Tuesday, 2 December 2025

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (15:03): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. I want to say at the outset that the coalition will not be opposing this legislation. We will not be opposing this legislation because we believe that this government has got it wrong for too long in addressing the community crime crisis that is gripping our state. But you see this bill that has come to the chamber today, a bill that has only come about, frankly, because of front pages of newspapers, and you have to ask yourself: how did we get here? How did we get to a place where a government who has done everything they humanly can to avoid acting on crime and getting tough on crime can immediately do an about face, in contrast to every supposed ideological principle they have, to bring about a bill that – in theory, if you listen to the Premier – gets tough, but secretly we know that what this bill does is not very much, not enough. It is not tough enough. It is weak and it is full of loopholes, partly because it is rushed, but also partly because this government does not really want to get tough on crime.

Every time I stand to speak on a government-proposed amendment on community safety I say very early on: it does not matter what the government tells you they are doing on crime, it does not matter what the government tells you they are doing to act on the crime crisis that is gripping our state, it will not be fixed by what the government and this Premier is proposing to do today, because at the end of the day we know that this government does not want to fix it and ideologically will not be able to fix it.

When you look at the bill that is before the Parliament today, it is a gross betrayal of Victorians’ trust, even in the two weeks since the government announced the bill. I will go into some detail why that is the case, though I do note that the government is so embarrassed by the substance of this bill that they will push it through this chamber in under 2 hours. In less than 2 hours the government will be guillotining – forcibly stopping – debate on this bill. Not at the end of today, but in 2 hours, because they are so embarrassed to debate this bill that they will guillotine it, force a vote and push it out of this chamber. It will not be debated today in the Council by the way, because if it was urgent, it would be in the Council half an hour afterwards. It is going to sit and collect dust until Thursday. It is going to sit there until Thursday. Can it be debated in half an hour in the Council, at 5:30 today? It could be, but it will not be because the government is so embarrassed they want to get this bill through the chamber as quickly as possible, without anywhere near the attention and scrutiny that it deserves.

I will say one small, tiny, nice thing, so let it not be said that I cannot say something nice. The Attorney briefed me on this bill, and it is the first time the Attorney has briefed me on something, so I do pay her regard for briefing me on the bill. Sadly, I will now tell the truth about the briefing in terms of the substance of the briefing. I did not find, unfortunately, there were many answers to important questions that were asked, and I will go through that.

When I asked about consultation, I was not provided with a single instance where the substance of the bill – that is, the bill itself – was shown to anybody to be consulted. When I got the bill I sent it to important stakeholders in the broader community, and any who had time to come back to me, and I thank them, did note that no-one consulted them. I am not talking about organisations that you would not expect to be consulted. I am talking about organisations that frankly should, as a matter of course, be consulted. I will note that the Law Institute of Victoria (LIV) and the Federation of Community Legal Centres were both very kind providing their insights into the bill in the very short space of a few hours. It is very important to note on the record that the law institute and the Federation of Community Legal Centres were both very kind in providing their assessment, and I will speak to some of the specifics that they went to.

We have seen a bill introduced in this chamber that, in my view, breaches the promise that the government and the Premier more specifically gave to Victorians only two weeks ago. Victorians will remember two weeks ago the Premier holding an emergency press conference and mustering all the strength that she had never found to show how strong she was: ‘I am going to be tough on community safety and we are going to introduce adult time for adult crime in Victoria. Everyone look at Queensland, because we are going to introduce it in Victoria.’ I think Victorians were expecting a regime of adult time similar to Queensland’s –

Danny O’Brien interjected.

James NEWBURY: Because you would think, Leader of the Nationals, when you are introducing a regime and ripping the name off the Queensland model, that is what you would see in Victoria.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

James NEWBURY: Maybe, Leader of the Nationals, but what we have seen is a regime that has nothing much more of the Queensland model than the name.

Frankly, the government has simply tried to pass off a product in Victoria that is tough like Queensland but is as weak as water. That is the problem with this legislation – it is as weak as water. But when the Premier made her announcement, she announced that eight crimes were going to be identified and fall under her policy for adult time – eight crimes. When you look at the press release – eight big bullet points in bold – you think, ‘Right. What they’ve done is they’ve modelled the Victorian system off Queensland.’ What they did in Queensland, for background, is they took 33 crimes and they said, ‘We are going to identify these crimes as serious because we have a crime crisis in Queensland. We will identify 33 crimes as serious, and when we do it we won’t just identify them as serious, we will also significantly increase the penalties – because they are serious.’ So for many of the offences they doubled the maximum sentences – massively increased the sentencing regime for those crimes.

When the Premier went out to announce her policy, the first point I made was: hang on, there are eight of the 33 in Queensland. You can understand why a couple may not transfer. Our laws are different, and certain offences in Victoria are dealt with separately, so it is not a straight translation of 33 – but eight? We are at a quarter of what Queensland is doing by way of the regime. Victorians could be forgiven for thinking the bill that is before the house designates those eight crimes as serious. That is a fair and reasonable assumption. Yet it designates five. We have lost three, and one of the five has not got an increased penalty. Of the eight the Premier identified herself in her press release with her big, bold writing and dot points, only five are designated as serious, to use the Queensland terminology, but only four of them have had an increased sentence – so only half of what the Premier passed off as being the core of her policy actually have an increased sentence. It is astonishing to think that the Premier can have so tricked Victorians with her policy announcement.

Steve Dimopoulos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker –

James NEWBURY: This is directly relevant.

Steve Dimopoulos: impugning a member and saying the Premier tricked anybody – she has just worked hard every single day –

James NEWBURY: That is a point of debate.

Steve Dimopoulos: No, it’s not. That language is not a point of debate. No, it’s not. She has worked hard every single day to protect this community, and that is what we are doing.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): There is no point of order.

James NEWBURY: There is no point of order, because it is true. As I said, the Premier tricked Victorians, passed off getting tough on crime with those eight crimes, but has only designated five of the eight as serious and only four have increased sentences. I will get to the recruitment promise separately, but to go through the Crimes Act 1958 reforms – and I have specifically referred to the eight originally promised – there are five designated offences, four with increased sentences. Now we will get to the other three, because it is worth mentioning what happened to the other three. I know I have just said one of them – one of them has not had an increased sentence – but ‘What happened to the other three?’ you ask. Two of them are only increased in terms of jurisdictional hearing if they are serious and repeated. That means if you commit those crimes once, it is not serious necessarily or repeated, therefore that has gone from the list. It has dropped off from what a normal Victorian would have read and heard from the Premier’s initial announcement. The final one is carjacking, which the government says also has got an increased jurisdiction.

This is where it gets very, very interesting, because only in crooked Victoria could –

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: I do not hate Victoria, Minister. But I will tell you what, this government is crooked to the core, Minister. And only in Victoria could this crooked little government propose a policy reform called ‘adult time for adult crime’ and allow the offender the right to opt out of being treated as an adult. The chamber has gone silent. I cannot hear a Labor member defending that. So a carjacker –

Members interjecting.

Paul Mercurio: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Brighton is being particularly nasty, and I would ask you to ask him to stop being nasty.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): It is not a point of order, but I do ask members to speak to the bill.

James NEWBURY: Exactly, Acting Speaker. So what this legislation says at new section 157B is that a carjacker can decide to ask that they not be treated as an adult. So we are introducing and dealing with a proposed piece of legislation –

Steve Dimopoulos: I think you’ve misrepresented it.

James NEWBURY: No, not true. We have a piece of legislation before this place where an offender can make a request. And of course it is not a simple tick and flick – there will have to be reasons around that request being approved – but nevertheless it exists. Nevertheless, it exists that offenders will have effectively a right of request. But that says everything about Victoria, and you can understand why Victorians would be looking at this bill now and saying, ‘Well, we can see why this bill is being rushed through the Parliament.’

I mentioned earlier the government’s commitment on recruitment of people into crime. When the government made that announcement they committed to life for recruiters of criminals – serious, serious penalties for the recruitment of criminals – and from memory, the announcement was made the day after the adult crime policy was announced. This bill includes a new sentence for recruiters, lifting the maximum from 10 to 15 years. Now, I did ask the Attorney-General about that, because clearly 15 years is not life, as promised by the Premier only two weeks ago. And she said, ‘We’re going to create another offence next year. We’re doing this now. It’s something – it’s an uplift – and then we’re going to create another offence next year for aggravated recruiting. So we’re going to do a little something now and a little something later. We can’t tell you when, but at some stage.’ I will tell you what, when it comes to community safety there is a lot of ‘We’re going to do something later at some stage.’ So the bill also does that.

The bill also deems theft of a vehicle where a child under 10 is inside the car to be a carjacking. We have seen horrific crimes where, as the Attorney said to me, in many instances the carjacker did not even know the child was in the car; that may well be true, but they are horrific crimes. I would make the point that I made to the Attorney, which she accepted as legitimate but could not explain why it was the case: what will now occur in Victoria, because kidnapping was not included under this policy as was the case in Queensland, is that if a youth offender kidnaps a child from anywhere other than a car, they will be dealt with in the Children’s Court and the sentence will be dished out at a lower level in the Children’s Court. So if there is a kidnapping from a pram on a street, it will go to the Children’s Court and the Children’s Court will mete out the penalty at a lower level. But if that same youth offender kidnaps the child in a car through carjacking – by definition, kidnapping in a car – their case will be heard in an adult court and they will face a very, very serious penalty.

In no way am I suggesting they should not, because they absolutely should. But are we now at the stage where legislation is so ill thought through that mistakes of that nature can occur, where kidnapping in a car is dealt with in an adult court at a much higher rate of maximum sentence than kidnapping anywhere else, where it would be dealt with in a children’s court with a lower level sentence? I put that to the Attorney and she said, to be fair to her, that the bill responded to high-profile crimes effectively, and the data had shown there had been high-profile crimes. I made the point that sentencing is much broader, so therefore you need to think of the implications of what you are doing, which clearly was not the case here. Further, the bill creates a new offence for the use of knives in the commission of certain indictable offences and lists specifically what those are.

I do want to, though, before going further, move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this bill be withdrawn and redrafted to provide an “adult crime, adult time” regime in Victoria that will deliver consequences for a range of serious offences and a meaningful impact upon the crime crisis gripping the state.’

We want this bill to be strong, and we are happy to work with the Attorney for the rest of the day to make sure that this bill is tough enough and is passed this week in a tough way, to make sure that it is a regime that actually does something to fix the serious crime crisis we face in Victoria. As I have said, we will not be opposing the bill, but we are seeking to toughen it. We are attempting to make sure that we have a bill that goes through this chamber this week, as the government has indicated, that is tough. We have put that commitment and offer onto the table and said we will work with the Attorney for the rest of the day and into the night to make sure that it is tough, and that is what we are asking for by way of amendment.

The bill does a number of other things. I do note I promised to give my colleagues as much time as possible. I have raised a number of concerns in relation to the initial commitment and what has been delivered; the bill being narrower and incomplete by comparison to Queensland; the issues around sentencing on various crimes, because there are clearly things that have been overlooked; and the opt-out request in certain circumstances, which a court would need to approve. But it is there, and I imagine that it will be the most used request in Victorian legal history. On those matters I should also finally just point out the analysis of some of the organisations that have taken the time. I do want to refer to the Law Institute of Victoria, which:

… acknowledges current community concern around youth crime and the importance of preventative measures and providing justice for victims.

However, amendments that seek to criminalise conduct that is already criminalised do not address the root causes and only create complications, increasing confusion in legislative interpretation. More broadly the LIV would observe that there is a concerning trend where the Crimes Act is amended unnecessarily to address specific conduct that is already addressed through other offences.

That does not go to their more broad concerns. They have raised more broad concerns with not just the bill but the announcements that were made by the government in that week. More broadly, I should put on record, they consider that exposing children to early incarceration will only serve to exacerbate their disadvantage and reduce availability for positive rehabilitation –

Steve Dimopoulos: Do you agree with that, though? Do you?

James NEWBURY: I am putting it on the record – increases the risk of recidivism. It is important in this debate to put that on record. That does not mean that I do not think we need tough laws, but it is absolutely the right of an opposition – and in fact an obligation of an opposition – to put the concerns of those organisations on the record.

The Federation of Community Legal Centres noted three concerns:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

The proposed bill has not undergone any meaningful consultation with the Victorian community.

…

The proposed bill will not make Victoria safer.

…

The proposed bill will perpetrate significant lifelong harm to children and undermines the integrity of our youth justice system.

I conclude where I started by saying that the government have attempted to do a full spin on their long-held position that frankly they side with offenders over victims. You can see it in everything they have done. You can see it in every legislative reform where they have watered down the law and, frankly, been a central cause of the crime crisis in Victoria. I know that when I started raising home invasions the Premier at the time said that I was making it up. What a pig of a man he was. He said I was making it up. Well, it turns out now this government is amending the legislation on the crimes that I raised. Pig of a man. This legislation –

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: Well, he is.

Steve Dimopoulos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I question whether calling someone a pig is impugning a former member. I seek advice. Just because someone is no longer here, can you call them a pig?

James NEWBURY: Just because he is not here doesn’t mean that he isn’t. He is. Whether he is here or he is not, he is still a pig of a man.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): I will rule on the point of order. On the point of order, there is no point of order. I do ask the member to come back.

James NEWBURY: Thank you. I appreciate your shielding, Acting Speaker. To conclude my remarks on this bill, the coalition will not be opposing it. We have put out the offer to the government that we want to work for the rest of the day to toughen these laws. We have put that offer to the government, and I am putting on record again the need to work, hopefully by the end of today, to toughen those laws. I would very much hope that the government today can work with us to toughen them. It is a genuine offer, because we do not want to frustrate this bill from being passed before the end of today, and neither will we. We just want to make sure that it is tough and it is fit for purpose, and we can do it by the end of today.

Tim Richardson interjected.

James NEWBURY: I can tell you, member for Mordialloc: where there is a will, there is a way. We can toughen it very, very quickly, I am sure. I am sure where there is a will, there is a way. We want to make sure by the end of the day this passes, but we want to make sure that it is tough and it does something about crime in Victoria.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (15:29): It is really important to rise and speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. Before I go to some of the points that were raised by the member for Brighton, I want to join with the Premier and Attorney-General in putting on the record our recognition of the impact high-harm crimes have had on communities and those that are victims of crime and that will live with the trauma and impact that this has had on them into the future. We must always remember that there is a human impact behind the stories of offences that happen and that people will live with those impacts through time. The many victims of crime that the Premier has had the opportunity to meet with, in her compassionate and kind way of approaching leadership in this state, demonstrates the importance that we place on having victims and victim-survivors at the forefront of everything we do.

These reforms today are a recognition of listening to the impact that it has had on them and a recognition that we must do more, and we are doing more with our adult time for violent crime – it comes directly on the back of those conversations. It is important to place that on the record.

It is not since Tim Smith was Shadow Attorney-General that we have had the legal fraternity in Victoria so shuddered by a lack of understanding of law reform and law in our state. Not since Tim Smith –

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, former members of this side of the house have got nothing to do with this bill. I would ask you to ask the member to come back to the contents of the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): I will rule on the point of order.

Tim RICHARDSON: I am literally talking about the Shadow Attorney-General in the role that he has undertaken in understanding the legislation. If that is not relevant, I do not know if the member for Evelyn was listening to my point, I was literally contrasting a point of debate.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): I rule on the point of order that there is no point of order, but I do ask the member to come to the point.

Tim RICHARDSON: Down at Flagstaff right now and down at Queen Street there is a shudder going through the legal fraternity like never before, because we have one of the most fundamental lacks of understanding of requests on a legal process that we have ever had. At least the member for Brighton made the effort to get admitted and got it done, did the juris doctor at Leo Cussen or whatever to get it done in here. The former Shadow Attorney-General was not a learned friend. We have got here a complete lack of understanding of what a request made in a court process to a judge is as opposed to an opt-out. The nuance might be lost on the wider Victorian population. The nuance is not lost on legislators and the nuance is not lost on judges, on barristers, on solicitors or on anyone who has done six months of a law degree – which you have done, Acting Speaker Tak. You have done a few rounds, quite a few – five years I think the Acting Speaker might have just signalled. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the legislation works and operates, it is a mischaracterisation of the bill and it is a serious and egregious misunderstanding for someone who wants to be the alternative first law officer of this state. There is not an opt-out. It does not exist. It then places a choice – a jurisdictional choice – and the suggestion of that is quite troubling. There is a request made to a judicial official – the judge – to then make that consideration. The notion of an opt-out is a choice to either go to Children’s Court or County Court, and that is placed in the hands of the offender. The lack of understanding of this legislation probably goes to the node of how this reasoned amendment, which delays adult time for violent crime, is a direct attack on passing this bill through. We just had a big 26-minute routine –

James Newbury interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: A request – that is right, member for Brighton. The member for Brighton’s word was opt-out. It might be lost –

James Newbury interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: The fact that the member for Brighton does not know that and does not realise the legislative difference between the two is very, very concerning. If you were before a judge and tried to play that argument out, you would be laughed out of Queen Street. You would be on Flagstaff station back to Brighton. And guess what, you would be up on ethical standards if you came in with a legal argument like that. If the member for Brighton was representing me, I would want my money back, and then I would want him to do it pro bono. The lack of understanding of this legislation is extraordinary.

Now, government consultation – the member for Brighton made the allegation that there was none from anyone that the member for Brighton spoke to. The fact that the member for Brighton did not know opt-out and the request being made is extraordinary. I still cannot get my head around it, because there were a few blunders from the member for Kew, but I think this one is kicking it out on the full in an extreme fashion. Let us go through it: the government consulted the courts, the Office of Public Prosecutions, Victoria Police, Victoria Legal Aid, the Aboriginal Justice Caucus, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the First Peoples’ Assembly and people who have been impacted by crime in how they want to see the legislation change. We know that a maximum sentence in the Children’s Court is three years, and any matter uplifted to the County Court will automatically see an increase – not the opt-out language. I know that this might make you shudder, Acting Speaker.

I know you have got to keep a straight face here, but as someone who has practised before, you would be horrified by that language and the lack of understanding of that. We know then the bill deals with these eight offences because of the uplift provisions put forward here. I was listening to the member for Brighton intently and I thought, ‘There has not been a reasoned amendment yet. There won’t be. Surely not.’ Surely with the urgency of this bill and the need to protect Victorians, they will understand that this serious high-harm crime needs to be responded to in this way. Then I see a reasoned amendment that I do not think cracks 28 words – I am not sure if it gets there – that is to basically kick it out into the nether-nether and put it out over the fence beyond reasonable doubt. There it goes. I do not think this makes any sense whatsoever, this reasoned amendment that has been put forward.

The opposition comes in here – and I do not know if the member for Berwick would stump up this. I do not think the member for Berwick has been talked to about this, because it makes absolutely no sense. He might be up on this. He might be able to give us a bit of flavour and the colour of movement in shadow cabinet. How you can get to saying, ‘We want urgent reforms’ – right? Tick. But we are going to kick it off into the nether-nether beyond January into February when we sit next and not allow this bill to go through. It does not make any sense whatsoever. I do not think some of those opposite would agree with this approach, because we need these reforms brought through – the eight offence categories. And let us be clear: those are the offence categories that we have seen Victoria Police and the police commissioner talk about. We have seen high-harm offending and a category of offence from a younger cohort of Victorians that need to face those consequences.

I am the first, as Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change, to say that we need prevention at the heart of what we do as well, because the overwhelming representation of offenders are boys. Ninety-five per cent of violent crime that is committed in our state is committed by a boy or a man in our community. We have to ask why. What are the societal elements that see 19 out of 20 offences committed by men and boys? We have to front up to that. People will say, ‘Well, it’s not all boys and it’s not all men,’ but we do not say that about mental health. We have a mental health toll that is 75 per cent men and boys, and we have a collective societal effort to try to lower that. We need to have the same conversations about violence in our community that is perpetrated by men and boys and try to understand how it has come to be that we have 19 out of 20 violent offences in that space.

We see the recent category of offending that is listed, which the member for Brighton went through, which I will put on the record: aggravated home invasion, home invasion, aggravated carjacking, intentionally causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence, recklessly causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence, carjacking, serious and repeat armed robberies, and serious and repeat aggravated burglaries. These are the categories that we have seen play out with a higher representation of youth offenders, some as young as year 7 and year 8. We have not seen that young offender category before. It is deeply disturbing and concerning to our community. We have to wonder where these kids – kids that should be in high school – are getting into high-harm, serious crime categories. We have to have a collective approach where there are consequences and we stop crimes from happening in the first instance.

This is not unique to Victoria. We see this conversation in New South Wales, in South Australia, in Queensland and in Western Australia. We are seeing a crime crisis across our nation where younger offenders are in that category, and we must have consequences and early intervention and prevention. But we do not need reasoned amendments coming here that are less than 28 words or 27 words in length that kick the bill out after saying it is serious. And guess what – we do not need shadow Attorneys-General who cannot understand the law. Opt-in is not the same thing as a request to a judge. Tim Smith would be blushing. Tim Smith would be sitting there right now saying, ‘Get me back in, legends; get me back in’, because even without a law degree he knew that cannot be a category. It is a big blunder from the member for Brighton. He might want to come in and correct the record before Flagstaff down there on Queen Street laughs him out of Melbourne.

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:39): I am pleased to rise on the justice legislation amendment (copying Queensland LNP but not quite getting it right) bill 2025, because I think that is really what this legislation should be renamed. This is a government that is all at sea, and if anyone just demonstrated it, it was the member for Mordialloc, who was at his best explaining exactly how chaotic and unorganised and panicked this government is in both a political exercise and on the issue of crime.

The member for Evelyn was just reminding me that only a year or so ago this government was talking about lifting the age of criminal responsibility, and now we are locking them up for life. What has happened inside you guys? They have obviously had some serious polling that says ‘Mordialloc has gone; there must be a real concern there,’ because they have suddenly discovered there is a crime crisis, particularly a youth crime crisis, here in Victoria, and they think they should do something about it. The old saying is that the most sincere form of flattery is imitation, and this government cannot even get the imitation right. They simply cannot even get the imitation right. They are trying to copy Queensland but cannot even do it.

I can only assume, and I am happy to be corrected by anyone who wants to get up and talk to me about the internal workings of the Labor Party, that the left has gone, ‘No way; we can’t go this hard.’ What was announced a couple of weeks ago has already been wound back by this government, with the Premier saying at the time that there would be eight offences that would come under the adult crime for violent time – sorry, adult time for violent crime. It is hard to get it right. You guys must be struggling with it too, because it is adult crime, adult time. When you put the whole violent thing in, it made it difficult. It again highlights that this government should have just stuck with what the Queensland LNP did because it worked politically and it is starting to work in a crime sense as well. But no, this government is hidebound by its own internal ideology and is struggling to deal with it.

The member for Mordialloc is upset that we have the temerity to suggest a reasoned amendment. We got this bill yesterday at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. We got a briefing at 4:30. We get the bill today, we are debating it now and we are going to pass it by 5 o’clock. I say to the member for Mordialloc: if this is so urgent, where have you been for the last 11 years? Where has this government been? They have just realised that there is a crime crisis, and now they are trying to act politically and say they need it debated and gone in 5 hours, because this government has messed up crime so badly. We have seen the Attorney-General and the Premier trying to say in here that what we are dealing with is a whole set of new crimes. If they are new crimes and this is a new approach to crime, this has happened on your watch. For the Premier to come out a couple of weeks ago and start to say there have to be consequences – hello, Premier, where have you been for 22 of the last 26 years when the Labor Party has run the state here, has run the legislative agenda, has wound back bail laws and ensured that there are no consequences, particularly for youth offenders? That is the key to this that Victorians have had enough of. They are sick of the excuses of a government that now is acting belatedly and saying, ‘This is so urgent, we have to act.’ Where have they been for 11 years?

Tim Richardson interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: No, we are not going to block it, member for Mordialloc, because we know that Victorians want action on this even if it is Clayton’s action – even if it is the Queensland LNP legislation that you have when you are not having the Queensland LNP legislation. This is the Clayton’s approach, but it is better than nothing. Victorians are pleased that finally the Labor Party has realised there is a crime crisis and that there is particularly a youth crime crisis. We can remember the former Premier, and I will not go to what the member for Brighton said, repeatedly saying there is no youth crime crisis.

A member interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: The current one has said it, and they are still denying it. Because of the very truncated nature of this debate, I am going to leave it early so that more of my colleagues can have a say. Because this government, that just discovered crime a few months ago, is now so desperate that it needs to get this through by 5 o’clock this afternoon, I will leave it there. This government has just discovered crime. It is acting politically to try and stem the tide of a Premier that is at minus 32 per cent approval rating, not because it is worried about the safety of Victorians.

 Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (15:44): I, too, rise to speak and make a contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. I am really pleased that the Leader of the Nationals has sat down. I am going to begin my contribution, and I will explain why as I go through this contribution and talk about a couple of things and make a couple of observations. The first is that it is impossible here in this place for those opposite to have a serious conversation about crime in this state. That has been entirely obvious, not just over the last three years, but over the last 11 years. Those opposite cannot be trusted to have a sensible, mature, serious conversation about crime here in Victoria. This is really the first thing I want to start with, and I do hope that colleagues and those opposite hear me when I say this: locking up and impinging on someone’s liberty out in the community, locking up a child, is incredibly serious. It is incredibly serious. It is not something that should be undertaken with sudden urge. It is not something that should be undertaken recklessly. It is not something that should be undertaken without serious consultation with the organisations and the people who serve at the front line of this, and I am talking about Victoria Police, those in the legal fraternity and those in the prevention space.

It is incredibly serious to lock up a child. It is no laughing matter. On the contributions of those opposite playing political hot potato, I would caution them against speaking like that about this issue and about this bill. The second thing I wish to mention is that whilst it is incredibly serious to lock up a child, it is also incredibly serious – and should not be joked about and should not be used for political pointscoring, which I have seen time and time again – to talk about these matters when people have died. People have had terrible things done to them; they have been maimed by knives and machetes and had terrible offences and nightmares cast upon them, not only by adults here in this state, but by young people and children. It is incredibly serious.

This bill has not come before this place without it and its implications having being seriously considered – yes, for offenders and for the children we are talking about, but also for the victims. Let us remember that some of those victims are children themselves, okay? We are also talking about victim-survivors who are children. What this bill does is make good on this government’s recent commitment to introduce adult time for violent crimes. This bill is something that has been welcomed in my community. It is the bill that is going to provide, determine and undertake consequences put upon those serious young offenders in our community – yes, in the western suburbs.

I do not want anyone to doubt that community safety is one of the top priorities of this government. It needs to be a top priority of this government, of any government; it must be. Community safety must be paramount. What the changes in this bill have done is provide a whole number of changes that our government has made to tackle what really is a scourge of violent youth crime. It is appalling seeing these crimes committed. It is appalling reading about them, and let us face it, it is appalling watching the footage of these crimes when we wake up and either read the newspaper in the morning or watch the news of an evening.

Now, earlier this year went ahead and introduced some of the toughest bail laws in this country, and we targeted offences like home invasion, carjacking and aggravated burglary. We introduced a new test to apply to repeat offenders who commit these crimes, yes, whilst on bail, ensuring that they are less likely to be granted bail in the first place. But what we have seen so far is that, yes, these laws are having an impact now. I know those opposite like to talk about them not having an impact. When I am out in the community, I remind my community we know they are having an impact because the number of people who have been remanded, both youth and adult offenders, has increased substantially since this time last year. But what we know as a government is that there is still more to do and we need to take more action. That is what this bill is about. A lot has been said about these changes that we have announced over the past couple of weeks, including this one, the adult time for violent crimes.

Some have said that we are going too far. I have talked to people in the community, and they can tell me about crimes that have been committed against them by youth, or they know friends or family, or they saw it on their community pages, and they are really unsettled. Some of them are really appalled or frightened, but some of those people have said, ‘Yes, it’s going too far,’ that we are setting these kids up for a life of misery and a cycle that will see them back in jail time and time again. Others have said that we have not gone far enough, but what I know is that these changes will make communities like mine in Melbourne’s west not only feel a whole lot safer, but they will be a whole lot safer. We have seen all of these kinds of offences occur – aggravated burglaries, carjackings, home invasions – and when I talk to folks out on the streets, and I talk to a lot of people, and I am always more than happy to talk about crime, what they tell me is that crime is one of their biggest concerns. It is. And unfortunately the number one sentiment they feel is that there are not enough, if any – and we talk directly about this – consequences, that young people especially need consequences for their actions. That is exactly what this bill is about. This is going to deliver very serious consequences for very serious violent crimes.

I think folks on both sides of the house know there is a litany of reasons why children are committing these crimes. I do want to say in Wyndham the two main reasons why we are seeing young people commit crimes is firstly social media and the normalisation of knives and machetes and gangs, the normalisation of violence, and these are real. This is something that is really difficult to tackle. We have brought in a ban on social media, but we are seeing children as young as 10 and 12 commit some of these horrible, horrible offences. Tackling social media for this generation is really difficult. There is no silver bullet and no easy solutions. It will not be fixed tomorrow, and I think folks on the streets know that.

The second thing in Wyndham that I think those opposite certainly have failed to talk about for the last 11 years here in this place while we on this side have gotten on – we have spent billions; we even had a royal commission into it – is domestic violence. It is a huge scourge on our community. The ripple effect is absolutely abhorrent. But what we do know is that some of the most violent youth offenders themselves have come from homes with the horror of domestic and family violence, whether they are watching dad beat mum or they have been beaten up themselves.

The other thing I will say about Wyndham is that Wyndham in the next couple of years will have the highest population of young people. Yes, it is one of the fastest growing LGAs, not just here in Victoria but in the country. It will have the highest population of young people, and that is something that governments like ours must take seriously. Kids will need consequences for their actions. The more serious consequences will be rolled out for the serious violent crimes for these kids. But what we also know and we talk a lot about and have talked a lot about and have invested a lot and we will continue to do even more because we must do more, is look at investing in prevention strategies. What else we can do? What else is working across the globe in turning young people who are going to fall into a life of crime away and giving them a life where they can be a productive, wonderful citizen in the community?

I think what this side of the house and this government has done is walk a tightrope where they have had to have a balancing act – adult time for violent, serious crime – and then we have put in prevention measures like the early intervention measure that we announced a couple of weeks ago. We were actually at Sunshine College to announce that, and Sunshine College knows very well what happens to young people who are not steered away from the justice system and are not given opportunity. But this is a really serious bill, and I would urge members to talk about it in a much more respectful, serious way.

 Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (15:54): The words ‘consequences’ and ‘brazen’ must have come up a lot in recent polls because they seem to be the words being mentioned the most right at the moment in this conversation. If you want to talk about consequences for crime, does anyone seriously believe bringing in a life sentence for a person who is 14 years old and who has committed an aggravated burglary is the right outcome? I do not think anyone does. Let us be honest: if you want to fix the justice system, stop focusing on the top end of it.

The problem is we have seen just today that the person who was found guilty of murdering Ash Gordon did not even get the top end of the sentence for the crime of going into someone’s home and doing a murder. Let us put it into perspective. That is the reality. We have seen people go into homes with knives and machetes and terrorise houses, terrorise victims and steal cars. Every single person in this room has spoken to someone who has been involved in and the victim of an aggravated burglary. It is just a thing that happens now, but when the perpetrators go to court, they are not getting any sentences.

The problem is the system fails them when they get out. If you are going to be fundamentally fair and fix the justice system, the first thing – and I know the member for Laverton spoke about crime prevention – is to put back the money that has been cut from crime prevention here in Victoria. We had 25 staff in the crime prevention unit here in Victoria; it is down to under four. They did not even have enough staff to put in a bid for the budget so they could get funding for the next 12 months to run programs. That is how you fix the criminal justice system: you go out and you work with Victoria Police and other organisations – not-for-profit organisations, private organisations – who can genuinely make a difference when it comes to young people here in Victoria and keeping them away from a life of crime.

I have spoken about it here before, and I will speak about it until the day I am no longer here: you are not going to arrest your way out of this problem. Yes, you can give the police the powers. Yes, we can introduce legislation, but that is not going to make a single bit of difference when it comes to sentencing here in this state, because the message here is wrong. The message should be: how do we ensure the sentencing regime gives the kids the best opportunity to come back out as better parts of our society? We have got to think differently. We can look overseas. I have read one book – I cannot remember, but I think it might have been the Deputy Premier who gave me the book.

The book that I got from the Deputy Premier was Fist Stick Knife Gun, and it was written by Geoff Canada about the changes that happened over in New York. If you do not intervene at the fist, you will end up at the stage of the gun. It is the process and the progress of that. Geoff Canada’s discussion and argument through that book highlights the fact that it was ignored for so long that it was nearly impossible to wind it back. By the time it got to the stage of winding it back, the entire community wanted all these kids locked up forever, but the outcome of locking them up was not getting the outcomes they needed to make the community safer. There has got to be some zero tolerance and other things, but it does not necessarily mean jail. It can also mean youth programs like Youth Start or, when we ran it, Operation Newstart – engaging with the highest risk young offenders early. Let us create opportunities for them before they go and commit the most violent crimes. Let us get to a stage where, like it used to be, aggravated burglaries were rare. No government is ever going to get rid of them, but let us make them as rare as possible, and the way to do that is to engage these younger people earlier.

Victoria Police over the years have struggled. We know the figures at the moment: there are nearly 2000 vacancies on the rosters. They struggle under the pressures when they continuously arrest someone and they know that they get bail continuously. You can argue about the stats and what figures are there at the moment, but the reality is a lot of them continuously get bail. We speak to the coppers every day who go and arrest the same kids the next day, the next day and the next day – we have seen cases where it is above 60 times. Then the coppers get frustrated. How many have sat down with frontline Victoria Police? How many have sat down with people like Sergeant Matthew Mudie, who has operated youth programs and made a genuine difference? These people out there know the programs they want to run, but they cannot because they do not have the staffing. Victoria Police now are literally there to respond. They are not getting the staff allocation to do the crime prevention, which they used to do very, very successfully because they know prevention of crime is the best outcome.

Coppers would love to be actually getting to a position where they are putting themselves out of work. How good would that be? And there are, within Victoria Police, so many people who have the expertise who have done this in the past. There are those that are no longer there and have gone out now with the Community Advocacy Alliance, and you have got some people who have run the Blue Ribbon Foundation and the Blue Ribbon events that we have had in the past. We know the ways that this can be fixed. These are the people who have the common sense and understanding of what they have got done. Shane Smith, who used to be at Dandenong, and Ian Gillespie, formerly at Dandenong, both ran programs that actually engaged kids. In at Prahran they used to run soccer events to get the kids engaged with Victoria Police and go and play soccer. Unfortunately the only game I ever got involved in we lost 9–1.

A member interjected.

Brad BATTIN: You said they still do it. Vince Manno still does it with limited funding, because he gets less funding and the staff cannot help him anymore or go on voluntary duties because they are not available on the rosters. So you cannot say they keep doing it and they still do it –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): Through the Chair.

Brad BATTIN: when they still have – that is through the Chair – this position now where they are trying to do it more and more but they get held back every step of the way. That is because they simply do not have the funding and they do not have the resources to do it. That is not a dig at the police, it is a dig at the government for failing to fund it and for failing to give the police the resources they need.

And this legislation today, which has been rushed through the Parliament all of a sudden, we need to get through urgently. We even heard the member for Laverton say – I think the words, and I will not quote exactly, were along the lines of – ‘We’ve got this legislation coming in. We’ve had to work on it properly because we want to make sure that there are no negative consequences, that the outcomes are all positive and we’re going to make the community safer’. Yet it gets introduced today and has to go through here in the next hour because it is that urgent. It is that urgent that it has to get put through here in a few hours, yet the government have said that they wanted to make sure it was all good in between. Wouldn’t you then give the opposition and wouldn’t you then give external agencies the opportunity to have a look through it and let us know how it is going to have an impact? Well, no, you want to make sure it is out because when the next lot of crime stats come out in Victoria they are going to be horrendous, and we are going to see the real impact of years of failure to address the crime issue here in our state. This is just so the Premier can stand there and go, ‘We’re acting. We’re now doing something. We’ve decided that all of a sudden, now that we have got nearly 120 per cent or something increase on aggravated burglaries over the last 10 years, we’re going to start to do something.’ Too late – it is too late. If you wanted to do something, you would have done what was right, and what was right was to ensure that the programs that were preventing crime longer term were not cut – where programs like Youth You out in Narre Warren, in Hallam; like Boys to the Bush up in Bendigo; and like Operation Newstart, which were cut under this government; and like the crime prevention programs, including the graffiti programs, were cut. Because when you do cut those, the consequences are what we are seeing today, where young offenders think and know they can get away with nearly anything, with nearly any crime, and the consequence for that is people are less safe. That is why we are where we are today.

If this government truly wants to review what is happening in crime, go and speak to those that have run the best programs. Go and invest in the organisations that make a genuine change in their community. Let us try some things that are different. Let us get some of these kids – because they are pretty inventive, some of these kids, and some of them are great artists, we have seen some of the art in the street; we might not like it down the Monash Freeway, but some of it is actually pretty good – and invest in these kids and create opportunities for them. Because if we can get them away from the life in crime, if we can give them the opportunities that they should get and if we can intervene in the highest risk youths at the earliest stage, legislation like this – any language in this Parliament where we all of a sudden want to talk about locking kids up for life – will not exist, because we will make sure that the kids are not committing the crime in the first place. Should I ever get the opportunity to be on the front bench of the other side, that will be my absolute priority – to make sure these kids never go into the justice system in the first place, making Victoria safer.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (16:04): Firstly, I would like to thank the member for Laverton and my fellow Wyndham colleague for her contribution to this bill and framing it in terms that I will turn to as well, which is this idea that we need to have community-led solutions.

[The Legislative Assembly report is being published progressively.]