Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A great state, as the member for Goldstein said. Victorians, apparently, are terrified to go out for dinner. The politics of fear is the lowest form of politics. The business model of dividing the community, scaring the crap out of everyone based on picking out statistics, is the lowest form of politics. I've seen this in local governments, and shame on this government, shame on this minister, for running this line. His attacks on African Australians are disgraceful.

There's no point going to the ins and outs of crime statistics. The media reporting is divorced, in many cases, from reality. Some of it is real; there are issues, and they should be dealt with. I say very clearly: crime should be dealt with firmly. Crime should be dealt with firmly. Crime should be dealt with firmly. Hansard, that is not tedious repetition; it is repetition to make a point, so I hope it's in there three times. But it is better to prevent it. Crime should be dealt with firmly, but it is better to prevent it. I do not believe that there is any member in this chamber who disagrees with that. But community safety, in reality, is a mixture of reality and perception. If you scare the crap out of people, you make people feel less safe, even in suburbs where crime has gone down. Even in Victoria, where crime has gone down by six or seven per cent in the last statistics, people are terrified because statistics are being misrepresented. That is a disgrace and anyone involved in that should be ashamed. There's an age-old truism for me: if you have young men in any human society on the planet sitting around, not engaged in education, with no hope for the future, being locked out of the employment market, they will do dumb stuff. That's a fact.

I tell the story of the Sandown Lions soccer club. I went down there two weeks ago. They sent me an email and I actually shocked them because I rang them back at nine in the morning, an hour after I got their email because I was doing my emails. It was quiet, at the end of January. I went down to their training at 7.30 at night in Noble Park. They're a fantastic team; 90 per cent are young South Sudanese guys in their 20s. They're working. The club captain works for the NBN and studied here. There's a teacher, a truck driver and people running their own businesses. They explained to me the vision for the club. They bailed it out a few years ago. It had run out of money. They put their hand in their pockets for five grand. They've got a women's team starting this year. God knows how, but we're going to get them a grant from the Victorian government. We're working with Daniel Andrews; it's in his state electorate. But their dream is to start an under-18s team because they're ashamed of some of the kids with no fathers who are running off the rails and they're trying to do the right thing. So they've gone around to businesses in the area and said, 'Can you give us some sponsorship?' They were very insightful. They said, 'Look, we're not like the Greek community that's been here for decades. We don't have rich businesspeople to give us money and support us, so we need a bit of support.' They got lectures, based on articles in the paper, that they had to improve their attitude, pull up their socks and come back when they'd improved their attitude. I said, 'What—stop being black?' They said, 'Yep, that's pretty much what they meant.' So, if anyone out there listening at home to the Fed Chamber wants to give some sponsorship to this fantastic club, we're helping them build a prospectus and we'll do what we can.

What worries me is the lack of evidence. I actually don't disagree that there are some important issues raised about what to do with young offenders at risk of violent extremism. There may be unpalatable, unpopular methods warranted, but it should go to the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. There is not the evidence in this report to say, 'Send it to COAG; the case is made'—because it's not. Send it to the law enforcement committee if you want the Commonwealth parliament to express a view and send it to COAG. Then the evidence can be gathered. I hope the next speaker will talk about the excellent recommendations 1 to 14, which I applaud. I didn't quite get to those!

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