Mt Dandenong Primary School lollipop man scandal proves Australia is a nation obsessed by small-minded rules | David Penberthy

Just when you thought Australia’s absurd obsession with stupid rules couldn’t get any worse, writes David Penberthy.

Every so often heroes emerge in the most unlikely of places and cases. Places such as Mt Dandenong Primary School in western Melbourne in the troubling case of beloved lollipop man John Goulden.

The story of the Mt Dandenong Primary lollipop man is one of those small tales that tells a greater truth.

It is a truth which goes to the absurd level of over-government and over-regulation in Australia. It also goes to the symbiotic relationship that exists between the pedantic and paranoid among us, and the worrywarts and weirdos who flourish in local government, keen as they often are to offer the pedants a generous hearing.

For many years now the elderly and genial Mr Goulden has worked as the pedestrian crossing supervisor outside the Mt Dandenong Primary School.

He wears a yellow safety vest and holds a red stop-and-go sign which he uses to usher the kids safely across the road.

Mr Goulden is so dedicated to his job that earlier this year School Crossings Victoria Inc crowned him “Region 4 School Crossing Supervisor of the Year” for his outstanding contributions to community safety.

This is the highest accolade a lollipop man or woman can receive.

Mr Goulden also gives his job a friendly personal touch by high-fiving the kids as they cross the road.

Crossing Supervisor John Goulden doing his job at the crossing near Mt Dandenong Primary School. He has been banned from high-fiving kids. Picture: Jason Edwards

At least he did until the local council got wind of the practice, off the back of just one complaint from some helicopter parent, prompting urgent talks at the council about whether the high-fives should be banned on safety grounds.

It is hard to see what the issue at play is here in a safety sense.

Perhaps the parent was worried the high-five could be executed in so forceful a manner as to propel their child into the path of a road train.

However fanciful the scenario, however unrepresentative the one complaint set against commendable and near-uniform parental indifference, the council decided it was time to act.

They contacted Mr Goulder ordering him to keep his high-fiving hands to himself.

The heartening thing about this genuinely stupid story is the immediate response it inspired from the rest of the community.

Within hours of the story breaking a petition was set up defending the high-fiving Mr Goulden and demanding the ban be scrapped.

TELL US WHY IN THE COMMENTS

The Herald Sun reported than by 10am Thursday the change.org petition had gained almost 1200 signatures, with more than 100 people also issuing words of support for Mr Goulden. Heroes all.

But damningly, even in the face of deserved public shaming, the priggish souls at Yarra Ranges Council were sticking to their guns.

Just marvel at the language the council uses here, and reflect on the man hours required to craft a position on this non-life and death issue, all in the midst of a cost of living squeeze where ratepayers everywhere are getting smashed by spiralling council rates.

The explanation from the council even went beyond the safety concerns raised by the solitary parent and raised the spectre of child protection, in so far as a high-five could constitute inappropriate touching of a child by a man holding a wooden lollipop.

This is what the council said:

According to internal council policies and Victorian Standards, it is unacceptable for crossing supervisors to “exhibit behaviours with young people which may be construed as unnecessarily physical” and “initiate unnecessary physical contact with children or young people”.

“Council has reminded the contractor who is currently supervising children at the Mount Dandenong Primary School of expectations of the role regarding interactions with children.

“If the high-five is undertaken in accordance with Council’s Code of Conduct, considering the safety and supervision of all children on the crossing, the traffic on the road and is initiated by the child, then they are not universally banned.”

The sad thing is that on any given day you can find a story like this in any newspaper in Australia.

A few years ago in my home town one of the local councils decided to remove the diving board at the Norwood Pool amid safety concerns.

The pool, which opened in 1957, had always had the board at its deep end, but some rules-obsessed busybody on council had worked out that under the modern safety standards the water in the deep end was 2.75m deep when it should be 3.4m deep.

Council launched an investigation and was advised that it could either hire an extra lifeguard purely to monitor swimmers at the diving board, or just remove the diving board.

The council went for option two.

The thing is, in the 60-year history of the pool, not one person had ever been killed, paralysed or even slightly injured using the diving board.

The report commissioned by the council even stated that there was never been an injury at the pool. Not one.

Council voted to remove it anyway.

Won’t someone think of the children? How many more kids aren’t going to be killed or injured thanks to the Norwood Pool’s diving board of death?

We have created multiple layers of bureaucracy in this country which are wholly disproportionate to our population and increasingly unjustifiable on economic grounds. Swathes of people are making a quid enforcing rules that make limited if any sense.

At its worst, it’s nothing less than a make-work scheme for pains in the arse, one which reminds us of the wonderful observation by the late Clive James, that Australia fancies itself as a nation of convicts when we are in fact a nation of prison guards.

Originally published as Mt Dandenong Primary School lollipop man scandal proves Australia is a nation obsessed by small-minded rules | David Penberthy