photo courtesy of The Daily Telegraph

Transcript of Alan Jones on 2GB radio.

Just as I was coming off air yesterday we learned that a western Sydney high school, Merrylands High, was in lockdown.

Initial reports said students were injured in a brawl. Well, as time has revealed, it's far worse than that.

An education system without discipline is not education, and a family without discipline has simply lost its way.

The details are everywhere, and yet tragically there are no great surprises.

The first thing that needs to be emphatically stated is that a society without discipline can't function.

An education system without discipline is not education, and a family without discipline has simply lost its way.

And yet discipline has been progressively eroded to the point of being removed from contemporary society. And now we've got this.

There's talk that the attack may have had a more personal motivation. That members of this gang, Gee 40, one of any number of these so-called gangs in Sydney's west, might have been seeking out a male student over a grudge about a girl.

But this was an horrific school yard attack involving five boys as young as 14, armed with machetes and baseball bats, dressed in jeans and hooded jumpers, and brazen.

750 students gathered for morning assembly in the school quadrangle at ten to nine.

The school has security fencing. It shouldn't need it. No school should need it.

But the gates were open for students running late and these boys walked in brandishing machetes and baseball bats.

They ran down the school corridors, smashed their way through glass panels, forced their way into classrooms.

Police were fantastic, arriving six minutes after the attack and arresting three youths in a classroom and two outside.

18 children and one teacher suffered minor injuries, including from the broken glass.

Put that down to luck.

A 43-year-old male teacher was injured when bashed on the head from behind as he tried to confront the attackers.

Now the kids there all knew what this was about, a local gang Gee 40 and one student said that the attackers came in search of a Year 11 student.

Apparently the gang is made up of local youths who don't attend Merrylands High.

Of the five arrested, two are 14-year-olds from Carramar and Auburn, two are 15-year-olds from Merrylands and Seven Hills, one's a 16-year-old from Merrylands.

One is said to have been bailed for armed robbery just last week.

There's some talk that the gang was made up of students from neighbouring Granville Boys' High School, looking for a boy who wasn't at school yesterday.

And there's talk that there have been tensions between the school's Pacific Islander students and other student groups for many years.

Police are saying that it beggars belief that this kind of activity would take place against innocent students.

But does it beggar belief?

These kids are emulating American gangster rappers. They're proud of their run-ins with police.

This Gee 40 is Guildford-based but the kids know, and they say, there are similar gangs from Merrylands, Parramatta, Auburn and Granville.

They form along ethnic backgrounds, they congregate on neighbourhood streets, they proudly flirt with the law, they boast about street robberies.

Everyone knows about this. And they give themselves names to make themselves feel important.

Gang talk dominates their websites. They list their crimes, they talk up their brushes with the law.

The Guildford Gee 40 have a website. Plenty of photos of Pacific Islander youths brandishing weapons.

The website is entitled Juvenile Justice and the Gangs of New South Wales, and it claims to feature "juvinile gangs ripping through Sydney".

One blogger says "We can eff with da law, about 1 in 100 things I do I get charged for, so eff you."

Another one calling himself I Luv Carly says "Eff da cops" and lists his crimes: Assault, grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, break and enter, possession of an illegal weapon.

Are we serious?

Do we have the resources of the law and aren't prepared to use them to reinforce broad community standards? Or don't we have the resources and are quite prepared to allow our society to become this sort of mindless jungle?

No, sad though it was yesterday at Merrylands High School, you and I know it's no use throwing your arms up and expressing surprise; this is and was inevitable.

And it will go on while ever it's allowed to go on.

They are tough, brazen and defiant. We are pathetic, gutless and defeatist.

Tags: high school, merrylands high school, racial violence