May 26, 2023
South Burnett councillor Kathy Duff has written to the Courier-Mail newspaper to complain about a report which claimed there is “fear on the streets” of Murgon.
The report, published on April 18, described 4605 as “the most dangerous postcode in Wide Bay”.
“Only a row of boarded-up windows suggests that Murgon is anything other than a thriving and healthy community,” the report continued.
The reporter spoke to a couple of people who told him they would be afraid to go out at night, including “a prominent local business person” who allegedly said “you’re going to get some form of violence in the street, that’s fairly normal”.
Police District Inspector Scott Stahlhut was invited to discuss crime issues at the May breakfast meeting of the Murgon Business and Development Association.
Murgon Officer-in-Charge Senior Sergeant Brett Everest also provided crime statistics for the area.
“Both officers are very interesting to listen to and you can learn the actual facts of what is going on in the region and in Murgon,” the MBDA noted.
Cr Duff told the meeting she had written a letter to the Courier-Mail editor, and the journalist responsible, stating “the community was not pleased”.
She said the crime figures, as reported, were false, and invited the newspaper to do an upbeat story about Murgon, perhaps about the successful programs the PCYC was running.
The Courier-Mail report took the number of offences noted in QPS data and divided it by the ABS population for the postcode, without adding weight to the seriousness of the matters listed on police maps, or the clear-up rate.
The same data created the impression Kingaroy was the sixth most dangerous destination, with Goomeri (fifth) and Fraser Island (fourth) even worse.
And the safest postcode? According to the Courier-Mail it is Malarga (4620) which the newspaper says has a population of 448.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts Malarga’s actual population at 15 in the 2021 Census. The largest locality in Postcode 4620 is probably Brooweena which has 91 residents.
The whole 4620 area has 448 residents but they are spread out across a sparsely populated rural area.
