Emergency Services scanner feeds now online. Is there anything the interwebz can't find you??

Expensive gear now superfluous...

Following the tragic news of yet another mass shooting in America, there was an online message about the radioreference.com  live feed of the local police radio chatter - with the obvious warning that much of the feed at that time was quite disturbing.

The service also links to emergency service radio feeds for many Australian services (but not ACT or Northern Territory). There is scattered availability in the other states, with Inner Sydney an interesting omission...

Amazing that this sort of eavesdropping used to require expensive hardware of questionable legality. And now there it is, given the interwebz treatment for anyone to listen in on.

In just an hour of listening in on the Sunshine Coast feed, they nabbed a guy who lifted a $400 pair of sunglasses from a shop in Noosa (didn't arrest the shop owner for charging that much though!), a female wanted pseudo-ephedrine runner, a wanted parole defaulter and a male with suicidal tendancies after a knife-wielding house invasion in Coes Creek. Not a bad work rate guys!

Regarding the shooting in Aurora Colorado, in Australia we can be truly thankful that John Howard - strongly supported by Tim Fisher - showed true leadership following the Port Arthur shooting and (at great personal political cost) pushed through sweeping gun law changes that make such an horrific crime so much less likely here.

I was active in the Australian Democrats on Queensland's Sunshine Coast at that time, and jointly organised a rally at Maroochydore to support the gun laws. However, it caught the attention of the local gun nuts Ron Owen, Ian McNiven, Tony Pitt, and a gun dealer from Eudlo whose name escapes me. Unfortunately, the rally descended into chaos when they and their supporters tried to swamp it with their own banners and shouting, and the whole ugly scene ended up on news coverage nationwide. It was pretty scary and I know I didn't handle it well. Even worse, the numerous local police who were present did nothing to prevent it happening. On reflection, perhaps they wanted the nation to see how bad these nutters were...


For the next several months, I was receiving unsolicited mail from numerous gun nuts including Tony Pitt, munitions mail order catalogues, and Owen even snuck into my back yard and then posted photos on his website "Lock Stock and Barrel". Unbelievably, Owen was later elected as a Gympie Councillor for the One Nation Party, then achieving national disgrace with anti-gay comments.


Quick funny story: at a packed out rally in the Gympie Convention Centre, Owen was non-stop heckling a high school girl speaker. In a moment of silence I hollered out "Go home whinging Pom" and the whole venue erupted in laughter. Owen was silent from then on.


(Understandably I think, I'm not linking this article to any of them in any way.)


While there is much to criticise about the Howard era, the gun laws are a true legacy of John Howard's time as Prime Minister for which all Australians should forever be grateful.