Matt Johnston: Crime in the poll position as election looms
THE state government and Opposition are jostling on crime and it will be central to the election, whether they like it or not, writes Matt Johnston.
Opinion
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LATE last week the quarterly political spin-fest on Victorian crime statistics was in full flight.
Labor was trying to keep a lid on its excitement that there had been an 8.8 per cent reduction in raw crime numbers since the same time last year — whatever that means to Joe from Ringwood.
The Coalition had been feverishly mining data for selective crime types that were continuing to increase and shifted its message to the fact crime levels are higher than under the previous government.
But, as the press conferences were being held, disturbing details about one particular crime was about to overshadow anything about numbers.
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For the following few days, people reading and talking about the attack on Eurydice Dixon buried all the stats.
In state parliament, our political leaders paid tribute to Dixon and her family and spoke about wider community issues.
Premier Daniel Andrews spoke of the attack being a call to action against gendered violence and how it showed why the nation’s first royal commission into family violence was needed.
Opposition leader Matthew Guy spoke about the threats women face and feel, but also spoke of the rise in crime and violence against people and that “we want our safe Melbourne back”. The political undertones were there, even if they were veiled. Crime, in all its forms, is still the top concern nominated by Victorians at the moment, according to polling company Ipsos.
It peaked at 54 per cent this year and has dipped slightly since, but the company notes “sharp increases (are) seemingly event-driven”.
Labor has tried to stem the tide of concern about law and order, which even its most in-denial MPs admitted two years ago had started to swell into the flooding zone.
When Andrews came to power in 2014, a lot of people in the law and order space — particularly in the Department of Justice — had little concept of what the government’s strategy was. In a bid to stop the issue being a subject that dominates an election campaign, Labor’s policies were vague or piecemeal.
There is no doubt now that Labor will pretty much do anything to nullify attacks on its crime credentials.
That’s not much of a narrative, however.
About 18 months ago it tried to start building a narrative, including by spending $2 billion on police — what some ministers viewed as overkill and certain to lead to a “law and order election”.
As one minister joked to me recently, there’s little Labor won’t do for the boys and girls in blue at the moment.
Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt should be coming up with a wish-list-a-month for the government to tick off. If it doesn’t, the Opposition will promise to.
In order to ensure Labor can’t do what Steve Bracks did in 1999, when he campaigned on boosting police numbers after the Kennett cuts, the Coalition is likely to come up with its own long-term figure at some point during the election campaign and increase the bidding war further.
Guy has maintained a straight face standing at lectern after lectern trumpeting “if elected in November I will make Victoria safe again”.
Tougher sentences, bail reforms and so on.
Labor has stepped up to the plate and kept reasonable discipline, with barely a lefty to be seen voicing concerns about some of the party’s new right-wing policies.
There were only a couple of ministers who spoke of concerns about changes to mandatory sentences for thugs who attack emergency services workers that strip back special reasons judges could use to reduce jail terms.
One of those who raised their voice was from the party’s right-wing.
Few people speak out against the overall approach to claim some ground on crime — and I don’t expect that to change in the lead-up to November.
They’re all in now and this will keep rolling all the way up to November 24, no matter what statistics say.
It doesn’t matter whether numbers are up, down, or sideways, the Coalition will be sending local messages about the impacts of crime and their policies.
But their success or failure in this space won’t be based on those numbers; it will be about making their policies relatable to voters.
Labor thinks it has nullified the issues by fighting some of the fire with fire. This week the government promised to introduce a raft of new legislation to protect police and target criminals. But it almost always seems on the defensive.
In another case of bad timing for the government, as it was promoting a tough approach, its laws designed to keep Russell St bomber Craig Minogue behind bars failed.
Andrews quickly promised Minogue would “die in jail” rather than win his parole case, but not before Shadow Attorney-General John Pesutto had this to say: “If Daniel Andrews can’t keep a murderer in jail, he can’t keep Victorians safe.”
The next set of crime statisticss come out in mid-September, during the football finals and two months before the state election.
Asked last week if another downward trend in overall numbers would mean his political law and order strategy would be harder to prosecute, Guy was surprisingly blunt.
“No,” he said. “Not in the slightest. You need to go and knock on some doors in Cranbourne.”
Matt Johnston is state politics editor.
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