Andrew Bolt: Stink of rot making Melbourne unrecognisable

Melbourne is festering with crime and ruled by a premier who cruelly wasted $360m on the Commonwealth Games. So is this abnormal state of affairs the new normal?

There is now the stink of rot in Australia’s biggest city, and not just because of this latest drive-by shooting.

No, I don’t mean the one in Sydney, which is bad enough – the 25th gang-related shooting since 2020.

I mean the one in Melbourne, now so bloated by uncontrolled immigration it’s unrecognisable from the garden-state capital I moved to 45 years ago.

Early on Wednesday morning, two gunmen shot up a home in Melbourne’s southeast, hitting a sleeping 17-year-old, who wasn’t actually the person they were hunting.

Melbourne is now that kind of city?

Police earlier this week told us not to worry; crime was actually down. So this is the new normal?

Here are some of the abnormal things Melbourne has suffered over the past week.

A gangster was shot dead while sitting at a cafe.

Three teens have been charged over the alleged abduction of a 14-year-old outside Glen Eira College. Picture: Wayne Taylor

A man reportedly with mental issues rammed his car into pedestrians in Bourke St, killing one of them.

Police announced they were looking for a gang of teens accused of robbing at least 14 bottle shops and supermarkets.

Police arrested a 14-year-old gang member, for allegedly abducting a schoolboy and leaving him fighting for his life.

In the city centre, assaults and related offences are actually at their highest level in a decade.

I’ve now left Melbourne, moving somewhere nicer, but I’ve seen videos this past week of a teenager being stabbed, and junkies or disturbed people swaying, or swinging a stick, or shouting threats or practising karate kicks on a bin.

But it’s not just these signs of a society where people falling through growing chasms and broken family nets that worry me.

Glooming over Melbourne is an authoritarian Premier who locked it down for months, and blew $360m by bidding for a Commonwealth Games he could never afford.

Such cruel waste, when desperate and desperately poor people had their access to free psychologists slashed to just six sessions – just six to sort out their trauma from child abuse, or appalling tragedies or neglect.

Where did all the money go that’s leaving Victoria with a debt bigger than NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined?

Meanwhile Melbourne swells like a cancer, swallowing our countryside. A class of fringe dwellers – many new arrivals – now live miles from public transport, crowded into tiny blocks with no trees.

Who wrecked my city?