Thursday, 20 November 2025

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (14:57): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. As we have heard, and the government has finally realised, Victoria is in the middle of a crime crisis. It has taken the government a long time to finally get to this realisation, but at least we have a government that is now seeing the problems that have really been created over a decade – over a decade of bad planning, not enough resourcing and swapping and changing between bail laws and between our jail systems, particularly more recently in 2023 when we saw a number of facilities being closed, and we now need some of those centres to reopen. So we have seen a government that have flipped and flopped, that have not recognised the problem and, especially more recently, because of a lack of a focus, a vision or a plan we have seen a youth crime crisis that is unprecedented, in which we are seeing more violent attacks than we have ever seen before, and a lot of dangerous weapons being used, including knives, and those attacks on the streets which have unfortunately led to the deaths of far too many individuals. We have seen reports of close to 50 individuals that have lost their lives over the last five years due to knife crimes – many of those under the age of 25. So this is shocking, it is horrific, it needs to stop, and I think that you would get agreement from both sides of the chamber that we do need to do something about it.

I also want to put on the record first up that Victoria Police only recently looked at data in their annual report. In their annual report as of Thursday 30 October data suggested, firstly, 756 crimes against the person, which is 14.5 per cent higher than was targeted. That is 750 per 100,000 people. We have seen 5140 crimes against the person, which is 25 per cent higher than first targeted. The public perception of safety when walking home alone at night was 19.5 per cent below target. The proportion of crimes against the person resolved within 30 days was 22.2 per cent below target, and for property and deception it was 26 per cent below target.

What does that say? People do not feel safe at night, they do not feel safe on the streets and they do not feel safe actually in their homes, and overall, when they are reporting offences, they are not being solved. Why aren’t they being solved? The recent crime stats show that nearly 50 per cent of crimes that are reported remain unsolved. Why – because we do not have enough police resources. The nub of the problem is we do not have enough police resources. We are close to 2000 police or thereabouts short on the streets. If you have got 2000 police short, then when you report a crime, unfortunately, the police have to prioritise what they are doing. When you go to a police station, it may or may not be open. We know that already there is some restructure happening in terms of stations and what resourcing there will be with that, because the government has not provided funding for that. There are resourcing issues that have been in place for six months, even to mow lawns and do basic maintenance at stations, because the government has run out of money.

Finally, more recently the government has announced a slashing of protective service officers on more than half of all train stations in the evening because the government does not have the resources. We have a retail crime crisis, so the government has decided, ‘Let’s flick some of those PSOs off train stations and put them into retail shopping centres.’ Ultimately, like we have just seen in this report, 20 per cent of people do not feel safe walking home at night. Well, how is that going to go if you are catching public transport and you turn up at a train station and you do not have a PSO there? It was one of the most successful programs in over a decade, and this government is planning to cut that and jeopardise safety.

We on this side of the house believe that you should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. You should not be robbing Peter to pay Paul. You should not be taking PSOs off train stations and putting them into retail shopping strips. You should be able to do both. That is why we on this side of the house have said we will keep PSOs on our train network and we will create a 200-PSO strike team that will go out to retail areas with high crime reported. They will be out there proactively to ensure workers and shoppers can be safe. That is the difference: we will invest and the Labor government will cut when it comes to law and order in this state.

So what specifically in this bill do we have issues with? What is good, what could be improved and what will we be proposing to amend? I will get to some amendments shortly. But I do want to start by saying that a lot of this bill came together because the Premier on 17 December 2024 put out a press release – the Premier loves putting out press releases – saying ‘Strong action to fight hate and help Victoria heal’. This was after the firebombing of Adass synagogue, which we know was highlighted as a terrorist activity linked to terrorist organisations, and there have been arrests. It has completely caused so much angst and pain within my electorate of Caulfield and among many of the Jewish community. I just put it on record, with a government that proclaims to have such strong bail laws, that an individual that has been connected to this is out on bail. You have a situation where a community has been targeted and a place of worship has been firebombed and you actually have the accused individual out on bail. What a disgrace. We are talking about strengthening these hate laws today. We are talking about places of worship and making them safe as part of this bill today. The whole bill was on the premise of making Victorians safe. Yet an individual that was part of the firebombing of a religious place of worship that started this is actually back on the streets.

How can anyone feel safe when the perpetrator is back on the streets, causing angst to the very community that they targeted? I just wanted to highlight that because it just does not make sense. None of this adds up. This is a government that is all spin and no substance, and it should be ashamed of itself for allowing a broken justice system to act in that particular way.

Nevertheless part of the bill today suggests that some of these laws will be to ensure that we unmask the gutless individuals, extremists, that turn up to protests and want to create violence and intimidation. We saw it a few weeks ago when they were hurling rocks at our fine men and women that keep us safe, Victoria Police. Well, that was the promise in this press release. What have we got in terms of the detail? What we have got are weak, watered-down laws when it comes to these mask bans. They are not a ban, they are a ‘Pretty please, take your mask off’ request. That is all they are. The Police Association Victoria themselves call it a ‘Pretty please, will you remove your mask?’ Well, that is not a way to tackle community safety and to tackle the very extremists that try to incite hate and violence in this state. That is not a way to deal with that, and we will seek to circulate some amendments shortly.

Just quickly, in terms of dealing with some of the other parts of this legislation, protests, again, are all promise, no delivery, and we will seek to raise some amendments on that. The other part of this bill talks about the Control of Weapons Act 1990, and here is a missed opportunity, because we tried to introduce a private members bill this week. The bill that we tried to introduce this week was titled ‘Jack’s law’, and we had Brett Beasley here, the father of Jack, who was brutally murdered on the Gold Coast in 2019 – a knife crime. He has made it his life’s journey to go out there and ensure that these types of crimes do not happen again. What happened only this week was the government voted against it. This bill could have been an opportunity for Jack’s law to be incorporated in it. I know other members of the government will turn up and say, ‘But we’ve got all these changes when it comes to knife control and weapons control powers.’ Well, the government does not have that at all.

In fact, due to our pressure, finally the Premier decided to meet with Brett Beasley yesterday. I remind the house that in June last year Brett Beasley was down here. He met with the Minister for Police, had a great, great meeting – all promises, no delivery, all headlines, no delivery – and waited for a phone call back. He got nothing, crickets, zero from the police minister. He came back this time, and then the Premier said, in the 10-minute meeting, ‘Well, what can we do you for?’ And Brett Beasley gave the Premier a piece of paper that pretty much showed the difference between Jack’s law and Victoria’s so-called search laws.

There are so many holes in the Victorian legislation when it comes to searching for weapons. Firstly, when it comes to knife crime, it is not called ‘search’, but it is called ‘stop and scan’. Why is there a difference with our search? Because they are hardly done, and when they are done, they are done because there is a belief that somebody is carrying a weapon. When they are done in Queensland and other places where they have Jack’s law, they are done like a random breath test. They are over in 45 to 60 seconds. People are stopped, there is a small wand and it is done, and literally people are on their way. It is not with a massive wand like this government is proposing, not having to get proper paperwork filled in; it is like a random breath test, and that is why they are getting knives off the streets. They have taken over a thousand knives in a year off individuals due to Jack’s law in Queensland. What have we had in Victoria? We have not had the 15,000 that has been claimed, because they are all parts of other seizures of weapons. The actual Omni operations, of which there have been 39, I remind the government, have retrieved 129 weapons off the streets – 129 knives. A thousand in Queensland, 129 in Victoria.

I do not want to see one member of the government standing up and saying our knife search powers are working. They are not. They are not working.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Do not deceive this house, member for Point Cook, because 15,000 is not an Omni operation. This government is so deceitful, and the member for Point Cook has no clue when it comes to what police actually do.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Hear my words, member for Point Cook: when police do an operation to seize weapons, they go out there with an Omni operation and they do it. When you go to BCF and Anaconda and you say, ‘We’re banning machetes,’ and they hand them in 5000 at a time, that is very different. When you have a $13 million machete bin operation, that is very, very different. I can tell you who is handing in the machetes: it is not the crooks, member for Point Cook.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Get a life, member for Point Cook. Try and work it out. You have got no idea. You have got one of the highest crime rates in your electorate, and you have let the community down because you do not understand it. You do not have a clue. You have failed your constituents, member for Point Cook.

Michaela Settle: On a point of order, Acting Speaker: through the Chair.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Thank you. I bring the member for Caulfield back to the bill – and please, through the Chair.

David SOUTHWICK: I want to remind this government of their failure to take knives off the streets since their first meeting with Brett Beasley back in June last year. On 6 September 15-year-old Dau Akueng and 12-year-old Chol Achiek were both fatally stabbed at Cobblebank after being ambushed by a group armed with machetes and large knives. Seven offenders aged between 15 and 19 have been charged with their murders, exposing the shocking scale of youth violence. On 27 September 18-year-old Kaiden Morgan, who also should be alive, had his life ended on a residential street in Morwell after a machete attack that should not have happened, because again we do not have the kinds of powers in place. In early 2025 in Altona Meadows Saurabh Anand almost lost his hand in a horrific machete attack at Central Square shopping centre – a violent assault carried out by teenagers that shows how easily these weapons are being brought into everyday public places. Northland shopping centre was locked down on 25 May 2025 after a violent brawl involving teenagers armed with a machete, sending shoppers running for safety and showing why frontline officers need the authority to wand and scan in retail hotspots. At Werribee Plaza in August 2025 a 14-year-old boy was attacked by six offenders armed with machetes – a terrifying example of youth violence in what one would describe as one of Melbourne’s busiest precincts. A hospitality worker walking to her early morning shift in the Melbourne CBD was stabbed in the chest by a stranger on 7 October – an unprovoked attack that highlights how unsafe our streets have become for people simply travelling to work. On 19 October three teenagers were set upon outside Luna Park by a group armed with machetes, turning a family entertainment precinct into a crime scene and proving how urgently we need a power to intercept knives before they are used.

These are just some examples where, if you can go in and do proactive stop-and-scan powers like under Jack’s law, not the Mickey Mouse stuff that this government is trying to propose, you will get dangerous knives off the streets. We do not need to spend $13 million on machete bins and have farmers and tradespeople – law-abiding citizens – handing in their machetes. We need to stop the crooks from carrying these machetes and these weapons in the first place. Jack’s law works. The Premier acknowledged that there are huge gaps in the laws we currently have today, compared to Jack’s law, which is in every other state. I say to the Premier: this is more than a missed opportunity; this is something that is leaving the community exposed.

Every day this government fails to introduce Jack’s law into Victoria is another day that threatens the safety of young people and old people – all of us. Every death and injury that we see will be acknowledged by us and brought to this government’s attention until they finally do something about them. We plead with the government to adopt Jack’s law. The government looked to Queensland for their adult time laws. There is no reason why they cannot do the same here. So we plead with the government: do not give us Mickey Mouse laws like you are proposing here. Give us the real deal of what every other state in Australia has adopted. Even the UK are doing this now. I think Victorians expect to be safe and a government that is fair dinkum when it comes to getting knives off our streets. That is what I would say on this matter.

In terms of the amendments, under standing orders I wish to advise the house of amendments to this bill and request that they be circulated. The amendments that I wish to bring to the bill are the crux of why this bill was brought into play in the first place. As I said, Labor promised strong action to fight hate and help Victorians heal.

James Newbury interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Well, member for Brighton, how did that go? Not very well, because as we have seen, there have been more protests and more hate and still there are very, very weak laws when it comes to unmasking gutless cowards.

Their first amendment, on clause 80, reflects the private members bill previously proposed by the coalition. We had a crack at trying to bring in masking powers. In the last Parliament that was rejected. Again, what have we got here? A Mickey Mouse version – something that is light on detail and will do nothing to unmask gutless cowards. The concern is that we have so-called lawful excuses for refusing to remove a mask covering: for religious grounds, medical grounds and cultural grounds. They are so broad that they are a catch-all to undermine the effectiveness of the law. Also they are not allowing Victoria Police to direct a person to remove a mask unless there is an indication that the person might be committing a crime. You have got to wait for somebody to commit a crime before you can do it.

A senior KC pointed out to me that these laws are the equivalent of somebody going into a bank wearing a balaclava over their head with their hand in a paper bag and their finger pointed or something else and then somebody saying, ‘Take your mask off.’ On the one hand it is saying, ‘Because it looks like they’re intending to commit a crime.’ On the other hand, they are pulling out a piece of paper and saying, ‘But I have an exemption to wear the mask on cultural grounds or religious grounds or for medical reasons.’ So what is it? Is it intent on one hand? Is it an exemption on the other? Pick your choice here. What they are doing is they are giving so many exemptions about why somebody should be wearing a mask that of course people are going to break the system and have a joke with the government, like they have all the way along. People are going to turn up in the city and they are going to wear their balaclava and their ski goggles, and when they are approached, they are going to say, ‘We’re not committing a crime. We’re just on our way to the ski slopes in the middle of summer. We think that we can get in early, buy our lift tickets and go skiing in the middle of summer. That’s why I’ve got my balaclava on, and that’s why I’ve got my goggles on my face.’ What an absolute circus. What a joke. It will not be enforced.

Firstly, we have already heard them described as ‘pretty please’ laws by the head of the Police Association Victoria. Police association secretary Wayne Gatt said that these laws were unlikely to work in practice and that:

… it amounts to … members having to ask protesters nicely whether they have a lawful reason for wearing a face covering, it should be renamed ‘the pretty please’ bill …

Government members may jump up and moan and everything. This government is pretty big on getting up and supporting their unions when they speak.

This is a union member saying that this law is not tough enough. It is that should be named the ‘Pretty please bill’. Do not pick and choose your unions, government. Back your workers; back the police. This government say they back the police. Well, the police are saying that your bill is weak. Why is this government proceeding when it knows that this is a weak bill? This is a hopeless bill. Again, as Mr Gatt said, imagine going up to a hundred people wearing black balaclavas and asking them one by one whether they have a lawful excuse to wear them: ‘Have you got your excuse? Do you have a cold? Do you have cultural reasons? Do you have religious reasons for wearing a balaclava?’ It is just an absolute joke. That needs to be taken out, and that is what we are doing with the first part of our proposed amendments.

Even Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler, who was on the working party for having these laws drafted in the first place, said:

We’re deeply disappointed by the Victorian Government’s announcement about the proposed mask ban.

He went on to say:

After the Adass Synagogue terrorist attack, the Premier committed to banning the use of masks at protests because they were being used to conceal the identities of those engaging in violence and vilification.

Under this new proposal, police will only be able to direct someone to remove a mask if they suspect that person is about to commit a criminal offence, and even then, there are exemptions for cultural, medical or religious reasons.

We don’t understand why a protester should be allowed to wear a mask if police believe they’re about to break the law.

This is a much narrower proposal than what was promised, and unfortunately, we think it’s unlikely to achieve the purpose this legislation was meant to serve.

There you go. One of the members of their very own working group to ensure we have stronger laws to protect people at protests said that this law is flawed.

Another amendment that we are proposing is to amend clause 82 to include public displays of images of key individuals linked to terrorist organisations and the use of symbols that closely resemble those of banned organisations that are not readily distinguishable by the average person. The main reason for this is that, again, we do not want to see a situation where we have colours and symbols that are not exactly the same as something that is banned but that are very close to it, so the average person could not distinguish between that particular symbol and one that is banned. We do not want to have the likes of Osama bin Laden photos, for instance, being held up by people trying to promote al-Qaeda as a terrorist organisation. We need to ensure the intent here, and that is why we think there needs to be more flexibility with the intent of that particular clause.

The final amendments are to amend clauses 84 and 85 to replace all mentions of ‘meeting of persons assembled for religious worship’ with the consistent term ‘religious assembly’. These amendments seek to better capture other significant religious activities that might not constitute religious worship. I hope the government will get on board at least with this one. This, again, was recommended by the JCCV, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, who have been very supportive, working with both sides to get better, stronger anti-vilification powers to ensure people are protected and to ensure that we tackle hate, and here is an opportunity to do that. What it says is in a place of worship you should not have those protections if you are just going there to pray. These places of worship are used quite often for textual learning, to have concerts and for cultural events, and if people are turning up for those reasons then the protections should be in place for them as well. I know that the JCCV has met with the government to look at trying to make those changes consistently. I hope those changes will be made so that people can be protected whenever they turn up to their places of worship, not just for prayer but for all other reasons as well, because when hateful individuals turn up to these places of worship and target a particular community that are in there, we know exactly what the intent is and we want to make sure that people are protected in that particular instance. They the changes that we are proposing.

Some of the other changes are pretty straightforward, which we do support. I think the confiscation of seized goods is important. The amendment to the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 to change the seizure and disposal of drugs brings us in line with other states, so that is pretty fair and reasonable. Part 7, the amendment of the Firearms Act 1996, which deals with 3D printing of weapons, again, is absolutely fair and reasonable; we have no issues with that. The amendment of the Sex Offenders Registration Act 2004 to electronic reporting and dealing with that we have no issues with either. A number of the changes absolutely have come from police command, so that is all fine and dandy.

But I will finish where I started by saying that the government comes out publicly and says that they are going to keep communities safe and they are going to ensure they have strong action to fight hate in Victoria, but they give us weak weasel words and soft bans – I would not even call them that – on face masks and weak laws. On one hand they say, ‘We’ve got the toughest knife laws in the country,’ but they are among the weakest when you have got other places like Queensland that are leading the way. Families out there that have lost their loved ones, like Jack Beasley’s, are saying, ‘You should do what’s worked well everywhere else.’ And this government are too – I would not even say proud, but because it is not the government’s own idea, they say, ‘We’re not going to adopt it.’ Well, I do not think that is any reason at all. I think that it is just unacceptable for a government to turn around and say, ‘We know better. We know best, and we are going to ensure we are doing the same.’ We know that doing the same only ensures that Victorians are left unsafe. We have a crime crisis because of the Allan Labor government.

 Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (15:27): I too rise to make a contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. There is quite a lot in this bill to go through. I was a bit surprised that the lead speaker of the opposition took almost 20 minutes to get into the actual substance of the bill and must have prepared his bill speech based on the legislation that they tried to introduce earlier this week.

I do want to at the outset just thank the Minister for Police and the Attorney-General for bringing this bill into the Parliament this week. I also want to thank Victoria Police, particularly in relation to what has been happening over the last couple of years. There is a lot in this bill that relates to powers at protests. We saw the Chief Commissioner of Police recently talk about just how many additional hours of police resources have been devoted to keeping the peace and to monitoring the protests that we have been seeing on a weekly basis. Often we have been seeing other protests that have just sprung up almost randomly and without a lot of warning. Particularly in relation to the matter as it relates to religious assembly, I think we can all recall the event in the lead speaker’s own electorate in November 2023 when there was a hastily organised protest that was outside a synagogue. A number of members who had been there attending a service had to be hastily moved out of the synagogue just after they had started the service on Friday night. Some of these protests are more organised and planned, and then others are, as I said, organised in quite an ad hoc manner – all of which have required significant police resourcing. I want to put on record my thanks to Victoria Police for making that effort every single day of the year.

I just want to quickly touch on the amendments raised by the member for Caulfield. In relation to the first one, under the opposition’s proposal they would rule out any exemptions for mask wearing other than for religious reasons. I think to also remove a genuine medical reason would be a really dangerous move. This does not mean that it is just somebody wearing a face mask claiming that they have a cold or whatever it is, even though those people should have an entitlement to come and protest generally as well. If you think back a few years, whether you call it a protest or a march, there were people in support of things like the NDIS. There would be people who have real, major health concerns, and their ability to interact and be part of the community can only occur if they are wearing a face mask. Maybe they need to have an oxygen tank and an oxygen mask with them.

David Southwick interjected.

Paul HAMER: The member for Caulfield says they should not be at the protest if they are not that well. No, I think we have a fundamental law in this country about the freedom of participation and association in a protest. To me this is what the crux of the debate is. It is the vilification that we are concerned about in the protest, not somebody who wants to participate in a protest about something that is actually very meaningful for them. We see next week there will be a day of action for the 16 days of respect, and there will be many people from many different walks of life who come to that event. Maybe you call it a rally or maybe you call it a protest, but it does not mean that every single person who claims to have a medical problem or just claims to have a cold is allowed to then go and vilify or assault police or other people on the street. We are not saying that. It is about the freedom of assembly which is a right in our democracy and a right that we do hold very, very dear to our hearts. I would have thought that most members in a party that calls itself the Liberal Party would also hold those values dear.

I do want to move on to the issue of the banning of the terrorist organisation symbols. I think this is an important change of the legislation. We did see that in some of the protests this year, where people were flying flags of listed terrorist organisations. I was having a look at the process and the procedure that the Australian government goes through to list the terrorist organisations. There are currently 31 organisations that are listed as terrorist organisations, and they are all described as ‘ideologically motivated violent extremist organisations’, and that is what they are. I do not see that there is any place on our street for the flying of symbols and flags that represent these despicable organisations. It has gone through that government process, and the listing of an organisation only comes about from the recommendation of the AFP. Even beyond that, once an organisation is actually listed, there is a review process by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which would be a multiparty committee. So there are a number of checks and balances to make sure that there is actually broad agreement across political lines about whether these organisations are terrorist organisations.

If you look at the organisations that are listed amongst those 31 organisations, there would be very few people in this house and very few people in the community who would disagree with any of those listings. Those listings come from lots of different positions in terms of their politics, but it gets back to their description, which is ‘ideologically motivated violent extremist’ organisations. If you were to summarise all of those organisations, that is what they represent. As I said before, in the same way that we have banned Nazi insignia and Nazi symbols and Nazi flags, I see that it is perfectly appropriate that we should be banning the use and the flying of flags representing these terrorist organisations.

The final point that I do want to raise is also in relation to the protecting of religious assemblies. I think this is another really important element of the bill. As I mentioned earlier in my contribution, there was a really terrible incident in the member for Caulfield’s electorate back in November 2023. There was a protest which was occurring outside a synagogue at the time that people were meeting for Friday evening prayers. The protesters had come to Caulfield to cause trouble, and they had been incited to come in relation to an incident that even the police said was not racially motivated. It is really important that we maintain the right to freedom of religious assembly. I commend the bill to the house.

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:37): I am happy to rise to say a few words on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. The opposition welcomes this legislation because it does deliver on some of the things that we have been campaigning for, and I particularly want to pay credit to my colleague here on the right, the member for Caulfield, who has been campaigning on this for a long time as the shadow minister for police, particularly with relation to protests and to face coverings. Whilst this is somewhat of an omnibus bill covering a wide range of police matters, that is one of the key issues with respect to face masks.

I guess what this debate is about is, when it comes to protests, we need to allow protests in a flourishing democracy. That is a right, a privilege, if you like, to some degree, and it is freedom of expression, and I certainly will always defend that. But that is not absolute. It is a bit like how freedom of expression does not mean you can say anything about anyone. It is not an absolute right, and we actually need to get the balance right on this.

I think there are some issues in here that obviously in the course of legislation do require some specificity. But as a principle, there are things that are straightforward when it comes to people wearing masks at a protest. If you are turning up to a protest with a balaclava on or with a mask over your face, you are clearly going there looking for trouble or expecting trouble. Whilst that is not easy to address in strict legal terms in legislation, there is a concern that the provisions in this legislation are far too broad and do make this unworkable, because the government is trying to have it both ways a little in saying, ‘Well, we’re banning masks at protests, but we’re not really banning masks.’ We saw the commentary – and I think the member for Caulfield actually addressed it – from the Police Association Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt, who is a very sensible man in my experience. He just tells it like it is, and he has told it like it is on this. He said:

… it amounts to our members having to ask protesters nicely whether they have a lawful reason for wearing a face covering, it should be renamed ‘the pretty please’ bill …

He went on to say:

Imagine going up to 100 people wearing black balaclavas and asking them one by one whether they have a lawful excuse for wearing them. We don’t think it will make a significant difference to the protest environment our members work in.

That is a summation of the point I was making, that it becomes farcical that there is this requirement in this bill for police to do that.

The second part of it is the police’s belief that the person in question is about to commit a crime. You have got 5000 people at a protest and again, 100 of them wearing balaclavas or masks, and they are all standing there looking for a fight with the police, and the police are meant to wait until they look like they are about to throw a rock at them. That, I think, is quite ridiculous. I appreciate, and again I acknowledge, that legislating this and putting those circumstances into law is not straightforward, but I do not think the government has got this part of it right.

The member for Caulfield has also addressed the issues when it comes to public displays of symbols associated with terrorist organisations, and the potential for that to be circumvented in this legislation. His third issue, which will also be an amendment when this gets to the other place, is to just give some clarity on the religious assembly question. The bill uses a couple of different terms: ‘religious worship’, ‘religious worship meeting’. We think ‘religious assembly’ would just be much more straightforward. In that case, if you are there for mass at a Catholic church, if you are attending an event at a synagogue or if you are going for music lessons at a Christian or any other church, it should just be covered. It should be straightforward. If it is a religious assembly of some sort, that would make a lot more sense.

There are other aspects of this legislation. It is an omnibus bill covering a range of matters. But it is interesting that we have got this flurry of justice legislation amendments this week and more to come, and had more last week as well. We have clearly got a government that is panicked by the crime crisis we have got in Victoria and is now belatedly lashing out and trying to plug the political holes, not necessarily address the problem. We saw that last week with the announcement of a Clayton’s version of ‘adult crime, adult time’, which was ‘adult time for violent crime’. We are seeing it with an almost hushed announcement of more wands for police announced on the weekend: ‘Announce it and call it anything, just don’t call it Jack’s law because we’re not going that far.’ That is really what the government did.

Again, with the Premier’s performance in question time, where she was saying that in terms of taking PSOs off certain train stations she was doing what the Chief Commissioner of Police wanted – I reckon I would be pretty confident in saying the chief commissioner would like some additional PSOs, and indeed he would like some additional police officers to actually do the work he wants to do. He is now having to shuffle the cards on the table, if you like, to try and cover the gaps that have occurred, all of which have occurred under this government.

Some of the answers we received last week about juvenile crime in this place, that this is a new type of crime – well, if it is a new type of crime, it has flourished and developed under this government, which has been in for 11 years. It has been soft on crime, with the weakening of bail laws and the signal-sending to criminals, particularly young criminals, that you can get away with anything and face no consequences. Now we are seeing a massive response from the government politically, because they know this was getting away from them and that Victorians are not feeling safe.

Literally today I have been talking to locals in my electorate, and police. We have got the Toora police station. It is a single-officer station that is still unmanned and has been for some time. I have had the single-officer station at Loch, which has been unmanned on and off for at least the last six or seven years – currently filled, and that is good for the Loch community. It is good for other communities too, because Toora goes in and helps Foster, Loch goes in and helps Korumburra and those stations go and help Mirboo North and Leongatha. They are all areas that need to be addressed.

I know the community of Loch Sport, which does have a single-officer station, is very concerned – they had a vacancy as well for some time – because they are quite an isolated community. It is half an hour or 45 minutes from the main town, with one road in, one road out, and there is a level of crime there that they are concerned about. These vacancies that I have mentioned are just a couple of the 1100 currently across the state.

I remember asking the former chief commissioner Shane Patton about this in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. He answered that the police force was actually using the vacancies – the money that they get for those vacancies that are not filled – to pay their WorkCover bill. That just highlights how stretched the police force is. We have seen that in recent times. The member for Caulfield has been veracious in highlighting the issues, that police cannot even get their lawns mowed. They have got memos out there saying that unless 50 per cent of the light bulbs in the station are out, then they cannot actually replace a light bulb. These sorts of issues are the dividend of bad financial management, of a government that has lost control of the finances and is spending $21 million a day on interest. All of that interest could be directed towards supporting more PSOs, towards supporting police and getting those vacancies filled.

Certainly in my electorate it is a concern. I know in Sale as well, a much bigger town where we have got a 24-hour station, crime is an issue and retail crime is a massive issue. Indeed the Wellington shire saw a 135 per cent increase in retail thefts in the past 12 months – that is just massive. That is a result of a couple of things. It is a result of the lack of visible police presence and effective policing on the ground, and it is a result of people over a long period of time now getting away with whatever they want with virtually no consequences. That is what this government has failed on. This legislation goes some way towards addressing it, and I hope that we will be able to pass the amendments the member for Caulfield has spoken of.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (15:47): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025, introducing a broad range of reforms which are aimed at addressing dangerous extreme radical conduct, improving community safety, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of police powers and providing a range of broader improvements to the criminal justice system. It is a very comprehensive bill, so I will not seek to acquit all matters, but I will go to some of the matters within the bill. The fact that I speak to some matters is not to suggest that they are more or less important than other matters included in the bill.

Firstly, I want to go to the issue of 3D printing of firearms. I know I have seen in schools very good usage of 3D printing. I want to make that qualification that around the globe this has been a fantastic innovation and people can do all sorts of fantastic designs. But of course, as with any technology and tool, there is unfortunately the potential for people to exploit and otherwise abuse that technology, hence the imperative to keep ahead of such behaviours. We know, as technology has advanced, digital blueprints are more readily being used to manufacture firearms with 3D printers. This has been widely reported in our media. To address the serious harm that may come from this, new offences will make it illegal to possess or distribute digital blueprints that can be used to manufacture firearm parts. Certainly when it comes to firearms laws, the government will always consult widely, particularly also with regulations in this state. In the event that changes to our laws are suggested by the community, by Victoria Police or by stakeholders, we will consider them carefully.

On a further note to this, when we think of the Australian context, we know Australia has some of the most robust firearm controls in the world. The sale, transfer and use of firearms in Victoria is strictly regulated. In December 2024 Victoria signed a federation funding agreement with the Commonwealth in which they committed to funding 50 per cent of costs for our state to integrate with the national firearms register. You can see that our state takes the issue of firearms control very seriously in terms of investment but also in implementing appropriate controls to keep ahead of those who are seeking to exploit what should otherwise be useful tools that can be used for good. But when they are used for very dangerous purposes, obviously we have to clamp down on those activities.

Further, I want to now toggle – because as I say, it is a very comprehensive bill with many different aspects – to the issue of dangerous attachment devices. The new offence introduced by the bill relating to dangerous attachment or lock-on behaviour at protests will target people who use a thing or substance to lock on or secure themselves at a public protest, where it is likely to cause injury to another person or is a serious risk to public safety. I will emphasise – and I think it is a point that has been reiterated in the chamber – obviously our state honours and respects the right to protest. But as with any aspect of human behaviour, there has to be an element of reasonableness, and so with radical or extreme behaviour and particularly behaviour that is likely to cause injury to another person or a serious risk to public safety, it is fair and reasonable that we would be seeking to curb any such behaviour. With the new search and seizure powers in the bill Victoria Police will be able to enforce this new offence and proactively prevent dangerous lock-on behaviour before it occurs – and I have no doubt that such behaviour could also put the person themselves at risk, particularly if they are doing something as extreme as gluing themselves to a particular item or otherwise. I can only imagine the human creativity in this regard. I am not making light of the activity, but suggesting that it is reasonable to have boundaries of behaviour when we are looking at keeping our community safe, particularly where there are collections of people who are protesting on a particular matter.

A further very serious matter: we are looking at the issue of terrorist organisation symbols. Terrorist organisation symbols represent racist, violent and hateful ideologies, and their public display can cause profound distress, fear and harm to members of targeted groups in Victoria. They have absolutely no place in this state. The new offence and new powers for Victoria Police in relation to these symbols will complement existing Commonwealth laws – and I know that my learned colleague the member for Box Hill has spoken to this matter in some detail, but I wish to reiterate the point. It is a very important point. The elements of the new offence will be simpler to prove than the Commonwealth offence for displaying a terrorist organisation symbol and will be modelled on existing laws, including our prohibition of the public display of Nazi symbols. I am just going to go a further step there, because we are talking about very nuanced but important reforms.

What are we talking about when we say a terrorist organisation symbol? Under the bill, a symbol is a symbol of a terrorist organisation if it is a symbol that the organisation uses or members of the organisation use to identify the organisation. It is possible that multiple symbols of an organisation may be captured if they meet those requirements – so it is not static, and new symbols used by the organisation or its members will be picked up once they become known to law enforcement. You can see where the delicate and nuanced drafting is required, because of course organisations can be cunning, if I can use that adjective, to try and get around, for want of a better word, definitions et cetera. So this is where careful drafting is absolutely paramount. ‘Members of an organisation’ is not defined. It will depend on the specific facts and surrounding context, and it will ultimately be up to a court to decide what constitutes a symbol. That is appropriate, understanding the complexities of the scenarios with which police are faced and that they have to address in what can be heightened emotional scenarios.

I know I have attended in the past many a protest, and generally you attend a protest because you feel passionately about an issue. But I will emphasise that in any such protest I have always attended in a peaceful manner and certainly would not want to be associating with others who are doing anything other than protesting in a peaceful manner, because ultimately – and this is not to lecture but just from a point of view of thinking about the purpose behind a protest – I would think, and it is something that I was taught, that you always want to take the community with you.

You have a certain amount of social licence, so behaving in a reasonable manner has surely got to be a fair parameter when you are looking at the way we as Victorians conduct ourselves. This then reinforces that commitment of our state to peaceful protest into the future and that right to be able to protest.

I do want to speak to protecting religious assembly. We have seen some really disturbing behaviours, really dangerous behaviours and really disrespectful behaviours when it comes to disrupting people from practising their faith, and this has no place in Victoria. In a multicultural, multifaith society the right of individuals and communities to safely and peacefully gather to practise their faith free from intimidation and harassment must be protected. The bill replaces the existing offence of disturbing religious worship in section 21 of the Summary Offences Act 1966 with two separate modernised offences prohibiting conduct that disturbs a religious assembly and the assault of persons arriving at, attending or leaving a meeting of persons assembled for religious worship. Just one further note in the minute that I have: what qualifies as a religious worship meeting? The meeting being attended would have to be an event in some way connected to the religion. I think that is a pragmatic association and that is appropriate, because what we are targeting is people who come and try to threaten, disturb or intimidate people who are just trying to gather and pray in peace. These new offences also complement our new anti-vilification offences, which will target anyone that is going after someone because they are entering a particular place of worship where that suggests they belong to a certain religion. In Victoria, if you try to target someone because of their religious beliefs, you will risk jail time as well. So we can see that there are some really significant reforms being implemented here, fundamentally to protect community safety in our state and peaceful protest.

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (15:57): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. I think every Victorian saw police commander Wayne Cheeseman, at the end of a very long day, after hundreds of weeks of him and his fellow officers coming into the city to manage what has been the most outrageous and disgusting behaviour our city has probably ever seen, tipping a box of big rocks out onto the floor and effectively saying enough is enough, it is not good enough, what we are seeing is a disgrace and the laws are not strong enough. That is effectively what he said, and I think every Victorian heard that message, because we know that what we have seen for over a hundred weeks has been the most disgusting and despicable behaviour by some absolutely feral individuals who are knowingly and outrageously breaking the law. Victorians, Victoria Police and the good people of this state have had an absolute gutful.

This is not a new thing. It is not like we suddenly said, ‘We’ve reached the tipping point now.’ No, I think that Victorians saw the Adass synagogue burning only just across the road from my community and said, ‘How could this happen in our great state? How could that crime have occurred in our great state?’ I remember that morning being with the member for Caulfield, and we were absolutely shocked at the news of that crime coming in. I think it would be fair to say we were not surprised when we learned of international actors being involved in that incident, that horrific crime. We were not surprised to hear of the links to international actors and the confirmation of terrorism – not surprised at all.

We were also not surprised only a week ago to hear that the alleged offender was let out on bail. That is the truth of this state: you can burn down a synagogue in this state and you get bail – what an absolute disgrace. I try very, very hard not to reflect on particular decisions that are made, but on this one we had a synagogue burnt down and bail given – what an absolute disgrace. I remember reading the reasoning of the decision and the reflection that it was a lineball decision – a lineball decision of course that went in the alleged offender’s favour, because of course it always does in Victoria. To think now you can have an alleged offence of burning down a synagogue and walk out the door because of our weak bail laws and because of our catch-and-release bail system is an absolute disgrace. It is no wonder why police commander Wayne Cheeseman, after coming out to the city with his colleagues every single week to try and stop the behaviour that is occurring on our streets, has had enough.

I think most people in Victoria, when the Premier in December last year put out a promise, an ironclad promise, to do something about this behaviour after the synagogue incident, hoped that she would live up to her promise. At the core of her promise was:

banning the use of face masks at protests, which are being used to conceal identities …

No equivocation there, no weasel words there – no left-wing sellout weasel words in that promise. But then we see in this bill a complete sellout, a total broken promise, one that the Police Association Victoria secretary has said is unlikely to work, which of course matters a great deal, doesn’t it, when we consider proposed laws. Further, it amounts to our members having to ask protesters nicely whether they have a lawful reason for wearing a mask covering. It should be renamed the ‘pretty please’ bill. The Premier has sold out and has in my view not told the truth in saying that the advice the government have received is that this would somehow breach constitutional issues and therefore they cannot live up to their promise. Will the government release that advice? No, because it is not true. Has the government released that advice? No, it is not true. It is a total con.

The Premier promised, in her own words, banning the use of face masks at protests. The only people who win out of this bill are ferals who are breaking the law – they are the only winners. Somehow we as a state have got to the point where we say, ‘We don’t want to offend the ferals. They’ve got rights too’ – well, bugger their rights. I think all Victorians are saying, ‘Their rights? Seriously, their rights? What about everyone else’s rights?’ When it comes to this law, when it comes to law and order in this state, I think everyone is jack of it. They are jack of this rationale coming from the government that somehow we have to care about what idiots, ferals and law-breakers think over what good Victorians do and what hardworking Victorians do every single day of the week.

On the face masks, the Premier is going to get her win. She is going to sell a supposed broken promise on the basis of it being somehow a breach of constitutional law – not true. The truth is there for everyone to see. The law-breakers will win on this one, and that says everything about the Premier.

I would also like to mention the religious worship protections – or so-called protections – that were also committed to and how those measures have been watered down, which is an issue that the member for Caulfield and I have both looked at very closely and that, through his amendments, we are seeking to strengthen. There is a heck of a lot by way of important religious assembly that occurs that is not covered by the protections in this bill, and we have raised that emphatically with the government. In good faith I am saying to the government: there is a pathway forward where you can extend protections beyond simply religious worship to religious assembly and not cover political events. I understand that there is a concern around political events, and I accept that. But I believe that the current measures do not cover what good people would think is deserving of protection, that certain types of assembly are not fairly protected and that many events that I am sure many members in this place would go to, they would be very shocked to learn, are not covered by this bill. I would encourage all members of this place to go to the government with detail of the types of events they have gone to and ask whether this measure covers them, because it does not. I would say to the government: we should work together in amending this bill in the other place, as the member for Caulfield has attempted to do, to make sure that on this particular element we can capture more fairly what should be the case.

This bill is a broken promise, like everything the government do on law and order, like everything they do to supposedly fix crime. This is about press releases. The only difference on this one is this one breaches the Premier’s own press release – what a con! The only winners from this bill are law-breakers, ferals and idiots. How could you be proud of yourself? Of course we will support the minimal measures in this bill, but we would say to the government: how can you look at yourselves in the mirror when you have broken your promises, especially to the Jewish community at their most difficult time, and be proud of who you are?

 Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (16:07): I also rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. It is a fairly expansive bill in terms of the measures that it seeks to introduce across a range of different areas of our society. The member for Brighton talked about some of those in the context of protest laws, and I will dwell on those in my contribution as well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I will characterise those measures rather differently than the member for Brighton.

I do, however, note that the statement of compatibility that accompanied this bill was of some very considerable length – I think about 50 pages – and from reading that statement of compatibility with the charter of human rights, I think it emphasises the complexity of striking the right balance in the context of protest laws in a democratic society. In acknowledging the depth of that statement, I think it is reflective of the amount of careful and deliberative work that has been undertaken by the Attorney-General and the Minister for Police – by the justice ministers as a collective – with stakeholders really across our society, from Trades Hall to churches to faith organisations and many others, to ensure that we do strike the right balance. To the extent that I agree with the member for Brighton, the right to protest is not an unfettered right to shut down the city, to intimidate, to incite fear and hatred or to perpetrate actions that hurt and harm, but it is a really important right in a democratic society. So it is interesting for someone who I think is a self-described classical liberal to be assailing laws that seek to strike that balance.

I think it is important that we recognise the building in which we are sitting as the Parliament of Victoria is where stonemasons in 1856 left the work they were doing here – and at your alma mater, Acting Speaker Lambert, the University of Melbourne – to go and protest for the right to have an 8-hour day, to have a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, to not be exploited and to be able to organise in concert with other stonemasons. If we diminish the right of protest too far, we risk not only curtailing that kind of freedom of expression and freedom of association that is central to the labour movement, as it has been in Victoria at the very least since 1856, but undermining broader democratic freedoms. So it is really important that we strike the right balance, that we do target the thugs – I am not going to use the words necessarily that the member for Brighton did, but those who seek to perpetrate harm, those who seek to incite fear, those who seek to intimidate those of a religious persuasion or any other Victorian for that matter.

That right to protest should not extend to undertaking certain actions, and I think this bill does a good job of seeking to strike the right balance. As I said, the statement of compatibility highlights the very significant challenge that comes when reconciling competing rights. I think that reconciliation, as it were, is integral to so many of the debates that we engage in in this place. It is central particularly to the disagreements that exist across the house just how you strike that balance. But I think it is particularly salient in the context of a bill such as this that seeks to preserve the right to protest and recognises its centrality in a free society and a tolerant liberal democracy but also, in doing so, seeks to protect people in that liberal democracy from harm, from violence, from intimidation and from fear and to enable those who are charged with upholding the right – as indeed Victoria Police are – to go about their job in safety and without some of the appalling actions that we have seen from those who were not simply engaged in that right of peaceful protest but were actively harming others, whether it is police officers or indeed passers-by, as we saw in Southbank last year.

With that preamble out of the way, I want to emphasise how supportive I am of this bill as part of a broader suite of packages that seek to strengthen consequences for those who do the wrong thing in our society. I do so speaking as the member for Greenvale and reflecting a lot of feedback that I have received on this and many other issues in recent times. I am grateful for that community engagement on these really important matters, which I have sought to reflect in my advocacy to the Premier, to the Minister for Police, to the Attorney-General and to all of that justice ministry team, because my community understands the need for measures that keep the community safe, but they also – particularly those who have come from countries where they do not have the right to assemble freely, do not have the right to articulate a political or a faith perspective in the public square – recognise that there is a real risk of harm, of that being curtailed excessively. So that balance must be struck, and my constituents have told me that as well.

I want to touch upon some of the measures in this bill, which I think has four really important objectives. The first is to stamp out the things I talked about before, that dangerous and hateful conduct at public protests. It increases community safety by expanding and improving upon the existing powers that police have to stop and search people for weapons and also makes some commonsense but perhaps quite tricky, in the context of federation, changes to enable the effective and efficient policing of communities, particularly in our border areas. Fourthly, there is a broader suite, as I suggested earlier, of justice system reforms and technical amendments.

The importance of protecting religious assembly I think has been really well captured by my colleagues the member for Box Hill and the member for Albert Park, so I am not proposing to dwell on those. Suffice to say that, again, ensuring that Victorians of faith can go about that practice without being assailed by neo-Nazis, by thugs and by those who seek to cause and inflict harm upon them is absolutely imperative. I think this bill not just seeks to do that but, if it is passed, as I hope it will be, will effect a positive change in that respect.

One of the dimensions that I want to dwell upon, which I am not sure has been canvassed too widely in the debate, is the capacity of Victoria Police to regulate firearms. The Firearms Act 1996 already provides a robust scheme to regulate the acquisition, possession and manufacture of firearms, but this bill amends that Firearms Act to prohibit the possession or the distribution of a document that can be used to instruct a machine to manufacture a firearm, in effect to prevent people from circulating documents or blueprints that would enable the 3D printing of a gun, in blunt terms. I think this is an interesting example of legislation seeking to catch up to where technology has already reached. I think we probably associate the sale and distribution of firearms which obviously have a legitimate purpose in the context of sporting shooting and those who have primary production properties and are seeking to keep livestock safe and for all those other reasons we are well aware of with it being done through a very strictly regulated trade through gun shops, licensed dealers and so forth. Obviously police through the Firearms Act and other powers have the capacity to interdict the illegal distribution of firearms.

I think one of the really positive reforms in the last generation in Australia was the response to Port Arthur and the way in which it is harder to obtain firearms by illicit means. But having now the capacity for printers to effectively construct a firearm in someone’s home potentially changes the calculus in that market. It creates a significant challenge, potentially, if those blueprints are circulating freely for people to simply print a gun. Self-evidently, I do not think that is a position we want to be in as a society, where people are able to print their own firearms at home. There is a very clear attendant risk to community safety that comes with that. It had not occurred to me before reading this bill that that prohibition was not already in place, but as I said, I think it is because it takes time for legislation to catch up with where technology is. So I certainly welcome that measure.

One of the other I think commonsense and very welcome measures in the bill is to enable cross-border policing. I was talking about this bill with a resident of Robinvale earlier in the week, who was reflecting on their experience of living in that border community, where to get to Mildura by far the most direct route is via Euston and Gol Gol on the northern side of the Murray. Enabling police to have the full powers they would have as Victoria Police officers rather than as some New South Wales auxiliary will improve the capacity for law enforcement to be undertaken in communities such as that and for emergency responses more broadly. Similar phenomena would be at play in places like Wodonga, where it does not really make sense for somebody needing medical attention to backtrack to Wangaratta hospital when there is the co-funded cross-border health facility in Albury just across the river. This bill seeks to make some really commonsense adjustments to our frameworks in that regard.

I commend the bill to the house. Again, I really want to thank the team of ministers and advisers, who have undertaken really substantive consultation and engaged in deep thought about both the intended and potentially the unintended consequences of legislation such as this in the context of our protest laws and what they mean for our democracy.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (16:17): I rise today to speak on the omnibus Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025 before the house. This bill purports to strengthen police powers, modernise our justice system and protect the community from serious and organised crime. When we look closely at the detail, though, what we see is a bill riddled with loopholes, inconsistencies and concessions that undermine its effectiveness. It is a bill that overpromises and underdelivers, and it is a bill that leaves Victorians exposed.

Let us begin with the protest provisions. After the Adass synagogue terrorist attack the Premier stood before Victorians and promised decisive action. She promised to ban masks at protests because they were being used to conceal the identities of those engaging in violence and vilification. That was the commitment. But what has Labor delivered here – a watered-down clause that allows protesters to refuse to remove a face covering on cultural or medical grounds. These exemptions are so broad that they create a catch-all defence and they render the law toothless. To make matters worse, police can only direct someone to remove a mask if they suspect the person is about to commit a crime. In the fast-moving, volatile environment of a protest, this threshold is simply unworkable. It ties the hands of Victoria Police and leaves them without the practical tools they need and have been begging for to keep the public safe. Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler has said:

We don’t understand why a protestor should be allowed to wear a mask if police believe they’re about to break the law.

He is right. This proposal is narrower than what was promised and will not achieve its purpose. Clause 80 must be amended to reduce lawful excuses to religious grounds only and to give police the operational capacity that they need.

This is not theoretical concern. We have seen protests escalate quickly. We have seen violence erupt. We have seen communities targeted with vilification. And in those moments police need clear powers, not convoluted thresholds and broad exemptions. Labor’s drafting leaves them constrained, and it leaves Victorians still vulnerable like they were yesterday. After this bill goes through, it will be no different.

The same weakness infects clause 82. The bill prohibits the overt display of terrorist symbols but ignores the use of images of key individuals linked to terrorist organisations, and these images function symbolically in the same way as emblems. They are used to glorify, to recruit, to incite. Yet Labor’s drafting leaves them untouched. Worse still, the bill fails to capture symbols that closely resemble those of banned organisations. A slight alteration of colour or shape should not be a loophole for extremists to exploit. By failing to address this, Labor has left open an avenue for circumvention. That is simply not good enough. Victorians deserve laws that are robust, comprehensive and fit for purpose.

Clause 84 is another example of sloppy drafting. This bill uses ‘religious worship’, ‘religious worship meeting’ and ‘religious assembly’ interchangeably. This inconsistency risks narrowing protections for legitimate religious practices, such as study preparation or communal observance. Labor’s failure to adopt consistent terminology undermines certainty for faith communities. The coalition proposes replacing all mentions with a single term, ‘religious assembly’, to ensure clarity and proper protection.

Some may ask: why does this legislation matter to the people of South-West Coast? Why should families in Warrnambool, Portland, Port Fairy and our smaller towns care about the detail of clauses about protests in Melbourne, extremist symbols and religious assemblies? The answer is because community safety is not a metropolitan issue alone. It has become a regional issue. I have had reps in my office many times displaying banned symbols and concerned about what they are seeing being displayed in our electorate. Our electorate has seen its share of protest activity, whether it be environmental demonstrations along the coast or rallies in Warrnambool. These are legitimate expressions of democracy, which I support, but when masks are used to conceal identities, when anonymity is exploited or used to intimidate or to commit unlawful acts, it is our local police that are already stretched thin who must respond. They need clear powers to act decisively, not legislation that ties their hands.

Our electorate is also home to diverse faith communities. Faith is an important part of community life. These groups deserve the certainty that their assemblies, whether for worship, study or communal observance, are protected under the law. Labor’s sloppy drafting risks narrowing these protections. This matters to South-West Coast, where faith groups are not just places of worship but also hubs of community support, charity and resilience. South-West Coast is a proud and resilient electorate, and we are a community that values safety, values connection and values clarity in the law. But we can see, even here, the consequences of Labor’s destruction of communities: rising crime rates that are no longer confined to the city in Melbourne but are reaching South-West Coast. There was a time very recently when our towns were places of trust – doors left unlocked, neighbours watching out for one another and families feeling safe. But crime has crept into our streets, and the security that once defined South-West Coast has been eroded. We cannot and should not stand by while violence takes root. We must stand together to protect our community and to reclaim the safety that is our right.

That is why the Liberal–National coalition Safer Community Plan matters. One aspect of that plan is Jack’s law. Let me explain Jack’s law. It would give the police and the PSOs the power to use non-invasive handheld electronic metal detectors to identify knives and weapons in public places before tragedy strikes. In Victoria, Police cannot do this without a warrant. This is a law that is about prevention – about stopping violence before it happens. Knives are being used for crime far too often, and we must give the police the tools to act decisively. Other states and the UK already do this, so why would we deny our Victorian police the ability to prevent stabbings?

The coalition this week introduced Jack’s law into the Victorian Parliament, yet the Labor government shut down debate. They refused to even allow discussion on a policy designed to protect families, children and local communities. By silencing debate, the government has denied Victorians the chance to stand with police and support a safer, stronger South-West Coast. Our police are calling for more tools to assist them to keep us safe. Why would anyone deny that?

This bill, presented as a serious response to organised crime, violent offending and extremists, is simply not correct. It consolidates changes across criminal procedures, police, weapons, firearms, drugs and poisons, surveillance, sex offenders registration and governance of Victoria Police. It is meant to be comprehensive; it is meant to be strong. Yet in critical areas it is weak, inconsistent and unfit for purpose. It leaves police constrained, communities exposed and faith groups uncertain. It is a bill that looks tough on paper but crumbles under scrutiny.

Consider the protest provisions again. Labor promised strong action. They promised to ban masks. They promised to give police the tools they need. But what they have delivered is a clause so narrow, so riddled with exemptions, that it is not going to achieve its purpose. That is a betrayal of trust. Consider the provisions of the extremist symbols. Labor promised to confront extremist imagery. They promised to protect communities from glorification of terrorism. But what they have delivered is a clause that has a dangerous loophole.

Victorians deserve better. They deserve laws that protect them from violence and vilification, not legislation that creates defences for those who seek to exploit our freedoms, who seek to be violent, who seek to destroy our communities. This bill, as drafted, fails that test. It must be amended, and if Labor will not do the work, the coalition will. We will propose three amendments, and I support my colleagues who have put those amendments forward. We want to see our police force given the right laws, the right tools and the right to protect our community from violence, from vilification and from extremism. It is a fair and reasonable expectation that every Victorian has been asking this Premier for for several years now, and every day is a day we slip further and further into more and more crime, more and more civil unrest and a society that no-one in Victoria even recognises anymore. Our safety in our homes is under risk because of this Premier ignoring Victorians.

 Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (16:27): I have to say, I step outside this place and I damn well recognise the Victoria and the Melbourne that I see, and I have to say on the weekend the 50,000-odd people that got to the West Gate Tunnel and walked or ran through that brand new second crossing in and around Melbourne city recognised Victoria and Melbourne and were absolutely loving exactly what they saw. The contributions from those opposite are again the doomsday, end-of-days, end-of-world, anti-Victoria and anti-Melbourne kind of nonsense we are used to and quite frankly expect from those on the other side. It is just sad.

But I am in a great mood this afternoon, because I love rising to speak about the justice legislation that we put here in this place. In the last couple of weeks we have been announcing some really, really big initiatives when it comes to justice, cracking down on crime and, most importantly, preventing it from happening in the first place, which is really key to making our communities a whole lot safer, something this side of the house will take advice on from Victoria Police and the Chief Commissioner of Police, the experts here in this state on what we need to do to crack down on crime and prevent it from happening in the first place.

This is a critically important piece of legislation because it is going to go ahead and deliver on our government’s commitment to ensuring that public protests are safe for everyone, safe from hate and safe from extremism. I think I pretty much speak on behalf of my community in Melbourne’s west: we quite often have had a gutful of these kinds of protests and these kinds of thugs and people turning up – neo-Nazis turning up to these kinds of protests, carrying on in our city. I have to say, this is going to be really important when I tell people in my community we are cracking down on that. We are giving the police the powers they need to ensure that, yes, people have a right to protest but they can do it safely and responsibly.

James Newbury interjected.

Sarah CONNOLLY: You can remind me of whatever you want, member for Brighton. I am right on the side of my community.

What my community will be pleased to hear is that in the last 12 months – and the member for Brighton will like this one – Victoria Police have made 77,000 arrests. That is an extraordinary number of arrests out there on the beat, let alone all of the other activities that police in our local community do on a daily basis.

As I said earlier in the week, ‘tis the season to be jolly and wish our emergency services workers, our transport workers and, most importantly, the police workers here across our great state of Victoria, that will be working tirelessly over the Christmas and New Year season, a very Merry Christmas. I hope they have a very happy new year and people are well behaved on our streets, because it is a thankless, tireless job to be a police officer. It is an honourable job, and the people of Victoria thank you very much for the work that you do in keeping us safe.

Our government has always been committed to working closely with Victoria Police. Our record investment – and those on the other side absolutely hate this when we mention it, because it is a huge amount of money – of $4.5 billion is making sure that Victoria Police are equipped with the resources and the power that they need every single day to keep us safe. We have more than 3600 more police officers on the beat compared to when were first elected 11 years ago. I tell folks – and I even told my mother, actually, on the drive into here this week – that Victoria does indeed have the largest police force in the country. She did not know that. She said that is something that I should be spruiking a whole lot more on social media, that folks in my community would really like to hear that.

This is of course in addition to the fact that we have been hard at work this year getting dangerous knives off our streets and participating in our nation-leading machete ban. This was huge in my community. More than 12,000 knives and machetes have been surrendered in just the last fortnight alone. I think that is a success story, that people are handing them in and surrendering them and they have been taken off our streets. Now, those on the other side of the chamber carried on that it would not work. Well, the statistics and the facts, the data, do not lie: it is working. In the last two months, police have taken – this stat is huge – more than 11,000 dangerous weapons off our streets. I think that is really important, because it means they are out of our neighbourhoods and out of our communities. It is all about making our communities safer.

But we know there is more to do, and that is why we are again working closely with Victoria Police to work out the best way to tackle a lot of the high-profile youth crime that we have seen absolutely tear up our local communities. That is why we have announced adult time for violent crimes committed by serious youth offenders, ensuring that the consequences for these kinds of serious criminal behaviour reflect the standard, quite frankly, that our community expects and that they can make a difference. It is why we have committed to legislating life imprisonment for those terrible, terrible people – I mean, I talk to people on our streets and I call them child abusers – who recruit children; they recruit young children into committing heinous acts. Doing this, as I said, is utterly reprehensible. If you are luring kids into a life of crime, quite frankly, I think you deserve to go to jail, and that is exactly what we are going to do. We will work with police on implementing these changes; there is a lot of work ahead of us to do. Today what we are working with them on in this bill before us, before the house this afternoon, makes good on our commitment to tweaking our law so that protests can be free from harmful extremism.

Let us be clear from the get-go – and I think the people of Victoria, particularly here in Melbourne, do understand this and do support this – that people have the right to protest. They have the right to protest safely and free from fear, harassment and intimidation, and that applies to everyone, including those people we disagree with. But there are of course ways to disagree better, and I think there are ways to disagree respectfully. And some of these protests over the past couple of years have really I think flown against the spirit of our democratic traditions. Many, many times – being married into a union family – I have been there protesting in the streets of Melbourne, of Sydney, of Brisbane, across our great nation, and it has been wonderful to be able to do so. But what we are seeing is a change in some of the behaviour of some of the people that turn up to these protests.

Quite disturbingly – and this is what really does my head in, because my kids absolutely love coming into the city and doing a bit of a shop, having a bit of yum cha; they have got their favourite yum cha place, which we are thinking about visiting on Sunday – what we are seeing are these brazen neo-Nazis taking to our streets here to spread fear, hate and intimidation at rallies. We even had a shocking rally in Sunshine West of neo-Nazis. They do live in my local community too. The fact that they come here into the city to attend protests and to incite hatred and violence is completely inappropriate. You do not have the right to target people who freely practise their faith. I think what we can do is we can get the balance right. That is what this bill is all about, and that is what we are trying to do here in this place.

Over the last couple of months our government has worked closely with Victoria Police, and we have worked really closely with faith groups, to ensure that we get these powers right. We want to work efficiently with our anti-vilification laws that have now come into effect. The result will be that people can continue to exercise their democratic rights and assemble peacefully and protest. This is a great bill, and I commend it to the house.

 Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (16:36): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. The Greens will not support this bill. There are some sensible changes like updates to the sex offenders register and confiscating and preventing the production of untraceable 3D-printed firearms. Those reforms make sense, but the anti-democratic elements of this bill tip the balance too far towards authoritarian and undemocratic futures.

This bill gives the police the power to remove face coverings at protests. While it has been wound back from earlier proposals, because it was such an egregious abuse of human rights, it is clearly still discriminatory and will do nothing to keep our communities safe. There are many reasons why someone may want to cover their face or wear a mask: religious reasons, health reasons. In recent years we have seen the censorship in the workplace of people for holding, discussing and acting on legitimate political beliefs, so it is not surprising that many peaceful protesters fear retaliation from an employer or online harassment and may not wish to be identified when expressing their political views. They may want to protect their face and their eyes in particular from the dangerous and indiscriminate use of chemical weapons by police – and with good reason. In 2024 IBAC, the anti-corruption commission, found that Victoria Police used OC spray in a way that escalated incidents, that increased safety risks and that was not proportionate to the situation. We have all seen the horrifying footage of police spraying this dangerous chemical into the faces of protesters who are literally just standing there, causing absolutely no harm and not presenting a threat. It is well documented that police use OC spray well beyond its lawful purpose and as a coercive tool against protesters. This bill gives those same police the power to de-mask protesters if they suspect they are trying to protect themselves from the weapons they are about to deploy. It just does not make sense.

There is a legitimate reason defence, but forcing people to go to court to argue that defence is just too great a burden. The government’s own statement of compatibility acknowledges that restrictions on masking at protests can have a chilling effect on freedom of assembly but concludes that this is reasonable and proportionate to meet the stated aim of the bill to address hatred and violence. The Greens reject that assertion. Giving police broad on-the-spot powers to demand unmasking and then exclude a person from protesting is the wrong way to balance those interests. Victoria Police already have a wide range of powers to address violence or vilification that may arise during public gatherings, including additional powers in designated areas. Ramping up police powers like this is disproportionate, it is unnecessary and it will not protect our community.

The Human Rights Law Centre has described these anti-protest elements as misguided and warned that in fact they will make communities less safe. They state that Victoria Police already have extensive powers to respond to violence and property damage and that these new powers will likely fall heaviest on people masking for health, safety, religious or political reasons.

The bill also introduces a new lock-on offence aimed at people using devices like chains and glue, with penalties of up to one year imprisonment or a $24,000 fine. Let us be honest about who these laws are aimed at. They are aimed at climate activists, at forest defenders, at peace activists and at social justice movements using nonviolent direct action to draw attention to crises that governments would rather ignore. But the Franklin River was saved by protesters locking on. Old-growth forests were saved because forest defenders locked on. The first Australian woman to speak in Parliament had to literally chain herself to the railings of the public gallery to stop guards from dragging her away. I have locked on as part of a coordinated, peaceful community campaign to stop the disastrous east–west toll road from tearing through our community, and we stopped that too.

Locking on can be disruptive, yes, and it is inconvenient – that is kind of the point – but it is powerful and it works. In fact in 1969 Zelda D’Aprano chained herself to the doors of the Commonwealth building after the equal pay case failed, demanding justice for women. That was locking on. Jacinta Allan and many other Labor MPs are more than happy to pose for photos in front of Zelda’s statue up the road at Trades Hall and then come back in here and try to criminalise the exact tactics that she used to win change.

The Defend Dissent Coalition has warned that criminalising locking on will be a disaster for democracy. The combination of new offences, broader seizure and forfeiture powers and an increasingly militarised policing of protest is a dangerous mix. In fact a coalition of 23 civil society organisations, including community legal centres, faith-based organisations and human rights and democracy organisations, have published an open letter urging that this bill be sent to a committee for an inquiry and proper consultation and emphasising that the ability of Victorians to freely assemble and participate in rallies and protests is a crucial democratic right that strengthens our community. The Jewish Council of Australia are also deeply concerned about the expanded powers in this bill. They warn that these provisions risk being used against people who are peacefully protesting, in particular in solidarity with Palestine.

In recent years hundreds of thousands of people have marched for Palestine, for climate justice, for First Nations justice and for public housing – clear, peaceful, determined protest. When we stand up to power, when we refuse to look away from injustice, we may make those in power feel uncomfortable. But those creating discomfort are not the problem; they are the conscience of our democracy. And now here in Victoria, this Labor government wants to hit people with massive fines and to arrest people, not for violence, not for corruption, but for giving a shit about our planet, about our homes, about our communities and about our future.

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member on her feet, in my view, has just used unparliamentary language. I am personally offended by that and much else of what the member has said. I would ask you to ask the member to withdraw that offensive comment.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Nathan Lambert): I remind the member for Richmond not to use unparliamentary language.

Gabrielle DE VIETRI: For the member’s comfort, I withdraw that word. I want to take a moment now for everyone who marshals, who observes, who organises, who plans, who shows up, who locks on, who pickets and who protests for a better future. Thank you. The right to protest is how we won change before and how we will win it again. But you know what – if the government truly wanted to protect our community, if this was a legitimate response to the actual dangerous rise of extremism, of neo-Nazis, the government would look at the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into the rise of the far right that the Greens secured in 2021: recommendations for early intervention, for tightening firearm laws and for deradicalisation programs carefully balanced with our rights under the Victorian charter of human rights. Instead what we have here are both major parties lining up to expand police powers while acknowledging in the fine print that there will be discriminatory impacts and a chilling effect on our democracy.

The Greens stand for a different principle. The right to protest is not a gift from government; it is not something we ask permission for. It is a right that we won, it is a right that we use and it is a right that we will defend. We are here to defend the space in which communities can stand together against violence, against injustice, against ecological destruction and against genocide.

Before I sum up, I want to tell you a little story about this place. The upper house here at the Victorian Parliament has neoclassical sculptures of women draped in robes meant to represent the values of the colony. There is plenty that holds a cornucopia of fruit and justice holding scales, and originally there was freedom represented by a cut chain. But during renovations, an overzealous tradie saw the broken chain and thought, ‘That’s not right,’ and he helpfully welded it together. Someone noticed the change a while later, and to address this discrepancy with the symbolism that now presented itself, rather than breaking the chain again, Parliament decided to change the meaning and change what it represented. It was not representing freedom anymore but unity and connection with tradition. I cannot help but see the irony here.

This government is literally cracking down on the use of chains while symbolically welding ours back together. Unity is forced upon us at the expense of hard-won freedoms. Social cohesion is rebranded to such an extent that it now justifies expanding police powers and the quiet erosion of democratic rights. For all the reasons above, for the risks to human rights and to protect our democratic right to protest, the Greens will not support this bill.

 Nick STAIKOS (Bentleigh – Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Local Government) (16:47): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.