For in our nearly six decades on this planet we’ve never seen such madness. Last night, being Halloween, Struggle Street was awash with urchins dressed as witches, devils and demons. Their intention, if our formative years watching American sit-coms tells us, was to coerce cash strapped householders to reward them with sweets, so increasing the national child obesity crisis and also causing tooth decay.

No child wandered into this correspondent’s fortified compound at Struggle Street and that was a wise move. We had some red frogs on hand, but no bludging kid dressed as a warlock was going to get his or her hands on them. We did, however, have a bucket of water ready to ‘reward’ any child foolish enough to wander into our yard and scream ‘trick or treat’.

Perhaps with a tinge of disappointment we can report the bucket wasn’t required. The trick or treaters must have had a sense of foreboding about Struggle Street, for they gave us a wide berth.

Now, we have made this point before – usually about this time of year – but it is about  time our political leaders made a stance on this. Now is the time for some real leadership on this matter. Halloween should be banned, barred, expunged, defaulted, thrown out, warned off the course and terminated.

Back when this correspondent was young – about 500 years ago – Halloween was considered an American oddity. It was possibly popular in Canada as well, but who really cares what happens in Canada?

Around this time of year kiddies of this correspondent’s generation were getting excited about Christmas – yet another pagan festival, so don’t get us started on that either. We certainly weren’t getting into a tizz about dressing up as Casper the Friendly Ghost to try and scare our neighbours into giving us a packet of fruit tingles.

Not surprisingly, we blame John Howard for all this Halloween nonsense. Under Howard’s draconian decade of rule Australia became a min-America, racing off to invade Iraq and embracing Halloween like never before. He has a lot to answer for, that Howard. 

However, taking drastic step like barring Halloween would be a bridge too far for our current PM. He’d had to run it by Tony Abbott for a start. So perhaps it is about time MidCoast Council made a stand. We call on our civic leaders to issue a blanket ban on all Halloween-related activities forthwith. Go on, show some ticker.

Greater Taree… sorry, MidCoast can be to the forefront of a national move to rid Australia of the scourge that is Halloween. 

So we’ll punt Halloween. That’s just the start.

Then we’ll work on Christmas and all those silly Santa Clauses. The world is going to be a better place.