A deliberate 'failure of government', as described by Stever Price:
Law and order in our state is now so bad one local council is buying ads warning residents to lock up their doggie doors. Is that really where we are at in the great state of Victoria?
Law and order in Victoria now is so out of control one local council is buying ads warning you to lock your doggie door.
I’m not kidding. It follows mobile signs on freeways with police telling you to lock your doors at night.
A sign on the gate of a local park near me poses this question: “Going out – have you locked your doggie door?” Authorised by the Victoria Police and Stonnington Council.
Is that really where we are at in the great state of Victoria, a council warning that your home could be robbed by some scumbag crawling through a doggie door.
The sign goes on to warn about intruders and advises you to lock your doggie door at night and when you are not at home. Who wants to live in a place where home security involves putting a latch on a pet door and securing it when you go for a morning walk.
Victoria, thanks to a politically correct government that wants to avoid at any cost locking up young offenders, preferring to bail repeat criminals, is paying the price. Ignoring petty crime has a cascading effect with respect and fear of police disappearing.
A place like Chapel St has become ground zero for this type of offending.
Drug affected and mentally unstable people who are often homeless treat retail businesses as their personal property.
A Liquorland bottle shop between High Street and Dandenong Rd now has a daylight locked door policy after a recent spate of snatch and grab robberies. In one week, the store was hit 30 times, traumatising the shop attendant and forcing the lockdown.
CCTV captured the moment thieves broke into an Armadale home through a doggie door last year. Picture: Supplied
Despite providing police with CCTV footage and identifying the culprit, nothing has happened. This is a stark example of a statewide government failure to protect Victorians as repeat offenders know there is no punishment for so called minor crimes. Major supermarkets have posted security guards in stores like Coles or Woolworths, but they are instructed not to intervene if someone walks out with arm loads of stolen groceries.
So bad has retail theft become that the Australian Retailers Association has this week put a price of $9bn a year on the cost to business and want the issue raised at next month’s roundtable meeting in Canberra.
Ironically that same Victorian government that does nothing about this increases fines for minor traffic offences like travelling at 45km/h in a 40km zone with onerous fines and a heavy loss of demerit points. Rob a bottle shop, crawl through a doggie door and steal a car and you are likely back on the street the same day.
Chapel St has become ground zero for petty crime. Picture: Grace Frost
Dare use a mobile phone by touching it sitting at a traffic light – which you shouldn’t do – and you will be fined a whopping $611 and lose four demerit points. Steal a bag full of bourbon and coke cans from a bottle shop or fill a shopping trolley with stolen groceries and walk out without paying and you are home free.
Police are too stretched and the crimes so rampant that criminals know it’s a free for all.
Now, so worried that law and order could cost her another election victory for Labor in November next year, Premier Allan has decided to make another change to existing bail laws.
Bail laws were tightened back in 2018 but under sustained pressure from activists they were loosened in 2023 and the sort of crime I’ve described exploded.
Police were then told the crime of public drunkenness was no longer to be policed and the useless drunk tanks were established which are nothing more than virtue signalling.
The toughened bail laws that went before parliament this week are of course useless unless magistrates and judges follow them.
Already Indigenous justice advocates have called the tougher laws a “disaster waiting to happen”. They claim the laws will “inevitably result in more Aboriginal deaths in custody”, a big claim that will scare the hell out of Allan and her frontbench including Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny and Police Minister Anthony Carbines.
It was activism from Indigenous groups that led to the bail laws being softened in 2023. Again, those same activists are making claims that tougher laws will drive up the number of people in prison (isn’t that the idea) and then this outrageous claim where they say the laws will condemn generations of Indigenous children and adults to the trauma of pre-trial detention.
How about trying this idea: use your activism and government funding to convince Indigenous people not to break the law and then they won’t end up in jail, waiting to go to court.
Dumped in the middle of this crime and bail mess is our new Police Commissioner, Kiwi Mike Bush.
He did the media rounds this week on radio, TV and in print and probably wisely batted away any tough questions and answered pretty much with platitudes. My worry with the new Commissioner is his time serving as the national head of police in NZ under one of the wokest politicians of all time, Jacinda Ardern, pretty much a national version of Jacinta Allan.
Bush now needs to come out swinging against crimes against innocent Victorians, like home invasions, and get his suburban stations to patrol shopping strips and shopping centres with a zero tolerance towards retail theft.
He also needs to ignore calls from vocal activists who have contributed greatly to the mess we are in today.
Most importantly he has to have the courage to stand up to the Jacinda Ardern version of politics in Victoria Jacinta Allan. Good luck with that.
Likes
• Olympians from the 1980 Moscow Games honoured in federal parliament this week.
• Victorian farmers making it clear with another protest this week that they are not going to surrender their properties to transmission lines.
• Oscar Piastri’s turn five trouncing of teammate Lando Norris at Spa.
• Donald Trump’s driver splitting the fairway on the opening shot of his new Scottish golf club.
Dislikes
• The amount of scoreboard advertisements now allowed after every break in play at the MCG.
• Prime Minister Albanese standing in front of just the Torres-Strait Islander flag telling the world of our social media ban.
• That same ban nothing more than virtue signalling young people will work their way around it easily.
• Pro-Palestinian protesters allowed to force a weekend shutdown of the NGV.
Source: Herald Sun