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Mis-spent youth: Why should we be punished for something we did half a lifetime ago?

At some part in our lives – or our careers – there must be a statute of limitations giving a free pass for something we did as a youngster, writes Madonna King.

Jacqui Lambie Network Senator Jacqui Lambie during Senate Estimates at Parliament House in Canberra, Wednesday, June 5, 2024. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Jacqui Lambie Network Senator Jacqui Lambie during Senate Estimates at Parliament House in Canberra, Wednesday, June 5, 2024. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

A few weeks ago, England women’s cricket captain Heather Knight was forced to apologise after a decade old social media post turned up of her attending an end-of-season fancy dress party in blackface.

Knight, who is now 33, was charged with bringing the game into disrepute as a 21-year-old at a cricket club party in Kent, and copped a heavy suspended fine – despite the cricket regulator finding there was “no racist intent in her conduct’’.

Different times. Different context.

This week, a young Labor candidate for Burleigh on Queensland’s Gold Coast, Claire Carlin, was lambasted after social media posts – one of them 15 years old – popped up, attacking police.

“We don’t like police coz they kick and they punch,” the 2009 post read.

Did Carlin hate police? Or was it a reference to a line from a song delivered by a British rapper in 2008, the previous year? And does it really matter?

At what point is there a statute of limitations on our earlier opinions? Or the silly behaviour that envelops most of our us, in youth?

A handful of years ago, I thought euthanasia was a form of murder; a crime that stole a life. And then I watched my mother die. And overnight, my opinion changed.

Gee, if it is confession time, I’ll also admit to voting against Australia becoming a republic a couple of decades ago. And much much more recently, I actually thought pill testing at music festivals was a bad, bad idea. And then my children became teenagers…

What was I thinking?

And if we are going to be judged on something we said or did at another time, without the knowledge and education we might have in 2024, I am also guilty of a 1980s perm that looked more like a mop, writing a newspaper horoscope that predicted the demise of an ex-boyfriend, and hiding a stolen (not by me) street sign in my college bedroom.

Only a few years ago, a university law student was charged with a similar offence.

Times change. And we change with them. If we are clever, we learn the importance of education and context and perception.

And to judge people now for misdeeds or mistakes made without intent a decade ago is wrong. Even mistakes made with intent should be summarily dismissed often too.

After a year of researching neurodivergence for a book manuscript, the use of Tourette’s syndrome in an insult delivered by the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week broke my heart.

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It was thoughtless. Ableist. Despicable, as one Coalition senator labelled it. How could we possibly have a prime minister who would use someone’s struggle as an insult?

It was a failure 101. But then, realising how unkind and hurtful his words had been, he apologised profusely. “I also want to apologise to all Australians who suffer from this disability, I regret saying it, it was wrong, it was insensitive and I apologise.”

Kudos. Perhaps he just deserves the benefit of the doubt.

A poll earlier this year put Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie as our second most popular politician.

Jacqui Lambie began her political career a decade ago, but has grown in stature by openly admitting her vulnerabilities and mistakes.

But she’s a rarity in a field of candidates who fear judgement from voters not inclined to forgive and forget the most minor misdemeanour. And that’s especially the case in a world engulfed by social media. Unless it’s posted, it didn’t happen.

Ironically, though, it is probably voters who then pay the cost of their own quick judgement: good men and women who are reluctant to step forward and up because of something, long ago, that might steal the ladder from under them.

And yet, we repeat the mantra to our kids. Failure is the first step to success. Have a go. Don’t be frightened to make a mistake and learn.

What about practicing what we preach, to borrow another idiom?

Blackface, with the knowledge and understanding and context we have now, can never, ever be right. Either is a blanket suggestion that all police are violent.

But a bad choice attending a fancy dress party in 2012? A line written in a social media post in 2009?

Let’s get real. And let those who have not sinned cast the first stone.

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