Wednesday, 18 March 2020

Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ms HENNESSY:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (13:25): I rise to speak on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. This bill looks at amending the Sentencing Act 1991 to strengthen sentencing requirements for injury offences committed against emergency workers. It makes consequential and related amendments to the Crimes Act 1958, the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 and the Serious Offenders Act 2018. This is a very, very important bill. It is very important legislation, and it is important that we get this stuff right.

Emergency services workers are certainly the backbone of our community. They are there to ensure community safety, and whether it be the police, whether it be ambulance services or whether it be our fire services, we see just the unbelievable amount of work that they do on the front line. We have seen also the difficulty that we are suffering at the moment with coronavirus, and in the state of emergency that has been declared, many of those emergency services are again placed on the front line to ensure the safety of the community. It is for that reason that we need to ensure that when somebody seeks to harm an emergency services worker who is just doing their job, the law should be protecting them. The law should also be sending a very clear message that this is not acceptable—absolutely not acceptable.

There have been attempts to strengthen this law by the Andrews Labor government, and we are back again with another attempt to strengthen this law. I am going to go through a number of those proposed changes today. Whereas we believe that the suggested changes are very important, and there were a number of people who have been working in the emergency services space that have been on a review panel from the police, ambulance and fire services to look at this and to suggest these changes, there are still questions that remain unresolved, and those are: will this go far enough, and will we be able to ensure that our emergency services are kept safe from those that wish to harm them? As Wayne Gatt from the Police Association Victoria has said, ‘The proof will be in the pudding’, and we are yet to see that.

On this particular bill, we will not be opposing it, because we believe that we need to do everything we can to strengthen laws to ensure that our emergency services are protected. But I will throw those questions out here today in terms of: has everything been covered, has everything been thought through? Because we do not want to see, as we have seen in recent situations, excuses made and people that we had been led to believe would be getting a minimum six-month sentence for assaulting—harming—a paramedic, harming a police officer or harming an emergency services worker in many circumstances get a community service order. In the Haberfield case, which I am going to talk to shortly, you had a female paramedic assaulted for doing her job by somebody who was high on drugs after frequenting a rave—a party—who then claimed mental health as part of the reason for the assault. Instead of getting a six-month minimum jail term, he got a community service order, which is appalling—absolutely appalling. It sends all the wrong messages, and that is why we must do everything we possibly can to strengthen these laws, and I will go into that in some more detail.

Tomorrow we will see the quarterly crime statistics coming out, and one of the things that you will read—which has been happening certainly in the current term of the Andrews Labor government—is an increase in violent crime, an increase in serious crime and an increase in crimes against the person. I would hope that trend will not continue, but it is certainly a trend that has been happening.

One of the other very, very disturbing trends is the attacks on emergency services workers—again attacks on those that are meant to be keeping us safe. It is really, really disappointing that we have a situation in the state of Victoria where we need to be running respect the badge campaigns because the community has lost respect for those that actually do the wonderful jobs that they do in trying to keep us safe. The fact that we have police and emergency services workers being spat on, ridiculed, attacked, punched, kicked is just unacceptable. It is absolutely unacceptable.

I know that the government has been looking at ways of increasing police numbers and has been talking about that, but it is very, very difficult to expect families to want to be encouraging people to join up in what is already a very, very difficult job when there are these kinds of attacks. I have spoken to many police and I have spoken to many emergency services workers in my role as shadow police and corrections minister, and repeatedly I am told that there has never been a tougher time to be an emergency services worker in the state of Victoria—never been a tougher time to be an emergency services worker—never been a tougher time to be a police officer on the beat, walking the streets, where you constantly have to look over your shoulders. It is just a slippery slope that has got worse and worse under this government.

It is a complete lack of respect for authority that starts at the schools. As the member for Forest Hill quite correctly points out, it starts here. It starts everywhere in terms of that lack of respect. It has been, if you like, perpetrated all the way through. We are seeing attacks in our schools. We are seeing kids not feeling safe. We have even had the situation where, looking at bringing a police in schools program back, retired police officers wanted to get involved and do it, because the government fell short of actually offering that up. The government would not provide it, so we had retired police officers saying, ‘We will provide it, because we know it is challenging times when the kids do not understand authority, they do not understand respect, and they do not understand the law of the badge’.

So when that is happening, something is clearly wrong. When that is happening—when police are being assaulted, emergency services workers are being assaulted—something is wrong. We can strengthen laws. We can do whatever we can, and we should do it, but we also need to ensure that there are consequences, that there is education, that there is support, and that ultimately we are signalling that that is completely unacceptable.

There are five changes in this particular bill. One of the changes looks at reflecting parliamentary sentiment in the courts in terms of what we would like to see here. I am sure today people from both sides will get up and say how unacceptable it is for emergency services workers to be attacked—and so we should. We should all in unity support our emergency services workers, which I am sure we will. I have no expectation of that not happening today. However, when we leave here, in this bill we are saying that this sentiment needs to be reflected in our courts. Why are we saying that? Why do we even have this? Why do we have that part in this bill? It is simply because it is not being followed through in the courts. We are almost having to have a separate clause in this bill today because the judges are not hearing what the community expectations are. The community is expecting the judges to ensure that they carry out what we have been talking about here for years.

Mr Angus: They are not listening.

Mr SOUTHWICK: But they are not listening at all. The judges are not listening, and the community is expecting more. The community is expecting that if people do something like attack an emergency services worker there will be consequences, and clearly there have not been. So the big question that I have about this bill is that it is all very well for us to say judges should reflect the sentiment of the Parliament, but will they? Will we see that change in the courts going forward? Will we see these tougher penalties coming out? Because back in 2018 when the government proposed a whole lot of changes we saw a media release that came out from the then Attorney-General in September 2018 titled, ‘New laws pass Parliament to protect emergency workers’:

Under these new laws, courts will have to impose a custodial sentence and will not be able to sentence offenders to a community correction order or other non-custodial outcome, even after determining that special reasons apply and that the statutory minimum sentence should not be imposed.

He is basically saying, ‘This is going to happen’. The Attorney-General at the time said:

These new laws will make sure that sentences for attacking our emergency workers, who put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe, are more in line with community expectations.

That is what he said. The then Minister for Police said:

This legislation sends the strongest possible message that its unacceptable to assault and injure a police officer, and if you do you can expect to go to jail.

Well, that clearly has not happened since that period at all. Again, the former Attorney-General said:

Under these new laws, courts will have to impose a custodial sentence and will not be able to sentence offenders to a community correction order …

They will not be able to sentence an offender to a community correction order. That was said by the former Attorney-General on 20 September 2018. It was very clear: not ‘may not’—‘will not’. So we would not see people that attack an emergency services worker being sent out on yard duty, garden duty; rather they would go to jail. Well, that clearly has not happened, and the Haberfield case was as clear as day. We have an article in the Age by Zach Hope on 28 August 2019—nearly a year later than the Attorney-General said these new laws would fix this—titled ‘Laws protecting ambos “a dud” after drug-affected basher avoids jail’. It goes on to say about the ambulance union:

The union said it was time “to start again” on the laws.

Emergency services workers and Ambulance Victoria bashed the ruling.

In the first test … James Haberfield, 22, was on Wednesday slapped with treatment, monitoring and community orders, but avoided the mandatory minimum … jail term because Magistrate Simon Zebrowski determined it “would have a disproportionate and catastrophic effect” on his future.

The article goes on to say that the assault on the female paramedic was so severe that she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety and has not been able to return to work. She was bashed, punched, and she has not been able to return to work because of this, and the offender got a community service order.

The legislation was passed by the Andrews government in October. It was an effort to close the loopholes that allow offenders who assault emergency workers to walk free in special circumstances. The Victorian Ambulance Union secretary, Danny Hill, said the legislation was a dud and had failed in its first test. Here was the opportunity. The laws finally came into play. We actually had the Premier say in May 2018:

We will do everything we can to protect those who protect us. This sends the strongest possible message—if you attack and injure an emergency worker, you will go to jail.

That was the Premier. Not ‘you may go to jail’ but ‘if you attack an emergency services worker, you will go to jail’—the Premier, on 22 May 2018. The Premier had said that.

The Victorian Ambulance Union secretary called the laws a ‘dud’ and said, ‘Let’s go back to the drawing board’. So why didn’t we get this stuff right? Why do we have to have yet another crack and another crack to get this stuff when we are putting our emergency services workers’ lives at risk and putting them in danger? Those people who are there to protect us are the ones that are being attacked by the community and not supported by the government. These are the ones that we really need to ensure that we support, and clearly that has not happened.

On 29 January—look, it goes on. But we have seen many, many other attacks as well. We saw the attacks prior to these laws in St Kilda where we had police officers brutally attacked, their heads smashed to the pavement, and we saw effectively out on bail immediately those people. Subsequently we had a change of laws that were brought in, but again they failed with the Haberfield case. We saw the situation where we had Priti Patel vow to change the law for thugs who attack police.

We have seen other jurisdictions that have tried to do this and certainly get better efforts going forward and we have seen a lot of situations where we have seen attacks on our emergency services workers. Unfortunately there has been no luck in getting this fixed. There have been calls for many to get rid of this loophole. Now we have the changes that are proposed in front of us, and I did mention one of them, which was to reflect the sentiment of the Parliament, and we certainly hope that they do. We certainly hope that they do, but again we have seen the history in the courts up until this point. That has not reflected community sentiment, and I just flag that and hope that things will change. But if we are now directing them through this Parliament, and we have certainly been making laws for some time, then I have little hope unfortunately that we are going to see the changes that we need in terms of these sentiments being passed on in sentencing.

The other element of this is it looks at all relevant indictable offences relating to intentional and reckless injury of emergency workers, custodial officers or youth justice custodial officers which have an existing associated penalty with a statutory minimum jail sentence and which can currently be tried summarily. They will be able to be prosecuted by the Office of Public Prosecutions (OPP) and additionally will be uplifted from the Magistrates Court to be heard in the County or Supreme courts. This is an important change. What we are doing with this amendment is allowing these very important offences, indictable offences, to be heard through a higher court. It is important because of the complexity of the law, and it is important particularly because we have seen situations in the past that have not proved successful. I hope that by hearing these cases in the County or Supreme courts we will see better results than we have seen in the past.

The other point to this, the third point to this, is ensuring that the existing special reason defence for self-induced intoxication is narrowed so it cannot be cited as a sole reason for impairment of mental functioning—that is, for the special reason for the defence against the statutory minimum sentence to be successful there must be another underlying substantive mental health consideration to lead to the offending. This is effectively saying that there needs to be a very, very clear reason to why you would be excused for that behaviour. You cannot solely rely on self-induced intoxication to constitute impairment of mental functioning for the purpose of establishing that reason. So you would hope, again, that this would narrow the range of circumstances in which self-induced intoxication will be able to constitute special reasons for applying the statutory minimum sentence. Again, we are unsure whether in the Haberfield case that would make any difference, and certainly the advice that I have received is that in Haberfield’s case because he was relying on his schizophrenia, despite the fact that he went on a bender and was intoxicated with a cocktail of drugs, he would not receive any change to what was handed down to him. So I just put that question out there.

The fourth point of this is the reverse onus applied to complicit offenders who argue that a statutory minimum sentence should be not imposed. So this is basically saying that where there are multiple offenders and insufficient evidence now it will be the accused that will have to prove on the balance of probabilities that their involvement was minor and that the statutory minimum should be applied. So, again, minor involvement in the commission of an offence may include but is not limited to situations where someone encourages another to resist arrest during the affray or encourages from the sidelines during a group attack. So, again, changing that around to a reverse onus is ensuring, you would hope, that the courts would take into account that the person has got extenuating circumstances and that those extenuating circumstances are well documented. Again, we would not want to see somebody that has effectively gone on a bender and then said ‘Well, I’m suffering for mental health reasons and that hasn’t been diagnosed’ and there is not a whole lot of evidence to show that they have tried to seek help and there is not somebody available in terms of some medical intervention but that then being used effectively to get them off an indictable mandatory offence. It has got to be clear.

There obviously will be a set of circumstances where, you know, somebody is not able in a mental health capacity to effectively operate and has sought all the treatment and help—there are extenuating circumstances, we all understand—but we do not want excuses, and that has got to be the difference. It is one thing to use an excuse but another if it is somebody that has a medical reason for doing what they did, and I think quite often those lines get blurred in our courts. I have never heard in a court situation, or you hardly ever hear, somebody turn around and say, ‘Yep, totally, I was off, this is why I was doing what I was doing. I just wanted to attack the person, belt the person, harm the person. I was clear of mind, and I knew exactly what I was doing’. It is very, very rare. In many circumstances you will find excuse after excuse that is being used. I certainly believe—and the community sentiment is the same from what I am hearing—that we have run out of excuses when people are attacking emergency services workers, completely. We need to send that clear message, and that is why it is important to ensure we have laws to protect emergency services workers, because as I said, if attacks are rising—as I said, the crime statistics are coming out tomorrow—if we see once again more attacks on our emergency services workers, then what inducement is that to get people to sign up? How could you as a family member say to your son or your daughter, ‘Hey, this is a great career for you. Join the police force, join the emergency services, be a firey or an ambo or work in our jail system’, only for them to be attacked, to be brutally attacked, which is completely inexcusable?

Finally, the bill amends the definition of ‘emergency worker’ in section 10AA(8) of the statutory Sentencing Act 1991 to clarify that emergency services workers who are employed or engaged in another state or territory or by the commonwealth but are performing duties within Victoria fall in the definition of ‘emergency worker’ for the purpose of that section. Again this is something that I think is important to take into consideration. We saw that during the bushfires when a number of fire services officers attended from other states, from other jurisdictions. They also should be protected, absolutely, when they are out there helping us.

As I stated, there are a number of concerns. We have seen that this reference group has been set up. The question is: is this really tinkering around the edges? There is not necessarily a stand-out initiative that we have seen from this. The reference group first met last August and it is now more than six months later, so one must question what has really been achieved considering the small amount of amendments and why it has taken so long, putting at risk emergency services workers by not bringing this in sooner, since the last time the reference group sat.

The existing special reasons in the Sentencing Act used as a defence against the imposition of the statutory minimum sentence for offending against an emergency services worker will remain largely intact, with just tweaking.

I mentioned the parliamentary intentions. It is mind-blowing really, why that is not just automatic. It seems to me like it is just some window-dressing. You would expect that when we bring in legislation, that is always the intent of the Parliament in terms of what we want and what we believe the community expect. So why wouldn’t the courts reflect the will of the legislation rather than us having to expressly write in a bill that the judiciary’s rulings need to reflect the sentiments of the Parliament? It just baffles me really that we need to do that, but obviously things are just not working.

In practice the minimum sentence of six months imposed in all cases, where minor exemptions are incorporated as part of the sentencing guidelines, could be whittled down to two or three months or even could be completely whittled down when these things are taken into consideration.

Having the OPP prosecute cases and uplifting cases to the County Court sends a message to the judiciary. However, this does not necessarily change the situation. We still need to ensure that the process will be carried out. The government’s amendments are not necessarily strong enough, but as I said, let us see what comes of this. I just hope that we are not back here again with more amendments in a few months—or whenever that may be. We have heard, as I said, a number of people, including the Police Association Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt, express some concern publicly about whether the provisions are effective. He said the proof is in the pudding and will be in the eating.

There also remains a lot of anger out there from police members, people on the front line, paramedics and ambulance officers that jail terms are not being imposed. I think that is important. We live in very uncertain times with what we are experiencing right now. We know that our emergency services workers do an amazing job, they really do—a hard job. We saw a situation with the killings in Kew only a week ago which started with a PSO that was attacked, and then we saw the deaths that followed. It is a difficult job on the front line every day. We need to be looking at how we ensure safety so we do not see these situations spiral out of control where we see attacks on workers.

I want to finish where I started, and that is by saying we need to be sending a very, very clear message, because if our emergency services do not feel safe, what does the rest of the community actually feel at these times? If we cannot protect our emergency services workers from harm—and our emergency services workers are trained to be able to deal with these things—what about Joe Blow in the street? What hope does anyone have if our own emergency services workers are putting their hands up and saying we do not have laws to protect them?

That is why, as I said, we are not opposing the bill. But we have a question: do these laws go far enough and will they ensure the safety of our emergency services workers that do a fantastic job every day protecting everyday Victorians?

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (13:55): I rise today to speak on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. It is an honour to be able to speak to this bill, because it relates to something that I have been passionate about for over 20 years—fighting for the rights for my members whilst working in the Victorian Ambulance Union. It is something that I know from the ground level, working on the road face to face with people as a paramedic, and something that I know affects friends and ex-colleagues. This bill goes to the heart of what has driven my career and still drives me as a member of this house. This bill seeks to make paramount the protection of our hardworking, dedicated and selfless emergency services workers as they go about their day serving, protecting and helping Victorians.

In my day on the road as a paramedic, no-one would think of assaulting a paramedic. Attitudes have changed. No-one deserves to go to work and be abused. No-one deserves to face violence, especially when they have gone to the assistance of someone in need. Every emergency services worker—not just those here in Victoria—deserves to be treated with respect and be free from violence. I worked tirelessly with my team at the union to advocate to governments from both sides to properly protect members through statutory minimum sentencing being applied to those who injured paramedics and other emergency services workers. As secretary it was like watching your children going out on a weekend and seeing them getting bashed, but you could do nothing about it.

In 2014 legislation for statutory minimum sentencing was first introduced. I want to acknowledge the previous coalition government for introducing the law to protect emergency services workers. These laws have always been affected by special reason exemptions that were created in 2013. These exemptions in law sought to address the situation of offenders such as those who may be suffering from mental illness or intellectual disability, young offenders or those involved in a minor way—for some of those people where prison might not be the best place to address their issues. These exemptions meant that in some cases courts needed to examine these exemptions for offenders who had committed totally unacceptable violence to emergency services workers whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol but had a history of some form of mental illness.

As the previous head of the ambulance union, seeing people inflict violence on my members and not receive a statutory minimum sentence was soul destroying. In March 2016 an event took place in Reservoir where two paramedics attending to a patient were assaulted by two women and a teenage boy. In fact the two women forced the male paramedic to the ground and were seen to stomp on his leg until they fractured it. This paramedic, Paul Judd, sustained serious leg fractures, has had four operations since and was away from his work for three years. I am pleased to say that Paul has returned back to work in the last 12 months in alternative duties. Paul has been a paramedic for 40 years and is held in the highest esteem amongst his colleagues. This case was the catalyst for changes to the legislation in 2018, when the two women appealed their custodial sentence and one received a community correction order. It was devastating to all of us in emergency services.

Of course, we had the more recent event of Mr James Haberfield, who was happy to go to the Rainbow Serpent Festival and top up on a cocktail of drugs, come home from that festival and then assault a female paramedic by grabbing her in a headlock and continually punching her to the head. Monica, the paramedic, is still struggling to get back to her duties while Mr Haberfield, the offender, received an 18-month mandatory treatment and monitoring order.

In the years before my retirement from the union I was proud to fight for the rights of my members. The ambulance campaigns were a significant reason that the Baillieu-Napthine governments were rejected by the Victorian public and the Andrews Labor government came to power. The new Labor government continued fighting for our emergency services workers and in 2018 significantly tightened the special reasons. One of these changes meant that if the minimum sentence was not imposed, some length of imprisonment or mandatory treatment or monitoring order must be imposed.

It is disheartening to see that some in the community still do not realise that violence against our emergency workers is not acceptable. Every story of violence has a ripple effect through the tight-knit emergency services community. I am pleased that this government is once again showing its commitment to the workers. The Attorney-General should be congratulated on her dedication and commitment to Victorian workers, especially emergency workers. This is something that I saw firsthand in her previous role as the health and ambulance services minister. I worked with her as the ambulance secretary, and I am honoured to now be able to work beside the Attorney-General in this Parliament.

This bill seeks to change how these statutory minimum sentences are dealt with in Victoria. The decision to require these offences to be prosecuted by the Office of Public Prosecutions in the higher courts and not in the Magistrates Court by police prosecutors will mean that these offences will be dealt with on a more consistent basis.

This bill provides some clarification around drug and alcohol intoxication. That is a provision that I am very pleased to see in this amending bill. I know that my members that I represented were frustrated at seeing offenders use the defence that their drug and alcohol use meant they should not be held fully accountable for their actions because there was an underlying mental health condition. We know that those suffering mental illness are very likely to seek drugs and alcohol to help them try to manage their pain and anguish. It can be hard to distinguish where one problem starts and another ends. But the commonsense change in this bill helps to weigh up these considerations and helps to close a loophole that a defence team may use to try to reduce an offender’s consequences for their actions.

Making those involved in an offence when they were not the primary offender prove that they are exempt from a minimum sentence is another change that I know my former ambulance members will be happy to see. I am so glad to see that the definition of an ‘emergency worker’ is clarified in these amendments to cover interstate emergency workers, because violence against any emergency worker is just not right and should not be tolerated. Emergency workers include police; PSOs; paramedics; fireys, including the volunteers; SES; doctors; nurses and others involved in emergency treatment in hospitals; and also custodial officers and youth custodial workers.

This Andrews Labor government has a good understanding of what this bill means for emergency services workers because our caucus is a reflection of emergency services workers. I have had many years experience as a paramedic. The member for Frankston has worked hard as a firey. The good member for Bayswater has served his community as a police officer, and many in the Labor Party caucus room volunteer in the CFA or SES, like the member for Yan Yean. We know what impact violence has on emergency workers, because they are people we know, people we have served with and worked with, people we socialise with and people whose families we know. We know that these amendments speak to these brave Victorians and seek to protect them to do their job.

This bill shows our commitment to them by making sure fewer findings of special reasons and longer sentences of imprisonment occur, because those who commit violence against our emergency workers must be held to account for their actions. This government sends the message to our emergency workers that they are valued and respected, not just by this government but by all Victorians.

I also want to acknowledge the Bacchus Marsh CFA, who attended a fire in February 2019 and were assaulted by two men. The damage done to those firefighters was devastating, and we need to throw all our support around them. I also want to thank the emergency worker harm reference group, which includes the emergency services unions, for all their input and their advocacy.

While this legislation sends a clear message to offenders, it is not all that has been done by the emergency services agencies, having provided additional training to their workers and provided body-worn cameras, and in ambulances recording thousands of locations of interest where aggression, abuse and violence has occurred towards paramedics. Paramedics are informed before arriving at the scenes about the risks that they may be encountering.

Finally, I want to acknowledge two retired paramedics that were assaulted in Bacchus Marsh back in 2003, Mr John Faulkner and Mr Hugh Esler. Both of them were assaulted by a group of men and both sustained facial injuries. John received damage to his teeth and is still having treatment 17 years later. These were very experienced paramedics, and both of them I worked with on the road out in the western suburbs. They are still suffering from that event 17 years later. I want to thank them for their service to all the Victorians that they served.

I would like to finish by expressing my thanks to the Attorney-General and her hardworking staff for this important amending bill. I thank all of our Victorian emergency services workers, who give so much to our state. I also want to express my thanks not only to the emergency services workers but to their families for supporting them and allowing them to do their jobs in caring for all Victorians. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (14:05): I rise to speak on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. This bill essentially makes five basic amendments and some related technical and consequential amendments. But I am mainly going to speak on the amendments that change the bill to make it stronger, hopefully, so that we do not see emergency workers harmed, and when they are, that people who do that will be sent to jail.

This is not the first time we have been here speaking about this. In fact this bill is an amendment to the previous bill, where the government reassured us that the bill that they were talking about in 2018, and I quote from the Premier and the former Attorney-General, who both talked about this new law that they were introducing that would send the strongest possible message that ‘if you attack and injure an emergency services worker, you will go to jail’, and:

Under these new laws, courts will have to impose a custodial sentence and will not be able to sentence offenders to a community correction order …

Now, what did we see? The very first test was a situation where two girls were attacked doing their jobs as ambulance officers, and the offender was not sent to jail. Here we are today hopefully strengthening these laws so that what we do get is a strong message sent to the community that our emergency services workers are not to be treated with disrespect and should not be abused and should not be physically harmed ever, under any circumstances.

We are not opposing this bill because we all want to do everything we can to send a strong message and to strengthen these laws. I am not so convinced that this will go far enough. I am pleased to see that there will not be excuses allowed for someone who takes drugs which impair their mental capacity and then uses that as an excuse. Clearly there are circumstances where mental illness and challenging situations may require some understanding, but not when it is simply used as an excuse. We do not want to see that. That is not a message I want to send to my children—that if you take drugs, you cannot be held responsible for your actions. That is not a message I want to send to the community of children and young people out there.

I have great respect, obviously, for emergency services workers. During my training as a nurse we spent two weeks in the ambulance service, and I quickly learned to have a great deal of respect for the chaps. Actually, there were no women then; they were all male. They would just jump into action whenever there was a middle cerebral artery or an acute myocardial infarction or something that they would get called out to. You know, when you are a nurse and you work in the wards or you work in accident emergency, you actually have support around you. You have oxygen and suction on the wall, you have got anaesthetists to help you intubate—you have got all sorts of support. Not when you are on the road; it is much harder.

Over the last 30 years the skill set of these ambulance officers in particular has developed exponentially, as the member for Melton, I am sure, is fully aware. The things they do now—giving anticoagulants and all sorts of things that we just did not imagine they would do 30 years ago—is very, very impressive. I give a shout-out to my daughter-in-law’s father, Phil Walker, who I spent Christmas with. He is a man who has recently become an ambulance officer. I see the passion and love for the job that he does, but also I have concern for the environment that they are operating in. I despair and am dismayed sometimes by the behaviour of the community. It is quite disheartening.

My niece is also an ambulance officer, and quite pregnant at the moment. Her mum and I, both nurses, had a discussion recently about how worried Clare was for Alex out on the road, because we just cannot guarantee the safety of our emergency workers. With a law in place, we should have been able to do that. It was very hard for me to have that discussion six months ago, to say, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry the Parliament let you down, and the Andrews Labor government did not strengthen the laws sufficiently’. It is a shame that we have to be back here putting that so explicitly, because clearly that is what the community expects. My brother, a policeman of many, many years, told me a story of how back in the 1980s when he would be driving along the road in his divvy van with his mate, the young 12- and 13-year-olds would yell out ‘copper’. The boys would pull up and the kids would run. Thirty years later he told a story about how they would not say ‘copper’; they would say all sorts of things that I would not even want to repeat in this place and use all sorts of hand gestures as well. If the boys would pull up, the kids would stand their ground. We have seen a massive change in respect, a deterioration, for people in whom we absolutely must instil that respect so they can get on and do their jobs.

I worked in accident and emergency (A and E) many, many times. We as emergency services workers know that you might get a dementia patient who is incredibly strong and incredibly aggressive, but you understand that, you know that that is part of your job, or you might have someone who has got a mental illness who is absolutely out of control, and you understand that. There are many examples I can use. Sometimes a diabetic, before going into a diabetic coma, can actually get very, very aggressive. But these are situations that we understand. It is very different today to be in A and E and have someone come in really pumped on some substance that gives them enormous strength, arrogance and absolute might to believe they can actually destroy you. It is incredible to witness. These are the sorts of things that have changed over the last 30 years in my experience, and that is why we as a Parliament need to send a very clear message to the courts that this cannot be tolerated.

We are in a very different situation now with the coronavirus. We know people are panicking. I saw an ambulance going down Bourke Street the other night. The lights were on because they were treating a patient in the back of the van and the driver had a full gown, mask, goggles and everything on. I had never seen a driver of an ambulance look like that before. That is important. We have got people in situations of panic. Emergency services workers are getting hurt in those situations, as hard as it is to believe the way that people are behaving. Let us make sure that we can protect these people by making sure that ambulance officers and the police who are conducting drug tests and alcohol breath tests are given the equipment that will protect them. We need them to have gloves, we need them to have masks, we need them to have gowns and we need them to know how to change those regularly. If you are working in theatre, those theatre masks last 20 minutes before the bacteria can get through, so you change your mask every 20 minutes. It depends on the type of mask you are using. These are the sorts of things our emergency services workers such as police, who have probably never really used masks to protect themselves from contagious diseases or infectious diseases, have to know.

Firstly, we should have had a supply, so it is disappointing to hear that the government have not got enough of these gowns, because I was personally involved in a role-play way back when—Project Minotaur it was called—where we as an agricultural community planned for a foot and mouth disease outbreak. We involved the ambulance service, the police, all the agricultural operators and teachers—it was just everyone across Victoria—as we would have had to stop agriculture there and then because of the cost to the community. So I am surprised that the government have not had the same planning for a pandemic of an infectious disease, because we have all known this could happen; we have all seen the movies.

I want to stop there and just take a minute to thank the police, thank the nurses, thank the ambulance officers, thank the firefighters and thank the justice system, who do an enormously good job to help our community and keep our community safe. I hope that this bill will go now towards protecting them. I hope I can guarantee my sister-in-law that her daughter is safe out on the road. I hope I can tell my daughter-in-law that her dad is safe out on the road. For all those who have lost faith because they have been attacked, I apologise for the society that we have become—a society that has lost respect for the most important people who get up every single today and just do the job they have been trained to do because that is what they do. There is going to be a real shout-out now for the people on the front line of this coronavirus outbreak. The nurses and doctors and the medical staff are well trained in infectious diseases. We have done it before. I clearly remember in the 1980s when there was paranoia around the AIDS virus and people were terrified that they were going to catch it from toilet seats et cetera. I was in the thick of it then. Let us all just remember to stay calm. It is an important time to do that.

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (14:15): Indeed, wise words from the member for South-West Coast in the conclusion of her contribution then. Can I begin by thanking the Attorney-General and all stakeholders in this sector that have contributed to this amendment bill. I would also from the outset like to thank all emergency services for the work they do and have always done but certainly in the critical times we have had this summer and also in the crucial times we have ahead of us that are quite complex when you consider the biological nature of the hazmat approach, which it seems the world is becoming a bit more aware of and a bit more qualified in at the moment. It is a very complex area to work in.

This amendment bill is just another way of strengthening the government’s resolve to assist and support our emergency services workers. You do not need me to talk about that; the evidence is there for everyone to see. We have had the Fiskville inquiry. We have taken action on PFOS and PFAS. We have employed 400 new firefighters. We have ended the war on paramedics. We have undertaken a WorkCover provisional payments pilot. We have passed presumptive rights cancer legislation for firefighters, which is actually in play for some firefighters at the moment and their families. We are planning a centre of excellence for first responder mental health. We have employed police custody officers. We have employed almost 3135 new police. We have given more powers to PSOs and provided body-worn cameras, stroke ambulances. It goes on and on—more resources and personnel than Victoria Police have ever had. Now is the time that those investments are coming into play, when we have pandemics, when we have emergencies like this.

This bill will amend the Sentencing Act 1991 to implement reforms to sentencing requirements for certain emergency worker harm offences. These reforms respond to, as we have heard previous speakers tell us, some fairly horrific incidents. We have seen some culture change over the last few decades in regard to how we treat leaders and how we treat emergency services workers in our communities, which has been a real shame.

The first time I heard of someone being injured in the line of their work as a firefighter was a terribly nice bloke called Alan Noble. He was a senior station officer at Frankston. He was called ‘Sarge’; that was his nickname. Just before I came into Frankston in 2001 I asked why Sarge was actually a driving instructor and why he struggled to walk, and I was told that not so long ago B-shift Frankston had turned up to a house fire. The firefighters went in to fight the fire. Sarge was in charge. He was on his radio calling for more equipment and more resources to come, and some people came out of another house with cricket bats, very, very high, and just laid into him with cricket bats and broke his hip—this is a 60-year-old gentleman—and caused all these other sorts of injuries. There are the physical injuries but of course there is the mental injury as well. Since then we have seen a culture change in our community where that respect is not there anymore—it is unheard of—and we have had some really terrible incidents that people have spoken about today.

Specifically to this bill, some of the most important parts of this bill are that the bill requires the Office of Public Prosecutions (OPP) to actually prosecute all offences with the statutory minimum sentence in higher courts, not police prosecutors, and I think that is really important. We are not talking about the Magistrates Court anymore; it is elevated. The requirement for the OPP to prosecute these matters in higher courts recognises the complexity of the law, and they will build up some experience to assist in the prosecution of these laws as well.

Another section of this bill requires the court to have regard to the fact that a sentence of at least the length of the statutory minimum sentence should be ordinarily imposed in all cases unless the circumstances of the case justify a departure from that sentence. That is really important because the bill introduces an additional layer of considerations that will apply when a court is considering the appropriate sentence to impose in circumstances where it has already found that special reasons exist not to impose an applicable statutory minimum.

The bill also provides that impaired mental functioning caused substantially, as opposed to solely, by self-induced intoxication does not constitute impaired mental functioning for the purposes of establishing a reason or a special reason. The obvious question concerns a very well known case that is an exceptional case. I would note that the existing laws have seen the imprisonment of at least four offenders who have abused and assaulted emergency services workers. But there is the exceptional case of James Haberfield, where prosecutors appealed the decision not to jail the offender on the grounds that it was not open to the magistrate to impose any sentence other than a custodial sentence, as required under the Sentencing Act. We have heard that the paramedics, Monica and Sam, are still suffering. I think Monica might just be coming back to work but she is suffering from PTSD. These are well-trained people—they did not deserve that. No emergency services worker, who is there to help people, deserves this kind of treatment. We need to put it very clearly out there that this will not be tolerated and that you will be punished.

As far as Haberfield goes, I think everyone is familiar with the fact that he went to the Rainbow Serpent Festival. He went on a bender for four days. He had, I believe, ice, MDMA and ketamine in his system. Apparently when his family were looking for him he was hiding in a dog kennel. During sentencing the judge said Haberfield’s mental impairment at the time of the offence was not solely due to his drug taking but was also linked to underlying schizophrenia. Our Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020 today proposes to further narrow this exception for ‘impaired mental functioning’ so that impaired mental functioning caused ‘substantially’ by self-induced intoxication will not be sufficient to constitute a special reason to not impose the statutory minimum sentence, which is supremely important. In this way, special reasons not to impose a statutory minimum sentence will not be able to be relied upon where there are multiple causes of an offender’s impaired mental function but the substantial cause is self-induced intoxication. I think that is closing a huge loophole.

I would also like to note that we have heard members of the opposition today in a bipartisan fashion talk on this bill, and we did actually pass the previous bill in Parliament and it was unopposed. I think one person, the shadow minister, spoke on it in this house. I think as a house, at least for the lower house, we thought that these laws would work, but we have these exceptions and we are buttoning that up today. We have seen that some adaption needs to happen, and that is what we are carrying out here today.

The issue, I think, regarding other people in situations where they are not the primary offender but are actually involved in the offence is an interesting one too. I am interested to hear what the member for Gembrook has to say, with his experience in the field of policing. But I was involved in a situation that almost resulted in a paramedic being gang raped at one stage. We arrived on scene, and it was a pretty full-on scene. But the issue for me was that many of those people are the worst kind of people. They stand on the circumference and say, ‘Do it. Do it’. They are encouraging people to do extreme offending, and they get away with it. Now we are introducing a reverse onus on those people—to provide evidence that their involvement was minor and that their culpability was so low as to justify an exception to the statutory minimum sentence.

In conclusion, there is no excuse in my mind for abusing anybody or assaulting anybody, but to do so to an emergency services worker—someone who is there to help you—is the lowest of the low, and we need to set the standard. We need to right the balance though. I think most emergency services workers understand that sometimes we are dealing with people with physical and mental issues that they are not in control of, and I think that understanding is there. I think this bill reflects that as well. But for those people who believe that they can use fairly flimsy excuses after going on a four-day bender, using illicit drugs, by saying that there is a mental issue that reduces their culpability—I do not think that reflects the community’s opinion. It was soul destroying to see that sentence handed down. I believe it was a miscarriage of justice. Haberfield should have gone to jail straightaway. I believe that under the amendments in this new bill, if something like that happens again, that will be the result, to the satisfaction of the people who work in these industries and have to put up with people like that doing the wrong thing. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (14:25): I rise to speak on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. I will first of all note the member for Frankston, who raised some issues there, raised some of the things that have happened in the past. Do not quote me exactly, but I think the detail he said was he became a firefighter in about 2001. I joined the police force in 2001, and I was speaking to the member for Melton just before who I thought had said he was in the ambulance service for 50 years—I was a little bit out; it was 15 years—but obviously he spent many years in the union after as well standing up for his members. I just want to say that times have changed even since I joined in 2001, the member for Frankston in 2001 and obviously the member for Melton prior to that, and I know we have got the member for Benambra as well, and things change.

I am a bit of a TV junkie when it comes to reality TV. Not Married at First Sight—I will not go there; I do not watch that one—but I do watch Paramedics and Ambulance Australia. I actually watch both of those. My wife is very keen on those shows as well; she makes us record them. If anyone wants anything of an example of where the world has changed, recently we saw written on the back of ambulances that ambulance officers should never be bashed, should never be assaulted, basically respect ambulances. It was a campaign that was very directed. It was directed partly at the community to say that it is not right. During one of those episodes, whilst they were sitting waiting at a set of lights, a car pulled up beside them, opened the window and yelled out at the ambulance officers, ‘I hope you get bashed’. Someone sat in a car and decided to yell out a window to two paramedics, ‘I hope you get bashed’.

Whilst today we are talking about the actual sentencing regime, this comes down also to the education regime. This comes down to the fact that you cannot have that level of respect in our community and expect change. You cannot have it, and we need to change the way people are thinking about it. I know the member for Frankston said before, and I will give examples from when I started in the Victorian police force. You could go past schools, speak to some young people who were doing something that was of a minor nature and the respect level was different then to what it was in 2019 and in 2020. I still speak to my friends and colleagues who are in the police force and who will tell you that people have changed the way they speak to Victoria Police, the way they deal with them, the way the parents on occasion are dealing with the police as well when they are bringing young people in, and the message then you are sending to the next generation it is okay.

We have seen a Royal Commission into Family Violence, and one of the things that came out of that royal commission is the way we speak. It is not just the actions that are taken by the person or the perpetrator later on, but it is the way we speak that leads to a culture that it is okay and it leads to a culture where it is acceptable. I think we would all stand together as one in this Parliament and say, ‘No, it’s not’. It is not acceptable. It is not at all acceptable to treat any emergency services worker in a way that could eventually lead to them having a mentality that they are a different person and it is okay to assault them.

PSOs—I note we have got two PSOs sitting up the top—we go back not that long ago and we had a PSO attacked out the front: not appropriate, not acceptable. It should never be acceptable in any community. I still remember when Senior Sergeant Gillespie, who I worked with, was assaulted on the job. He went into court and was told in the court, ‘You should expect that in your role’. That is not acceptable, and that is a message that needs to change.

When legislation like this comes in, I think we should be using the opportunity not just to talk about the legislation. We can go back and talk about the things that have been said in the past about how the legislation should have been implemented, how it should have worked, some of the issues that were raised when it went through at that time, some of the concerns that were raised in the upper house, but I would much prefer to take this opportunity to turn around and go, ‘We need this legislation to go through, and we need it to work’. Do I think it will work 100 per cent? I am hoping there is in there enough to make sure that anyone who disrespects or assaults an officer or assaults an emergency services worker does go to jail. I hope there is enough in this legislation to ensure that each person who does commit one of those offences goes and gets a custodial sentence, because it is unacceptable when you see officers out there or anyone else protecting the community assaulted.

We know that when we go back and we look at the recent media stories around James Haberfield, who left court without being sentenced to a term of imprisonment. He came out with a conviction and whatever else he got at the time. That was unacceptable to us in this room and that was unacceptable to the community. Again, it sent a message that it was okay, and that is something we just cannot continue to do.

The other thing is when they started to use the issue around drugs, around alcohol, around when you have got yourself into a position that you offend based on the fact of the substance you have put in your body. Well, let me assure you—a message that has to be very strong for everyone—you do know if you get drunk you will probably do something stupid. Do not get drunk. If you are going to get drunk, make sure you are in an environment where you actually can control it. If you do drugs and it leads to a position where you assault someone, you made the decision in the first place to do those drugs. You have to wear the consequences of what you do after. If those consequences involve an ambulance officer who has gone out to protect you, as Monica in January did, those people should be protected. We need to get the message out again that what is occurring is not right.

As I have said, times have changed. Things have happened in the emergency services and the respect level has moved. We need to ensure when we are putting through this legislation that we are changing the way we also deal with the next generation and our emergency services. I do not think it was that long ago we had the police in schools program as one way that we could actually engage with young people and teach them about respect for Victoria Police. One of the changes in Victoria Police was to bring in the youth resource officer, and the youth resource officer engaged more with young people who were on the cusp or the edge of youth at risk. But if we do not go back and engage with the generation that is younger, I think we will see a change in that generation where they will lose the respect because the first time they come into contact with police will most likely be of a negative nature.

We have seen a change in the culture, and particularly out in our community at the moment with all the new Australians moving into the area. Every time we see a group of Sudanese people in our area we have got people in the community who will say it is a gang and the police turn up. A lot of the time it is going to end up having a negative impact when they have their first meetings with the police on those occasions if it is not handled correctly. Again, if we can, we should put that back into the education setting, where the police can sit down with these young people and have an opportunity to talk to them about the police role here. If people want to argue with me about confrontation when you are talking about people coming from war-torn countries, I understand. We started to see a lot of people come in from South Sudan and the Horn of Africa while I was in the police force, and they were very, very aggressive when we first spoke to them as Victoria Police on the street. They have come from a nation where obviously the police did not have the respect and did not act or behave in the same way we would expect in our community, where the police are the citizens that we look up to, the ones we try and find when we are lost and the ones we try and find when we are in trouble.

So we need to make sure that we can have a change where we can get those people engaged within the service, and we need to change the way we talk about the Victoria Police, about ambulance officers, about firefighters. Again, we used to have a program where young students—and we have still got it set up in Casey—could do a cycling program. Part of that cycling program was learning what a stop sign is—stop and go—how to give way, where you sit on the road in your car or on your bike. Obviously they were not driving in primary school; they were on their bikes riding around and having discussions. In that little facility they have got a fire station, a police station, an ambulance station, and they tell them all what happens when any of those people come along.

I remember—and I will never forget this—when it was 2001 and I had just graduated from the academy. I was pretty excited. I had been stationed at Dandenong. My first job, my first role, was at Dandenong on New Year’s Eve. If you want to start a great night on duty, New Year’s Eve is a great place to start. As I was driving there, I was going along the Princes Highway and a police vehicle came up behind me and turned the blueys on and pulled me over. It was a random breath test and licence check. Now, I was on my way to my first day in the job. I was a bit scared to even pull out the badge at that time and say I was a copper. I thought, ‘I’d better not. It won’t go down real well’. I still remember the heart flutter I had because I actually respected the right of the police to pull me over and what they were doing. Now people get told where to go. Half of them will not even care when they pull them over. The respect level for Victoria Police officers trying to do their job of saving lives has changed totally.

As I have said, and I will finish off where I started, I think it is really important we do acknowledge that in this Parliament we have people who have been in all walks of life in those emergency services. It is really important they get an opportunity to put their voice on the record about what has happened in the past. It is that firsthand experience of when you are in a station, a unit or wherever you are working within any emergency service and you hear of a person going to court who has assaulted in an absolutely horrific way for whatever reason one of your colleagues, one of your friends; it touches every single person in that service and the other services. When this ambulance officer, Monica, was assaulted, every Victoria Police officer and firefighter felt the pain. I think it is important that we all get together to stop that.

Mr TAK (Clarinda) (14:35): I am delighted to join other honourable speakers in this house to contribute on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. Like previous speakers I would like to start by saying thank you to all of our hardworking and dedicated emergency workers, including our representatives here, on both sides of the Parliament. We have the member for Bayswater, the member for Melton, the member for Frankston and the member for Gembrook—and many other members before us—who serve in this house and who have had that previous professional involvement in this very, very important service.

To emergency services workers, including our police officers, paramedics, firefighters, SES workers and volunteers and medical professionals who provide emergency treatment in our hospitals, on behalf of my constituents a huge thank you for keeping us safe, for saving lives and for everything that you do for our community.

We saw a really prominent example of this during the recent bushfires. We cannot underestimate the danger that our emergency workers put themselves in, and we must never underestimate the bravery, the compassion and the strength shown by our emergency workers, firefighters and first responders. It is truly amazing. To every single person that puts their life on the line to keep our fellow Victorians safe: thank you.

Also, with the state of emergency we are currently facing with the unprecedented situation with COVID-19, those medical professionals are there on the front line in our hospitals and in our emergency wards. These individuals need to be commended for their dedication and bravery. It is an anxious time for everybody, an unprecedented time, and these workers are on the front lines of that. I would like to commend the Attorney-General for this bill, and I would like to echo her sentiment—namely, that it is simply unacceptable that a person who dedicates their life to keeping us safe could be intentionally injured or worse by just doing their job.

So this is a very important bill—a bill that will help us send a very strong message to everyone that attacks against emergency workers will not be tolerated. This is a comprehensive bill, and the consultation that has gone into the development of this amendment is also comprehensive. In 2018 the government established the emergency worker harm reference group to review the effectiveness of emergency worker harm laws. This group supported the development of the government’s 2018 reforms to emergency worker harm laws.

The emergency worker harm reference group, if I may, included a wide range of representatives. These representatives came from the whole range of organisations on the front line: the State Emergency Service organisation, Victoria Police, Ambulance Victoria, union representatives, emergency workers, Police Association of Victoria, the Victorian Ambulance Union, the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation of Victoria, the Community and—most importantly—Public Sector Union, the United Workers Union, the Office of Public Prosecutions and relevant organisations and departments, including the Department of Justice and Community Safety, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

This reform will ensure more clarity in this law and, as we have heard previous speakers already allude to, less room for error and unintended outcomes, and it will ultimately provide better protection for emergency workers. The content of the bill reflects consultations with the emergency worker harm reference group and its members’ contributions, as well as feedback from the courts.

The bill will amend the Sentencing Act 1991 to implement reforms to sentencing requirements for certain emergency worker harm offences. These reforms respond to concerns arising from sentencing outcomes in recent cases which indicate that the sentencing requirements for emergency worker harm offences are complex and cause some confusion, if not difficulty.

The bill will reform sentencing requirements for emergency worker harm offences in several ways. The first and most important is by requiring the Office of Public Prosecutions, not the police prosecutors, to prosecute all offences with statutory minimum sentences in the higher courts.

The laws providing for statutory minimum sentences for injuring emergency workers were first created in 2014. The offence, which carries the presumption of a six-month statutory minimum, is recklessly or intentionally causing injury to an emergency worker on duty. The law covers emergency workers; that includes, once again, police, PSOs, paramedics, firefighters, including volunteers, the SES, doctors, nurses and others involved in emergency treatment in our hospitals and also custodial officers and youth custodial workers. Under these amendments these cases will in the future be prosecuted by the Office of Public Prosecutions in the higher courts.

I would like to take the remainder of my time here just to say how extremely proud I am to be a part of a government that knows the value of our emergency workers. Once again, on behalf of my constituents, I should thank you for keeping us safe, for saving lives and for everything that you do for our community. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr WAKELING (Ferntree Gully) (14:42): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. As members before me have highlighted, this bill is about strengthening the sentencing regime regarding harm that is caused to emergency services workers. We would hope that in this day and age we would not need a bill like this, because we would hope that all Victorians would treat our emergency services workers with the respect that they deserve and that emergency services workers would not be the recipients of violence—violence which often results in time off work or, worse still, long-term and sustained injury.

The history regarding this important issue is that work was undertaken by the former government to enact legislation to strengthen sentencing in this area. This government in the last Parliament undertook legislative change that the government saw fit to implement to ensure that the laws were tight enough and strong enough to ensure that anyone who acts in a way that impacts on an emergency services worker during their employment will in fact receive a period of incarceration. In fact in the lead-up to that previous legislation, back in May 2018, the Premier stated that if an attack injured an emergency services worker, it would mean jail, and jail would mean jail.

We know that that unfortunately is not the case. We have seen played out in the media cases where people have in fact not gone to jail because of the actions that they have meted out on our emergency services workers. We have seen the situation with the Haberfield case and how in that situation someone who was drug affected attacked a female paramedic. The sentence that was meted out was appealed but upheld by the appeals court in December 2019. County Court Judge Michael Tinney found that Mr Haberfield’s mental impairment at the time of the crime was linked to his schizophrenia and not his drug taking. That decision and other similar actions have certainly caused great concern, and rightly so, in the Victorian community.

Our emergency services workers do an important task—often a thankless task—and we should all thank them for the work they do. Some serve in this house. The member for Melton, I am aware, has certainly served in his capacity as an ambulance officer, and the member for Frankston, the member for Bayswater, the member for Gembrook and others made a voluntary contribution, but I know that there are members on all sides of the house that have actually served our community as emergency services workers, and in my role as the Shadow Minister for Emergency Services I place on record my thanks and gratitude to the hardworking paid and volunteer emergency services workers in our community. So it is imperative we have legislation that provides them with the support and the comfort they need to ensure that they can go about their day-to-day work without the fear of being assaulted and, if they are in fact assaulted, that the law is there to protect them and to ensure that an appropriate sentence is meted out to those who perpetrate these heinous crimes.

We know that when we dealt with this issue in the last Parliament we were advised by the government that in fact that legislation would deal with the issues we are talking about today—that in fact jail would mean jail—and we know that is just not the case. We know that there were gaps that were identified and placed on record in this house by the opposition, and those concerns have obviously borne fruit, and that is why we are back here today. Putting that issue to one side, it is important that we have legislation before the house that deals with this important issue. I do hope—and it is a hope, because I do not know if there is any certainty associated with this—that this legislation in fact deals with the problems that have been identified with the previous pieces of legislation that have gone before the house, because at the end of the day we have got to ensure that we provide that level of certainty for emergency services workers.

The member for Gembrook raised a very important issue, and that is that often the reason we are in situations like the one we are in now is that unfortunately many in our community do not treat emergency services workers with the respect that they deserve, and a lot of it comes back to education. As a young person I remember police visiting our schools and I remember being educated about the importance of our emergency services workers, but to a large degree that level of education no longer exists. While it is invariably up to parents and family to educate young people about the importance of our emergency services workers—and I know often these issues are dealt with in a classroom setting by the teacher—children are influenced by their role models, and if parents themselves have had a bad experience with our emergency services, be it the police or be it ambulance or whoever, then often that resulting behaviour flows through to a young person.

As we have seen, often the only interaction that a young person has with police—their first interaction with police—is in a negative environment. People are concerned about young people and particularly congregations of young people. That will often involve police interaction, and that can often be confrontational. So we need to ensure that as a society we are doing two things: firstly that we are ensuring that parents are educating and role modelling good behaviour for their children with respect to showing respect for our emergency services but also that governments through our institutions—through our education system and other institutions—are providing young people with an opportunity to have a positive engagement, a positive education opportunity and a positive interaction with emergency services to understand the importance of showing respect so that our emergency services are treated with the level of respect that is demanded of us.

Whether it is an ambulance officer who is doing their job at a music festival being assaulted, whether it is one of our protective services officers like James, who was assaulted here on the steps of the Victorian Parliament while doing his job, or whether it is other officers who are simply doing their jobs on the weekend, we do not want to see situations where they are assaulted. If an assault is perpetrated on an emergency services worker, it is imperative that we have legislation in place to ensure that the perpetrators of those crimes are dealt with appropriately.

The government has gone through a process of consultation through the emergency worker harm reference group. There have been reviews and assessments that have been undertaken about the capacity of the current legislation, which has led to the bill that is before the house, so anything that is done and implemented in this house that improves that legislation certainly has to be positive. But again I place on record that we should not be here in the first place. The legislation that went through this house in the last Parliament should have dealt with these issues. Those problems that were identified at the time and raised at the time in this house should have been addressed. They were not. So we hope that this piece of legislation means that the government has got it right, that the government has fixed their problems and that the government has fixed the loopholes in the legislation and ensured that if an offender is brought before our judiciary for assaulting an emergency worker, the appropriate sentence will be meted out to that offender.

Mr PEARSON (Essendon) (14:51): It gives me great joy and pleasure to rise today, on this fine autumnal day, somewhat overcast, but nonetheless I think you should always look at the positives. That will be my mantra going forward. I rise to speak today on the Sentencing Amendment (Emergency Worker Harm) Bill 2020. At the outset I want to put on the public record my deep appreciation and thanks to those emergency services workers who work tirelessly to protect us and our communities in all sorts of circumstances. We have been incredibly well serviced by Victoria Police, by Ambulance Victoria and by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade and the CFA, but now obviously, with the changes, by Fire Rescue Victoria. We are very fortunate to have such great support provided to us by these organisations and their members.

I think that we are confronting uncertain times. We are as a society, as a community, and I suspect—I hope I am wrong—that we will be relying upon these brave women and men more to keep ourselves safe and to protect the foundation of our great society.

The bill that is before the house further enhances the previous bill that was passed by the former Parliament in so far as it related to addressing some of the appalling actions that we saw in the period 2014 to 2018, instances where emergency services workers were assaulted by the very people who they were trying to assist. I want to place on the record and advise the house of a constituent of mine, Mel Berry. Mel is a fantastic paramedic. She is going to join the party of seven. She has got four boys and is about to go on maternity leave as she is expecting a daughter, who will be their fifth child.

Mr Richardson interjected.

Mr PEARSON: Indeed I do, member for Mordialloc. Mel is just a great paramedic. She has got a warm, kind and caring nature, she is thoroughly professional, she is good in a crisis and she is a really important member of my community. She is always present if there is a Bunnings sausage sizzle to raise money for the kinder. She is always helping out at the local primary school. She is a really good, thoroughly decent person. I remember when members of Ambulance Victoria were being assaulted that she rang me up one night and she was really distressed. She was incredibly upset about what had happened to one of her colleagues. She expressed her concerns about the fact that her colleagues were being treated by some members of the community like they were punching bags. She made it really clear that she wanted this government to be able to bring forward legislation to make it safe.

At the end of the day people like Mel just want to do their job. She wants to be able to go to work. She wants to be able to care for people who are in desperate need, and she wants to go home to Rob, her boys and her soon-to-be daughter. That is entirely reasonable. It is an entirely fair request that she can go about her business without being assaulted. So a bill like this is incredibly important. I spoke on a previous version of this bill, and that is why I rise today. This is for people like Mel Berry—good, decent workers, people who keep us safe, people who just want to be able to do their job and to care and protect people and not be assaulted in the process.

The bill also makes a number of changes that reflect what has been the practical example of the way in which the law has been delivered and interpreted by the judiciary. We are a great Western liberal democracy, and I say that because we have an independent judiciary. We can set the laws in this place. We can pass legislation, and that is our absolute right as legislators, but we have got an independent judiciary. The judiciary will then seek to administer those laws. There are times when they interpret those laws in a way that is entirely consistent with the legislation as passed, but it is my experience that when you are dealing with people—people are complex. And when you are dealing with complex people in complex situations there are times when that can create some uncertainty, so what you have to do is look at providing a degree of clarity and clarification on those areas of concern or uncertainty, and that is exactly what this bill does.

You would expect that this is what we do. There is continual improvement. I strongly believe in continual improvement. How can we do better? How can we be better? How do we ensure that the legislation that is here on the statute book reflects the community’s needs and desires and is reflective of common practice? Where there is a need for greater certainty and security, then it is incumbent on us as an executive to bring forward legislation that makes those improvements, those very necessary improvements to ensure that the legislation moves smoothly. So that is what we are doing. You will constantly see good governments looking at refining, enhancing, improving and modifying legislation to make sure it meets those needs and meets those standards.

This is a really important bill. I am very lucky to call Mel Berry a friend of mine. She is a good person. In this job you meet countless people and you have plenty of conversations with people, but there are some times in this job, as I have learned in the brief time I have been here, when there are those conversations with a person that really stick in your mind, you recall them with great clarity and you reflect upon what they mean. It is about making sure that a bill like this protects our emergency services workers so that they can get on and do the things that they need to do and keep us safe.

As I said, these are very challenging times that we are confronting, and a bill like this just makes sure that our emergency services workers receive the protection they need, because that is what they are entitled to. They are absolutely entitled to know that when they leave their house in the morning to work their shift, or at night as the case may be, they know that they will be treated well and appropriately by the community and that when it is time to end their shift, they can go home safely without having been assaulted. I commend the bill to the house.

Business interrupted under resolution of house today.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The house now stands adjourned until tomorrow.

House adjourned 3.00 pm.