Thursday, 5 February 2026

 Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:26): (1516) My adjournment is to the Minister for Police, and my action I ask of him is to enter into his diary a time that he can come out to open the Clyde North police station. The Clyde North police station seems to have fallen out of the diary, and I have no doubt I know why. It has fallen out because of the fact that they did not actually put Victoria Police officers in the Clyde North police station. I note the member for Werribee said it is not up to the government because what happens with Victoria Police is an operational decision. But he has not been here long enough to have history with the member for Bellarine, and the member for Bellarine stated in this place that they directed the Chief Commissioner of Police to put police into their electorate. When those police went down to that electorate, it was not done by the commissioner and it was not done by the staff allocation model, which is used to try and decide where Victoria Police go; it was a direct decision by the police minister. So I have to ask: why is it okay for a Labor minister to appoint Victoria Police officers to protect their own community but not to put them into a $30 million station in Clyde North, where crime is going up at such a substantial rate that people feel unsafe.

But the real reason I really want the minister to come out there to open up the station is because I want to highlight to every victim out there that they have been misled by every single member, including the member for Cranbourne, the member for Bass, the member for Narre Warren North and the member for Narre Warren South, who were all happy to stand there with the sign saying ‘We’re building this station’. But they all lied, because they all said that they were going to have new police at that station. They misled the community.

The SPEAKER: Order! I will call you out, member for Berwick, on unparliamentary language.

Brad BATTIN: They did tell an untruth. They misled their community by saying that they were going to put Victoria Police officers out there to respond to crimes. I know if I ring 000 and no-one from the station is there available to turn up, that is a real problem. But despite this, I am going to be nice to Labor for a minute. To give credit to the government, they are upgrading Narre Warren police station. But whilst they are doing that, they have put them all into a place that they have got to rent around the corner in Narre Warren. Yet just down the road in Clyde North they have got an empty police station. Why couldn’t they have just relocated the police from Narre Warren down to Clyde North during the time of the reconstruction and then brought them back, possibly saving $200,000 or more in what it is costing them to do it? This is how Labor wastes money. This is how Labor absolutely wastes money. The reality is that what we should have been doing is making sure that Victoria Police officers are available to respond to emergencies, because people in Clyde, Clyde North, Cranbourne North and those areas have been ripped off by Labor again, and they are no safer because of mistakes from the Allan Labor government.