Melbourne: Hitting out at Australia's former defence chief Peter Cosgrove who said it was "easy to conclude" that some attacks on Indians may have been racially motivated, Victorian premier John Brumby dubbed his speech as 'factually inaccurate' and wide of the mark.
Brumby whose state has been under fire for reporting maximum assaults against Indians, however, declined to elaborate on how it was not accurate.
Soon after General Cosgrove asked nation to confront racism, the Premier praised Victoria's multicultural heritage and said, "Many of the so-called statements that form
part of Peter's (speech) just factually are not correct.
They're just plain wrong. From that I believe he has drawn completely the wrong conclusions," according to The Age.
In his speech on Wednesday, Cosgrove said the nature of attacks on Indian students made it easy to conclude that they were racially motivated.
Simultaneously, Victorian police chief Simon Overland also told a media outlet on Wednesday that the crime against Indians was an old issue which was realised by police two years ago.
He said "The problem for us is that the criminal incidents are cowardly and sly and it is easy to conclude that they are racially targeted."
He had stated from "day one" that some of the attacks had a racist motive, but some of them had not.
"I think we sometimes too quickly rule out racism. I think in individual cases sometimes we simply have to say we don't know, and I think that's some of the learning for us,"
Overland said.
Meanwhile, reacting to the latest comments by police chief, spokesperson of Federation of Indian Student Association (FISA) Gautam Gupta said it was "brilliant" that
community leaders like General Cosgrove and Overland acknowledged the problems.
However, he was waiting to have another meeting with Overland about solutions to the attacks, and for the federal and state governments to provide financial support.
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