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If someone stole my car out of my driveway while I slept, and then dumped it miles away with the tyres off the rims and the engine still running … you know what I’d do?

I’d call the police.

Why would I call the police?

Well, I’d call the police because I’m not a Green-endorsed mayor who’s decided the best way to fight crime is to ignore it.

But, remarkably, that’s exactly what appears to have happened in Alice Springs.

Mayor Asta Hill had her partner’s diesel SUV stolen from their home on Sunday night.

Now, why a Green-backed mayor is driving around in a diesel, I don’t know.

But let’s not get hung up on climate emergencies. Because we all know that, despite their bleating, the progressive left certainly doesn’t.

It’s entirely possible that Climate Minister Chris Bowen is flying over your house right now in his never-ending bid to curb emissions.

A Crime That Went Unreported

The stolen vehicle was found at around 1 a.m., but according to a report in The Australian, the mayor

“… declined to give a statement and did not want the offenders charged.”

Now, to normal people, this makes no sense.

If my car were stolen, I’d want the crime investigated, and I’d demand the perpetrators be tracked down.

You see the problem here, though, don’t you?

If you report a crime, the police record it.

And if the police record it, it appears in the crime statistics.

And if it appears in the crime statistics, the crime statistics go up.

And if the crime statistics go up, people might start to mistakenly believe that you’ve got a crime problem.

Changing the Story, Not the Statistics

The Alice Springs Mayor was lamenting just this conundrum when she spoke at the Developing Northern Australia Conference last month – back in the days when she had a vehicle…

She told the audience:

People are scared of moving here because they think it’s unsafe. It’s not actually true. And we want to not only dispel those myths, but we also want to start celebrating the incredible reasons why, in my view, this is the greatest place on earth to live.

Wait. Why would people think Alice Springs is unsafe?

I mean, apart from all the violent assaults and all the property crime.

But I mean, apart from all the crime, what would possibly give people the impression that Alice Springs is beset by crime?

She continued,

I’m really saddened to say that analysis has revealed that 65 percent of news portrays our town are negative. And they’re all on that central theme of this is not a safe place to live.

Ah. So the reason people think Alice Springs is unsafe is that the damned media keep reporting what’s happening in the town.

It’s not the crime… it’s the REPORTING of the crime that’s causing all the problems.

The obvious way to solve this would be to crack down on crime.

But I only say that because I’m not from the progressive Left … and therefore keep forgetting that reality can be bent to our will by sufficient quantities of wishful thinking.

Here’s the Mayor’s solution to the Alice Springs crime problem …

We’re currently engaging in a change the narrative strategy.

Changing reality is difficult.

But changing the narrative… that could work.

This was her plan:

We’re going to bring together diverse stakeholders who have the shared want to change the story of our town to actually roll out a strategy to get the good stories out, the more balanced stories out. And to really promote this place to the rest of Australia.

Well, good luck with that.

When Narrative Meets Reality

But here’s the problem.

Narratives aren’t magic spells.

You can’t simply rename a crime wave a “misunderstanding” and expect the stolen cars to politely return themselves.

You can’t assure people that Alice Spings will be safe … just so long as they promise not to notice anything to the contrary.

Like drunken fights in the street, or stores being robbed, or the Mayor’s abandoned, tireless car.

You can’t make crime less real by making it less reported.

In fact, failing to report crime makes crime worse because the authorities have less information about what’s really happening.

The Left, and particularly the Greens, have long had this adorable, childlike faith in the power of language to transform reality.

If we say trans women are women … chromosomes will reorder themselves.

If we chant Queers for Palestine … Islamic theology will reconfigure itself.

If we keep saying diversity is our strength … the Bondi terror attack will turn out to have been a giant misunderstanding.

Change the terminology. Change the narrative. Change the perception. And perhaps reality will get the hint and change itself.

And that way, we can do as we please without ever having to take responsibility for anything.

But reality is stubborn.

Reality will steal your car in the middle of the night without giving your communications strategy a second thought. As the Mayor has discovered.

Her ideology met reality at the weekend, and reality stole her wheels.

So this week, if you see the Greens Mayor travelling around Alice Springs on foot … it’s not because she doesn’t have a car. No, no. She’s just driving her narrative.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Adobe.