Victoria becomes Australia's crime capital

0:00If you had any doubt before, new research has confirmed Victoria is Australia's crime capital, with the state recording more car and property theft claims than anywhere else in this country. Data from the insurance council of Australia has revealed some really scary stats in Victoria, a car is stolen or broken into every 43 minutes, while there's a break-in at a home every two hours. For more, we're joined by Andrew Hall, insurance council of Australia CEO. Good morning to you. You would be used to seeing some pretty alarming stats and figures. Are you concerned by what you're seeing in Victoria? Well, these numbers are really extraordinary because they're quite often double what they are in the other states when it comes to home invasions. So in Victoria, the home invasion numbers are double what they are in New South Wales. And then when it comes to cars being stolen, the number of cars stolen in Melbourne alone

1:00is more than the combined number of every other capital city in Australia. So these are really, really big numbers and I don't think we should be accepting that this is some sort of normal. It clearly is not the case and we need to be getting on top of it. Yeah, we'll get to national insurance premiums in a second, but every other state and territory as you touched on there has recorded a decline in the same period for both motor theft and for home breakings. Why is Victoria an outlier of the moment? Well, I think crime targets the weakest link and at the moment it's targeting Melbourne and it's targeting Victoria. I mean, 10,000 cars stolen from Victoria. If you line them up, they stretch from the Melbourne CBD through to the Dandyong Ranges. And insurers are telling me that two thirds of those cars are never recovered. So this is a serious crime issue that's occurring here in Melbourne. I think the police are doing their very best, but clearly something needs to change. Doing the same thing and hoping for a different outcome is not going to be the way forward here

2:01in Victoria. Victoria is going to have to tackle this problem in a very different way. Yeah, and these are only people who are in short. So the number is a bigger. What does it do to insurance premiums around the country? Well, at the moment every year, half a billion dollars worth of cars are stolen around Australia. And we are seeing other states making a real effort to get on top of that. In Queensland, the adult crime, adult time, laws have made a real difference to particularly the petty crime, which trains up the criminals that then move into the more organized crime side of things. So there are things that can be done. They do in fact, they do impact premiums around the country. It is a risk we can control. We can get on top of crime in this country. We don't have to accept that it is somehow the normal. Yeah, Victorian crime is affecting policy holders right around the country. It is so interesting. Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate your time.