Wednesday, 5 February 2025

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (18:43): (1380) My matter tonight for the adjournment is for the attention of the Minister for Police, and it concerns the serious and worsening situation of crime in the inner east, in particular in and around the Prahran electorate. We know that tragically at 8 am this morning on the corner of Chapel Street and Malvern Road, a middle-aged man was stabbed in the lower body repeatedly. He has obviously been taken to hospital, and you can only hope and pray that he is all right. This crime occurred in front of a tobacconist, but this is on the back of a series of similar incidents, serious incidents involving machetes, involving violence of various types. We know that the crime numbers in the Prahran area have gone up massively. Residential burglaries are up 39 per cent, motor vehicle theft is up 68 per cent and there are massive increases in retail theft in the Windsor area of the region.

What is required now is for the Minister for Police to ensure that Victoria Police has the resources to begin urgent crisis patrols. We need crisis patrols to actually ensure that there is real pushback, that there is real visibility of police. We need to make sure that these incidents stop. It is no longer good enough for the minister and for the government to look the other way. They have got to stop these violent incidents. It is just simply unacceptable.

People forget that the first and most basic duty of governments is to guarantee the safety of the community. People have every right to feel safe in their home, in the street, in their business, as they go about their shopping or whatever other activity they are doing during the course of their daily life. We need those urgent crisis patrols up and down the area to make sure that these criminals see the presence of the police, so that they can see that there is going to be an intervention if they undertake one of these extraordinary incidents.

I can only say that nobody wanted to see this happen – nobody wants to see the terrible outcomes that we have had in this recent period – but it has to stop, and the government has got to turn around and intervene. They have got to make sure that Victorians are safe, and they have got to make sure that people in my electorate and Ms Crozier’s electorate are safe and that these crisis patrols are urgently brought into action.