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The information in this section regarding Australia's crime rates is sourced from the document "Recorded Crime, Australia 2000", obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, www.abs.gov.au.
The definitions used for violent crime in Australia differ considerably from the New Zealand definition of violent offences. Australia's definitions of crime categories can also differ from state to state. However, it appears the standard definition used for violent crime at the federal level includes homicide, assault, sexual assault, and robbery offences. Attempted murder does not appear to be included in the Australian definition of homicide or assault. A subsection of New Zealand violent and sexual assault offences can be drawn together to provide a comparative statistic to the Australian definition. The offences included in the Australian definition of violent crime and the equivalent New Zealand offences are provided in table A2 in the appendix.
The following tables indicate the total recorded number, and rate per 100,000 population for the four categories of violent crime, as according to the Australian definition.
In 2000, Australia and New Zealand had an equal rate of homicide per capita. New Zealand's equivalent data for Australia's definition of assault, however, was more than a quarter higher than Australia's rate per capita, while Australia's rate of sexual assault was more than a quarter higher than New Zealand's. Australia's rate of robbery per capita was more than twice that for New Zealand. New Zealand's total violent crime rate of 1036.4 per 100,000 population, according to the Australian definition, was ten percent higher than Australia's rate of 941.9 per 100,000 population. Great caution, however, should again be adopted in interpreting these comparative figures, as discussed below.
In relation to the factors discussed in the earlier section "Comparisons between different countries", Australia and New Zealand's jurisdictions use different crime counting rules. Australia's crime rates are counted in terms of the numbers of victims, rather than the number of offences, recorded by Police. In the Australian counting rule, each victim within a distinct criminal incident is counted once to the most serious offence within each national offence category. For example, if a person is indecently assaulted (one form of sexual assault) and then raped (another form of sexual assault), only one count of sexual assault is recorded. New Zealand's counting rule would normally record two sexual assault offences from this criminal incident. Where a victim is subjected to multiple offences of the same type during a single criminal incident (e. g., being assaulted by several offenders, or repeatedly assaulted by the same offender), the victim is counted only once. In New Zealand, every offence by every offender is normally recorded. These differences in counting rules are likely to inflate the apparent violent crime rates of New Zealand in comparison to Australia. However, due to the many factors that can influence the accurate comparisons of recorded crime figures between the two jurisdictions, it remains unknown to what extent the differences in counting rules alone accounts for the difference in the rates between Australia and New Zealand.
