Unemployment is killing another community, write Drew Warne- Smith, John Stapleton and Annabelle McDonald

WHEN Dylan Raywood, Matt Robertson and another young man jumped into a stolen white Commodore on Friday night and careered away from police, they embarked on a time-honoured ritual around the Glenquarie housing commission estate.

They headed for Eucalyptus Drive. For the bored and the embittered young men who haunt Glenquarie streets in Macquarie Fields, southwest Sydney, Eucalyptus Drive is more than just a smooth arterial road snaking through the backwaters of one of the more depressed housing estates in Australia.

The drive is a well-trodden escape route from police, a racing track and a dumping ground for stolen cars. But for Raywood and Robertson it was also to become the scene of their deaths.

It is there, opposite the small park known as Flinders Oval, that flowers and tributes are being laid for the two teenagers who died when their stolen car rolled several times while being chased by police. And it is there, for four consecutive nights, that hundreds of enraged local youths have staked out their battleground and rioted against police, who they blame for the deaths.

In scenes reminiscent of the Redfern riot in Sydney a year ago, police have been showered with petrol bombs, bottles and bricks while residents stood by and cheered. According to friends of Raywood and Robertson, the pair regularly shadow-boxed with police. They knew the car chase routine as well as they knew the area.

And, crucially, they knew they needed to slow down approaching the oval, so they could cut across the field, dump the car on an embankment and flee into thenight on foot.

That their car flipped on trying to make the turn is proof they were pressured or rammed by police pursuers, friends claim. It is a charge vehemently denied by police — and one that’s the subject of a coronial investigation. Police are still hunting the third young man from the car — the driver who fled after surviving thecrash.

Raywood and Robertson were members of a local gang known as the Kelly Boys or the MFBs — the Macquarie Fields Boys. Members claimed yesterday they had been targeted by police for many months. One young man, who does not want to be named, says Robertson was fresh from jail and “had been flogged by the coppers that many times”. “The police have been making threats to take these boys off the street one way or another,” he tells The Australian. “The cops weren’t going to stop until there was a death.”

In addition to the tears and violence, claim and counter-claim, that have marred the aftermath of the deaths, locals have spoken of their disbelief that two “good boys” — and one boy “with a future” – – has died. Friends say 17-year-old Raywood didn’t smoke, didn’t drink and had the talent to play rugby league for Australia. He and Robertson, 19, had lined up work loading equipment at the Royal Easter Show. For Raywood, it would have been his first job.

“If you look around here, the kids are all drug-addicted. But these kids were `straighties’,” says Marcus, a resident of 30 years who will only give his first name. “Their adrenalin was the cars. If they had had something to do around here they would have been fine. They were good kids.”

Debbie Kelly, a grandmother to the Kelly Gang, says she had been taunted by police that her “boys” — whom she had known since they were children — were going to die. “Matt was like my adopted son,” she says. “He always had a home with me when he needed one. He was a terrific kid, he wasn’t perfect but he was always there for everybody. He had a heart of gold.”

Kelly says it was boredom as much as anything that led them to steal that late-model white Commodore. Without cinemas, pool halls, skate parks or even a local video game arcade, many youths in the area buy radio scanners and lock into the police frequency for entertainment.

“If you listen to the radio you get ads, if you listen to a scanner there’s always something happening,” one youth tells The Australian. “That’s what people here sit and do. Just listen to it.”

As is the case in too many regional areas across the nation, when that thirst for action is coupled with a culture of welfare dependence, unemployment, low education, broken homes and drug and gambling addictions, the result is a creeping lawlessness that authorities struggle to contain. In the case of theGlenquarie Housing Commission estate in Macquarie Fields, a suburb of Campbelltown about one hour’s drive from Sydney, it is a cocktail that exploded in a crippled and angry community.

The Glenquarie estate was established by the NSW Department of Housing about 30 years ago. Campbelltown mayor Brenton Banfield says that back then it was a place of hope and opportunity. Today it is home to about 4500 residents and entrenched disadvantage. “Over the years people with get-up-and-go got up and left,” Banfield says. “But the most disadvantaged stayed. And as the years have gone on it has only got worse.”

The statistics tell a sad story. Unemployment in the area is locked at about 25 per cent — three times the rate for the city of Campbelltown. For young people not at school, that rate soars to more than 35 per cent. About one-quarter of the population has completed the equivalent of the Higher School Certificate. By comparison, 44 per cent of Sydneysiders have been schooled to Year 12. More than half of all households at Glenquarie are broken homes or single-parent households. And those who attempt to find work carry the stigma of where they live.

“Scotty”, a member of the Kelly Gang, says he is embarrassed to admit to a potential employer he hails from Macquarie Fields. “If you go for a job and say you’re from Macquarie Fields, you can be ashamed,” he says. “They automatically think you’ll be dumb.”

Salvation Army welfare officer Michelle Bonham tells of the drugs and gambling that have taken root in the community, of the parents who pay for a hit before they pay their bills. “It’s a poor area. A lot of people have problems paying bills,” Bonham says. “I know there are parents on drugs, on the methadone program, there’s gambling and the wives come to me because they can’t pay the bills.” And with disrespect coursing through the veins of so many youths, she warns there is no quick remedy. “It’s a general respect issue, a general attitude. It’s not an easy-fix situation,” she says.

Banfield, who has been mayor for the past 2 1/2 years and who has lived in the area for most of his life, says he first saw evidence of dysfunction 12 years ago. But he denies it is a sore neglected by council or state governments, with millions of dollars spent on the estate through the state’s renewal program, which renovated many of the decrepit enclaves. “You can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear,” he says.

It was a view reiterated by NSW Premier Bob Carr yesterday. He refuses to link the continuing riots with the community’s ills. “I will not have it said this behaviour is caused by social disadvantage,” Carr says. “This area has not been neglected.” He says that from 1996 to 2003, the NSW Government spent $49million to improve housing design and layout.

For Banfield, who is struggling to come to grips with the continuing violence in his community, the first step to cleansing Glenquarie is a dramatic one. “What we need to do is demolish the housing estate and start again, and disperse the disadvantaged people throughout the community,” he says. The property should be turned over to private developers, with one in five of the new homes designated for public housing.

And after that, parents should be given incentives to control and educate their children, Banfield says.

“This is not about children behaving badly,” he says. “Or the police. It’s about the culture. It’s about the community helping them to act as they should.”