California on the Yarra

What follows should perhaps be discounted as the thoughts of a Melbourne partisan, someone who has lived in Sydney and far-flung elsewheres but always knew life’s road would lead back to the metropolis that has come to sprawl almost all the way around Port Phillip, from Portsea to Geelong, and deep into what was, until not so long ago, a hinterland of orchards, bush and bucolic tranquility. Yet somehow, even as Melbourne grew like Topsy, the essence of the place never really changed. Sydney has come to half-fancy itself, half-correctly, as the New York of the South Pacific, all hustle and deals, not to mention the ‘honest graft’ of its home-grown Tammany political class and midnight foibles of cops, judges and other public officials.

Melbourne, it is different — a city of 4.5 million residents whose pleasure it has been to enjoy life in a city that has the soul of an overgrown country town. Or rather, had, because that ethos and spirit withers with every day by dark-headlined day.

In the CBD, Mayor Robert Doyle evinces an impatience with the drugged and often deranged miscreants whose blankets and cardboard mattresses encrust its footpaths. Yet their numbers swell.

Almost every night, somewhere in the suburbs, a door is kicked in by young men “of African appearance”, families are terrorised, their homes looted and cars stolen.

Every week, another jewelry store is robbed with great violence by more of those same men “of African appearance”. The reaction of Premier Daniel Andrews’ state police force? Just this: to discuss with traders “how jewellers can adopt a number of crime prevention measures“. Rather than a red-blooded vow to stop the crime wave, which has grown to include random assaults and carjackings, a senior policeman took to the airwaves last week to deny any hint of an “ethnic crime problem”. Perhaps VicPol’s court eunuchs are too busy leaking dossiers against Cardinal George Pell to notice.

One could go on at some length about the degeneration of daily life in Melbourne — how, sure as eggs, the city will be cursed by blackouts when Andrews fulfills his plan to shut down better than 20% of the state’s capacity to generate electricity. It is an example of green madness so extreme one can only wonder about kickbacks and favours from rent-seekers and the nicely connected.

Misery loves company, so there was some joy in finding that Melbourne is not alone in seeing the urgent needs of  its decent citizens ignored while officialdom, every ready with its fine books and citations, goes after the inoffensive middle class and the low-hanging fruit of easy revenue.

In California, as Victor Davis Hanson reports via the link below, things are much the same but  worse.

Melbourne, behold your future.

— roger franklin

Read More