Victoria bans machete sales
Andy Park: Australia's first ban on machetes is set to begin after a brazen and violent daylight gang brawl in a Melbourne shopping centre at the weekend. The Victorian Premier's ban comes after a series of high profile and tragic knife crimes both here and overseas. One victim is campaigning for a complete ban on pointed kitchen knives in the UK. The tip and not the edge of the knife being the most harmful source of her own critical injuries. Kimberley Price filed this report.
Kimberley Price: Crowds of shoppers flee a Melbourne shopping centre on Sunday as a violent brawl unfolds. A man wielding a machete is seen on CCTV lunging towards two people before a shopper called Anthony stepped in to make a citizen's arrest.
Anthony: I saw one of the guys with the machetes just kind of bring it out from his waistband, sort of remove the sheath and then have it in the air and start swinging at it. One of the guys ran towards us into the shopping centre and that's the guy that I tripped over.
Kimberley Price: Two teenagers were arrested at the shopping centre and charged with a fray, intentionally causing injury and possession and use of a controlled weapon, while a 20 year old was seriously injured. It wasn't the only knife related incident in Melbourne over the weekend. On Saturday, Victoria police shot dead a woman after she drove at officers while they were arresting a man allegedly armed with a machete. Today, Premier Jacinta Allan declared Victoria will fast track Australia's first machete ban.
Jacinta Allan: We must never let the places where we gather, the places where families come together to meet, to shop, to enjoy the peace of their weekend become the places we fear.
Kimberley Price: It will be illegal to sell machetes in Victoria from midday Wednesday. The government says the move is an attempt to dry up the market before a ban on possessing the weapons comes into effect in September.
Jacinta Allan: This comes also off the work that is being done to provide Victoria police with expanded knife search powers, which has seen a record number of these dangerous weapons being seized and taken off the streets.
Kimberley Price: The Australian Bureau of Statistics says knives were the most common weapon used in homicides between 2010 and 2023. Recent high profile incidents like Sydney's Bondi Junction shopping centre stabbing where seven people were killed underline the danger. As authorities hold inquiries into these deadly incidents, overseas, Leanne Lucas, who survived the Southport stabbing in England last year where three children were killed at a dance studio, wants to see an end to the sale of pointed kitchen knives.
Leanne Lucas: I feel like I've just had my eyes opened to the dangers of how domestic tools can be weaponised and the fact that they're so readily available. A safer option is to go for a curved or a blunt tip knife that reduces that risk of the kitchen knife being used ever as aa weapon.
Kimberley Price: Dr Vincent Hurley is a criminologist at Macquarie University and former New South Wales police officer. He welcomes the Victorian government's ban, but argues it doesn't go far enough.
Vincent Hurley: If you go back and look at graffiti about two decades ago, state governments decided to put spray cans behind grills in hardware stores to stop graffiti. If governments were serious about knife crime, then they would put behind grills, machetes, axes, tomahawks and all these sharp implements. They would do what they did with the gun buyback scheme 20, 30 years ago after Port Arthur, where they would pay people to hand in axes, machetes, zombie knives and things like this. Together, those two things would be an excellent suggestion to try and reduce knife crime. It would have to make a difference.
Kimberley Price: Dr Hurley believes Leanne Lucas's campaign could prevent some crime, but it wouldn't stop people from accessing other bladed instruments.
Vincent Hurley: Knife crimes account for most deaths in Australia against violence against women and machete attacks like this. It is the idea that they are so easily accessible that they are a weapon of convenience. Anyone can purchase them.
Kimberley Price: Victoria Police continue to investigate Sunday's shopping centre incident, while the state inquest into the Bondi Junction stabbing attack remains ongoing.
Andy Park: Kimberley Price there.
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