Tuesday, 3 February 2026

 Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (19:27): It is not normal. It is not normal to have graffiti covering key road signs, making it difficult for people to find their own exits on freeways here in Victoria. It is not normal to have sound barriers like on the Monash Freeway that are covered in graffiti all the way from the city out to Pakenham. It is not normal to have potholes all the way across Victoria and now in areas like the metropolitan growth zones, where the potholes are basically big enough to be pools, and the government failing to fix them continuously. It is not normal for police stations to be closed or to have hours reduced when we have got a crime crisis in our state. It is not normal for a government to spend $30 million on a new police station and not put one police officer in that station to respond if someone calls 000. It is not normal for suburbs in Melbourne to have increases in crime of 134 per cent in 12 ‍months. This is what happens when a government loses control of the budget and fails to keep our community safe. Through every electorate, not just mine, we are seeing crime go up across this state, and what I am going to say to every person is: it is not normal to see crime continue to increase and a government continue to ignore it.