In this interview, Daniel Wild appeared on Credlin – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on criminal justice.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Steve Price:
Welcome back. Steve Price in for Peta Credlin. I’ll be with you tomorrow night as well. Now let’s get straight into the other news of the day with our panel Sky News contributor Karalee Katsambanis and Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild. Guys, welcome.
I want to start with the front page of the Herald Sun today, latest edition of the Bail Bench Book. Who would’ve known there was such a thing? Published by the Judicial College of Victoria. It shows that Labor’s changes to bail laws will do absolutely nothing. It’s an official guide provided to judges and magistrates on how to apply the law in practise. This is in the middle of a crime crisis and basically what it says, Karalee, is don’t send youngsters to jail. It’s not going to help them in their lives.
Karalee Katsambanis:
Well, Pricey, I do have to say it is incredible timing, but just a couple of hours ago, as you would know, you did that wonderful interview in July with the 33-year-old lovely Indian man, Surabhai Anand, who had his hand-
Steve Price:
Severed, almost.
Karalee Katsambanis:
Okay, and I’m sure you’ll know this, our viewers won’t though, that a 14-year-old boy that was accused and charged with doing it, he has been released on bail as of a couple of hours ago because the magistrate believes that it is in the best long-term protection for the community. Long-term protection, have this little 14-year-old so-and-so out on bail. Mr. Anand is absolutely distraught this evening and apparently it is alleged that the 14-year-old has made a series of alleged assaults and things to the staff and also people that are on bail at Parkville. Now, you cannot make this stuff up and coming on the front, as you said, of what this Bail Bench Book is all about. The government, you’ve got to think of mandatory minimum sentencing. It’s got to come in.
Steve Price:
Well, it’s not going to come in, Daniel, here with this government, is it? I mean, we’ve got the most socialist left-leaning state government in the country and they see this stuff as the heart of what they do.
Daniel Wild:
Well, you’re exactly right. There’s a couple of things here. Firstly, this is the consequence of appointing these left-wing activist judges. So now the government can’t even do what it says it’s going to do because of the judges they themselves have appointed. Well, this is what happens. The other point written in the handbook is that it says that special consideration should be given to Aboriginal children in this-
Steve Price:
It does. Yeah.
Daniel Wild:
… which is shocking because what that basically means is that you can have two people, two children committing the same crime, but because one of them has a different race or background to another, there’ll be different consequences to that.
Steve Price:
But this is where this all started because we had that incident with an Indigenous woman on a train headed to Melbourne. She was taken off the train because she was intoxicated and she was put into a police cell and tragically died. And from that moment onward, this government decided to treat Indigenous people in the courts with crime completely different to everyone else.
Daniel Wild:
And it’s completely inconsistent with everything about our legal system, which is that regardless of your race, your gender, your ethnicity, your background, if you’ve committed a crime, you need to be held accountable for that. Now, yes, there can be mitigating circumstances of different kinds of degrees, but if we’re going to have a situation like we’re developing in Victoria where there’s different consequences for people based upon their race, well, we’ve fallen very far.
Steve Price:
Karalee.
Karalee Katsambanis:
But Pricey And Daniel, we know that there are 1,100 young offenders aged between 10 and 17. The crime stats came out for Victoria, the absolute worst on record. These 1,100 young youth repeat offenders are responsible for 70% of the crime in Victoria. And this revolving door of bail, I just don’t understand why magistrates don’t get it.
Steve Price:
No, I don’t understand. Well, they’re doing the government’s bidding, clearly.
Karalee Katsambanis:
I mean, there’s a couple of magistrates-
Steve Price:
I’ve got to ask. Where’s the parents of these kids?
Karalee Katsambanis:
Well, this is it. They’re currently wards of the state and-
Steve Price:
I mean, for God’s sake. There was a case this week where a kid got bail to go on an overseas holiday with his parents.
Karalee Katsambanis:
That’s the other thing. I mean, Magistrate Brett Sonnet has come out and he is a very brave one to come out and say that when he was a young lawyer, one of his clients was 18 years old, clean record, got three years jail for stealing white goods. That’s about 25 years ago, three years. And then he applied to get a lighter sentence. The judge knocked it off by a month. But he’s actually saying, he fears the people that come before him, but he’s the only one that is speaking out. It’s terrible.
Steve Price:
I’ve been out of the country for three weeks and I come back and nothing’s changed.
Karalee Katsambanis:
It’s the same.
Steve Price:
Daniel, let’s talk about ISIS, the brides, I’m completely confused by what happened in Senate estimates. Have a look at the questioning yesterday around this matter.
James Paterson:
Have any applications for citizenship by dissent been processed for people in Syria?
Stephanie Foster:
The department has received applications and processed them consistent with our legislative requirements.
James Paterson:
Right, thank you. How many?
Stephanie Foster:
We processed two applications.
Steve Price:
I mean, Paterson’s doing a great job, but these public servants just stonewall. They don’t tell you anything.
Daniel Wild:
That’s right. And this is why trust in our government and in our systems of government is falling down when you see non-answers like that. And we see it time and time again in Senate estimates. I think the broader issue here, Steve, is this whole thing with the ISIS brides is another example of how the migration system is being run largely for domestic political considerations. Not in the interest of –
Steve Price:
We saw those images of Tony Burke out at the airport celebrating the arrival of people.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s right. And there was the rushing through of citizenship before the election. And look what Senator Price said, that immigration system has political consequences. Well, doesn’t this prove that point that was made?
Steve Price:
It does prove this point. And I mean, as the public, we deserve to know the detail of this. I mean, they’re going on about, “Oh, there’s been no repatriation.” Well, these people got out of Syria, somehow got into Lebanon and suddenly ended up with passports and DNA tests on their children to prove that they were their children. The women’s passports would’ve expired. So that means the government helped, doesn’t it?
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s the only logical conclusion. And look, again, I think the issue here is not only do you have this particular matter with the ISIS brides, but it comes on the back of this record surge into the number of migrants that have come into Australia, which is not in the interest of our community and doesn’t have its support. And also don’t forget the massive breakdown in social cohesion that we’ve seen, so it’s just one thing on top of another.
Steve Price:
Karalee, our old mate, the Lord Mayor, Nick Reece, he’s been in China and he’s recreated Daniel Andrews’ infamous Tiananmen Square photo on his mobile phone. A dumb move in my view. He’s called it cheeky political satire. The problem Karalee is we don’t ever, have never known what Andrews did in China.
Karalee Katsambanis:
And that’s it. And also the other thing is, this is a trip by Lord Mayor of Melbourne on our taxpayer dollar. What’s he doing?
Steve Price:
Well, rate payers’ dollar.
Karalee Katsambanis:
Rate payers’ dollar, but where’s the investment coming back? What’s he actually doing for Melbourne? Melbourne’s got enough problems. He really didn’t need to take the trip over there. It’s not really necessary. We need to be able to get the confidence in Melbourne, the safety, the security, the graffiti, no matter what it is. Because I’ll tell you what, the image going out to China and the rest of the world, a lot of students here, Melbourne and Victoria is not a safe place.
Steve Price:
He shouldn’t have been there, should he?
Karalee Katsambanis:
No.
Daniel Wild:
He should not have been there. And this is another failure of Nicholas Reece. Don’t forget, this is the guy who said lockdowns were good for Melbourne. This is what he thinks. This is a guy who has a Melbourne or a council voice to parliament, which has divided the city by race and he won’t even fly the Australian flag, who refused to stump up a measly couple hundred thousand dollars to fix up one of the massive flags that we have. But he’s happy to spend the money and go over to China. I mean, this guy is a complete and total joke. We need someone serious –
Steve Price:
He’s done nothing to what he promised when you lead up to him getting elected.
Karalee Katsambanis:
Nothing.
Daniel Wild:
Nothing. Hey, look at the homelessness, the graffiti, the crime, everything that’s around. Have things got better or worse?
Steve Price:
Oh, yeah. The graffiti squad, they were going to be there in 10 minutes and clear it all off.
Daniel Wild:
Apparently we were going to swim in the Yarra by 2050, right? That’ll fix our problems.
Karalee Katsambanis:
And apparently there were security guards going around and he promised a squad of 20 or 30 and there’s only 10, and they don’t have the powers of arrest or anything.
Steve Price:
Never seen one of them.
Karalee Katsambanis:
Never seen one of them.
Steve Price:
Karalee, Daniel, thank you very much for your time.
This transcript of Daniel Wild talking on Credlin – Sky News Australia from 9 October 2025 has been edited for clarity.
