Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Ministers statements: bail laws

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:08): Keeping Victorians safe is and always will be our priority. That is why we introduced into this place, this Parliament, and saw pass through this Parliament the toughest bail laws in the country – to break that pattern of repeat serious offending, because when people commit serious crimes they should not be out on the streets. What we are seeing as a result of the hard work of the Attorney-General, the Minister for Police and the Minister for Corrections is more serious and repeat offenders are going to jail; they are not getting bail. When you look at the data, we have seen more people on remand in our prisons over the past month – 465 more people compared to this time last year. And when we put these bail laws, the toughest bail laws in the country, to the Parliament and the community recently, we said we would also invest in our corrections system, because to see more people not getting bail but going to jail also needed the government to back the hard work of our corrections system. It is why I was pleased today, with the police minister and with the corrections minister, to visit Western Plains Correctional Centre, a new modern facility, and to announce that next week’s budget will invest a further $727 million to increase the capacity of our prison system – 1000 new adult prison beds, 88 new beds in our youth justice facility and of course additional staff too. Today we met with Jack, Joy and Nina, new Corrections Victoria staff who have been part of the recruitment process to date. We are going to bring on more Corrections Victoria officers with the investment in the budget and we are going to protect them too, with better protections in their workplace with the legislation that has been introduced to this place today.