Daniel Andrews’ approval rating is slipping and crime and safety concerns are rising, according to a new poll that found 64% of Victorians believed the government was not doing enough to tackle youth crime.
The Galaxy poll, commissioned by the Herald Sun, found 44% of respondents said Victoria had become less safe since the Andrews government was elected in 2014, while 15% thought it was more safe and 31% said there had been no change.
Coalition voters felt most strongly, with 67% saying it was less safe and 82% saying the government was not tough enough on youth crime, compared with 27% and 49% respectively among Labor voters.
The two-party-preferred vote remained the same as the 2014 election, with Labor leading 52 to 48, but Andrews’ personal approval rating had slipped to 36%, with opposition leader Matthew Guy at 31%.
The Greens vote had grown slightly in the two years since the state election, from 11.5% to 12%, and the minor party vote also inched up.
The Andrews government has been forced to defend a decision to move up to 40 children into a maximum security adult prison after Parkville youth detention centre was damaged by riots.
There have been sporadic riots at the Parkville and Malmsbury youth detention centres for a number of months, prompting the opposition spokesman for children, Georgie Crozier, to say youth affairs minister Jenny Mikakos had “lost control of youth justice”.
The poll responses on crime are also being blamed on the Apex gang, a group of teenagers deemed responsible for a spate of aggressive robberies in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and a street fight after the Moomba festival in March this year.
