Corruption Rewound

Pic courtesy News.com

A very long time ago, when I was a young teacher working with students with intellectual impairments, I came across a situation which, to put it mildly, made my blood boil.

There was a corner shop not to far from the school in which I worked, which had the habit of failing to give these kids change, when they bought low value items with large denomination notes.

It happened too often to be accidental, and after a number of complaints from parents, I took it on myself to have a chat with the shopkeeper. Initially, he denied ripping off these students, but when I recounted a couple of complaints, he became angry, called me a "bleeding heart", and threatened physical violence.

The message went out (discretely) and none of the students from the school darkened his door again.

That was back in the early eighties.

At the banking royal commission today, the father of a lad with Down Syndrome revealed how his son had been ripped off by a bank selling life insurance.

Vulnerable people are still being exploited in 2018.

Only these days, it not a spiv who runs a corner store in the frame, but a previously respected institution.

I don't believe things have improved much in the intervening thirty years.