After a welcome absence in 2006, Laura Norder has taken up residence in Victoria for the election campaign. And the conservatives have her front and center, as their campaign ads show.
Their key claim – Victorians are living in fear of rising violent crime:
Labor’s 11 years of failure and the Liberals plan to change Victoria for the better. Under John Brumby, violent crime has reached record highs and assaults are up, but police are spending less time on the streets protecting Victorians and more time behind a desk doing paperwork. Many Victorian families are living in real fear and face rising levels of violent crime and too few police on the frontline to protect them. Labor spends the least per person on policing of any state. Since Labor came to power, assaults have increased from 19,000 incidents in 1999/2000 to 34,981 incidents last year.
Their response? The usual. 1600, wait, there’s more, 2640 additional police and protective services offices – and to abolish suspended sentencing. Labor, is offering, amongst other things 2100 new cops and that mother of all placebos, CCTV cameras (which don’t reduce violent crime – but don’t tell either of the major parties that).
But let’s stop a minute. Is violent crime actually rising, and if so, how much?
The source for the Liberal Party’s numbers are Victoria Police’s crime statistics, and the raw numbers on the assaults appear to be accurate. However, there’s at least two reasons to be skeptical that quoting assault numbers is indicative of huge rises in violent crime.
The first is that Victoria’s population has risen substantially since 1999/2000, which accounts for some, but not all of the rise.
However, there’s also the question of family violence, the reported levels of which have increased a lot over the past few years. However, I’d bet considerable amounts of money that the family violence isn’t new – what’s new is the willingness of the victims to report it.
Unfortunately, the police don’t provide a detailed breakdown of those statistics, but they do claim the following in their most recent statistics summary:
In terms of a rate per 100,000 population, crime against the person has increased by 0.7%. In 2009/2010 there were 45,385 offences of crime against the person recorded. This is an increase of 2.9% compared
with 2008/2009. In 2009/2010, total crime against the person offences not arising from family incidents as a rate per 100,000 population decreased by 1.0% compared to 2008/2009 and have decreased by 0.6% since 2000/2001.
While there are any number of complexities not dealt with in the available statistics (for instance, the possibility that assaults may be resulting in more serious injuries) if we have a real increase in violent crime, it seems a major part of it is taking place inside our homes, not on our streets.
Accordingly, I wait with anticipation for the Coalition to announce their policies to use those extra police to enforce AVOs, their funding of extra women’s shelters, and so on. Anybody want to give odds on that happening?
I wonder how “legal” in the strict, or at least ethical sense, it is for Feral Horse to have his secret police clocking up info on anti logging protesters, doing the loggng vandals work for them.
When they hand this information over to them, like Judas dobbing in Christ, at the expense of freedom of speech and the environment, in return for the thirty pieces of silver.
But would they then have the character of even a Judas, who at least felt ashamed enough of himself, to try to make amends whilst suffering a healthy dose of remorse.
Laura Norder is a feature of EVERY State Election and used by any Opposition against a Government.
Bob Carr for example used it in NSW to great effect based on focus group fearings rather than actual evidence.
The Radio shockjocks thrive on this and this is the area they have the most influence. State politics
I hope they don’t ‘clean up’ the rail corridors too much. The graf from Moorabbin through Mentone is often superb. Bentleigh station had some decent pieces as well, but they’ve recently been replaced with Yves Klein Grey.
Gee, Laura Norder. Why, I remember this fallen woman, in earlier times as a heroin. But she had been reduced to brazenly doing the rounds forty years ago during the Vietnam protests, by the McCarthyists.
Now, exhausted by overuse and lobotomised by her gutless pimps, she totters about on her walking frame, as a witless factotum to neolib politicians desperate to avoid action on real issues for fear of the Murdoch/msm wolf, reduced to preying off their communities rather than defending or nurtuing them.
I actually really really hate the tired ‘Laura Norder’ trope. The actual phrase. Partly for obvious personal reasons, Sure, but also because it lends itself very readily to classically misogynistic imagery of the kind on display in a comment not a million miles away from this one.
But wait! Jail terms for politicians who mislead the public during election campaigns! A new Police task force to deal only with legal compliance by elected officials! Said task force to have no discretion about laying charges when criminal offences are detected! Non-complying property developments must be made compliant or they will be forfeited to the crown – retrospective approval outlawed! Law enforcement vehicles to be subject to anti-hoon laws!
(trains to run on time! speed limits to be obeyed! weather to be fine on cup day!)
Laura, If its my posts that trouble you, be reassured.
As I implied above, it is not Laura N that is the problem, she was in her younger days a true McKillopian heroine, as antidote to grim Hobbesianism, “red in tooth and claw”.
Our objection is to her misappriopriation by pimps representative of those forces, that, in her right mind, she once battled and tried to tame; ignorance, autho ritarianism, secrecy, lawlessness, corruption…
Please, Laura, dont miss the forest for the trees, in the quest for politically correct speech, it is surely the least of ourt problems when we faced with the dismantling of civil society, itself.
But it is nice to see you posting again, so long since the last one.
Paul, without wishing to prolong a slightly offtopic argument, I’d suggest you may have missed Laura@5′s deeper point in your apology.
BTW, Could one ask what your thoughts on the (derailed)thread topic; the threat to Victorian civil society itself, were (if any)?
The other, peripheral, stuff could be covered at another thread?
H&R: As far as graffiti goes, I agree that the best of it is actually interesting to view. However, I don’t share the views of street artists who seem to think they have an inherent right to appropriate public space for displaying their work.
Look Robert, I would not have responded to that post if I’d found the slightest sign of anything “deeper” let alone “relevant” in the comment.
It was, to me, a derail; a chance for someone to occupy themself with a personal hobby horse at the expense of the serious issue you raised.
The poster had not a jot to say on the tread topic itself.
I’m more worried about developers who are allowed to appropriate public space for some of most goddamned awful looking buildings on the earths surface. They are trying to build one over the road from me right now.
And Mr Merkel wasn’t it you who came up with the “‘Laura Norder’ trope” in the very first place, even if it was Paul Walter who put his foot in it first?
Joe, yes, I used it in the post (though I surely didn’t invent it, it dates from no later than 2002).
As for developers “appropriating public space”, it’s a complicated issue. One of the more complicated bits is why developers seem so keen to build “goddamned ugly” buildings in the first place.
I’m with joe2 when it comes to public space.
Law and order has tended not to be a high priority issue in Victorian State elections. The Hun beats it up a lot, but I’m not whether people are that concerned.
Quick Delurk Laura Norder was first used by Mungo back in the 1970′s (think 1973 but read it in a book of National review columns so not sure of the date )
Fine, the Tories have chosen to run with this issue. Presumably they have polling that suggests it connects with the people they are trying to sway, even if it’s a dead issue elsewhere (Jane Garrett and Cyndi Dawes haven’t exactly been plastering the streets of Brunswick with promises to put in CCTV).
I’d always thought that Laura Norder was Strine, but it seems not. The earliest use in the Google News Archives comes from Canada, 1954, talking about the English use and abuse of their own language: http://bit.ly/a7cM2L
Well, I love Laura Norder campaigns.
Though the image of Toorak Ted Bailleau as a hang ‘em ‘n’ flog ‘em type is difficult to imagine. I’ll bet his heart is not in it.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t, Sam.
But there are plenty of hard-right hacks in the Victorian Liberals who subscribe to that philosophy.
For what it’s worth, I’d like crime to be lower as well. But the evidence that getting rid of suspended sentences is a cost-effective way of doing so is totally lacking.
Putting more people in the Big House means building more Big House. They aint cheap.
In my experience the city and public transport feel a lot safer after dark now than they did 15 years ago because there are a lot more people around.
However knife crimes and glassings sound more frightening but then I wasn’t allowed to Stonehenge in the 1970s because it was violent (too young to know if it was stabbings however I learnt to throw knives with the younger sibling of one of the main protaganists of that era)
Who is going to run The Big House. Is the state government going to abdicate its responsibility for conditions in The Big House by outsourcing the staffing – like Immigration Department has with Detention Centres
Cost effectiveness… I am still waiting for a politician to stand up and defend early childhood education as a crime reduction measure, let alone adult literacy programmes. Which, for those who care, have the best bang-for-buck effects of any programmes known.
Frank Hardy had “Laura Norder” as a central motif in his “Outcasts of Foolgarah”, c. early seventies.
Re Robert’s response to
Fine, the underlying Zietgiest involved in this “forgetting” incorporates guilt and self loathing, fear of unemployment and the Green “other”.
In so far that it is apart of ideological infrastructure, cultural reinforcement etc, Laura’s point assumes validity.
I know moz, and Labor actually has a reasonable record on that.
Robert, yes, for which I am very grateful. I would just love to see someone pile into a law’n'order auction with an ECE bid. “Labour will spend an extra $100M over 5 years on ECE in low socio-economic areas as a crime reduction strategy”. Or even better “Proposed cuts to ECE rejuected because of flow-on effects on crime rate”.
Yes, I know the Libs are making a run with this. How much much it bites, I’m not so sure. I’d take bets now that Labor gets back with a reduced majority. The Greens win a couple and the Libs get about four back.
Baillieu seems like a genuinely nice small ‘l’ Liberal. The caring face of noblesse oblige. It seems that he and Brumby hung out in the same club together at Melbourne Grammar. Such is State politics that it seems like a truly small, old-school tie club. I believe Brumby and his wife sent their kids to State schools which I give hem credit for.
The Brumby mob have come up trumps with these bikie laws going down in S.A. Big Ted had been goading on this, with claims Vic was becoming The Gang Preferred State. Stuffed that Laura Norder bash, eh?
http://www.theage.com.au/national/sa-bikie-laws-out-of-order-20101111-17peb.html
And one of the downsides with this election is that if Labor holds on, we’ll likely get a member of the hard right in Baillieu’s place, who would then be a pretty good shot to win in 2014.
God I hope it’s not somebody like Bernie Finn or Richard Dalla-Riva.
Finn is … well. Came as close to a filibuster as there ever has during the abortion debate in the Victorian LC in the recently dissolved parliament.
But both are in the LC, and are unlikely to see their way out of the red morgue.
However, the point about the results of “Red Ted” losing should make you all get out and vote for your local Liberal candidate on November 27 – I know I will be.
And one of the downsides with this election is that if Labor holds on, we’ll likely get a member of the hard right in Baillieu’s place
It will be Terry Mulder.
From the defeat of the Deakinites, you actually get hard right any way; the name is actually “Brumby”.
And a downside for those of us who like to see a change of government, once in a while, to grease the democratic wheel, Big Ted might be slipped out the door once the creepy people get a bit of power.
Helps to explain why we had another stumble by Tony Abbott this week, this time into the election of judges.
Victorians are on the cusp of making a terrible mistake. A minority conservative govt. supported by the Greens will certainly be challenging. Especially for Greens voters. Wonder what deals they will make with the Nationals.
PS Does anyone know if it is correct that the Vic Greens voted more than 2/3 of the time with the Lib/Nats in the Legislative Council?
Kevin, I’m not sure but I heard that it is now the preferred line of attack, against the Greens, by Labor worked out by means of focus group. I cannot understand why because you would imagine most sensible people would think it wise to oppose a great deal of the crap Brumby serves up.
And Kevin it does not look thatclose according to Antony, at least.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/vic/2010/calculator/?tpp=-2.4&tcp=-6&retiringfactor=1