I’m walking down the street on a weekday morning, heading for the shops to do some banking and check the post box, when I see a couple approaching from a distance. I am already anticipating how I will negotiate the pass.

‘Top of the morning,’ says the male pedestrian, but I find myself unable to muster a reply, only making passing eye contact.

Nee-naw! Nee-naw! The sound of a siren and a small flashing light emanate from a device attached to his shoulder strap. He stops me and flips his badge.

‘Damn! A MUPPET!’ I curse to myself. (Manners Upholding Public Protection & Enforcement Trooper.)

‘Sir, are you aware you failed to reply to my morning greeting, either verbally, or with a clear tip of the hat in my direction?’

‘I’m sorry, officer. I was distracted in my thoughts, and found the gesture did not spontaneously arise. I bid you the best of mornings, with a guarantee not to be so lax again.’

‘Alright, laddie, I’ll let you off with a warning this time, but if I catch you missing so much as a thank you or beg your pardon again this morning, I’ll fine you with the loss of three Manners Demerit Points. Accrue 12 and we forcibly relocate you one suburb further west. Understood?’

‘Thank you, officer. Good day to you.’

With authoritarian enforcement being the go-to approach of governments around the world in recent times, it makes only perfect sense that manners should fall under a similar banner of control, given the central role they play in civil society. What is the value in trying to control a viral outbreak, for instance, if the whole of society has fundamentally broken down anyway?

Licence points, credit scores, carbon emissions, Woke demerit points – surely all these are secondary if the most primary condition of social cohesion is decaying around us in a festival of narcissistic self-absorption? If pronouns can be enforced, so too can ‘please’ and ‘thank yous’.

Good manners need to be beaten into people, at least until such time as it takes for the modern generation to pull the buds out of their ears, look away from their smartphones, and return to the most basic acknowledgment of the fellow beings with whom they walk the Earth and stroll down supermarket aisles.

Redeveloping the habit of greeting passers-by with at least a smile might just be the baseline approach to reducing road rage, social media bullying, and machete attacks. Seems pretty important to me.

(Note to men: this is not permission to behave in a predatory fashion, and only the most serendipitous connection established by dictate of the stars should give you leave to advance beyond the minimal gesture of civility.)

(Note to women: a man saying good morning is not necessarily trying to hit on you.)

I foresee various levels of offence and corresponding punishment, from manners demerit points for un-reciprocated greetings to Chinese-style public shaming on billboards for not thanking wait staff.

Of course, I’m not suggesting people should be legally obliged to greet every single person they pass on a busy street, like Crocodile Dundee in New York. That would be silly. But MUPPETs should be able to exercise their discretion where obvious and egregious acts of omission have occurred.

The great thing about good manners is they benefit both giver and receiver, lifting the quantum of spirits of all, like the ‘invisible hand’ of market economics. As economist and political commentator Thomas Sowell says, ‘Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.’ ⁠

We fuss over ATAR scores and yet, as Justice of the US Supreme Court Clarence Thomas says, ‘Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.’

‘Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree,’ said American civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman.

And economically speaking, ‘Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go,’ wrote American poet Margaret Walker.

All of these people are black, by the way, so if they can recognise the vital importance of manners, surely all of society can, even West Australians.

I see enforcement by uniformed and plain-clothed MUPPETs, as well as permission for civilian arrests where sufficient video evidence is provided of the incident. CCTV footage is likely to play a central role and, of course, mass arrests might have to take place at airports whenever flights from Darwin disembark.

‘Good humour is just good manners,’ said Clive James, and I expect monthly quotas of light-hearted banter to also be met to maintain social credit. E.g., ‘Sugar?’ ‘No thanks, I’m sweet enough.’ ‘If you don’t like Melbourne’s weather, just wait five minutes.’

Discussing grief in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, psychologist Francis Weller was surprised to find himself recognising good manners as key ground to managing not just personal grief, but grief for the loss of languages, and species, and ecosystems. It’s literally life and death stuff.

So, until such time as good manners are habitually returned to our society through instinctive recognition of their value, punitive enforcement should be introduced, alongside our other less important totalitarian measures, with the full backup of police brutality.

Could instances of injustice occur? Naturally, in some cases, but this may be the price we have to pay for a healthier society.

And we should have faith that the most experienced MUPPETs will be well-trained to distinguish when politeness is being expressed with a hint of sarcasm or irony. Anyone caught faking manners with a slight pressing of tongue into cheek should of course be instantly detained and summarily imprisoned.