It is one of the oddities of British law that if you pick your nose with your left hand in public you can be arrested and held in detention in a local police station for up to sixty days, provided, of course, that you've done it within sight of an official building. The left hand was associated with defiance (from the Latin word 'sinister', meaning 'left') and the nose picking was supposed to be symbolic of 'thumbing your nose' at authority. None of the six Australian State parliaments has ever come around to repealing this archaic British ordinance, dating back to the early years. Here are a few Australian laws still on the statutes to this day:
Taking money to restore dogs
"Whosoever corruptly takes any money or reward, directly or indirectly, under pretence, or upon account, of aiding any person to recover any dog which has been stolen, or which is in the possession of any person other than its owner, shall be liable to imprisonment for one year."
This fine old term is a courteous euphemism for what is named and called by vulgar persons 'dog-napping'. It's a useful law. After all, one can scarcely tell a perfect stranger eyeing your pup that you are suspecting them of evil intentions. How much more effective to say, "Taking money to restore dogs has still not been repealed you know," even if it's impossible to conjecture how a seventy five year old lady is going to lead away your fifty kilo Rottweiler straining on its lead.
Stealing of rocks and stones
A rock-thief is a blight on society. He is a marked person, caused by a number of reasons, chief among them an unrepealed law that states: "Whosoever steals a rock or a stone shall be liable to imprisonment for 6 months." Now you understand that if the odd rock disappears from your lovingly amassed pile, it is due to the fact that there are some very criminal people around.
Interfering with a mine
Had you been a colonial miner digging your claim in the New South Wales of the 19th Century, you would have been frequently inconvenienced by counter-claimers flooding your little subterranean channel. So a law was passed which still applies to this day: "A person who maliciously causes water to run into a mine or any subterranean channel connected to it, is liable to penal servitude for seven years." Thus, up to now at any rate, you and yours are still safe from persons pouring water down your adit.
East India bonds
"Whosoever forges, or utters, any East India bond, or any bond, debenture, or security made under the authority of any Act relating to the East Indies, shall be liable to penal servitude for fourteen years."
There you are, alone in your cell with a fourteen year sentence, and it is day one of your stretch. Two immediate questions leap to mind. Where to find an Internet terminal to do a spot of share-trading, and what made you want to forge the bonds of a company that has not existed since 1859. Gracious fate suddenly provides you with an answer to both dilemmas: an IT-minded warden. There is a computer terminal in the library and an Internet terminal could be arranged, it seems, in exchange for the portfolio of the East India bonds that you had managed to salt away and save from the clutches of bankruptcy, and all at once fourteen years do not seem quite so long.
Wasting water of fountain
Approach any garden tap on the edge of the street on any parched summer's day with the aim of quenching your thirst. Bathe your throat in a welcome trickle of water, and then forget to turn off the tap as you walk away. It is Sydney to a tile, that it's all a constable needs to nab you and haul you in. The law is very clear on this: Whosoever opens or leaves open any cock of any public fountain or pump so that the water runs or may run to waste shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding four dollars. Perhaps it could all be settled amicably for the price of a couple of Scratchies.
Speak English
In the hurly burly of everyday day life, few of us spare a thought for the hazards of war. One of the problems is what to do with people who do like to use the odd foreign language. In 1940, for example, Mr Thorby, the then Minister for Communications, announced that telephone conversations using foreign languages were banned. "If a person cannot speak English," said Mr Thorby, "they cannot use a telephone in Australia".
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