On Wednesday the former prime minister broke the flimsy containment lines around the Sudanese “gangs” debate - if you can call our overlords in Canberra hurling Molotov cocktails at a highly visible and vulnerable ethnic group, and retaliatory memes about un-menaced Melburnians sampling the latest Uzbekistani-fusion restaurant a “debate”. In an interview with 2GB radio, Abbott shifted the discussion from the Victorian government’s supposedly slack bail and sentencing regimes to suggesting African Australians shouldn’t really be Australian at all. “So there is a problem,” Abbott began, chiming in to the most recent iteration of the debate sparked by the death of South Sudanese woman Laa Chol. “The Victorian socialist government should get real and own up to the fact that there is an African gang problem in Melbourne.” Thus far, he was in concert with federal ministers and a shrink-wrapped Malcolm Turnbull and their banal yet calculated assertion of a Sudanese “gang” problem that the state government and its allied do-gooders prefer not to discuss. Though the word “socialist” is a strange descriptor given socialist states tend to hold ethnic minorities in violent contempt. Familiar ring: former prime minister Tony Abbott. Credit:AAP

Abbott continued: “I guess the big question though is: why do we store up trouble for ourselves by letting in people who are going to be difficult, difficult to integrate?” Andrews professed to be concerned about the same issue in 2007 when he said - in the wake of a fatal bashing in Noble Park of a Sudanese teenager by two caucasians - that Australia had slowed its humanitarian intake of Africans because the refugees had been slow to integrate. For its naked cynicism the statement was hard to top because two months earlier the minister had attributed the reduced intake from Africa to improved conditions in those conflict zones, as against worsening conditions for refugees from Myanmar and the Middle East. (By Andrews’ logic, Middle-Eastern refugees are quantifiably easier candidates for integration than Africans.) A decade after this welcoming embrace from Canberra, it’s startling to learn that African-Australian refugees are apparently still struggling to “integrate”. I say “apparently” because consider some of the crimes and anti-social conduct Sudanese Australians have been involved in: trashing short-stay rentals, pre-loading before sporting matches, brawling, affray and violence against women. The death of South Sudanese woman Laa Chol was again dragged into the debate. Credit:Skye United FC/Facebook

Now flip through other recent headlines: violent brawl between Geelong and Melbourne fans, a Victorian Liberal MP busted for drink-driving, women killed in various contexts. On one measure these kids are assimilating just fine. To state the obvious, because everyone else is: of course there’s a problem with crime among Sudanese migrants in Melbourne, irrespective of whether the violence is gang related. As you’ve been hearing ad-nauseam, Sudanese-born Australians are over-represented in statistics compiled by Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency, although criminologists say this demographic skews considerably younger than the Australian average. Progressives and multiculturalists whose first instinct is to clamp down on any discussion about the small number of Sudanese spreading fear and misery only worsen, in ways too numerous to mention, the predicament of the community they’re trying to protect. Loading

To state more of the obvious: other nationalities also have problems with crime. New Zealanders, for instance, accounted for 2.2 per cent of criminal offenders last year, according to CSA figures, and in the past three years we’ve deported a record 1300 Kiwis. Some of these deportees were members of the Comancheros, enough in fact for New Zealand authorities to accuse Australia of exporting gang violence across the Tasman. Maoris and Islanders figure prominently among the evicted, make of that what you will. Still, we’re yet to hear a serious proposal about slamming the door when New Zealanders come knocking. Along with post-war Italian migrants came the Mafia. We can also thank the Italians for Melbourne’s first-rate dining scene, to grossly understate their net contribution. While we should not succumb to the racism of low expectations by excusing pockets of criminality among the Sudanese, understanding the community’s susceptibility and vulnerability to crime is a necessary concession to reality. Like Abbott says, refugees come with difficulties - otherwise they wouldn’t be refugees. They bring experiences of violent conflict in the world’s poorest countries, fractured families, disrupted education. Like Abbott says, refugees come with difficulties - otherwise they wouldn’t be refugees.

In the case of the South Sudanese, the conflict was a brutal 22-year civil war against the north which left roughly 2 million dead and 4 million displaced - but why sweat the details? As Peter Dutton infamously noted two years ago, we confront the added difficulty of refugees not only leeching on welfare but (worse?) taking “Australian jobs”. I’m waiting for Abbott’s Coalition colleagues to condemn his words, reassure African Australians that a few rotten apples don’t extinguish the community’s rich contribution to the country, and give a full-throated affirmation of goodwill and tolerance. But it’s a bit like waiting for US Republicans to turn on Donald Trump. Julie Szego is an Age columnist.