Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (17:01): I grieve for Victorians who have suffered under a government that cannot fix the crime that has beset our CBD, our iconic shopping strips and even our homes. Perhaps if the government did not waste their grievance debate opportunity on fostering nasty untruths and scaremongering about the Liberal Party and focused on finding solutions to the crime issues in Victoria, Victorians would not be so disillusioned and living in despair. Crime is not a political abstraction, not a set of statistics to be filed away and forgotten, but the lived, daily reality of families in my electorate, of traders on Chapel Street, of workers in our shopping centres and of visitors to this once great and confident city.

In the year to September 2025 Victoria recorded 640,860 criminal offences. That is an increase of more than 62,000 offences, or 10.8 per cent, on the year before – 10.8 per cent. That is extraordinary. The crime rate, adjusted for population, rose by 9 per cent. Over 235,000 Victorians became the victims of crime in that single 12-month period. Let me put that in very real terms that every Victorian can understand: more than 235,000 people. That is not a statistic, that is a suburb. That is a community of Victorians whose lives were disrupted, whose sense of security was shattered, whose property was stolen or damaged or who suffered violence at the hand of another person.

Last night, as reported in the news, a 17-year-old boy from Prahran, from my electorate, was stabbed and rammed by a stolen car outside a McDonald’s in St Kilda. His attackers chased him, slashed him with a weapon and stole his car. The detective leading the investigation described the offenders as behaving like ‘rabid dogs’. That is the language of a senior Victorian police officer, not a politician and not a media commentator but a detective describing what is happening on our streets. Shame on the government for this and for allowing these issues to escalate to this point.

The communities I represent are on the front line of this crisis. The City of Stonnington is officially Victoria’s worst local government area for residential burglaries, and it recorded 932.1 burglaries per 100,000 residents in the year to June 2025. Prahran, within my electorate, is ranked the least safe suburb in the entire municipality. Crime in Prahran increased by 29 per cent from 2023 to 2024. Stonnington’s crime rate rose 22 per cent, and over a thousand theft offences were recorded in our suburb alone. That is in a single year in a single suburb. The City of Port Phillip, which borders my electorate, recorded a criminal incident rate of 11,155 per 100,000 residents, up 16.2 per cent. Port Phillip now sits amongst the top five worst local government areas in the entire state for crime.

On Chapel Street, the heart of my electorate, retail thefts account for nearly 30 per cent of all recorded crime, and as we know, our retail businesses and our small businesses are doing it so tough. Half the time they do not even record these issues or report them. Eighty per cent of shoplifters arrested are repeat offenders. One individual was linked to 147 shoplifting incidents over his lifetime. What are we doing about it? These are not victimless crimes. They destroy livelihoods, they drive up prices for consumers and they erode the character and vibrancy of our shopping strips.

Victoria’s retail crimes have reached the highest level on record. In the year to June 2025 there were 99,114 retail crime offences recorded across the state, and that is up 20 per cent on the year before. Theft from retail stores surged 26 per cent; assaults in retail settings climbed 21 per cent. I know I am throwing in a lot of statistics here, but these figures are astronomical. Something needs to be done. The government needs to listen. A crime is occurring in a Victorian retail setting at least once every 5 ‍minutes. Since 2022 retail thefts have surged by more than 90 per cent. This is not somebody else’s problem, this is everybody’s problem. Retail is now the third most common location for crime in this state, behind only private dwellings and streets.

What is the response from traders who have been left to fend for themselves? Desperate and innovative but ultimately heartbreaking measures. On Chapel Street – listen to this – Coles has resorted to blasting opera music outside its store to deter beggars and to deter antisocial behaviour. A major national retailer in one of Melbourne’s most iconic shopping precincts has concluded that a loudspeaker is the most effective tool available to it because the government is not doing enough – not because the police are not there and not because the state government has no plan but because nobody is coming to help them. This is not just Coles; it is the shoppers that face this disarray out the front of Coles.

Just this morning the famous Emerson rooftop bar and club on Commercial Road in South Yarra, right in the heart of my electorate, was ramraided and set alight. A vehicle was driven into the building at 1:30 in the morning and a fire was deliberately lit. The venue has been forced to close, and this is not the only venue. We have already found four venues recently that have closed down on Chapel Street ‍– four hospo venues, all putting it down to crime in the local area and the cost of doing business – and now we have had another one close because it has been set alight. This is a venue whose parent company already has six other Melbourne venues in administration. Our hospitality operators are battling rising costs, crushing regulation and falling foot traffic. Now they are battling arson as well. This is the reality of doing business in a Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan Victoria.

Victoria remains the only state without a dedicated retail crime taskforce. It is something that we absolutely need. New South Wales has one, South Australia has one – and Victoria has none. New South Wales has had online crime reporting since 2016. Victoria has none of these measures, and yet this government wonders why Victoria leads the nation in retail crime. The government’s response is Operation Pulse, a temporary 90-day trial deploying protective services officers to four large suburban shopping centres, and the feedback has been positive – visibility works, presence deters. But those public security officers have been pulled from train stations and precincts across the city. This is a textbook case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is temporary, it has opened up gaps in coverage elsewhere and it overlooks entirely the retail strips and precincts that absolutely need the most help. What about Chapel Street, what about Lygon Street and what about the CBD? A short-term trial is simply not a strategy. It is a sticking plaster, it is a bandaid, and the challenge runs deeper than deployment.

Victoria Police is facing a workforce crisis that this government refuses to honestly confront. As the Leader of the Opposition Jess Wilson has rightly identified, there are approximately 2000 vacant Victoria Police positions across the state. The Police Association Victoria reports 800 unfilled vacancies, more than 700 members off duty on WorkCover and an average of 500 officers leaving the force every year. An independent study of more than a thousand serving officers found that 67 per cent felt burnt out and one in five were likely to leave within 12 months. That is not good management. While this government underfunds its own police force, Queensland is rolling out the welcome mat with a $20,000 relocation bonus, up to 130 grand a year and fast-tracked training. At least 25 Victorian officers have already gone. They have already taken this opportunity to move elsewhere. We are losing our police officers. Another state is actively poaching our police, and this government’s answer is a 90-day trial that basically shuffles resources from one postcode to another. What is needed is a properly funded permanent plan; more officers; better conditions; genuine incentives to attract, retain and value the men and women who keep us safe; and permanent, visible deployment to the CBD, to our shopping strips and to the centres where Victorians work, where they shop and where they live. When it comes to crime and antisocial behaviour, presence absolutely matters. There is no substitute. Every time I speak to a resident in Prahran all they say is, ‘We want more police on the streets. We want to feel safe.’

On Monday the Leader of the Opposition Jess Wilson and I hosted the first Melbourne –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Correct titles.

Rachel WESTAWAY: Sorry – Leader of the Opposition. On Monday I hosted the first Melbourne economic revitalisation forum at Parliament House. We listened, and the message was loud and clear: businesses are leaving Victoria.

Members interjecting.

Rachel WESTAWAY: They are leaving Victoria, and I will absolutely give you those stats. The combination of rising crime and an uncompetitive tax environment is driving one message: anywhere but Victoria. They are not my words, they are their words. Since 2014 this Labor government has introduced 14 new –

Mathew Hilakari: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, members must be factual in their statements. I understand the member should reference the ABS and the increased number of businesses in Victoria.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members are assumed to be factual at all times, as has been said many times. That is not a point of order.

Rachel WESTAWAY: Since 2014 this Labor government have introduced 14 new property taxes and increased 13 more. Victoria is the most expensive state in the country for property taxes. In the past year alone more than 12 major investment firms have shut their Melbourne offices. It costs up to a million dollars to fit out a restaurant in Melbourne. Do you know what, the same fit-out in Queensland costs $300,000. The red tape here adds months of delay that simply does not exist in other states. Victoria’s payroll tax burden is the most punitive in the country, with a base rate of 4.85 per cent, plus the mental health and wellbeing surcharge, plus the COVID debt levies. For the largest employers the effective rate reaches 6.85 per cent. This is a tax on hiring, a tax on jobs and a tax on growth. Is there any wonder Victoria has recorded the highest unemployment rate in the nation for more than 20 consecutive months?

It is not just our businesses being lured interstate, it is our police officers too. Victoria is being outcompeted on every single front. We are losing our businesses, we are losing our investment and we are losing every officer that we need to keep our streets safe. Business leaders at the forum were absolutely crystal clear: they want a plan, fairer taxes, less red tape, safer streets and a government that gets it, not just one that takes it for granted. Melbourne should be a premium international tourism destination. Our events calendar is world class. Our city is beautiful. But our food and hospitality sector is hurting as well. It is great, but it is hurting. This government is squandering the potential to highlight this. Business leaders across the room said to us, ‘We’ve got it good. We need a better environment – less red tape, more safety – and we can actually do business, and a better injection into marketing.’ The City of Melbourne has been forced to spend $4.5 million of ratepayers money on safety initiatives because this government is not looking after them. Victoria Police –

Juliana Addison interjected.

Rachel WESTAWAY: Yes, Melbourne City Council are already investing in their own security because this state government will not take them seriously. The council has hired its own quasi police force. That is not innovation, that is an indictment on the government. Melbourne cannot be a confident, outward-looking global city if its own residents do not feel safe, and right now the signal Victoria is sending to the world is wrong. Let me be absolutely clear, it does not have to be this way, because the people of Victoria deserve better than having the most expensive state to do business in, the highest crime rate in a decade and a government that has stopped listening. It does not have to be this way, and under a Liberal–National government it will not be.