Thursday, 29 May 2025

Bills

Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Harriet Shing:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (10:11): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025. On the face of it, as we have been consistently briefed on the way through, it is a reasonably non-controversial bill, and I would like to thank my colleague Mr O’Brien, the Shadow Attorney-General, for his work on the bill to look at technical amendments. What I am really disappointed about is the apparent surprise amendment to this bill that has been talked about really in the last 12 hours rather than much earlier in the week. The government is seeking to move an amendment to supposedly make clear that Mike Bush, the new Chief Commissioner of Police, can go about his business as a non-citizen. This is extraordinary – extraordinary because of the amount of times we have heard blistering statements and sanctimony from that side of the chamber about bringing amendments to this house late and not giving the government the opportunity to have a briefing or to review legislation. Yet here we are. We got told late last night, after the house had adjourned, that the government has an urgent amendment. We have had no opportunity to have a briefing, no opportunity to have a shadow cabinet meeting and no opportunity to have a party room meeting where we can make decisions on the government’s amendments, which we have not seen, which we have not had a briefing on, about which we have not been told why this needs to happen and for which we have not been given the legal documents that make clear that this is the actual advice. It is quite clear the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel has been working on something, and usually it would have to work on something for a couple of days. It would have been nice if the Minister for Police and the Leader of the Government in this place had given the opposition a heads-up well before, while the house was still sitting, so that we could review processes in the proper way. We have not been given the clear evidence. Where is the advice to government made available to the opposition to put beyond reasonable doubt that this is the situation they are in?

We know this government has had a pretty sorry saga when it comes to police leadership recently. That has not been a problem of police leadership, it has been a problem of government leadership, whether it be their weakening of our bail laws or whether it be not properly funding our police force and closing down and reducing hours at police stations across the state. It really dates back to COVID and what police had to do during that pandemic, which has ruined the morale of many Victoria Police officers, with one in five Victoria Police members leaving the force, and growing. It has really been a failure of government leadership, and this tops off their failure when it comes to keeping our community safe and making sure we invest in Victoria Police, because they went through an entire recruitment process where they basically sacked the chief commissioner; hired a new chief commissioner, who did not even last 90 days; and then went through a big process to hire a new one, and hired a new one, being Mike Bush, but did not even know at the time that his position was legally uncertain. It was not yesterday they appointed Mike Bush. It has been known for several weeks. Where was the clarification earlier? Where was the ordinary process, where the government would get a brief and then would brief the opposition? The government knew this bill was coming, and it has just tried to tack it on. Also I would state that there is no rush with this anyway because any amendment has to go back to the house. Any amendment has to go back to the Legislative Assembly, which is not sitting for a few weeks.

We have a government that has botched this process, and what I say to the government is: do not ever criticise the opposition for not bringing on things and not letting the government know. We have seen this in many debates where you have had people like Ms Symes, like on 5 March 2024, criticising my colleague Mr Davis for not engaging with the government earlier on amendments, saying they were rushed amendments and the government was not afforded the opportunity to see drafts of proposals and saying it was sloppy work. Well, we do not even know if the government’s work is sloppy, because we have not seen it. We have not seen the advice. You have, supposedly, a police minister who was meant to brief us earlier but did not, and then you have others in the government who are upset because the police minister did not brief us earlier. This is a whole-of-government issue. If your left hand is not talking to your right hand, how can we trust you to govern the people of Victoria and keep us safe? I do not want to hear these mealy-mouthed words, ‘Oh, the process should have been better – we understand this.’ We are talking about the leadership of Victoria Police, and it is government leadership that has failed miserably in both directing our police force in the right manner and showing leadership and investing in our police force so they are not reducing operating hours and shutting down police stations.

We have seen a revolving door of police commissioners. We had a police commissioner basically sacked by the police minister. We had that whole sorry saga where one day they were okay with the police commissioner and the next day they were not. Then we had another police commissioner who did not even last 90 days and then was out the door. He was on holiday, came back and was out the door. Then, ‘This is the search. This is the search that we’re going to do.’ They were very thorough, and they appointed Mike Bush. I am sure he is a good candidate, but they did not even do the work to make sure it was legally sound for him to be appointed police commissioner. Then you came to us as a government late last night, after the Legislative Assembly had adjourned, to tell us you are going to bring forward an amendment of this bill. That is not proper process, and it is emblematic of the way in which this government operates when it comes to keeping our community safe and the way in which this government operates when it comes to the respect it has for Victoria Police.

I am aghast at the way this government has handled this. I am aghast at the way this government has botched this entire affair of rolling police commissioners. But again, it is emblematic of the leadership of this government. You cannot go and blame the police minister, saying, ‘Oh look, his office should have come to us earlier.’ The left hand is not talking to the right hand, and we have seen a really sorry saga play out in this way. I am actually interested in what might have happened if we had had a proper briefing, if we had been told maybe even at the start of the week. Usually we get told earlier – we get a briefing a few weeks before, so that we can put our proposals through our normal process. I would have been very interested to be at a briefing and to see the legal advice that says this is not possible. We had Sir Ken Jones serve in a deputy role I believe. We also had a chief commissioner – yes, this was back at Federation – Hussey Chomley, who was born in Dublin. Perhaps he was not eligible to serve as police commissioner.

What I want to know from the government is: where is the evidence? Where is the advice? Why haven’t we been shown it? Why has it taken so long for the government to take action on this? We have got a pretty non-controversial bill – I do occasionally enjoy these non-controversial bills because they are fixing errors and things like that and you get to have a rant on a few different issues and there are a few jibes back and forth – and this could have been a really non-controversial morning in the Parliament, except the Minister for Police has stuffed up again and rammed this through late at night, blindsiding the opposition and apparently blindsiding his own colleagues. How can anyone trust that the government has the confidence to keep the community safe when the police minister and this government keep botching basic advice like this – things that should have been done earlier, things they should have picked up, like ‘Is it legally possible for us to appoint Mike Bush?’ Those are the kinds of decisions that are flagged in cabinet papers.

I have worked for a federal government before, and this kind of advice is usually picked up. If they are not picked up by the Attorney-General’s department, they are usually picked up by Premier and cabinet. Sometimes they are picked up by other departments looking at that advice, and then they are put as a note in the cabinet submission for when they are signing off on an appointment like for Mike Bush and then the government is able to play it from there. If the legal advice is sound, the cabinet will meet and say, ‘Okay, we’re still keen’ – on Mike Bush – ‘let’s go about preparing legislation to make it absolutely clear that we can appoint him. Let’s go about doing that. Let’s speak to colleagues in the Parliament. Let’s brief the opposition and the crossbench on these processes to really make sure that it is possible for us to make the right call.’ That process has not happened, which leads me to believe that something is really wrong with this government. Something is really wrong with this government when it cannot get the basic processes right.

We have a government that has waxed lyrical lately. Once they saw their opinion polls sliding and once they had federal MPs and others on the phone after doorknocking demanding the government strengthen bail laws, all of a sudden the government was interested in crime, after telling us that we were only after a 3AW interview or Herald Sun headline as Mr Galea said. He said that it is not an issue out there in his community, it is not an issue for the Victorian people, which is in Hansard. The government all of a sudden came out and said, ‘We’re going to get tough on crime. We’re going to introduce the toughest bail laws,’ and crime is an actual problem. The problem for this government is that it weakened the bail laws in March 2023, and as it stands the laws on the statute books at the moment are weaker than what they were in March 2023. We have got aggravated burglaries at record levels, car thefts at record levels, theft from cars at record levels and machete crime, and this government still claims that it has introduced the toughest bail laws. Well, it has not. This is why we are calling on the government to adopt our ‘break bail, face jail’ set of policies to make sure there are serious consequences.

I live in the northern suburbs and go to Northland regularly, and I am usually there on a Sunday. Last time we went to mass at a different time of day, so went on Saturday instead, and on Sunday there was the most horrific of machete brawls with people bloodied and running through the food court with machetes. That could have been prevented had the government, back in 2023, when we moved a bill in this place – I moved a bill in this place – instead of laughing at us, as they did on that side of the chamber, and mocking us, have said, ‘Do you know what? Okay, we’re going to take a look at this. We’re going to pass it.’ But they did not. They did not, because they would rather cynically mock the opposition than listen to their actual community about a real problem that is going on at the moment.

They mocked us when we talked about strengthening the bail laws. They mocked us when we tried to prevent them. I moved an amendment to Ms Symes’s bail reforms, seeking to reverse the changes they were making, which would have meant the removal of the indictable offence whilst on bail so that these offenders do not continually face the lowest test to get bail again. But that is what has occurred under this government. Then we find out that many of the offenders that took part in that wild machete brawl at Northland were on bail. They were on bail, and then many of those that were arrested as a result of the Northland incidents, even the ones that were on bail, are now on bail again. They are on bail again because of this government. This government might find it inconvenient, but my constituents do not.

Gayle Tierney: On a point of order, President, I do not see the need to be screaming and yelling into the microphone. We are sitting here listening quietly. We do not need to be yelled at.

The PRESIDENT: I do not think there have been any previous rulings about how loud someone speaks, so I cannot uphold that point of order.

Evan MULHOLLAND: That is right, President. There has been no precedent in regard to the volume in this chamber, and I would point the minister’s attention to some of her other colleagues’ previous debates in this chamber, where they have significantly raised the volume. I think it is important because it is a topic of concern for my community, and so I am reflecting the will and the sentiment in my community when it comes to crime and when it comes to community safety.

In the same suburb, Reservoir, the former police minister Lisa Neville opened a brand new police station, just in, I believe, 2021. It was a brand new police station, right, and it was billed as a 24-hour police station in all the media releases. In all the documents it was billed as a 24-hour police station, and it had all the facilities and fit-out to be able to operate as a 24-hour police station that would protect the community. It is now an 8-hour police station. It is now a shopfront because this government cannot manage money. You have got them spending millions – it was over $20 million – on a new police station and then reducing the hours, even though it was meant to be a dedicated 24-hour police station. That police station is around the corner from Northland shopping centre, and now they do not have the staff numbers to be able to operate it 24 hours because of this government’s failure of leadership.

We saw that failure of leadership on display with the revolving door of police commissioners that we have seen recently. I think really it is quite a shame because our Victoria Police members deserve our respect. Our Victoria Police members have this side of the chamber’s absolute respect for the work that they do in our community protecting us and risking life and limb to protect Victorians. The work they do is heroic, the work they do is brave, the work they do is commendable and I thank them for their service. Unfortunately they have been let down by a bad government. Their previous no-confidence vote was more of a no-confidence vote in the government. You saw it on their police vans about the perpetrators in their divvy vans being bailed. I speak to my local police both in the Hume region and in the Whittlesea region, and they come up to me – they probably come up to Mr Welch as well – and tell us that they are arresting the same people later that night that they arrested that afternoon. They are sick of it because it is a lot of work to arrest someone and a lot of paperwork, and then they are doing exactly the same thing later that night. Imagine how demoralising that is. Victoria Police members should expect that the law is going to act as a punishment and is going to keep the community safe. They are arresting people who are a threat to the community. They are arresting people to keep the community safe. Then they are out committing the same offences, putting the community in danger, and the same police officers are arresting them again. That would be soul-destroying, demoralising, having to go through this process of continually re-arresting the same people in the same day, but that is what occurs under this government.

There has been a complete failure of leadership when it comes to Victoria Police. You have got a police minister that has gone through multiple police commissioners. You had one that the government had confidence in one day and then did not. You had another that did not last 90 days. Then you went through a search to get a police commissioner and did not even follow the proper process. Surely there should have been some advice to cabinet at the time of the cabinet decision clarifying that there might be an issue with this appointment, but we have not seen any of that. Why did that not occur? Why were we only told late last night, after the Assembly had adjourned, that there is an issue and we are going to need to amend a reasonably uncontroversial bill in order to pass this through?

The government could have gone about it the ordinary way. If the government came to us on Tuesday, even Wednesday morning, we at least would have had the ability to have both a shadow cabinet and a party room while all of our colleagues were here and go through the ordinary process where we could have a briefing. We still have not seen the advice to government and the evidence that this is even necessary, so this is a real sudden drop in standards on the way you deal with and treat your colleagues both in the opposition and on the crossbench. To pull something out of nowhere is quite disrespectful. We hear weasel words that it should have been earlier and they are disappointed, but it shows that the left hand is not talking to the right hand when it comes to this government.

I think that is emblematic of deeper issues and deeper tensions within this government that are yet another example that the community cannot have confidence in the government when it comes to keeping our community safe. You only have to look at what happened last Sunday at Northland to know that the government has lost touch with the community. How many times were we lectured by the other side? I brought a machete ban bill to this place, and we were lectured by the other side, saying this was not an issue and we were just wanting a Herald Sun headline or a 3AW interview, trying to suggest that the Nationals were opposed to it and cynically mocking us. Now all of a sudden Jacinta Allan turns around and says, ‘I’m angry. I’m taking action – Australian-first machete ban!’ What is really disappointing for my community is that nothing ever seems to be a problem for this Premier unless it is a political problem, unless it is a problem of her own leadership or opinion polls. not because it is a problem for the Victorian people. I think the Victorian people have worked this Premier out. Nothing ever seems to be a decision that she has made because she believes in it or the Victorian people want it. It has always been because there are opinion polls or threats to her leadership that mean she has to act, and that is really disappointing. It is also no way to govern. It is no way to govern the people of Victoria when you are jumping from reaction to reaction. We have seen the opposition listen to our communities and introduce bills like our bill to strengthen the bail laws after this government weakened them and our bill to ban machetes as a result of listening to our communities.

My colleagues Michael O’Brien and David Southwick, and Brad Battin before him, have attended countless crime forums in our communities in areas like Kew, Brighton, Craigieburn, Point Cook, Werribee, Ringwood, Warrandyte – all over Victoria – where people are expressing deep concern at the crime crisis that is going on in our communities. This government, at every single turn, has botched attempts to resolve the crime crisis and get on top of it. We continually see police stats at record highs in terms of the crimes that are being committed.

I was going to give a pretty bland speech on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025, but I will not really have time to go through it. Broadly, having looked at the bill, and my colleague the Shadow Attorney-General having been briefed on it, it is a bill that we do not oppose. But we will have to leave our position open ended on the amendment because we have not seen it. We have not been briefed, because this government has botched what it is trying to do. this is the latest failure in a succession of failures when it comes to Victoria Police leadership. Surely on your third time lucky with the police commissioner you would dot the i’s and you would cross the t’s, but that has not happened. That has not happened because of a failure of leadership by this government, where the left hand is not talking to the right hand and it has got it wrong once again. Where was the cabinet submission from the Attorney-General’s department or the Department of Premier and Cabinet along with the appointment to clarify that this might be a problem? The Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel has been working away on an amendment so I assume that you must have known since at least the start of this week. Once you figured out that you might have to add it to this bill, where was the cursory phone call to the opposition just to say, ‘This might be coming up. let’s get a briefing in,’ and everything else? Instead we had an eleventh-hour meeting last night between the police minister an the and the shadow police minister. That is no way to treat colleagues. As I said, there are several examples – both on 5 March 2024 and 8 February 2023 – where my colleague Mr Davis was criticised by the Leader of the Government here in this place about not giving the government the opportunity to look at amendments. It is glaring hypocrisy that we are now told that we should support an amendment that we have not seen and have not had the opportunity to look at. I just find it absolutely extraordinary the way that the opposition have been treated with regard to this. We could pass this bill now – we do not oppose this bill – but the opposition are going to need some time to consider the amendment when we actually see it and get a briefing on it.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (10:41): This bill introduces a range of amendments to justice legislation. In itself each amendment is not hugely significant, but as a whole these amendments demonstrate our government’s commitment to ensuring our laws work as intended and are clear, efficient and fair. I am just going to focus this morning on the particular changes relating to trustee commissions, but there are a number of other amendments.

Section 180 of the Crimes Act 1958 makes it an indictable offence for a trustee to give or receive something of value, or for someone to offer it, when appointing a new trustee in the trustee’s place without the assent of all trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court. Recent decisions of the Supreme Court have raised the possibility that trustees could be in breach of that section, even if there was no corrupt purpose. This provision was first introduced in 1905, and it has remained largely unaltered since. It was introduced in response to the 1905 Commonwealth Royal Commission on the Butter Industry. According to the royal commission’s report, ‘there was a marked unrest in the trade and amongst the dairymen’. There were murmurings of disapproval about the frequent collapse of dairying companies, who then passed their interest in the butter trade on to others, who worked them in their own special interests and not in the interests of producers.

The commission looked into, among other things, the payment of secret commissions, which was apparently rife. Out of these findings came this provision. Shifting back to today and the roles and activities of trustees, they look very different. Trustees manage a huge range of entities. These include commercial trusts, managed investment schemes, discretionary trusts and superannuation funds. Trustees may be responsible for highly complex organisations with millions or billions of dollars in assets and thousands or millions of beneficiaries. In practice, trustees regularly make payments on appointment of trustees. These might include indemnifying outgoing trustees or paying costs of a transaction.

As currently drafted, trustees would have to obtain unanimous consent from the trust’s beneficiaries or the consent of the Supreme Court to avoid committing an offence under section 180. This is clearly unworkable. Most Victorians would be the beneficiary of at least one trust, their superannuation fund. Imagine if we all had to sign a consent form every time our super fund made a payment relating to a change of trustee, and I doubt the Supreme Court would appreciate being flooded with applications for consent for mundane transactions. This bill reframes the provision to make clearer what is being prohibited and when criminal liability might be invoked. It redrafts provisions to make it clearer what the offence is and adds a mental element to make clear that the prosecution must prove that the conduct was done for a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose and with the necessary intent or knowledge. It removes the requirement to obtain the assent of the trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court for the proposed conduct and provides that these amendments apply retrospectively except in limited circumstances. The unusual retrospective application of these reforms is warranted because the reforms clarify the original intent of the trustee’s secret commission offence, which was to prohibit dishonest conduct during the replacement of a trustee.

You can see that this is the logical change that is needed. It has got very deeply historic origins and is a very commonsense tidy up of the act. In addition, before I close, this bill also streamlines criminal proceedings. It postpones summary appeal reforms and also removes a number of redundant provisions. I will conclude my remarks there and say that I heartily commend the bill to the house.

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:46): I am pleased to rise and speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025. As the title suggests, this bill comprises a suite of technical amendments across a range of legislative instruments within the justice portfolio. The bill does not have many headline-grabbing features to be debated in this chamber, but it is important that we do good housekeeping across our laws, and this is clearly a function, for the most part, of that. The first amendment I will address is the repeal of the outdated regulation-making power of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1989. Specifically, the bill eliminates the power that allowed the prescription of municipal areas where police were not required to serve civil process. This is a very, very outdated clause. We are not aware of police actually performing any of these civil functions in any recent memory at all. The opposition sees no reason to object to this amendment.

The bill also addresses an oversight in the Social Services Regulation Act 2021. Under current laws, workers in out-of-home care were inadvertently excluded from protections during the three-year transitional period for the suitability panel. This amendment rectifies that issue by clarifying that exclusion from working in the out-of-home sector will only occur where the suitability panel finds both that the individual engaged in misconduct and that they pose an unacceptable risk to children. It is that dual test that is essential. It ensures procedural fairness while prioritising the protection of vulnerable young people. We have received, in our consultation, no negative feedback regarding this change, and the opposition offers no objection.

Further technical corrections are made to the Worker Screening Act 2020, particularly relating to working with children checks and NDIS worker screening. These changes correct cross-referencing errors. They are somewhat technical in nature, but they are of significant importance. Working with children checks are crucial; I think everyone in this house would concur. We all recognise the necessity of protecting children and vulnerable people from harm, but that protection hinges on the proper functioning of administrative systems – systems that must be accurate and dependable. While I acknowledge that the implementation of working with children checks has not been without some flaws, that is no excuse for ongoing carelessness. Any mistake, however minor it may appear on the surface, risks opening the door to exploitation and harm. This is not an area where we can afford to be lax. I think it is very prudent to have zero tolerance in this area. I urge the government to continue working to maintain and improve these systems; children deserve nothing less.

The bill also proposes amendments to improve the operation of the case management system – the CMS – in the Magistrates’ Court. IT projects are fraught, and this is no different to many other IT projects. There has been a difficult path, and there are many magistrates who are still not happy with the full operation of the system, but we must press on. These amendments will enable the court to expand the use of the CMS in the criminal jurisdiction. The amendments themselves are sensible. However, I raise the concern about the government’s record in delivering IT projects and delivering productivity within government services and other services in general. The CMS has become one of those very familiar tales of a government and state technology stuff-up frankly – delayed for years, over budget and still failing to deliver all the benefits as promised. And it is not a nuisance; it is a drain on resources, it hampers efficiency and it reflects poorly on governments. Government IT projects, especially those in critical sectors like justice, must be managed competently, and that means adequate planning, budgeting and above all accountability. These particular amendments may be technical, but they exist in the context of a broader systemic failure, and that context cannot be ignored.

Turning now to more substantive matters, the bill amends section 180 of the Crimes Act 1958, which currently criminalises the offering or receiving of secret commissions in the appointment of trustees. As it stands, the provision does not require that the conduct be undertaken with a dishonest or corrupt purpose. That means individuals could be potentially targeted even when their conduct was in good faith and without any ill intent. This bill narrows the offence by introducing the requirement that the conduct be undertaken with a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose. That is a significant and in our view reasonable change. The law should target the actual wrongdoing, not technical breaches undertaken without malice or deception. And I think in those cases, that is where the law can be weaponised.

The second part of the amendment removes the current requirement for the assent of beneficiaries or the Supreme Court in relation to these appointments. Again, given the new requirements for corrupt purpose, this adjustment seems measured and fair. What makes the particular amendment unique is the fact that the bill also introduces new section 640 to the Crimes Act, which makes these changes retrospective to 1 April 1959. I have lots of reservations about any law being retrospective. Generally you are treading dangerous ground, and certainly dangerous ground in terms of basic fairness and due process in that case. Again, in this particular case we do not have an explicit objection given the intention is to prevent the law being weaponised against people who have not acted in bad faith or have not acted with corrupt purpose. The Attorney-General’s office did explain the rationale for the date. It was when the original offence under section 180 was first introduced. We can go on there, but I will not.

The other particular area on this is the delay in the commencement of abolishing de novo hearings in the County Court, and that delay, if we go through the history of it, was first proposed in 2019 for implementation by 2021. At that point it was then deferred to 2023, and now it is deferred further to July 2025. The explanation throughout that period has been that it takes time, cost and complexity to implement. But I struggle to understand that in two senses. One is it is six years since 2019: how much time, cost and complexity can there be in six years to implement it? And at the same time, the government is cutting the budget of the very services that need to implement it. In fact we have had $19.1 million cut from the current year, 2024–25, and we have got $58 million being cut in the 2027–‍28 year. If on the one hand we are saying that the delay is due to a lack of resources or inability to implement it but at the same time we are cutting the budget, these two things seem very much at odds. The words are there, but is the genuine intent there? It seems very strange. These cuts are not trivial. When we are in the middle of a crime crisis, when the confidence of the community is shaken, you would think we would be doubling down and bringing things forward, not pushing them back further and further.

In terms of the amendment – and Mr Mulholland spoke at length about the failure of proper process in having us consider the amendment – I would like to offer a perspective that is from outside the political bubble and just consider the opinion of the person in the street who would hear this. Here we have had a carousel of police commissioners. We have had extreme doubt sown into the minds of the community at a time when their confidence in police is low and when their lived experience in the community is one of fear. To have a new uncertainty thrown into it – I think the community would have every right to be exasperated, and not just exasperated but deeply disappointed and have their confidence further dented.

Consider this: it did not have to happen this way. An appointment like this is not meant to be political. An appointment like this is a very, very important role. Therefore if it has an amendment that speaks to this role, it is even more beholden on the government to consult quietly and sensibly with the opposition so that we could also add maturity to the process and reassure the community that nothing is amiss here. It seems absolutely extraordinary that after you have gone through the due diligence process of appointing a commissioner, you suddenly come up with a question over their eligibility and then treat the issue without the gravity it deserves. It is very, very poor, and in the eyes of the community the way this will be interpreted will be very negative for our police. It is a very, very bad start for what we would all hope would be a new period.

Again it is tangential, but it is an appropriate analogy or cross-example. It is sort of the same as when for three years running we have had problems with VCE exams. We were given the big statement: ‘We’re going to rectify it now. It’s all going to be okay. You can be confident in the process going forward’, but there was a problem the next year. ‘No, no, no, this time we’ve got it right’ and then again there was a problem. The confidence of the community in education was completely unsettled by this. It is the same with the machetes and saying, ‘Oh, look, we’ve made the big statement. We’re going to ban the machetes. We’ve come around to your point of view. We’re finally listening. Oh, but hang on, it can’t be until September. We’ll get them out of the shops, but it’ll be on Wednesday, so we’ll give everyone time to buy some on sale.’ I could go on. There are any number of examples where the government is basically a week late and a dollar short on what it plans to do, and it undermines the community’s confidence in these very important institutions that are not meant to be political.

As Mr Mulholland said, we reserve our position on the amendment because we have not even seen it. We do not even know what the question of eligibility may be. We do not know what it is. We do not know why it has suddenly come up now and not for any previous appointment. What have they learned? It has been treated flippantly in respect to a role that should not be treated flippantly. We do not oppose the bill – there is good housekeeping in the bill – but where it really, really matters now is in the amendment, and we have not even seen it, which I think is extremely poor. With that I end my remarks to the house.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:00): I rise to make some comments on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2024. Many aspects of this bill are, as other speakers have referenced, relatively minor but nevertheless important to ensure the continued effective operation of our legislation. As is customarily the case, from time to time in this chamber we do have bills that are of this nature and make relatively minor technical changes. I wish to acknowledge the work of both the Attorney-General and her office, who have worked thoroughly and comprehensively on the aspects of this bill and I know have consulted widely and appropriately.

This bill will implement some very time-critical reforms to achieve administrative efficiencies and correct technical errors in legislation. One of the key measures is to amend the Crimes Act 1958 to narrow the trustee secret commission offence so that it only prohibits dishonest or otherwise corrupt conduct. It will amend the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Act 2019 to extend the default commencement date of summary appeal reforms by three years from 1 July 2025 to 1 July 2028 to allow additional time for implementation planning. It will amend the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 and the Sentencing Act 1991 to allow the Magistrates’ Court to achieve efficiencies following investments in its case management system. It will correct section reference errors in the Worker Screening Act 2020. It will amend the Social Services Regulation Act 2021 to rectify an unintended deemed exclusion for out of home care workers. It will amend the Magistrates Court Act 1989 to remove an obsolete regulation-making power to prescribe areas where police officers are not required to serve civil process.

In terms of the Crimes Act 1959, this bill will repeal section 180, which relates to secret commissions for trustees. The changes break the old offence down into five discrete, separate offences to make them clearer and to narrow their scope to only capture that conduct which is done with a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose. It will remove the requirement to obtain assent from trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court for the proposed conduct, which will streamline routine transactions. Removing the requirement to seek assent has appropriate safeguards, as neither trust beneficiaries nor the Supreme Court would assent to conduct done for a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose. These reforms, as has been noted, will in some cases apply retrospectively, but that retrospectivity will not apply in some other limited circumstances.

I do take on board the comments of Mr Welch and the general disposition that we all have against retrospective legislation, but I note that the function of the amendments in this particular case is to clarify what was already intended as part of the original legislation. Recent Supreme Court decisions have demonstrated that the current offence may capture routine, good faith and standard transactions which are associated with the replacement of a trustee. Without these reforms we run the risk that applications to the Supreme Court will increase for routine matters to ensure that trustees avoid criminal liability, which can be costly, has an administrative burden, causes delays and adds to the court’s workload. I note that these changes will apply to an equivalent provision in New South Wales legislation. This provision was recently amended to require the conduct was done corruptly in that state and to remove the requirement to obtain the assent of trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court.

There are also some amendments, as others have discussed, to the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 and to the Sentencing Act 1991, which will allow the Magistrates’ Court to maximise and fully utilise the benefits of its updated case management system and to then apply those efficiencies and timesavings into a more efficient process. The bill will also amend the Worker Screening Act 2020 by correcting section reference errors relating to administrative processes and required definitions for working with children checks and NDIS checks. We know when it comes to these areas, especially working with children checks, how important they are and what an important role they play in keeping our communities safe.

There are a number of errors that this bill will correct, making some minor changes to the Magistrates’ Court Act, as well as amendments to the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Act 2019, as I mentioned, which will enable the court system to roll out these measures in a way that will not impact on the services that they provide. It will not impact on the timeframes within which they are able to provide those services to the community and will be very valuable indeed. It builds off our continued large investment into the court system. With those remarks, I commend the bill to the house.

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (11:06): I rise to speak to the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025. Others have laid out what the bill entails in relation to why the bill has been brought before the house. The reforms in this bill are mostly minor and administrative, making administrative changes, with one exception, and that is the further delay to the Magistrates’ Court criminal appeal processes.

Changes to the Crimes Act 1958 are being made to clarify the trustee secret commission offence in response to recent court decisions. In relation to a lot of these issues the bill amends the Crimes Act, which currently makes it an indictable offence for a person to offer or give to another, or for that other person to solicit or receive, any valuable consideration as an inducement or reward for appointing or otherwise authorising a person to be appointed as a trustee or to act in their place as a trustee without the assent of the persons beneficially entitled to the estate or the Supreme Court of Victoria. The bill narrows the offence by requiring that relevant conduct be done with a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose, and I find that line pretty curious coming from this government, given its track record of allowing corruption to thrive in this state within so many elements that we are seeing. It is Victorians who are paying the massive price for that ongoing corruption that has been exposed in recent times, especially around the Big Build and the issue around taxpayers having to foot the bill because of that corruption and rorting. But to get back to this bill, it also removes the requirement for the consent of beneficiaries or the Supreme Court.

There are another few elements to this bill, but I do want to make a couple of points around what has been already raised by my colleague Mr Mulholland in his contribution around the government’s late amendments that have come before us. It is just extraordinary that the government are so chaotic and so dysfunctional that they do not know what they are doing and are bringing the amendments at this late hour when it is only the Legislative Council that is sitting. We do not have our colleagues here. We have not had any proper time to be able to consider the government’s amendments. It just highlights the dysfunction and the chaotic nature of how policy is being formulated and how it is being legislated. To have no ability for the opposition to have due consideration on an issue like this, I think is extremely concerning, and it should be concerning.

What we are seeing with this government with the police is a revolving door of police commissioners who are going in and coming out. It is no different to Ambulance Victoria with its revolving door of appointments in these very important positions. I raise Ambulance Victoria in the context of this bill with what we are relating and the government’s amendments because these two areas of emergency services are incredibly important for Victorians. We know that crime is out of control in this state. We are being regarded as the crime capital of the country, which is just the most appalling title to have. But it is a fair one because of what is happening. We have a Premier who goes out and lies to the people. Look at the latest issue around the machete ban. She goes on public radio a week before she introduces this ban and says there will be no ban, there are no changes, and is steadfast in that position that she takes. She tells Victorians that in the public domain, and then a few days later completely backflips and tries to champion that she is some sort of incredible reformist, that Victoria is the first state to ban machetes. I mean, it is absolutely comical. I wish Yes Minister was still running because they would take so many episodes from this government and have a television episode every single week, because that is another Yes Minister moment if ever there was one. Oh, my God.

And while I am on crime, can I just say that in my area of Southern Metropolitan Region, in Glen Eira, for instance, which takes in the electorate of Bentleigh, from 2023–24 the stats are aggravated burglaries are up by 18 per cent, car theft is up by 31 per cent and theft from retail stores is up by 12 per cent. I mean, this is just a snapshot of what is happening right across our city and right across our state. These statistics are damning, but more than that, they are concerning for everyday Victorians who are running their businesses, who are being threatened by these thugs and crims and crooks and these young people. Many of them are in state care, but the minister refuses to tell the Victorian public how many of these vulnerable children are being caught up in these horrendous crimes, because the government is doing the worst job possible for some of these kids. I am reminded of years ago, of a former commissioner and the bad parent that the state is. Well, if ever there was one, there is one now. It is this government being a bad parent for these very vulnerable kids who are doing these heinous and shocking crimes.

But not just those – we have got organised crime gangs that are going around bombing tobacco stores. We have seen that in Bentleigh. We have seen it in Prahran. We have seen it right across the city, as I say, this ongoing out-of-control lawlessness in this state. And we are a lawless state because we have not had a government that has stood up to the issues that have been running not just in recent months, they have been running for many years. The gangs that we see today – the government finally concedes that we have a problem with groups of people that are gangs. Years ago when we used to raise it in this house it was, ‘There are no such thing as gangs. They’re just groups of affiliated young people.’ That is what the government called them. I mean, it is just astounding. How ridiculous and absurd that they just turned a blind eye to what was happening. And now we have this situation where we have this monumental problem around crime, so I say to the government in relation to their amendments that it is not the police’s fault that the community does not feel safe. It is not the police’s fault that the community is not safe. It is this Labor government that has led us to this position, and I think many Victorians are aware of it. They speak out openly about their concerns on crime. It is why you get this kneejerk reaction from the Premier and her team and her ministers. It is why you have her saying defiantly one thing on Melbourne radio on a Wednesday morning and then on the following Monday a couple of days later she completely backflips. I mean, it is just laughable, but it is not laughable – it is a really serious issue.

I say again that I commend the police’s efforts, given the very difficult circumstances that they are under. I have said before in this place that I was a victim less than 18 months ago from somebody trying to get into my home, the terrifying aspect of that, and I was lucky he did not get in. I do not know what could have happened should that have occurred. And I have friends who in recent weeks have had knives put to their stomach – very violent home invasions. A friend is still seeking counselling for the trauma that she was subjected to because of a violent aggravated burglary, and she has spoken out about it. I met with her a few weeks ago, and she said to me, ‘I’m still struggling to go to sleep at night. We’ve moved out of our home into my father-in-law’s because I don’t feel safe in my home.’ No-one should have to feel that way. No-one should have to worry about, ‘Am I going to be a victim again?’ And I know that feeling, because that is how I feel many, many nights when I am woken. And as I said, I am a lucky one; they did not get in. I do not know what may have happened if they had. The police told me on the night – they were very, very concerned – that this is a revolving door that they are fighting with and they are doing everything they can to bring it into some order. I think, like other Victorians, they feel very failed by this government.

I say to the Leader of the Government: don’t you ever lecture the opposition around community safety or bringing amendments to this house when you disgracefully and, quite seriously, show your true form in ramming stuff through, with no proper consideration and no ability to ask questions before we come in here and debate. This shows the chaos of a government that has lost control of crime and lost control of the justice system – and quite frankly, given all of those serious concerns, it is Victorians who are most definitely paying the price.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (11:18): I rise to make a contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025. This bill makes amendments to a series of bills, which will implement some time-critical reforms as well as reforms to achieve greater administrative efficiencies and correct technical errors in legislation as it currently stands. It amends the Crimes Act 1958, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Act 2019, the Criminal Procedure Act 2009, the Sentencing Act 1991, the Worker Screening Act 2020, the Social Services Regulation Act 2021 and the Magistrates’ Court Act 1989. Given this bill aims to provide amendments around six pieces of legislation that are extensive and comprehensive in nature, I would like to take the opportunity to explain the complexities of the bill.

First, this bill will make amendments to the Crimes Act 1958, which move to replace section 180 of the act relating to secret commissions for trustees. The primary challenge is to break the old offence down into five separate offences in order to make them clear and narrow them down to only capture conduct with a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose. The change also removes the requirement to obtain assent of trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court of Victoria for a proposed conduct. This ought to help with streamlining routine transactions rather than backing up a system with more administrative burden. Removing the requirement to seek assent has appropriate safeguards, as neither trust beneficiaries nor the Supreme Court would have assented to conduct done for a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose. These reforms will also be applying retrospectively, except in limited circumstances. This is because the reforms clarify the original intent of the trustee secret commission offence prohibiting dishonest conduct during the replacement of a trustee. It is more so a technical correction for what should be a straightforward interpretation of the legislation otherwise.

Recent decisions made by the Supreme Court have demonstrated that the current offence may capture routine or otherwise good faith standard transactions associated with the replacement of a trustee. These reforms restore the original legislative intent for these matters. Without the amendments to the Crimes Act here, there is a risk that applications to the Supreme Court will increase for routine matters and ensure trustees avoid criminal liability. That can be costly and brings with it a significant administrative burden, causing compounding delays and adding to the court’s workload even more. This amendment should clarify the original intent in a more definitive manner for legal interpretation. It should bring with it more efficient and streamlined processes without the need for assent from trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court. The changes will also align with an equivalent provision in New South Wales. That provision was also recently amended to require that the conduct was done corruptly and to remove the requirement to obtain the assent of the trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court – meaning the similar situation in New South Wales has been amended in a similar manner, correcting the same technical error.

This bill also amends the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 and the Sentencing Act 1991. The bill will be amending the Criminal Procedure Act and Sentencing Act to remove outdated requirements for criminal proceedings in legislation, which can include things such as requirements for making certain applications in person or by post. This will improve administrative efficiencies and reduce the burden on the Magistrates’ Court. The changes here will allow the court to expand its case management system to automate various high-volume administrative functions in criminal proceedings, such as filing applications and documents. Administrative burden can cause and is causing serious strain on our legal system, and this amendment will take that pressure off. We must make sure that the courts are being enabled to do their job, and if they are being slowed down by administrative work, then it is on us in this place to do what we can to ensure that we are helping them to streamline the process. This would then enhance the administrative functioning of the criminal jurisdiction of the Magistrates’ Court, which has a significant volume of matters to sort through and deal with.

There are a series of changes in the Magistrates’ Court Act 1989 contained within this bill. These are chiefly amendments of a technical aspect, which will help clarify civil processes under this act. This means that they are not necessarily the most exciting reforms to ever make their way through this chamber, but that does not take away from their importance. Repealing the relevant section of the Magistrates’ Court Act, as done by this bill, removes a redundant regulation-making power that basically states that the Governor in Council may make regulations when it concerns municipal districts or subdivisions of municipal districts in areas in which police officers are not required to serve civil process. If you inspect the legislation closely and compare it to the real world, you will notice that police do not actually serve civil process under this Magistrates’ Court Act, so this section is redundant. For that reason this amendment will repeal that relevant section to clarify that police do not serve civil process under the act. If it was not repealed, the Governor in Council would need to make regulations clarifying that police do not need to serve civil process, which would effectively be a longer and roundabout way of achieving the same thing, which could be more succinctly and decisively resolved with this bill.

This bill also amends the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Act 2019. The bill will postpone the commencement of the summary appeal reforms contained in the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Act 2019. It will shift the date of commencement from 5 July 2025, as it currently stands, to 1 July 2028. With most changes in the justice system and the broader legal profession, we aim to stage a delayed or gradual introduction of new legislation or provisions in order to give the profession time to adapt and prepare in order to effectively execute them once in effect. This is because no system can work without the people inside it, and this is why these reforms will not happen overnight. They have been implemented gradually so that we do not overwhelm the system and so that legal professionals have time to adjust. We always need to, and should, give the justice system time to expand, adapt and prepare itself for the entry of new laws like this. With that, I will conclude my remarks and commend the bill to the house.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:24): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025, a bill that makes a number of changes to various acts to further support the justice system, including narrowing the trustee secret commission offence under the Crimes Act 1958 to only capture dishonest and otherwise corrupt conduct; to defer commencement of the summary appeal reforms; to improve the operation of the case management system in the Magistrates’ Court; to correct technical errors in the Worker Screening. Act 2020; to rectify an unintentional deemed exclusion for out-of-home-care workers in the Social Services Regulation Act 2021; and to remove an obsolete regulation-making power from the Magistrates’ Court Act 1989, where police officers are no longer required to serve civil processes.

The bill is obviously an amendment bill that deals with a range of things. The government from time to time is required, due to the practical application of previous legislation and how it evolves, how it works in practice and what we learn from the practical application of legislation, to make amendments and tweaks to the system. But also, particularly in the justice space, we do find from time to time that the courts interpret law in various ways, whether that be the law as written or the common law. That has implications for the continued operation of various parts of various legislation, and therefore bills like this are a necessary part of governing to make sure that we have got laws operating as intended.

This bill makes amendments to the Crimes Act to respond to some recent decisions of the Supreme Court in the case of the trustee secret commissions offence. The consequence of the Supreme Court decisions that were handed down in 2023 in the Diversa and Guild cases is that there may be routine, good faith and standard transactions associated with the replacement of a trustee caught up in the new interpretations that the Supreme Court decision has consequences for, and those actions, which would be good faith and standard transactions, may attract a penalty as a result. That is obviously not something that was intended when those provisions were put in place. This legislation clarifies that there is not an intention to include legitimate transactions in this space for the purposes of section 180 of the Crimes Act.

The bill replaces section 180 of the act and makes some changes. The consequence of this is to avoid the inclusion of transactions that might include the payment of indemnities in favour of transactional costs and expenses to an outgoing trustee. The new provision will create five specific offences in total, in each adding a clause that the actions must not be for a dishonest or otherwise corrupt purpose, ensuring that only legitimate transactions are captured by the law. Without these reforms, applications to the Supreme Court for assent to routine transactions are likely to increase as trustees and their representatives become aware of the two cases I mentioned earlier. It is imposing a significant burden on trustees and beneficiaries in the Supreme Court. What these changes do is also amend the act to remove the requirement to obtain the assent of trust beneficiaries or the Supreme Court for the proposed conduct. Removing this requirement to seek assent has appropriate safeguards, as neither the beneficiaries nor the Supreme Court would assent to conduct done for a dishonest and otherwise corrupt purpose, and therefore this requirement is unnecessary. The reforms will apply retrospectively except in limited circumstances.

There are other provisions of the bill amending the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 and the Sentencing Act 1991 to modernise the systems of the courts so that they can operate more efficiently, amending the Criminal Procedure Act and the Sentencing Act to remove outdated requirements for criminal proceedings and legislation, and as such, requirements for making certain applications in person or by post would improve the administrative efficiency and reduce the burden on the Magistrates’ Court. These amendments will allow the court greater flexibility to carry out a range of high-volume administrative tasks more efficiently for criminal proceedings. In the immediate term, the amendments will enable the court to roll out the case management system in its criminal jurisdiction, generating greater efficiency. The case management system for the Magistrates’ Court is an important update to how the legal system works, leading to better experiences for people engaging in the legal system. It will replace the legacy information technology systems such as Courtlink and enhance the access to justice and improved processes to strengthen information sharing.

I have spoken a lot in the past in this chamber about the importance of information sharing in the criminal justice context. There are certainly elements of the old information technology systems that were being used in the Magistrates’ Court that impeded those activities in the past. Those deficiencies were identified in many prior fora, including in the Royal Commission into Family Violence. The case management system commenced operation in the Magistrates’ Court civil jurisdiction in October 2022 and the Children’s Court child protection jurisdiction in October 2023, and a further rollout of the case management system for criminal law and intervention order matters is expected in 2025. I think this is going to make a significant and very positive difference to the operations of the court and will bring benefits to the administration of justice more broadly in the state.

The bill is also making some technical amendments to the Worker Screening Act to correct section reference errors relating to administrative processes and required definitions for working with children checks and NDIS checks. The changes will not operationally affect the sections but correct minor drafting oversights. The bill also proposes to repeal a certain section of the Social Services Regulation Act to ensure that out-of-home care workers cannot be subject to an exclusion decision under the workers and carers exclusion scheme unless they both engage in misconduct and pose an unacceptable risk of harm to children and young people. A range of very important amendments are both responding to the operation of schemes to improve the operation of the Magistrates’ Court and responding to decisions of the Supreme Court. These are important changes, and I commend the bill to the house.

Sitting suspended 11:32 am until 11:43 am.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:43): I move:

That debate on this bill be adjourned until later this day.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until later this day.