Peter Dutton Thinks Victorians Don’t Eat Out Because They’re Scared Of “African Gangs”

I swear to God I forgot Peter Dutton existed. Over the tranquil Christmas and New Year period I attempted to limit my engagement with politics and one positive consequence of that was slowly losing all recollection I had of Australia’s own Mr Potato Head.

But guess what, he’s back! Oh boy is he back.

Over the past week the Australian media along with politicians have been obsessed with the so-called “African gang crime crisis” gripping Melbourne. We’ve previously talked about how it isn’t really a thing, but facts should never get in the way of a good old fashioned racially based scare campaign.

The short version is the Victorian Liberal opposition, aided and abetted by Malcolm Turnbull, have been talking non-stop about “African gang crime” to try and scare everyone into voting for them in the upcoming state election later this year.

Dutton is the latest federal Liberal figure to weigh in on the issue, and I’ve gotta say his intervention has to be dumbest yet. The home affairs minister told 2GB radio that “People are scared to go out to restaurants at night time because they are followed home by these gangs”.

Yep, apparently Victoria’s food and entertainment industry is taking a dive because everyone has locked themselves up at home. He went on to say: “We just need to call it for what it is. Of course it’s African gang violence. It’s not the whole community, there are many good people within the community that would condemn this action as strongly as you and I would.

“We need to weed out the people who have done the wrong thing, deport them where we can, but where they are Australian citizens, we need to deal with them according to the law.”

Classic Dutton — there’s never a problem you can’t solve without a few cheeky deportations, am I right!

But that’s not all. He also blamed “political correctness” and the courts for the alleged gang crime that is apparently sending restaurants broke.

“You look at some of the jokes of sentences that are being handed down, there’s no deterrence at the moment,” he said. “The state government’s wrapped its police force up in this politically correct conversation, which I think they’re trying to break out of and they are trying to do the right thing.”

The worst part of all this is that we’re only three days into the year and there’s 11 months to go until the Victorian state election, so expect more of this absolute horseshit from Dutton, Turnbull and their cronies.

Meanwhile, the folk at Get Up have suggested that Melbournians heading out to dinner should snap a picture and send it to Dutton as proof of his stupidity.

Melburnians – if you head out to a restaurant tonight, why not send @PeterDutton_MP a pic of your dinner? Let’s show him we’re not affected by his brand of fear-mongering.https://t.co/WMkwjAyfgQ

— GetUp! (@GetUp) January 3, 2018

I’m into it.