"...boorish popular culture, widespread welfare dependency and, primarily, the erosion of the two-parent family."

Peter Saunders: Don't blame Howard for decline of civility
It's absurd to say that pro-market reforms lead to boorishness - February 03, 2006
In the past, when the norms governing public behaviour were clearer than they are today, public figures such as teachers and police officers felt confident about expressing and enforcing them. They knew the rest of the community (including those higher up) would back them up. Today, this confidence is ebbing away. Last October, Sydney magistrate Pat O'Shane dismissed a case brought against a youth who had drunkenly sworn obscenities at police in a public street, and she ordered the police to pay the offender's costs of $2600. She told her court: "I'm not sure there is such a thing as community standards any more."
Peter Saunders, the social research director at the Centre for Independent Studies, is co-author of Six Questions About Civility, available at www.cis.org.au. Frank Field's The Ethic of Respect: A Left Wing Cause will be published by CIS later this month.