous times whether he was ‘right to ride’ and Scott said he was fine. Scott left the pub on his bike and ten minutes later ran off the road, hit a bridge rail and was killed.

Who was to blame?  In an earlier court case a Judge ruled Kirkpatrick was not negligent. That duty of care did not extend to preventing a customer harming himself by his own drunkenness. The Appeals Court disagreed.

Once again it comes back to personal responsibility. Here was a grown up man, drinking too much, being offered assistance and abusively rejecting it. When do people have the guts or sense to say: It was my fault?

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008