Steve Price: Law and order is breaking down and leaders ignore it at their peril

Shocking vision of ram raids, arson, armed teens and violent attacks are filling the news but we’re not living in 1980s New York or the badlands of Johannesburg. What the hell is happening to our city?

How has basic law and order collapsed in Melbourne?

On Tuesday this week as two young girls opened the Bonds Outlet store on Chapel St Prahan it happened again.

A man rushed in, loaded up bags with T-shirts and underwear and fled without paying. Staff took the decision not to intervene, worried about his mental state and concerned for their physical safety.

Incredibly and sadly the young woman in charge told me there had only been just one day in the previous nine days this hasn’t happened.

Staff called police but the culprit was gone.

What the hell has happened to our country?

The same week saw hardware and gardening giant Bunnings release CCTV footage of staff being punched, kicked and threatened with weapons like pistols and long bladed knives.

How is it then that we have more homeless people living on the streets than ever before? Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Shocking vision of violent attacks on people – many of them older staff – just doing their job.

About 5km up Commercial Rd in Prahan at the local Hawksburn shopping strip at the local Woolworths-owned BWS outlet, the manager tells me they have been constantly targeted with booze thefts. Brazen thieves simply walk in, load up trolleys with expensive targeted booze and walk out. He has instructed young staff not to try to stop them for their safety.

And it gets worse. At 6.30am on Thursday this week the 7-11 at the corner of High and Chapel streets had the front door locked. Buzzed in, the terrified young girl behind the locked serving counter told me she had been threatened with a stabbing by a young woman – who was still outside – if she reported the woman and her male partner for loading up the shop’s bin with stolen food.

How has basic law and order collapsed where retail stores are being robbed in broad daylight?

This is Prahan and Hawksburn village – Chapel and High streets – it’s not 1980s New York city or the Badlands of Johannesburg or lawless Somalia. Melbourne – and I suspect every capital city in Australia – now looks like the horror shows that we have witnessed in communities like Alice Springs and around the world in places like LA and San Francisco.

A genuine question from me to our audience: what has happened to our country? To our Australia? How has basic law and order collapsed where retail stores are being robbed in broad daylight by people with no regard at all for young staff, fear of police or any fear of being caught.

These people are not doing this in the dead of night wearing masks or balaclavas – it’s broad daylight.

When did this blatant disregard for law and order, respect for retail staff and lack of fear of police begin? Did Covid and the lockdowns break our society down? Is it social media or the ready availability of an increasing range of chemical-based illegal drugs? Have slacker drug laws like heroin injecting rooms and now pill testing led to this? I am genuinely seeking the answers.

People are buying security cameras to hopefully deter a potential 3am home invasion by a bunch of 12-year-olds looking for car keys.

I was in the Bonds Outlet store five minutes after the thief struck at 10am. Would I have intervened even verbally if not physically. I would hope I would have said something or at least dialled triple-0. You wonder what good that would have done though, the Prahan police station is probably no more than 400m away, but as we know the 24-hour station had to shut its doors a few weekends ago because of staffing issues.

Even if they had turned up what good would that have done? Even if the robber is a repeat offender some soft magistrate would list excuses why he shouldn’t be locked up, talking about a mentally-challenging childhood, or abusive parents, maybe a drug habit or alcohol dependence. Here is your bail slip, don’t do it again. And we all know how that story ends up.

Again, I ask how did we get here?

Lux nightclub – again Chapel St – was torched apparently on the orders of an organised crime figure living in Dubai.

Liquorland now has all its spirits locked behind glass doors and you need a salesperson to use a key to buy a bottle of whiskey, gin or tequila. In Darwin and Alice Springs, you must produce a driver’s licence to even buy an alcoholic drink. Many pubs put cage-like bars around the taps to prevent assaults while JB Hi-Fi and other electronic retail stores station security guards at the entrance.

But it’s purely to check you have a receipt for that Garmin sports watch or increasingly that set of security cameras you just bought to hopefully deter a potential 3am home invasion by a bunch of 12-year-olds looking for your car keys. Watch out, they likely will be armed with a knife or machete.

This is our country in 2024. We are one of the wealthiest nations on earth with a generous social security system, near to free state-provided education, low unemployment and jobs for anyone who wants to work.

How is it then that we have more homeless people living on the streets than ever before. We have more beggars than I can ever remember, and large groups of suburban teenagers are forming armed gangs to protect their turf.

Large groups of suburban teenagers are forming armed gangs to protect their turf.

I could have written that line 30 years ago about East LA or Harlem in New York — now it’s Dandenong or Truganina in Melbourne or Canterbury-Bankstown and Blacktown in Sydney.

Melbourne doesn’t go a night without a tobacco shop being torched after a ram raid and last week, Lux nightclub – again Chapel St – was torched apparently on the orders of an organised crime figure living in Dubai. It’s lucky no-one hasn’t died in one of these blazes with this one shutting a major road and tram route with the torched buildings set for demolition.

Ask yourself when was the last time one of our political leaders in Canberra addressed the breakdown of basic law and order in our country. Prime Minister Albanese famously made a flying visit to Alice Springs when it was in the headlines, and I don’t think he’s been back there since. I can’t recall the PM even addressing the issues I’ve outlined here and it’s as if he lives in some protective bubble.

If it was his 20-something daughter or the child of Premier Jacinta Allan standing terrified at 10 in the morning in a Bonds store as a deranged thief took what he wanted and walked out, maybe we would hear about it.

I think we all agree cost of living will be the biggest single issue at next year’s election but a tip from me to both sides of politics – start taking seriously the collapse of basic law and order in our big cities and regional towns.

Crime is literally out of control and people are angry – ignore the issue at your peril.

Dislikes

• Dane Swans crazy idea to allow dogs to order food at his Windsor Hotel.

• Doing deals to let the Bali 5 heroin smugglers finish their sentences back here.

• IVF being considered for a female convicted murderer who would then raise her baby in jail.

• State Labor unlikely to stand a candidate in the Prahan by-election – gutless.

Likes

• Australian Open golf back in Melbourne this weekend at Kingston Heath and Victoria golf clubs.

• New restrictive poker machine laws about time.

• One of the great blokes of the AFL John Longmire calling it quits at the Swans on his terms.

• Sky News’ documentary looking back 50 years at the Christmas Day Cyclone Tracy destruction of Darwin.