Thursday, 14 August 2025

Bills

Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Harriet Shing:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (10:05): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. This is essentially the legislation enabling the practice of ‘post and boast’ to become a crime. The bill inserts division 2E ‘Performance crime’ into the Crimes Act 1958. There is a broad definition of what is considered ‘material’ in new section 195S. It includes any film, audio, photograph, printed matter, image, computer game or text or any electronic material, including data from which text, images or sound could be generated or any other thing of any kind, basically. So this essentially covers anything in hard copy, electronic data such as sound, any moving or stagnant images, associated commentary and information in text format, and there is the ‘everything else’ cover.

The definition of ‘publish’ is in new section 195T, and it is fairly broad. It includes actions such as posting online and in hard copy, but it excludes a situation where a person makes material available only to one person. I just make that essentially clear: this excludes when you publish material to just one person, so sharing this with one person does not constitute a crime under these proposals.

New section 195U outlines what a relevant offence is, and in terms of posting and boasting, this list includes things like theft, theft of a motor vehicle, robbery and armed robbery, burglary and aggravated burglary, home invasion and aggravated home invasion, affray and violent disorder, and it also includes inciting or attempting to incite those above offences as well.

New section 195V outlines the elements of summary offences. Those elements are:

A person must not –

(a) publish or cause to be published material that depicts, describes or otherwise indicates the commission of a relevant offence by the person; and

(b) undertake or cause that publication with the intention of attracting attention to the commission of that offence.

The penalty is level 7 imprisonment, which is a maximum of two years. New section 195W outlines the process for issuing a warrant in respect of these offences.

We think that the bill is a weak attempt to prescribe consequences for those who post and boast. It could be a lot stronger. The reason why we say this is because it not only applies to a very limited number of offences, it excludes some offences which are often posted and boasted about in public, and we have seen many examples in the community of that, including arson, assault and dangerous driving. I am sure in news clippings we have all seen examples where there is dangerous driving and hooning and it is being filmed. Those sorts of actions are not covered under this. Anyone can go around driving dangerously and filming it, and they are not covered by this, so they can post and boast as much as they like – it is not a criminal offence at all. In other jurisdictions, such as Queensland, anybody posting relevant material to glorify criminal conduct can be charged, regardless of whether they actually committed the offence that is being posted and boasted about.

This is a serious flaw in the legislation. If the aim of the legislation is to prevent people from glorifying acts of crime, then you would have to ask the question: why doesn’t it apply to anyone filming the crime? Again, we have seen many different examples of where someone may not necessarily be a participant in a crime but is filming it. Under these provisions they are not covered. If we think about something like an armed robbery – imagine a group of people undertaking this crime; it is usually not just one person, it is a number of people – it might be the case that the person who physically undertakes the armed robbery is not capable of literally filming themselves undertaking this offence. I do not understand anyone who literally wants to break into a house while they are live streaming it on a streaming service like Facebook or something like that; that is not usually how it works. So you can imagine a situation where someone is literally breaking into a property and some other person who may not be undertaking that crime – they may be standing somewhere in the background – might be filming this. But technically they are not actually part of the crime, are they? They are not the ones breaking in and they are not ones undertaking the crime. So it stands to reason that they would not be caught up in these provisions as they are written in front of us. It would only be a crime if the person undertaking the activity actually filmed it themselves. Again, there are a number of different crimes where I do not know why a criminal would actually do that, except in very limited circumstances.

A real-life example of this actually happened only a week or so ago, when a group of motorcycle hoons using many of the main roads around Melbourne, including CityLink, turned it basically into an illegal speedway, putting lives at risk when they were doing tricks on the speedway. Police allege the group used products on their boots to throw up sparks on the road, which obstructed the view of other motorists, and of course it is not really good for road safety or anything like that. They also covered their number plates to avoid detection – all for cheap likes on social media.

Additionally, there is nothing in the legislation that requires any penalty for the offence in addition to the penalty for the underlying offence. This effectively means that the sentence for the underlying offence and the offence for posting and boasting can be served alongside each other concurrently. You have got to think about that: what is the purpose of going through this if you can serve an offence concurrently? Is there really a penalty for this, or is it just a matter of saying, ‘We want to make it a crime, but it’s not really going to have that much of an impact’? So why create a set of circumstances where a crime can be committed but the ability to have the post-and-boast crime served alongside the substantive crime does not actually exist? It really flies in the face of encouraging consequences for actions and ensuring people take their responsibility seriously, because if there are effectively no consequences for posting and boasting, then what is the deterrent? Why would people not post and boast if they knew that whatever crime they were found guilty of was just going to be served concurrently? In effect you serve the same time as the substantive crime; what is the disincentive there to post and boast?

I guess we also need to think about what message this is sending to the community. If you will not have extra time added on to the substantive sentence because someone posts and boasts about it, what message are we sending to young people in the community? Are we saying it is okay to post and boast? Are we saying, ‘Please don’t do it, but there are not going to be any consequences for doing it’? It just seems like we are not really putting the teeth into this that there need to be.

We do have amendments to this bill which we believe will strengthen the bill. We will not be opposing the legislation. I ask that those amendments be circulated now, please. The amendments to the bill, which we believe will strengthen the bill, include the following – essentially there are three aspects to it. The first one is to add the following to relevant offences under the legislation. The first one is ‘causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence’. The second is ‘causing injury recklessly in circumstances of gross violence’. Assault is included, destroying or damaging property is included and dangerous driving is included. We believe that those are important because those are quite often the circumstances where we see posts-and-boast materials happening. For example, with dangerous driving, which I just cited before, you see it all the time online where people are driving crazily in the streets of Melbourne and in regional Victoria as well. We want to include that in here to make sure it is captured in the legislation. We do not want to incentivise people putting risk on our roads. I think that is going to be really important. Safety here has to be first.

The second change we want to make is we want to delete the provisions relating to the publication of material to only one person – if you put it to just one person, that is not considered publication. This essentially means that even if you do share it with just one person, that should be captured under these laws, and they would therefore be guilty of a performance crime.

Thirdly, we also want to ensure that any sentence imposed for the performance crime must be served cumulatively, not concurrently. This will ensure that any punishment for a performance crime is in addition to the underlying offence and will not be served alongside it, ensuring that there is an actual consequence for actions.

Before I finish I just want to touch on the impact on victims of crime. Time and time again we see the criminal justice system lacking a focus on victims and their support. In this particular circumstance, with this bill we are debating today, the government is effectively allowing someone not involved in a crime to film a crime and post it online and there is no consequence. The reason I say that is, again, it is in here: you are only covered by this if you are filming or posting photos of your crime if you are the one undertaking that crime. Anyone else – it could be a bystander or someone standing to the side of the crime watching it happening – is not captured. This legislation could almost facilitate a situation where you have got young people standing around and one person commits the crime and everyone else films it. Everyone else who is filming it and posts it online is not guilty of a crime at all. As I said, if we are really trying to disincentivise posting and boasting, they should all be captured in that. So it is a serious gap.

I do want to talk about the mental health ramifications for people that are victims of crime as well, because they are quite often asked to relive traumatic experiences. I am talking about things like theft, armed robbery, even burglary, and to think that those sharing content online are not captured because they are not the ones who directly committed that offence – it is a real missed opportunity. And those that are victims of crime, who might have seen their car stolen, who might have seen their home broken into, have to relive that experience day in, day out when some of these clips, unfortunately, are spread far and wide across the internet. Because the mental health impact on victims ripples right across individuals, families, support workers and entire communities, we want to make sure that that is captured a bit better. I encourage others in this place to carefully consider victims of crime, especially when considering these amendments that we will be moving to make sure that this is actually strengthened.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:18): I rise today to speak to the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025 introduced by the Labor government. This legislation creates a separate standalone offence which adds up to two additional years imprisonment for people who publish serious crimes on social media. The legislation itself is performative and punitive, not preventative. This law will disproportionately impact marginalised youth, particularly First Nations children, and is unsupported by evidence that it will actually deter crime or contribute to community safety. As the Law Institute of Victoria has pointed out, the legal tools already exist to prosecute offenders for the crimes that they commit, including when they share evidence of those crimes online. Offences such as robbery, burglary and carjacking already carry significant maximum penalties, including imprisonment. Filming and sharing a crime is already an aggravating factor to be taken into consideration when sentencing, and as abhorrent as it is, making a separate crime of filming the attack is unlikely to be a further deterrent.

Let me be crystal clear: the Greens believe in community safety, but we firmly reject this government’s approach. Instead of resorting to headline-seeking announcements that criminalise young people trying to climb a viral ladder with reckless posts, we must invest in comprehensive evidence-based strategies to address the root causes of offending behaviour in the first place. Where the government cuts budget line after budget line for preventative services – for mental health, for youth services, for education, for housing and for early intervention – we believe in reinvestment. Redirecting money from prison responses into community programs, trauma-informed support, counselling and education can genuinely steer young people away from the substance abuse, violence and crime that fuels these incidents. Let us please listen to the experts: the Justice Reform Initiative, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, the children’s commissioners, community legal centres, First Nations organisations and social services. Not only have they raised serious doubts about the effectiveness of this bill, but they are concerned it will do more harm than good, pushing more young people deeper into and enmeshing them in the justice system, doing nothing to prevent offending and serving only as political theatre and distraction.

The responsible course here for the government would be to step back, to consult and then to invest in what works, not to double down on this futile politics of appearing tough. It is not working. We must see the deradicalisation and rehabilitation of young people, not their deeper entrenchment in the criminal justice system. At the Victorian Parliament’s inquiry into extremism in Victoria, which focused on far-right extremism and was initiated by the Greens, it was demonstrated that police alone will not solve these problems. We need credible messenger programs, positive mentoring, digital literacy and counter-narrative work, and we need restorative justice that builds accountability and community ties. These approaches are being piloted here in Victoria and have been proven overseas. They are far cheaper than carceral responses and they are far more effective at changing behaviour, which surely is what we all seeking to do in this place. Social media platforms should also be made to lift their game. We must be funding wraparound support services, support programs in schools, youth mentoring, suicide prevention, mental health outreach, diversion programs, family support, Aboriginal community controlled responses and genuine alternatives to incarceration. We could do all of these things for far less than it costs to prosecute and keep young people in prison. We also support legislative measures to hold social media companies accountable for platforming harmful content, improving moderation and limiting youth exposure to extremist or violent messaging.

This bill provides no protection for victims whose assaults are filmed and circulated. Victims of these crimes are often subjected to ongoing digital harm that the government could be preventing better through stronger regulation of online platforms and victim notification mechanisms. Labor continues to defund intervention work. Its budget cuts to frontline services, mental health teams, youth workers and housing supports are glaring. In these circumstances adding new punitive laws is only going to compound the harm and continue us on a path that does not contribute to improved community safety. Our communities do not want performative politics; they want results. They want fewer young people behind bars, and they want more young people thriving. They want safe neighbourhoods with youth services, not flashy laws that seek to punish tragedy instead of preventing it in the first place. The Greens reject this post-and-boast bill because we reject the theatre of ineffective tough-on-crime rhetoric. We need reinvestment and early intervention, and we need deradicalisation support for vulnerable young people. That instead would be the path to a safer and a more just Victoria.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:24): I rise to speak on the amendment to the Crimes Act 1958 which is currently before the chamber. This amendment changes the act to make it an offence for someone who commits a serious crime to post about it online. This is a practice that has become far too common recently, and it is often known as posting and boasting. This practice is harmful and sometimes traumatic to the dignity of victims. It makes people feel unsafe in their own communities and can inspire others to commit similar crimes. Sadly, I think all of us in this place know that young people are far too often negatively influenced by the kinds of content they see online. This applies to many different corners of the internet, often affecting different groups of young people differently.

Today we are specifically talking about the issue of those out there who seek to turn crime into content. In cases where crimes such as carjacking, motor vehicle theft or home invasions, amongst others, have been posted online they can have serious and harmful effects beyond the crime itself. Often shared as videos on social media platforms, these posts can make serious crimes appear to others to be cool – a way to prove one’s toughness, a way to feel powerful or just a way of getting attention online. They can appeal to the instincts of teenage rebellion and adventure to encourage young people to make decisions and commit crimes which are damaging to the social fabric of their community. No-one wants to live in a community where the elderly are afraid of the young, where the standing of all young people is tarnished by those few who make the wrong choices. This is not a recipe for a peaceful, highly cohesive community or society. We need to keep our community safe, and we need to make sure that our young people feel safe online. As well as the damage that an individual crime such as car theft can do to the victim and to the community, often these kids are doing potentially irreversible damage to their own lives as well. No parent raises a child hoping they end up in the youth justice system. In fact it is something which parents actively try to prevent from ever happening to their child, and we know that a criminal record, especially one acquired so early in life, can do serious long-term damage to somebody’s future. We also know that the best way to crack down on crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

The aim of this bill: if posting and boasting is leading to more young people being inspired to go out there and commit serious crimes which they otherwise would not have, then it follows that banning this practice will help keep our communities safe. Rehabilitating young offenders is difficult, it is expensive and it is important, but it is generally better value for money to prevent them from offending in the first place. We on this side of the chamber believe that by cracking down on the post-and-boast trend we can prevent the normalisation and glorification of criminal activity from spreading online. By preventing it from spreading online we aim to prevent it from influencing the habits, views, perspectives and ideas of the young people online. No child is born a criminal. Criminality emerges from a range of extremely complex factors in somebody’s life. It is important, if we can remove or attempt to remove one of these factors with a simple piece of legislation, that we do so. Preventing young people from being exposed to this sort of content we believe is one way that we can reduce the risk of young people making decisions that could land them in the youth justice system. This bill gives the offence a two-year maximum penalty which will come on top of the penalty handed down for the original offence, such as car theft or home invasion. For the sake of efficiency in the courts system the bill intends for the accused to be charged and tried simultaneously for the performance crime and the original crime.

In Victoria community safety comes first, and the Allan Labor government is committed to doing what is necessary to keep Victorians safe. We passed tough new bail laws earlier this year, invested in support of Victorian police year on year and provided our justice and corrections systems with the resources they need. This is because we on this side of the chamber are putting community safety first with actions, not words. Sometimes what the government needs to do to keep the community safe is provide the funding and resources that are necessary. That is why in the budget handed down by the Treasurer in May the Allan Labor government committed to an additional $1.6 billion backing Victoria’s new bail laws. This meant more funding for the police and more funding for our justice workforce. This was so that every part of the justice system could get the resources it needs to keep us all safe: the police, the courts and the corrections system. It also meant providing our police with the resources they need to implement the Allan Labor government’s new ban on machetes. At other times keeping our community safe means early intervention, breaking the cycle of crime and breaking the cycle of reoffending. That is why we made a $176 million investment in programs within prisons, programs for young offenders, programs in schools and more funding for case management for kids at risk of disengaging. We are making these investments because it is much better for everyone involved if we can reduce crime by preventing it from happening in the first place. It is also important that we give people who have offended in the past the help they need to get their lives back on track and break the cycle of reoffending.

At other times, however, the changes that are needed are changes which emerge as adaptations to the rapidly changing world. Technology is changing so much in the world. Social media is changing so much about our society and many of these changes we may not fully understand for a number of years to come. It is important with issues like this – crime being fuelled by trends on social media – that the government works to deal with the issue as it arises. There are also those out there who believe that governments have no business interfering with social media – that is, it is the role of the tech sector and the social media giants to move fast and break things regardless of the negative effects on individuals and society. But when moving fast and breaking things means teenagers are encouraging others to break into people’s homes, we simply say that that is not acceptable and there must be consequences.

Of course there are many opportunities and benefits social media provides us with, but equally there are significant dangers. Post-and-boast offences going viral online can play a very dangerous role in shaping young people’s views of what behaviour is acceptable, normal and legitimate. Therefore it is our hope in this bill that by adding an additional penalty to the offence there will be fewer of them being spread around online and therefore fewer copycat offenders. Our approach to community safety is not only to be tough on crime but to get smart on crime as well, and getting smart on crime means preventing it before it happens through measures like this one.

The offences to which the new additional offence applies will be motor car theft, carjacking and aggravated carjacking, burglary and aggravated burglary, home invasion and aggravated home invasion, robbery and armed robbery, affray and violent disorder, and inciting, attempting to commit or being complicit in one of these crimes. These antisocial behaviours, which have been promoted online, must stop and must not be shared freely the way they currently are. It is also important to remember that similar laws have already been passed in other states. It is a system which has already been tested. This bill has been written having learned the lessons from implementation in other states. This bill also goes much further than the laws in a comparable state such as New South Wales, taking a broader approach and applying to more types of crimes.

I have already spoken about the destructive effect of this sort of behaviour on the young people who get involved with them, but we also need to remember the additional harm which can be brought to the victims of crime through posting and boasting. Suffering through the crime once can be extremely damaging, even traumatising to a person, but having footage of it shared publicly by someone seeking to boast about it can do even further damage. From the simple invasion of privacy to the risk of identification leading to a repeat or copycat offence, there are serious risks to people’s wellbeing. Further, there is a risk of retraumatisation either from seeing the footage or from the consequences of the footage being spread around widely. Nobody deserves to go through that; nobody deserves to deal with that sort of behaviour.

Victims of crime deserve far better than to have this sort of thing posted online for attention, and it is offensive to the values that as Victorians we hold. Fortunately, Victorians know that we on this side of the chamber in the Allan Labor government are always on the side of the victims of crimes and will always put community safety first. When we introduced our tough new bail laws, we knew that they would be controversial and we knew that would not be easy, but we did what was right and what would keep our community safe.

We are also banning machetes. The ban on possession will come into place in September, but until we have the implementation of a total ban on sale of machetes in September there are no exceptions to the ban. Once the permanent ban on possession and sale comes into play in September, we will allow for cultural and agricultural exemptions. Whatever legitimate reasons people or organisations might have to seek to purchase a machete, we said that they would have to wait until the exemptions become valid through September. In fact this is the toughest ban on machetes that has ever been attempted in the history of Australia. The reason we did this is because Victorians deserve to be able to walk around their neighbourhoods without worrying about whether they could be a victim of a knife crime.

Of course this ban on posting and boasting which we are debating today will help prevent young people from being exposed to content online which glorifies and encourages crime. I have been over a few different ways that the government is seeking to tackle this issue of crime, and I want to emphasise and highlight the different methods and approaches that we are taking, because crime is complex and is an issue that never takes a one-size-fits-all approach to preventing crime. For some people straightforward deterrence might work, whereas for others early intervention and helping them address underlying issues is a better way to prevent them from falling into a cycle of crime and reoffending. Of course in this bill we are trying to prevent young people from being introduced to a type of content which portrays, glorifies and encourages serious crimes.

It is worth emphasising once again that this is not the only solution that the government is proposing to deal with the offences covered under this bill; it is a solution to part of the much broader issue of crime generally and youth crime specifically. The Allan Labor government is addressing all aspects of crime and crime prevention, and this bill is a change which is being sought to address the challenges brought about by our modern and digital age. It is no good ignoring what is happening online. All of us in this place know that what happens online can have an impact on the real world. People are radicalised online, and they can be shown fictionalised versions of the world that do not reflect the reality. They can learn to view the people around them and their communities as not worthy of respect, and they can see serious crimes being committed but filmed or portrayed in a way that presents the criminals as daring and the victims as not even worth basic human respect and dignity.

It is important that the government moves with the times. We understand new developments and new dangers will emerge online and through social media, especially when they relate to real-world consequences. So you can see quite clearly that a reform like this is important. Twenty years ago we might never have imagined that we would need to make changes like this. But the internet has moved fast, social media has moved fast, and if we do not keep up with these sorts of changes, then we risk more young people being pushed towards the path of crime.

So much of what is influencing young people these days is almost completely unrecognisable compared to how things were at the turn of the century. There is a lot out there, including things such as the posts which we are discussing today, that I would think disturbs all of us in this place – those who sit on the other side of the chamber and the crossbenchers. I am sure that all will find these posts reprehensible and the potential consequences disturbing, which is why I think it is appropriate to also take a moment to acknowledge that, by all indication, the opposition will be supporting this bill. It is heartening to see that we can work together on issues like crime and reflect constituents regardless of whether they are in a Labor seat, Liberal seat, Nationals seat or Greens seat, because community safety is not an issue that will ever go away. It is one issue that will always be front of mind for all governments, especially for the Allan Labor government, and I commend the bill to the house.

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (10:37): I rise today to make my contribution to the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, and I do so with some reservations. This bill should be commended for its intent, which is to provide for a new offence in relation to those who wilfully publish material online glorifying certain offences. The rise in post-and-boast materials is alarming, and therefore any bill that limits or reduces this content is a good thing. However, the bill which we are debating today is quite weak, and the crimes that the bill covers are limited. I will go through those limited offences shortly, but to exclude offences such as assault, arson and dangerous driving, the three main offences we see regularly, from this bill is short-sighted and weak given much of the content that is shared by those offenders and others online falls into these offence categories.

Just an example: assault. How many fights have we seen in past years where again and again we see a group of students attack another? Dangerous driving – hooning: how many times have we seen clips of a passenger in a stolen vehicle laughing and boasting about the excessive speed they are travelling at or travelling on the wrong side of the road? The government have a perfect opportunity with this bill to finally enact some reform that will combat the rise of post-and-boast material, but instead they are offering this watered-down, weak and ineffective bill, tinkering at the edge of what is a very serious issue rising in the community.

This aforementioned bill amends the Crimes Act 1958, and as I stated, its intent is to combat the rise in post and boast, where commission of the offence is glorified online, encouraging others to copycat. Several jurisdictions across Australia, namely Queensland, Northern Territory and New South Wales, introduced a similar offence throughout 2024 and with various performance crimes covered. Some of these bills are not yet law, such as the bill introduced by the Cook government in Western Australia, which started debating their version of the bill back in June, to crack down on ‘crime influencers’, as they refer to those who glorify dangerous illegal acts on social media. I think this term should be used more often, because that is exactly what these people are doing. They are glorifying crimes online, pretending they are some form of criminal influencer – very dangerous behaviour. These people post and aim to enhance offenders’ bad reputations and to embarrass the victims for laughs. South Australia also has a version, which was tabled in Parliament earlier this year.

One of the major concerns I have with this Allan government bill is that it only applies to a very limited number of offences, which limits liability to situations where the offender commits a relevant offence and subsequently publishes the material themselves. In other jurisdictions across Australia anybody posting material glorifying criminal acts can be found guilty, regardless of whether they are committing an offence or not. This is what this side of the chamber thinks we should replicate in Victoria to really send a good message that anyone posting materials glorifying a criminal act can be found guilty regardless of whether they were committing an offence or not.

I will just give you an example of people driving dangerously in a stolen vehicle. The person in the passenger seat or the back seat filming it and encouraging and posting it is not committing an offence under this bill. I strongly believe that it should be a requirement that any penalty of offence be additional as well. The offender should receive an underlying offence. If this bill proceeds as it stands at the moment, this may result in a subsequent penalty where any sentence is being served concurrently. So comparatively, Victoria’s bill, which we are debating, is weaker than those in other states.

I will just quickly mention some of the other states to give you a comparison in relation to what is going on. Take the Queensland bill, which introduced an amendment to the Summary Offences Act 2005 last year prohibiting material about offending behaviour for offences that include driving or operating a vehicle, violence or threatening violence, and taking, damaging, destroying, moving, using, interfering with or entering properties. In Victoria only the person who committed the offence can be found guilty of publishing the same offence, whereas in Queensland the law applies to anyone who publishes the same material. I believe if the Allan government is serious about this offending, it should adopt the amendment that my colleague Mr Joe McCracken put forward earlier, sending a strong message to the community that it is not okay to publish material and that these offences are not tolerated. Naturally, the exemption for material published by journalists in the course of their work should apply, and we understand the reason behind that. As a result of the Queensland bill, it was reported on 12 May 2025 that 195 offenders have already been charged with the offence since August last year, showing the seriousness of the offence. That is in Queensland.

New South Wales introduced a similar bill in 2024 to amend the Crimes Act 1900 to prohibit performance crime. The New South Wales legislation will apply only to motor vehicle break-and-enter offences. The person guilty of an offence is sentenced for their involvement in the offence. The Northern Territory also have a similar offence.

In comparison to the main provision of this bill we are introducing today, the definition of ‘material’ we are introducing only covers – which my colleague mentioned earlier – theft, robberies, armed robbery, aggravated burglary, carjacking and affray, to name a few. As I pointed out earlier, this bill excludes assault, arson and things like dangerous driving, which are the most common things we see regarding post and boast. Why are they excluded from this bill? The question needs to be asked. This new law will apply to anyone who encourages people, including young Victorians, to commit these offences, including social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and X, formerly Twitter, where most of this material is posted.

My question to the Attorney-General and those opposite is this: why would you wait a year to act on this now? It is the trend and clearly it is not declining. So it is late, but it is better late than never. The Minister for Police in the other place Mr Carbines has suggested that the government had the right to ignore calls previously to introduce this law, saying that the government needed more time to ensure the legislation was effective. These laws are weak, and Victoria is behind the eight ball once again. But I encourage the chamber today to put a strong message out to the community and accept the amendment we put forward today to strengthen the bill. The bill needs work, but nonetheless we think we should support alignment with community expectation in this space to protect the community from harmful online posting.

I will speak quickly on the amendments put forward by Mr McCracken. They cover those causing serious injury intentionally in any circumstances or causing serious injury recklessly in circumstances which will cover the dangerous driving part. Also, in section 2 they will add assault, which covers most of the online posting we have seen young Victorians all across this country posting over the years. They also include an insertion about the Road Safety Act 1986 in clause 3. All of these are important to strengthen the bill. They also mention in relation to sentencing that it is important that penalties served for offences committed are served cumulatively and not concurrently. If you do it concurrently, the perpetrator or offending person will not really be punished for what they have done; it will just be added on to what they will already serve.

Just quickly wrapping up my time in relation to this bill, it is important that we support the community in relation to sending a message out that post-and-boast material is not to be condoned. That is why, with these amendments strengthening the bill, it is important that we send a strong message that we do not accept any sort of encouragement in relation to criminal activities. Whether online, whether you are committing an offence or not, you are part of the commission of the crime if you are in the space encouraging others to participate – encouraging those who are committing the crime – and you should be looked at as also participating in the commission of the crime.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:48): I also would like to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. There is certainly a performance happening, and I think that the performance is by the government. Once again we have got this doubly illegal thing, where something is already illegal and the government bring in new laws to make it doubly illegal, and then they can say to people that they are actually doing something about crime. Unlike the motion that we were debating yesterday, which was about something that people actually want – about defending their own homes – today we are doing something which will have no real effect whatsoever, because if someone posts something online about their own crimes it can already be taken into account as an aggravating factor when sentencing.

So what is this actually doing? It is really just performative politics by the government. It seems to be so pointless that not even the Greens will support it, but apparently the opposition are supporting it. In fact they are complaining that it is not pointless enough, and they want to make it even worse than it is. This is about as useless as a machete bin. It is just nuts, what they are doing here.

Since I have been in this place there have been so many instances of the government making things doubly illegal, it is crazy. They come out and say, ‘We’ve got to do something,’ and of course they always need to do something in response to crime. Usually the things that they do have no effect whatsoever, and this will be one of them. In fact it may even have a negative effect. What we are doing here – think about the incentives – is incentivising people, criminals, to not publicly post evidence of their crimes. These social media posts are quite often used as evidence against them, and we are incentivising people to not post evidence of their crimes. That is ridiculous.

So the Libertarian Party will not be supporting this bill. It is ineffective, performative politics, and I will not be a part of it.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:50): Crime is not content, and we should not be in a world changed by social media where criminals can commit crimes and get clicks for their satisfaction and face no consequence. That is what the bill before us today seeks to ensure is not part of the acts that are occurring in our community. It is about sending a very clear message to those who may be thinking about committing criminal acts and going through the process of committing that crime, which has, as we all know, very serious and negative consequences for the victims but also for many in the contemporary age, where the realities of social media and the realities of the way that algorithms have been affecting what people see, what they consume, and then what they seek to feed into those algorithms are creating sets of behaviours and creating sets of circumstances that this legislation is seeking to deal with. Crime is not content, and we should not allow it to be so. It will not be tolerated, and it will not be rewarded.

This legislation really seeks to protect victims not only from the traumatising events that the criminal act itself brings but also from the retraumatising events that occur when that act is then exploited for the gratification of the criminals themselves and those who they seek to attract to their following. It is designed to also be a preventative measure that mitigates fears and the fuelling of community fears and attempts to prevent would-be criminals from copying the serious crimes that they see in online content.

The bill will amend the Crimes Act 1958 to introduce a new performance crime offence, which prohibits a person from publishing material to draw attention to their involvement in certain serious offences. The offences that are captured as part of this are theft of a motor vehicle, burglary or aggravated burglary, home invasion and aggravated home invasion, carjacking and aggravated carjacking, robbery and armed robbery, affray, violent disorder and inciting or attempting to commit one of those above offences or being complicit in such offending. A person will be able to be charged with the new performance crime offence if they have been found guilty of a relevant offence that is the subject of the material. The new performance crime offence will be a summary offence, carrying a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment, which is additive to the penalty for the relevant offence. The bill also gives Victoria Police certain search warrant powers pursuant to section 465 of the Crimes Act to investigate the offence.

The bill obviously responds to community concern about the prevalence of certain serious offending, such as motor vehicle theft and home invasion, which is often magnified when offending is depicted in material that can be shared online. The proposed new offence increases the culpability of these criminals and will send a very clear message denouncing those actions. Certainly the intent behind it is to prevent or deter the publication of material drawing attention to that offending, and obviously, as I said, it acknowledges the significant trauma that many in the community face when they see the crimes that they have been subjected to reshared online and used for the gratification of others. We are very serious about our commitment as a government to making sure that we are not only dealing with the crimes themselves but also dealing with the attitudes and the practices that exacerbate some of that offending.

The bill is part of a broad suite of measures that the government has been introducing and implementing in recent months to help keep our community safe. The government has acknowledged that there is serious concern within the community about serious offending. Sadly, we have seen in recent times an increase in certain types of serious offending in parts of the community. We have listened to community concerns about that offending and the impact that it is having, and we have changed the law to help stop it. We have provided police with both the powers and the resources that they need to help tackle serious offending in our community. We have made changes that have been necessary to introduce the toughest bail laws in the country. We have introduced the country’s first ban on machetes, and we have passed anti-vilification laws to protect the community from hate speech and division. We have expanded our capacity in the prison system and the youth justice system. And importantly, we have increased funding for crime prevention measures as well as rehabilitation and reintegration programs.

All in all, what we are trying to achieve here is not only a response to offending as and when it occurs, but also to create pathways for people to choose a future that does not involve further criminal offending and to support them to get out of the cycle of offending. Hopefully one of the benefits of the legislation we are debating here today is that it will help break the cycle of attention that offending can bring now in the modern world – with social media and the way that algorithms are fed by engagement on matters that are often quite sensational and quite extreme – and break that cycle of algorithmic furtherance of criminal endeavour. That really is a concept that as a criminal justice system we have not had to grapple with in these sorts of ways before but do now because of the emergence of not only the technology of being able to record but the way that particularly the algorithms that power the delivery of content on social media have certainly changed the dynamics of how this is fed out into the broader community. It is a necessary part of the response the government has to make to these changing circumstances to try and deal with this sort of new phenomenon that is delivering real and significant harm to the victims of crime who find themselves recorded in these acts.

We do think that with the particular offences that are being criminalised in this performance crime and the post-and-boast measures here it is important that they are serious and specific high-harm offences – as I said, things like aggravated burglary, car theft, home invasions and violent disorder. It is not about making additive offences for those which do not meet that threshold of high harm. The bill is very specific in ensuring that the criminalisation of the publication of high-harm materials is designed specifically to prevent the furtherance of the gratification of those offences into the future and is very clearly connected to the act of commissioning or the participation and the facilitation and incitement of further serious crimes. So it is not just about those who are involved in the act of the crime itself, but it enables the encompassing of those who may be trying to incite those acts as well. So I think it does attempt to have a preventive element to it as well. It is attempting to strike the right balance to ensure that we do get action taken in this part of the criminal justice system.

As I said, the bill also considers the impact that these very serious crimes have had on members of the community. I know that I have certainly spent quite a bit of time recently talking to members of my community in the Southern Metropolitan Region, particularly through the work that Neighbourhood Watch Bayside have done in recent months and recent years. I have had some very constructive discussions with Neighbourhood Watch Bayside, and I have also had discussions with other local representatives, including local government representatives in Bayside, Glen Eira, Port Phillip and other areas, who are concerned about increasing types of crime, particularly aggravated burglaries and particularly motor vehicle theft offences that have been occurring in the community. We take them seriously. I want to thank the local community advocates, particularly people like Neighbourhood Watch Bayside, who have been out working with the community, bringing their concerns forward, having constructive and detailed conversations with their local representatives and reaching out as well to have those conversations with ministers in the government.

Certainly what this legislation and what legislation we have debated in the past demonstrate, and what I am sure we will deal with in the future will demonstrate, is that the government is taking these law and order issues very seriously. We do have a responsibility to ensure that our community is safe. Through the laws that we are passing, like this one, we are taking concrete steps to give clear signals to those would-be offenders that this sort of behaviour is not something that is acceptable or appropriate in our community. We are also certainly making sure that with the significant investments that the Labor government has made providing additional and appropriate resources to Victoria Police we have police on our streets with support and resources from the government for not only the largest but also I think the best police service in the nation. We are giving them the support that they need to take action, and there are certainly significant inroads that Victoria Police is making in certain criminal activities across the state. I want to thank members of Victoria Police for all the hard work they do every day to keep our community safe.

I think the fundamental point that I will come back to here is that the bill makes it very clear that crimes are not content and that hurting others – serious offences, serious harm caused to others – is not something that you can capture for clicks. It is not something that should be designed to help you gain attention and gratification online. It hurts others, it harms others, and this bill says very clearly that it has no place in Victoria. I commend the bill to the house.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (11:04): I am pleased to be able to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. Crime rates in Northern Victoria are rising, with rural communities facing increasing threats from youth gangs, property crime, drug-related offences and violent incidents. Families and farmers are feeling unsafe in their own homes and in their own towns, and we have seen a disturbing rise in young offenders particularly posting and boasting about their crimes on social media, glorifying violence, theft and destruction and facing little or no consequence for that. This bill has been introduced to combat that post and boast.

We saw Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales introduce similar offences in 2024. Western Australia has a bill before their Parliament as of February 2025, and a bill was tabled in the South Australian Parliament in May 2025. But this bill is weak. It is like Swiss cheese; it has lots of holes in it. What is not in this bill? Assault is not a relevant offence for the purpose of this bill. Another is dangerous driving – dangerous driving is not a post-and-boast offence under this bill. Why not? Another is destroying or damaging property, including through arson – this is not a post-and-boast offence. Why not? In Victoria under this bill only the person who commits the crime and then posts about it themselves can be liable. Somebody can have a mate standing beside them filming, and that mate can put it online. As long as they did not commit the offence, they have got a clear pass under this post-and-boast legislation.

When I look at the crime rates that we are seeing in Victoria compared to New South Wales they show how off track we are. Just to give you an insight into some of the things that are happening, I know in Bendigo, near where I live, the Bendigo Theatre Company were broken into recently, and they have been broken into before. We have read about a councillor that had his car broken into, but he is one of many in the region. In the City of Greater Bendigo we actually pay for a security guard to be there at the library. I know as you walk up our streets there are boards on some of the shopwindows because windows have been broken through antisocial behaviour. Hooning is a big issue in our area, and people have told me about hearing the screeches at night and being quite scared about that. We have people walking in the street that are high as a kite, and some of them have been very threatening to other people. I know retail theft has been a huge issue. We are seeing in Hargreaves Mall a number of shops that are empty now, with businesses moving out of that area. It is a big concern. We have seen all areas of crime increase in Bendigo in the 12 months of the data from the Crime Statistics Agency to March 2025: total offences up, again, 14 per cent; theft from retail stores, as I mentioned, up a whopping 84 per cent; aggravated robbery up 60 per cent; motor vehicle theft up 21 per cent; residential non-aggravated burglary up 35 per cent – it goes on.

In March we had locals take to the streets. They had a protest about crime rates, and that was right in front of the Premier’s office, to send a very clear message. Last year we had police walk off the job in Bendigo as part of a protracted pay dispute. I held a crime forum at my office. We had a number of residents, and we were able to connect them with Bendigo police. It is important that they get heard in this conversation because many feel that their calls for further action are just falling on deaf ears. Earlier this year you would be aware that there was a vicious and violent attack on a security guard at the Bendigo Marketplace. We also had an attack, reported on the news, at a jewellery store where a resident actually took action. This is one of many, but I know it is not just an issue that we are seeing in Bendigo. I should recall also the tobacco shops; we have had tobacco fires happen in the middle of Bendigo, and we also had one at Epsom. We have had reports of young people being bashed in the city centre. I have spoken to parents that have told their kids to avoid walking in certain areas. It is a very different place than what it was 20 years ago, I know that. Local businesses have reported a surge in crime, including vandalism, thefts and an attempted break-in at the Deck nightclub. Apart from anything else, Labor’s soft-on-crime approach is making it a lot harder to do business in Victoria.

These statistics that I have talked about in the Bendigo region we are seeing right across Northern Victoria. In Loddon shire total offences are up 24 per cent and stealing from a motor vehicle is up 157 per cent. I know in Shepparton total offences are up 22 per cent, motor vehicle thefts are up 60 per cent and stealing from a retail store has increased by 110 per cent. In Hepburn we have seen total offences up another 8 per cent, but in some areas there has been a dramatic increase – motor vehicle theft is up 63 per cent, stealing from a motor vehicle is up 51 per cent and stealing from a retail store is up 69 per cent. In Campaspe total offences are up 15 per cent, residential aggravated burglary is up 48 per cent, stealing from a motor vehicle is up 34 per cent and total serious assault is up 39 per cent. These figures paint a very grim picture about the state of crime and the increase in crime that we are seeing across Northern Victoria, and I have been reminded today from other members that it is not just Northern Victoria, it is right across the state.

The Allan Labor government has failed to address this shocking increase in crime in any real way. There are issues like the huge number of police vacancies that remain unfilled, and there has been the closing of police stations and reductions to their hours. We have had the weakening of the bail laws – apparently with the tougher bail laws, they are trying to make them tougher. Labor has contributed to these statistics. Behind every statistic is a person impacted by crime, and I have spoken to many of them. It is not just a one-off, it is an impact that they carry for many, many years to come. I think this government does send mixed messages, very much so.

It is important that this government considers our amendments. We have put forward a number of amendments to this bill to expand the list of offences to include assault, arson, dangerous driving and causing serious injury; to broaden the definition of ‘publish’ to include sharing with even one person; and to mandate cumulative sentencing for post-and-boast offences, ensuring additional jail time beyond the original crime.

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:12): I rise today to also speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. Given my colleague Ms Copsey has already covered many of the Greens’ concerns about this bill, I will instead focus my contribution on what needs to be done to take real action to address the string of homophobic and queerphobic attacks that we have seen occurring across Melbourne. Realistically, the actions that are required are not in this bill. These violent attacks that have been directed specifically at queer folk, at gay and bisexual men, in Victoria are deeply concerning. Men have been lured through fake profiles on online dating platforms like Grindr and others to meet up. Once they arrive, they find themselves ambushed, often by a group of young men. They are brutally assaulted as well as sometimes robbed, kidnapped or blackmailed, and all are left terrified and traumatised. While some of these attacks have been filmed and while some of them have been posted online, what we are talking about here – and what I think we all would accept – is that these are crimes that need to be dealt with accordingly and we should be addressing the root causes of these issues.

There is much more work to be done to prevent these crimes from occurring in the first place. We need to take serious action to stop the online radicalisation of young men who end up in these shady corners of the internet that are deeply misinformed, downright hateful online spaces that glorify violence against queer people, against men who have sex with men. There has been a really worrying rise in hateful rhetoric against LGBTQIA+ community members, and this has certainly fuelled these targeted attacks that are directed at our community. Bigoted and divisive ideas imported from far-right groups – often in the US, emboldened by Trump and by the Make America Great Again movement – are putting community members at risk. We have seen it with protests at rainbow family events. We have seen it with these attacks that I have been talking about on gay and bisexual men. We have seen it in the recent foul neo-Nazi-style graffiti that we saw splashed across two venues not far from here. We need to take action to support and protect our community and to build a society where homophobia, queerphobia and transphobia have absolutely no place, but sadly, the solution is not contained in this bill.

The Greens initiated an inquiry into the rise of far-right extremism a few years back, and this inquiry provided to the Parliament a number of tangible steps that all levels of government could take to prevent and counter far-right extremism and to keep our communities safe. And I do not just mean the LGBTQIA+ community; I mean all communities, because far-right extremism puts all marginalised folks in our community at risk. The hateful ideas that are espoused, including in these corners of the internet that I have mentioned – we are talking about racist ideas, sexist ideas, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia – are bigoted in so many ways, and these are people that seek to recruit others by exploiting fractures that exist in our community, fractures like rising levels of social isolation, rising distrust and suspicion of institutions like government and distrust of media, and of course growing economic insecurity, which we all hear about from our constituents. Victoria needs to invest more in building up our communities so that everyone feels like they have a place and they have opportunity for a good and meaningful life. We need to be funding programs that support young people and specifically prevent this radicalisation that we are seeing of young men and teenage people. The Anti-Hate Taskforce, for example, needs to be expanded to hear from LGBTQIA+ communities as well as other marginalised groups. Our schools need more inclusion, diversity and anti-racism education. We need to stop these crimes being committed by often young men and teenagers who find a place, a comfort somehow, in these corners of the internet, in far-right ideologies. Tackling that is the best thing that we can do to keep our communities safe.

Beyond building up our communities, we need to do more when we are seeing these homophobic or queerphobic hate acts being committed. It is vital that we see police have the data collection tools and that these tools are being used to record and to track prejudice-based crime where it is occurring. They must be including these factors in their data collection so that it is possible then to properly and fully understand the scale and the widespread nature of this problem that is occurring in our state and across this country. Given that there is no quick fix, we must do more to protect victims, particularly if these attacks are then shared online. We should be empowering courts to issue take-down and no-reupload orders when these crimes are posted. There should be a victim notification system so that people know when content is published or admitted as evidence and consideration of federal laws to strengthen online safety. But that is really beyond this bill and often this chamber.

My community – queer people in this state – are strong and resilient, but these attacks are causing a great deal of harm and uncertainty. It is beholden on this chamber and this government to take action to prevent this radicalisation that we are seeing. And it will not just be the queer community who benefit; multicultural communities, people of faith, disabled people and everyone will be safer through this action. Sadly, as I have stated, it is not this bill which will take these steps, and as has already been indicated, the Greens will not be supporting it.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:18): Weak, weak, weak – that is what this government is, and that is what this bill is. The Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025 is a weak bill from a weak government that is not prepared to do exactly what it takes to protect Victorians and to prevent copycat crimes. There are so many omissions in this bill that it is almost laughable. Yes, it is a step in the right direction, but it is a baby step.

This bill does not cover a number of crimes that it ought to cover to protect Victorians from copycat crimes. The post-and-boast element of this is incredibly important, right? This bill is where the government is seeking to tackle the phenomenon of post-and-boast offending. That is great and that is what we would like to see, but the number of omissions that are in here are just laughable, particularly when you compare it to other states. If we look at Queensland’s legislation, for instance, the legislation applies to offences involving driving or operating a vehicle, which means that hoon driving is covered. But is that covered in the Victorian bill? No, it is not. What about violence or threat of violence? One would have thought that a government that wants to protect the Victorian people would be covering violence or the threat of violence. We have enough of that. There are so many people in Victoria right now who are worried about their safety – they are so worried. As has been mentioned – and I have mentioned it before – there are a number of people or groups who are worried for their safety and who are feeling targeted in this state. It might be a religion; it might be to do with your identity. But nobody should be being targeted and everybody should be protected by Victorian laws, and this weak bill does not do that. This is a government that is not protecting Victorians, and all Victorians are paying the price.

What about tackling, damaging, destroying, removing, using, interfering with or entering property? Is that properly covered in here? What about an offence involving a weapon? Is that properly covered in here? And what about the fact that we have an issue, clearly, in this state with protecting our babies and our children, our little ones? Will they be protected in here – no. I know that post-and-boast crimes are over a range of fields of criminal activity, and this does not even attempt to touch on anything that has to do with protecting our babies – nothing. This is a failing government. This is a state in chaos, and this is a bill that is simply not good enough.

I think that we need to look at some of the other states and what they have actually included in their post and boasts. In New South Wales, in 1924 – let us be clear, 1924, which shows that other states are well ahead of this state because this state is quite happy to allow lawlessness. It is quite happy to allow people to just walk into shops and take things and have no consequences. That is why we have had this revolving circle of bail after bail after bail, with young people being in police stations and saying, ‘They can’t do anything to me. I’ve been bailed 58 times.’ How pathetic is this government? In New South Wales in the Crimes Act 1900 they inserted a number of clauses that prohibited performances of crime, and the maximum penalty for their offences is two years imprisonment. I know that there is a copycat of that in ours, but I think you need to have a look at some of the different factors that are in there. If a person is found guilty of the offence or if they advertise their involvement in the offence or the act constituting the offence, they will be convicted.

One of the problems we have with our bill here in Victoria is that the person that is posting it has to be the person that has actually performed the criminal activity and therefore they are posting and boasting. Well, what about the mate that posts and boasts for the criminal? They should be covered in this bill as well. This is a weak bill. This is not protecting Victorians. This is not preventing copycat criminal activity. It is weak. It is weak once again, and Victorians are going to pay the price for a government that is not standing up for them. It is simply not good enough.

Let us have a look at what they do in the Northern Territory. In the Northern Territory they have included quite clearly a number of miscellaneous offences against the person, including disabling or stupefying to commit an indictable offence – spiking – and intentionally endangering safety of persons travelling by railway or roadway. You would like to think that you would be safe when you are on public transport. Does our bill cover that – no. No, it does not. It is weak. What about preventing escape from a wreck? What about intentionally endangering safety of persons travelling on an aircraft or ship? You would like to think that when you travel on a Qantas plane or any plane coming from Australia or Victoria you would be safe. Will you be covered by this bill – no.

All right. What else have we got on here – endangering occupants of vehicles and vessels, causing serious harm. Will you be covered by that in Victoria – no. This is a weak bill. What about the fact that we have endangering life of a child by exposure? That is the most incredible negligence you could have. Will this be covered by this bill – no. No, it will not. This is a weak bill. Setting man traps: will this be covered by this bill – no. Causing harm: will this be covered by this bill – no. Choking, strangling or suffocating in a domestic relationship: will this be covered by this bill – no, it will not be covered. But they are covered in the Northern Territory. What about just plain old assault or assault with intent to steal? Will that be covered by this bill – no. This is a weak bill by a weak government that is simply not standing up for Victorians, and Victorians are sick and tired of having a government that is letting them down. They are sick and tired of not feeling safe in their homes. They are sick and tired of having to go down the street and see criminal activity with nobody able to turn up or do anything about it. Victorians are wanting to stand up for themselves, and they do not want to be implicated in post-and-boast situations when they are actually trying to defend themselves either. So this is a really weak bill, and they have only just touched the surface. One has to wonder why they are doing this. Who are they protecting? Do they have mates that are involved in criminal activity? One has to wonder about this, because this is a weak bill. I mean, we did not get to see what really went on in the investigation of the CFMEU, did we? None of us could really be there to see or to question. That was not a public hearing. No-one from the opposition was allowed to be there. Why wasn’t it public? What is going on with this government?

If we have a look at what it is going to cover, it is very, very weak – armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion or aggravated home invasion, carjacking and violent disorder. It has got a few things in there, but really it is not enough. It is a very, very broad definition. It does not allow us to protect Victorians in this state. It is a very, very weak attempt to prescribe consequences for those who post and boast as well. That is the other part that makes it weak. Number one, it only applies to a limited number of offences and excludes some of the offending which is regularly seen in post-and-post offending, including assault or arson or dangerous driving. But it is also weak because there may not be an additional penalty. You see, there is nothing in the bill that requires any penalty for the offence to be in addition to the penalty for the underlying offence. What that means is that there may not be any additional penalty at all where any sentence is served concurrently – no consequences for actions. There are loopholes in this bill.

Who is this government protecting? It is certainly not protecting the families in Victoria. It is not protecting our teens from learning consequences of actions and having to take some responsibility. It is not protecting the grandmas and the grandpas at home. It is not protecting the mums and dads, and it is certainly not protecting our children. It is not protecting our babies. This is a weak bill. This is a weak government. This is a flawed bill that could have been tighter. All they had to do was to look at what was going on in other states of Australia to tighten up their laws. But no, ‘We’re going to provide a weak bill so that we can look like we’re doing something, something amazing. We’re bringing in a bit of a penalty.’ No, you are not. There is no genuine penalty if they are already in prison and it is just going to be served concurrently. There is no penalty. And on top of that, a whole lot of assaults and offences have been left out – pathetic, hopeless. Well, at least it is something. All we can say is, ‘Yay, they’re finally doing a little bit,’ because we have been calling for it ever since we came into Parliament. We have been calling for tougher crime measures, and this is a weak bill from a weak government.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:29): Well, that was an odd contribution from my colleague in the south-east. I am not sure of the logic of calling it a weak, weak, weak bill and then saying that you are going to be supporting it. But I would particularly like to call into question the outrageous assertion that members on this side are somehow mates with or supportive of the offenders in some of these post-and-boast incidents that we have seen. This government has been very, very clear on that. If Mrs Hermans wishes to raise it, she may do so in a substantive motion, but it seems that, as usual, she is talking complete rubbish in this place. Last I checked, the only member of –

Ann-Marie Hermans: On a point of order, President, I feel highly offended by the accusations of the member across the chamber. I would ask for an apology for that, please, and for that to be retracted.

The PRESIDENT: I think that there have been exchanges like that for many, many years. I just ask the member to be mindful and try not to be offensive towards individuals in the chamber.

Michael GALEA: I will heed your advice, President. I mean no offence of course to Mrs Hermans. I do not wish to imply in any way that she is rubbish. She is not; she is a decent person. But she was talking rubbish – that is the point I was making – which is something we have become accustomed to in this place.

But I find it particularly odd, given some of these post-and-boast offences have been related to hoon driving and people filming all sorts of behaviour on the roads – I am not sure why you would suggest that we are mates with these people when it was of course the former Liberal member for Kew who was last seen crashing his car into a child’s bedroom on a drink driving fuelled rampage. That is the sort of rampaging that we do not want to see. We do not want to see any of this activity going on that we have been discussing and that other colleagues such as Mr Batchelor and Mr Berger have so well elucidated in their contributions today. But I would just caution members, including Mrs Hermans, that this is a very serious topic and it should be treated with respect and not with hyperbolic or exaggerated remarks.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:32): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025. In the last year families and communities across the Eastern Victoria Region from Gippsland to Casey have seen a surge in violent youth offending, brazen property crime and organised gang activity. According to the Crime Statistics Agency March 2025 data, youth crime in Victoria has reached a 15-year high: 23,810 alleged incidents – that is almost up 17 per cent on the previous year. In my region alone motor vehicle theft is up 28 per cent year on year, with over half of those offences committed by people under 18 years of age. And yet, despite these alarming figures, this bill arrives too late and too narrow and, as usual, riddled with loopholes. Our opposition statement made clear that Labor has dragged its feet while offenders continue to glorify crimes online, putting public safety at risk. But despite this, Minister Anthony Carbines still makes no apologies. The government’s bill says it will kerb post-and-boast behaviour, offenders recording their crimes while posting them online to glorify that crime. I absolutely support the intent of this; the coalition absolutely supports the intent of this. But intent is not enough. This bill fails to match the strength of laws in Queensland and the Northern Territory. This is a headline but really lacking in substance.

I have spoken in this place a few times about something that happened in Pakenham, where a young kid named Jack was at a party. A gang that he did not know crashed this party and beat the living daylights out of him. He was unconscious; they broke his eye socket, all while posting it online. I raise this case study not because it is local and just extremely terrible, although those things are true, but because this bill would still not capture this case. The reason is because of the narrowness of the list. What Jack was victim to was a serious assault. It broke his eye socket; he was beaten unconscious. Serious assault is not on this list. Serious assault, arson and dangerous driving are all common performance crime videos, but they are missing from this list. Offenders in those categories can still post and boast without the consequences.

The other reason that Jack’s offender would not be liable under this bill is because of the offender-only liability. Only the original offender can be prosecuted for posting; others who post to glorify the crime face no penalty. It is very difficult to beat the living daylights out of people with one hand and post and boast with the other hand. It is generally people in groups that are doing this, and this has been missed in this bill. There is also the single-recipient loophole: this bill excludes material sent to only one person. In Queensland and the Northern Territory no such loophole exists. Also there is no cumulative sentencing. Once again, like in a lot of the laws in Victoria, everything is siloed rather than stacked on top of each other. Sentences for performing crime can run at the same time as the original offence, meaning there is no real extra punishment.

I also want to pick up on something that the Greens spoke about: young men and teenagers that are involved in far-right extremism and far-right hate crime. What about the far left? What about the extremism that they promote? What about the extremism that they are involved in? The other thing I want to pick up that the Greens spoke about is they are talking about teenage boys. Well, the Greens are the ones that want to raise the age of criminal responsibility even further. They were the ones that advocated to raise it from 10 to 14. In this place we raised it to 12, and I am going to talk about that and why that is detrimental, and important to this bill. Youth offending is not an abstract statistic. It is a lived reality for many people in Victoria, and it is a failure of the law and order system here. The core underlying reasons for increased crime absolutely need addressing, and we have not been doing that here in the state of Victoria. There was an article in June last year that exposed the shocking reality, and I am going to read a bit of it for you today. It states:

Crimes involving children as young as 10 years old have soared to their highest level since 2010 as alarming new figures reveal the state’s growing youth crime wave.

Children aged 14 to 17 years old were “over-represented” in burglaries, assaults, robberies and car thefts while almost 400 youth gang members were arrested within the past 12 months.

Baby-faced offenders aged 10 or 11 years old also recorded a 52.6 per cent spike in the number of offences committed.

More than a third of young criminals aged between 10 and 17 years old are repeat offenders, with the number of recidivist offenders rising by 10.4 per cent.

Children aged 10 to 13 years old were responsible for 84 aggravated burglaries across the state.

Five years ago, they had only been involved in 18.

Yet at the same time and in the same year the government’s Youth Justice Bill 2024 raised the age of minimum responsibility from 10 to 12. Crimes committed by children under 12 have now vanished from the record. This does make youth offending look much better on paper, while families and people on the ground have seen the opposite. It is a statistical illusion – one that organised crime syndicates are already exploiting by recruiting children too young to be charged. They are recruiting children as young as 12 for arson attacks, sometimes for as little as a $500 fee. In multiple cases offenders freed on bail have now reoffended within days. This is a direct consequence of the legislation of the current bill. You cannot be guilty of post and brag or post and boast if the offence itself does not legally exist. Young people are the ones that are generally involved in these sorts of crimes, so if we are continually raising the age of criminal responsibility, we are just erasing the part that they can be found guilty of, yet it still exists in the community. A child a few days short of their 12th birthday can now film and share their own burglary or car theft without being charged under these laws, simply because the underlying offences have been erased.

But this post-and-boast phenomenon could even get worse with these laws that are raising the age of criminal responsibility and keeping it so narrow. We know that this government is under pressure from activists to raise the age of criminal responsibility now even further from 12 to 14. If that happens, even more offenders, including those responsible for serious and violent crimes, will be invisible to this bill. Again, they can post and boast to their heart’s content without penalty, because on paper it does not exist. Add this to the more than 1100 sworn police vacancies statewide, the at least 12 stations in the Eastern Victoria Region that have closed or reduced hours and bail laws that the Police Association Victoria say leave an enormous amount of loopholes. And this current bill is unlikely to be a silver bullet for the crime crisis. These are the realities. We have already seen dangerous consequences of this soft-on-crime framework. In one case a 14-year-old boy with almost 400 alleged offences, from home invasion to luxury car thefts, had every single charge dropped. He was even granted bail more than 50 times. The presiding magistrate cited prison overcrowding, not community safety, as the reason. I raise this to highlight the reality of the holes and the reality of the failures of what is happening under this government’s watch.

Last month the Herald Sun reported that a 15-year-old boy was released without further supervision because ‘he wouldn’t comply anyway’. This youth first came under police notice at the age of 11, and since then he has racked up over 400 offences and has continually breached bail. This backs up what the police association and many others have said about bail laws that are so weak they allow repeat offenders to walk free again and again while the justice system dismisses or erases accountability through legislative loopholes. The police association puts it like this: when bail laws are working and offenders are put in prison, they are happy for them to boast as much as they like, but the fact is there is so much weakness in this that they just get put out on bail and offend again and again. This bill is another example of a government acting only when crime reaches their own backyard. They are a classic case of politicians and selective NIMBYs: one set of rules for the masses and another when it comes and hits their own backyard.

I just want to say, in closing, our communities do not need more political theatre. The government needs to take on board the reasonable amendments put forward, which would strengthen the performance crime bill. What is needed is capable government with a focus on repairing a broken system. Victoria needs real laws, real enforcement and real accountability.

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:43): I am not really sure where to start with this debate today, to be honest. It was very tempting – and still is – to stand up and rant and rave, but in truth this subject demands much more than that. I have been listening today to those on all sides who have made their contributions, including from the government side. When I came here this morning I think I reflected most on how I would explain this to people in my local electorate in Ringwood – how I might explain this to a mother or a father or a relative or friend of anyone who has been assaulted and, in that assault, had that assault filmed. That is done, as we have heard today, very infrequently, if ever, by the assailant themselves but actually by those around them, and it could be gang members, it could be other criminals. Infrequently it might be a bystander, but very frequently it will be one of the offenders – not the offender that is perpetrating the crime on the individual but just an offender that is using the opportunity to film the attack. I do not know about those listening at home or through social media or about those in this chamber, but when I see these kinds of videos from time to time, they are awful. I am not sure that there is anything more unpleasant than watching someone else be attacked in any way, shape or form. I have never liked it, never will.

I think why I have chosen to adopt this tone in this debate is a reflection of my disappointment in this place. I cannot, frankly, understand – let us take the politics, the partisan politics, out of it for a moment. I do believe there are good people on all sides of politics, and I know that there are very intelligent people on all sides of politics, including among the government ranks. How so many intelligent people around a cabinet table thought this was somehow a solution is puzzling. It really is puzzling. As the Greens have said today, this will not deter a crime and it will not punish offenders, so what are we doing? I mean, this is almost the very definition of wasting everyone’s time, but it is a little bit worse than that because we are giving false hope – because the next time there is a video that appears, be it on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat or just on television, and a parent or loved one is affected, outraged and saddened, they will quickly realise that the laws we will, in all probability, pass here today are meaningless. They are meaningless in two ways. First of all, in most instances where the person assaulting the victim is not actually filming, this law will not apply; it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever. If in the odd, unusual and rare circumstance the attacker is both attacking and filming – and I have to admit, never in my lifetime have I yet seen that – then the family will not be comforted by the fact that the penalties not only are laughable, were this not a serious issue, but will be, as has been pointed out today, served concurrently, which in common speak means they will have no additional impact on the sentencing whatsoever. I have never been a fan of concurrent sentencing. I find it abhorrent. I wish we would outlaw it in every respect. It has no place in a civilised society. We either punish and deter or we do not, and increasingly in this state we are doing neither. This is a classic case of false hope.

We are providing so many Victorians who desperately are crying out, who desperately want their sons, their daughters, the elderly or the disabled – we have seen attacks on people of ability constraints, horrendous attacks. We have also seen attacks, as has been pointed out today in the chamber, on those who have a sexual preference – horrendous attacks – and it is something that has gone on, largely, without attention. I think I recall one minister in this place referring to those attacks. She rightly did so, and she rightly condemned them. But there has been too little focus on protecting those individuals, and sadly, this piece of legislation will do neither; it will neither protect nor punish. How do I explain to a mum, a dad, a cousin, a relative or a friend why, when they next see vision of their loved one being viciously attacked, the Victorian government saw fit to not include that crime in this piece of legislation? I cannot begin to imagine what the cabinet discussed. I mean, did they discuss this? Did anyone in cabinet speak up? Did anyone say, just for a moment, ‘Attorney-General, I’m sorry, but why are we not including assault? Attorney-General, I’m sorry, but why do we not apply this new law to those gang members, those fellow criminals, who are filming the attack knowing full well what they are doing?’ In addition to that, why did no-one around the cabinet table say to the Attorney-General – or the Premier, for that matter – ‘Will this have an impact? Will it either deter or punish?’ If the answer to that is no, then it is really quite a cruel bill. It has to be almost one of the cruellest bills I have seen in my three years in this place. Perhaps they did speak up and perhaps we just do not know that; we will never know. But what we do know is that this piece of legislation is window-dressing. The media release issued by the government says it all. It says:

No Likes For Lawbreakers: ‘Post And Boast’ To Be Outlawed

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in a very cruel and twisted way, what this bill does is actually protect post-and-boast individuals. If you think about it logically, what we are now doing is codifying protection for the people who are part of a gang who wish to film this material, because they are explicitly excluded from prosecution; they are explicitly excluded from this legislation. There is no offence that they can commit. If their friend, their fellow gang member or just an associate commits an awful, heinous crime of assault, then they are protected. So in many respects this is actually the post-and-boast protection bill for assailants and criminals. That is this piece of legislation. That is what we are now passing. It is twisted. It is bizarre. I could never fathom how a cabinet table of smart men and women can sit there and think in any way, shape or form that it is progress when we codify the actions of the criminals and sanction what they are doing, because this is sanctioning the filming of an assault on any Victorian and ensuring that they are beyond the law.

As if that were not enough, as if that were not insult enough to the person being assaulted – and it could be a disabled person, it could be somebody who is homosexual, it could be somebody who is elderly; it could be somebody who is all of those things, or it could be someone who is none of those things – the other offence committed here by the cabinet on this Parliament and these people is the fact that if you do all these things, if you commit an assault and you manage to film your assault at the same time, as craven as that is, so long as you only share it with one person, guess what, you have not even committed an offence. What was that logic? Who around the cabinet table – what was the advice? Where were the questions? Where was the probing? Who thought it was a great idea that when some criminal beats the living daylights out of, tortures, rapes or whatever it is, but certainly assaults – because we know it is not covered by this piece of legislation – an individual and films it at the same time, so long as they only share it with one person, then that shall not be a criminal offence? So again, in what I can only describe as a twisted sense of reality in this place, we are now codifying that and protecting them under legislation. We are protecting criminals.

This piece of law, this bill, does more to protect criminals than it does any other Victorian. It has been pointed out by all sides except the government in this chamber today. I can never and will never understand how we have got to this point. But I have not finished yet. As they say in those awful Demtel ads – because it is sort of like a Demtel ad – it just gets worse and worse. The maximum penalty under this new law is two years. Now, you might go, ‘In and of itself, two years is nothing to be quibbled with.’ But, you know, insert asterisks, look down to the small print: ‘served concurrently’. I touched on this earlier in my speech today. The reality is, if you understand what that means, it means that whatever sentence the judge hands down, should you be found guilty of an offence – that is, the offence, the attack or whatever it was; it will not be an assault because it is not covered by this legislation, but whatever the principal offence is, the primary offence – you will serve the sentence concurrently, which means that you will actually never serve any additional time.

What do I say to those mums and dads in Ringwood and the mums and dads in Mitcham, Nunawading, Blackburn, Vermont, Forest Hill, Donvale and Ringwood East? I will have to say, in all honesty, ‘We failed you, and I’m part of that failure because we’re going to vote for it. As unpalatable and terrible and morally moribund as it is, we’re going to stand in this chamber and vote for it.’ It is an embarrassment to me personally. It is no doubt an embarrassment to my colleagues. It should be an embarrassment to this Parliament. It is not least an embarrassment because we actually had a unique opportunity to protect vulnerable people and people who are attacked, and we have squibbed the opportunity. We have squibbed it simply in exchange for a cheap headline, a one-day story – the ability to be able to say that somehow Victoria has acted, when the truth is we know it has not. We know that actually it has failed to act, and much worse than that, what it has done has brought Victoria yet again into disrepute.

As I pointed out today, the bill will actually codify and set a whole layer of protections for criminals that will be familiar with it when it becomes an act, and they will know and avoid this. I will not be the least bit surprised if there is not a single person ever charged with an offence under the act, such is its ill-conceived and ill-contemplated nature and manner. We will be back here, because too many parents, too many Victorians, will realise that if we are not also holding to account those fellow assailants that may not be the primary offender but will be filming, then that is not justice – or it certainly does not look like justice to me. In all honesty, I do not think there is any Victorian who would differ from what I am saying today. Maybe there were some cabinet members who said the same thing I am saying, and maybe they just lost out, so perhaps my message to those cabinet members is: next time, stand your ground and speak up, because wherever your voice was and however loud it was, it was not loud enough and you did not prevail. What we have now is a piece of legislation that will attract a headline, but it will do nothing to protect young people. It will do nothing to protect women, which we hear about all the time, day after day, year after year, and we have done nothing to protect them in passing this piece of legislation. We have done nothing to protect those with an ability constraint, those with a disability. It is a sad day. As I stand to vote for this bill later today I will be ashamed to do so. I will be ashamed because we have missed an opportunity to do what is real to protect and deter. We have done neither.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.