Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Community safety

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (19:26): (1647) My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Police. We have seen in recent days an extraordinary turnaround by the Premier of this state and the government in terms of banning machete sales. We know what happened at Northland on the weekend, and I could not think of something more frightening than being out shopping with your family and having very threatening, dangerous individuals with machetes moving around a shopping centre – I mean, nothing could be worse – but this government has had four opportunities over nearly as many years to get on and actually ban the sale of machetes, and the government would not do it; in fact it mocked the opposition repeatedly. It basically carried on as though it was a terrible thing that we were pushing for, to have machete sales without a proper usage banned in Victoria. We pushed very strongly, and the state government, the Premier, the Minister for Police and the whole lot of them all pushed back the other way. I say that there could have been a different outcome on this if people had been prepared to listen and to engage. And now suddenly it is possible. It is possible to ban them and to do it quickly – to do it within days, within a day or two, within 40 hours. Suddenly there is this amazing change from the Premier. Instead of saying, ‘We could do it earlier,’ she would not say that.

But now there is still an outstanding matter. The outstanding matter relates to how the government is going to take the next step. It says only in September will it take the next step. I say that the Premier and the police minister should act earlier. They should bring these matters forward. There is no reason why they cannot act to clean up these failures on regulation of machetes in this state. The September date is too far away. We have heard once from the Premier that she cannot do it quickly, but it is frankly an untruth; it is a lie, and she should get on. My question today is to say to the Premier and the police minister: get on and take the next steps with machetes as outlined. Do not let it dither; do not let it delay – finally act. We cannot allow this risk for the community to continue, as we saw. We do not want any more Northlands.