Peter Dutton says Victorians scared to go out because of 'African gang violence'

Victorians are “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence”, Peter Dutton has said, in an interview attacking the supposed lack of deterrence of crime in Victoria.

The home affairs minister told 2GB on Wednesday that Victorians were “bemused” when they looked “at the jokes of sentences being handed down” due to “political correctness that’s taken hold”.

“There’s no deterrence there at the moment,” he said.

The federal Coalition government and Victorian opposition have stepped up rhetorical attacks on the Andrews Labor government using a string of high-profile incidents to claim that “African street gangs” are on the rise because certain nationalities such as Sudanese are over-represented in statistics – although crime overall is in decline.

The Victorian deputy police commissioner, Shane Patton, has reassured the public the police are taking youth crime seriously and said that “networked criminal offenders” are not technically “gangs” because they lack any organised structure. Deputy commissioner Andrew Crisp last week said police also consider it better not to elevate their status.

Dutton said the Victorian government had “wrapped the police force in this politically correct conversation, which I think they’re trying to break out of and do the right thing, but the state government has been caught flat-footed”.

Dutton blamed Daniel Andrews, calling for the premier to pass stricter bail laws and to stop appointing “civil libertarians” as magistrates.

“When the police are given a direction from the premier and state government which is really a go-soft message, it’s unacceptable,” Dutton said. “The Victorian public is really outraged by some of the goings on ... the reality is people are scared to go out to restaurants of a night time because they’re followed home by these gangs, home invasion and cars are stolen.”

Acting Victorian premier, Tim Pallas, responded to the claim Victorians were too scared to go out to dinner by recommending Werribee’s Park Hotel, in Melbourne’s west:

Dutton said politicians “need to call it for what it is – of course it’s African gang violence”, despite acknowledging there were “many good people in the community” who had condemned criminal actions.

Dutton said the federal government needed to “weed out the people who have done the wrong thing”, including deporting people who are not Australian citizens.

He linked the issue to federal Labor’s refusal to pass a stricter citizenship test, because he said if people “are not prepared to integrate” by sending their children to school and preventing them “wandering the streets at night committing offences” then “they don’t belong in Australian society”.

Dutton suggested the court system was releasing people on bail who then committed crimes “hours later”.

“[Judges] are not above public scrutiny,” he said. “I get criticised all the time [when I say] that some of the decisions you see I think are pathetically weak ... If you’ve got people let out on bail from serious offences ... it’s no wonder police are left scratching their heads.”

Asked about the case of a 15-year-old granted bail after allegedly attempting to kill people with a motor vehicle, Dutton said that on his judgment a magistrate in New South Wales or Queensland would have held the child in custody.

In 2017 Turnbull government ministers Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar narrowly avoided contempt of court charges by apologising for comments during an active terrorism case calling Victorian court of appeal justices “hard-left activist judges” who engaged in an “ideological experiment” in sentencing.

Victoria’s chief justice, Marilyn Warren, warned them that – but for the apology – there was a prima facie case against the three because their comments appeared to attempt to influence the court.

On Tuesday the deputy Labor leader, Tanya Plibersek, said it was “undoubted that many Australians aren’t feeling safe” and that people in Victoria particularly “feel that there is a risk that they will be the victim of gang-related violence”.

“It’s very important that commonwealth and state governments work together to reassure people that they can live safely in their communities, in their own homes,” she said.

Plibersek accused the Turnbull government of “[shoving] responsibility onto the state government” while cutting $180m from the Australian federal police.