COVID-19 curse: Gold Coast future crime wave as unemployed kids graduate to become criminals
Our kids could graduate to gangs rather than from universities, writes Paul Weston
Gold Coast
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OUR kids risk graduating to bikie gangs rather than from universities.
This is an issue possibly developing too late to impact on the state poll. It will start to really take off early next year.
All of it is a consequence of COVID-19 restrictions, the Gold Coast being Australia’s tourism capital and what happens when too many young kids cannot get a job or refuse to train it up to Brisbane to find one.
Employment fell by 11,000 or 3.4 per cent between March and June, with the Gold Coast’s jobless rate rising from 4.1 per cent to 7.9 per cent.
About 10.5 per cent of employment in the region is accounted for by the accommodation and food services sector, one of the industries most heavily impacted by coronavirus restrictions. At least 9700 businesses rely on JobKeeper to keep their doors open, If you remove that government benefit, unemployment would be 19.3 per cent here – about 58,899 jobs.
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Before COVID-19 hurt the economy, Mudgeeraba MP and LNP frontbencher Ros Bates conducted “the biggest community survey”, asking about health, cost of living, law and order, and the environment. Crime and rising household costs were by far the biggest concerns and, ironically, 90 per cent of residents were “concerned the government will increase our state debt and cost of living”.
Respondents supported the LNP’s tougher anti-gang laws (81 per cent), were concerned about hooning and graffiti (83 per cent) and supported tougher measures against juvenile offenders (86 per cent). The majority (63 per cent) did not feel safe.
Since then coronavirus sucked up all the media airtime, with the debate turning first to our health and safety and now slowly toward our mental wellbeing and the fragile financial future.
LNP campaign doorknockers say they have been confronted with young couples who both worked in Surfers Paradise in the tourism industry but are now without jobs and are about to lose their homes.
We read reports about youth knife crime in Surfers Paradise, hoon gangs vandalising Ms Bates’ signs, and vehicles splashed with graffiti around Parkwood.
Miami residents are rallying against “troubled people” being placed in motels.
We have reported the plight of a 12-year-old girl who ended up with a teenage gang.
Finally, the Pimpama bikie gang leader assassination.
A bikie source said the Coast’s worsening economy was about to create a breeding ground for the gangs, a production line as smooth as the top rugby league schools producing new recruits for NRL clubs.
The kids graduate from the Coomicubs, the Gold Coast Brotherhood and Mexican Soldiers, all linked to the adult gangs. “There’s a breeding ground and it gives rise to a selection criteria. It allows semi-hardened criminals to become part of a gang,” the bikie source said.
“It’s an incestuous cycle of organised crime and bikies controlling it. In essence, they have a business model of recruitment that many large organisations would be envious of.”
Before the October 31 poll the LNP needs to promote its tougher law-and-order policy, under which magistrates would set night curfews for young offenders and also warrants for arrest if the youths failed to attend court.
Voters might well judge Labor, in the driver’s seat of government, being able to create more jobs. But what of the fate of those young kids who miss out?
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