By Michael Giles
VICTORIA was the laughingstock of a joint awards night for the Victorian and NSW country newspaper associations at Yarrawonga last Friday night.
“How well’s Victoria going?” asked the NSW-based comedian hosting the event.
“They’ve adopted a new five-bin system down there. The machete bins go out every other week!”
Funny right, but also an indictment on Victoria’s biggest problem right now, affecting not only the community but clearly, our reputation.
In this column, we’ve previously preached that a knee-jerk reaction to Victoria’s burgeoning crime rate, involving harsher penalties and tougher bail laws, isn’t the answer.
And honestly, what’s a machete bin going to achieve?
Victoria Police have consistently maintained that the response to crime needs to be a whole-of-community approach and the Victorian Coroner Ingrid Giles (no relation) underscored that last week when she handed down her findings into the 2020 death of Solomone Taufe’ulungaki, who was bashed to death with a baseball bat in a shopping centre carpark at Brimbank.
“The evidence before me demonstrates that youth knife crime (like all youth offending) represents a complex issue rooted in a broad range of socio-economic factors… In this sense, the responsibility to prevent further fatalities from youth knife crime requires a whole-of-community response that addresses the reasons such crimes are being committed in the first place.”
Hallelujah, finally some commonsense and in the next few weeks you’ll hear how the Inverloch police and local community groups, including the local Lions club, are taking up the challenge of changing youth behaviours in a positive setting.
Interestingly enough, the same newspaper conference heard from Peter Norris, son of Clarry Norris, one of Australia’s most notorious criminals, about how one or two isolated acts of kindness changed his life (see his new book ‘The Bank Robber’s Boy’).
That’s going on every week in football-netball clubs, soccer, cricket and swimming clubs and basketball associations where youth from all backgrounds are motivated to take responsibility for their actions, to learn the lessons of discipline, hard work, leadership, sacrifice, self-control and other life skills in a fun, team-based environment.
Leaders of any of these clubs can tell you how the involvement has changed dozens of lives for the better.
Former Bass Coast Mayor and operations manager of the West Gippsland Football Netball Competition Brett Tessari can attest to that, and he’s also of the belief that the AFL, with all its billions, should be doing a lot more to keep the 16s, 17s and 18-year-olds engaged, not only for the benefit of the game but also the overall development of country and suburban youth.
They should be part of the response to crime, as should our major companies and corporations.
Which is why it’s an absolute tragedy that a previous Bass Coast Shire Council wasted $34 million-plus on the Berninneit Cultural Centre in Cowes, where $2 million to $3 million would have done the job, when there was such a glaring need for sporting fields, courts and facilities in Cowes, notwithstanding the sell-out crowd at the performance by the Victorian State Concert Orchestra there last Sunday.
What’s the fallout from not being able to accommodate those that want to play, let alone trying to attract disaffected youth? Huge.
As much as Bass Coast made a mistake committing so much of its scarce resources to an under-utilised cultural centre, the rise in crime across Victoria is a complex problem needing research, recommendations and a whole-of-community response.
Any help that our sporting and community organisations get will always be put to good use building a better, safer community.