Victorian election: African crime hits Labor seats

East African crime in Victoria is overwhelmingly a problem in Labor seats.

Elena Morgan, who was attacked by three women of African appearance late last year, in Richmond yesterday. Picture: David Geraghty

East African crime in Victoria is overwhelmingly a problem in Labor seats, with the major hotspots overlapping key sand-belt marginals as well as many electorates considered rock solid for the Andrews government.

Analysis by The Australian shows 19 mostly Melbourne local government areas with a significant history of crime by offenders born in Sudan and other Horn of Africa countries over the past 10 years. Those areas overlay 31 Labor electorates, including the four vulnerable bayside seats of Frankston (held on a margin of 0.5 per cent), Carrum (0.7), Bentleigh (0.8) and Mordialloc (2.1).

Premier Daniel Andrews’ district of Mulgrave overlaps with the number two African crime hotspot of Greater Dandenong, while Bill Shorten’s federal seat of Maribyrnong lines up with the council area of the same name that is ranked number one for ­African-born crime.

It is the first time that the scale, footprint and decade-long trend of police dealings with African-born “alleged offenders” in Melbourne has been put clearly on the map. The data covers all kinds of dealings with police, from official warnings through low-grade offences to brutal crime.

The story of East African crime in Melbourne

Law and order — along with the spectre of burglary, home invasion, assault and carjacking by youths of African appearance — has been a polarising issue in the lead-up to Saturday’s election.

Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville said yesterday that “high-harm crimes by African youth offenders” had fallen in the latest figures. “We’re delivering an unprecedented investment into 3135 new police, and giving police the powers, resources and tools they need to keep the community safe,” she said.

 

Elena Morgan was assaulted 11 months ago in East Melbourne on her way to work. She was in the Greens-held electorate of Melbourne and was targeted by three teenage girls of African appearance who had spent a night at a party and set upon her at 7.30am, repeatedly punching her before trying to push her into the path of oncoming traffic.

The traumatic assault left her physically and emotionally injured, “I was fearing for my life,” she told The Australian. It has also left her about $8000 out of pocket through medical expenses, including physiotherapy, psychological help and specialist appointments.

She says victims of crime in Victoria need to be taken seriously.

“The police do such a good job and there are a lot of people in the system who want to help you, but they’re all under huge caseloads and so the waiting times are really long for people who need help paying medical bills,” she said.

“And so when politicians talk about changing the system, they need to realise it’s not just about making people safer and stopping this stuff from happening — it’s also about looking at the other half and the people who’ve been affected by crime and making it simpler for them to get back on track.”

Two of the three offenders involved in the attack, both teenagers, were arrested and charged. One person has been sentenced and another remains at large.

African crime in Victoria: what people are saying

In today’s crime-data analysis, the combined African “offender incident” count is very low compared with Australian-born offenders but higher than would be expected given their small population in Victoria. The analysis focuses on countries from the war-torn Horn of Africa: Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea.

The data does not include Australian-born offenders from Horn of Africa families.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton has said the African crime problem involves a small number “(who are) mostly people born here”. Some African parents say their children born locally have to be viewed as products of the Australian experience, not the horrors of the home country.

Maribyrnong, Greater Dandenong, Mooney Valley, Brimbank, Yarra and Melbourne councils head the list of 19 East African crime clusters derived from official data for the top 10 nationalities linked to alleged offender incidents. In Maribyrnong, 2086 African offender incidents repres­ented 7.9 per cent of total incidents from 2008-18 yet the African-born accounted for only 1.34 per cent of the local population. One offender may be linked to multiple incidents and offences in the data. In Greater Dandenong, African offenders were linked to 3562 incidents, 5.8 per cent of the decade’s total in that council area, while making up only 0.9 per cent of the population.

The cut-off for The Australian's ranking of 19 councils with crime hotspots is 250 African offender incidents and 0.5 per cent of total incidents from 2008-18.

The number of African-born offender incidents statewide rose by 209 per cent over the decade to 2017-18. This outstripped African population growth, which increased by 57 per cent from the 2006 census to 2016. More offenders linked to multiple incidents may be part of the story.

The incident total for Horn of Africa-born offenders last ­financial year (3384 incidents) is still slight in comparison with ­Australian-born offender incidents (135,046).

Some of Labor’s safest seats overlap with African crime hotspots including Footscray and Williamstown. The Liberals have four seats with significant African crime (Caulfield, Gembrook, Malvern and Mount Waverley), the Greens three (Melbourne, Northcote and Prahran), and the Nationals one (Morwell).

In some cases, council and electorate share only a small area, meaning crime may be less of a political issue for the state MP.

The small group born in Eritrea, which has had its share of Horn of Africa conflict, hardly figures in the data for the top 10 crime nationalities. Sudanese, the biggest group, accounted for 73 per cent of African-born offender incidents last financial year.

In the past year, federal Coalition government ministers and the Andrews administration have clashed over law and order issues.