The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index, 2026 edition
Equipment theft is widely described as a worsening problem. It is not, and the government's own numbers say so. The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds recorded theft from vehicles in New South Wales fell 72% between 2001 and 2025, and break-ins at non-residential premises fell 85%. One category has genuinely turned: motor vehicle theft is up 42% since 2021, while theft from vehicles kept falling.
The index is derived from NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research recorded crime data, which covers 62 offence categories monthly from 1995-01-01 across 131 local government areas. It exists because no credible Australian equipment-theft statistic is currently published: the National Equipment Register stopped in 2016, and the figures most often quoted in this category cannot be traced to the bodies they are attributed to.
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The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds recorded theft from motor vehicles in New South Wales fell from 90,528 incidents in 2001 to 25,218 in 2025, a 72% decline. Break and enter at non-residential premises, the category covering yards, sheds and workshops, fell 85% over the same period, from 52,203 to 7,639.
Source: Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Derived by MapTrack.
This is the opposite of what the category says about itself. It is worth being precise about why the difference exists: a decline in recorded incidents is not a decline in exposure for any individual operator, and it says nothing about the value of what is taken when it happens. What it does rule out is the claim that theft is climbing.
The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds motor vehicle theft in New South Wales rose 42% between 2021 and 2025, from 10,496 incidents to 14,857, while theft from vehicles fell 9% across the same four years.
Source: Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Derived by MapTrack.
The two series moving apart is the finding. Whole vehicles are being taken more often; the tools inside them are not. For a fleet operator that is a different exposure to the one the category usually describes, and it points at the vehicle itself rather than at what is in the tray.
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The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds Newcastle records 900 thefts from motor vehicles per 100,000 people, against Sydney at 364 at a rate 2.5 times higher. Sydney ranks 12th. Regional centres take the leading places.
Source: Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Derived by MapTrack. Areas with 50,000+ residents only.
The population floor is doing real work here.This table is restricted to local government areas with 50,000 or more residents, and uses the publishing agency's own rate per 100,000 rather than a population estimate of ours. Without that floor the ranking is topped by areas of a few thousand people, where a single additional incident moves the rate by more than 18 per 100,000 and a headline percentage change can rest on fewer than twenty incidents. Rankings of that kind are common and they are not measurements.
The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds break and enter at non-residential premises runs about 19% higher in January than in September, measured across eleven complete years. The swing is real but modest, which is worth saying plainly: this is a scheduling consideration, not a step change.
Source: Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Derived by MapTrack. Eleven complete years, 2015 to 2025.
The underlying counts are published by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, covering 62 offence categories monthly from 1995-01-01 across 131 local government areas, and are free and open. Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. The aggregation, the percentage changes, the per-capita comparison and the seasonal index are MapTrack's derivation from that data. The agency published the numbers; it did not make these comparisons.
Rate rankings across small populations are unstable to the point of being misleading. In the unfloored table, the leading areas hold a few thousand residents each, one additional incident moves a rate by more than 18 per 100,000, and the largest apparent increase resolves to nineteen incidents in a town of about four thousand. Every rate published here comes from an area of at least 50,000 people, and no percentage change is quoted on a base under about fifty incidents.
New South Wales only. Offence definitions, counting rules and reporting rates differ between jurisdictions, so these figures are not a league table and should not be ranked against other states or countries. “Steal from motor vehicle” covers all vehicle contents, so it is a labelled proxy for tool theft and never a measurement of it. Recorded crime counts what was reported, so every figure here is a floor rather than a true volume.
Every figure on this page renders from a single generated dataset rather than being typed into the prose, so a number in a sentence, a bar in a chart and a row in the download cannot disagree. The derivation is committed alongside the index, and a figure whose derivation is not committed does not enter the next edition.
Each headline finding is also published as an individually citable entry in the MapTrack equipment statistics library, alongside third-party figures on theft, downtime, maintenance and compliance.
This report is free to quote, republish and build on under CC BY 4.0, including commercially, with attribution to MapTrack and a link to this page. No permission request needed.
The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index 2026, MapTrack, derived from NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data, https://www.maptrack.com/research/australian-equipment-theft-index-2026
MapTrack. (2026). The Australian Equipment Theft Index (2026). The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index, 2026 edition [Data set]. Derived from NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research recorded crime data. https://www.maptrack.com/research/australian-equipment-theft-index-2026
The underlying figures are available as CSV and JSON, each carrying the population definition, the measurement date and the attribution line. Every chart on this page has its own embed code. Questions about the method, or a correction, go to corrections@maptrack.com.
Not in the state with the longest published series. The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds recorded theft from motor vehicles in New South Wales fell 72% between 2001 and 2025, from 90,528 incidents to 25,218, and break and enter at non-residential premises fell 85%. Both fell again in the most recent twelve months. The widely repeated claim that equipment theft is climbing with the cost of living is not supported by the New South Wales recorded crime data, which runs monthly from 1995-01-01.
Vehicle theft specifically. The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds motor vehicle theft in New South Wales rose 42% between 2021 and 2025, from 10,496 incidents to 14,857, while theft from vehicles fell 9% over the same period. Whole vehicles are being taken more often while the contents of vehicles are being taken less often. Both remain far below their 2001 levels.
Regional centres, not Sydney. The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds Newcastle records 900 thefts from motor vehicles per 100,000 people against Sydney at 364, a rate 2.5 times higher, with Sydney ranking 12th. The ranking uses the publishing agency's own rate per 100,000 and is restricted to local government areas with 50,000 or more residents, because smaller areas produce rates that a single incident can move by more than 18 per 100,000.
January. The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index finds break and enter at non-residential premises in New South Wales runs about 19% higher in January than in September, its quietest month, measured across eleven complete years. The seasonal swing is real but modest, and a single year should not be read as a trend.
Cite it as: The MapTrack Equipment Theft Index 2026, MapTrack, derived from NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data, https://www.maptrack.com/research/australian-equipment-theft-index-2026. It is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence, so it is free to quote, republish and build on, including commercially, provided MapTrack is credited and the report is linked. The underlying crime data is published by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, which requires the acknowledgement "Source: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research" on any document containing it. Figures are downloadable as CSV and JSON, and every chart has its own embed code.
Four, and they matter. It covers New South Wales only, and state definitions and counting rules differ enough that these figures should not be ranked against other jurisdictions. "Steal from motor vehicle" covers all vehicle contents, so it is a labelled proxy for tool theft rather than a measurement of it. Recorded crime counts incidents reported to police, so every figure is a floor. And rates for areas below 50,000 residents are excluded rather than published, because they are too volatile to rank.
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