It found Indigenous people – who make up 1% of Victoria’s population – accounted for 30% of Covid fines in some regional parts of the state like Mildura. Overall, First Nations people accounted for nearly 3% of all fines.for breaching the state’s lockdown rules in 2020, when accounting for their share of the state’s population. Victoria police have rejected the allegation by the report’s lead researcher that officers targeted certain racial groups.
Melbourne suburbs with higher proportions of people from non-English speaking backgrounds also received more fines. More than 20% of Covid fines were issued to people of African and Middle Eastern appearance, despite people of this background only making up about 5% of the Victorian population. Abdul Kareem, now 28, received a Covid fine in August 2020 while running errands outside the state’s curfew hours between 8pm to 5am, although he does not believe he was targeted by police.Kareem had just left a laundromat in Reservoir, in Melbourne’s north, when he was approached by police at about 10pm. He received a fine shortly after in the mail.
He says he was not aware of the curfew – which was implemented earlier that month – as he had been relying on friends and family to stay informed about Covid restrictions.Alex Walters, Vals’ principal managing lawyer for civil and human rights, says the Inner Melbourne Community Legal centre report, on which he sat on the steering group for, was “robust, concrete and comprehensive” evidence of racial profiling.