Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett has taken a swipe at Peter Dutton for his interventions in the state's street gang debate, accusing the federal Home Affairs Minister of dividing communities with a "cheap political shot".
Mr Kennett, the Liberal premier of Victoria for most of the 1990s, said he was disappointed by Mr Dutton's claim earlier this month that the threat of street violence in Melbourne suburbs had left people afraid to go out to restaurants at night.
The outspoken Mr Kennett said the Queenslander's comment was "not right and that's just a cheap political shot".
"And you know Peter Dutton was a policeman. If he was a policeman, he would not be making those comments. So he's gone from being a policeman with that training and that discipline to being a politician, which is just to take a cheap political potshot at whatever you can, so it's not helpful," Mr Kennett told Sky News on Thursday night.
"You've got actually try and bring people together rather than simply divide them."
Mr Dutton's dramatic contribution to the Victorian debate was among several from federal Liberals, who have backed up their state colleagues' attacks on the state Labor government's handling of street crime linked to the Sudanese community.
On Wednesday, a joint press conference held by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and acting Victorian premier James Merlino descended into awkwardness as the pair discussed the issue.
Mr Turnbull said Victorian authorities were responsible for tackling the issue and asserted Sydney was not experiencing the same problems.
Immediately responding, Mr Merlino observed Victoria has experienced a drop in crime rates and called on the Prime Minister to "talk to the mobster's mate" - referring to state Liberal leader Matthew Guy's dinner with the alleged head of the Melbourne Mafia - to get him to support firearms legislation to tackle organised crime.
Sudanese-born migrants are over-represented in crime statistics and a series of violent incidents received a lot of attention late in 2017 but Victoria's youth crime rates have been declining for a decade and the last quarter of 2017 saw a drop in overall crime.
While Mr Dutton drew widespread criticism for his comments, a Fairfax Media-ReachTEL poll detected unease in the western suburbs affected by recent high-profile incidents.
Some 62.1 per cent of respondents in Tarneit said they were less likely to go out at night than a year ago because of the threat of gang violence, and 55.2 per cent of respondents in Cranbourne agreed.
