Speaker 1: We've probably come to regret the fact that more was
Speaker 1: not done then, because a stitch in time might have
Speaker 1: helped everyone, including those young people who were running off
Speaker 1: the rails.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Who were born somewhere else and came to this country
Speaker 1: to build a life for themselves and their families, work hard,
Speaker 1: the whole migrant story, who are frightened of youth gangs.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life in Crimes. Today we're
Speaker 1: going to have another look at the thorny issue of
Speaker 1: youth crime.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It's only a few weeks since we did another aspect
Speaker 1: of youth crime.
Speaker 2: That was the episode we called the Kids.
Speaker 1: Are Not All all Right. Today we're going to look
Speaker 1: at the youth crime wave that particularly involves car theft
Speaker 1: and home invasion. And I'm indebted for this episode for
Speaker 1: the inn and knowledge and wisdom of my colleague Mark Butler, whose.
Speaker 2: Idea it was.
Speaker 1: Now, there always were some desperate escapee or robber willing
Speaker 1: to grab a car at gunpoint to flee from a
Speaker 1: jail break or a robbery gone wrong. That has always
Speaker 1: been a possibility in crime in Australia since since Ned Kelly,
Speaker 1: although of course they'd be stealing a horse or a
Speaker 1: horse and buggy in the old day, it's not a car.
Speaker 1: But the idea of taking a vehicle at gunpoint isn't
Speaker 1: exactly new. But what's new, what's new in the sense
Speaker 1: of new in the last ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty years,
Speaker 1: is this idea of young people taking cars, car jacking cars,
Speaker 1: which is very scary. Taking a car by forcing the
Speaker 1: driver out of the driver's seat and taking it by force,
Speaker 1: or now more so breaking into houses or entering houses
Speaker 1: and taking the keys, whether just burgling them quietly and
Speaker 1: sneaking out, or taking them by force, to steal the
Speaker 1: cars from the drive why l from the garage. That
Speaker 1: is a whole other thing. That is carjacking, That is
Speaker 1: car theft with a view to joy writing. And it's
Speaker 1: not perpetrated by a criminal who's trying to escape from
Speaker 1: a crime scene. It's a different thing, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: actually more pernicious for most of us, because there are
Speaker 1: dozens of these kids out in Melbourne in the suburbs
Speaker 1: every night or every week trying to steal cars to
Speaker 1: go joy writing at high speeds. Now it seems to
Speaker 1: me that these kids are not so much trying to
Speaker 1: escape the law. As you know at the old fashioned
Speaker 1: bank rubber Boss, they're trying.
Speaker 2: To provoke the law.
Speaker 1: They're actually deliberately taking prestige cars or fast cars, high
Speaker 1: performance cars in the hope of provoking a high speed chase,
Speaker 1: or at least knowing that there's a huge chance that
Speaker 1: they will provoke a high speed chase, and not being
Speaker 1: worried about that. That's all part of the game for them.
Speaker 1: To them, it is this ridiculous, dangerous, high risk, stupid game.
Speaker 1: It's a game. They're not actually doing something for profit.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to feed families, they're not trying.
Speaker 2: To pay off debts.
Speaker 1: They are just taking cars from innocent citizens in order
Speaker 1: to have fun. In their terms, they're doing it for kicks.
Speaker 1: And it is this wave of crime that is of
Speaker 1: great concern to the police, to the public, and it
Speaker 1: should be of great concern also to politicians. Now, when
Speaker 1: we first heard about carjacking in Melbourne, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take a wild guess and say the first example of
Speaker 1: it that I recall noticing, and this is not a
Speaker 1: statistical fact, this is just me reaching back into my
Speaker 1: own very average memory, and I think that a car
Speaker 1: was carjacked in Carlton, I think in daylight by a
Speaker 1: teenager from memory in probably the late nineties or early
Speaker 1: two thousand, so it's at least twenty odd years ago,
Speaker 1: and I recall noticing it because it stood out it
Speaker 1: was different, but it echoed a crime that happened with
Speaker 1: dreadful regularity in other parts of the world. And when
Speaker 1: I say other parts of the world, I mean very
Speaker 1: troubled parts of the world, such as Johannesburg in South Africa,
Speaker 1: which is the worst bits of South America, in parts
Speaker 1: of Brazil and Venezuela and Colombia.
Speaker 2: Places like that where there's a.
Speaker 1: Breakdown in law and order and where there are youth
Speaker 1: gangs and they do a lot of reckless stuff, including
Speaker 1: stealing cars. Now, when that happened in Melbourne those years ago,
Speaker 1: it stood out as something that was different from the
Speaker 1: usual run of thefts here. There'd always been some kids
Speaker 1: joy riding ever since cars were invented, you know, there'd
Speaker 1: be people that would steal them to joy ride, and
Speaker 1: you know, back in the fifties and the sixties and
Speaker 1: the seventies, no doubt there was plenty of car theft
Speaker 1: it was an era when cars were very easy in
Speaker 1: those days to steal. You could hop bire them with
Speaker 1: a screwdriver pretty simply and just drive away. Those old
Speaker 1: holdens and falcons and so forth that everyone had were
Speaker 1: easily stolen and often stolen. But these guys these days,
Speaker 1: they're more determined to get hold of a car. They're
Speaker 1: so determined that they will commit reasonably serious crimes. They
Speaker 1: are willing to go armed, many of them, so they
Speaker 1: can force people to hand over their keys. They're willing
Speaker 1: to break into houses and commit burglaries or even worse,
Speaker 1: aggravated burglaries, going into a house armed with machetes or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be and forcing people to hand over
Speaker 1: the keys. Now, this elevates, you know, joy riding into
Speaker 1: something far more sinister. They're willing to break into people's
Speaker 1: houses and frighten them in order to get the cars.
Speaker 1: And that was something that really is new that's crept
Speaker 1: up in the last decade or so. This wave of
Speaker 1: carthifts has morphed into a whole youth crime wave, which
Speaker 1: includes other stuff as well that goes hand in love
Speaker 1: with it. A lot of these kids are armed, they're
Speaker 1: carrying knives or machetes or some form of weapon, not
Speaker 1: so much guns.
Speaker 2: But they would if they could get them.
Speaker 1: The recent well publicized adventure of the Carlton coach Michael Voss,
Speaker 1: who grabbed an alleged car thief after he and an
Speaker 1: accoumptless rolled a stolen Mercedes in Hawthorne, this Vos episode
Speaker 1: underlines what we're talking about. You've got young people, clearly teenagers,
Speaker 1: taking high performance or expensive cars and keeping them for
Speaker 1: as many days as they possibly can, and driving around.
Speaker 2: At ridiculous speeds so that they roll them.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to drive a good color that
Speaker 1: fairly stupidly in order to be able to roll it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy stuff, which means that they are a
Speaker 1: constant threat to the rest of us. Not only are
Speaker 1: they going to hurt themselves too often, they hurt other
Speaker 1: people because they run red lights, they run through pedestrian lights,
Speaker 1: they lose control and hit foot paths. If the worst happens,
Speaker 1: they can run through footpaths and through front fences and
Speaker 1: hit people's houses. This is a terrible state of affairs,
Speaker 1: and already, of course, it has led to the deaths
Speaker 1: and serious injuries of innocent people. Innocent people like that
Speaker 1: young man who was driving home at night recently. Now
Speaker 1: that crash was at the intersection of Warregal Road and
Speaker 1: Highbury Road out in burbledash Burton area. The young man
Speaker 1: who died was in his twenties. I think he was
Speaker 1: an innocent party, just going about his business going home.
Speaker 1: Never got there because teenagers have stolen a car. They
Speaker 1: speeding through the streets and they run into him, and
Speaker 1: of course he's killed. The innocent art is killed, and
Speaker 1: the alleged bad guys they basically walk. They were not
Speaker 1: injured or not enough to hold them up. And so
Speaker 1: in Melbourne we have here a situation where it's alleged
Speaker 1: that some of these kids are repeat offenders, and some
Speaker 1: of them repeat offenders to a great extent. They have
Speaker 1: been grabbed for karth eft and for driving offenses, and
Speaker 1: for having machetes and knives, and they've been bailed over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. Interestingly, when Michael Voss grabbed
Speaker 1: the young guy the other day with the rolled over
Speaker 1: Mercedes in Hawthorne, it is said, and I believe it
Speaker 1: to be true, that when that alleged offender was searched,
Speaker 1: he had an edged weapon. He had a large knife
Speaker 1: or a small machete about his person. Now that tells
Speaker 1: you that, in a slightly different set of circumstances, had
Speaker 1: he not been grabbed while still shaken by a very strong,
Speaker 1: fast athletic man like Michael Voss, somebody like that lad
Speaker 1: with his concealed weapon could easily have hurt anybody who
Speaker 1: tried to apprehend him, or even got in his way
Speaker 1: or looked at him the wrong way.
Speaker 2: Upset by fear, upset by.
Speaker 1: Aggression, upset by adrenaline, he could easily pull out a
Speaker 1: weapon and do something very bad. And the fact that
Speaker 1: he's carrying it indicates that he's not thinking that straight.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty big deal and a pretty serious
Speaker 1: situation that we find ourselves in which there's two things
Speaker 1: about it. One is could it have been prevented? Well,
Speaker 1: you'd think perhaps it could have been at least ameliorated
Speaker 1: in the past. And it's interesting to note that it
Speaker 1: has a erupt into a crime wave in recent times
Speaker 1: partly because in the past the authorities, and I mean
Speaker 1: by that police, politicians and other authorities all deliberately seemed
Speaker 1: to turn a blind eye to it and didn't want
Speaker 1: to call it out. For what it was now. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons for that, I would suggest is that
Speaker 1: in the past, when we first saw these carjackings and
Speaker 1: these home invasions, I mean as long ago as twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: these things were happening. These things were starting to happen,
Speaker 1: and there was talk of teenage gangs. You know, there
Speaker 1: was talk among ordinary citizens who could see them congregating,
Speaker 1: and therefore there was talk in media stories of teenage gangs.
Speaker 1: And to some extent, some of these gangs were ethnic gangs.
Speaker 1: Some of them would appear to be sued in the gangs,
Speaker 1: some would appear to be Islander gangs, some would appear
Speaker 1: to be Middle Eastern gangs, some would appear to be
Speaker 1: gangs of none of the above, all sorts of different gangs. Again,
Speaker 1: we've always had some sort of gang culture of some sort.
Speaker 1: We had them in the sixties and the seventies, and
Speaker 1: now we've got them again. But arguably they're committing more
Speaker 1: serious crimes now. But in twenty fourteen, the police would
Speaker 1: not call them gangs because there was sort of political
Speaker 1: pressure not to the police would say, oh, no, well,
Speaker 1: there are groups. There are loose groups of young offenders
Speaker 1: who sometimes meet up and talk to each other and
Speaker 1: then go off and do things sometimes, but they leant
Speaker 1: over backwards not to call them gangs, because everybody was
Speaker 1: afraid that it would become some sort of knee jerk reaction,
Speaker 1: racist thing to actually describe what was happening with any accuracy.
Speaker 2: And we've probably.
Speaker 1: Come to regret the fact that more was not done then,
Speaker 1: because a stitch in time might have helped everyone, including
Speaker 1: those young people who were running.
Speaker 2: Off the rails.
Speaker 1: So we saw this sort of thing back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: It was then that reporters started to ask police about
Speaker 1: these youth gangs, and reporters were rebuffed routinely by police
Speaker 1: who back then adopted nothing to see here attitude. Oh no,
Speaker 1: there's not gangs. Oh no, don't exaggerate, We don't want
Speaker 1: to exaggerated. It's just isolated events. There's no sign of
Speaker 1: gangs as such, no sign of gangs per se. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, these groups just break up and whatever.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, by twenty sixteen, two years after that, we had
Speaker 1: the Moonber Riots, and that seemed to turn a spotlight
Speaker 1: on youth offenders and to crank.
Speaker 2: Up public pressure for the authorities to act.
Speaker 1: Now, the police of course, are nearly always the meat
Speaker 1: and the sandwich in these things, because police, to some
Speaker 1: extent are answerable to the criticisms of the public, but
Speaker 1: also they have to act in accordance with the orders
Speaker 1: passed down to them from high in the police force,
Speaker 1: and the police hierarchy to a large extent reflects the
Speaker 1: interests and biases of their political masters. So if you've
Speaker 1: got a police minister that belongs to a cabinet that
Speaker 1: belongs to a government that is very keen on saying
Speaker 1: there's no youth gangs, we haven't got a problem, the
Speaker 1: senior police will mouth that fairly dishonest platitude, and that
Speaker 1: will filter its way down to inspectors and senior sergeants
Speaker 1: and all the rest. But the fact that out on
Speaker 1: the street, all the young coppers on the beat know
Speaker 1: very well that it's wrong that there are gangs and
Speaker 1: they're doing bad things all the time. By twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: of the Moonber riots, it couldn't really be ignored by everybody,
Speaker 1: but police meet in the sandwich. They resented claims that
Speaker 1: they were racist. Police are in a bind here because
Speaker 1: if they said, look, you know, there's two or three
Speaker 1: groups of views and one lot of African appearance, and
Speaker 1: one lot of is something else, and one lot is
Speaker 1: something else. They know straight away that they will be
Speaker 1: criticized for that by people who are determined not to
Speaker 1: address the actual problem and the actual theft and the
Speaker 1: actual assaults. They just want to criticize police for perceptions
Speaker 1: of racism, which is really dodging the real issue. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't make life any.
Speaker 2: Easier for the police because they're.
Speaker 1: Ducking criticism from everywhere, and so they end up mouthing
Speaker 1: or well Ian euphemisms instead of just speaking the truth.
Speaker 1: Despite the euphemisms, despite the evasions, despite the attitude of
Speaker 1: nothing to see here, it was clear that in that
Speaker 1: eray fourteen fifteen sixteen, that there were plenty of youth
Speaker 1: gangs and they were doing plenty of bad things. Now,
Speaker 1: by twenty eighteen, this issue had actually generated its own
Speaker 1: edition of the ABC Current Affairs panel show Q and A,
Speaker 1: filmed in Dandyenong, which back then and to some extent
Speaker 1: now was and is a youth crime hotspot. The panel
Speaker 1: included a once prominent or then prominent police officer, that
Speaker 1: would be Stuart Bateson, who later hit a hurdle, a
Speaker 1: politician called Alan Tudsho later hit a hurdle, an African born.
Speaker 2: Lawyer who has not hit a hurdle.
Speaker 1: She's I think going very well and so she should
Speaker 1: and a crime reporter, alleged crime reporter that would be met.
Speaker 1: It was a time of peak denial of youth gangs
Speaker 1: now Q and A produced by the ABC's finest out
Speaker 1: of in a suburban Sydney in a suburban Melbourne. The
Speaker 1: people that produced it ensured that the audience gathered that
Speaker 1: night was diverse, but apart from a handful of outnumbered attendees,
Speaker 1: the prepared questions seemed not to reflect the concerns of
Speaker 1: a wide range of ordinary people, many of them migrants themselves.
Speaker 1: What I meant by that long sentences that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people out in our suburbs who were born
Speaker 1: somewhere else, came to this country to build a life
Speaker 1: for themselves and their families, work hard. The whole migrant
Speaker 1: story who are frightened were back in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 1: many of them now frightened of youth gangs what we're
Speaker 1: going to call youth gangs or gangs that were used
Speaker 1: and some of them got older and became gangs that
Speaker 1: are now in their twenties whatever, gangs of young criminals.
Speaker 1: And I know this because before this event, I had
Speaker 1: gone out to truck a Nina out in Melbourne's out
Speaker 1: of West. Not long ago it was paddocks full of
Speaker 1: rocks and thistles and tiger snakes. And now it's full
Speaker 1: of houses. And the houses are relatively cheap compared with
Speaker 1: the eastern suburbs, and so it has attracted a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are keen to buy cheaper houses. And
Speaker 1: there I found, in the privacy of their own homes,
Speaker 1: people very friendly, very keen.
Speaker 2: To talk about this.
Speaker 1: If they took you inside off the street so no
Speaker 1: one could see, they would take you in and talk
Speaker 1: to you. And I talked to a range of people.
Speaker 1: I talked to an Indian grandmother, this lovely woman. She'd
Speaker 1: moved across there because she saw a chain to buy
Speaker 1: a better house for less money than when she lived
Speaker 1: in box Hill or somewhere. And she went out there
Speaker 1: and she said, I really regret it now, moving from
Speaker 1: where I was. I said why, She said, I'll show
Speaker 1: you why. She just moved the curtains a little bit.
Speaker 1: She was quite nervous about the people outside. She moved
Speaker 1: the curtains a bit and said, see. Then they frightened me.
Speaker 1: And these big, tall kids of African appearance, seventeen year
Speaker 1: olds walking home from wherever they'd been, maybe school, maybe not,
Speaker 1: don't know where. And she said, I'm scared of them
Speaker 1: because they've caused a lot of trouble around here. You know.
Speaker 2: They broke that down the park.
Speaker 1: They had a fight, and then they broke bottles, and
Speaker 1: then they lit a fire, and then they break windows
Speaker 1: and whatever, steel cars. And she went through it all,
Speaker 1: and she had examples of the alleged atrocities, and we
Speaker 1: had a chat, and she gave me a drink of
Speaker 1: water because it was a hot day. And it was
Speaker 1: very interesting. And then I went around through a park
Speaker 1: where there was a bit of a cleat of youth,
Speaker 1: and I tried to talk to a couple of them.
Speaker 2: I had a bit of a.
Speaker 1: Chat, and they were reasonably sullen and not that communicative,
Speaker 1: but that's all right. And then it went over and
Speaker 1: spoke to a group of Chinese students. I would believe
Speaker 1: them to be Chinese students, but they were students who
Speaker 1: also worked to make some money to live, so they
Speaker 1: worked at markets and things. They fit that sort of
Speaker 1: stereotype Chinese Asian student thing, hard working, polite, careful sort
Speaker 1: of people, very unthreatening. And again they took me into
Speaker 1: their house and said, yeah, we're very frightened here because
Speaker 1: see out the front of our place, see that where
Speaker 1: there's been a fire. And they pointed to the bitchumen
Speaker 1: where somebody had smashed a bottle of some sort of
Speaker 1: accelerant like kerosene or whatever and burnt it and there
Speaker 1: was broken glass and there was a big scorch mark
Speaker 1: and who was melted bitchumen right outside their house in
Speaker 1: the middle of the street. And they said, they just
Speaker 1: do stuff like these young guys.
Speaker 2: There's youth.
Speaker 1: They wander around, they smash stuff. They're obviously off their
Speaker 1: heads on something, smash stuff, light fires, throw bottles, scare everybody.
Speaker 2: We're very scared here. We don't like it here, but.
Speaker 1: We're sort of stuck, and we're very careful when we
Speaker 1: go out, and if they're in the street, we don't
Speaker 1: go near them, and so on and so forth. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's two examples from Track and Nina. Third example around
Speaker 1: the corner, go and find somebody else. Then I find
Speaker 1: sort of Joe Blogs. You know Kevin Smith and his
Speaker 1: wife Maureen who lived there, and they had similar.
Speaker 2: Stories to tell.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, it's pretty rough and the week
Speaker 1: Fridays and Saturday nights, it's very ordinary, and we don't
Speaker 1: want our kids out anywhere in the street because of
Speaker 1: the trouble it's caused and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And really everybody in that district was feeling the effects
Speaker 1: of the anti social activities of youth gangs. And I
Speaker 1: don't care what ethnic composition the youth gangs were. What
Speaker 1: they did was making life hard for a whole range
Speaker 1: of people, many of whom were migrants themselves. So this
Speaker 1: is not a race thing. This is just some people
Speaker 1: behaving badly and other people being affected by it. Let's
Speaker 1: get that straight. I go to the Q and a
Speaker 1: recording session at Dandy Longtown Hall or wherever it was,
Speaker 1: and I'm in a taxi and there's a taxi driver
Speaker 1: who I would say he was certainly born overseas. I'd
Speaker 1: say he was probably Lebanese, or he might have been Greek,
Speaker 1: I can't remember now. And he is a few years
Speaker 1: ago and he was probably in his fifties. Abe a
Speaker 1: guy with a house and kids and the whole catastrophe
Speaker 1: and working twelve hours a day. And he's the same thing.
Speaker 1: He said, Oh, these bloody kids, you know, they're always
Speaker 1: causing trouble, and they try and steal taxis and they
Speaker 1: get a fair and then they run away and they
Speaker 1: do this and that, and they make life a misery
Speaker 1: for people like him. So when we go to the
Speaker 1: Q and A recording, I don't hear anybody in the
Speaker 1: audience that's you know, the Indian grandmother, the Asian student,
Speaker 1: the Lebanese taxi driver, all the people who had sort
Speaker 1: of grievances about youth gangs. They weren't in there having
Speaker 1: their say about youth gangs. What we had was all
Speaker 1: these questions prepared by people who were asked to prepare them,
Speaker 1: who are basically preparing bar the odd one bar perhaps
Speaker 1: one Dorothy Dix's, for the purposes of making it look
Speaker 1: as if this whole thing is media buzz about youth
Speaker 1: gangs is contrived. It's artificial, it's borderline racist. It's you know,
Speaker 1: the wicked media holding hands with the wicked police to
Speaker 1: pick on really nice people like our lady lawyer here,
Speaker 1: which was a bit rich, really but that's the way
Speaker 1: it went, that's the way it was presented. And no
Speaker 1: one there, including myself, apart from one comment I made,
Speaker 1: no one there really felt they could take on City Hall.
Speaker 1: It was a stacked deck. But I will say one thing,
Speaker 1: and I did say one thing that night. A few
Speaker 1: weeks before this, Peter Dutton, who I think was then
Speaker 1: in government, he had been interviewed on Sydney Radio, and
Speaker 1: as happens on Sydney.
Speaker 2: Radio, the debate gets fairly basic.
Speaker 1: And he had said some sweeping generalization, albeit one based
Speaker 1: on truth, and he said down in Melbourne people are
Speaker 1: frightened to go out because of youth gangs, or because
Speaker 1: of African youth gangs or something like that. This created
Speaker 1: a bit of a stir. People, instead of thinking is
Speaker 1: this right or is this wrong, picked him up on
Speaker 1: it and said, oh, you know, he'd be wrong. Instead
Speaker 1: of looking at the facts of the matter, whether the
Speaker 1: youth gangs would doing this, they wanted to just pot
Speaker 1: Dutton and pot you know, Allen Jones the radio program,
Speaker 1: which is fair enough. But one of the responses that
Speaker 1: was made to Dutton's comments on radio was from a
Speaker 1: then Supreme Court judge Lex slavery, very well known Victorian judge, former,
Speaker 1: very well known criminal barrister, extremely accomplished barrister, very well
Speaker 1: thought of as a barrister, good lawyer. I think he'd
Speaker 1: done his share of prosecutions as well, maybe respect the
Speaker 1: judge as far as I know. But it was I
Speaker 1: think a Saturday night, a Friday night or a Saturday night.
Speaker 1: And when these comments of Peter Dutton's wor aired more widely,
Speaker 1: apparently mister Lazary was sitting in a restaurant or a
Speaker 1: friend's house or somewhere at Mansfield. Now, he wasn't in
Speaker 1: Druga Nina or Werriby or Dandy Nong. Funnily enough, He's
Speaker 1: at a friend's place or a nice, cheeky little restaurant
Speaker 1: in Mansfield, which is the most comfortable, safe, middle class
Speaker 1: town in Australia. Manfield it is the gateway to Melbourne's
Speaker 1: snowfields a buller.
Speaker 2: It is where people.
Speaker 1: Pull up in range rovers to fill with fuel and
Speaker 1: to buy a few good bottles of wine before they
Speaker 1: head up the hill to the snowfields that is Mansfield.
Speaker 1: It's a very safe place if you don't fall off
Speaker 1: your snow skis or hit a wombat with your range rover,
Speaker 1: or run over a Geelong grammar boy who's at Timbertop.
Speaker 1: If none of those things happen, you are very safe.
Speaker 1: And believe me, Lex Slasury and his friends and his family,
Speaker 1: they were very safe at Mansfield. And so he's tweeted
Speaker 1: a tweet. His comment that he tweeted was breaking. There
Speaker 1: are citizens out in Mansfield tonight and they're not worried.
Speaker 2: Well, gee whizzy, Now that was sharp. It was tart,
Speaker 2: It was sarcastic.
Speaker 1: It was sort of funny. I don't think it's funny,
Speaker 1: but some people his ilk would think it was funny.
Speaker 2: No doubt. But it wasn't wise.
Speaker 1: It was very unwise, which is probably why as a
Speaker 1: sitting Supreme Court judge, I think next day he.
Speaker 2: Took that down.
Speaker 1: It disappeared, but too late. The damage you've been done.
Speaker 1: Now have you ever heard such a tone death message?
Speaker 2: This is the sort of.
Speaker 1: Thing that is not going to reassure Indian grandmothers and
Speaker 1: Chinese students and Lebanese taxi drivers that everything's okay where
Speaker 1: they live.
Speaker 2: Because Lex Lazri.
Speaker 1: And his group feel safe in Mansfield on a Saturday night,
Speaker 1: It's hardly the point which I'm sure he realized when
Speaker 1: he thought about it later, because he's not a fool.
Speaker 1: He's a very clever man, and he probably regretted saying
Speaker 1: that he may not regret the sentiment, but he probably
Speaker 1: regrets expressing it, stingpointing. Six years later, Lex Slattery in
Speaker 1: an interview with that most excellent broadcaster Neil Mitchell, who
Speaker 1: I have to admit is a longtime colleague and friend
Speaker 1: of mine from decades ago, Lex Slaztery, he now concedes,
Speaker 1: six years later, that there is a very real threat
Speaker 1: posed by youth crime. Youth crime, I must add, which
Speaker 1: is now migrated from the outer suburbs into affluent areas
Speaker 1: where these tear away kids steal high performance cars and someone.
Speaker 1: In this very frank interview with Neil Mitchell, Lex Slattery
Speaker 1: said that youth crime was a quote horrifying problem that
Speaker 1: couldn't be ignored and was not diminishing. Now it's not
Speaker 1: that Lex who incidentally plays drums in his band, the
Speaker 1: Lex Pistols. It's not that he is suddenly marching to
Speaker 1: the beat of a different drum. He is still the
Speaker 1: same humane lawyer who represented two Australian citizens who were
Speaker 1: executed as part of the Bally nine drug smuggling case.
Speaker 1: Lex Lazrie was one of the Australian lawyers who spent
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time and effort and tears trying
Speaker 1: to help those guys and stop them from being executed,
Speaker 1: which I think is one of the things.
Speaker 2: That has greatly affected his life.
Speaker 1: So he's a humane person with good instincts, but doesn't
Speaker 1: mean he's always makes the right call on everything. But
Speaker 1: it's now clear to him that well meaning libertarians can
Speaker 1: no longer paper over the cracks in the justice system
Speaker 1: that daily and weekly let a procession of young offenders
Speaker 1: run free on bail because magistrates and judges are so
Speaker 1: reluctant to jail them. Now it might be that there
Speaker 1: is no room for all these kids. There's all sorts
Speaker 1: of reasons for this, I guess, but I've heard it
Speaker 1: said in the last twenty four hours that the young
Speaker 1: fellow that Michael Voss grabbed, the one with the machete,
Speaker 1: allegedly the one who allegedly stolen Mercedes spends or was
Speaker 1: with the person who stole it and who rolled it
Speaker 1: and could have killed a family or anything. It's said
Speaker 1: that that young man has received bail. Now, what do
Speaker 1: you have to do not to be bailed? You steel cars,
Speaker 1: you drive in a culpably dangerous fashion, and you are
Speaker 1: carrying a weapon that is both concealed and is big
Speaker 1: enough to kill somebody. If that is not a reason
Speaker 1: for denying bail, what is What.
Speaker 2: Do you have to do?
Speaker 1: Apparently you would have to actually kill somebody. Police are
Speaker 1: still cagey about commenting in this politically charged debate. They're
Speaker 1: still wary of criticism by crime deniers. Crime denies such
Speaker 1: as Victoria's Attorney General Jacqueline Symes, who last year, now
Speaker 1: get this. Last year, Jacqueline Simes scuppered changes to the
Speaker 1: youth's bail reforms that have been proposed and was openly
Speaker 1: dismissive when she was asked about it. She said this,
Speaker 1: I do not want a discussion about a youth crime
Speaker 1: crisis that doesn't exist. That's what she said when she
Speaker 1: was asked about it by a reporter. She then refused
Speaker 1: to say anything else. She said, no, there is no
Speaker 1: youth crime crisis, and I'm not talking in the story.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, missus Attorney general. With political masters
Speaker 1: like that, it's no wonder that police are careful what
Speaker 1: they say, but at least now their actions speak louder
Speaker 1: than words. Every night, every night, this is out there
Speaker 1: in the suburbs in Melbourne, these police helicopters. I heard
Speaker 1: them last night where I lived. The choppers out there
Speaker 1: are the Dog Squad, Canine Unit, and up to seventy
Speaker 1: officers are tied up trying to catch teenage home invaders
Speaker 1: and car thieves before they actually kill another innocent person
Speaker 1: by running over them or maybe attacking them with a machete.
Speaker 1: These culpable driving fatalities, knife crime, and these paid arsons.
Speaker 1: A lot of these arsons of tobacco shops are in
Speaker 1: fact committed by this same cohort of youth criminals because
Speaker 1: they are mad and bad and stupid and very easy
Speaker 1: to get hold of. And for the price of a
Speaker 1: pair of high end sneakers a few hundred bucks, they
Speaker 1: will steal a car, take a few letters of petrol,
Speaker 1: and go to a tobacco shop or any other venue
Speaker 1: and fire bombit for somebody higher up the organized crime chain.
Speaker 1: That is another reason why it's important that the police
Speaker 1: have the backing and the tools and the judicial backing
Speaker 1: to grab these young offenders and get them locked up
Speaker 1: or off the street so that they aren't out there
Speaker 1: offending and reoffending and reoffending because they are doing very
Speaker 1: dangerous things lunatic high speed chases, armed.
Speaker 2: Ready to fight or kill.
Speaker 1: And committing firebombings that will inevitably kill innocent people. One
Speaker 1: of these firebombs is going to burn down a shop
Speaker 1: with an apartment above it, and we will see little
Speaker 1: children burnt to death because of this absolute terrible stuff.
Speaker 1: And undoubtedly when the police grabbed the person that lit
Speaker 1: the fire that kills the babies, which will happen one day,
Speaker 1: we will find that those people have been arrested before
Speaker 1: and have been.
Speaker 2: Released on bail.
Speaker 1: This is why this issue is important. Things have started
Speaker 1: to change a bit. The reality is so obvious now
Speaker 1: that the fashion has swung around a bit. Even the ABC,
Speaker 1: which in twenty eighteen was so painfully politically correct about this,
Speaker 1: is now starting to cover youth crime as guess what
Speaker 1: legitimate news and current affairs. It's only taken them a
Speaker 1: decade to get around to it. Meanwhile, the police are
Speaker 1: guarded in what they say, but determined in what they do.
Speaker 1: One good point they make, and it's a good point,
Speaker 1: is that youth crime has become an equal opportunity pastime
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, Unlike ten years ago, young offenders
Speaker 1: come in all sizes, shapes and races, many of them
Speaker 1: in the same gangs. The fact is many offenders, regardless
Speaker 1: of where their parents might have come from, were born here.
Speaker 1: And there's one veteran cop out there, good friend of
Speaker 1: my colleague, Mark Butler, who is getting sick of demands
Speaker 1: that young offenders be deported. You know, people say, oh,
Speaker 1: why don't they send them back to where they come from,
Speaker 1: and why don't you deport them and all this, and
Speaker 1: this old copper says, well, where do you want me
Speaker 1: to deport them to Casey Hospital because that's where most
Speaker 1: of them were born.
Speaker 2: A lot of these kids that.
Speaker 1: Are causing trouble in twenty twenty four were born right here.
Speaker 2: So let's get used to it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald
Speaker 1: Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.
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