AWOL Labor MPs blind to gang crime wave, says Kroger

Labor MPs living in affluent suburbs outside their outer-suburban Melbourne electorates are clueless about their constituents’ fears.

Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger. Pictuer: Stuart McEvoy

Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger has attacked federal Labor over its response to Melbourne’s crime wave, saying that Labor Melbourne MPs who live in affluent suburbs outside of their outer-suburban electorates were clueless about fears held by their constituents.

Turnbull government MPs yesterday backed Mr Kroger’s comments after an analysis by The Australian showed that more than a third of the 15 MPs who lived outside their electorates were Labor members who represented the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Four of these lived in rich suburbs closer to the city.

“These Labor members are in cloud cuckoo land with no appreciation whatsoever of the fears held by many of their own constituents,” Mr Kroger told The Australian. “The problem with Labor in Victoria in terms of crime is that their heart is not in it.”

Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus lives in leafy Malvern outside his electorate of Isaacs, while justice spokeswoman Clare O’Neil lives in inner-city East Melbourne, more than 20km from her electorate office in Melbourne’s southeast where the Apex gang is doing damage, sending crime levels up 15 per cent in the past two years.

Scullin MP Andrew Giles, who labelled Malcolm Turnbull’s concerns about growing gang violence in Melbourne as “cowardly fearmongering”, “dog whistling” and a “new low”, lives away from his outer-suburban constituents in a $2.85 million house in Clifton Hill.

List of federal MPs living outside their electorate.

Calwell MP Maria Vamva­kinou lives in inner-city Northcote, more than 20km from her electorate. She was one of the joint signatories of a dissenting report from a parliamentary committee that savaged recommendations for tougher deportation laws for criminals.

Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge, the federal member for the outer Melbourne electorate of Aston, said the Labor MPs would have a better idea of crime fears if they spent more time in their electorates. “There is not a week that goes by that locals don’t tell me about their fears,” he said.

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar, the member for Deakin, said Melbourne’s gang problems came from the outer suburbs.

“The only way these Labor MPs can deny the crime epidemic sweeping their electorates is because they are hopelessly out of touch with the experience of their electorates because they don’t live there,” Mr Sukkar said.

Mr Dreyfus said his home had been in the “nearby electorate of Higgins” for more than three decades while Ms O’Neil said she needed to live near her mother, who helps look after her two young children.

“We could not manage me being a member of parliament without my mum, who helps us care for our kids,” she said.

Chisholm MP Julia Banks, a Liberal, also lives out of her electorate in neighbouring Higgins, while Labor’s member for Holt, Anthony Byrne, lives in the neighbouring electorate of La Trobe.

In Sydney, the MP for the outer southwestern Sydney seat of Macarthur, Michael Freelander, lives nearly 50km away in inner-west Newtown, although he owns a medical practice in his electorate.

Bennelong MP John Alexander lives with his partner in North Bondi while Small Business Minister Craig Laundy lives in an $8m waterfront mansion in the North Sydney electorate next to his seat of Reid.