Thursday, 31 July 2025

 Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:29): (1801) I do not really want to moan and bitch and complain –

Michael Galea: I was nice to you.

Nick McGOWAN: Exactly. But I do have a serious matter, and I want to talk about crime. I do not like to talk about crime and be hysterical about it, because I think no matter which side of politics you are on, there is always that temptation when you are in opposition or when you are in government, and I do not want to play politics with crime, because I think genuinely increasingly we are seeing a number of patterns emerging within our community. One that perhaps concerns me most is this pattern of offenders committing crimes against people in their homes. I think that is really what is affecting Victorians perhaps the most at the moment, to be quite frank. There are lots of crimes that are committed, but those that occur in our own homes are particularly chilling because until it occurs to us we think it will not happen to us. The truth is it is increasingly happening to more and more. Wherever we find the solution, we all have to work together to make sure that these things stop, because no-one should be in their own home and feel unsafe. It is particularly concerning for women and it is particularly concerning for young people, but it is particularly concerning for old people and senior citizens as well.

This all leads me invariably to the point of my question tonight, and that is for the Minister for Police, Mr Carbines in the other place, to provide an update. I asked a question at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee in respect of the uniformed police officers in my local constituency, specifically in the areas of Box Hill, Forest Hill and Ringwood. At the time the information that I was provided with was that at Box Hill there were eight positions that were vacant. That is a lot of police officers that we do not have. One of those positions, I was advised at the time, had been filled but had not yet commenced. In Forest Hill there were nine positions that were vacant. Of those nine, three positions had been filled, but they had not at that point yet commenced either. In Ringwood there were 10 positions – that is 10 police officers and 10 vacancies – of which four positions, I was advised, had been filled and were due to commence but had not commenced. So in total there were 27 vacancies across the district I represent. That, I would propose to anyone, is way, way too many. Combine that with the fact that our police officers as they serve today – last night I was at Box Hill town hall at a community safety forum conducted by the police – are having to deal with antiquated IT systems, which the Chief Commissioner of Police himself says are 10 years behind any other jurisdiction in the country. It is simply not good enough. We all have to lift our game. I would appreciate from the minister an update on the figures for each one of those three police stations: Box Hill, Forest Hill and Ringwood.