Dysfunctional youths have community scared to dine
Wed 18 July 2007
Brooke Petersen, Journalism
Mooloolaba businesses are paying the price for disorderly youth violence along the esplanade, with people becoming reluctant to dine out.
Along with destruction to property, businesses along the esplanade said disorderly groups of youths are fighting, bullying younger children and disturbing businesses by using foul language and abuse.
Amber Hackworthy, owner and manager of the Cherry Bar and Restaurant, said the problem had become so out of hand that the youths were now an audience for hoons.
“It is affecting the atmosphere of the esplanade. People and families are not enjoying outdoor dining or the beach park areas in fear of facing disorderly youths,” she said.
Local councils are being blamed for the state of youth disorder on the Sunshine Coast, with local businesses saying the problem has always been known to council.
“It is common knowledge amongst council, businesses and police that there is no infrastructure or activities provided for youths to entertain them,” Miss Hackworthy said.
“There is no area dedicated for youths to ‘hang out’ so they annoy the general public instead.”
Miss Hackworthy said a number of surveys had already been put through high schools to gather information on the problem and all had the same answer.
She said youths are crying out for something to fill their 
time.
“They want night time activities such as we do. They want to hang out in cool places to be seen, just like we do, not shuffled to some outback remote place.”
But esplanade businesses said the council is not doing enough to address the problem.
“Authorities implement such things as silly as the ‘move on’ policy which as the name suggests, just relocates the problems,” Miss Hackworthy said.
“More should be done, as nothing is being done and any suggestions just get negative responses from authorities as it just presents a problem when they [representatives for youth] are all together.”
The problem of youth disturbances along the esplanade however stems from more than just willful damage.
Miss Hackworthy said the youths are expressing their boredom to the public in the hope of gaining some attention, and said it should be the parents of the children giving it to them.
“Parents should definitely take more responsibility as they are … spending less time with their children and appear to care very little where their kids are really at,” she said.
But Miss Hackworthy said part of the blame lies on the older generation of society.
“The older generation is the group complaining about their destructive nature, being the wiser party, they do nothing to be pro-active in solving their boredom,” she said.
“Times are not the same … and if adults didn’t have infrastructure provided for them, then they too would be of a social disgrace.”
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