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OPINION: I Survived The 2025 Crime Wave

63m 31s

OPINION: I Survived The 2025 Crime Wave

The transcription begins with announcements for a live comedy show and the host's Patreon. The main content is a satirical critique of conservative media's portrayal of a crime epidemic in Australia. The host first humorously exaggerates absurd statistics about gang violence in Melbourne to mock alarmist rhetoric. He then argues that this "crime wave" is a manufactured moral panic. Citing his research, he asserts that Australia, and Victoria specifically, are statistically very safe, with crime rates generally down. The host explains that increased media coverage of individual crimes, despite their rarity, creates a false sense of escalating danger. He accuses conservative media and political figures of leveraging this fear to garner votes and support for expanded police authority, criticizing outlets like Sky News for their credibility and tactics. The segment concludes by illustrating how the newsworthiness of an event like a stabbing actually proves its uncommonness, debunking the pervasive narrative of a lawless society.

Transcription

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English
Hello, we are back on the Greg Larson show. Two announcements. The first is, I am doing a show on December 6 in Melbourne at Humdinger Studios. I am filming a special. It's going to go for two hours. There's a few tickets left. Go onto my Instagram, Google it, look it up. Greg Larson, Humdinger Studios. It's a special. It's called Where's My Fucking Money. I'm filming it two hours long with an interval. It's going to be crazy. It's all my best bits over the last few festival shows I've done. If you like my comedy, you'll love it. And if you know someone that might like it, tell them. There's not many tickets left, but there's a few. And I really want to pack it out. So get onto it. December 6. If you're listening to this after December 6, then suck shit. You fucking suck. It's said holy moly. You strike bowling and hide you. The other thing is the usual announcement. Get onto my Patreon. If you like this show, you can listen to episodes without this little introduction, without any fucking bullshit ads for whatever the fuck. I don't know what ads are on here. There was some liberal party ads at one point during the election, which I found kind of funny. But anyway, I don't pick the fucking ads. But yeah, go onto my Patreon, support me, do in comedy. And the whole reason I keep doing this podcast and keep doing comedy and not living in the river is because of Patreon. It helps me out. If you want to give me, I've got a TF for five bucks. That's the one and only tier I have. Every now and again, there'll be a little extra thing, whatever. I'm fucking dead on it. Get onto it and get you back on track. The greatest fucking only. Big, blah, sell, show. Yeah. Great. Just what we need another podcast. Yeah. I am very, very sorry. This episode is not going to be funny. I may not even get to the end of this episode. I may die. You see, I am broadcasting to you now from Occupied Melbourne. This episode is called "I Survived the 2025 Crime Wave." But I don't know if I am premature. I'd there's still time for me to be murdered. As we speak, I can hear the machetes clanging against the door from the bunker in which I am cowering. As thousands of non-descript tribal drums play in the distance. Australia has been overrun. I have personally lost 300 family members to machete attacks in the last two days alone. 300 members of my family have been murdered just in the last two days. According to Sky News, over 600 million Sudanese gangs arrive at the port of Melbourne every 13 minutes. Just think about those numbers there for a minute, folks. Just think about the staggering scale of those numbers. I didn't say 600 million gang members, 600 million gangs. That includes all the members of the gang and each of those gangs has over 1000 members. Shocking numbers. And if those numbers are correct, which I believe they are, that means that 600 billion with a B, 600 billion gang members are arriving in the city of Melbourne every 13 minutes. Let that sink in every 13 minutes, 600 billion gang members are arriving in Melbourne. Not only are Melbourneians getting chopped up at a rate of 6 Melbourneians per second, but if these gang numbers continue to rise at the rate which they are currently rising, we're talking 600 billion every 13 minutes. The earth is literally in danger of collapsing in on itself due to the sheer weight of the gravity of these machete wielding gang members. The earth is literally in danger of becoming a black hole. But at the mass of the earth plus the gang members, that would create a black hole only 1.7 centimeters in diameter, roughly the size of a marble. So at that distance, there would be literally nowhere to hide from the rampaging machete wielding teens. They would literally be on top of you. You would be crushed into a singularity and chopped up by a teen with a machete, all because the radical left and their open door immigration policy. We are in the middle of a violent crime epidemic and there's nothing we can do to stop it. At Holy Molly's, strike bowling and hygiene, so tell Brisbane's number one hit music station. V 105, Brisbane Traveller, this text on, switch day. So that's a situation, shocking statistics, shocking statistics there about the crime wave. But look, if I'm being honest, and I'd like to be a little bit honest with you for just a moment here, is that rain? Can you hear that in the podcast? Does that make a nice little, it's like raining quite heavily. Maybe that makes it a nice little, it's a nice little background track. Let me see if I could a nice little relaxing bit of sound to go with it. That was the famous, I'm a Kool-E-Kolken Death Scene in my girl. But anyway, let's talk about this crime wave. If I'm being honest, I'm a little skeptical of those numbers. I mean, look, it is hard to trust the conservative media. Like Sky News, for example, who, you know, spend a lot of time banging on about the crime wave that is gripping Victoria and Melbourne specifically. But all of Australia. You know, I don't know how credible they are when for years they employed the famous sex offender and pedophile Alan Jones, who, you know, was, was, you know, being a pedophile and a sex pest for decades. And the full knowledge of every single person in the media, who everybody knew it, you know, Sky News who hired the pedophile lover Andrew Bolt, who loves pedophiles like George Pell and Donald Trump, or Sky News who hired Lauren Southern, who's a famous neo-nazi, who was a personal hero of the Christchurch killer. I mean, one might argue that Sky News, for example, are directly or indirectly responsible for the Christchurch massacre. And I certainly would agree with that statement. So the question is, do I trust conservative media like Sky News or the Daily Mail when they go on about this crime wave? I mean, I know, like personally, they've published false things about me. You know, there was an article when I wrote when I did an Anzac Day episode and pretend journalist and shit can't Chloe Walker from Sky News and pretend journalist and shit can't harassing Christian from the Daily Mail, both published lies about my Anzac Day episode and defamed me. You can listen to my response to that on my Patreon. I was a little patreon extra episode. So I don't know. I don't know who to trust with the media. What I do know is I know a little something about statistics. I studied sociology at university. And I studied a little bit of statistics. I'm certainly no expert. But I know enough to sort of go in and lay out. Let's take it. Let's break it down a little bit. Let's have a look. So I just want to set the scene in it, especially for international listeners and everything like that. What's happening right now here in Australia? We are being told by the conservative media. And by the Liberal Party of Australia, which again for international listeners, I've said this a million times, the Liberal Party are our conservative party, right? People get fooled by the name because international listeners don't use the term "liberal correctly" where we use it correctly in Australia to mean someone who is fiscally conservative, you know, small government capitalists. Whereas in America, for example, you use the term "incorrectly" to mean progressive. Anyway, we are told that we are in the midst of a crime wave. Right? Crime is up across the board, particularly violent crime. It's a crime wave that's destroying our society. The loony left have thrown the borders open and now we're afraid to leave our houses. And in particular, Victoria, the traditional lefty stronghold, you know, is an even more in particular Melbourne. The city of Melbourne is often cited as the crime capital. Crime is out of control. Crime is on the rise. Crime is fucked. Crime. If you go onto the Liberal Party of Australia website, they have an article from two months ago and the article is literally titled "New ABS data. Pro Victoria is the most lawless state in Australia." Now, that's a pretty bold claim. The most lawless state in Australia. Is it? That's the question. That's the thing I'm asking. When I see constant articles, constant talk, and now there's like new police powers coming in in Victoria where police have the power to stop and frisk anyone they want, it's making me wonder, is there a crime wave? I feel like we're hearing about crime more and more, knife attacks and machetes and whatever. Which by the way, I want to say to you, there's a machete band in Victoria. And I've always said this, the only way to stop a bad guy with a machete is with a good guy with a machete. I think if anything, we need more machetes, that way we can all feel safe knowing that there's machetes on all sides. Give the teachers machetes. It's fun to say machete. What are you trying to ban something that rhymes with spaghetti? Why would you ban something that rhymes with spaghetti? You idiots. But here's the thing, is there a crime wave? Are we in the mid, is Victoria the most loyal estate? Is Australia in a crime wave? What's the truth? What's the truth? Now I've looked into it, I've done some research and I found out the truth is no. There's no crime wave. This is an invented story. Oh my God, shock horror. This is an invented panic, a moral panic to make you vote liberal, to get the government to bring in new police powers to frisk random people on the street. It's a lie, crime is down. Australia is one of the safest countries on earth and it's getting safer. And Victoria is one of the safest states in Australia. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a fuckhead, the end. See you next time. Goodbye. So I will elaborate a little bit and by a little bit I mean I'm on page two of like a 10 page document that I've written. So we'll go into it in detail, your fuckhead. So you might not believe me, all right? I've just said crime is down. It's all made up. It's all bullshit. But you and with good reason might be sitting there going, "I don't believe you." I've seen the news. I've watched the news. I've been on social media. I've seen the stats. They keep saying that crime is up. They're showing figures and percentages and they're saying crime is up. You keep seeing reports about knife attacks, property theft. Are they making up those statistics? Are the stories made up? I mean I know on social media there's all AI and shit. But you're watching, you know, channel seven news, nine news, even sky news. You know, are they actually just making things up from nothing? Are they not making them up from nothing? Are they lying through their teeth? Well no, they're not lying through their teeth. They're not making up. Fakes the statistics. The stats do show that crime is up and it's rising faster in Victoria than anywhere else. But hang on a second, Greg. Hang on a second, Greg. Oh no, fuck. That's one of the ones where when I push it, it plays the whole thing. But wait a second, Greg, you just said crime was down. Yes, I did say that. The stats clearly say that crime is down and it's down in Victoria. But also, and this may sound confusing, the stats clearly say that crime is up and it's up in Victoria. Wait a fucking second. How can the stats be up and down at the same time? Well, it's easy because you just pick what stats you want to show. You pick the way that you show the stats. You pick the range of the stats, what you compare the stats against, right? If you know how data sets work and you understand how to interpret them, you can use just about any data to kind of say anything you want. So I want to teach you about how you can tell lies using factual statistics, right? This is how to tell why using factual statistics. Let's say, for example, let's take a hypothetical scenario. Say that I was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia. Now I've just come back from the child market where I sold my first born child to be cut up into meat for $6.37. Now I'm obviously a little bit sad about seeing my child get cut up for meat and frankly, $6 seemed low to kill my own child. But at the end of the day, profit is profit and in the real world, we in the Liberal Party know you have to make tough decisions. So anyway, I'm sitting there. I'm drinking my babies blood, my cup of babies blood as a member of the Liberal Party of Australia. And I'm seeing the news. I'm worried, right? I'm seeing the way the wind is blowing. I'm worrying that no one likes conservative politics anymore. We've lied about global warming for years, but now it's catching up with us, right? There are too many bushfires for our voting base to ignore. We created a housing crisis, so houses are less affordable, which was working out great for our Boomer land-owning voting base. But now many of them are dying and many more people are being born who can't afford houses. And there are fewer and fewer landlords around. Fewer and fewer people who get sexual gratification from watching their tenants drink their urine. And that's a huge portion of the Liberal Party base, right? There are also some of the most important issues that we've been doing. And so we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to get people to vote for me. Right? How the fuck do I get people to vote for me? Well, there's still one old classic stand by that I can pull out of my Liberal Party shit-covered hat. The crime wave. You're not safe in your own home. Crime gangs are chopping you up. Let's get my friends in the media who pretend to be journalist to start reporting on the fact that crime is out of control. Easy. We'll drum up some moral panic. There's a problem though. A single problem. Crime is not out of control. That's a problem when I'm trying to say that crime is out of control. In most respects, it's down. In some areas, it's up a little bit, in some it's down a little bit, in a lot of stable, either way you slice it, compared to almost every other country on Earth. Australia is incredibly safe. The likelihood that someone in Australia will be murdered is vanishingly low. So how do we pretend it isn't? How do we pretend there is a crime wave? Well, the first trick. Before you even get into the manipulation of stats, and you can do all that, and I don't even know if I'll time to go into that. But you can just report on crime more. You don't even need to worry about stats. You just report on crime. Just make sure there's like a lot of news stories about crime happening. So crime is super low in this country, in Australia. But still, we have a population of 27 million people. So on any given day, on any given time, there is a crime happening. something somewhere, right? So even if something has a one and a million chance of happening, it's still going to happen most days when you have 27 million people. Crimes happen. So you tell your reporter mates who are all their mates. They're not real journalists. If your mates with a politician, you're not a journalist. They say to their reporter mates, put the crimes on the front page. Make it the lead story. The old classic stand-by. It bleeds. It leads. It's a classic reporter's trick. Crime has gone down all around the world, you know, in the last few decades, all around the Western world, at least not all around the world. There are definitely places where things are very, very bad. But in, you know, in Australia, in a lot of Western countries and developed countries, crime has gone down. But reporting on crime has gone way, way up, which is why you hear your parents, your boomer parents saying things like, "Oh, we never used to like our doors, you know, the neighborhood. It used to be safer." No, it didn't. It was actually way less safe when they had their doors unlocked and were running around. People getting abducted more. People were getting killed more. There were more breaking inters. They just felt like they were safer because they weren't seen at all the time. And statistically, it still was an unlikely thing to happen, right? We are safer than they were. You know, like we don't lock our doors. We do lock our doors now, but I mean, you could just not lock your door. I mean, you might get broken into, but like you might not. Nine times out of ten, a thief doesn't really give a shit if you've got a lock on your door. That's just to make you feel safe. A lock isn't that hard to crack. I've gone to YouTube channel called the lock picking lawyer. He's cracking him and popping him like a, like a French boy pops up, pimple on his penis. I don't know. Yeah, I think that was like a French boy pops up pimple on his penis. Crad man. Crad man. Either way, you were more likely to be killed, robbed or the victim of a crime back in your parents' day than you are now. You just are. And you also have to remember there's an old saying, right? And I feel like this is saying that people sort of forget what it actually means. You've heard the expression, well, that's the exception that proves the rule. I actually didn't understand what that meant for a long time. I was like, how can an exception prove the rule? If it's an exception, then what? I don't understand. And what it actually means, right? Is, say if crime is really, really low, but then you see a news report on a fatal stabbing. You could say that that news report is the exception that proves the rule. Because most people, the vast vast majority of people don't get stabbed. Getting stabbed is extremely, extremely rare. It's so rare that when an exception happens to that rule, it's newsworthy, right? It's a big story. Someone getting stabbed is an exception to the rule that most people don't get stabbed and that's why it's a big story. The reason someone getting stabbed makes national headlines in a country of 27 million people is because it is statistically quite uncommon and therefore it is newsworthy. If 10,000 people got stabbed every single day, no one stabbing is going to make the news. If anything, there would just be like a little footnote on every news report going, oh yeah, and here's the list of today's stabbing victims, right? And it plays at the end. It's like if one person, if one single person in Australia died tomorrow from the Ebola virus, that would be a nation wide and possibly international mega story, the Ebola virus in Australia. But you're not, you're not hearing a single news report about any individual who's died of various other diseases, like heart attacks or cancer, because those things are common. They happen in the background every day stuff. So they're not exceptional. So they just, there's not news reports about them. It's like how at the start of the genocide in Gaza, the recent genocide, Israel has been committing genocide for a long, long time. But at first, you know, stories coming out of Israel were leading the news, you know, with death tolls and missile strikes on schools and hospitals. And now like the killing, killings are still, if there's a ceasefire that but killing still happened just daily. And there's just so many, it's just sort of background noise, right? It's because it happens so much that we no longer care about any individual cases and it's just background noise. The very fact that you hear a news story about any individual stabbing is because they are rare, because they don't happen very often. Like if I, if I went down to Swanson Street and fucked a dog, if I walked down to Swanson Street in the middle of Melbourne in the CBD and I fucked a dog, people would be outraged. That'd be up in arms. Maybe it'd be on the news. People would be going, who's this guy? Fuck, I'm a dog. But if I did that every single day for 10 years and other people started joining me pretty soon and like there's and suddenly there's like thousands of people fucking dogs in Swanson Street, it would stop being a news story and it would just start to become like a quirky fact of Melbourne life. You know, people would come down and they'd be like, it's like 10,000 people fucking a dog on Swanson Street and then you go, yeah, that's Swanson Street, that's where they fucked the dogs. And maybe people would still be upset about it, but upset about it, like, what can you do? It's like they fucked the dogs on Swanson Street. Yeah, it would be good if they did it, I guess. But I mean, it's like saying you're going to get rid of graffiti. What are you going to do about it? And if your life would go on and no one would care anymore. But so that's the first way, right? It's like you don't even need statistics. You just need to report on something a lot and then people feel like it's happening a lot. So that's sort of one way of doing something and that is the way that is happening. But you might be saying, well, I've been seeing that the news, they're reporting on this crime wave a lot and they have been using some statistics. They've been saying crime is on the grow. And yeah, there's been a lot of statistics. There's been a lot of articles. I mean, I've just like, I've been looking at article after article going, Melbourne, is Melbourne in a crime wave? Melbourne is in a crime wave. What's the crime wave really happening in Melbourne? It's big about happening in Melbourne. Let's take a look. There's like, there's a lot of statistics and people are questioning them and putting them forward and what the hell are. But the thing is like, it's easy to manipulate statistics while still being truthful. It's just about picking what statistics you say at what point and how you present them. So you might look, you might go, well, first of all, safe, if the question is, is Australia safe? The first question is like, in comparison to what? You know, that all we have at the end of the day to compare it to is the world and all of human history. You know, is it, is there, I mean, there's less crime on the moon, but there's also no people, right? So we've got to go, all right, is Australia safe? Now, the thing is, if you want to put forward this idea that Australia is becoming a crime wouldn't wasteland. You're in a, you're in a tough spot. You're in a, you're in a very tough spot from the outset because you'll look at the statistics and go shit. Australia is extremely safe. It's actually the ninth safest country on earth according to US news, the 15th according to the global peace index and it's actually trending safer, right? It's listed alongside countries like World New Zealand, Iceland, the various Scandinavian countries. It's an extremely safe country. It's one of the safest places you could possibly be on planet Earth. And that's not going to sell papers. That's not going to get baby blood drinking conservatives elected. So you have to figure out another way to present the stats. So you can't compare Australia to other countries because we're super, super safe. But there's other ways you can manipulate statistics, right? You can, you could, you can present them in a misleading way by picking an arbitrary date range. And that's often, you often have to look at the date range and go, why that date range specifically have you picked? You know, so you might see a graph going up and up and up. But then if you, if you broaden out the date range and added three previous decades, you'll actually see crime going down, down, down, down, and then a little spike going up right now. You know, for example, if I wanted to make it look like violent deaths would dramatically decreasing in Europe, I could start my date range in the middle of 1942 and go, wow, violent deaths really dropped off. Just, you know, this random date in 1942 and then suddenly, you know, violent deaths really dropped off. Europe became very, very safe. I mean, that's sort of true because of the war. But you know, you know what I mean? It's like kind of misleading. And the opposite is true. If I wanted to make it look like violent deaths in Europe were really, really bad, I could just go, well, look at this data and take all the data from the start of 1914. for example, I'll just randomly picked 1914 to now, to go all the violent deaths, including war deaths and the two world wars, and then just averaged it out over the time. It would make it look like deaths now were way higher than what they were, violent deaths, right? Because you just average it out. You can take a real legitimate stat and have the real legitimate average, but that's not really a good indicator of how many violent deaths are actually happening, right? That's a way you can just fuck around with the numbers. In both cases, you take real truthful numbers and just present them in different ways to say whatever you want. I could say since March 2020, there's been an increase in road deaths, and because of COVID lockdowns ending, there probably has been, I haven't looked that up. I haven't looked that up, but I reckon that's a guess. But you know what I mean? Like if I just pick, oh, just pick some random date and say let's March 2020. Yeah, it seems like road deaths are really spiking. Yeah, because they're getting back to normal. So you can pick arbitrary date ranges. You can do all kinds of things, but there's another thing you can do to be sneaky without lying is talk about percentages rather than raw numbers, right? Because percentages can get confusing sometimes, or that you can make things seem bigger or smaller than what they actually are. Example, right? Let's take a fake country call it Greg Gland, call it crab land. Got this super, super safe country called crab land. And let's say there's 20 million people in crab land. I can't, I can't do this anymore. And let's say you only have one single murder every year. That's a really low murder rate. One single murder every year in a country with 20 million people. And then on one year, one guy goes a bit crazy and he does a double murder. And it wouldn't sound that dramatic or that it wouldn't be indicative of any big problem or whatever to say this year we had two murders, right? That's statistical anomaly. You've had like one guy killed two people instead of one guy killing one person, right? It's it's yeah, it's terrible for the two people that got killed. But statistically there's not anything significant going on here. And that's still a very crazy low murder rate. But you can make it sound a lot more dramatic by going we had a 100% increase in murders. Murders have doubled in one year. Lawlessness has taken hold. You say double, you say increased by 100%. It sounds way bigger than just saying, oh, there was one there was one more murder. There was one single more murder. And you can do like the opposite. Obviously, the conservatives did the opposite when it came to COVID, right? And like because they'd be like, oh, it only has a death rate of like 0.3%. 0.3 sounds really small. But when you got hundreds of millions of people infected, that means millions of people die, which also by the way, it's just going on. So going back to my earlier point still heaps of people dying of COVID. Like it's still like real bad. Like thousands of Australians, actually, I don't know if it's thousands of Australians, I agree. It's definitely with COVID. But like it's a lot of people die from COVID. And no one gives a shit anymore. Like that's not even the news. Like my dad went to the ICU after he nearly died from some heart shit because of COVID just last year. And you don't even have to wear a mask in the hospital. They're just like, ah, who cares? We're bored of COVID. It's just it's no longer a thing. It's 2025. Get with the times. We're all about machetes now. And another thing you can do with stats. Kind of, um, I guess the opposite of percentages. Sorry, the opposite of percentage is just a different thing. Crab man. Is you can talk about raw increases or raw numbers increasing without the context of other similar things increasing. Perfect example. Population increase. Right. So if you have, let's say you have a thousand car thefts in 2023. I don't know. That's a number I'm pulling out of my ass. Um, and, uh, I'm going to pull this number out of my ass. Oh, this sound has to play out the whole sound. I'll start that again. So I'm just pulling this random number out of my ass. So if you have a thousand car thefts, do I say car deaths before or did I say thefts? I don't know if I said deaths. Um, car deaths like in the movie cars. If you have a thousand car thefts in 2023, for example, um, then in 2024, you have 1,150 car thefts. You can truthfully say car theft has increased. And on the raw numbers, you are correct. There have been 1,150 cars stolen versus 1,000. So it's, there have been 150 more car thefts than the year before. The car thefts are up. But if you just say that without any context and you leave out the population increase, it doesn't paint the full picture because if the population increases, say, I don't know, I'm making shit up, but I'm pulling this out of my ass. If the population increased by like 500 people, the number of cars increased by 300 people, then whilst yes, more cars are being stolen, but there are even more people and more cars. So if you look at it as a percentage, as a rate, the rate of car theft per 100,000 population has actually decreased. So even though 150 cars more were stolen, more, there's more than double that, or there's double that amount of new cars that exist, which means statistically, you are less likely to have your car stolen in 2024 than 2023. So it's technically true to say that car thefts went up, but it's also technically true to say that car thefts went down. The real truth, whatever stat you use is to say you are safer now than you were before. Your car is less likely to get stolen. I realized in doing this, I have no fucking idea if car thefts are up or down or whatever the fuck. It's sort of how like conservatives will lie about wages. Again, pulling a figure out of my ass. If wages, they'll say we've increased wages by 2%, but if inflation is up by 6%, then your wages have actually gone down. And you should get a machete and chop up your boss. It's the same principle in rugby. I had this argument with someone in the 2015 World Cup. All passes, you can't have a forward passing rugby. This is so boring to anyone who doesn't like rugby fast forward one minute. All passes are a forward pass technically because when you're running forward and you pass the ball behind you, the forward momentum will actually still move forward, but relative to you, it moves backwards. It could technically look forward when it isn't. I think it was Bowden Barrett. They got it. It was not a forward pass. Anyway. The other thing that can happen, and I'm not even necessarily saying this is happening, but this can just definitely happen, right? Crime can go up, and the rate of crime can go up. But in actual fact, there isn't more actual crime happening. What's happened is we've gotten better at catching or stopping or reporting the crime. Right? A perfect example would be if you change the definition of what sexual assault is to include more types of sexual assault, then there will be a jump in the amount of sexual assaults that occur. But does that mean that more sexual assaults were occurring or more people are simply being brought to justice for the sexual assaults that were already occurring and going under or unreported? Does that make fucking sense? If crimes are happening to no one knows about them, then they're not happening. They're not recorded in the statistics. But if you've got, for better or worse, you've got CCTV, you've got more advanced policing techniques, more people feel empowered to report a crime, whatever, then rates of crime will go up because we are getting safer. And things that might have been considered, oh, that's just a, boys will be boys, punch in each other. Maybe someone feels more empowered to go, well, no, that was an assault and report it, right? So it's something that has always been a crime actually is getting reported. So it looks like it's going up, right? So any kind any time you see the other thing is like, you know, we'll talk about the date range and shit and fucking shit. Any time you see any data that includes, you know, the last five, 10 years, it's all a bit sneaky too because it's like, yeah, COVID. You forget about COVID. A lot of stuff stopped during COVID and then just went up and down and is going back up to normal, right? I'm not saying that it's good that it's, oh, it's good that we're back to a normal level of robberies. But I'm saying that compared to five years ago, when a lot of crimes were at an all time low, yeah, you're going to see a rise in the in the short term. But if you compare that to the 80s and the 90s and like further back, you'll see a broad thing of crime going down. Well, I reckon you would, but I was I decided to look it up. What are the what are the real numbers saying? What what the fuck what's going on with crime? Merry Christmas and a happy new year. So let's look at some actual crimes statistics. And I've, you know, I am not a fucking a big boy. I'm not a big, I'm a big boy, but I'm not a big boy. You know, I'm not a big journal reading science man. I'm doing I'm doing a bit of a muck around have a look, right? I looked at a whole lot of things. I looked at the CSA, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Institute of Criminology, I read a bunch of fucking articles, secondary sources. You can just look shit up, right? You can look shit up. And there's a lot of and there's a lot of data and some of it's hard to interpret and some of it's hard to figure out. The short the short answer is some crime is up, some is a bit down most is pretty stable compared to other countries where very, very fucking safe. Homicides in Melbourne are at a 10 year log, right? Homicides in Melbourne are at a 10 year log. That's a fact here in Melbourne, Melbourne, the crime capital of Australia. Across the country, all across Australia, assaults, all assaults, murders, rapes, robberies, violence across the board is either stable or down with us with a spike in post COVID years returning to pretty COVID levels. New South Wales is the most violent state, then Queensland, then Victoria. Violence is is either pretty flat or down pretty much across the board. Drug crimes way down, drug trafficking, drug possession, I suspect drug possession probably because even the cops don't fucking give a shit if you're smoking a bit of gonger anymore and drug trafficking. I don't know, I couldn't fucking tell you it's down, it's way down apparently. I was reading this article in the conversation which cited the CSA as their source. Melbourne, which is the crime capital of Australia, which it absolutely is not the crime capital of Australia. In Melbourne, the total criminal events per 100,000 population. Now, criminal event is not necessarily an individual crime because you could do one thing and be charged with four crimes. If you rob the shop, you could be charged with robbery, possession of a weapon. So technically, there's five crimes involved but the whole thing is one criminal event. Does that make sense? It makes sense. So in Melbourne, the crime capital of Australia, which is not the crime capital of Australia, there were 18,147 criminal events in 2016, they said. And in 2024, it was 18,097. So slightly less, slightly less. 2016 to 2024 crime went down, criminal events went down a little bit. But the news is saying there's a rapid crime wave rise. And that's because during COVID, the crime, the criminal, a number of criminal events dipped to historical lows around 14,000. So now it's just basically back to the base level it was at. And they reported as this massive crime wave, it's this crazy, massive rising crime in Victoria, the law estate, the lefty dictator, Dan, who's soft on crime. I don't understand. That's the other thing. There's just a fucking side note. All these fucking people who go on about, we need to be tough on crime. They're the same people that are going on about, oh, nanny state government sticking their nose in my business. What do you fucking want, can't? Do you like, yeah, tough on crime, lockdowns, police forcing you off the streets. The same people that are like, oh, we need to be tough on crime are the same ones that when they get pinged by a road, a fucking speed camera, are like, oh, you're fucking revenue raising. Pick a lane, can't. Do you hate the cops or do you love the cops? What the fuck is your deal? I don't know who the fuck you are. What's your story? Like, oh, I want you to be tough on crime, but not on me. I'm just on fucking, just on fucking immigrants. Is this fucking subtext there? But anyway, it's not a massive crime, it's not a massive crime rise. It's just it's back to how it was in pre-COVID times. And if we look at, so Melbourne is frequently cited as this lawless capital of Australia, here's the cities that have the most crime. Most crime number one, Alice Springs, then it's Darwin, then it's Sydney, then it's Brisbane, and then it's Melbourne. So even though Melbourne is the most popular city in Australia, it's beaten out Sydney. Melbourne is now the most popular city in Australia. Crime is lower than Sydney, Brisbane, Alice Springs, Darwin. What's I think the Gold Coast and cans and maybe a, and Rockhampton, I think as well? So Melbourne is is quite, is very safe actually. It's extremely safe, see. Homicides across the country are lower than the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. Homicides are going way down. Actually not way way down, but they've gone down and consistently gone down. Retail crime is up. I'll give you that one. Retail crime is up. People are stealing from colds and woolly's, but at the end of the day, who fucking gives a shit? If you care about people stealing from woolly, you get a fucking life you fucking. It's just a little bit of monkey business. Got that. Stealing from Woolworth's. Stealing vanilla rations. Scanning potatoes as onions. Wait, no, Scanning capsicums as potatoes. Fuck, fuck you woolly's. Yeah. Yeah, fucking, who gives a shit of people steal from woolly's? They fucking steal from their workers all the time. Fuck them. But look, I'm going to say, like, these statistics are real hard to interpret. There's so many kinds of data. There's so many ways of collecting data. I definitely, like, I'm been looking around, but I'm not, I'm a fucking comedian. I could have gotten things wrong. I've definitely overlooked something. I've definitely overlooked things. There's plenty of room to discredit and dispute. Everything I've said in this podcast, and I look forward to all my wonderful listeners posting comments that I will never read saying I'm wrong about this or that. But let's take the nitty gritty aside, right? Whatever way you spin the stats, whatever way you interpret the data, we're not in a crime wave. We're not in this dangerous lawless state. Whatever way you spin it, crime is slightly down. It's flat. Or even if I'm giving you, like, if it if I'm admitting that it's up, which it isn't, it's slightly up. By like statistically insignificant amount, we are super, super safe in Australia. There's no new special thing that's occurring. We are not in a crime wave. We are in an information wave. Because when a crime occurs, we see 30 angles of every crime that occurs. Every time, you know, something goes, something happens in a city or a shopping center, we see fucking CCTV. We see iPhone footage. We see fucking 200 opinion pieces from white, right wing pedophile protectors and commercial radio shock jocks saying that we need to get tough on crime. And now in Victoria, the fucking Victoria police copped dog pieces of shit because of this moral panic about this fake crime wave that doesn't exist. The police literally now have the power to stop and frisk anyone they feel like at any time in the Melbourne CBD. Did you know this is happening? This is happening. New police powers that have been completely glossed over. This is fucking psycho. This is fucking psychotic that we would just be happy. And all these fucking people that hated that hate fucking left you dictator lockdowns. They're the ones going, yeah, great. I want cops patrolling the street frisking citizens at random. Fuck that. And I also have a sneaking suspicion that very few of these randomly selected people to be frisked will be white boomers or men in business. suits. And even if there was a crime wave, which there isn't. But even if there was, getting tough on crime doesn't do shit. That's one thing we can say pretty much conclusively from the statistics because we can see. We can compare countries that are tough on crime versus countries that are not tough on crime. America has the death penalty. They have life sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. They have the highest incarceration rate of any developed nation. And they are unsafe as fuck. They have a way higher. They have way higher robberies, rapes, homicides, basically any kind of crime. They are way worse than most other developed nations. They are extremely unsafe as far as the developed nation goes. You know what countries rate higher than us when I said we were one of the safest countries on earth. All the countries that rate higher than us in safety from crime are Scandinavian ones. Just about all of them. It would European, I don't know, I forget actually every single one. But there was almost all the Scandinavian ones were on there. And almost all of the ones that have a really low rate of crime and are very, very safe. Other ones that are really soft as the fucking liberals would put it on crime. They are the ones that focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. And after everything I've said, I'm not a particularly bleeding heart person. I, you know, I've made no secret of me being a big old fucking lefty on this show. I'm a massive lefty. But I'm not a bleeding heart. Like if a rapist or a murderer would have get chucked in a hole, I wouldn't share it here. I'm against the death penalty. I was dead against the Iraq war. But I didn't feel bad when Saddam Hussein got hung or hanged. Couldn't think of a more deserving bloke to get bloody hanged than Saddam Hussein. I reckon he was a bit of a fuck wet. I don't, like I believe in rehabilitation and education rather than fucking prisons and like police stopping people to frisk them. I believe in that. But I don't believe in it because I'm softhearted and emotional. I believe in it because it works. Right? Stopping people and frisking them and being tough on crime and mandatory minimum sentences and death penalty don't work. They don't reduce crime. They in fact make it worse. And I'm sorry to all these conservatives, but facts don't care about your feelings. And the fact is being tough on crime, quote unquote, is worse for crime rates for crime rates. The tough on crime is worse for crime rates. You are wrong and you probably have a choked. Also, there's this other thing. There's laws, when Queensland, they're proposing laws everywhere. I've like adult time, adult crime, adult time. If you're 16 and you commit a crime, serious crime, then you get adult time, mandatory sentencing and all the rest of it, right? And like, I mean, fuck, there's a million fucking arguments for and against this. I'm definitely against this. But like at the end of the day, though, if someone is, if someone is mature enough to be tried as an adult, if someone does a crime and they can be tried as an adult, like if a 16 year old murder someone, right? I don't feel sympathy for them. And if they're going to be tried as an adult, okay, but that means 16 year olds also get to vote and drink alcohol and go to the pub and everything. If you're old enough to be tried as an adult, then you're old enough to vote. And if you're not old enough to vote, then you're not old enough to be tried as an adult. You can't have it both ways. You can't be mature enough to make adult decisions and then be tried as an adult, but not mature enough to make adult decisions and vote for who you want in parliament. You're either an adult or you're not. What is it? You got to pick one. You can't just say it's like these fucking conservatives with their fucking, oh, we hate a dictator, Danny State. We also want cops to be fucking Gestapo and frisk everyone. What do you want? If you want, like if you're going to be tried as an adult at 16, then you can vote at 16. You can smoke d'arees, you can drink, you can go to a peep show. I wish I hadn't said that. I don't want to be sitting here going. I think 16 year olds should be able to go to pee shows. I think 16 is good. You can go to a peep show. You'll learn something. I'm just saying if they're old enough to, if they're old enough to do adult time, they're old enough to vote. But all this fucking crime wave bullshit, this is all a fucking distraction. That's all it is. Never ever forget that. Because more and more, these days, conservatives are having a hard time winning elections. They're having a hard time winning elections because they're trying to make people think that a drag queen reading a story to a kid is tearing our society apart and no one's buying it. They can no longer stand in the smoldering wasteland that used to be a national park or in a farmer's field as gas bubbles out of their creek due to colceum gas mining and be believed when they say the environment is fine. Burning coal and gas is fine. Everything they're saying is falling apart in front of their eyes. So they have to pretend it's immigrants with machetes that are destroying your way of life. And that's the other thing that is the most important thing to say with this whole crime wave bullshit narrative. It's always about immigrants with machetes. It's always about people with skin color that looks different to you or me. The crime wave never extends to politicians doing cocaine in the prayer room at Parliament House, which they do do. It never extends to celebrities doing cocaine at the loggies. It doesn't extend to good old white boys who are having a bit of a punch on on the footy field. That's not a crime. That's just boys will be boys. The crimes they're talking about are always immigrants with knives. It's never just, oh, you know, fucking a couple of boys having a punch on on the Friday night after having a few beers. And retail theft gets reported as a crime, right? Retail theft is on the up. So is wage theft. That's not counted in the crime statistic because that's not a criminal. That's an ombudsman thing. You don't get the police involved for a company stealing your wages. That's just smart business. That's just been a good capitalist. The crime wave doesn't include the rich bosses who get away with it. When they say crime wave, they don't mean all the various different crimes they're committing and doing and their mates are committing and doing. They mean a brown guy with a knife in public. And that happens so rarely, so infrequently that when it does happen, it's a national news story. You dear listener, whoever you are, you are not going to die from being murdered. That's just statistically, you're not. No one's going to break into your house while you sleep and murder you. Now, unfortunately, depending on how many people listen to this episode, for one of you, I am wrong. Sorry. You're statistically extremely unlucky. But in Australia, every week in Australia, 3,600 people die. That's how many people die per week in this country of all causes. Of those 3,600 five are murdered. Unless not pretend that that's good or acceptable, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that is low. That is, that is historically low and it is also low for worldwide compared to every other country that is quite low. Of those 3,600 people, 5 people are murdered. 4 people are killed in a workplace accident. So the homicide rate in Australia is 0.84 per 100,000 people. That's how that's the homicide rate. The workplace death rate, by being killed at work, is 1.3 per 100,000 people. So your job, your shitty boss cutting corners, is statistically more likely to kill you than a murderer than a criminal. I say a criminal. Then a, you know, a crime gang. That's more likely way for you to die as a workplace death than murder. Now, the rest die of those 3,600. The vast, vast majority die from the same way that we all die, heart disease and cancer. Also dementia, diabetes and COVID. COVID's quite up there. The vast, vast majority of those deaths, like COVID and flu and stuff. But when we talk about heart disease, cancer, even dementia, diabetes, those deaths are caused by lifestyle things, whether you know it or not, whether you're consciously doing it or you're being subjected to it. Deaths caused by pollution. Deaths caused by stuff that goes into your bodies from companies like McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Deaths caused literally from stress, from your shitty fucking job, where you have to spend the vast majority of your life. Not with your family, but at your shitty fucking cubicle, with your shitty fucking boss who smells like gravy. Five people are murdered in Australia every week. Also every week, 61 people die in Australia from pollution. Just pollution, just just breathing the air 61 people die from that. 3200 people die every year in this country from pollution, just from breathing in a city. But that's not news, right? That's just the same as like people fucking dogs on Swanson street. It's like, yeah, it sucks, but what are you going to do? You know, that's just people die from pollution. That's what just what happens. Like people fuck the dogs in Swanson street. It's just what happens. You know, what, what are you, how are you going to do about it? It sucks, but what are you going to do about it? We're going to not drive to McDonald's. You know, I'm not drive to McDonald's. You know, we've got to drive to McDonald's. So we can eat the ultra-process meat filled with hormones and microplastics. You've got to be realistic here. You're not going to be murdered by a gang. You're not going to be the victim of a crime that will end your life. You're going to be killed by a corporation statistically by far. That's how you're going to die. Whether it's British petroleum, pumping your lungs with carbon monoxide on a daily basis, whether it's McDonald's, fist fucking your pancreas with bread that contains so much sugar, it should be called confectionery, whether it's whatever fucking company makes plastic that becomes microplastic, that doctors are finding embedded deep into every single organ inside the human body, whether it's whatever What a fucking company you work for that decided they had to need to spring for good hard hats or your bullshit accounting job where you sit in a fucking cubicle every day with your dead shit boss breathing down your neck, causing your blood pressure to spike so you have a heart attack at 56. The statistics are clear. We don't have a crime epidemic. We don't have a crime wave. We have a pollution wave. We have a pollution epidemic. We have a stress epidemic. We have a plastic epidemic. We have a global warming epidemic. You are way, way, way more likely to be killed by some fucking corporation than a pimply teen with a Stanley knife at Westfield. And when the corporation kills you and they will kill you and you will die, these bosses will face no punishment, no trial, no crimes statistic will be recorded and your death will not make the news. You're just another dead worker ground up into pulp so the boss can have a lobster for lunch at the country club. Get mad. Cunts? Hello? Hey, that's Steve McEady. What, thank you for listening. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The host announces a live comedy special in Melbourne on December 6 and promotes his Patreon for ad-free content.
  2. He satirically presents exaggerated, fear-mongering statistics about a fictional "crime wave" in Melbourne, attributed to conservative media.
  3. The core argument is that there is no actual crime wave; crime in Australia is low and decreasing, but increased media reporting creates a false perception.
  4. He criticizes conservative outlets like Sky News for spreading panic to influence politics and justify increased police powers.
  5. The segment explains how selective reporting and statistical manipulation can make rare events seem common, using the concept of "the exception that proves the rule."

Summary:

The transcription begins with announcements for a live comedy show and the host's Patreon. The main content is a satirical critique of conservative media's portrayal of a crime epidemic in Australia. The host first humorously exaggerates absurd statistics about gang violence in Melbourne to mock alarmist rhetoric.

He then argues that this "crime wave" is a manufactured moral panic. Citing his research, he asserts that Australia, and Victoria specifically, are statistically very safe, with crime rates generally down. The host explains that increased media coverage of individual crimes, despite their rarity, creates a false sense of escalating danger.

He accuses conservative media and political figures of leveraging this fear to garner votes and support for expanded police authority, criticizing outlets like Sky News for their credibility and tactics. The segment concludes by illustrating how the newsworthiness of an event like a stabbing actually proves its uncommonness, debunking the pervasive narrative of a lawless society.

FAQs

Greg Larson is filming a comedy special called 'Where's My Fucking Money' on December 6 at Humdinger Studios in Melbourne. It will be a two-hour show with an interval.

Tickets are available through Greg Larson's Instagram or by searching online for 'Greg Larson Humdinger Studios'. There are only a few tickets left.

Greg Larson's Patreon offers ad-free podcast episodes and occasional extra content. The only tier is $5 per month, which helps support his comedy and podcast work.

No, Greg Larson argues that the reported crime wave is an invented story or moral panic. He states that crime is actually down, and Australia remains one of the safest countries.

He criticizes them for spreading misleading crime statistics and for employing controversial figures like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt, questioning their credibility on reporting crime.

He explains that while crime rates have decreased, media reporting on crime has increased significantly, creating a false sense of a crime wave through selective coverage.

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