Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Victoria Police

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (19:14): (1137) My adjournment tonight is for the Premier. The action I am seeking from the Premier today is to finally introduce an independent police ombudsman to ensure police are no longer responsible for investigating themselves here in Victoria.

On Thursday 17 April two officers in Footscray shot and killed 35-year-old man Abdifatah Ahmed. Abdifatah was a beloved son and brother forced into rough sleeping, who was also experiencing mental health challenges.

The local community and especially the Australian Somali and Australian African community across Melbourne are shocked and angry and asking how this could have happened. Why was Abdifatah met with force in the first place instead of care? Just a week before Abdifatah’s death the police announced an operation in Footscray titled ‘Strong show of force in Footscray’. Interestingly, that media release has since been scrubbed from Victoria Police’s website. But there is no ignoring its message that force comes first, and time and time again it is our black, brown and First Nations communities who bear the brunt of overpolicing.

Four years ago the mental health royal commission demanded recommended that mental health call-outs be led by paramedics, not police. It was meant to happen by 2023, two years ago, but now it is being delayed again until 2027. Last year Victoria Police’s budget was $4.5 billion, almost double what it was when this Labor government came to power in 2014, yet we cannot find the money to fully fund our mental health system and right now there is not a single drug and alcohol public rehab bed available in Victoria, because we do not have the funding for it. How is it that in a wealthy country like Australia, in a wealthy state like Victoria, we cannot fund care but we can find enough funding for police and prisons?

The Lawyer X royal commission also called for real police oversight. That has now been delayed almost into its fifth year, and there is no confidence that it will ever happen. While there is an investigation running into Abdifatah’s death, in Victoria, police are still allowed to investigate themselves. The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission investigates only 1 per cent of police misconduct complaints; the rest are just referred back to the chief commissioner to deal with in house in police. Victoria has an ombudsman for almost every other agency, including telecommunications, public transport, energy, water and all government agencies, to hold these public agencies to account, and it is well past time in Victoria we also had an ombudsman to hold the police to account and ensure that police are not investigating police.