Wednesday, 17 June 2026

 Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:07): Young kids should be out there doing things that young kids want to do. They should be in school, they should be playing sport and they should be spending time with their families and friends and looking forward to their future. But as we know from the advice from Victoria Police, vulnerable young kids are being coerced into crime by evil adults who know exactly what they are doing. Hiring children to do your dirty work is absolutely appalling. It is just disgusting. It is shameful. But what makes this worse is that some of these kids that are being preyed upon have intellectual disabilities. This is just disgraceful behaviour, where organised crime is using these kids to commit crimes like arson and carjacking. Today our government is introducing legislation to stop this evil practice, creating a new offence of recruiting a child to commit a serious crime. The penalty will be life in prison, and the offence will apply whether the crime is carried out or not, because if you prey on young children, if you exploit young children and if you put Victorians at risk you should face the full force of the law.

This is one part of our fight against organised crime. I want to here acknowledge the work of Victoria Police and Operation Eclipse, which has seen more than 65 arrests and 370 charges have been laid over arson attacks. We have here in Victoria the strongest bail laws in the country and, with adult time for violent crime, the chance of jail is stronger and sentences are longer. This is our plan to keep Victorians safe, not the plan of those opposite to cut Victoria Police and to cut the violence reduction unit. We are backing Victorians to keep them safer.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for South-West Coast, you are warned.