Last week, the Australian state government of Victoria banned the sale of large knives after a violent gang fight in a Melbourne shopping mall. The brawl consisted of seven men wildly swinging machetes at each other. Since the event, all seven men have been arrested and charged.
Those arrested were all “known gang members and known to police,” according to a Victoria Police statement. Six of the seven were allegedly out on bail at the time.
The new measure to ban machete sales fast-tracked a partial implementation of a plan that the state announced in March, which in turn was made after a previous series of vicious crimes involving large knives. Victoria will implement its full ban on machetes (defined as a “cutting edge knife with a blade of more than 20 centimeters”) in September, but the far-left Labor government has used “extraordinary powers to totally ban the sale of machetes” effective immediately.
Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan attributed Australia’s crime waves to knives longer than 20 centimeters, or about 8 inches. “I hate these knives,” she said, “and I will keep introducing as many laws as it takes to get them off our streets, out of our shops and out of our lives.” Her comments continue the war on machetes she declared in March: “Machetes are destroying lives so we will destroy machetes.”
Victoria’s new measures follow the example set by the U.K., which banned the possession, production, transportation, and selling of machetes and “statement” knives last September. Those knives had become the only means for self-defense for many in the U.K. who were facing increasingly dangerous streets. In an interview with the BBC, a youth worker said that young people are “absolutely petrified” for their safety: “Usually the young people that are carrying these knives are more so carrying them for their own safety and they have absolutely no intention of using them.” Now, it seems that only bad guys will have knives.
Australia and the U.K.’s measures to restrict gun possession have not been successful in stopping crime, revealing what will ultimately happen in the U.S. if calls by American politicians to restrict firearms achieve success. President Joe Biden in 2020 famously argued that assault weapons “should be illegal. Period.” But gun control can never stop at banning “assault weapons.” Australia has banned guns, and now its problems with knife stabbings have compelled it to ban knives by the same reasoning.
Although Australia has some of the most stringent gun laws in the world, violent crimes and gang activity are increasingly common. According to the Guardian, “Victoria’s crime rate is spiralling, reaching its highest level in almost a decade.” The reports show that the crime wave is driven by a cohort of repeat offenders who are under the age of 18, many of whom are involved in gangs.
A primary factor of Victoria’s violence is mass migration. African, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and Burmese gangs have allegedly been involved in numerous violent episodes in recent years in Victoria. Although Victoria’s police stopped publishing offenders’ nationalities in crime statistics in 2018 to quell concerns about rising African gang violence, data still shows the dangers presented by migrant crime.
Despite making up only 1 percent of the population, African youth accounted for roughly 50 percent of young people in custody in 2024. In contrast, they accounted for only 4 percent of youths in custody in 2012. Since crime rate increases are being driven by criminal youths and gang-related activity, these statistics are especially pressing.
Instead of ending mass migration, a root cause behind spiraling violence, the Victorian government has undertaken extreme steps against its citizens’ liberties by implementing its new knife bans. Citizens are understandably upset.
One post on X from an Australian citizen reads, “If you want less machete attacks, ban mass immigration, not machetes.” Australian podcast host Sam Bamford also argued that the new machete bans are “Band-aid solutions” to the real problem. He said, “It’s not the machete — it’s who’s holding it. Banning tools won’t fix mass immigration, weak bail laws, and the refusal to deport violent offenders.”
When the government attacks citizens’ freedoms rather than addressing the real problem, the inevitable result is that it will bring out spirited resistance. And sometimes that resistance isn’t pretty.
On Saturday, a radical group of protesters held up an offensive banner at the shopping mall where the African gangs brawled the previous weekend. In response, Premier Allan condemned the protesters as “cowards” and praised the fact that Victoria has “recently passed tougher hate speech laws.”
It is certainly true that this group of far-right activists belong to an unsavory organization and expressed their opposition to knife-banning in a contentious manner. But Allan shouldn’t have expected anything different. These protesters, in an immoderate way, are pointing to the problems felt by all Australians.
A pertinent analogy from Plato’s Statesman can be applied to these issues. It describes statesmanship as the weaving together of moderate, orderly people with courageous, spirited people. The moderate types preserve stability and act with civility, but they can tyrannize over citizens’ spiritedness and erode the very pillars of civilization in their attempt to maintain niceties. Plato’s Stranger stresses that the “especially orderly” can be too polite and docile for their own good, especially in their excessive meekness toward other peoples — “they’re always at the mercy of those who attack them.” Every community requires spirited men not only to fight its wars, but also to reinforce liberty in assertive ways. When governments try to infringe on fundamental freedoms, they inevitably stir up virulent resistance; this resistance is on the one hand necessary, but it can also become ugly.
Plato also defines the solution. The statesman brings together the “courageous and moderate human beings … by unanimity and friendship”; he must take into account the genuine needs expressed by his country’s citizens. Order and civility are desirable, but the community must also honor courage rather than attempt to exterminate all danger and pursue an “untimely” love toward foreigners. To prevent spirited men from acting crudely, the government must prioritize its own citizens. A country that bans all manner of weapons while flooding its homeland with foreigners will become both feeble and crime-ridden.
Australia, the U.K., and far-left cities in the U.S. are already experiencing these effects. Yet, instead of addressing the real issue at hand, they continue to punish their own people with senseless bans and harsher speech laws. Maybe the spirited types have a point.