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A nostalgic Melbourne elite is today reminiscing on a much more simpler time, before the waves of South Sudanese migrants welcomed to Australia by his favourite ever Prime Minister, John Howard.
Freddie Baxter (57) is a pretty open-minded kind of bloke, he catches a tram to work in the inner-city, and he even voted yes – but Freddie says noticeable groups of teenagers gathering and occasionally getting into a scrap on the St Kilda foreshore is a bit too much, even for him. “I’ll tell you what, we didn’t have the problem with the African kids back in my day!” he says, making reference to the last 20 days on incessant Herald Sun front page stories that suggest there might be a rise of youth crime during school holidays.
The recent Melbourne race-baiting hysteria comes as both Victorian Labor and Liberal parties come to terms with the fact that their leaders are both the most uncharismatic and unmemorable political figures in recent history, and are in turn politicising the mistakes of migrant children in the lead up to the 2018 state election.
It’s a bold political strategy used by both the Federal and state politicians around the country when they can draw paralells between youth crime committed by tall dark males and an underperforming government.
However, luckily for Freddie it is was never in the interests of politicians and journalists to sensationalise and incriminate white teenage gangs in the 80s and 90s, back when Chopper Read and Carl Williams were literally killing people in the streets of St Kilda. “If we wanted to walk down the foreshore, we didn’t have to worry about asking a 6 foot black teenager to move out of the way. It was only skinheads back then and the people they caused any drama for had it coming. I used to hang around them a bit” he says.
Freddie says the biggest concern for his beloved ‘egalitarian and inclusive’ suburb is the young visibly North African kids who don’t have flat screens and iPads at home, and like to hang out in places that look nice, like St Kilda foreshore where he used to bash gays.
“It was a different time” he says.
“But I certainly felt much safer”
