Tuesday, 9 December 2025

 Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:00): (1479) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police. The action I seek is that the minister comes out and visits the Clyde North police station. We have all heard of the pub with no beer; this is the police station with no police. They have built a wonderful new police station out in Clyde North. Where they have put it is a great location if you manage to call 000 when you have been home invaded out in Clyde North, which let us be honest, happens quite often, or if your car gets stolen from your driveway or if you are down the road and you are one of the retail workers and you need the police support – you can ring 000. Isn’t it magnificent? We have got a $30 million police station, but the one thing we are missing are Victoria Police who can come out and respond to the crimes, and that is a real problem out in Clyde North, because if you want to get there at the moment, you are still calling them from Cranbourne or Narre Warren. But let us be honest, Narre Warren is partly shut at the moment as well and not open to the public because of the renovations going on there. If you need to get a police car down there, the coppers in the area know what all the community know: you are going to get stuck on Clyde Road. You cannot get down Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road. You simply cannot get out to the places where it is most needed, where these offences are happening over and over again.

One of the most common emails I get from people out in Clyde and Clyde North is about the amount of crime that has been happening in the local community – the aggravated burglaries, the car thefts, the continuous ongoing crimes that people have seen every single day. At one stage I knew that one in 19 houses had been burgled through the area; I am sure that stat has changed since then. We have seen the growth and the new people moving into the local community, which is great to see. We have got a great growing community and many people that are involved and active in their local area, but they have continuously said we need to make sure we have got police here.

When the government came out and promised a police station in 2018 and to have it ready, up and going by 2022, we all know that was a lie because it was not ready by 2022 – in fact it had not started by 2022. Then when they came out and said to the community, ‘Don’t worry. Trust us,’ and they all went out and got their little happy snaps on the site, saying, ‘We’re here to build this wonderful building,’ what they did not say to them was, ‘We’re not putting police in them.’ When the government comes out and says, ‘We are putting police in them,’ they are putting the traffic patrol and the criminal investigation unit in there. If you call 000, there is no police van, there is no uniform officer and there is no way you can walk into the station to go and make a report or get a stat dec signed. All of these things cannot happen because the doors are locked. Only Labor could lie to this community so much that they have convinced them that they are going to build them a police station to protect them, when the outcome is that the Clyde North community is no safer after building a police station with no police – as much as I am still thirsty, going into the pub with no beer.