The Project’s Waleed Aly slams Turnbull: “Politicians aren’t being honest”
Waleed Aly has taken aim at the Coalition’s claims about African gang violence in Victoria, accusing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of dishonesty, in an eight-minute segment on The Project.
In a blistering a takedown on Thursday night’s episode, Aly dismissed claims from Coalition politicians that Melbourne had an African gang problem.
He took particular aim at comments made by the Prime Minister on radio station 3AW this week.
“There is real concern about Sudanese gangs,” the Prime Minister said on air on Tuesday. “You’d have to be walking around with your hands over your ears not hear it.”
The PM’s comments echoed previous ones made by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton that Melburnians were “afraid” to go out to restaurants at night because of African crime.
Aly, a Melbourne resident, noted that the only place he’d heard such concerns was on talk-back radio.
“What’s interesting is I have lived in Melbourne and the only place I have heard concerns about Sudanese gangs is on talk-back radio where the PM made those comments,” Aly said.
Aly joked that he had also started to get “concerned” about African gangs, “mainly because I am of African heritage. If there really are a bunch of African gangs, frankly I am offended to not have at least been asked to join one”.
While he conceded that people of African descent were slightly over-represented in certain crime statistics, Aly argued politicians were overstating the issue.
“Take aggravated burglary for example, where they were responsible for 3.8 per cent of incidents,” Aly said. “That sounds huge until you look at the raw numbers, and you realise you are talking about just 70 incidents over the entire year.”
He pointed to the fact Australian-born Victorians are still responsible for the majority of crimes in the state, coming in at 72 per cent.
Aly ended the segment by arguing that politicians were using African youths in order to curry favour with voters ahead of the upcoming federal by-elections and the Victorian state election.
“I’m sorry to say I think it’s our politicians who aren’t being honest here,” Aly continued. “I think the government is facing the super Saturday elections next week. To put it crudely, they want to appear tough on Sudanese migrants despite the fact they’re responsible for just one per cent of crime because being tough on that community wins votes in this country.”