James Campbell to Peter Dutton: No Minister, you’re wrong

PETER Dutton has called Victoria a lawless state but statistics suggest the Home Affairs Minister is way off the mark, writes James Campbell.

SOMETIMES Jeff says it best. Speaking on Sky News on Thursday night, the former Premier and Herald Sun columnist gave Peter Dutton both barrels.

“Peter Dutton was a policeman. If he was a policeman, he would not be making those comments. So he’s gone from being a policeman with that training and that discipline to being a politician, which is just to take a cheap political pot shot at whatever you can, so it’s not helpful.”

Kennett was referring to Dutton’s comments earlier this month about Melburnians being too scared to go out. In fact the Home Affairs Minister has been having a fine old time of it all summer denouncing the “soft on crime” approach of successive Victorian governments.

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You can get an idea of how informed he is about the facts on the ground down here from his statement to Heidi Murphy on 3AW that “Daniel Andrews has created this mess through appointments to the Magistrates Court, as well as the District Court”. District Court, eh Pete? What race is that one running in?

Given he doesn’t appear to know the name of the court in Victoria that sits between the magistracy and the Supreme Court — (it’s the County, Minister) — it would be interesting to know how many judges and magistrates in this state he could actually name.

Jeff Kennett has criticised Peter Dutton’s comments on Melbourne law and order. Picture: Adam Head

If his knowledge of the Victorian judiciary is anything like that of his fellow federal MPs, Michael Sukkar, Alan Tudge and Greg Hunt, I reckon he’d struggle. When last year those three gentlemen decided to gob off in The Australian about Labor-appointed leftie judges, they appeared to be unaware that one of the judges in the case they were talking about was a former Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions who had been appointed to the bench by a Liberal Attorney-General.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a South Sudanese youth crime problem in Victoria. There clearly is. But from the way politicians from north of the Murray are talking, you’d swear this was the most lawless state in the nation. According to Dutton: “This is a problem years in the making and it’s not a problem in New South Wales, or Queensland, or Perth, it’s a problem in Victoria.”

But is that true? How does the youth crime rate in Victoria compare with the rest of the country? Are all those tough magistrates and judges in Queensland making the residents of those states safer than we are here? Err, no. Not if you believe the ABS.

According to the cardigans at the Bureau, in 2016 — the last year we have data for — the NSW rate of offending for “acts intended to cause injury” was 403.4 per 100,000 of population. The rate in Victoria 308.3.

Were things better in Dutts’s home state of Queensland? Alas, no, sadly. They’re at 330.8 per 100k.

Peter Dutton’s knowledge of Victorian judiciary leaves a bit to be desired. Picture: Joe Castro, AAP Image.

You’ll have noticed there’s a bit of a gap between 403.4 and 308.3 per 100k. Big enough to give you pause for thought before opening your mouth about the crime wave in Victoria, you might have thought. But there was the Prime Minister in Geelong on Wednesday lecturing our small but perfectly formed Deputy Premier James Merlino that “it is the government’s job to deal with those concerns and make sure people feel safe when they walk down the street and they go to work and they are going to school and so forth”.

OK, so Victoria’s got a better crime rate when it comes to youth violence, what about robbery? Well according to the ABS, the NSW youth robbery/extortion rate is 35.5. In Victoria, it’s 27.8. Queensland? 47.8. In other words, according to the ABS’s Recorded Crime-Offenders stats, you’re nearly twice as likely to be robbed or blackmailed in Queensland than Victoria. Theft? QLD: 588.3, NSW: 1405, VIC, 447.7.

I don’t want to labour the point but that would suggest that you are three times more likely to have something stolen in NSW than you are here. I could go on but you get the picture. And the same is true of the overall crime rates in these states. True, in 2016 the youth homicide rate was higher here than in NSW but the number of youth homicides is so small you can’t really draw any conclusions from that.

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But if you choose to believe the statisticians, Victoria is, overall, a much safer place than NSW and Queensland. Why this should be so is a matter for them. I wouldn’t presume to lecture them on their ongoing policy failures on crime over several decades, just as I wouldn’t lecture them on their lower school retention rates, the fact they drink more and more likely to get pregnant before the age of 18. As I say, these are entirely matters for them.

It would nice if they could extend the same courtesy to us.

James Campbell is national politics editor.

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