Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Ministers statements: community safety

Anthony CARBINES (Ivanhoe – Minister for Police, Minister for Community Safety, Minister for Victims, Minister for Racing) (14:14): On National Police Legacy Day, caring for police families, we give a shout-out to members of our blue family across the state. But I am here to talk about our nation-leading machete ban and the work that we are doing on that. We saw in particular the scenes at Northland recently, which are unacceptable. We know that. They have no place in this state. But we do know that for those affected by knife crime – and the member for Melton knows from his work as a paramedic the horrific injuries that knives can inflict on people when people go about things in the wrong way – we need to hold those offenders to account.

We know that last year alone Victoria Police seized some 14,000 edged weapons from the community. That is in part because of the laws that have been changed by our government, where we can stop, seize them and search people in this state more often for longer right across the state, and that is why some 14,000 edged weapons were taken off our street last year alone. We are expanding our search powers. Make no mistake that there are no excuses for carrying knives here in Victoria.

There is $13 million in this year’s budget to deliver our machete ban this year. That will start on 1 September. We have got our Minister for Consumer Affairs, and I want to give him a shout-out for the work that they are doing already to see Amazon, eBay and other online retailers removing these machetes from sale. We have seen nearly 400 in-store inspections already from the crack team down there at Consumer Affairs Victoria, and I want to thank the minister for his leadership and work.

This is a national issue, and the Police Ministers Council will be dealing further with these matters as retailers across the country want to get on board and support what our government is doing to rid our streets of machetes to keep people safe. We will have more to say on these matters as we roll out our communications campaign. The bins are being put in place at our 24-hour police stations. We are going to make sure that we get these dangerous machetes off our streets and keep the community safe.