Singapore shows Australia - and Johnson Wen - how to fix a serial pest | David Penberthy
Usually I wouldn’t celebrate authoritarianism but in this case, they do it better than freedom loving Aussies, writes David Penberthy.
Generally speaking, there is nothing to be admired or celebrated about authoritarianism. Authoritarian regimes usually fail.
They fail because people have a natural urge to be free to do what they want, any old time, as the great political thinker Mick Jagger said.
The idea of allowing the state to have vast and enduring power over your life is an anathema, especially in a free country like ours.
But then there’s Singapore.
This plucky Southeast Asian nation has again turned on something of a masterclass in how the right amount of authoritarianism might actually be a good thing.
It has done so through its harsh treatment of a card-carrying halfwit from Australia who’s a bit of a social media identity and who thought that Singapore might be the ideal spot to pursue his chosen career as a “TikTok prankster”.
How wrong he was.
Setting aside the fact that calling yourself a TikTok prankster should, of itself, land you in jail, it was this ratbag’s antics on the red carpet of an appearance by pop singer Ariana Grande which landed him in strife.
The fellow’s name is Johnson Wen and he’s carved a name for himself previously as a pitch invader, like a latterday Peter Hore, the serial pest who crashed Michael Hutchence’s funeral and threw off the Socceroos’ composure in that infamous qualifier against Iran when Australia squandered a 2-0 lead to miss the 1998 World Cup.
Wen has also crashed a cricket World Cup game and boasts about it on his socials, describing himself as the most hated man in Australia.
He decided to add to his body of work by crashing Grande’s public appearance in Singapore last month. It ended badly.
Not only was Wen grabbed and arrested, he was then sent to court where the Singaporean prosecutors and District Judge Christopher Goh gave the young Australian a harsh lesson in what personal responsibility and behavioural consequences look like to our north.
Wen was charged with the catch-all crime of “being a public nuisance”, which sounds like a terrifically handy way to lock up anyone who’s a massive pain in the arse.
The law worked to excellent effect and the protagonists in this brief but effective trial didn’t hold back.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jane Lim called Wen a “serial intruder” with a “glaring lack of remorse”.
Judge Goh agreed, telling Wen he was “attention seeking” and that his conduct “showed a pattern of behaviour” which suggested he would do it again.
Wen pleaded for clemency and showed full contrition, telling the court he “won’t do it again”. Judge Goh was having none of it.
He sentenced Wen to nine days jail and also arranged to have him deported, declaring him persona non grata in Singapore, banned from ever returning to the island nation again.
One interesting thing is that by Singaporean standards, this was a pretty mild sentence. Wen should count his lucky stars as the maximum penalty for being a public nuisance is three months in jail, a fine of $1500, or both.
It is easy to imagine how things would have panned out if Johnson Wen had done all this in Australia.
With his early plea of guilt, his contrition and his youth, Johnson Wen would have been out of the courtroom and back on the street in record time, hassling more celebrities or disrupting sporting contests.
He would have learnt no lessons whatsoever and been given a green light to continue making an ass of himself.
You can see it happening all the time in Australia. Two incidents last week illustrate the point.
The first involved a brazen daytime bottleshop theft in St Lucia in Brisbane where a bunch of youngsters, one wearing a clown mask, emptied the shelves of the local Liquorland in front of customers and staff.
It seemed like no effort was made by anyone to stop them, and one shopper filmed the theft and later uploaded it to social media, noting that it was only after the thieves left that the owners of the store contacted police.
You can understand why they didn’t intervene and waited on safety grounds, I guess.
But it also seems emblematic of the white-flag thinking where these routine bottle shop robberies are now seen more as a cost of doing business than a law and order one, given we are all resigned to the same youths breaking the law, knowing they will likely never face any significant consequences.
Then there was the case in Gilles Plains, Adelaide, where three children – the youngest aged just 12 – allegedly tried to pull off a home invasion at a suburban residence wearing balaclavas and armed with screwdrivers and a knife.
Three children have been charged with multiple offences. While the serious allegations are unproven, at least for now there’s no consequences as they were given bail and will remain free in the community until January 15.
Given their age, and given what must be a total absence of parental supervision and decent parental role models, do we assume these kids will be spending the next seven weeks busying themselves reading books and doing some colouring-in?
The allegations in the Brisbane bottle shop case and the alleged Adelaide home invasion are vastly more serious than anything Johnson Wen did, yet there is only one case which attracted anything resembling significant consequences.
It’s a case study in what Singapore’s restrained brand of authoritarianism looks like, where the trade-offs for modest restrictions on your freedoms include clean streets, buildings devoid of graffiti and civilised public behaviour in this improbably successful city-state.
One of the most crowded places on Earth, and also one of its most relaxed and peaceful.
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