But if they'd been 13-year-old girls shouting "ape" they'd have been named and shamed The ABC reports an unusual crime in Melbourne: Eleven people were attacked during a home invasion in St Albans, in Melbourne's north-west on Friday night. Two men were walking along Adelaide Street when a group of men assaulted them and stole their slab of beer. The victims ran to their nearby share house and locked themselves inside. Up to 20 men followed the victims to the house, forced their way in and used a pole and beer bottles to attack the occupants... The gang stole money and mobile phones during the attack. A gang of 20 people invading a stranger's home? Who could possibly have done this? Ah. One detail is omitted from the ABC report, but released by Victoria Police: Investigators have been told that the offenders are perceived to be of African appearance and wish to speak to anyone who may have more information about the incident. Now why would the ABC have omitted that detail, so critical in identifying the alleged perpetrators and understanding such a bizarre crime? From the Herald Sun, surprisingly, a similar failure to be explicit: This, too, seems an unusual development - a kind of wild, us-against-them tribalism that suggests an ethnic based group, probably of relatively recent arrival. The only clue comes in a fact-box next to the story: Many members have gang links to New Zealand But in an earlier Radio Australia report, this important detail - and, yes, it is the ABC this time revealing it: The majority of the gang members are migrants of Maori or Islander backgrounds. Some have older relatives in jail and/or connections to gangs in New Zealand. Unless you knew that, this shocking and unprovoked attack on a Sri Lankan man might have been falsely described - again - as an example of Anglo Australian racism by the likes of Eddie McGuire: