Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Sonia Kilkenny:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Michael O’BRIEN (Malvern) (10:43): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. This is a bill the government is seeking to bring in to tackle the phenomenon of post-and-boast offending. This is where a person commits an offence and then adds insult to injury by promoting their commission of the offence by posting material, usually video, of the offending online. People do this in order to draw attention to themselves; to gain notoriety for themselves; to try and enhance, as they would see it, their reputations. But of course in doing so not only are they glorifying criminal actions, they are literally adding insult to the injury of those who are the victims of the offending. So it is timely – in fact arguably it is over time – for the government to introduce legislation to tackle the rise of post-and-boast offending.

The concern of the opposition is that this bill does not do it particularly well. This government has introduced legislation which has loopholes in it. It is almost as though the government does not want this bill to be particularly effective. I will take the house through where I see this government has fallen very short with this bill, because it simply will not do the job it is supposed to do. I think a lot of Victorians, probably a lot of Australians, remember in January last year there was footage that was posted online – and it received a lot of attention in the news – of an elderly person fishing on a pier down on the Mornington Peninsula.

A gang of youths surrounded the person and one of the youths pushed this person into the water – off the pier – assaulted them.

Cindy McLeish: Shocking!

Michael O’BRIEN: It was terrible. It was shocking, absolutely shocking. And as I said, to add insult to injury, they then posted this footage of them having done that, presumably to try and gain notoriety for themselves but also to humiliate the victim of this offending. It was disgraceful. That was probably one of the offences that we saw in Victoria which led to the impetus for this bill to come forward. The trouble is, the way this bill is drafted, that offending would not be subject to post and boast, so you have to ask yourself, ‘Why the hell not?’

The way the bill is structured is that only certain relevant offences can be the subject of post and boast, and these are set out in new section 195U. The first of the relevant offences for the purposes of new section 195U, which is an exhaustive list, is theft but only if the property stolen is a motor vehicle. I am not quite sure why the government is limiting it to that. Why shouldn’t any theft be the subject of post and boast? We do not want people stealing from other people and then glorifying it, but theft only applies to post and boast if it is theft of a motor vehicle. Perhaps the government can explain why it thinks that other sorts of theft are okay to post and boast about. Then there is robbery armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, aggravated carjacking, affray, violent disorder and incitement or attempts. They are the only offences for which post and boast can apply.

Do you know what is not in there? Assault. Assault is not a relevant offence for the purpose of this bill. Do you know what else is not a relevant offence? Dangerous driving. How many times have we seen hoon driving behaviour glorified online? But dangerous driving is not a post-and-boast offence under this bill. Why not is my question. Destroying or damaging property, including through arson, is not a post-and-boast offence. Why not? Does the government think it is okay for people to glorify destroying property, damaging property or committing arson? Apparently so, because the government has said you can post and boast about that all you like and you will not be picked up by this bill. How about causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence or causing serious injury recklessly in circumstances of gross violence? They are pretty horrible offences, and unfortunately we have seen instances of that sort of offending being the subject of post and boast, but again the Labor government says that is fine – you can post and boast about that all you like, because that is not a relevant offence under this bill. Why not? As I say, it is almost as though the government does not want this bill to succeed. It wants to be seen to be doing something, but it is not prepared to actually do something serious, so the government has dropped the ball quite badly on this.

It has also dropped the ball in terms of its definition of ‘publish’. In other states, notably Queensland, any person who publishes the footage of the offending can be held criminally liable under their post-and-boast laws. In Victoria only the person who commits the crime and then posts about it themselves can be liable. Somebody can have a mate standing beside them filming and that mate can put it online, and as long as they did not commit the offence, they have got a clear pass under post and boast. Even providing it to one other person is okay under this bill. The definition of ‘publish’ excludes where that material is transmitted to one other person. Why? Isn’t publishing it to anybody sufficient? Why shouldn’t that be sufficient to invoke post-and-boast offending? As I say, it is almost as though the government wants to be seen to be doing something but has drafted the bill in such a way that it is going to be very difficult to ever apply. I am very interested to hear what the government says about that.

Also, the concern is that this is a summary offence. While the underlying offending, if I can call it that – thefts, robberies, burglaries, home invasions, carjackings – are serious offences, indictable offences, this post-and-boast defence is only a summary offence, with a maximum of two years imprisonment. But there is nothing in the bill that says that any sentence for the post-and-boast element needs to be in addition to the sentence for the underlying offence. For example, if somebody was to be sentenced to two years jail for an aggravated home invasion and then six months jail for the posting and boasting about that, there is nothing to stop a judge saying, ‘You know what, do your six months concurrently with the two years, not a single extra day in jail.’ Again, I think that undermines the purpose of this bill. If the purpose of the bill is to say, ‘If you commit a crime and then you post and boast about it, you’re going to have an extra penalty,’ let us make sure the penalty is in fact extra – in addition. Let us make sure that any extra sentence must be served consecutively, not concurrently. So under standing orders I wish to advise the house of amendments to this bill and request that they be circulated.

Amendments circulated under standing orders.

Michael O’BRIEN: I know that the government will not look seriously at these amendments in this house, because that is the nature of this government, it is the arrogant way they go about things. But I do hope in the other place – where there is some opportunity for some more mature reflection and there is some opportunity for other parties who, combined, can actually agree to amendments – they take these amendments seriously. If the government was actually serious about wanting this to be an effective bill and an effective response to post and boast, they should take it seriously too. I am not proud – if you want to take up any of these amendments yourselves, members of the government, I would be delighted for you to do it.

Let me tell you what these amendments are. Number one, we will remove the loophole that says that if you transmit the video or the footage to one other person, that does not count as publishing. We will remove that. This amendment removes that loophole which the government is creating in this bill. There is no argument for that loophole to exist – only if you are not serious about tackling post and boast. The first amendment will remove that loophole. If you transmit that footage or video to any person, that is publishing.

Other amendments will add additional offences to the list of relevant offences for the purposes of post and boast. We will add the offence of causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence. We will add the offence of causing serious injury recklessly in circumstances of gross violence. We will add the offence of assaults, so that people or the person who pushed that poor elderly fisherman into the water off the pier would be caught. We will add the offence of destroying or damaging property, including by arson, and we will add the offence of dangerous driving. Every one of these offences that I have put in these amendments is the type of offending which has been the subject of post-and-boast behaviour – every single one of them. It should be subject to post-and-boast laws.

I urge the government to take these amendments seriously because this is about trying to make this bill better. I agree with the intent of the bill, and I agree with the government’s intent in bringing it forward, I just do not think it is a very well-drafted bill. It is almost as though the government wants it to fail. Well, we do not want it to fail; we want it to succeed. That is why we are putting forward constructive amendments to strengthen it, to improve it, to actually tackle the sort of post-and-boast offending that the community is rightly so outraged by.

At amendment 6 we also change the bill so that in imposing a penalty for an offence under post and boast, the court must direct that any term of imprisonment imposed be served cumulatively on any term of imprisonment imposed for the relevant offence.

In other words, the post-and-boast term will be on top of any sentence you get for the underlying offence. You will not get a two-for-one deal. You will not be able to serve the sentences concurrently; they will have to be done cumulatively. It will be an additional penalty for the additional offence.

There is precedent for this in the Crimes Act 1958, so I do not particularly want to hear any complaints from the government about limiting judicial discretion. This is something the Parliament has done in the past. We have amended the Crimes Act to say that in certain circumstances certain offences must have the penalty served cumulatively – and this is exactly the sort of thing the community wants to see. I would urge the government to take these amendments seriously and strengthen the bill to allow it to live to its potential.

One of the reasons we have included the offences of assault and causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence, either intentionally or recklessly, is we have also seen some horrific behaviour in recent months and years. The rise of dating apps has unfortunately and very sadly seen the gay community targeted for homophobic bashing. We have seen usually gay men lured into places through these dating apps and then being the subject of assaults and attacks – simply for being gay. It is horrific. It is homophobic. It is disgraceful. This is exactly the sort of thing which we need to take a stand against as a Parliament, and one of the ways we can do that is to send a clear message, through this post-and-boast law, that if you commit assaults or you commit serious injury in circumstances of gross violence and you then boast about it – you boast about your horrific deeds online, to add insult to injury – we will not cop it as a Parliament and you will be punished in addition to your penalty for the underlying gross act that you have committed.

I do urge the government to take these amendments seriously. They are about trying to protect a vulnerable part of our community who have been subject to horrific homophobic attacks. We do need to send a message that that is not on in this state. Here is an opportunity for the government to work with the opposition to strengthen this bill, to improve it, to send a message that that sort of offending is absolutely not on; it is abhorrent. I do urge the government, whether in this place or the other, to take these amendments seriously and to see if we cannot actually work together as a Parliament to strengthen this bill.

In Queensland, as I mentioned, in the way their post-and-boast offending is dealt with we see things done a little bit differently. In Queensland there is a broader range of offences: any offence involving driving or operating a vehicle; any offence involving violence or a threat of violence; any offence involving a weapon; and any offence involving taking, damaging, destroying, removing, using, interfering with or entering property. All in that category of offending is caught by Queensland’s post-and-boast law. By contrast, Victoria’s relevant offences list is tiny, it is so limited, and I do wonder: what is the government’s rationale for that? Why has the government limited it so much when we know that a broad range of offending can be subject to post and boast? In Queensland we see as well that the law applies to anybody who publishes the material:

… for the purpose of –

glorifying the conduct; or

increasing the person’s reputation, or another person’s reputation, because of their involvement in the conduct.

Whereas in Victoria under this bill you have to both commit the relevant offence and then publish or cause it to be published yourself, in Queensland anybody can be caught if the effect of what they are doing is glorifying the criminal activity. Again, we are not talking about stopping journalists or citizen journalists from doing their jobs of drawing attention, for example, to where there might be an offender on the loose in the community. Clearly the purpose of publishing footage of a crime is to try and track that person down to assist police. Nobody is talking about making that an offence, and Queensland’s law does not provide for that to be an offence.

Queensland’s law specifically has exemptions for journalists as well, which is entirely appropriate. But again, it is almost as though the government thinks you have to you have to steal a car on one hand and then film yourself with the other, and unless you do the two together that is the only thing that counts as post and boast. That is not the way the real world works. The real world works where you have got gangs of people, one person might commit the crime and then their mate takes the footage, and their mate puts it up online. Well, under that scenario where one person commits the offence and their mate films it, that is okay under Labor’s laws; that is okay under post and boast. It does not count as an offence. It makes no sense. It makes no sense, so we do think the government has not drafted this particularly well.

Certainly if we were in office we would have adopted the Queensland approach, and should that occur next year I think we will be adopting the Queensland approach, but in the meantime we can make this fairly weak bill much stronger with the amendments that I have circulated to the house today. We can make it stronger by removing the loophole on publishing to one other person. We can make it stronger by adding to the list of relevant offences caught by post and boast the sort of offending which is actually the subject of post and boast in the real world. Let us have that reflected in the law, and we can make it stronger by ensuring that any sentence for post and boast is in addition to the sentence for the underlying offending, not served concurrently with it.

Now, there have been some concerns about how effective these sorts of laws are around the country, and I note that the Courier Mail reported on 12 May this year that 195 offenders had been charged in Queensland with the offence since August 2024. Well, that would seem to indicate that their law has been effective. It has been capturing the bad behaviour, and it has been leading to additional penalties for those who have been committing it.

Tim Bull: It works.

Michael O’BRIEN: It works, as the member for Gippsland East says. As part of my consultation as Shadow Attorney-General, I always consult with legal industry stakeholders on these matters, and I am very grateful to Louisa Gibbs, the chief executive officer of the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Victoria. I did ask for the FCLC’s view, and they do not support the bill, and they believe it will effectively double-punish some offenders who will be charged with a substantive offence and the new performance crime offence. Well, I would say it is not double punishment; it is punishment for two separate offences. One is the underlying offence, and then the second offence is adding insult to injury for the victim by going online and posting and boasting about it. So it is not double punishing; they are two separate offences, and the punishment should reflect that.

Ms Gibbs goes on to say in practice the new offence will disproportionately impact certain types of offenders, particularly young people from marginalised communities who are more likely to post on social media without fully understanding the consequences and impacts of this behaviour. Well, part of the purpose of the law is to send a message to the community or to reflect what the community believes about what is and is not acceptable behaviour; that is why we have laws, and young people do need to be sent a message that to add insult to injury to a victim by not only, for example, committing an aggravated burglary or an aggravated carjacking but then going online and gloating about it is something that, as a society, we say is out of bounds, and as a Parliament we need to change the law to reflect that. So I am very grateful to the federation for their views, but on this particular occasion I do not find myself in agreement with them. Nonetheless, it is very helpful for me as Shadow Attorney-General to get the feedback from these different stakeholders.

Similarly, the Law Institute of Victoria – I was very pleased to consult with them on this bill and received correspondence from Adam Awty, the chief executive of the LIV, and can I just on the put on the record my thanks to Adam and to the policy team at the LIV. They always provide exceptionally informative and thoughtful and considered responses to legislation when I ask for their views, and we are very grateful. We agree at times, we disagree on other occasions, but they do a power of work, and I just want to place that on the record, because it is an extremely valuable addition to parliamentary debates.

The LIV does not support post and boast for not dissimilar reasons to those put forward by the Federation of Community Legal Centres – they say there is no evidence from New South Wales or Queensland, no evidence from these jurisdictions to suggest that it has deterred this behaviour. As I said, the Courier Mail reported there have been 195 charges as of May this year for an offence which has only been on the books since 2024. That would seem to indicate that it is catching the behaviour. Whether it is deterring it I suppose only time will tell, but it is certainly catching the behaviour because those charges are being laid. The LIV make some points about not wanting to see young people entrenched in the criminal justice system. They say:

The LIV has concerns that this new offence will primarily target youth offending and will only serve to further entrench young people in the criminal justice system.

Given the relevant offences under the bill are pretty serious offences – as I say, robberies, home invasions, burglaries, carjackings – I think that this, the post-and-boast aspect, is a relatively small aspect when we are considering the underlying offence. If we have a young person out there who is committing aggravated burglaries, aggravated carjackings, aggravated home invasions, they should not be videoing that and putting it online – that is what this bill is about – but really the main problem is they are committing those serious offences in the first place. Obviously we need to have a good think as a Parliament and as a society about how we are tackling youth offending.

I see the government has just second read its bail bill, although I notice it has still got an enormous amount of loopholes and in many senses will still be far weaker than even the bail laws they replaced two years ago. We have still got 1100 vacancies in Victoria Police. We still have 43 police stations that are closed or have reduced hours in that status, including my local one in Malvern. There is a lot of work to be done to tackle youth crime, but I do not think that ignoring the phenomenon of post and boast is a way to help us get there. On this particular occasion I do not share the concerns of the LIV and the Federation of Community Legal Centres, but I am very grateful for their views and I put those on the record.

This is a bill which the opposition will not be opposing because it does a little to tackle post and boast, but it does not do nearly enough. If we are serious about standing up against homophobic attacks on gay men in this state who are using dating apps, who get lured to places and bashed and then have insult added to injury by having it filmed and put online to further humiliate them, if we are serious about tackling that sort of offending, then the government should seriously consider adopting my amendments and adding those offences in – adding assault in, adding offences such as causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence. Let us add that in. Let us add dangerous driving, let us add destroying or damaging property, including through arson. Let us let us give this bill some teeth.

The opposition will not be opposing the bill, but we do put forward three sets of amendments designed to improve it: adding to the list of relevant offences to include those sorts of offences which we know in the real world are the subject of post and boast; removing the loophole in the bill that publishing the footage to one other person is not really publishing – let us take that loophole out; and let us ensure that a penalty for post and boast is a real penalty, one that is served in addition to the penalty for the underlying offence, not a two-for-one freebie. Those amendments will make this a better bill, and we urge the government to seriously consider taking them up in this place or in the other place.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (11:09): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. Really the government is responding to a disturbing trend on the rise among young people who are using platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat to gain clout and fame for engaging in dangerous and criminal behaviour – on the one hand committing very serious and troubling offences, but on the other hand retraumatising victims and unnecessarily punishing the victims by reminding them of something which is in all likelihood one of the most traumatic events of their lives.

It is heartless and it is completely unacceptable behaviour, and hence that is why we are cracking down on this cowardly behaviour that is deeply disturbing to the community.

The bill is introducing a new offence into the Crimes Act 1958 that criminalises a person publishing material like photos and videos depicting their involvement in a serious offence. The offence will apply to a person who has been found guilty of specific crimes, including affray, burglary and aggravated burglary, robbery and armed robbery, car theft, home invasion and violent disorder. I would like to think that everyone would agree that these are indeed serious and disturbing offences. To suggest that we are not wholeheartedly committed to clamping down on this behaviour I think is unwarranted and unfair when you look at the list of offences that this specific legislation is targeting. The new offence will also capture anyone involved in promoting or facilitating these crimes.

I will go a bit further in unpacking some of the elements, because broadly speaking when you say ‘post’ and ‘boast’, those concepts are probably well understood by most in the community; however, as is always the case when you are looking at offences, you have to be very precise in order to ensure a fair trial but also a proper outcome in terms of meeting community standards. The offences include those who are complicit in or who incite the offending – again, important nuances that must be taken into account with this legislation. Offenders will face an additional two years jail on top of the penalties for the substantive physical offences they have been charged with.

I do want to proceed to some further elements because that is obviously really important when we are looking at introducing these important reforms. One of the greatest concerns for the community, and certainly for the government, is that when people do post and boast serious offences that they have committed, this has the grave danger of normalising completely unacceptable behaviour – almost conditioning the observer in some sense to think that this may somehow be acceptable or in some way tolerated – and also fostering a toxic level of competitiveness. It is hard to fathom, when you think of it logically and objectively, that anyone could be excited or inspired by witnessing such horrific behaviour. Nevertheless, this is what this disturbing trend is showing, and hence we are taking strong action in order to curb and stamp out this very bad behaviour. Of course that is a critical element when we are looking at enforceability of the offences being discussed.

The relevant offences to which the new performance crime will apply are listed, as has been stated, in new section 195U of the bill: theft of a motor vehicle, burglary or aggravated burglary, home invasion or aggravated home invasion, carjacking or aggravated carjacking, robbery or armed robbery, affray and violent disorder. These are serious offences that are increasingly being shared online through videos or social media posts. Capturing these offences ensures that the law will directly address the criminal behaviour which is escalating and causing the greatest concern in the community. As I was trying to be really clear about from the outset, the new offence will also apply where a person attempts, is complicit in – for example, encourages or directs – or incites commission of the relevant offence.

Why does this new offence only apply to certain offences rather than all serious crimes? By targeting performance crime in relation to specific offences, the new offence responds to serious, high-risk and high-impact crimes that are increasing in prevalence, particularly among young offenders, and anecdotally are increasingly being boasted about on social media. I hope that goes some way to explaining the rationale behind the particular offences that are being targeted through this legislation. By limiting the scope of these serious offences of concern, the government is making sure the new laws are proportionate, effective and enforceable. At the end of the day, we do want to achieve appropriate outcomes.

There were questions raised regarding comparisons to New South Wales and Queensland. Let us start with comparing with New South Wales. The bill is broadly modelled on the New South Wales approach, as it requires the offender to have committed an underlying serious offence and is punishable by up to two years imprisonment. However, unlike New South Wales, the bill creates a separate offence. This is because the New South Wales model may not result in higher sentences. A single offence which encompasses a substantive offence and advertising that offending will not necessarily lead to increased sentences for the criminal behaviour or reflect the additional aggravating component of posting and boasting about the criminal behaviour. It does not align with existing Victorian legislation and would have impacts on Victorian criminal law and procedure as well as laws relating to bail, sentencing, court jurisdiction and presumptions and requirements for the relevant offence – for example, minimum non-parole period for aggravated home invasion – and may result in inaccurate crime statistics that do not reflect the actual crime rate of substantive serious offences. Like the New South Wales legislation, the bill will capture theft of a motor vehicle and breaking and entering offences. However, unlike New South Wales, the Victorian performance crime offence will also apply to these additional offences – and forgive me for the repetition, but to be clear: robbery, armed robbery, affray, violent disorder, inciting one of the relevant offences and attempting one of the relevant offences.

Why does the bill take a different approach to Queensland and the Northern Territory? The Queensland and Northern Territory model is quite different to the bill and the New South Wales model as it applies to anyone, even if they are not found guilty of the offence depicted. The risks of this model include: it would not increase sentencing for serious offences – for example, carjacking, home invasion et cetera – which are of the most concern to the community; and it would likely result in lengthy and complex prosecutions, because the prosecution would have to show that the published material advertises offending conduct without necessarily having any proof of the substantive offence. There are further issues there, but I just wanted to shed some light on why we have gone with the pathway that we have.

I did also wish to speak to the matter of specific attacks on the LGBTIQA+ community. The performance crime offence may apply if the offending includes a relevant offence, depending on the facts and circumstances of the case – granted. For example, some recent examples of horrific behaviour which has targeted members of the LGBTIQA+ community have involved serious offences, including robbery and affray, which are relevant offences. In such a scenario if no relevant offence is committed a court sentencing an offender is required by the Sentencing Act 1991 to consider whether the offending was motivated by hatred or prejudice against a group of people with common characteristics, such as the LGBTIQA+ community and may consider the filming and or publication as an aggravated sentencing factor. Furthermore, I will say that homophobia is completely unacceptable, and I would stand on the record of our government when it comes to advancing protections with regard to the LGBTIQA+ community, certainly with our Pride in Our Future strategy. I am going on a tangent that does deviate from the bill, but just to be clear, if you are looking for a record when it comes to equality in this state, I am not sure that the opposition are shining in that regard. They may wish to be cautious about bestowing some sort of higher moral standing when it comes to protections for the LGBTIQA+ community.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (11:19): I rise today to talk on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. I thank the Shadow Attorney-General for highlighting what the bill includes but also what the bill does not include.

I think we in the chamber today stand with the government bringing this bill in, because as we are going to talk about, this is an attempt to tackle the rise of post-and-boast offending on social media. Who would have thought that five or 10 years ago we would have to be bringing in laws to stamp this out? Unfortunately these days our younger fraternity, who seem to get away with a lot more than what we did back in the day, have options where, as the member on her feet just before said, they are trying to outdo each other, to elevate what they can get away with and what crime they can get away with by posting it to social media and embarrassing the poor person that the offences may have happened against. It happens right across Victoria, whether it is here in Melbourne, in the city, or whether it is around regional Victoria.

I think if we are bringing a bill in to stamp this out it makes sense to make sure, as the member for Malvern said before, that we cover the loopholes that are glaring in this bill that is in the chamber right now. So why aren’t we passing a law? The amendments that have been put up do close a lot of those loopholes. You have only got to have a look at some of the stuff that is posted. I am sure members will talk about what is in the bill, but it is about what we are leaving out. So if we post and boast that we are stealing a car, well, that is sort of in, but not the dangerous driving which then follows if you steal that car. I think we have all probably seen it as we travel down the Monash on our way home in the car when we are sitting on 100 kilometres an hour and a car goes past doing 150, 160 kilometres an hour. That is a deadly missile that is going past you, and most of the time there is probably someone in there filming how fast that speedo is showing. I know we do see it with motorbikes that get stolen and also cars that get stolen. I know myself, in my home town of Traralgon you have to keep your wits about you coming up to a roundabout or an intersection, as we all should do, not because of what you may cause but because of what is coming at you from all different sides, because unfortunately these people that we are trying to stamp out with this post-and-boast legislation just do not give a stuff about what they do on the roads and what lives they put at risk.

Assault is not in this post-and-boast legislation, as the member for Malvern said. Arson – setting a car alight or setting something alight – is not in it. A certain element of our community – and these are the particular people that are doing this – do not play within the rules, so why do we give them the scope where they have got options with this bill coming in? Why don’t we just cover every single loophole that we can so they do not have an option? If they get caught posting and boasting on social media, they know they have to face consequences. At the moment unfortunately with our legal system, our youth crime participants these days – these are the ones that mostly use the post and boast for a little bit of one-upmanship with their mates – do not have consequences for what they decide to do in our community, so it does not make sense. We are only capturing the person who is committing the crime. As the member for Malvern said, if he has got a mate or a group of people that are there that are filming, it is not incumbent on them and they get to walk free. They are not going to be able to be brought in under these new amendments that are coming in. I want to say that we need legislation coming in about this posting and boasting, so I am in agreement with the government bringing it in. But we are standing here, we are talking about it, and I have got to go back to my community and look them in the eye and say, ‘Look, we voted for this bill today. We could have made it better, but there are loopholes in it.’

They know full well that the local fraternity down in the Latrobe Valley are going to use those loopholes. One hundred percent they are going to use those loopholes to step aside and not be captured in the legal system. We need to make sure that anyone that is doing this can be captured, because at the end of the day they should not be doing it. They should not be posting, traumatising victims of crime, because of something that we had the opportunity in the chamber to change and make a stand on but we did not go far enough on. I hope the government do look at the amendments that the member for Malvern has put up, because they are going to go a little bit more of a way to stamping it out.

Local crime in my area is put up on social media. I have not got my head in the sand thinking that the Latrobe Valley is immune. Our local crime rate across the Latrobe local government area, in the last crime stats that came up, was up 11.5 per cent. In Churchill, which is one of the townships in my patch – we had the local station there come online with reduced hours, and that is a separate issue; the police throughout the Latrobe Valley are striving and doing the best job that they can, and we fully support them in their efforts – the crime rate was up 38 per cent, so this is what we are dealing with. We look at these percentages. These are issues where people committing crime have the opportunity to video it, and most of them do. I am sure if the police apprehended someone and went through their phone, they would see what had happened on a video or on social media. Crime in Moe is up 26 per cent. We are not missing out on any crime stats in the Latrobe Valley.

Unfortunately, and this is one of the ones which I am not happy about and I do not think anyone would be happy about, in the LGA down at Latrobe we have the second-highest rate of family violence incidents in the state – I see that the member for Gippsland East has just left the chamber – I think Gippsland East is number one and Latrobe Valley is number two. We need to be able to make sure that those numbers are going down. Unfortunately, right across the state family violence incidents are taking up so much time of our police, who are trying to deal with this issue. Theft across retail stores – this is where you see the kids in the shopping centres filming what they are doing – jumped 86 per cent. The kids that we are talking about probably will not look at the legislation because they know that they are going to be able to get away with it, because they think they are bulletproof.

As I said, we are not opposing the bill. We know as a community we need these laws coming in. But I do ask the government, as they sit down, to have a look at the sensible amendments that have been put forward by the member for Malvern, because they will make a change not only here in Melbourne but in regional Victoria, in my patch. Let us get on with the job and make sure we can make the laws as tough as possible.

John LISTER (Werribee) (11:29): Community safety is one of our priorities. It is the responsibility of the state to continue to change and adapt to our changing society, and our criminal law is no exception to this. Australians are more online now than ever before, and it is incumbent on us here in Parliament to ensure our laws acknowledge this.

People in my community, particularly young people, are no longer looking to old-fashioned media like the Herald Sun for news and updates on our community. Young people are producing and consuming content themselves, a lot for positive reasons, but some produce content to boast about the serious criminal behaviour they are involved in. I regularly meet with police at the Werribee police complex. In a meeting with me, my fellow Wyndham MPs and the Minister for Police the proactive policing unit described the challenge of social media being used as a tool to promote crimes in the community and encourage one-upmanship of escalating violence. They are seeing issues like aggravated burglary and robberies broadcast on these social media platforms as self-promotion by these offenders. Unlike the Liberal and National parties, we do not just bleat about crime and try to stir fear in communities like mine. We meet and listen to police and develop well-considered laws that will meet the challenges our police face daily. This legislation responds to an horrific trend that is on the rise among young people who are using platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat to gain clout and fame for engaging in dangerous and criminal behaviour.

Before reflecting on the specifics of the bill, I want to take a moment to explore the behaviour it is targeting. There was a time when as a teacher you knew about a potential fight at or outside of school based on whispers and rumours; this just is not the case anymore. Social media platforms are being used to create beefs between young people and encourage them to commit serious crimes. While work is underway federally to control access to these platforms, which I welcome, we need to continue to adapt to changing crime trends. These laws build on our 2022 laws around grossly offensive public conduct. I used to dread coming into school and having a line of good-conscience students at my door ready to show me the screenshots and grabs of serious criminal behaviour by other young people posted on Snapchat. Often police would be well aware of these incidents and be actively working to convict the perpetrators, but as for boasting about these serious offences, there was no clear way to hold them to account. Young people may be increasingly plugged into these platforms, but it does not mean they want to see this sort of behaviour, and I commend them for when they call it out and report it. This is one of the many reasons why it is imperative that this Parliament passes these laws.

The bill introduces a new offence to the Crimes Act 1958 that criminalises a person publishing material like photos and videos depicting their involvement in a serious offence. The offence will apply to a person who has been found guilty of specific crimes, including affray, burglary and aggravated burglary, robbery and armed robbery, car theft, home invasions and violent disorder – offences that my local police have told us and the intelligence tells us are being increasingly displayed and promoted online. This new offence will also capture anyone involved in promoting or facilitating these crimes, including those who are complicit in or incite that offending. Offenders will face an additional two years jail for the substantive physical offence they are charged for.

I do want to go to the amendments circulated by the member for Malvern briefly. There are accusations of this bill not necessarily being thorough with the list of offences that are there, but the amendment that is proposed could replicate offences that already exist, like grossly offensive public conduct or using a carriage service, the Commonwealth offence, to cause offence. These laws that we are proposing here are targeted, and they are based on intelligence from police. It is targeting the behaviour we are seeing, particularly among young people. You cannot look at this bill and these offences in a vacuum, as if this is the first and only way we have outlawed this conduct.

This bill builds on the Allan Labor government’s work to crack down on crime. We have seen our tough bail laws for repeat and violent offending start to have that effect. We have $1.6 billion in this last budget to strengthen our justice system and keep communities safe. We have our landmark anti-vilification and social cohesion reforms to protect Victorians from hate, which I do note the Liberals and Nationals opposed for so long, and we are working on further improvements to stalking and family violence intervention order laws.

Reflecting on this, particularly from my experience as an educator, we know that when it comes to making sure Victorians have access to better opportunities and lives away from crime it is only this Labor government that invests in those opportunities, like free TAFE, like cheaper health care and like getting kids through school through our vocational major and our VCE senior pathways. If we are not engaging them in this way, we will not see a reduction in this kind of behaviour. We cannot see this bill in a vacuum.

I recently met with residents from the Savana estate, including Aravind, and thank you for organising it. They are concerned about crime in their community, and we spoke about the different ways we are supporting our local police to hold offenders to account. I spoke about these laws that were coming up this week, and they were very excited to hear about how they are an innovative way to continue to address the changing crime trends in our community. We have also built the largest police complex outside of the CBD in Werribee, boosted the number of police in the West Gate division, rolled out new resources like mobile technology – ironically – to our frontline police, as well as a raft of new laws. When we really drilled down in our meeting and conversation, they felt that it was actually the services that young people have in Manor Lakes that were the real cause of their concerns. That is why I fought to secure funding to increase youth services spaces there, as well as working with our local schools to open up more programs to keep young people engaged and encouraging our schools, who do great work with our local police, to share that intelligence and meet regularly with the principals and proactive policing unit. Thank you to those people from the estate for meeting with me.

This is about taking a targeted, sensible approach to a novel area of law. Our bill will introduce a crime that is very similar to the one that was introduced in New South Wales, except we go further by adding violent disorder and affray. The list of offences covered ensures the law is focused, proportionate and directly addresses criminal behaviour causing the greatest concern in the community. The laws will send a clear message to anyone thinking of using their criminal actions to gain a following or to encourage others to offend. You will be held for distributing this vile content.

It is really important to also reflect on the fact that this bill is trying to address a novel area of law and a trend that we are seeing in society that has increasingly become more disturbing. It is part of a whole gamut of changes that we have done recently, changes that people particularly out in the Werribee electorate have come to me to speak about, whether that is ensuring that young offenders who are out on bail are held to account for that offending while they are on bail. It is also for the laws that we have passed around making sure that those different categories of offences – and we will be looking at this soon – apply with a stricter bail test. In meeting with my local police recently, I asked them about the laws’ effectiveness and what they are seeing, and they are seeing more of those people who were on their rap sheet – around 150 people on this regular sheet that they keep updated – getting kept on remand and being denied bail. As much as we want to try and support people to make sure that they do not offend, and that if they do offend they get the supports around them to make sure they do not do it again, we also have to remember that one of the obligations of government is to protect those people in the community who are victims of crime. These victims of crime are ordinary Victorians, and my heart does go out to them, and I do speak to many victims of crime every day in my job and throughout the community.

It is important to remember these particular reforms are all about changing and adapting to our society. It is one of our top priorities, and it is the responsibility of the state to continue to change and adapt to our changing society. Crime prevention is not only about these sorts of laws but about providing people with opportunities, whether that is better health care, education, training, transport, housing or community services. The work we are doing to create better opportunities for people is whole-of-government work, and it is the bread and butter of this Labor government. I commend this bill to the house.

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (11:39): I rise to make some comments on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, and I say at the outset that we all know that Victoria is in a crime crisis. Unfortunately, the crime crisis did not happen yesterday; it has been happening for over 10 years, because the Allan Labor government has failed to keep the community safe.

Just about every single time in this particular Parliament when we see issues, Victoria seems to be last to the party. In other states when there are issues in crime, in community safety, we see premiers jump on it. Even in New South Wales, where you have a Labor Premier, that Labor Premier just jumps up and about and says, ‘You know what? We’re going to tackle it.’ We have seen it in so many different instances.

With this particular bill it seems like it is groundhog day and the same applies. Post and boast, as many of us would refer to this as, is a huge problem in Australia. Certainly federally the Liberal–Nationals took to the election a commitment that there would be a national set of laws to ensure that we tackle this real issue. Why is it an issue? It is an issue because we know that young people are influenced by the behaviour of other young people. When you have a young person that takes out their phone and records a victim that they are assaulting, abusing or attacking or takes images of themselves hooning or stealing a car and burning the car and then posting that, all that does is influence other people to do bad things. This government is late to the party to tackle these issues. Even when we have finally got there, after Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales all have these laws, the government still has botched it and has not provided enough coverage to do things.

Nina Taylor interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: I know the member for Albert Park keeps interjecting, but the member for Albert Park needs to know that even things like driving, which is a big part of post and boast, are not covered. That is why the member for Malvern has got some really good amendments, which I hope the member for Albert Park will support, because we know there are many hoon drivers. Victoria Police tell me the majority of carjackings used to be for the purpose of selling those cars and making money for those people that really need it. Now we are seeing half or more of cars stolen being done for glory, for exactly what we are talking about here: post and boast. We know that a big part of this, dangerous driving, is not part of it. We are not talking about that and catching that up as part of these things. There are a number of amendments that have been put forward by the member for Malvern that are, unfortunately, where this government has not got it right. They could have gone to Queensland and seen what the Queensland government have done and said, ‘Yes, that works really well. Let’s just take it off the shelf and implement it here.’ The member for Albert Park can keep interjecting, but only yesterday we saw crime stats come out in Queensland that have seen a massive reduction in youth crime, whereas in Victoria we see an 18 per cent increase in youth crime.

Members interjecting.

David SOUTHWICK: Labor talks about fudging numbers. The backbench are jumping up about fudging numbers. Well, the Allan Labor government would know a lot about fudging numbers. It is all a big fudge when it comes to the Allan Labor government. Everything is just a big black hole, a big mystery. But at the end of the day Victorians are not safe. You can scream as much as you like, but you only have to talk to Victorians on the streets and victims, who unfortunately the Allan Labor government has put last. Talk to the victims. Talk to the guy that had his hand chopped off with a machete. What did he say yesterday? He said it was the Allan Labor government’s failure that enabled that machete attack. Do you want to argue with him? Do not argue with me, argue with the man that had his hand chopped off. You are a disgrace. You should be quiet, all of you, because at the end of the day you have failed – you have absolutely failed. We see youth crime up in huge numbers, 18 per cent up on last year, 42 per cent up over 10 years under the Allan Labor government. Every 1.1 hours there is a crime committed against the person, up 5 per cent on last year. Every 36 minutes property offences occur. Every 5 hours we see public order and security offences, and we see drug offences up 600 per cent.

The list goes on. Everything is up, up, up at a time when we need to ensure that community safety must be first, and it is not. The amendments that the member for Malvern is proposing, firstly, add the following offences to the list of relevant offences, which includes section 15A ‘Causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence’, section 15B ‘Causing serious injury recklessly in circumstances of gross violence’ and section 31 ‘Assaults’. I would have thought it would be pretty obvious that if somebody assaults someone and videos it and puts it online you would reckon that would be outlawed – that would be something that we would be tackling. But no, the government says assaults are okay. You can video those. That needs to be an amendment this government should be supporting if they were serious – big question mark. Section 197 ‘Destroying or damaging property’ – well, that is what a lot of this is about. We see cars being driven as fast as they possibly can, put on the side of the road, set fire to, videoed and then posted about. Is that covered?

Finally, there is section 64 of the Road Safety Act 1986, which is ‘Dangerous driving’, and we see it all the time. We see young people driving cars as fast as they can, videoing it with a GoPro or, even worse, with one hand on the wheel and the other on a phone and then posting it. You would reckon you would want to be tackling that. You would reckon you would want to be able to try and keep people safe and have that as part of the legislation. If the government are serious, they will back the member for Malvern’s amendments and, on top of that, the second lot of amendments in terms of who is actually posting, because it is not good enough for a young person to video it and send it to a mate and say, ‘You post it for me.’ If that is the case, the person videoing it might be a problem, but they are not the one posting it. The one that they then send it on to – the mate – they get off scot-free. So let us get serious about this. This is a serious problem that needs a serious solution. If this government were serious about it, they would back the member for Malvern’s amendments.

Then finally, if somebody is caught posting and boasting on top of other offences, the ultimate sentence must be served cumulatively, not as part of the initial sentence. You do not want to say, ‘Right, well, okay, you’ve got 12 months for a home invasion but also you’ve posted it and everything else, which is another three months, but you’ve already got 12 months so forget about the three months.’ No, it is a separate offence, and it needs to be treated as such. The government has a real choice here. If the government was serious about tackling youth crime, if the government was ensuring that young people do not influence other people by posting horrific attacks against Victorians – the victims – it would back our amendments. This is a real opportunity for this government to say, ‘Well, we haven’t done all of our homework. The opposition have found some flaws. They’ve looked at Queensland; we haven’t. Queensland have got it right; we haven’t. Let’s pick up the amendments. Let’s take them, let’s make the legislation better and let’s protect all Victorians and put victims first.’ The government will either do that or again they will put their head in the sand and they will say, ‘You know what? Near enough is good enough. We’ve ticked the box. We move on.’

Well, I tell you what, Victorians do not think that is good enough. If this government are just going to tick boxes and say they have had a little bit of a say, but ultimately Victorians are not kept safe, then this government have failed. Ten years of a crime crisis; 10 years of failure by the Allan Labor government, and now they are trying to play catch-up, but unfortunately it is all too late. Victorians deserve community safety. Victims deserve to be put first. This is a huge failure. It is an important part of legislation, but please get it right and support the member for Malvern’s amendments.

Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (11:49): Acting Speaker De Martino, it is fantastic to see you in the chair. I rise to support the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, and what a performance that was by the member for Caulfield, who is leaving the chamber now. He wants to talk about and get on his high horse about posting and boasting. I mean, the biggest poster and boaster in the Liberal opposition is the member for Caulfield.

This is the guy that boasted about being a ‘fake’ adjunct professor. He went around waving his fake CV around saying he was a ‘fake’ adjunct professor.

Tim McCurdy: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, could we get back to the bill, please?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Member for Pascoe Vale, please return to the bill.

Anthony CIANFLONE: I welcome your guidance, Acting Speaker. I acknowledge the member for Ovens Valley’s point of order, but it was very relevant to the bill because this is all about posting and boasting. Whether you are posting and boasting about being a ‘fake’ adjunct professor or whether you are tape-recording colleagues and promoting that through the Federal Court system – this is what this bill is all about.

I acknowledge the work of the Minister for Police, the Attorney-General and the Minister for Corrections who have helped bring this bill to the chamber, because every Victorian deserves the right to feel safe in their homes, their communities, their streets, their neighbourhoods and their workplaces. That is why we have been continuing to prioritise community safety through a wide range of investments and reforms, including continuing to provide Victoria Police with all the powers, tools and resources they need to keep us safe – that annual $4.5 billion investment into Victoria Police, the appointment of new Chief Commissioner of Police Mike Bush. We have recruited 3600 extra police since 2015. Victoria is home to the largest sworn police force in the nation. In Merri-bek in my community an extra 180 police have been recruited since 2015, including 21 extra dedicated family violence prevention officers. The new Victoria Police EBA has been progressed, with a 4.5 per cent annual increase and a 0.5 per cent increase for general duties officers, along with other improved standards and conditions.

We are continuing to progress the stronger bail laws by placing community safety first, cracking down on that dangerous, violent and repeat offending, including home invasions, carjackings, aggravated home invasions, gun offences, arson offences and other serious knife and weapons offences. $1.6 billion has been provided in the current 2025–26 state budget to improve our corrections and justice system’s capacity to remand and house offenders and keep corrections staff safe. But it is also about those other wide powers and reforms that we have pursued to keep our community safe: the tobacco licensing and illicit tobacco trade reforms, the crackdown on organised crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs; unexplained wealth; the crackdown on machetes; the passage of the Youth Justice Act 2024; and the electronic monitoring trial for young at-risk offenders. We have introduced landmark and expanded anti-vilification laws; the Royal Commission into Family Violence – we are now working on further improvements around family violence and intervention orders and stalking; the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System – the first of its kind in the country; we have more recently established the rapid review to identify immediate actions to improve the safety of children in early childhood education and care settings; and much more.

But it is also about tackling those root causes of crime through free TAFE and the Education State – the sensational NAPLAN results that have been released today are testament to our ongoing commitment to improving our education system across the state; free public transport for young people; cheaper health care; and more housing. But we must continue, along with all of these things, doing more than ever before to keep deterring further criminal activity and deterring people away from a life of crime. When all combined, these measures and this bill will help make our community safer.

In this respect one of the challenges confronting our community is the rise of posting and boasting about criminal offending, where people commit serious crimes and then share content, advertise or draw attention to their conduct on the internet, primarily via social media – a disturbing trend on the rise among some young people using platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat to gain clout and fame for engaging in dangerous criminal behaviour. This cowardly behaviour is deeply, deeply disturbing to the community, retraumatising for victims and encourages copycat offending, all for likes and shares on social media.

The performative nature of these offences introduces a new layer of harm, particularly for the victims and the community members impacted by such crimes. It glorifies unacceptable criminal behaviour, encourages others to emulate such activity, exacerbates community concerns and fear and erodes public confidence in the justice system. It may also publicly identify and retraumatise victims, as I said. Essentially it is about committing a crime and then seeking to rub salt in the wounds of victims and the community. That is why this bill will introduce a new offence of performance crime into the Crimes Act 1958 that recognises the additional criminality associated with publishing materials that advertise serious criminal offending. While existing laws cover the underlying conduct, such as the motor vehicle theft or burglary, they do not specifically criminalise the act of turning crime into content. Such behaviour can be considered during sentencing of an offender. However, the new offence will provide additional accountability, denounce the publication of this content and acknowledge the further trauma it can cause for victims of these crimes.

The new offence criminalises the publication of material that draws attention to someone’s own involvement in the following serious offences, and they include theft of a motor vehicle, carjacking and aggravated carjacking, burglary and aggravated burglary, home invasion and aggravated home invasion, robbery and armed robbery, affray and violent disorder and inciting or attempting to commit one of the above offences or being complicit in such offending – for example, encouraging or directing a robbery. The performance crime offence will carry a maximum two-year penalty. This is in addition to the penalty for the underlying serious offence. For example, if a person is found guilty of a home invasion and also a new performance crime offence, they may be sentenced to a maximum of 25 years imprisonment in relation to the home invasion and up to two years further imprisonment for the performance crime offence. The new offence targets serious confrontational theft and violent gross offences of concern to the community, which are increasing overall in frequency or becoming more prevalent among young offenders, who are most likely to post and boast about their conduct. The offence will capture a broad range of conduct.

There are also respective definitions around material and publication in this bill, which are defined broadly again. Material is defined to mean any film, audio, photograph, printed matter, image, computer game or text or any electronic material or any other thing which depicts or describes anything done in the course of committing the relevant offence, property obtained or damage or harm caused. Publishing is defined as including exhibiting, communicating, sending, supplying or transmitting the material and making it available for other people. These definitions are consistent with the existing definitions in the Crimes Act, and introducing a targeted offence sends a clear message that publishing material that advertises or draws attention to such criminal conduct will result in serious consequences. Communities, as I have said, have the right to feel safe, and this reform here today will continue to make our community even safer and deter such activities going forward.

I draw the house’s attention to the member for Malvern’s amendments that were recently circulated and to quite a few queries that I just want to go back through and rebut, including why we are not making it a crime to post and boast about pretty much every crime – I think that is what they are getting at – or most crimes. The reality is that this is a targeted, proportionate, balanced approach that is informed by Victoria Police intelligence. It is modelled on the approach that New South Wales has taken. It will focus on the areas of greatest concern amongst the community. ‘Why aren’t we including assault?’, the member for Malvern and others opposite asked. Well, if they actually read the bill, affray and violent disorder are actually included and captured in the bill. Furthermore, anyone who seeks to incite or attempt to commit such offences is also covered. Again, this is modelled on the New South Wales approach and Victoria Police intelligence. ‘Why don’t we include dangerous driving?’ It is a fair comment – I get it – but if we actually again look at the bill and look at the work that has informed the bill, often these individuals, these alleged offenders or offenders, have stolen the very vehicle that they are posting and boasting about. Again, we have included in this bill theft of a motor vehicle, carjacking and robbery. As currently designed, the bill largely captures the very things that the Liberals are claiming it does not capture.

On amendments around additional time or additional offences that must be served cumulatively, again our bill provides court discretion on these matters, because courts are best placed to consider the facts of every individual case. It will be up to a court to decide if such a sentence is served cumulatively or concurrently. We have made it very clear as a government in passing this bill that we expect this to be treated as a standalone offence, and we expect sentencing standards to reflect this. In other words, serving the additional two years is almost inherent in this bill being considered and progressed, because we want to make sure we do not see such crimes amplifying the impact on victims and their families. There was also a query around homophobic attacks, but I find it ironic that the Liberals will be claiming that we are not doing enough for the LGBTIQA+ community when it was that side, the Liberals, who opposed our anti-vilification reforms, which cracked down on such hate and incitement speech towards such members of our community. In essence, I commend this bill because it will make our community safer.

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (11:59): I rise to speak to the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, which creates a separate standalone offence for sharing footage or photos of crimes like carjacking, affray and burglary. After careful consideration and consultation, the Greens will not support this bill. As the Law Institute of Victoria has pointed out, the legal tools already exist to prosecute offenders for the crimes they commit, including when they share evidence of those crimes online. Offences such as robbery, burglary and carjacking already carry significant maximum penalties, including imprisonment. A magistrate or judge already has the discretion to take into account factors such as filming and publishing an offence. This bill is unlikely to deter criminal behaviour; it simply introduces another layer of punishment.

Under this bill, people found guilty of both committing a crime and posting about it could face an additional two years imprisonment. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has rightly raised concerns that this bill will disproportionately impact marginalised youth, particularly Aboriginal children who are already grossly over-represented in our justice system. Legal experts across the board, from the Law Institute of Victoria, the Justice Reform Initiative and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, all agree this bill is performative and unnecessary. It distracts us from the real solutions that we need to invest in. The government should be prioritising investment in wraparound services in First Nations-led, community-led, culturally appropriate programs. Instead, this bill will increase and perpetuate cycles of incarceration rather than breaking them, and it contradicts the government’s own stated commitment to youth justice reform. The Labor government claims to support diversion, rehabilitation and reducing youth incarceration. In fact they spoke about it at length. They spoke about the vital importance of this last year when they, with the support of the Greens, passed the Youth Justice Amendment Bill 2024.

This Labor bill introduces new criminal offences for children. This bill is not the solution to the problems that we face, but we have a problem with online-inspired and tech-enabled offending. In particular there is a concerning rise in homophobic violence in Victoria, which is often filmed and shared. Emboldened through online platforms, offenders have lured gay and bisexual men through online dating sites like Grindr into secluded places only for them to be beaten, robbed or extorted by groups of young men, sometimes teenagers. These attacks have been shared online to humiliate victims, glorify violence against gay men, to coerce or to blackmail them. It is cowardly, it is disgusting and it is unacceptable. These crimes are worryingly widespread even though they are typically under-reported. There have been 35 arrests in recent months in Victoria. We want to and we must work as a community and with the government to address and prevent these ongoing attacks from continuing any longer.

Unfortunately, this bill is unlikely to affect the severity and frequency of these attacks. These young men who commit these violent attacks are already committing a crime. They know that assault and extortion are illegal; they know that they carry severe penalties. Filming and sharing a crime is already considered an aggravating factor when sentencing, and as abhorrent as it is, making a separate crime for filming the attack would be unlikely to be a further deterrent, and that is also only if the incident is considered a relevant crime under this bill – most of these attacks are actually physical assaults, which is not considered a relevant offence and so would not be captured by this bill. The bill also does not offer any direction what rehabilitation looks like for this type of ideological, hate-fuelled offending. The courts are not empowered to treat publication as a sign of deeper community risk or ideological harm, therefore they cannot follow up with the rehabilitative needs that an offender might have.

While the bill criminalises some publication, it provides absolutely no protection for victims whose assaults are filmed and circulated. Victims of these crimes are often subjected to ongoing digital harm that the government could be preventing through better regulation of online platforms and victim notification mechanisms. We also have really poor tracking of prejudice-motivated crimes here in Victoria, which means that we cannot properly analyse and respond to rising trends in our community before they get out of hand.

Speaking with members of my community, which is beautifully diverse and proud and unapologetically queer, the victims of these crimes really want these crimes to be stopped before they happen in the first place by addressing the root causes, because these attacks have not happened in a vacuum; they are part of a coordinated rise in homophobic, neo-Nazi, racist activity across the state. These far-right extremists have targeted trans people, gay people, black people, Muslims, Jews and refugees. From the Grampians to Preston, from Ballarat to the CBD, we have seen this rise in aggression coming from afar, and that is why back in 2019, the Greens put up an inquiry to investigate this rise of far-right extremism so we could stop it at its source. And yet as these attacks become more frequent and more brazen, we are still to see meaningful action from the government in response to that inquiry, which recommended investment in youth work designed to prevent the radicalisation of young men and teenage boys that leads to this kind of hate-fuelled offending; and statewide anti-racism, inclusion and diversity education across schools – the kind of investment in social support and education that could have stopped these crimes from happening in the first place.

The government claims that these post-and-boast laws will deter people, and it is not backed up by any evidence. There is no clear evidence that prosecuting people for what they post online prevents crime or improves community safety. Similar laws in New South Wales and Queensland have not provided any proof to date that these laws stop people from committing, filming and posting about crimes. What the existing evidence does show, and we have decades of evidence for it, is that pushing people, and particularly young people, into the criminal justice system sets them up to be further enmeshed in crime and the criminal system. Early interaction with the criminal system significantly increases the likelihood of re-offending. It does not help them break the cycle, and it does not help make this community safer. Rather than deterring young people from committing crimes, this bill risks pushing them deeper into the system, which further criminalises them and retraumatizes them.

The Greens are committed to an evidence-based justice system that focuses on reducing crimes and improving safety by raising the age of criminal responsibility and investing in prevention, education and rehabilitation, reforms that tackle the root causes of poverty, trauma, unstable housing, lack of education and social disconnection. Criminalising young people for posting their actions online does nothing to address these root causes, and that is why the Greens oppose the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. This proposed legislation is nothing more than a tough-on-crime theatre. It distracts from real reforms backed by research and frontline experts. It will do nothing to improve community safety. Instead it will further criminalise young people, disproportionately impact Aboriginal communities and undermine the government’s own stated goal of reducing youth incarceration.

While we oppose this bill, we know that it will likely pass, because Labor here in Victoria are working in close partnership with the Liberals when it comes to locking up kids and feeding our already overinflated prison system. This is just one in a suite of performative, undemocratic, downright dangerous changes from this Victorian Labor government – regressive reforms like new bail and anti-protest laws – that go against the grain of justice. We call on the Victorian Labor government to reconsider this ill-conceived bill and focus on real, evidence-based solutions to prevent crime and to support young people in their rehabilitation. The Greens will continue to fight for a justice system that focuses on care and support, not punishment.

Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (12:09): I am thankful for the opportunity to rise today to make contributions on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. I do so in support of this bill and following my lead speaker the member for Albert Park and having listened carefully to the contribution made by the previous speaker on this side. This is another important bill, one that will introduce a standalone performance crimes offence into the Crimes Act 1958. What we are talking about here is prohibiting a person from publishing material to draw attention to their involvement in certain serious offences, The relevant offences that are captured here are theft of a motor vehicle, burglary or aggravated burglary, home invasion or aggravated home invasion, carjacking or aggravated carjacking, robbery or armed robbery, affray or violent disorder and inciting or attempting to commit one of the above offences or being complicit in such offending.

These are serious offences that the government is putting a great deal of work into combating, as we can see here in this bill. We can see recent happenings here in this place regarding our justice system and keeping our community safe. We have seen from some really significant legislation and changes, particularly around community safety, that this is a very important priority for this government, and we can see that again in this bill here today.

I was happy to be involved in the debate on our tough bail bill, a bill to put community safety first and above all in bail decisions by removing the principle of remand as the last resort, creating the toughest bail laws ever for serious offenders, including new bail tests which are extremely hard to pass, and targeting repeat offenders for those worst crimes. It is a really important measure that we are seeing the results of in the remand rate. That is really important because there was and is a really clear expectation from the community on this. It is one of the most common concerns in my community and is still a major concern for many, along with the importance of quality public health care, major infrastructure projects, local development and ensuring amenity for local residents, which is really important. We will keep working in particular around community safety, and we will continue to work around the government’s new tough bail laws to keep Victorians safe by putting community safety above all and creating the toughest bail laws ever for serious offenders, targeting repeat offenders for the worst crimes.

Again, I would like to say thankyou to all of my constituents for raising community safety with me in my time doorknocking, at my mobile office or at my electorate office and, most importantly, as we all do, attending community events. Community members come to me and say that we need to do something with repeat offenders, such as today, so the feedback is very important to me and also very important to the Allan Labor government. Those were positive changes which sent a clear message that community safety must be placed above all, and we will keep working to make sure that is the case. We have legislation to keep our community safety and to keep our justice system operating efficiently and effectively.

We continue to do that important work here today through the changes in this bill, the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, a standalone amendment. I commend the Attorney-General for bringing this bill forward. This sends another strong message that community safety comes first. These changes will prohibit a person from publishing material to draw attention to their involvement in certain serious offences, such as theft of a motor vehicle, burglary, home invasion and carjacking, along with other offences as mentioned previously.

I heard the other side are also concerned about this material being shared online, and it can be rebutted by having this amendment here today. As such, a person can be charged with the new performance crime offence if they are found guilty of a relevant offence that is the subject of the material. We have heard from this side of the house the lead speaker and the members for Werribee and Pascoe Vale talk about this. The new performance crime offence is a summary offence that carries a maximum of two years imprisonment, and this is in addition to the penalty for the relevant offence. This is a serious penalty for anyone, let alone any young re-offender, to face in our criminal justice system.

Finally, the bill will also provide Victoria Police with search warrant powers pursuant to section 465 of the Crimes Act to investigate the offence. These are strong changes that will send a strong message that these are serious offences and publishing material around these offences will not be tolerated.

Again, I would like to thank all my constituents for raising community safety with me because of their concerns, and that feedback is driving change. Like you, Acting Speaker, I saw a lot in my own activity out and about, door knocking, attending community events or at a mobile office and certainly heard that, clearly, we had to do something. This bill will respond to community concern about certain serious offending such as motor vehicle theft and home invasion when that offending is depicted in material that offenders share online. That is despicable behaviour, and it has been called out by the community and is being called out by this government once again here.

The proposed new offence increases criminal culpability, denounces and deters the publication of material drawing attention to offending and acknowledges that victims may experience further trauma from publication of material depicting their experience. This behaviour is completely unacceptable to me and unacceptable to this government. I am also happy to support these changes that introduce a performance crime offence to address this behaviour similar to a new offence in our neighbouring state, New South Wales.

Key legal stakeholders have been consulted, namely Victoria Police, the Office of Public Prosecutions, Victoria Legal Aid and the Magistrates’ and County courts. All were provided a draft bill and consulted on the technicality and practical issues of the proposed offences, so the bill has broad support from stakeholders, and I am happy to support this bill here today.

We have seen the government’s commitment to community safety in introducing Australia’s toughest bail laws to protect people in our community from the risk of serious crime, and now more serious and repeat alleged offenders are going to jail, not getting bail. We have seen that commitment in the most recent budget – backing it up with significant investment, namely $727 million to ramp up capacity in Victorian prisons and youth justice centres, bringing more prison beds online to deal with the increasing number of alleged offenders being denied bail. As I have said, that commitment continues here today with the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. This is an important bill, one that introduces a standalone performance crime offence into the Crimes Act and sends a strong and clear message that this behaviour will not be tolerated.

We will keep working on community safety, and we will continue to work around the government’s new, tough bail laws to keep Victorians safe by putting our community safety above all else. I commend the Attorney-General for bringing this bill forward, and I commend the bill to the house.

Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (12:19): It is my pleasure to make a contribution today on this post-and-boast bill, the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. I want to make a few points in particular around scope and talk a bit about the things that are captured and perhaps are not captured or things that ought to be captured by this bill. I want to talk a little bit about judicial discretion and then more generally about the particulars of the youth crime wave we find ourselves in and the government’s approach and response to that particular crime wave. I think the speakers prior to me have canvassed quite broadly the amendments to the Crimes Act 1958 that this bill proposes. I am not going to go through those in any great detail, save to say that I think it is a point of significance that the definition will not capture the making available of material to one person – that is, it is not a crime to share the material with one person only. It only becomes a crime under this bill to share that material more broadly, so it excludes private one-to-one communication. It is about wider publication. I think there is a scope difficulty with that, I think there is a scope difficulty with needing to prove intention to publish and I think there is a scope problem with what crimes are captured.

Some of these issues are addressed by the textual amendments moved by the member for Malvern, because they go to the scope, the number of crimes that can be captured by this additional crime, the performance crime element. But what the member for Malvern’s amendments do not do is capture or seek to amend in any way the intention to publish component of this, which I think is troubling. I have not heard much in this debate about the importance of judicial discretion and to what extent we as parliamentarians, we as this Parliament, would attempt to fetter that discretion.

In relation to the breadth or the scope of this publication, I do not think that narrowing it so that one-to-one communication is excluded is the appropriate public policy response – far better, in my submission, that we actually lower the threshold around intention to publish and make it reckless and broaden that test to include one-to-one communication, because what we see at the moment is a very, very, very difficult bar to establish. For a prosecution to establish that you intended to cause the publication they have to be able to demonstrate through circumstantial evidence that it was always your intention to have it published more broadly. If you simply share a video with someone with no commentary, if you simply share that video with one other person, it is going to be almost impossible for a prosecution to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that it was your intention to cause that to be published. But if you lower that threshold to a threshold of recklessness and you include the sharing of one-to-one, then it becomes much easier to outlaw that kind of behaviour. I do not think we need people sharing this material unless they have got a genuine reason for it, a public purpose for it.

I do not think it is important to protect the right of people to share video evidence of crimes. If we lower the threshold to recklessness, if we broaden the scope of publication to include that to one person, then that means if Fred Nerk, Joe Smith or whatever you want to call them – an individual offender – sends a video to someone, you may be able to capture that under this legislation. As the bill currently stands, you would not be able to capture that behaviour of just sending a video without commentary. There is no chance you will ever get that up in a criminal prosecution. But if you lower the threshold to reckless rather than intentional, if you are reckless as to whether it will be published and it includes the transmission to one person, then you have half a chance of being able to capture that behaviour in this new crime, which I think is the appropriate response, because what we do not want is to create the easiest of loopholes, the easiest out imaginable, for people who are intending to engage in post-and-boast behaviour either themselves or by proxy. That I think is what the intention of this bill ought to be, and the only way it will fairly achieve that deterrent, as well as hopefully reform that behaviour, is to make sure that those who transmit material as it is defined in this bill to one person and are reckless as to whether it is published or not come into the ambit, come into the reach of this bill. That is the appropriate response.

I would urge the government in the other place to consider whether lowering the threshold to reckless and broadening the transmission rule so that one-to-one transmission is covered can indeed be captured by this bill.

Scope is the issue that is addressed by the member for Malvern’s amendments, and that is what crimes are covered. This bill, as it stands, fails to capture a range of lower-level offences which are frequently filmed and distributed and which are frequently ‘posted and boasted’ about, including common assault and threats and vilification. Indeed the attaching of those lower-order crimes would give this bill far more meat – would make it a far more substantial intervention into the behaviours that we are trying to outlaw. Particularly in the threats and vilification space, what we have seen is a very disturbing uptick in antisemitism, as you well know, Acting Speaker Hamer, and the ability of people, as it currently stands in Victoria, to disseminate instances of those particular hate crimes with abandon and to disseminate them without consequence. I think the broadening of the crimes that are captured here would make sure that the intended behavioural change that this bill seeks to achieve actually occurs in that class of crimes that is so much broader, particularly common assault and threats and vilification, and even perhaps offensive behaviour and public nuisance. I do not say that we ought to forever criminalise all material attached to all crimes. I think that creates a burdensome set of legislation and intervenes far too deeply into private communications between citizens, but clearly in matters of assault and with threats and vilification, we are seeing a pattern of post-and-boast behaviour, and that is exactly the sort of behaviour that ought to be curtailed. For that reason, I do support the albeit textual amendments put forward by the member for Malvern.

I want to make a general point about judicial discretion. As I understand it, some of the speakers prior to me said that the amendment proposed by the member for Malvern regarding jail sentences being cumulative fetters judicial discretion. I would generally say that we ought to support judicial discretion in these matters. I would generally say that when Parliament seeks to fetter judicial discretion, they often do so in a blunt way that does not necessarily achieve the public policy outcomes they seek. But clearly, in this circumstance, this is almost always going to be charged as a tangential charge – an additional charge to the substantive crime. If you allow concurrency, you simply render this new performance crime completely pointless, so it needs to have a cumulative sentencing provision. Whilst I accept the general ideal about fettering judicial discretion, clearly here, because this will almost always be an additional charge to a charge for the substantive crime – be it assault, be it whatever – I think you do have to lay out that any sentencing does need to be cumulative because if you allow for concurrent sentencing, all that will happen is there will be an additional conviction with no additional sanction. What we need here is the additional sanction, not just because we are trying to ensure that punishment is appropriate and proportionate but also because we want to create deterrence. What we want is for this behaviour to actually be stopped, and that ought to be the goal of the legislation. For that reason, I would encourage the government to give serious consideration to the amendments from the member for Malvern and also to deal with the scope issues I have raised.

Josh BULL (Sunbury) (12:29): I am pleased to have an opportunity to make a contribution on the bill before the house, the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025 and to make some observations and some reflections on the bill that is before the house but to also, before I go to some of the specific changes that are contained within the legislation that we have been debating for the last couple of hours, just make some broader comments about what are indeed the changing dynamics, the changing nature of, of course, local communities due to some significant advances in technology and indeed to make some reflections on the changes that are required within legislation and to ensure that governments are responding to those changes, working with local communities and working with agencies to ensure that that indeed happens. Apologies for the voice; I am running a bit of a cold, as many are in this last week in July, but I do want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that has played a significant role in bringing this piece of legislation before the Parliament and indeed making sure that the response that has been provided for is indeed led by community but also making sure that we are doing everything we can to keep community safe. I also want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the appointment of the new Chief Commissioner of Police, and indeed I think the reflections and comments that have been made by the new chief commissioner publicly, particularly over the last week, are indeed something that is indeed very warmly welcomed within my community and communities right across the state.

I want to go back to those changing dynamics when it comes to tech from certainly listening to other members’ contributions and thinking about perhaps what society and community would have been like not just a couple of decades ago and thinking that in the course of just 20 years, two decades, the changes that we have seen due to technology – due to software, apps, social media and of course the changes to the way in which we communicate – are something that of course the government is live to and responding to and that go to some of the changes that are within this legislation.

What we know and understand of course is that rapid change to the way particularly smartphones and other devices are used has indeed led to many changes within society and within community. Not wanting to cast any aspersions on you, Acting Speaker Hamer, but I imagine we are of similar age, and certainly when I was in year 12, all the way back in 2002, with the smartphones and the rollout of technology, well, there were not many smartphones when I was in year 12. Going back to primary school, and I graduated primary school in 1996, I think the internet at that point was either just starting or in its very infancy, and to know and understand that in that time, within 20 years, the fact that now each and every one of us in this place has a smartphone, is connected to the internet, has a whole range of apps, uses social media in all sorts of different ways, and now we are looking at obviously AI and what AI brings, that in itself, as a reflection in just a couple of decades, is an extraordinary thing. It is something that we, I think, often do not take the time to step back and reflect on, and it is something that is vitally important for communities and societies. There have obviously been the changes to federal legislation around the use of technology and iPhones and smartphones and the way that our devices are used, and I think that as we, as members of Parliament, move through school groups and community groups we get a real sense of how people feel when they are connected, when they are online, but that basic interaction of human connection, that ability to care for one another and be supported by each other is something that is very, very important. What we need to do – and it is where this legislation is primarily targeted – is make sure that when social media technology and our devices that I have talked about are used for harm, the government is responding.

Other members have mentioned a whole range of initiatives, programs and allocations from the budget that go to provisions for corrections and our changes to bail, which have been really well canvassed. What the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill does is introduce a new offence into the Crimes Act 1958 that criminalises a person publishing material, like photos and videos, depicting their involvement in a serious offence. As has been mentioned, the offence will apply to a person who has been found guilty of specific crimes, including affray, burglary, aggravated burglary, robbery, armed robbery, car theft, home invasions and violent disorder, and a new offence will also capture anyone promoting or facilitating these crimes, including those who are complicit or incite the offending. Offenders will face an additional two years in jail, on top of penalties for the substantive physical offence that they are charged for. As mentioned, this builds upon the tough bail law reforms that we have introduced, the $1.6 billion in the 2025–26 budget that I mentioned earlier, those significant and important landmark anti-vilification and social cohesion reforms to protect Victorians from hate, the electronic monitoring trial systems that we have brought in and the landmark Youth Justice Act 2024.

What this goes to is providing for a range of changes that go to responding to community safety. As other members have done, I want to take the opportunity to thank the incredibly hardworking members of Victoria Police, those people who put themselves on the line each and every day to respond to very challenging circumstances within local communities but also do that really important outreach work that I think we as local members of Parliament get to see. I certainly take that as a great privilege to be able to talk with local members of the Sunbury police and local emergency service workers, who are doing wonderful work within communities, very challenging and tough work as well.

What we need to do each and every day that we have got the opportunity – and indeed it is a great privilege to be on this side of the house and to be in government – is make sure that we are working with and responding to local communities at a time when there is significant change underway. I go back to that significant change, because I think it is something that, in the high-paced environment we operate in, is not going to go away. If you look at investment, AI investment, the money that is being spent in places like San Francisco, Silicon Valley and throughout South-East Asia, if you look at all of the projections that go to technology, semiconductors, everything that goes into manufacturing components, AI generation and software, this is only going to accelerate. What that means is that we need to respond accordingly. But this comes down to people doing the right thing, people looking after each other within the community, and it comes down to making sure that we are providing appropriate and adequate responses to challenges that are within our community.

We know and understand that that is what each and every Victorian deserves, an opportunity to make sure that they can move about their daily lives and remain safe, that they can be their best to be able to look after their family, to be able to enjoy time with friends and to be able to enjoy all of the wonderful things that local communities and indeed this great state offer. What we need to do is make sure that we are working very, very hard to listen to our agencies, to understand the complexity and the changing dynamics of communities and to make sure that when those that want to do the wrong thing want to post and boast about it, we respond, and that is exactly what this piece of legislation will do. I want to take the opportunity, as I did at the start, to thank everyone who has played an important role in bringing this to the house. With those relatively short comments, I commend the bill to the house.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (12:39): I too join the debate on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. I must say that I thought the title itself was quite interesting, calling it ‘performance crime’. I was not exactly sure why that was chosen. But the term ‘posting and boasting’ is a new term, and we have all very quickly got to understand what it means. It is committing a crime and then posting it on your social media and boasting about it. The boasting is the fact that you have posted it on social media, letting everybody know what you have done and drawing attention to you.

We certainly do need legislation that keeps up with changes to technology. Over the last decade or so technology has changed dramatically from what it might have been 20 years ago to what we have now, because access to technology is in everybody’s pockets. It does not matter what background they come from; everybody seems to have some sort of smartphone that allows them to very quickly capture video of any situation and then post it and share it among their mates to really try and get themselves a little bit of a reputation. When somebody actually takes that footage, they are taking it for a reason, and then they are posting it on social media also for a reason. The thing that they might be doing that for is to enhance their own reputation – ‘Look at me. Aren’t I fabulous?’ It can be seen to encourage other people to do the same to match them, or in fact even to outdo them. You can get a competition between different people within a group of trying to outdo each other with what they do and what they record, and then how they post it. It can be said that this glorifies criminal behaviour as they try and outdo each other. We have also got the other element here of the victims and the community. In each of these situations there is a victim, there is something that has happened to somebody, and the community feels less and less safe.

The bill itself is fairly short and sharp. It could be sharper. The government would argue it is short and strong, but it could be stronger. I think the government have probably not done enough work in this space and enough thinking about the sorts of things that should and should not be part of this bill. The purpose is fairly simple. The purpose is about creating the new offence in relation to the publication – this is the important thing – about the commission of certain offences. I want to just draw your attention to the intent which is outlined in the explanatory memorandum. There are probably three key points here. The first point is that the bill is intended to recognise that this conduct increases criminal culpability, and that it is intended to denounce and deter the publication of material drawing attention to offending. It also tries to acknowledge that the victims may experience further trauma from the publication of the material.

Just thinking for a moment of victims, we did have a situation earlier this year where an older gentleman was fishing on a pier and was pushed into the water, and it was all recorded, which was just horrible. That is not an offence that is picked up here at all. Think about that victim. That image was shown time and time again. It was posted, it was boasted about, it was talked about in other forms of social media and in general in the news. There was a person at the end of this, and that can be quite humiliating for that person, but it can also be very fearful for him and his friends and other people doing the same sorts of recreational activity. You are sitting there thinking you are doing something quite safe, but anything can happen if a group of delinquents or thugs comes along. I think it is important that this is outlined there, because it would give us a bit of an insight into what the government is intending to do.

The bill outlines pretty well what is a relevant offence. It has theft down – if the property stolen is a motor vehicle, not other forms – robbery, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, aggravated carjacking, affray, violent disorder, and incitement or attempt in relation to any of the above offences. There are a number of things that we think are missing here, which the Shadow Attorney-General has put forward to try and broaden it a little bit based on things that have been seen. I know that the government are a little bit unsure how to do this, because they are trying to say, ‘Oh no, it is already covered.’ I am not entirely sure that is the case.

What is sought to be added through the amendment been put forward by the Shadow Attorney-General is ‘causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence’ and ‘causing serious injury recklessly in circumstances of gross violence’. The amendment also includes assault, destroying or damaging property and dangerous driving. I think all of us in this place would have seen many, many examples of dangerous driving that has resulted in some pretty horrible outcomes where people have been killed or injured and there have been accidents, cars have flipped and damaged other stationary vehicles, running red lights. There has been so much that has been documented and recorded not just through social media but also through dash cams and red-light cameras and things like that. We see a lot of these sorts of things, and I think it is important that the legislation does pick up the things that worry the community.

Another area that is concerning is around the definition of publishing and what that actually means. It is all right for me to publish that and send it to a mate, but it is not all right for me to post that more generally. I am worried – and I know others on this side of the house are worried – that I know that I will get done if I publish something on social media, so I can send to one of my friends and say, ‘Hey, listen, I can’t do this, but how about you pop it up for me?’ and that is okay. I do not think it would be the intent of the government to make that okay, but you have got to wonder about the definition of publishing and why they have done it like that, because that makes no sense. We would look at that as a loophole: more than one other person publishing it. The amendment removes that loophole and makes it a lot tighter and stronger as a result.

One of the elements in the second-reading speech is communities having a right to feel safe. It is a clear comment in the second-reading speech. I can tell you right now that communities are not feeling safe. I think if this was a little bit stronger – it goes a little bit of the way, but it does not go all the way, because we have seen already that the bail laws have been weakened and weakened and then the government –

James Newbury: Delayed.

Cindy McLEISH: And delayed. The government tries to say, ‘We have got really tough laws, we have got strong laws,’ and they had to introduce legislation to strengthen them, but they were still weaker than they had previously been. We have put a number of amendments to this place and in fact policies around ‘breach bail, face jail’, because people are breaching bail and they are getting away with it in a whole lot of areas.

Communities should feel safe, and they are not feeling safe. They are not feeling safe knowing how quick and easy it is for their motor vehicles to be taken and how many instances there are of carjackings. I think it is so important that as technology changes legislation does keep up with it. But as the government tries to keep up with the legislation, they have got to make it so that you do in fact go back to that community safety lens. The government would like to be looking at this as a crime prevention measure because, as I said at the outset, posting it makes other people might want to outdo you or at least match what you have done. We need to prevent that, and if this is one element that can go to preventing some of this delinquent behaviour that we see more and more, that is not a bad thing. The opposition are not opposing this bill, but we do have amendments that we would like to see get up. I know that the Greens are certainly opposing it for reasons sometimes that are a little bit beyond me.

We are also very keen to have these penalties where if you get a conviction, they are served on top of each other, that they are not concurrent, because too often somebody will get a sentence and it is like, ‘Oh, you get six months additional, but you can serve it at the same time.’ That is not on. We want to see that changed as well through our amendments.

James NEWBURY (Brighton) (12:49): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. I would like to make a number of comments about this bill. As the previous speaker, the member for Eildon, quite eloquently said, the community does not feel safe because the community is not safe. It is not just that they do not feel safe – they are not safe. When you look at this bill, which is intended to deal with post and boast issues, you can see as you look around Australia that this government has realised that it is behind the rest of the country when it comes to these types of very aggravated crimes. We have a crime problem, there is no doubt. I do not think anyone questions there being a crime problem. But what this bill tries to do is deal with the aggravated nature of some of these most vicious crimes that are not only occurring but people are then boasting about them afterwards, they are posting on their social media with joy and with glee the damage they are causing people, the hurt they are causing people.

I know that the member for Eildon spoke about the incident of the poor man on the pier who could not swim and who was pushed off that pier; that video was shared many, many times, not just by the offender, which was obviously shocking, a shocking case, but then the media – rightly, to expose the damage of the weak laws – posted it again, completely understandably, to make the case. But the poor victim. I mean, you can just imagine what he went through knowing that everyone he knew would have seen that video. He would have known that almost every Victorian would have seen that video. Of course we understand the media was trying to make the point that we need action. But what I think it reinforced was that we did not have action in Victoria. We did not have protections. But more than that, what this bill does not do is help him. This bill at its core exhaustively lists the types of crimes that are captured by this bill; it specifically lists at proposed section 195U, the crimes that are included – crimes like robbery, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion. You hear from the government that it should not be every single crime, it does not need to be every crime. But what has been forgotten is assault. Assault, you would argue, would probably be one of the most common causes of crime in relation to post and boast. When post and boast occurs, you would imagine that in many of the circumstances an assault has occurred. Not every case, but in many; I would argue that potentially even in most cases assault would have occurred – enough that it is wrong for it to not be in this bill.

I will acknowledge the Greens spoke before about a matter that I would like to raise and have spoken about in media interviews recently, the incidents of gay men, members of the rainbow community, who have been bashed – lured through social media and assaulted, to use the legal term that we were just speaking about. In fact since October last year 35 arrests have taken place where a young person, in most cases, has been lured and then attacked, assaulted – and that is not covered by this bill. How could it not be? We know that 35 arrests have occurred where gay people have been lured and bashed, and there has been a boasting on social media about that crime – and that crime is not covered by this bill. ‘How could that be?’, I say to the government. I have spoken directly to police about this issue, and they have said to me what they are hoping to do is work out a way, when that occurs, to use affray, which is listed in the bill – to somehow use affray to work around the loophole in the bill.

Why should police on the job be trying to find a workaround because of a loophole in a bill?

The member for Malvern, the shadow Attorney, as he does with every bill, has looked at this closely and in this case developed a very, very strong set of amendments. I would say to the government: look at the member for Malvern’s amendments, because they are very, very clever amendments. They enhance the bill. Clearly the Attorney does not have enough time to commit 100 per cent of her focus to the drafting of a good and proper bill, so use the amendments that the member for Malvern, on behalf of the coalition, has come up with. They include the inclusion of assault in the bill to ensure that the list is more robust, and things like causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence – clearly the type of crime we know has occurred in relation to post and boast – and destroying or damaging property. The member has put forward a number of very important suggestions, just as he has also proposed the deletion of the one-person-sharing rule. Under this bill, if a criminal passes the video to another person and asks them to post it, they have not committed any offence. Straightaway they have got a loophole out of this bill. If you commit assault, we know that this bill is not going to touch you, and we know that if you share it one to one, guess what? You are out again. This bill is full of loopholes.

The third proposition put forward by the member for Malvern is to ensure that any penalty in relation to this crime is served differently than the core crime in and of itself. Why does that make sense? Of course it makes sense, and there will be arguments as to whether or not the judiciary should have capacity to consider these issues, but we know that when you post and boast you are committing an aggravating offence. You are not only in many cases hurting someone; you are then deciding to take a video and aggravate that crime by boasting about it on social media, so it only makes sense that that different crime be dealt with differently and that a punishment be attached to that behaviour. That is the problem in this state: we do not have proper consequences for crimes, and that is why crimes are increasing.

We heard the government today talking about extending the implementation of the new bail bill they introduced this week and not operating it before the end of March next year. Imagine introducing a bill in July and saying, ‘I’m not going to bring it in until April the year after.’ What a joke. There must be some 15 sitting weeks until then, so we know that the bail bill is nothing more than a stunt. But the point I am trying to make is that we need to do more than introduce bills that do not fix problems. Though we are not opposing this bill, we are saying strongly to the government: consider the coalition’s amendments. The member for Malvern has done a power of work, and the amendments he has proposed will not allow the loopholes that clearly exist and will ensure that consequences are delivered to the people who are committing these most aggravating crimes and that a message is sent out to those criminals that it is not good enough and they are going to be punished for their behaviour.

Paul MERCURIO (Hastings) (12:59): I rise to give my contribution on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, simply known as post and boast. I know I have probably got 40 seconds and there are quite a few different things I want to talk about. I am not sure if it is because I am a storyteller and a performer that I look at different things that come to us with a bit of humour and a bit of tragedy. Humour and tragedy in theatre are very close bedfellows, and sometimes I am not sure which is which, but I look at this bill – post and boast – and the slightly humorous side is that everyone in this chamber posts and boasts every day. We lead by example, and I find some kind of conflict in this idea that we are here to talk about the negativities – and I most certainly will talk about the negativities after lunch, which is coming.

Sitting suspended 1:01 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would like to acknowledge in the gallery the Honourable Monica Gould, a former President of the Legislative Council, and Cr Jack Kowarzik, the mayor of Cardinia shire. Welcome, and welcome back.