Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (17:31): I am pleased to rise today on this grievance debate, because in Victoria there is a lot to grieve for. It is interesting that none of the government members actually want to talk about crime. They want to steer clear of it. They do not want to go near it. Even after the meeting on Monday of the Labor caucus, when the state secretary Steve Staikos said to them, ‘Your weak point – the government’s weak point – is crime and cost of living.’ That is why there is not one member over that side that wants to even go near crime.

I will give the member for Mordialloc credit. You know, the government always roll him out into a grievance or a matter of public importance. He likes to swing the big stick. He is not bad at that. He is pretty articulate, but I do feel a bit sorry for him. He is a bit angry today, the member for Mordialloc. I think he is frustrated. He is a hard worker in the government. He is, he is. But he is almost in the cabinet and he cannot quite get there, and I reckon he is getting frustrated. He does not know whether he is left or right. He is sort of stuck in the middle, but he is trying hard. And look, he is my opposite number. So I am not scared to go toe to toe with the member for Mordialloc. But look, he is a good bloke. He is a little bit angry. He is a little bit frustrated. There is a cabinet position up, and you know, we do not know whether he is going to get it or not, and he does not know whether he is going to get it or not. He is stuck in the middle. He is factionless. But we will see where it goes this time. He might calm down if he gets in there, but let us talk about the grievance today.

Let us talk about the grievance, and I will start on crime because the crime in this state is out of control. It is that simple. Now, people will get up, as Labor does. They will get up after I say this because I have a difference of opinion to Labor on crime, and they will say it is misinformation because that is what this government does now. Every time you may have an opposite view to the government, it is misinformation, but statistics do not lie. That is the thing about statistics. They are factual. They are accurate. This is why the government does not want to talk about crime, because they have failed on crime. The member for Eureka, who has exited the chamber at the moment, said of our new leader that crime was not part of her thing. It was always part of her thing. It was in the first press conference when she came out. The first press conference was on crime, health, housing and the atrocious state of Victoria’s finances. So I do not know where the member for Eureka was on that day, or whether she was googling something completely different, but the current Leader of the Opposition, the member for Kew, has been very clear that crime is one of our priorities in this state, and it needs to be, because this government has failed, absolutely failed on every level.

Even now we know that with tobacco shops in this state I think we have had over 120 firebombings or something – somewhere around that figure of tobacco shops in this state. We know it is linked to organised crime, but the government has decided to put on 16 inspectors for up to 10,000 tobacco shops. But they have not given the inspectors the power to shut those shops down. What is the use? What are you going to do – rock up, give them a fine, whatever? Shut them down if they are doing the wrong thing – shut them down. I mean, it is actually interesting with the government members around crime. Some government members – I will admit this – see it as an issue. The member for Laverton, for example, knows that crime in her area is out of control. The member for Laverton has even written a letter to the Minister of Police, saying, ‘I need more PSOs, and I need more police.’ Even some Labor members recognise there is a crime issue, but some bury their heads in the sand. It is really quite simple. For the member for Werribee, for example, when he got elected, crime was not even in his top five concerns – not in his top five. Werribee’s crime rate is quite high. Not only that, when members of the public raised concerns about crime, what did the member for Werribee say? ‘Stop whingeing about crime.’ That is exactly what he said. He said, ‘Don’t whinge about crime.’ Talk about disrespecting Victorians.

Apparently now we have a new type of crime. Knives have been around since Moses was a boy, so I do not know why that is new. Assaults have been around for a long time. Carjackings have been around for a long time. Aggravated burglaries, aggravated assaults – they have been around for a long time. They are not new crimes. They did not get invented in the last two years – they have been here for a while – but the reason why they are more prevalent now is because of the government’s inability to control crime. That comes back to a few factors. If we look at all incidents since 2023, since the new Premier has come in – we will just go to there – all incidents are up 29 per cent. That is significant, very significant. Aggravated burglaries, 45 per cent; residential aggravated burglary, 41 per cent; non-residential aggravated burglaries, 164 per cent; total robberies, 22 per cent – I mean, there is not one figure in here that is positive. Here is another one: motor vehicle theft, 72 per cent. Now, there is one in here: aggravated retail robbery and assault and retail offences, 57 per cent and 29 per cent respectively. I have read up on this: the reason why we are having so much retail crime comes back to the government’s inability to run this state and the finances of this state. It comes back to a cost-of-living pressure; people will commit retail crime because they cannot afford to live because the government has stuffed the finances. It is really that simple. The government has absolutely stuffed the finances.

Talking about our police numbers, I was doorknocking in Drouin and I met a guy from Victoria Police. He was pretty high up, and he said to me, ‘Wayne, we need 1500 police today.’ Now, that figure is subjective; I have heard figures from 1400, 1500 to 2000. But he was very emphatic to me. He said, ‘We need 1500 police today.’ He said the problem we have got in this state is our police numbers are going down and our population rate is going up, and he said that is a serious problem in the state of Victoria. We are losing police hand over fist. When you think of our interest bill today – I do not know, what did we pay today, $20 million in interest? It is only a lazy $20 million; do not worry about it. How many new officers could that give us? That could give us nearly 200 new officers – nearly 200 ‍new officers for one day’s interest in this state. No wonder the government does not want to talk about crime. No wonder the government does not want to talk about a budget when we are spending that many millions – that $20 million or $22 million a day – in interest.

When I say the government has stuffed this state, they have stuffed this state; it is really that simple. They have closed or reduced hours for 41 police stations. That is why no-one over there wants to talk about crime. Who can forget the poor lady that went to Malvern police station, running away from someone, and it was closed. I do not hear anyone sledging me on that one now. This is a problem with the government. We have a car stolen every 16 minutes in this state. There is no-one in the government that can get up on the government’s behalf and defend themselves on crime. Even the police minister at one stage said, ‘I have the solutions. They’re in the bottom drawer.’ It is no good them being in the bottom drawer. We still have not had any real solutions to the crime crisis in this state.

There are lots of things to grieve about. I love the state of Victoria. I love living here. I love my electorate, but people are scared. People are scared in their own homes. They are scared in their cars. They are scared walking home, and for good reason. When we read out these statistics of what is going on in this state, people have a right to be scared. I tell my daughter, ‘Do not walk home. Get an Uber.’ She is 26 years old. God help it, you do not want to put your kids at risk, and people are at risk in this state. It is as simple as that. I never used to lock my house. I did not worry about it. I do now. I have got security doors. There is a reason for that. With the amount of aggravated home burglaries we are having, why would I take the risk. Why would I put my family at risk of someone intruding.

This all comes back to the mismanagement of this state. When the government’s own state secretary said to them in their caucus meeting, ‘Crime and cost of living are the two biggest weaknesses for you at the election,’ that is why no-one wants to talk about crime on the government’s side. They know it is a weakness, and they know they cannot defend it. They know they cannot defend cost of living either. It is out of control. Victorians are hurting. They are hurting because of the inability of this government to manage a budget. They are good at opening big, bright, shiny things, but they cannot build them on budget at all. You cannot build them on budget to save yourselves. It is absolutely unbelievable. Most of the time it is probably to keep the CFMEU happy. ‘We don’t want to upset the CFMEU when they keep donating to us. Why would we do that?’

The government has cut crime prevention programs at a time when we need crime prevention. I have said in the chamber many times that I do not want to see kids locked up for stealing a Mars bar. That is stupid. What I do want to see are crime prevention programs to get kids away from crime, to pluck them out of that environment they are in and put them into something positive so they come out the other end. Why, in the middle of a crime crisis, would you cut the very programs that do that? I will tell you why, because you mismanaged the state’s budgets, because you do not have the money to do it. That is why the government has failed.

Even the machete bin program – my goodness, what a debacle: $13 million, $375,000 per bin. What a great investment that was for honest people to hand their machetes in. You could have done it the same as when we had the gun buyback scheme, and you could have put them in gun dealers, wherever, where they could put their machetes in there. It would not have been a problem. But you put them outside police stations, where only honest people were going to go. No criminal is going to put their machete in the bin. At $375,000 a bin I do not see that as great value for money. I do not think any Victorian saw that as great value for money.

That is the problem with the government: they have lost sight of the value of a dollar. They have never had to work for it in their lives. They have never had to run a business. They have never had to do the hard work of a business to survive, because they just spend everyone else’s money. It does not matter to them. It does not matter to the government. They are not used to business. They do not know how to make money; they just know how to spend money. When you give someone a dollar and they spend $2, that is irresponsible. It is that simple. This is where the government fails – they have lost the value of a dollar. It does not matter what it costs anymore. $375,000 for a machete bin? No, that is acceptable when a bin costs $4000. Do the math on that. Where does the rest of the money go? Waste. That $13 million would have been better spent on crime prevention programs, not on machete bins, and yet they are going to sledge me again.

But I tell you what, there is not one member on that side today that will talk about crime and the government’s failures on crime, because they have failed, and that is why they are very quiet at the moment. Yes, they will get up and they will talk about the Leader of the Opposition. One thing I will say: I know the Premier is a big fan of Kylie Minogue, and I think her favourite song now is Can’t Get You Out of My Head, because that is where Jess Wilson, the member for Kew, is living rent-free right at the moment.