Attorney-General Senator George Brandis and Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Human Rights Commission. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen A high standard of civility is not only expected, it is assumed, which is why a bully will thrive in its corridors - there are no real world consequences for old school intimidation, no one is going to punch you in the head or break your legs if you push them too far. Leading barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside believes our Prime Minister Tony Abbott "is a bully". "He knows he cannot contradict the contents of Professor Triggs' report or the UN report, so instead of denying the message, he attacks the messenger. Bullying is an ugly thing. It is regrettable in the schoolyard; it is despicable in a national leader," wrote Burnside in an opinion piece yesterday. What I find interesting in the ongoing dialogue about the phenomenon of bullying is the people most likely to invoke the term to describe a political opponent, seem almost congenitally incapable of enunciating a real world solution to the problem.

If you asked your average middlebrow, ABC-listening, private school parent how they'd react to a drunken neighbour swearing obscenities at their partner and children, I'd guess they'd say something like "let the authorities deal with it" or "talk to them when they're sober about how inappropriate their behaviour was". It reminds me of a scene in the film Manhattan, where Woody Allen talks to friends about skinheads. Allen: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Ya know? I read it in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, ya know, get some bricks and baseball bats, and really explain things to 'em. Party Guest: There was this devastating satirical piece on that on the op-ed page of the Times, just devastating. Allen: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it.

Party Guest: Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force. Allen: No, physical force is always better with Nazis. Devastating satire doesn't work with bullies, particularly when they have no regard for authority or they are the authority themselves. Bullies understand aggression - if not the use of it, then certainly the threat. If someone intimidated or swore at my daughter, there is no way I could "talk to them when they're sober about how inappropriate their actions were" because the punch would already have been thrown. Granted this may well spiral into a tit-for-tat cycle of revenge but I have a strong sense it would end the problem. It would tell my neighbour that me and my child are not to be screwed with ever again.

I am taking an irrational risk here, but that is the point. They would sense, when it comes to my daughter, I am irrational and not bound by any other person's sense of what is right, wrong or appropriate. Throughout human history, the risk of physical retribution has kept as many people safe as has the rule of law, yet we now deem a punch in the head unacceptable, uncivilised. In most walks of life this threat has been completely removed. Punching someone - whether it be on the street, on a football field or in the workplace - is anathema, even illegal. However, in doing so, we have removed one of the most effective deterrents to anti-social behaviour and bullying. Despite this, many people's moral intuition is that this is exactly what bullies deserve and that punching a bully in the face provides valuable cultural discouragement to other bullies.

Observe the internet reaction to the recent footage of a diminutive MMA fighter beating the hell out of a much larger bully. Viewers were torn between horror of the brutality of the "fight" and delight at "justice" being served. The "no one deserves to be punched in the face" crew will often paint themselves as being the standard bearers of reason over emotion - except their's is actually only one form of reason (non-consequentialism), trumping another form of reason (consequentionalism). The tension here is that while "no one deserves to be punched in the face", punching a bully in the head provides a strong disincentive for other people to act in the same manner as the bully. If you don't buy this argument, imagine Gillian Triggs walked up to Tony Abbott at media conference today and punched him in the kisser. I'm pretty sure even Julian Burnside would applaud.

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