Thursday, 20 November 2025

 Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (16:50): I rise to give my contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Police and Other Matters) Bill 2025. It has been a big week in Parliament where we have been talking about bringing bills into this house that we are going to be voting on to make our community members safer. I think everybody in this chamber will constantly have people either walking through their door to talk to them, sending emails or calling up and telling them how at the moment they are feeling unsafe on the streets of Victoria, whether it be in their own homes or whether it be going down the street to do some shopping. In my community in the Latrobe Valley the older generation are changing the way they are going out to eat, because they are afraid to be still out after dark. Instead of going out to their local RSL or their bowling club to get something to eat and being there from 6 till 7 o’clock, they are changing so that they are there a lot earlier and by the time they have finished their meal they can still drive home, because they feel unsafe. That is not good enough. I think one of the things that we should be doing here as MPs and politicians is making sure that every Victorian knows that we have their back and that we will do everything in our power, whatever it is, to make them feel safe in their own homes and when they are at work. We have debated bills this week about shop owners and their employees, the people that actually work in shopping centres and so forth, who feel they are being let down by weak bail laws, by weak sentencing and also by police not having the powers that they need to keep us safe.

I think I speak for everybody, or most in our community – there are some members in here that would disagree. The government is coming into the chamber talking about a crime wave that is coming into our state and a new set of rules for the way people are carrying out crime. But as I stand here now, a carjacking has always been a carjacking. If someone is kicking in your front door to do an aggravated burglary, that has not changed. Maybe the demographic of the people that are doing it has changed, but I think the reason that we are noticing it more is that it is becoming more and more common, because, as the government has said and as the coalition has said, often there are no consequences for people walking the streets of our community. If they are doing the wrong thing, wanting to steal your property, wanting to intimidate people in their own homes, wanting to walk into shopping centres or down shopping strips on the streets and intimidate people and steal items from shops, there are some consequences, but there are not a lot of consequences. Mostly they get a slap on the wrist and they are back out under our system that we do have at the moment. I know we are bringing in laws and that these laws and these bills and these changes will make our system stronger, but I do not think they go far enough.

People are worried that the police need more powers. We only need to look at Jack’s law, which we tried to bring in this week. It is having the police say, ‘We’re not going to search you; we’re going to get our little machine out and we’re going to wand you.’ It is not a stop and search; you just stop and wand. What is the issue with that? If you are not carrying an edge-blade knife, you should not have an issue. And you should not be carrying one – 100 per cent you should not be walking down the street, walking into our shopping centres and carrying a concealed weapon on your body. If you are doing that, there is only one reason you are. It is because you are looking for trouble and you are going to cause grief.

It does not matter whether it is our young children, our teenagers or our elderly parents; we need to make sure we are protecting them. For too long now we have actually cowered and tried to make sure that the silent majority have really not had a voice, and with that vocal minority that want to carry weapons, that want to wear masks on their faces to cause grief, it has come to the stage that enough is enough. We should be making changes to laws in this chamber that stop that. It is bad luck; if they want to do that, they must suffer consequences.

As I have spoken about many a time in this place, people have actually had loved ones that have lost their lives. I have had a couple in the Latrobe Valley. I constantly talk about it, because I have promised their parents that I will not let their child have been killed in vain. And it is not someone that has been walking along the street that has had an incident and has been stabbed and has been unlucky that they have died; it is people that have been stabbed multiple times.

There are people that are crying they do not want to be wanded, that they want to wear masks when they break into your house. Well, no. Enough is enough. If you want to protest, well, you can go and protest. Do not wear a mask. That should be the bottom line of the rule. Do not wear it. You know the rules. Do not turn up with a mask, because if you are doing that, you are doing it for your own benefit so you cannot be recognised. It always surprises me when I see it in the media: the people that are causing the most grief at protests have all got masks on. They have got them on for one reason. They are carrying stones, they are carrying rocks; these are weapons as well.

As I said the other day, if we actually had these wands and walked down the main street and down the CBD of Melbourne and wanded the first 300 people that we saw, you would be shocked at the amount of people that would be carrying a concealed weapon. Half of them would not be carrying it to injure someone; half of them would be carrying it to protect themselves, because they have lost faith in this Allan Labor government bringing in the strong laws that we need to keep us safe.

I have got young kids in my family and I have got elderly parents, and my commitment to them – as is the commitment of every member in this chamber to every person in Victoria – is that we should be keeping them safe. If you have got an issue and you want to carry a weapon, here are the rules: you are going to be found out. We do not want these people on our streets. We do not want these people of a night-time coming up to our front doors and kicking them in and going in and terrorising people.

The genie is out of the bottle, and somehow we have got to put it back in. The only way we can do it is by giving our police stronger laws, and we need to make sure that when these people are arrested and they go to court they are facing consequences from our judicial system. You just do not get a free tick and walk out. The government are saying that they are increasing the laws from five years to 10 years to 25 years to life imprisonment. But we are not increasing the minimum laws. There is the issue: we need stronger sentencing from the people in our court system because our minimum laws are the ones that are causing the issue. We need to make sure that they have got no wriggle room at all to be walking into a court knowing that they are going to be coming out.

As we are politicians in this place, yes, we may be bringing in laws. They are not tough enough. We need to once and for all stand up for our community, draw a line in that sand and say, ‘Enough is enough. We here in Parliament as a government will make laws that will protect you, that will keep your children safe. They will no longer be stabbed to death on the streets in regional Victoria and in Melbourne.’ We need to make sure that that is absolutely crystal clear to every person in Victoria. As I said, if you want to carry weapons so you can cause conflict and cause grief on the streets of Victoria, you are no longer welcome here. Let us get tougher, and let us fix this once and for all.

The SPEAKER: The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business.

Assembly divided on motion:

The SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.