Racist attack on elder’s car

Respected Busselton Noongar elder and former political candidate Mitchella Hutchins has been left feeling “disgusted and hurt” after racist slurs and nazi swastika symbols were spray painted on her car by vandals, who also stole her vehicle and towed it into the bushes. Ms Hutchins, 51, who grew up in Busselton, is well-known in the South West town for running as a Greens candidate in the State election in 2008 and the Federal election five years later. Ms Hutchins said the incident, which was believed to have occurred on March 5, had completely rocked her and family. She said she was worried this was a targeted attack related to last month’s Gosnells incident which saw two Indigenous women abused by a man with a white swastika painted on his forehead. “It was senseless, it was stupid. I cannot understand for the life of me why anybody, whether they were young or old, would do something so malicious and calculated,” she said. The car was stolen from outside of Busselton near the Sabina Nature Reserve and found on Cable Sands Road. Ms Hutchins had left the vehicle on the side of the road five days earlier after it overheated. On Friday, police directed her to a new location where the Mitsubishi Triton had been vandalised. “The car was just a total wreck,” she said. “I only got the call from police because they had received a report of two men who were seen towing it,” she said. Ms Hutchins said the car’s tyres had been removed, its windows smashed and the outside of the vehicle covered in racial slurs and bad language. “They had just gone crazy, it was a frenzied attack. That’s what it looked like,” she said. Ms Hutchins said she had never seen such malicious, intended vandalism and believed the act was directed at her race. She said she was surprised to see something so “nasty” happen in the South West. “I have a bit of fear there would be an ongoing flow of that attitude that may arise after seeing attack after attack,” she said. Police confirmed they had found a spray-painted car in the bush and said the matter was under investigation, but did not believe it was a targeted incident.