Tuesday, 11 August 2026

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (15:48): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026. Crime has consequences, and not dealing with crime has a profound, longstanding and tragic impact on our community. We have seen that in recent days. It is important, as we debate this bill – a bill that seeks to address crime – from the commencement of this debate to acknowledge Van Viet Truong and the tragic loss of a member of the Sunshine community who was taken from the community far too young and in a way that I think has touched the heart of every Victorian. He was a local trader of 30 years, and you could see the outpouring of grief from the community. I say again these are the consequences of crime left unchecked. These are the consequences of not being tough when it comes to offenders being left out on the street, who will at times through repeat crime cause the most tragic consequences for community and for victims.

We have talked in this chamber for many years about the surging crime in our community and the weakness of our laws. As these debates occurred, the government initially denied crime was occurring. They literally denied that there was a crime problem. They used words that suggested crime and increases in crime were not real and not occurring and that there was no crime crisis. In fact the former Premier Daniel Andrews literally chastised someone in my community for calling out the increase in crime. He chastised her, belittled her and said that she did not understand crime data. We have seen with every certainty a surge in crime to the point where there is no other way to describe it than as a crime crisis. It is a crime crisis that has seen a softening of our laws and a softening of bail, which has meant that specifically youth offenders are on the street. On many occasions they are committing repeat offences and, once arrested through the good work of Victoria Police, are let out through the revolving bail door.

As a result, in the months before an election the government is seeking to politically fix the issue of crime, not actually fix the issue of crime. The Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill is one of those attempted political fixes. What this bill does is create a new offence, punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment, where an adult recruiting a child to engage in criminal activity constitutes an offence punishable on first conviction by 15 years imprisonment or more. In short what this bill does is create a new recruitment-of-children offence that in the government’s view acquits the Premier’s and the Attorney-General’s commitment of November last year to create this new aggravated offence.

What this bill fails to do, like all legislative measures moved by this government in relation to crime, is actually deal with the problem, because inherent in this government is a belief that certain offenders should not be punished, because of their age. I am not talking about offenders who are under the age of 18; I am talking about youth offenders primarily, in the government’s mind, up to the age of 21. When you treat offenders as different classes of offenders, what you do is create a loophole through which offenders will repeat their crimes – we are seeing that without any question and now without any dispute – and also loopholes in how you manage those criminals. That is, unfortunately, what this bill will do.

We will not oppose this bill, but under standing orders I wish to advise the house of amendments to the bill and request that they be circulated. In doing so we are seeking to make one primary change to this bill. This bill creates a new offence for adults, in shorthand, and says, ‘If an adult recruits, they commit an offence.’ So what will happen as a result of this bill? An adult offender will recruit one child who will now do all of the recruiting. This bill creates a new loophole which is encouraging an adult criminal to conduct a pyramid scheme. That is exactly what will happen as a result of this bill, and the government was not able to explain why the offence was only targeted at adults. Recruitment is not and should not be an offence that only an adult commits. If a 17-year-old conducts a recruitment campaign of criminals, why should that 17-year-old be treated differently than if that recruiter is 19? How can it possibly be that the government would propose a scheme that says a 17-year-old recruiter should not receive the same punishment for the crime as a 19-year-old?

All this does is underline the problem with this government in the way that it creates different classes of offending based on age, because in the government’s mind what they believe is that young people deserve endless chances no matter what their crime, and you can see that. I mean, the last statistics that I looked at in terms of the Children’s Court – and I am going on memory here – show that outcomes in relation to crimes committed by children saw an average, in the last period, of detention of 3 per cent, so 97 per cent of offenders were not detained as a punishment for their crime. How are those odds? If you are a youth offender, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is very, very hard to be detained in Victoria. And what you now know, as a result of this new offence being put into the statute books, is if you are a recruiter of criminals, hire a young person to do the recruiting for you, because then you will be only guilty of one offence, one crime. You will be guilty for the one single recruiter that you recruit, and if that recruiter then recruits 50 children for you, you are guilty of nothing.

This bill, through a giant loophole, enables a pyramid scheme. That is why the coalition will move, and has moved in this chamber, amendments that take out the word ‘adult’ and, in simple terms, say, ‘If you recruit, as a person, you are guilty of the offence.’ I think that that passes the commonsense test, and I am very sure Victorians would agree. In fact I am very sure Victorians are sick of seeing the loopholes in relation to the crime that is occurring from the legislative reforms that the government has sought to make over time, because every single time the government moves a bill in this place, regularly, if not almost immediately, the opposition will stand up and say, ‘This bill will not fix the problem that exists. This bill will not solve the category and type of crime that is occurring.’

And I would say that the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill will not close the loophole that is seeing what the government acknowledges is a problem in relation to recruitment of children who are committing crimes. In the government’s own words, they have seen a need for this offence because the government have identified that under existing legislation there is not enough power to address this issue. In the bill briefing the government gave they confirmed that between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2024, over that period, there were 29 charges for the existing offence before this bill and four individuals were convicted. Over this period there is no doubt and no question we have seen an explosion in crime, we have seen an explosion in gang-related activity and we have seen an explosion in relation to the recruitment of children to commit crimes, and we have seen four individuals convicted.

This bill, because of that loophole, has been drafted to discourage recruitment. But as I said earlier, what this bill does in its drafting is aim at adults who recruit, and like with every other measure when it comes to bail, when it comes to violent behaviour and when it comes to recruitment, the government creates legislation that creates categories of offenders based on their age, and it says that if you are not an adult, you do not deserve to be punished despite that crime. Well, our amendment seeks to address that, and it is an amendment that we will move here and we will move in the other place, because our view is that when a person recruits, that person should be guilty of the offence. If you are 17, for example, and you seek to recruit, these specific measures should be available in relation to the consequence you receive, and they are not under the drafting of this bill. That is why we have sought to move that amendment both here and in the other place.

We cannot keep seeing not only a crime crisis but legislative drafting that protects certain offenders. By creating two classes of offending based on age, you are protecting certain offenders. Why the community is so angry about it is because you are not protecting an offender for a minor crime. In fact what the community now sees and knows to be true – because it is true – is that the government’s laws protect youth offenders on the basis of them being young and in many cases protect youth offenders who are committing dozens of crimes, the most serious crimes. It is why the coalition has announced a very strong difference in the government’s fake ‘adult crime, adult time’ legislation, and the coalition has proposed strong laws which we will implement straightaway if we are elected.

When the government announced their ‘adult crime, adult time’ legislation, they looked at Queensland, which has roughly 50 laws within the purview of that legislation – 50 serious offences – and they said they will bring down five in full and they will bring down three in part. So of the eight offences that exist under the government’s adult crime legislation, there are five crimes which are fully covered – five out of 50, 10 per cent – and three in part, so eight of 50. The coalition has already committed to 25 falling under the adult crime legislation, because we believe that violent crime must stop and the only way to stop it is to stop having a two-tiered system that encourages young people to offend because there are no consequences. I have spoken about this particular instance before. I recall a series of youth offenders conducting multiple carjackings in my community not that long ago and being arrested on a Saturday afternoon in my main street in front of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. As the two offenders were being arrested, they were laughing to each other, and one of them shouted out to the other, ‘See you in a couple of hours when I get bail.’ And, guess what, 3 hours later they were on bail.

Unfortunately, what the legislation this government has put forward does is it says that if you commit certain violent crimes, you get out of jail free because you are not an adult. Literally the government is building get-out-of-jail-free cards into all of its legislation. It says that if you are young, you get out of jail. The government will say it is not true, but the community knows it is true. That is a point we have also been making: every single time the government has come into this house with a bill, not only have we said it will not solve the problem, but we have said the community will work it out. And now not only do you see the government seek to try and move legislation which is flawed but you see the new Premier somehow claim – robotically, of course – that he is going to do something about crime. ‘I’m going to do something about crime,’ says the new Premier. No-one believes it to be true, because when you dig underneath the substance of what the robot says, there is nothing there.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Order! Member for Brighton, correct titles.

James NEWBURY: What title? I am talking about robots.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): There was a description before of someone else, and that was then carried through. I am just asking for correct titles.

James NEWBURY: So not descriptions, correct titles. Thank you for the clarification on your contribution. Anyway, whatever – we will leave that where it is. People are touchy. The new Premier will step up and say, ‘I’m going to do something about crime.’

A member: ‘Gonna’.

James NEWBURY: ‘Gonna do something about crime.’ What? It is like the royal commission: ‘I’m going to do something about a royal commission.’ What? What are you going to do? The Premier has done nothing about crime – nothing. You could see that in Sunshine five of the local mayors drew attention to the police station closures and the lack of policing. Very fair points that have been made, frankly, by most Victorians – not Labor members of Parliament, because they have been busy shutting them. Actually, there was one member – I have forgotten the member’s name – who let the cat out of the bag and did speak about the issue before they were probably hauled away.

The government has proudly overseen the closure of police stations and the reduction in policing. But the community can see what has happened. As I said earlier, when measures have been moved in this place, we have said they will not work. We have also said that Victorians will see the failure by this government on crime, and the community can now see the failure, because normal people are becoming victims to the worst type of offending, most of the time by repeat offenders – not all of the time, but most of the time some of the worst crimes are being committed by repeat offenders. Victorians are now looking on and seeing their new Premier standing up and saying, ‘I’m going to do something about crime.’ They know that he has not, and they know that he will not. We have eight more sitting days until an election, so they know this government will not fix the crime crisis and they know the coalition will.

At the end of the day Labor believes that if you are not an adult you should have the door open to you and you should be let out no matter what crime you have committed. There is no more offensive behaviour by this government than that which has seen aggravated home invaders and carjackers commit the worst possible crimes and be let out again and again and again. There are examples of tens and dozens of offences being committed by certain offenders. When you look at the weak adult crime provisions, which cover only eight crimes, those provisions do not cover some of the worst offending that is occurring in the community.

If you look at arson, as police have said publicly, they believe children are being recruited to commit arson attacks on Victorian businesses – recruitment of children. Why are children being recruited? Because they are let out. And every time they are caught, guess what happens. You can track it. Before the end of the police officer’s shift the offender is bailed because the government believes that as they are not adults the door should be open to them. ‘Why would you want to punish them? Why would you want a consequence?’ says Labor. Because they are violent offenders. What the coalition will ensure happens, I can say, is that adult crime will include arson because we believe it is one.

We have already announced 25 crimes that should be considered adult crimes, because we do not believe in two categories of offending – that if you are not an adult you should be treated differently. We do not believe that, when a 17-year-old commits a certain type of attack, that 17-year-old should be treated differently than a 19-year-old is. If you are old enough to go into someone’s house with a machete and hold it up to some poor Victorian’s neck, you should face the full consequence of the law, and that is what we will ensure.

This bill, although we will not oppose it, as I have said, does everything that this government does by way of law and order legislation: it creates loopholes. As I said earlier, this bill creates an offence for adults. What this bill, I fear, will do is this: if you think through what has occurred with the recruitment of children to commit arson, if an offender recruits one child and gets that child to commit to recruit on their behalf effectively, they are only guilty of one offence, not the pyramid scheme that is created which will see all of the other children go into the offending.

That is why the coalition is seeking to amend the bill: to ensure that loopholes do not exist. That does not mean that the law should not account for differences in age at all, but our view is when it comes to serious violent crime, especially serious repeat violent crime, there should not be a tolerance that allows the worst types of crimes to be forgiven because, for example, the offender is 17, not 18 or 19. We believe that if you are old enough to commit a serious violent crime, you should be dealt with in that way. I say finally that the coalition will not be opposing the bill, but we will be seeking to move those amendments in both this place and the other place.

 Ros SPENCE (Kalkallo – Minister for Corrections, Minister for Victim Support, Minister for Youth Justice, Minister for Community Sport) (16:16): I rise today to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026. I am very pleased to be able to do so because last week I had the privilege of being sworn in as the Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice and Minister for Victim Support. I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important bill today, and I am also very pleased to hear that those opposite will not be opposing the bill.

We know that many Victorians are concerned about incidents of children involved in serious crimes. Every Victorian has the right to feel safe in their home, in their community and in their local neighbourhood, and my thoughts and my deepest sympathies are with anyone who has been a victim of crime in this state. These crimes can be traumatic and devastating for victims, for families and for communities, and, frankly, they are unacceptable. But there is also an understanding across our community that when a child becomes involved in serious and violent criminal activity it is a sign that something has gone seriously wrong. Children who engage in high-risk or harmful behaviours are often not acting in isolation. There can be complex and deeply troubling circumstances behind a child’s involvement in crime, including family violence, abuse, neglect, housing instability, social isolation, exclusion from education and other significant disadvantages.

We are seeing another disturbing factor: organised crime groups who deliberately target vulnerable children and recruit them to carry out serious offences. Exploiting vulnerable children, especially those who have already experienced disadvantage, is absolutely inexcusable. Not only does it cause enormous harm to both victims and the communities in which they live, but we also know that once children are introduced to crime they are more likely to be on a pathway towards further offending and more serious criminal activity. That is why this bill is so important.

The bill will create a new offence for an adult recruiting a child to engage in serious and violent criminal activity. These offences include murder, home invasion, carjacking and their aggravated forms, armed robbery, kidnapping, arson and extortion with a threat to kill or inflict injury. Importantly, the offence is of the recruitment itself. It does not matter whether the child ultimately carries out the criminal activity or carries out a different criminal offence. The harm begins when the adult deliberately recruits a child into serious criminal activity, so that is where our laws need to intervene. The bill introduces a new offence into the Crimes Act 1958 for recruiting a child to engage in serious criminal activity that constitutes an offence carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years or more imprisonment. The new offence will apply when an adult recruits a child to engage in this serious criminal activity knowing or being reckless as to whether that person is a child. The bill also amends the existing recruitment offence so that it can apply where a person is reckless as to whether the individual being recruited is a child. The existing recruitment offence applies for offences that carry a maximum penalty of between five and 15 years, with the recruitment offence penalty being a maximum of 15 years. The new offence will carry a maximum penalty of a life sentence. These changes will strengthen the application of the offences, particularly in cases involving organised crime networks and criminal gangs. This sends a very clear message: adults who recruit children to participate in serious offending are committing an extremely serious crime themselves, and their sentences should reflect their high level of criminal culpability.

The bill delivers on the government’s commitment to strengthening our laws around the recruitment of children by organised crime networks, and it responds directly to the concerns of organised crime groups using vulnerable young people to carry out serious offences on their behalf. The introduction of this new offence also follows the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s findings in its Opening the Books report on the impact of serious and organised crime in Australia. The report found that organised crime groups are deliberately recruiting vulnerable young people to carry out violent acts because they are cheaper to hire, more easily influenced and more accessible to recruit. This is deeply concerning. This bill will clearly denounce and criminalise that conduct. It will strengthen accountability, support community safety and, importantly, it will recognise the harm caused to the child being recruited. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has also made clear that tackling the recruitment of children by organised crime groups and criminal gangs requires collective solutions. Finding and charging people responsible for this conduct can be complex, particularly where those involved operate online or offshore. Victoria will continue working with law enforcement, other jurisdictions and relevant stakeholders to disrupt organised crime networks, to strengthen investigations and to support the prosecution of those who target children.

At the same time we know there is much more to do to prevent young people from becoming involved in crime in the first place. Last sitting week the Commission for Children and Young People tabled its inquiry With Us, Not against Us. I take this opportunity to thank the commission for this detailed work and its contribution to our understanding of children and young people involved in the criminal justice system. The government will carefully consider the findings and recommendations in the report, which are wideranging and have implications across the whole of government. But I will note the report includes that some adults have used the power imbalance to coerce, control and manipulate children into offending. It notes that children who have experienced abuse, housing instability, disability, social isolation or exclusion from education can be more likely to be targeted, increasing their risk of criminalisation and involvement in the justice system.

These findings reinforce the importance of taking a multipronged approach. We have introduced tough consequences for young offenders, with adult time for violent crime, and we must be tough on the adults and organised crime groups who exploit children. But we must also intervene early to prevent children from being drawn into crime in the first place. That is why the government’s serious consequences and early intervention reforms are so important. Introduced last year, these reforms are designed to reduce violent youth offending by reinforcing clear boundaries for young people, both in the community and within the youth justice system. Last year we established the violence reduction unit, which is working to prevent violence before it starts by supporting programs that intervene early and work with young people at risk of becoming involved in violence. The VRU coordinates crime prevention programs across government and works directly with the community and young people to connect them to find new solutions. We know that lasting reduction in violent youth crime comes from early intervention, and that intervention works best when young people feel connected, valued and hopeful for their futures.

These reforms are not an excuse for children who commit serious violent crimes, but we must recognise the distinction between holding a child accountable for their actions and holding an adult accountable for deliberately recruiting and exploiting a child. Those adults are taking advantage of vulnerability, and they are putting children in harm’s way. We will not stand by and allow that to continue. The Victorian government will continue to disrupt organised crime groups targeting children, working with our partners across the country to prevent offending, protect vulnerable young people and hold perpetrators to account, because when adults recruit children into serious crime, the harm is immediate and the impact is lasting, so the response must be firm. This bill is an important step in making sure that response is strong. It makes clear that recruiting a child into serious criminal activity is itself a serious crime and unacceptable in Victoria.

I will go back to where I started: exploiting vulnerable children, especially those who have often already experienced disadvantage, is absolutely inexcusable. That is why this bill is so important, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (16:25): Although I am not happy to, I think the timing for me to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026 is impeccable, you might say, given the incident that we had in Mildura last week, the horrific incident that we had, with two children of 12 years old being the victims of a crime in and of itself and being run down in the Langtree Mall. Let me just say from the outset that nothing justifies an act like that, running down two children in public, but also nothing justifies recruiting children into a life of crime, which this bill hopes to address. I will get to the amendments that have been circulated by the Shadow Attorney-General in a moment. Going back to the acts over the weekend, I thank the Minister for Corrections at the table for involving me in the conversations moving forward with the community, because this is a whole-of-community approach that has led to the boiling point of community. We understand that there is anger within the community with rising crime, but again, nothing justifies the acts that were perpetrated last week – nothing justifies that.

I have been having many conversations, some, like I said, facilitated by the minister, over the last couple of days, and what has happened in this particular case and in many cases are failures of the multiple systems that have been put in place not only to protect children but to protect the community and to offer support to those giving care to those children. All of these systems have failed these kids, and that is statewide; that is not exclusive to Mildura. There are horrific failures of the systems here, and this bill, although well intentioned, is not going to address a lot of these. I asked the question myself even this morning. I had a phone call from a dear friend of mine who runs an engineering company in Mildura telling me that he had been burgled again overnight. I had raised the question and thought to myself: is this linked to recruiting children through organised crime to commit these crimes? There are no facts. Police obviously have not released facts or details of that case. An engineering plant is not often a target; it is pretty niche to be targeting that for burglary. You do not want to jump to conclusions, but I now know, after having conversations, like I said, over the last couple of days, that there certainly is an element in our local community of children being recruited to commit these crimes, which is horrific.

There was a meeting in Mildura last week, with the community getting together with heads of government as well, and the stories came out. These children that are being recruited into this life – and nothing justifies that – are vulnerable. Like I said, they have been failed by the system at every turn. Their carers have been failed by the system with lack of support. The minister was talking about early intervention. Early intervention cannot start at 11 or 12 years old. It needs to start at seven years old. When we have children committing crimes as young as 10 or 11 years old, by the time they are 12 years old those early intervention programs are too late. They need to start at seven. We know locally, after the meeting that happened of agencies coming together with government, that children are being recruited into crime, they are being paid in drugs and they are being sexually exploited, and there is no-one there to catch them. The stories are horrific. Because of the failure of this system, these kids feel like they have no choice, and their carers are at a loss what to do because there is no support there for them.

As I have said, although well intentioned, the bill as it is written risks creating a pyramid scheme if ‘an adult’ is the term used. The amendments from the member for Brighton address all of these issues, because using the term ‘an adult’ means that an adult could be charged with recruiting a child, but that child could then go on to recruit more children, so it creates that multilevel networking and marketing scheme. It is a pyramid scheme. That is how it will end up. If the adult at the top of the pyramid is charged with recruiting one child but that child can then go and recruit however many more, it creates that pyramid scheme. These amendments seriously need to be considered by the government. These are not radical changes; they help strengthen this bill to the point where it needs to be.

But along with this, it is not just one bill or act that needs to be strengthened. It is the entire system that keeps failing these kids and then failing the community, to the point where we get to community anger boiling over and snapping, leading to abhorrent acts like we saw last week in Mildura. Again, I will be clear: nothing justifies that. I do not care how many times you have been broken into, I do not care how many times your shop has been damaged, I do not care what the circumstances are – nothing justifies that. I just want to make that very clear so that I am not taken out of context: nothing justifies that. When you start talking about these issues and these incidents, the conversations that follow are obviously quite heated, or they can be, but these conversations need to be had.

Particularly when they are not city-based communities, the solutions need to be place based and community led, because what works in somewhere like Oakleigh or Cranbourne or wherever it might be in the city will not work in Mildura and will not work in Swan Hill or somewhere out in the regions. They need to be place based and community led. But bills like this also need to make sure they encapsulate that pyramid scheme that could emerge and will undoubtedly emerge, because organised crime and the criminals engaged in this type of activity are not silly. They will find loophole after loophole to exploit the system, and that is what has been happening to this point. So I strongly urge the government to consider these amendments put forward by the member for Brighton.

There were areas of concern, particularly from the Federation of Community Legal Centres. They actually oppose this bill in its current form and recommend that it be withdrawn pending broader consultation. They are of the opinion that it is drafted too broadly and is unlikely to disrupt those who control and profit from organised criminal activity. They argue that the provisions are more likely to capture marginalised young people. We know they are marginalised young people. We hear the commentary after incidents like we saw last week about where the kids’ parents are and where the system is. Well, the system is not there and the supports are not there, and their parents are certainly not in the picture. Their carers are, and their carers do not get a huge amount of support.

It is a huge systemic failure of multiple systems. It is justice, the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and social services that have failed these kids and their carers. It is the education system as well. Reduced timetables do not help kids when they are disengaged from school. So I am asking the government to seriously consider strengthening this bill with the amendments put forward by the member for Brighton.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (16:35): I rise to support the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026. Before coming to the substance of the bill and seeking to rebut some of the claims of the opposition – notwithstanding they will be supporting this bill – I come to this debate as the Parliamentary Secretary for Community Safety, the member for Pascoe Vale but also as someone who really got involved in politics as a result of three things that originally got me interested in politics and government. The first was that we had Bob Hawke as our local federal member of Parliament. At the time, he was also the Prime Minister, which was quite inspirational. The second thing is I grew up in a time when we had a Kennett Liberal government that closed 12 local schools in my community, including Coburg High, which my brother and sister used to go to. That saw me going to Northcote High, so I feel you, member for Mildura, 100 per cent on that.

The third thing that really got me interested was the fact that we did not have a youth centre at the time when I was growing up in my community, and so quite a few other enthusiastic young people and I started a campaign called the Oxygen youth campaign, which was all about creating breathing spaces for young people. We felt we saw young people being disparaged far too often in the local media, with coverage talking about young people who were loitering at the local station or that named them as bludgers who were binge-drinking or undertaking other types of antisocial behaviour. A group of us young people got together and said, ‘That’s not right.’ The young people we knew overwhelmingly made a positive contribution to our community through our schools, our sporting clubs, our community groups and the like.

Those young people who may have been undertaking those types of behaviours needed our help, not our demonisation, so we started Oxygen, which was about creating breathing spaces for young faces. That led us to help construct, really, the funding towards the Harmony Park skatepark, which is there on Gaffney Street now, a skatepark at CB Smith Reserve in Fawkner and quite a few other initiatives. But the jewel in the crown of Oxygen was the Oxygen youth centre, a youth hub which still stands there today on Gaffney Street at the back of Coburg Lake. It is a multiservice council youth hub which supports thousands of young people every single year through different types of programs, initiatives and outreach. It still very much does an incredible job in supporting socio-economic, health and wellbeing outcomes for our community. Since its opening – in 2013, I believe – we have seen issues around young people continue to become more serious, particularly when it comes to youth crime.

On a sombre note, I just want to acknowledge Van Viet Truong, the 60-year-old owner of Hong Hung Asian Grocery in Sunshine, whose tragic death has deeply affected people in Melbourne’s western suburbs, particularly the Vietnamese Australian community. Mr Truong was a local shopkeeper, a husband, a father and a much-loved member of his community. Police allege he was fatally injured after intervening during an incident involving young people in Hampshire Road. A 15-year-old has been charged with manslaughter and remains before the courts, and I will therefore say nothing further to prejudice those proceedings. But we can say this: a man went to work and did not come home. A family has lost someone they love, a community is deeply grieving, and traders and residents are understandably asking what more we can do to keep them safe. I commend the Premier for visiting – as well as the member for Laverton and the member for St Albans – and the Minister for Police for his efforts in proactively reaching out to the community.

It is a community I also know very well. I used to work at Brimbank City Council for quite a few years as the advocacy officer and director. We recently held a VRU, violence reduction unit, forum in Sunshine just off Hampshire Road at the Visy Cares Hub, talking about these very issues. This is why community safety must remain one of our highest responsibilities as legislators in this place, because all Victorians deserve the right to feel safe in their homes and their communities, on their streets, in their neighbourhoods and in their workplaces as well. That is why they rightly expect serious consequences for serious crimes.

There has been enormous public discussion about youth crime, and sometimes perceptions and reality can diverge, but governments cannot use that observation to dismiss what people are really experiencing. There has been a genuine and deeply concerning concentration of serious offending involving a relatively small cohort of young people through home invasions, carjackings, armed robberies, stolen vehicles, assaults, arson, weapons offending and others. We must neither exaggerate that challenge nor seek to minimise it, and there are encouraging signs. In the year to March 2026 Victoria’s criminal incident rate fell by nearly 3 per cent and the youth offending rate fell by 6 per cent, the largest reduction in alleged youth offending since before the pandemic. Aggravated burglary fell 22 per cent and robbery fell 15 per cent. In my own community of Merri-bek total offending fell 13 per cent, robbery fell 29 per cent and weapons offending fell 19 per cent over that period. Those figures do matter, but they do not mean the job is done, because crime does remain too high. Serious youth violence remains too high, repeat offending remains too high and one family whose home is invaded, one shopkeeper who is attacked or one innocent person killed is one too many. That is why this government has strengthened the law.

We have introduced what are now amongst Australia’s toughest bail settings, and the evidence shows that those laws are being used. Remand has increased. Alleged offenders being remanded is up 70 per cent. That is 10,000 more offenders that have been remanded. Bail revocations are up by 84 per cent and Children’s Court bail refusals are up by one-third. We have introduced adult time for violent crime, increasing the likelihood of imprisonment and potential sentences for young people aged 14 and over who commit specified serious violent offences. We increased penalties for offences including aggravated home invasion and aggravated carjacking. We strengthened knife laws and banned machetes. We are investing $117.5 million into a specialised fast-track County Court youth list so that serious matters can be determined sooner. Last year we increased the maximum penalty for the existing offence of recruiting children to commit crime from 10 to 15 years, and police had already laid 64 charges under that offence when this legislation before us today was introduced.

The victims and communities deserve and expect consequences for serious crime, and this bill before us is another step in that important work. The question we need to ask ourselves is: who is actually pulling the strings, overwhelmingly, when it comes to youth crime? The teenager caught committing the offence may be the most visible participant, but who told them to do it, who offered them money, who selected the target, who supplied the instructions, who organised the vehicle, who profits and who sits safely behind most overwhelmingly encrypted accounts while someone else’s child takes all the risk? More often than not we know that it is organised crime, and organised crime has changed over the years. It is no longer necessarily a meeting in a backroom between hardened criminals. Recruitment can happen through social media, gaming platforms and encrypted messaging applications. Instructions can come from another suburb, another state or, as we have seen reported, even another country. Organised criminals identify vulnerabilities in recruiters, and they seek to exploit vulnerable young people, whether it is through money, status, belonging, trauma, disengagement from school, mental ill health, family instability, disability – intellectual and developmental – or social isolation.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has warned that organised crime groups deliberately target young people because they are cheaper to hire, easier to influence, impressionable and readily accessible online. Think about the business model behind that for a moment. An adult criminal transfers the danger, transfers the visibility, transfers the prospect of arrest, transfers the possibility of injury or death and transfers the prison sentence – potentially all of that – onto a vulnerable child or children while keeping the profits for themselves. That is not merely recruitment, that is exploitation. If we are serious about dismantling organised crime, we cannot simply arrest the person at the bottom of the criminal food chain. We have to climb to the very top of it, to the crime boss and all the others in between, and that is what this legislation is designed to help us do.

The existing offence applies to an adult who recruits a child into criminal activity, carrying a maximum penalty of at least five years. The bill creates a distinct aggravated child recruitment offence for the most serious category of crime offences, carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment, including life imprisonment. It captures 71 serious offences. Among them are murder, arson, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, armed robbery, kidnapping, extortion involving threats to kill or injure and much more. The maximum penalty for an adult recruiter will be life imprisonment, and this reflects something very much fundamental: that if you are knowingly placing a child in the path of extreme violence while attempting to remain removed from its consequences your criminal culpability is extremely high and the law should recognise that. The bill also makes another important change. The prosecution will no longer have to establish that the recruiter actually knew the person was under 18. It will be sufficient to establish that the adult was reckless as to whether the person was a child.

With the time I have remaining I just want to touch on the other important work we are undertaking in this space. We have obviously supported Victoria Police with the investment, tools, powers and resources they need to keep us safe. We have recently announced the establishment of the organised crime command, supported by a $170 million investment, which is bringing together a number of taskforces, including Hawk, Viper, Lunar and Eclipse, and adding specialist investigators to that important work. We are recruiting more PSOs as well. But we have also established the violence reduction unit, Australia’s first public health led model towards tackling root causes of crime, including housing, unemployment, mental health, wellbeing, education and the like. The VRU is undertaking extensive work, and I am very proud as the parliamentary secretary to support that work, which we are continuing to roll out through a number of initiatives through the $30 million-plus we have allocated to a number of programs already, including social workers in schools, youth mentors and so much more. It is in that respect that I commend this bill to the chamber.

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (16:45): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026. A number of times I have spoken here in the chamber about the crime crisis that Victoria has been experiencing now for a number of years under the Andrews, Allan and now Carroll governments, and we must get to the bottom of this and ensure community safety is a number one priority. One of the big factors is dealing with youth. When we see youth being recruited by organised crime, by these criminals going out and targeting, in many instances, quite vulnerable youth and funding them to commit these horrendous crimes against people, the book must be absolutely thrown at these individuals – no ifs, no buts. The only way to stop this from happening is to ensure that there are consequences.

The bill that we have before us today looks at tackling this, but there are some loopholes still with this bill. I support the member for Brighton’s amendments that have been put forward today to ensure that we do not see a pyramid-style system where you have an adult recruiting a younger person and that younger person going out there and recruiting a whole number of other young people to do multiple offences when there has only been one offence committed by the adult. We know at the end of the day, if there are 20 young people committing crimes that the kingpin behind it is responsible for, then that individual should be responsible for the 20 crimes, not for one crime. That pyramid-style scheme is where Victorians are vulnerable, and that needs to be shut down. We have suggested that to the government in the bill briefing. We have informed them with these amendments, and I would hope that the government will support the amendments that the opposition has put forward. There are many occasions on which we have done similar – proposed amendments and private members bills – to try and strengthen community safety in this state. Unfortunately, the government seem to know best, and they continue to push forward, with the results which we are seeing. That is why we see Victorians are most vulnerable and the crime crisis continues to thrive in this state. The only business that is doing any good at the moment is crime – it is horrible – and we will fix it with a fresh start come November.

One of the parts that we have been talking about is ‘adult crime, adult time’. The government claim that they have taken our ideas and what they have done in Queensland and said, ‘We’re going to do the same here.’ We know that is not working. We know that all that is is a slogan here under this current government. There are five elements that deal with adult crime. There are 20 other areas of adult crime that are serious crimes, like firebombing, like serious aggravated home invasions, like carjackings or like arson, that are not covered in ‘adult crime, adult time’. That is where a lot of the recruitment of younger people actually takes place, so that is why it is important to take these crimes very seriously by young people and by adults as well, because if there are serious crimes that have been committed, it does not matter what the age is; there have got to be consequences that go with it. That is why many young offenders are on the merry-go-round of committing more and more serious offences, because they get let out, they go back on the streets and they commit more serious crimes. Our point of difference with Labor, should we be given the opportunity to govern after November, is a serious element for 20-plus offences when it comes to ‘adult crime, adult time’ to be tried in the County Court, in a more serious court with serious consequences, so these individuals once they are let out literally before a police officer’s shift finishes are not tweeting out and saying, ‘Look, I’ve been let out. How good is this?’ That will not happen when there are serious consequences under a Wilson-led government.

We have seen horrific firebombings. We have seen tobacco stores that have been targeted. What are we up to? About 150 tobacco stores that have been targeted right across Victoria. We know that it is being done through organised crime syndicates, where young offenders are being told ‘Go out there, knock over an IGA store. We’ll give you $5 for every pack of cigarettes that you steal’ or ‘We’ll give you a couple of thousand dollars if you burn down a tobacco store.’ This is serious, serious stuff. Young people are being recruited. It is just absolutely not on, and we need to change it.

Jade Benham interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: The member for Mildura says they are also being paid with drugs and other kinds of inducements. This needs to stop. That is why we want to ensure that there are serious consequences and that the recruitment process of younger offenders is completely stamped out. We will have early intervention programs to help young people as well. Our $100 million early intervention programs will give those young offenders a fresh start before they end up in a life of crime ‍– put them into boot camps and get them out of the kind of bad scenario of bad role models that they are experiencing each and every day; give them positive role models and positive mentors, not the bad experiences that they are currently dealing with, with the bad eggs that are actually recruiting them. We know a lot of this stuff is being done internationally as well – a lot of the recruitment is done internationally. With a lot of the tobacco stores that are being done over, you have kingpins in Iran, Iraq or wherever they are, managing the system, managing the infrastructure and managing multimillion-dollar operations that are harming every single Victorian’s life each and every day.

We all experience it. We all live with it. We all wake up with it every day in the media, and especially those strip-shop businesses that may live next door or work next door to a tobacco store or a business that is being targeted. Imagine doing that every day. Imagine having to wake up when you are living above a dodgy tobacco store, wondering whether you might be the person that has to deal with a store being firebombed from under you. Imagine having to live with that every day. Well, people are. What has this government done about it? Nothing, quite frankly. That is why things need to change. In my area, back on 10 November 2023, we had the Burgertory store burnt down, and that was a month after 7 October. Initially the Jewish community were blamed for doing it as retribution for the antisemitism that was happening – appalling stuff – only to find out months later that there were two individuals recruited and paid $20,000 to target a Burgertory store, to then blame others in a community that had been through hell and back as a result of this.

That is what is happening. People are being recruited. They are being paid to target businesses and to really run a complete Breaking Bad type of scenario on our streets, where you have got outlaw motorcycle gangs, where you have got the worst crooks in the country that are running things. I have heard it. I have heard many of the outlaw motorcycle gangs that have actually been pushed out of other states have been setting up operations here because it is just easier to do business. Can you believe it? You cannot.

Jade Benham interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Easier for bikies, bad for business. In any every other type of business, you have got regulation like you would not believe. I mean, you cannot set up a coffee shop, but you can set up a bikie illegal tobacco store operation with no worries at all, no regulation. You can go out there and burn stuff down, knock yourself out, recruit people and off you go – away you go – with zero consequences. That needs to change.

I would hope that the government does support the amendments that we have put forward here. To think about some of the examples, police have made 65 arrests and laid 370 charges as part of Operation Eclipse, which targets crime syndicates behind the string of recent firebombings. But, guess what, they get off. They are out and about again, committing more of these serious crimes. A Mornington Peninsula man, aged 30, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment in July 2026 for recruiting intellectually disabled teenagers to steal vehicles. I mean, talk about preying on the most vulnerable. He supplied them with drugs and balaclavas and coached them on stealing cars and evading police. That is what is happening. These absolutely disgusting individuals – I would not even call them humans – are going out there and recruiting disabled, vulnerable people, providing them the wherewithal and all the information to be able to go and commit the crime and a get-out-of-jail card should they get caught. These people all need to stop. They all need to be locked up. They need consequences. No matter whether it is one crime or 27 crimes, these individuals should be made responsible for all of them.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (16:55): I have mentioned here many a time that before I was here I was a public school teacher, and I have seen firsthand the impacts of the recruitment of children to commit crimes in our community. Teaching at Wyndham Central College, in the same community that raised me, I knew that I wanted to see young people in my community have the same opportunities that I had growing up. We all know just how much potential our young people have in the western suburbs, but we also know that young people can be vulnerable to adults who seek to exploit them and draw them into criminal activity. That is something we should never accept.

When I am out knocking on doors around Werribee, Wyndham Vale, Manor Lakes and Mambourin, community safety is consistently one of the issues people raise with me. Parents want to know their kids are safe and families want to feel safe in their homes, and locals rightly expect their government to take serious offending as seriously as we can. But keeping our community safe is also about putting responsibility where it belongs – not just on the child committing that crime but on the adults grooming them to do it, because that is what this is: it is grooming. Children should never be used by adults or organised criminal networks to carry out serious crimes on their behalf, and that is why I am proud to support this amendment that is before the house today.

To give a little bit of background about where we are sitting at the moment in the City of Wyndham in particular, I meet quite regularly with our local area commanders and talk about some of the crime trends that they are seeing. When I was first elected, one of the first things I did was go and meet with our local area commander. I have mentioned on a number of occasions that when they came out with the de-identified list of repeat offenders under the age of 18, they went through what the dedicated youth crime taskforce that was set up with funding from this government was doing to address that. But we knew it was about more than just a policing response. We also needed to match it with laws that introduced serious consequences for these crimes. We have seen a slight drop in the number of 12- to 17-year-old offenders in the City of Wyndham, from 1000 down to 990, but this is still far too many. As someone who has grown up in this community, it really shocks me to see so many young people turning to a life of crime. This is what this bill is about.

We have laws making it an offence for an adult to recruit a child to engage in criminal activity, and this bill goes to strengthening those laws when comes to some of the most serious offending. It creates a new offence for an adult who recruits a child to engage in serious criminal activity where that underlying offence carries a maximum penalty of 15 years or more. That captures extremely serious crimes, including murder, home invasion, carjacking, armed robbery and arson. The message this bill sends is clear. It strengthens the existing recruitment offence so that it can apply where an adult knows or is reckless as to whether the person they are recruiting is a child, because we know so much more of this offending is being done through online platforms, where anonymity is used for criminals’ benefit. The harm starts with that recruitment and contact with criminals in the first place. We all know that organised criminals should not be able to exploit the vulnerability of young people, putting them in harm’s way and then distancing themselves from the consequences. This puts the focus squarely on those adults who seek to pull young people into a life of crime.

For me, this is not an abstract issue. Not only do I meet with my local police quite regularly to talk about this, but I also meet with the youth workers from some of our community support groups in Wyndham who work with marginalised young people, and I thank them for helping me prepare my contribution on this bill and for some of the anecdotes that they shared from their work on the ground. These youth workers have described adults deliberately seeking out vulnerable young people in places where they should feel safe, around schools and social settings. It does not begin necessarily with serious crime; it can begin with an offer of friendship, which for so many of these kids, with a disconnect from family or friends or with other social issues, can be so huge.

It begins with small amounts of money, with gifts, with the promise of brotherhood, safety and protection. It begins with someone making a young person feel like they finally belong somewhere. This in other contexts would be described as grooming, and that is exactly what it is in this context as well. We have heard of grown men in their 30s, 40s and 50s in Wyndham targeting children as young as 13, using money and expensive items to lure them in. Last year leaders from my local police command met with young people to understand where the pressure came from to commit these offences. They found in these round tables that they held across Wyndham two sources: first of all, a desire to get street cred, which this government has addressed through our post-and-boast laws and the relentless focus by Victoria Police on that kind of broadcasting of criminality, but it also comes from this issue of adults contacting kids and bringing them into a life of crime.

We have heard stories of young people who have tried to leave, and the police always bring this up with me. A lot of the people they are picking up really do not want to be in that situation, and they are trying to leave, but they do not feel safe to speak to police because they fear the adults that have either recruited them or recruited them through an interlocutor. We hear these stories all the time. In one particularly confronting case, a social worker was told that a young person was threatened that if they left, they would be shot in the head. This is a child being threatened with this. These youth workers told me that they are first drawn in with money, protection and a sense of belonging and then threatened with death when they want to get out. I know the names of these kids; I taught many of them and I taught many of their older brothers and sisters, and it pains me that this is the situation that we see in Wyndham.

Accountability cannot stop with the child who is caught committing the offence. We have to look further up the chain. We have to hold accountable the adults who target them, recruit them and deliberately draw them into serious criminal activity. That is why the changes in this bill matter so much, to make it crystal clear. I think it was reported in the news at the time when we announced these changes last year that some of these leaders of organised crime groups, some of them operating in the western suburbs, said that they were absolutely stuffed, to use more parliamentary language than was described in the article. The act of recruiting a child into serious crime is itself a serious wrongdoing, and the adult responsible should face serious consequences.

I want to briefly address the Liberals’ thought bubble of an amendment. They make out as if there are not consequences for children recruiting on behalf of adults. This is not true. In fact in the Crimes Act ‍1958 sections 321G and 321GA go into incitement of a child who may not be criminally responsible and incitement more generally. If you direct, command or encourage another child to engage in criminal activity, you may be charged with other offences such as incitement. The maximum penalty for incitement corresponds to the maximum penalty for the underlying offence. For example, if someone is found guilty of committing arson, it would carry a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment. It is disappointing that those opposite have not done their homework before offering such an amendment to the house.

I have spent much of my working life around young people. As a teacher I saw firsthand their potential, their ambitions and just how much of a difference the right support and right opportunities can make. I would like to thank those people who not only work on the front line with Victoria Police and our youth crime taskforce, our proactive unit, and the embedded youth outreach workers that work with the Youth Support and Advocacy Service and Victoria Police to help those kids who find themselves in these situations, where they do not feel like they can get out, and help them find ways to get out of these offending cycles. I would like to thank those workers from the violence reduction unit, who are now set up at Manor Lakes, operating from Manor Lakes College on many programs to help address and intervene early, a program that many of us on this side are quite proud of. This nation-leading program – nay, world-leading program – was rolled out here in the western suburbs of Melbourne particularly.

I saw that potential, the ambition and just how much of a difference the right support and the right opportunities can make. I remember a particular case of two young people who were caught stealing a car and driving it through Melbourne. I cannot say too much because I do not want to identify them, but the work with that early intervention – getting them in front of the Westjustice lawyer and getting them to work with the counsellor to work through why they did it, who they were connected to and what pressure they were under to do it – was so important to turning their lives around, and it is great to see those young people completing courses in education out in Wyndham. The people growing up in Werribee today deserve exactly the same as what I grew up with. I commend this bill to the house.

 Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:05): I rise to speak in relation to the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026. I think it is probably fair to say it is sad where we are today when it comes to crime here in Victoria that we have to be debating this bill. I note, listening to the government speakers and reading the second-reading speech, there is a lot about the fact that they are trying to be tough on the adults that are causing these kids to commit crime. We all agree that if adults are working with children to commit crimes, there should be penalties in place, but I think we need to take one step back from there.

One of the issues we have here in this state is that these young offenders who are particularly violent and particularly aggressive and do particularly terrible crimes, with, at the moment, the arson attacks probably one of the main ones to focus on – it was not happening in 2022. It was not happening in the beginning of 2023. So what changed? Well, I think the change that we need to really look at with this is the fact that the Labor government weakened the bail laws here in this state and took away the offence of committing an offence whilst on bail. Therefore it took away the step-up when people were applying for bail, particularly young people and they were getting bail more often here in the state. Over time there was a quite a clear message that young people could commit crime and go home at the end of the day, every day, for every crime they committed, and it almost did not matter what crime. Then what we saw was the front page of some of the newspapers in town talking about some young offenders. Obviously, we are very cautious – we do not want to name some of those young offenders because they do have that protection – but some of those offenders were getting up to 350 or 400 ‍crimes committed. It was up to 50 or 60 times they were getting bail. Let us be honest, nobody in the world – actually probably one or two people, but very few people – would think that is okay. But I am not interested in those very few people that think that is okay writing laws around crime here in this state –

Jade Benham: Or their opinions.

Brad BATTIN: Probably true. I am not really caring about their opinions anymore, because the opinions I care about are the victims’, because every time someone got bail and went out and reoffended, not only was there a new victim but the offender felt more empowered to do more crime or worse crime. We saw how even the theft of a motor car – whilst that is a pretty serious crime – at the time was probably at the higher end, but then we saw young offenders going into homes with machetes, we saw young offenders doing violent crime in stores for theft, we saw the ram raids and we saw the firebombings, and we are talking a couple of hundred-plus firebombings here in this state. Now, this is not the issue across Australia which people will try and paint it to be; this is a Victorian problem. You can see the dramatic increase in the government’s own statistics from the independent agency and the dramatic increase from March 2023.

Now the government is in panic mode, because do you know what will happen in 2026? In 108 days there is an election, and there are a lot of people over there that have gone, ‘We’re in a bit of trouble here. We might lose our seat.’ What is more important, losing your seat or fixing the crime crisis? Well, the answer is pretty obvious when it comes to Labor. It is about losing their seats, because if it was not, they would have fixed the bail laws or supported our legislation 12 months ago when the problem was increasing and we were saying, ‘It’s only going to get worse.’ It did, and they did not believe us. It just kept getting worse and worse, and everyone from the Labor Party kept putting their head in the sand. All the same people, including the Premier, used to turn around and go, ‘Nothing to see here – a little bit of an increase. We can do a little bit better. We could change some things when it comes to the laws. Look, we’ll just tinker a little bit with the bail laws. That’ll fix it.’

And it did not. We kept saying to them it was going to get worse, and then, unfortunately, in Victoria we saw people die – we actually saw people die from this – and then the government really panicked. Let me assure you, it was not because people died, it was because they were worried about their own seats. They were not worried about the people. They were not worried about the victims. They were worried about the polls. The new Premier came in and said that exactly: ‘The reason we changed leaders wasn’t because we had more victims, it wasn’t because people can’t afford homes, it wasn’t because taxes have gone up; it was because of the polls.’ That is the sign of one of the most arrogant governments I have ever seen.

Then they get in this place and they say, ‘We’re going to fix it by bringing in the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill,’ but the truth is this legislation is coming in as panic stations at the very end of an end-of-days government who are all about protecting their own seats and not the community. If they were serious about this, then they would actually follow what the Shadow Attorney-General has put in place to ensure that this is a proper bill, to ensure that the recruitment of young people here in Victoria does not become a pyramid scheme and does not become another environment where someone who is 25, 26 years old decides, ‘I’ve got a way to make some money. I can pay kids out a thousand bucks. All I need to do is recruit one. As long as I can get away with that, I’m fine,’ and then that kid can go and recruit kid after kid after kid, because let me tell you, that is happening. When we hear about what is happening on the app Signal, which is sending out the message ‘$1000 to go and burn down a tobacco store. Go and throw a warning out there. Two days later go down, drive your car in there and set it on fire’, that is coming from other kids. These kids are going out knowing they can just go to their mates now and go, ‘Check this out. Guess what, you can earn a thousand bucks. Come with me. Burn it down. You just hold the camera. No dramas here, because do you know what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? We’re going to get arrested and we’re going to go home that night, and we’re not going to worry about it.’

Because the court systems are so delayed here in Victoria, because of the amount of stuff-ups from the government when it comes to the court, they are probably not going to end up in court for probably two years, and when they get into court, the kids are getting smarter now. If you are following the system at all, we are seeing kids now not even bother applying for bail. They actually go in and just plead guilty because now, when they plead guilty, they can walk out with a good behaviour bond for some of the most serious offences I have seen. If you do not believe me, go and look up the court cases recently. The owners of 80 Proof had a factory in Keysborough. The offenders knew they were going to get remanded, so they pleaded guilty and the judge let them go with a good behaviour bond. That is what the problem is here in this state. It is not just about the recruitment; we have sent a message for far too long to a whole generation of young offenders that in Victoria it is okay. That is why we have nearly twice as many cars stolen here as anywhere else. That is why in the whole nation, when we put all the car thefts together from the last 12 months, we had a slight increase in the amount of cars stolen, yet every state but Victoria went backwards. Only Victoria went forwards.

When the government have brought in this piece of legislation, they have forgotten some other things in there as well. Only the Liberals and the Nationals have a true plan to work together to get kids off the street, to intervene early and to not just put in place ‘break bail, face jail’ but also make sure that these kids actually get a genuine opportunity in life. That is why we are going to put $100 million into working with these young kids. We have looked at programs, whether it is in Cheshire, whether it is in London, whether it is over in Texas, whether it is throughout Europe – programs that engage with young people early, before they end up in the justice system. We have had the programs here in this state. The government cut them. Good programs, crime prevention programs – gone. $11 million that used to be in crime prevention programs – gone under Labor. If you want to know why crime is up, it is not one piece of legislation in the last hundred-odd days before they actually lose government; it is because this government have been so arrogant when it comes to the crime crisis here in this state that they believed they knew better than everyone else – they knew better than the experts and they knew better than the police.

They forced judges to make decisions to ensure that young offenders could get back out on the streets. Well, let me assure you, under a Wilson Liberal–Nationals government, that will not happen again. We will make sure that we deliver the programs, we deliver the police and we deliver the sentencing. We will make sure that the judges quite clearly understand that if a child continues to break bail here in Victoria, they will face jail. In areas like where I live, like Casey, where crime continues to increase by over 10 per cent per year, we will make sure that we can get on top of that and start to see crime come down. Member for Bulleen, I want your community and my community to be safer, and that can only happen under a Liberals and Nationals government.

 Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (17:15): I am delighted to rise today to speak in support of the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026. This is another important bill, one that introduces a new offence targeting adults who recruit children to commit serious offences, for example, aggravated home invasion or aggravated carjacking. These are important changes, which will continue to build on the government’s work around community safety. Community safety remains a priority in my community. It is something that my constituents raise with me consistently when I am out and about doorknocking. It was out in Clayton South over the weekend that I spoke with families about their priorities, about what matters for them and about what they want to see from the Carroll Labor government. I also spoke with many young families in Clayton South near Clayton station, many of whom have children at Westall Primary School and Westall Secondary School, and community safety came through as a really strong priority for this community. That message is clear in Clayton South and across the Clarinda district, and I am happy to see this change before us here today.

Victoria has the most police in Australia, the nation’s toughest bail laws and the nation’s first violence reduction unit. We have seen some really strong investment in the budget targeted at getting more police officers out from behind their desk and into the street where the crime is. This includes a $62 million investment to recruit up to 200 reservists for administrative duty, which will free up frontline officers, putting more police back in our community where they are needed most. This investment and this legislative work continues so that everybody in my community can feel safe. I do not want anyone in our community to feel unsafe at home, out in public or at work, or anywhere for that matter. This is unacceptable to me and unacceptable to this government. It is for that reason that I am happy to be involved in the debate on our tough bail laws, which put community safety above all else in bail decisions by removing the principle of remand as the last resort for creating the toughest bail laws ever for serious offences, with bail tests that are extremely hard to pass and target repeat offenders for those worst crimes. It is a really important measure, and we can see the result in the remand rate. That is really important because there was and is really a clear expectation from our community on this. As I mentioned, it is one of the most common concerns in our community. It is still one of the major concerns, along with the cost of living, roads, health and education, which are all really important.

We will keep working in particular around community safety, and we will continue to work with our tough bail laws to keep Victorians safe by putting community safety above all and targeting repeat offenders for the worst crimes. This work includes the violence reduction unit, because violent youth crime is hurting families, kids and workers in our community. We are also ensuring that there are serious consequences with our adult time for violent crime laws, which passed Parliament in December. Under those laws, children committing crimes like invading someone’s home or injuring someone in a sickening act of violence will face an adult sentence in adult court.

There are no easy solutions, as we all know, to reduce crime, and these are serious consequences for violent crime to protect our community. But we know it is better to stop crime before it starts. Our nation-leading violence reduction unit shows that violence is preventable and not inevitable. The budget backs more community-based pathways away from youth crime, with more than $44 million for the violence reduction unit and other programs, and we are backing the violence reduction unit with $33 million to deliver local initiatives which tackle the root causes of violence through targeted preventative measures. This includes $3.7 million for the violence reduction unit pilot, a New York–style violence prevention initiative here in Melbourne to steer our young people away from violence. Almost $15 million will continue to fund early intervention support for children and young people to keep them in the education system and reduce potential contact with the justice system.

This is a wonderful initiative because we know that our younger generation will benefit and be deterred from offending the longer they stay in our education system. It will deliver a new pathway to help divert some children away from the justice system before they actually get charged. We have had some really positive crime prevention work happening here in the south-east of Melbourne. I am looking forward to that work continuing and expanding, steering our young people away from crime and violence. These measures are an example of that. These are tough new laws to crack down on child recruitment, with a new offence for an adult recruiting a child to commit a serious crime. This will apply regardless of whether any criminal activity is carried out by the child or not, or even if different criminal activities take place. The offence is the recruitment itself, because that is where the harm begins.

Last year the government also increased the maximum penalty from 10 years to 15 years in prison for the existing offence of recruiting a child to carry out criminal activity. These reforms go even further by creating stronger maximum penalties where children are recruited to commit serious crimes. This is a direct response to organised crime networks increasingly recruiting children to commit offences on their behalf, including arson, aggravated burglary, home invasion and carjacking. If found guilty, offenders could face life imprisonment. This is a serious offence, so key stakeholders have been consulted and have provided technical feedback, including Victoria Police, the Office of Public Prosecutions, Victoria Legal Aid and the courts, and I am sure that this proposal will have broad support in my community in the electorate of Clarinda.

We have many fantastic Victoria Police officers working in the Clarinda district, and I thank each and every one of them for their amazing work in keeping us safe day in, day out. I also want to thank my community for voicing their concerns with me. This feedback is important, and it will continue to drive changes like those we see before us today. As I said, there has been some really significant change over the last year, and this is because the community has set a really clear expectation.

The government will continue to work hard around our tough bail laws, around adult time for violent crimes and around the violence reduction unit, together with Victoria Police and the justice system more broadly, to make sure that everyone in my community and across Victoria can feel safe. That is work we continue with here today by cracking down on child recruitment for community safety. These are important changes. They are changes that will continue to build on the government’s work around community safety. Once again, I thank all Victorian police in my community, and I commend the minister for bringing this bill forward. I commend the bill to the house.

 Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (17:24): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Recruitment of Children for Criminal Activity) Bill 2026 and to say that the Greens oppose this bill. Let us be clear from the outset: adults who exploit children and draw them into serious criminal activity should be held accountable. Children should never be used, pressured or groomed by adults to commit offences. The law already makes it an offence for an adult to recruit a child into criminal activity, and only in December last year did Parliament increase the maximum penalty for the existing recruitment offence from 10 to 15 years. Six months later, for no reason other than that Labor are facing an election, they introduced a bill that creates a new aggravated offence carrying life imprisonment. However, in the bill there is no requirement that the recruiter be part of an organised crime group, profit financially, hold a position of authority, exploit the child, be significantly older, or have any connection with organised crime, for that matter, at all.

The Federation of Community Legal Centres strongly opposes this offence. Its central concern is that it is likely to capture young and marginalised people, including young adults who themselves were recruited and exploited as children, rather than those who control and profit from organised crime. The government has not demonstrated that the 15-year maximum, enacted only months ago, is inadequate, nor has it demonstrated that the problem with organised crime recruitment is that judges lack a sufficiently high sentencing ceiling.

If the real difficulty is identifying and prosecuting senior figures who direct recruitment from a distance, increasing the maximum sentence does not solve that problem. Organised crime networks do not necessarily operate through a senior figure directly approaching a child. A vulnerable person may become recruited and exploited and then directed to bring in a sibling or a cousin or a friend and then another friend. Think about a group of teenagers – 16, 17, 18 years old – who may not know each other’s exact ages. An 18-year-old who involves a slightly younger friend in offending can fall within this offence. That may be criminal conduct, but it does not turn that 18-year-old into the organised crime boss that this government says this legislation is aimed at. Once that young person turns 18, this bill can treat them as the recruiter. They are the person the police can see and the person exposed to a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Meanwhile, the older person who directed them, exploited them and profits from the offending may still remain at arm’s length.

That is the structural flaw in this bill: it risks criminalising people at the bottom of an exploitative structure while doing very little to actually reach the people controlling it. We know that there is an over-representation in youth justice of young people with disabilities and children who have experienced both child protection and the criminal legal system; these are precisely the young people who may themselves be vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. There is a stark contradiction here: Victoria recognises that some people need the protection and support of a child protection system until they turn 21, yet once they turn 18 that same vulnerable young person can be treated as an adult recruiter and exposed to an offence carrying life imprisonment.

The risks for Aboriginal young people are particularly serious. The government’s own treaty statement acknowledges that these changes may lead to more prosecutions and increased custodial sentences for First Peoples, further increasing their overrepresentation in custody. It specifically acknowledges the risks to young Aboriginal adults close in age to the children involved, and yet the same treaty statement confirms that the First Peoples’ Assembly of Gellung Warl was not given the opportunity to advise on this bill before it was introduced. For legislation of this severity, the government should be taking their lead from the experts who work directly with the people most likely to be affected – the Federation of Community Legal Centres, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Aboriginal community controlled organisations, specialist Aboriginal legal services like Djirra, youth legal services and organisations working with children in child protection and youth justice.

Just this month, an inquiry report entitled A Systemic Inquiry to Learn from the Experiences of Children Who Entered the Criminal Justice System before 14,from the Victorian Commissioner for Children and Young People, was tabled in Parliament, with the commissioner writing:

There is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating that punitive responses to children do not address the underlying drivers of their behaviour and do not improve community safety over the long term.

The inquiry also recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 14. If the government genuinely wants to disrupt organised crime, it should target the people who control and profit from that exploitation and address the conditions that make children vulnerable to recruitment in the first place. Instead this bill risks catching exploited young people while the people directing them remain insulated from prosecution. It imposes a life maximum without demonstrating why the 15-year maximum that Parliament enacted only months ago is inadequate, despite acknowledged risks of greater Aboriginal incarceration. Children are not recruited into criminal activity in a vacuum. They may be experiencing family violence or poverty, homelessness, disability, trauma or state care. Adults who exploit those vulnerabilities should be held accountable, but this Labor government’s capitulation to tough-on-crime rhetoric does nothing to address the conditions that make children vulnerable in the first place. Real protection means intervening before recruitment happens and resourcing services that can reach children before organised crime does.

Life imprisonment is the most severe penalty under Victorian law. Maximum penalties matter because they express Parliament’s view about the relative seriousness of offending and they set the upper limit of punishment considered proportionate. The government has identified offences, including murder, home invasion, carjacking, armed robbery, kidnapping and arson, as falling within a new tier, but those underlying offences do not all carry the maximum penalty. Arson, for example, carries a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment. Rape carries a maximum of 25 years. Murder carries life. Yet under this bill, recruiting a child to commit arson could expose a person to the maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The Federation of Community Legal Centres warns that as a result this bill distorts the hierarchy of penalties under Victorian criminal law. This bill also sits within a broader punitive direction in Victorian criminal law – regressive bail changes, expanding remand and an increasing reliance on prison over prevention and rehabilitation. This is a direction that the Greens oppose in the strongest possible way.

This bill is too broad, too punitive and too poorly targeted. It is yet more law and order rhetoric from a desperate Labor government. It will not make our community safer, and it risks sucking exploited young people and their peers into cycles of criminalisation. It imposes a life maximum without demonstrating why the 15-year maximum Parliament enacted only months ago is inadequate, and it proceeds despite acknowledging risks of further Aboriginal incarceration and inadequate consultation with those most affected. For those reasons the Greens oppose this bill.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc – Minister for Local Government, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Renters) (17:33): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.