Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Questions without notice and ministers statements

Decriminalisation of public drunkenness

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:00): (113) My question is to the Attorney and Leader of the Government. I refer you to reports of startling comments made this week by senior health bureaucrats that your government’s health response measures to public drunkenness will not be fully in place by Melbourne Cup Day, with a Department of Health deputy secretary stating, ‘We will be learning as we’re going,’ and the department’s executive director of strategy and policy saying, ‘Some people describe it as building the bike as we’re riding it.’ Why are you and your government not listening and being so insistent on Melbourne Cup Day being the designated day for the commencement of the new system, when clearly the new system will not be ready and, as a result, community safety will be at risk?

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:01): I thank Ms Crozier for her question on our decriminalisation of public drunkenness, a piece of legislation that has been considered by this chamber twice, most recently last year in agreeing to postpone the commencement by 12 months to ensure that the enactment will be on or before 7 November 2023.

Decriminalisation of public drunkenness is something that the government has been looking at for some time. It is something that has been on the agenda for many advocates, and what we wanted to do was to ensure that people that were just drunk were not sobering up in police cells. We know that there are some dire consequences for individuals. I do take the opportunity to, once again, acknowledge the passing of Tanya Day as one of the issues that really prompted the strong advocacy in relation to ensuring that a better approach to people intoxicated in public – a health approach – was something that we agreed to progress, and I am very proud that we have legislation.

Ms Crozier, we have delayed the commencement because of, effectively, the impacts of COVID. We knew that we had a strained health system, and that is why we brought legislation to the Parliament to delay it by 12 months. A lot of people were upset that we had to delay it, but we wanted to get the system right. I am on the record as saying it is difficult to get laws such as this perfect, but to suggest that we should not have a health response is not something that I agree with.

In relation to the laws, there will still be opportunities for Victoria Police to retain existing powers to respond to individual and community safety concerns and problematic behaviours. This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card if you are drunk. If you are committing another crime or if you are behaving inappropriately, it is still of course expected that police would respond to such behaviour, but we want to make sure there is a proper response to people that are intoxicated, and we believe that that is a health response. This is a system that we are building. There have been some trial sites, which are underway, and we will continue to build and learn as the system unfolds, but having a health response to this is good public policy.

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:03): I thank the Attorney for her response. I note that you said that the implementation of these new laws was delayed because of COVID, but there is considerable concern in relation to how these laws will actually work, and they are the concerns that I highlighted in my substantive question. I again ask: why is the government going ahead with the introduction of these measures if the system is not ready?

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:04): Ms Crozier, it is May, and these laws are coming into effect in November. We have a lot of work to do – I acknowledge that – in both the health system and in working with VicPol in relation to education in relation to de-escalation and responding to public intoxication in a decriminalised environment. Everyone is working together to ensure that this can be as successful as possible. As I said, it is complex law – we are responding to human behaviour – but we think that this is the best approach to have a health response to people that are intoxicated in public, and where people are committing crimes, police will still be able to respond to disorderly conduct and the like.

There is a lot of work to do, but that work is targeted and the government is committed to assisting all agencies in ensuring that they can best enact this legislation. We will have ongoing evaluation and monitoring of these reforms because we know that there will be instances that we want to learn from to improve the system, and we are not going to shy away from ensuring that we build the system and continue to learn to make sure that these laws can be the best possible.