African & Sudanese Refugees - Immigration and Ethnic Crime in Victoria - The Bolt Report

Summary

Andrew Bolt argues that Australian politicians, journalists and some police have downplayed concerns about refugee integration and crime. He revisits former immigration minister Kevin Andrews’s warning that migrants from some backgrounds may face greater difficulty integrating. Bolt says Andrews was criticised as racist by ethnic leaders, newspapers, Labor politicians and then–Victoria Police chief commissioner Christine Nixon, and argues that such denials obscured problems rather than addressing them.

Bolt cites reported incidents in Victoria—including fights involving African youths, home invasions, a car chase, armed robberies, assaults and carjackings—as evidence of what he describes as a crime wave involving children of African, particularly Sudanese, refugees. He says the ABC has acknowledged that some youths of Sudanese background are offending at alarming rates. Reported contributing factors include unemployment, lack of schooling, limited parental supervision and a sense of exclusion. One interviewee says some young people feel they cannot fit in. A Sudanese woman says she sent two of her children to school in Uganda, while attributing problems among other children in her family to the freedoms and protections available in Australia.

Bolt also refers to the arrival of Lebanese Muslim immigrants under Malcolm Fraser, linking it to high gun crime, jihadism, welfare dependence and low incomes. He uses these examples to question immigration policy and accuse the media of branding critics racist. These causal claims and broader generalisations are Bolt’s commentary, not findings established in the segment.

Presenters and Contributors

• Andrew Bolt — presenter and commentator
• Kevin Andrews — former immigration minister, quoted
• Christine Nixon — then–Victoria Police chief commissioner, quoted
• Former Queensland premier — quoted, not named
• Unnamed interviewees — a Sudanese woman and a young person interviewed by the ABC
• Unnamed victims — interviewed in news coverage of the reported home invasion