Urgent and clear strategy needed to break the wave of criminal attacks in city

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Fifteen years ago, when the Gillard government was working to introduce legislation for plain packaging of cigarettes, British American Tobacco put out a seven-minute film in which gangsters were depicted claiming the packs would be “easier for us to copy”, that they would “use persuasion” to protect profits and that they could bomb critics and murder rivals over their cut.

The imaginary scenarios were dismissed by Quit Victoria at the time as “Z-grade fiction” and “big tobacco propaganda”.

Perhaps so. But as Victorians wake up each morning to news of another tobacco outlet or nightspot having been burnt to the ground, the state appears to be living in a realisation of that plot.

Detective Superintendent Jason Kelly, head of Victoria Police’s anti-gangs division, likened the now-regular attacks to a service industry, telling our crime reporter John Silvester: “The leaders can be offshore, interstate or sitting on a couch anywhere, using an encrypted app on a phone to put it out there that they have a job that is paying well.”

What is more, the danger is escalating. The transition from years of gang conflict over the........

© The Age