Paedophiles are among the most hated individuals in the community. It's tempting to suggest that this is for good reason. After all, children and young people are at once society's most cherished assets and its most vulnerable. Paedophiles exploit this vulnerability, and children must be protected from them.
But hate is a negative emotion that can be all-consuming. Inevitably it is directed towards people who have done wrong, rather than bad circumstances. It can lead to further negatives, such as vigilantism in the style of the Ku Klux Klan, or misguided military action such as the War on Terror, which was essentially an act of vengeance on the Muslim world in response to the actions of extremists.
Hate also nurtures a more subtle and pernicious mindset that assumes some people have rights and others do not.
The NSW Government has effectively enshrined hate in legislation, thanks to its ham-fisted attempt to deal with the reaction of residents of Ryde, a suburb of Sydney, who did not want released paedophile Dennis Ferguson living in their neighbourhood. The Housing Amendments (Registrable Persons) Act 2009 was hastily passed last week, specifically to force Ferguson out of his home.
Eureka Street has published an article on this by barrister Georgina Wright, who believes the community should expect a better performance from the Government in the face of whatever level of threat Ferguson poses.
'Does a conviction as a paedophile mean someone forfeits any and all rights for the rest of his life?' she writes. 'Were there not alternatives to this option? None of these questions were debated because of the way the legislation was passed.'
There are indeed alternatives, and governments have the resources to assemble appropriately qualified professionals to formulate proposals. Similarly insurmountable challenges have been met by making use of the best creative minds we have available.
Think, for example, of the heroin injecting room run by the Uniting Church's UnitingCare in Sydney's Kings Cross. The so-called shooting gallery was a much-debated concept prior to its establishment, and still has its detractors. But Dr Alex Wodak of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, said last week that overseas and local experience has proved the strategy an effective component of the effort to tackle drug abuse.
'We don't need a debate about heroin-assisted treatment,' Wodak said. 'We should be providing this now to the small minority with very severe problems who have not benefited from repeated episodes of other treatments.'
The philosophy that underlies the injecting room is that drug addiction is an illness more than a crime, and that community empathy, rather than ostracism, is required to overcome it. Note that there is a distinction here between empathy, which acknowledges and respects the humanity of all individuals, and sympathy, which might be seen as tacit approval of individuals' actions.
Empathy for paedophiles is a big ask, but without it paedophilia will remain a problem. It is important to recognise that it is a problem that afflicts the community as a whole, and not just the human beings who are its agents.
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Michael Mullins is editor of Eureka Street.