Brisbane’s commercial TV news bulletins have been bashing the Palaszczuk and Miles state Labor governments over the heads for a few years now about supposedly out-of-control crime, and youth crime in particular.

The general theme has been that the government has done fuck all about it with the very obvious if unstated hint that an LNP government under David Crisafulli will sort everything out and make Queenslanders feel safe once more in their own homes and when they wander out and about.

The uphill battle Steven Miles and his ministers face in combating this almost pervasive message from Nine, Seven and 10 was perfectly displayed on the state news bulletins from Ten and Nine on Monday night.

Let’s look at 10 first. The statistics that 5pm news service kicked off with (at top and below) are horrific, aren’t they?

They were compiled by Crisafulli’s LNP and are certainly quite frightening, right?
But here’s the thing. The figures are the overall increases year from year from the 2015-16 year – nine financial years in total if my shit state-school maths is correct.

It’s probably why the segment had the Premier saying he’s not in the business of commenting on LNP-created statistics. Why would you?

Look, the figures might still be horrific and show some real underlying problems for Queensland society but, really? From 2015-16? And given the number of people who’ve migrated here from interstate and overseas plus the natural population increase during that time?

To be fair to 10, they did have the police minister stating the most recent stats were moving in the right direction and the reporter added those figures represented a 10 per cent drop for youth crime. My best bet is that you’ve never heard that mentioned on Nine or Seven News.

The segment ended with Crisafulli having a go at government people who had called youth crime a media beatup. Going back many years to create the worse possible crime figures could also be regarded as a bit of a beatup.

An hour later, Nine News Queensland was in the business of creating its own news instead of just reporting on it.

The crowd of 150 or so Goondiwindi residents (pictured above and below) had been invited by Nine News to a local park, as Andrew Lofthouse explained in his introduction as “fed-up Queenslanders fighting to take back their streets from teen criminals”’. Or as reporter Peter Fegan added: “Many living in fear and been held hostage”.

His report no doubt chronicled an horrific spree of assaults, home invasions and car thefts in just the past week – one admitted to by Miles – but this old ranter still questions whether Nine News Queensland would go to the bother of creating this news event if it wasn’t just part of their clear intent over time to see the Miles government sent packing from office. Or put another way, would Nine News Queensland have organised that park rally if Crisafulli were premier and facing an uphill battle for re-election? I’ll blame their track record of biased and unbalanced reporting for my cynicism.

This is, after all, the news outfit that has virtually declared itself the patron of the Voice for Victims community group that has consistently argued, with Nine’s total endorsement, that youth crime is out of control and rising and the government has done bugger all to combat it.

The news networks can argue otherwise but I think they have clearly had it in for the Miles government, which probably explains their scant if nil interest at all in reporting state statistics that have shown that general and youth crime rates are being lowered as mentioned above, albeit slowly.

None of these networks also seem remotely interested in questioning how the LNP, who are promising to get out of people’s lives with smaller government with less spending and less taxation (they’ve promised to forego billions in coal royalties), are going to maintain or increase the police numbers needed to meet this crime challenge, whatever its level.

Don Gordon-Brown

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