Tuesday, 26 August 2025

Bills

Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Lizzie Blandthorn:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (13:35): I rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. I note that this bill comes after the changes made in the Bail Amendment Act 2025, which was the first tranche of reforms to reverse several of Labor’s previous actions which weakened Victoria’s bail laws. Although these changes are at best a tweaking around the edges, they are at least a small, baby step in a better direction. To give some context, the high watermark for community safety was in 2013 when the Liberal–Nationals introduced legislation which strengthened bail, with the introduction of offences for breaching bail conditions and a reverse-onus test for offending whilst on bail. These changes were watered down to some extent by Labor in 2016 when exemptions were introduced to stop minors from facing real consequences for breaching bail conditions. Following the Bourke Street tragedy, in 2017–18 some aspects of bail laws were toughened, but this was later undone along with other changes which were passed in 2023 and which took effect in March 2024. The weakening of bail laws has had a predictable effect, seeing repeat offenders continue to get bail and continuing to make bail easy to keep.

As a consequence of sustained pressure from the coalition, which reflects public outrage and the extreme situations many Victorians are facing, the government was forced to apologise for its weakening of bail laws and make amendments. In March this year, under Labor’s so-called tough bail laws, there was a removal of the principle that remand is a last resort for under-18s; community safety was expressed to be the paramount consideration for bail decision makers; and there was the introduction of bail offences, although the consequences were extremely watered down. At the time the government said these were the toughest bail laws in the country, but the truth of the matter is that the laws that were introduced were not even as tough as the ones that existed prior to March 2024. In an attempt to be seen as doing something, the government have now introduced a second tranche of bail laws designed to strengthen the system. However, these changes do not restore bail laws to what they previously were. In short, it does not look like the government takes community safety seriously. The proposed changes do not match the ‘break bail, face jail’ policy the Liberal–Nationals have announced, which is a real alternative that puts community safety front and centre.

I do want to talk about the provisions of this bill and some of the aspects, but before I do I want to note that under clause 2 the commencement of this legislation is set to take place on 31 March 2026. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is several months away. If the government takes community safety seriously, why is there such a significant delay in the proposed date of effect? Doesn’t that seem a little bit bizarre? The rhetoric of being tough on crime matched with the action of a delayed implementation does not really match up. I will leave that with the government to talk about.

The first provision I would like to discuss is the high degree of probability test, which now forms part of the unacceptable risk test. The changes include a new section 4F, which applies to a decision to grant bail to a person charged with any of the following offences who is already on bail for any of the following offences: armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking and aggravated carjacking. Essentially a person must (a) have originally been charged with one of those offences I went through, (b) have been granted bail for that original offence and (c) be charged with the same offence whilst on bail. When the original charges are laid – that is, when the person first gets bail – the accused must bear the burden of showing that there are exceptional circumstances, or in the case of carjacking show a compelling reason to justify bail. Two, the police must be unable to demonstrate that granting bail would pose an unacceptable risk. If a person, whilst on bail, is charged with one of the six specified offences, the first step essentially remains unchanged but the second step is being modified by this legislation.

The bail decision maker must find there is an unacceptable risk that the accused would commit a schedule 1 or 2 offence unless satisfied that there is a high degree of probability the accused would not commit one of the six indictable offences if released on bail – for example, armed robbery, carjacking, home invasion et cetera – but the high degree of probability test only applies to those six offences. If it is highly likely that the accused might commit another crime, that is not included in the high degree of probability test, and therefore a bail decision maker is not mandated to find that there is an unacceptable risk. That makes sense, right?

This is supposed to represent a significant change to bail laws. In reality, it is not a huge change at all. In fact it is basically the same as the New South Wales high degree of confidence test, and the effect of this legislation is that it brings us into line with New South Wales. So much for the rhetoric about these being the toughest bail laws in the country.

When applying the high degree of probability provisions, bail decision makers are still required to consider existing factors in the Bail Act 1977 which ensure a risk-based, proportionate application of bail tests. These include consideration of whether there are any available bail conditions which might mitigate the risk of reoffending as well as any surrounding circumstances relevant to the risk-based focus of the high degree of probability test. The high degree of probability test will be difficult to pass, but it is possible when reoffending risks can be appropriately mitigated and managed. Again, I want to draw to the point that this change is just bringing Victoria into line with New South Wales. The claim that these are the toughest new bail laws in the country is clearly false. It is just not true.

The second area I want to discuss is clause 9 of the bill, which inserts subsection (4A) after section 4AA(4) of the principal act, which outlines new circumstances for the use of the show compelling reason test and that it is to include indictable offences. This uplift only applies if the person is already on bail for an indictable offence. So if the original offence is a summary offence, there is no uplift at all; it is only for indictable offences. Any offences contained in the new schedule 4 will not be subject to a show compelling reason test for bail for committing an indictable offence whilst on bail, even though schedule 4 offences are all indictable offences.

One of the concerns with the schedule 4 lists is that they include a number of offences which could be associated with serious and organised crime and therefore should attract a show compelling reason test – for example, handling stolen goods, dealing with the proceeds of crime, possessing a tablet press, possessing precursor chemicals, possessing controlled drugs, possessing controlled precursors, and proceeds of crime, which is money or property worth $10 million or more.

Schedule 5 sets out further exemptions to the list of indictable offences for which a show compelling reason test must apply where the person on bail for an indictable offence is charged and they are subsequently charged with a schedule 5 offence. This means that any offences contained in the new schedule 5 will not be subject to the show compelling reason test for bail for committing an indictable offence whilst on bail – again, despite schedule 5 offences all being indictable offences. Schedule 5 offences include theft of a motor vehicle of any value or theft of property worth at least $2500, and damaging or destroying property where the cost to repair the property that is damaged would be $5000 – but that excludes graffiti damage – or if the property that is destroyed is worth $5000 or more.

Clause 17 of this legislation adds two new circumstances to the non-exhaustive list of surrounding circumstances set out in section 3AAA(1) of the act. This adds pregnancy and caring responsibilities as special vulnerabilities that bail decision makers must expressly take into consideration if relevant to the matter of the accused’s circumstances. Clause 14 substitutes section 5AAA(7) of the act with 5AAA(7), (8) and (9). New section 5AAA(8) provides that bail decision makers may impose electronic monitoring conditions if the bail decision maker is not making an applicable decision within the meaning of part 2A – that being basically that that person is a child – the monitoring required or facilitated by the condition is to be carried out by an entity prescribed in regulations and the prescribed requirements, if any, are met.

The new provisions for use of a prescribed entity enable the government to permit certain providers to carry out electronic monitoring of bail. Clause 20 provides that arrangements currently in place are not impacted if they were enacted before the commencement of this bill. Essentially what that means is that if there are already current electronic monitoring arrangements in place, they stay the same. Any new ones that are put in place after the commencement of this act are under the new provisions but the old ones stay the same.

There are also amendments to the Summary Offences Act 1966. Clause 22 of the bill makes a technical change to the Summary Offences Act by substituting ‘a person’ for ‘an accused’. Everyone watching at home will think this is not a particularly substantial part of the legislation, but typically people on bail have been accused of a criminal offence and are referred to as ‘the accused’. However, in some circumstances respondents to family violence intervention order applications may be placed on bail and be subject to bail conditions to mitigate the risk of family violence. A respondent in these circumstances is not necessarily ‘the accused’. In essence what I am saying is that we support a person being called ‘a person’ rather than ‘the accused’.

Clause 18 requires a statutory review to consider the impact of the changes made by this bill, particularly the high degree of probability test. Clause 18(3) specifically requires that the review consider the impact of the operation of the relevant amendments on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people regardless of any other matters considered.

In summary, this bill makes minor steps to improve bail laws – minor steps. These changes do not restore bail laws; they were in a stronger position even pre March 2024. The focus from the government has been the six offences for which the high degree of probability test will apply and how that impacts on the unacceptable risk test. However, focusing on that masks the weakening of bail laws on a raft of other indictable offences. It is really a very small set of changes that we are seeing from the government here, despite the rhetoric of these being the toughest new bail laws, which is a complete and utter falsehood. It is just not true.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

Joe McCRACKEN: It is not true, Mr Batchelor, because you are literally, in the legislation, bringing this test in line with New South Wales. This just goes to show that it is not the toughest at all; you are literally bringing it in line with another jurisdiction. I do not know where the government seems to think that this line of tough new bail laws is coming in, but it is certainly not the toughest. You admit it yourself in the legislation. It is basically just a PR and spin campaign designed for a political outcome, not an outcome that genuinely seeks to bring about widespread and meaningful change within the state’s bail laws, and that is a great shame.

The coalition does have amendments to this bill, because we believe that integrity and confidence needs to be restored into the bail system of Victoria. We believe that our policy of ‘break bail, face jail’ is a deterrent to those considering breaking bail conditions. In short, we want to reinstate the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail as a schedule 2 offence, triggering an uplift in the bail test. By contrast, Labor’s legislation exempts dozens of indictable offences which will not see an uplift in the bail test.

We want to reinstate the offence of breaching bail conditions without reasonable excuse as a schedule 2 offence, triggering an uplift in the bail test. By contrast, Labor does not provide a bail uplift for breach of bail conditions at all. We want to remove the current exemption for youth offenders who breach bail conditions without reasonable excuse, ending the free pass for under-18s which Labor has allowed. However, the government know that there is no penalty for minors who breach bail conditions. We want to list robbery and burglary as schedule 2 offences, meaning tougher tests apply. Labor’s legislation will only see these offences incur a tougher test when it is a repeat offence on bail, not for the initial offence. I ask now that the coalition amendments be circulated, please.

We will not be opposing the legislation, because we at least recognise that it is a very small step in a better direction. It is a baby step, barely even a step, to be fair, but that is obvious to the community who daily experience crime. It is clear that the Labor government do not take community safety seriously. But what is worse is that by having weak bail laws, Labor do not take into consideration the experiences of the victims of crime. There have been countless stories in the community of offenders being arrested by the police, only for them to be released hours later. How is the community expected to have confidence in our justice system when the system is not just? How can people expect to feel safe in their own communities when criminals are let out on bail and they know that there are virtually no consequences for their criminal activities? How can anyone think it is fair to allow criminals to be released into the community without a strong set of conditions? It is pretty obvious the Labor government think it is all well and good. Crime crisis? What crime crisis? It is all made up. This is from the government that ‘puts people first’ and are doing ‘what matters most’. This is from the same people that cut police department budgets but want to install machete bins at a cost of $13 million. How is that one going?

The truth is that we do have a community safety crisis in Victoria, and that lies squarely at the feet of the government. Labor’s solution is to play around on the edges with bail, make minor tweaks here and there and dress it up as some sort of tough new solution. It is just not. It is a little bit like a chihuahua. It makes a lot of noise, but it really does not do much. It should be called the chihuahua legislation.

The coalition have put forward a number of alternatives. It is a plan which makes meaningful change to our justice system and ensures there are consequences for breaking bail. We just want people to feel safe in their communities and to see an end to the crime crisis in our state. That is what people are crying out for. It is one of the most basic functions of government to keep people safe. But why does the government refuse to accept that this is a problem of their own making?

The coalition has provided them with the solution. If the government votes against our amendments, it will show that they really do not take community safety seriously, they do not take criminal justice seriously and they do not care about the victims of crime, who have to see criminals out in the community literally hours after they have been arrested. I urge everyone in the chamber to support our amendments to make sure that the justice system is actually just again.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (13:54): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. The government in bringing forward this legislation as the second tranche of our bail reforms, and particularly the work that the Attorney-General, the Minister for Police and the Minister for Corrections have been doing over recent months in response to the legitimate community concern about community safety, is to be commended. I want to particularly place on record my thanks for the hard work that is going on by frontline police officers, who are working very hard day and night to make sure that those who are committing crimes in our community are being held accountable for them. They are day in, day out doing their job, protecting our community and making sure that our community is kept safe. I want to particularly acknowledge both the hard work of the frontline uniformed officers who are responding to criminal events as they occur but also the investigatory work that is going on to try and get to some of the root causes of particularly the organised elements of the criminal activity that we are seeing in some parts of Melbourne. Those issues are being dealt with as well. I think both of those elements are particularly important.

The work that the government has been doing with respect to bail laws, the second tranche of which we are debating here today, is designed to support that effort of our frontline officers in Victoria Police in keeping our community safe. It also makes some pretty clear statements from the Parliament to those who are making decisions about bail that community safety has to be an exceptionally important and overarching priority of our bail system.

As I said, the government introduced the first tranche of its bail reforms earlier this year. We debated those earlier this year, and they are working. We heard the voices in the communities for change. We have made the changes, and we are working hard to keep our communities safer. Since that first tranche of legislation was delivered in March this year more alleged offenders are being held on remand. The latest statistics reveal an increase of over 26 per cent of alleged youth offenders who have been remanded compared with the same period last year. High-harm offenders are being held on remand so they cannot go out and commit further crimes until their alleged offences and alleged offending are dealt with by the courts.

The bill before us today introduces our second package of legislative reform to our bail laws – reforms that will further strengthen the laws that apply to high-harm offenders. It will introduce the toughest bail test in the country for repeat offenders and implement a second-strike rule for those who commit offences while on bail. It means that repeat offenders are not going to walk away and are not going to walk free, they are going to be held accountable and held on remand until their trial. These changes are ultimately about prioritising community safety.

We do not agree with the approach that those opposite espouse – it will not work. The best way that we have got to stop crime is to give people a future worth choosing and to offer them the tools to give them an opportunity to turn their lives around. There is a significant investment in this area and these sorts of programs from the government. They have got to come alongside a focus on community safety, and that is what this bill does.

The bill introduces a new test for bail decisions. From now on there will be a new high degree of probability test – that is, a bail decision maker must be satisfied that there is a high degree of probability that the alleged offender will not reoffend if granted bail – and the test will be introduced for repeat or serious schedule 1 offences, which include aggravated home invasion, carjacking, armed robbery and aggravated burglary. These are the crimes which our communities have said repeatedly that they are concerned about, and we are tackling them head on. It means that bail will only be granted in these circumstances if a bail decision maker believes that there is a high degree of probability that the accused offender will not reoffend with a serious crime while on bail. It is one of the strictest tests of bail in the country, putting the community first. It means that reoffenders are sent a clear message: if you pose a risk to the safety of our communities, you are not going to be granted bail.

The second measure to be implemented through this bill is the second-strike rule in relation to bail. If it is believed that there is not a high degree of probability an accused offender will reoffend if granted bail and thus is granted bail, there will be no third chance if they reoffend. With the second-strike rule, if an offender is already on bail for an indictable offence and they are charged with another indictable offence, the offender will face the higher threshold for bail, the show compelling reason test. What this does and why it is really important is it puts the onus on the accused to demonstrate to the bail decision-maker that there is a compelling reason that justifies their release on bail once more. If we have an offender already on bail and there is another offence, they have got to prove that there is a compelling reason that justifies their release on bail once more. If the bail decision-maker is not satisfied, then no bail will be granted. This is in addition to the unacceptable risk test, a test which applies in nearly all bail applications and stipulates that bail must be refused if the prosecution establishes that the alleged offender poses an unacceptable risk to the community.

This change to the test for bail is about accountability for serious offences, as the test will only apply where an alleged offender has been charged with a serious offence listed in schedule 2 of the Bail Act 1977. This includes legislative safeguards to ensure that low-level, nonviolent crimes are not picked up by the second-strike rule – and we think it is particularly important that we are not picking up these nonviolent crimes with this second-strike rule. It is what makes our reform of bail laws both targeted and proportionate, because we know that contact with the criminal justice system can lead to reoffending, and that is very clear. So there are legislative safeguards that stipulate that those charged with lesser offences, such as minor theft, property offences or public nuisance, are not subject to the reverse-onus second-strike rule – important safeguards that accompany the clear and tough approach for high-harm offenders.

The bill also makes other consequential changes. It places a ban on private electronic tagging, because it is a pretty simple principle that if you are on bail, you should not be able to buy access to it. It is not fair. We have had some bad cases of it, and we are going to put a stop to it. The bill will also add considerations for care and pregnancy when giving decision-makers consideration as to whether to grant bail, and the bail system will now better recognise the impact of incarceration on mothers, children and family stability. Because we know how detrimental contact with the criminal justice system can be for vulnerable people, we need to make sure that they are considered, while considering reducing high-harm offenders being out in the community as well.

Committing serious crime must have consequences, and that is why these bail reform changes are both needed and targeted. Our reforms to bail are specifically targeted and designed to protect the community from the serious, high-harm offences – those who have committed home invasions, those who have committed carjacking, aggravated burglary, the crimes that understandably instil fear into communities. I have in recent months had the opportunity to speak to some members of the community which I represent – along with some colleagues in the chamber at the moment – in the Southern Metropolitan Region who have themselves been subject to some of these types of offences, including home invasions and aggravated burglary. It is very clear, in the conversations that I have had, the significant impact these have had on these individuals and their families. We have heard what they have been telling us. We have listened to quite harrowing stories that have been conveyed to many of us across the chamber about the impact that these high-harm offences have on our communities, and that is why we are acting. That is why this is the second tranche of our laws to try and stop reoffending in high-harm and serious offending. And what that does, along with these changes today and along with the changes that we passed early on this year, is send a very strong message that crime will not be tolerated in the community.

In March we amended the guiding principles for bail, clarifying that decisions for bail should give consideration to community safety overarching importance, that the overarching principle that should apply in our bail system is that of community safety. We made some further changes, particularly with respect to young offenders, altering some previous words in the act that made consideration of bail for those offenders a last resort. The changes also moved certain offences such as armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion and carjacking from schedule 2 offences to schedule 1 offences. This means that alleged offenders of these crimes face a higher bail test, that of exceptional circumstances for repeat offenders, and now will face the high degree of probability test also introduced in these laws.

The March changes moved a series of other offences, including serious arson and motor vehicle theft into schedule 2. These offences are now trigger a higher test for bail than previously. Where there was community concern about high-harm offences, we made the changes we needed to toughen our bail laws. That is what makes these changes appropriate. That is what makes these changes proportionate. We know that the approach that those opposite advocate will not work, does not work. We want to ensure that whilst we are targeting high-harm offences through the way our bail system operates, we are making the considerations that I outlined earlier in this speech to ensure that certain lower level offences are not caught up in these changes to the bail system and that some of the issues that were very clear in the scheme that applied in years past, that had disproportionate effects on some of the most vulnerable in the community, will not be repeated. That is certainly not the intent of the changes here. They are not designed to catch the vulnerable. They are designed to ensure those who are charged with serious crimes – burglaries, home invasions and carjackings – are held on remand as appropriate with these new tests until they have their day in court.

These changes to bail come alongside investment in preventative measures to stop people, particularly young, vulnerable people, from entering the criminal justice system in the first place. They include investments in health care, in rehabilitation and support services across the corrections and youth justice systems to help drive down repeat offending and support for those who want to turn their lives around, who want to get put on a better path – case management, coaching, mentoring, pro-social activities. The youth crime prevention program runs all of these sorts of activities and has supported more than 7500 young people to date. It is through this suite of approaches that we as a government are implementing tough laws and more support protections for the vulnerable, which make the suite of measures that we have been implementing in response to the real and legitimate concerns about community safety proportionate and appropriate for action.

We do know that there are a range of issues that are of serious concern to members of the community. That is why this government has not been backward in taking the steps forward that we need to make sure that in a range of areas our community is safe. We reformed these bail laws earlier in the year through targeted changes and introduced the toughest bail test in the country. Recently we have had strong, new anti-vilification laws, particularly to protect vulnerable communities from hate and abuse. This government proposed them. This government passed them. The Liberals voted against them, and we should never let people forget the fact that the Liberal Party has opposed tough anti-hate laws in this Parliament. This year we are banning machetes, the first ban of its kind in Australia. We have introduced post-and-boast offences so that you do not glorify crime, so crime is not content and it is not being used in that way. We have trials of electronic monitoring of youth offenders. We are boosting investments. We are significantly increasing our investments across the justice system to make sure that it is able to cope with the increased demands that we are placing on it. The changes that we are proposing to our bail laws today are considered, proportionate and targeted, and I commend them to the chamber.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (14:09): I rise today to make a contribution on this Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. Listening to the member opposite, one would think everything is hunky-dory in this land we call Victoria. The member talked about backwards steps – ‘We’re not taking a backward step. We’re taking forward steps.’ Well, I am about to outline the backward–forward – the crime cha-cha – in Victoria that we have been facing over the last 10 years. Let me start by just reflecting on a news item that was in Channel 9 news in March this year. We had two mothers and great insight from those two mothers, Jen and Kate, whose sons were repeatedly bailed in 2023 for car thefts – no light offence – and for home invasions. Jen described living on a continuous roller-coaster as a parent and how she would call police, she would beg police, she would ask police, ‘Please, he’s on bail but he’s doing this again.’ She begged them to keep the kids locked up – not out of malice, not out of bitterness, but out of desperation and fear for her child. This life of repeat recidivism is no life for these youths, nor is it life for a parent and nor is it life for those multiple people who have had their car stolen, who have had their home invaded. We only need to turn on the television in our living rooms every single night to see – so sadly, so desperately – yet another example. I am sure we can all understand their frustration.

We saw only a few days ago teenage boys repeatedly holding up shops and going into shops with machetes. We have seen them in our supermarkets. If you think it is only a city event – and it is shocking that it is happening anywhere – it is not just a metropolitan Melbourne and suburban event, this is happening right across our state. It is happening in my Eastern Victoria electorate. Let me give you some examples in relation to statistics, because while we hear those opposite talk about sending a clear message, to my mind all that this government – the Andrews now Allan government – has been sending for the past 10 years is a shingle out the front saying that you can get away with a great deal of activity, you can get away with crime and they will never lock you up.

We have heard about police. I want to put on record my thanks to our statewide police, particularly in my Eastern Victoria electorate. They do an amazing job. There are over 1100 vacancies for police. Why? Because they have had a neckful. They are frustrated; they are burnt out. They are like teachers – and we saw some information about teachers today. They are tired and sick of doing this work and doing the hard yards that come to no fruition on outcomes for keeping the community safe.

Let me provide some examples in Eastern Victoria LGAs as they are measured in the stats. In Latrobe in 2015 there were 54 residential aggravated burglaries. Last year there were 162 – a 200 per cent increase. In Bass Coast there were 11 ten years ago, 43 last year. There were three in Baw Baw 10 years ago, 75 residential aggravated burglaries last year. These are frightening stats for the people that I represent. In South Gippsland we saw 15 last year, and there were only four in previous times. In Cardinia, 43 in 2015 and 120 last year. East Gippsland was up and Wellington was also up. If you think it does not happen in the country, I was speaking to a local resident the other day, and not in his house but in a town I know very well, two youths entered the house in the middle of the night, with children in the house, and ransacked it, pinched the keys, stole two cars, left and trashed one car and the other one is somewhere over the hill and far away. I know this is an all-too-real occurrence for people living in metropolitan Melbourne.

In fact I think one home in metro Melbourne has been invaded, burgled and all of those things five times. You would think that you had won the reverse lottery if this was your home and this was happening to you.

We hear that we are not taking a backward step, but that is not true – it is absolutely not true. This government weakened bail laws in 2016 and again in 2023, and now it has created a crisis. There is no doubt about it, there is a crisis in this state. Rather than offering this terrible crime cha-cha, we are offering a real solution, and that is: if you break bail, you face jail. This is about accountability. It is about protecting communities, it is about stopping repeat offenders and it is about restoring trust in the justice system. It is not about being reactive and soft, it is about having a clear, tough, fair measure: if you break bail, you face jail.

Let us look at some of the aspects of the history that have brought us to today – looking backwards, because the government seems to think it is ‘sending a clear message’. Back in 2013 the Liberals and Nationals introduced robust reform. They introduced bail offences for breaching bail conditions and reverse-onus tests for offending whilst on bail, and they made committing an indictable offence whilst on bail a schedule 2 offence. The result was we had stronger community protection and clear consequences for bail breaches. In 2016 there was a watering down under Labor, under the then Andrews government, and we had exemptions from real consequences for minors breaching bail conditions, which created a free pass for those under 18s who breached bail.

Everyone in this room agrees that we need diversion therapy. We need positive outcomes for our youth. We need great education opportunities. We need the basics. We need numeracy and literacy standards to increase. We need opportunities, not only in regional Victoria, where the trajectory can be low in terms of educational attainment, but we need many, many opportunities. We need more support for families. Families are doing it tough, and one of the things that this government has done just recently is cut Parentline. For parents who are struggling – not every parent is struggling, but I am sure Kate and Jen were struggling big time with their children as they were going through their youth – it was about providing that 8 am till midnight support, but this government has cut away from parents. We need all of those supports. There is no argument on that one.

With the Bourke Street tragedy, I was here at that time, and I remember my colleague the then Shadow Attorney-General Mr Ed O’Donohue spoke very passionately and with great knowledge and depth about that tragedy as he argued against the 2018 provisions. The government made some provisions then, but they were again reactive rather than policy-making in depth. Then in 2023 we saw the Bail Amendment Act 2023, which took effect in 2024, reverse many of those strengths from the Liberals and Nationals and from the post-Bourke Street reforms. We are seeing this terrible cycle, and what for? What is it to achieve? Is it to achieve an outcome in the polls? Is it to show that we do care? If we really cared in Victoria, we would not create this amount of mayhem.

Now it is 2025, and we have this bill before us today. We want to see that people will feel safe in their homes. We certainly need a full, functioning and resourced police force. We need our system to be trusted, and we need to see the ‘break bail, face jail’ implementation. The amendments that have been circulated by Mr McCracken on behalf of the Liberals and Nationals today go some way to making that happen in this place with the bill before us.

Through our policy, through our commitment to the Victorian community, in government we will look to and, hand on heart, reinstate committing indictable offences while on bail as a schedule 2 offence. We will reinstate breaching bail conditions as a schedule 2 offence. We will end youth exemptions, but we will focus on youth health, youth support and better outcomes for youth. And we will elevate robbery and burglary to schedule 2 offences. These are just a few of the actions that we will undertake. There are many more speakers to come. I thank the house for its indulgence. We will not be opposing this bill, but I call on those in this chamber to support our amendments.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (14:21): I rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. It feels particularly important today to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting. I pay my respects to elders past and present and who have advised on this bill. Sovereignty in this state was never ceded.

Today we debate a bill that takes Victoria further down a path that we already know is harmful and ineffective, and the Greens will oppose this bill. It pretends to be a targeted fix for high-harm repeat offending. In reality it expands reverse-onus bail settings, it hardens refusal tests and it widens the criminalisation of people breaching bail. These are measures our courts, coroners, First Peoples and frontline experts have all warned will increase the warehousing of people on remand, deepen disadvantage and put more people, especially Aboriginal women, at risk. That is why the Greens oppose this bill, and it is why I asked the government to halt this second tranche, to listen to the evidence and to implement Poccum’s law – the blueprint communities have put before us to fix Victoria’s broken bail laws and prevent, rather than increase, the risk of deaths in custody.

Let us be clear about what this bill does. First, it inserts a new section 4F into the Bail Act 1977 – an additional ‘high degree of probability’ hurdle inside the unacceptable risk test for people accused of armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion and carjacking when the alleged offence occurs while they are already on bail for one of those offences. If the bail decision maker is not satisfied to a high degree of probability that the person would not commit one of those offences, the person is treated as an unacceptable risk and bail must be refused. Second, the bill expands when the step 1 reverse onus show compelling reason test applies. New section 4AA(4A) lifts anyone to that onerous test if they are accused of an indictable offence that was allegedly committed while they were on bail for an indictable offence. They are also charged with the resurrected commit indictable offence while on bail offence under section 30B of the Bail Act. There are some carve outs for non-imprisonable offences: a new list in schedule 4 and threshold-based exceptions in schedule 5; for example, theft under $2500 in value. But the core effect of this bill is unmistakeable: many more accused people will carry the burden to justify their release, even where the later offence would never attract a sentence of imprisonment. This is the very dynamic that the coroner in the inquest into the tragic death of Veronica Nelson called in the findings a ‘complete and unmitigated disaster’.

Third, the bill tinkers with electronic monitoring. It renames and reframes the regime and permits electronic monitoring conditions in certain circumstances outside the children’s trial by regulation and prescribed requirements. The Attorney-General says that this is constrained, but layering surveillance conditions onto people who are legally presumed innocent is more net widening by stealth. Finally, the bill amends the Summary Offences Act 1966 so the offence of contravening certain conduct conditions of bail applies to ‘a person’, not just ‘an accused’, expressly extending the bail breach offence to situations where a person’s bail does not arise from being charged with a criminal offence. This is a quiet but significant expansion of criminal liability for breaching bail-like conditions.

The government has framed these changes as necessary to strengthen community safety, and the explanatory memorandum repeats that claim, but we have been here before. Tougher bail tests, more reverse onus provisions, more breach offences – these are the same levers that exploded Victoria’s remand population over the last decade without demonstrable community safety benefit but with extreme harm. Between 2012 and 2022 the proportion of unsentenced prisoners more than doubled from 20 per cent of people in Victoria’s prisons to 42 per cent unsentenced. As at April this year 40.5 per cent of people in our prisons were on remand. Almost half the prison system is now people who have not been sentenced. That is not a targeted, risk-based approach, it is mass pre-trial incarceration. Let us be very clear about what remand is. People in Victoria can often spend months in prison on remand, often for offences that when they do get their day in court they may be found not guilty or they may receive a sentence that does not include time in prison or is less than the time served.

First Nations organisations, legal centres and advocates are begging this Premier and this Parliament not to repeat these mistakes of the past, which cost lives. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the Aboriginal Justice Caucus, the Koorie Youth Council, the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Villamanta, the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women, Victoria Legal Aid and the Human Rights Law Centre, among many more stakeholders, have jointly warned that this second tranche is ‘another unmitigated disaster waiting to happen’. They remind us that the Aboriginal imprisonment rate in Victoria has almost doubled in 10 years and about half the prison population is on remand. Their demands are clear and reasonable: bail saves lives; adopt Poccum’s law; do not go backwards. We should listen.

The Koorie Youth Council has urged the government to halt these changes and work with Aboriginal communities on evidence-based, community-led responses for children and young people. They warn that these kneejerk bail changes will undo hard-won reforms, and they are right. If we care about safety, we must invest upstream in housing, health, cultural connection and services that keep kids out of the criminal legal system, rather than defaulting to incarceration as our response.

Victoria Legal Aid has been blunt: tightening bail tests again ‘will harm the state’s most marginalised people’ – people grappling with poverty, homelessness, family violence, mental ill health and trauma – and it will entrench systemic racism that we must work hard to undo. These are not abstract values; they describe the everyday clients that are now clogging remand lists in relation to low-level offending.

Jesuit Social Services calls the government’s approach ‘the wrong end of the system’. They point out that the government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into more prison beds, knowing that these bail changes will turbocharge the numbers of people on remand, when what actually improves safety are investments in prevention and rehabilitation. The government’s own budget papers and subsequent reporting acknowledged a $727 million injection to expand adult and youth custody capacity, money that will not prevent a single offence tomorrow. This is the cost of legislating to fill cells rather than to fund solutions.

Frontline women’s services are equally clear. The Law and Advocacy Centre for Women, which runs hundreds of bail applications each year, opposes this reset to punitive settings and flat out warns that we have seen the harm from tranche one: rising incarceration and more women, the majority victim-survivors themselves, held on remand for minor poverty-driven offending. These are women who need housing, health care and family violence support, not a reverse onus legal trip-wire that keeps them in a cell pre-trial.

Every jurisdiction that has embarked on mass pre-trial detention has discovered what we already know from Victoria’s last decade: remand swells, prison budgets blow out, court backlogs worsen and people churn through custody only to be released into even more precarious circumstances. The evidence from around the world and from right here in Victoria says that tougher bail tests do not fix the drivers of harm, they warehouse people, and because of that they make the problem worse.

If this bill passes today, all of you going down that track will make community safety worse.

The government’s additional rhetoric is that this bill is targeted. If the aim is to reduce serious repeat offending while on bail, the strongest levers – let us be real – are not in the Bail Act. They are in investments in victim-survivor services, stable housing, family violence safety, youth outreach and the capacity of courts to decide bail quickly, fairly and independently with full information, including culturally appropriate supports. The solutions are in proper funding of Aboriginal community controlled organisations to deliver bail support and case management.

The Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities tells us that deprivation of liberty must be lawful and not arbitrary, proportionate to the legitimate aim. The government’s own statement of compatibility concedes that the bill limits liberty and the presumption of innocence by uplifting more accused people into reverse-onus tests. This is not a small thing we are about to do today. When Parliament moves the dial so that an accused person must prove that they deserve their freedom, we are cutting against the grain of fundamental rights, and we should only do that when the evidence shows that the fix is going to work. The evidence on this shows that it clearly does not. Consider who is captured by the new deeming clause in section 4F. It is not restricted to people convicted of prior crimes. It is not a targeted response to individuals assessed to pose specific immediate risks. It is a rule that assumes a person on bail charged with a listed offence today is too risky tomorrow unless they can persuade a decision-maker otherwise to a high degree of probability. It is a profound reversal of how risk is supposed to be assessed – individualised, evidence based and capable of mitigation by tailored conditions. Instead, this bill says if you are not in that category, we start from no and we start from a very high bar. That new test is harsher than the bail test that applies to murder and rape.

Look also at the expansion of the show compelling reason test under new section 4AA(4A). There are exceptions, but in practice we are elevating a large cohort of accused people into a reverse-onus setting because they are alleged to have offended while on bail and are charged with the new section 30B offence. That is the same double uplift logic that the coroner, Yoorrook and legal experts told us drives unjust remand and disproportionately harms Aboriginal people. The government appears to know this. It is being written into the act that the 2026 review must examine the impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. If you already suspect disproportionate harm, if tranche 1 has already caused disproportionate harm, why legislate that harm now and then measure it later? Just do not do it.

That quiet change to the Summary Offences Act matters. When we turn more breaches of conduct conditions into criminal offences for a person, we widen the pipeline where a missed curfew, a prohibited association or being late to an appointment can convert into a new charge. This is not a hypothetical concern. It is one that we hear over and over from people who represent accused on bail with unstable housing, with caring obligations, with health issues or with patchy phone access. We should be trying to reduce technical criminalisation, not inventing new pathways to effect it. We are grateful that the Attorney has, at least in this bill, recognised pregnancy and caring responsibilities within the surrounding circumstances, which the sector has advocated to include, and there is a review in the bill that must examine the impacts, as I said, on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. But these small rights in the margins of the bill cannot cure the overall framework that expands pre-trial detention and criminalisation, a framework that normalises pre-trial detention for broader classes of accused people. Many of them will be poor, sick, homeless, traumatised, disabled or Aboriginal. That is not a framework that the Greens can support. A review in 2026 is little comfort to the people who will be denied bail in 2025 because we legislated new ways to turn bail risk assessment into a near-automatic remand for a whole class of people before they have been found guilty of anything.

This bill arrives in a state that has already chosen incarceration as the default tool of social policy. In July 2025 there were 6564 people in our prisons, and more than 39 per cent of them were unsentenced. The government is expanding the number of beds because it expects more people on remand. None of that answers the community when they ask what actually stops harm.

The answer from experts across the spectrum is consistent: adequate funding for housing, alcohol and other drug treatment and mental health care; therapeutic bail support; culturally strong services; and practical help for people to meet their conditions. That is where safety and community is built.

The Greens have amendments to this bill, and I would ask that the Clerk circulate those now. The first Greens amendment is a reasoned amendment, which asks that the bill be withdrawn and not reintroduced until the government, one, commits to changes to the bill so that (a) it does not exacerbate the risk of human rights abuses and deaths in custody, (b) ensures vulnerable children and adults charged with non-violent crimes will not be required to overcome a tougher bail test than a person charged with murder or rape, and (c) ensures that people will not be pushed into prison who should not be there; and two, solves the problems in Victorian prisons exacerbated by overcrowding.

We then have substantive amendments that deal with three matters. Firstly, we have amendments that seek to ensure the high degree of probability test should only apply to the listed offences where an accused person is alleged to have used force or violence, either actual or apprehended, against another person in the alleged offence, or had the intent of violence. Aggravated burglary should not be subject to this high test. The new section 4F includes aggravated burglary and a list of offences which will now be subject to the high degree of probability test. However, this is not targeted, as the government has attempted to put forward with its rhetoric. The aggravated burglary charges also include aggravated burglary with intent to steal and aggravated burglary with intent to damage. These offences do not definitionally involve violence, and in many instances these are poverty-driven and so do not align with the government’s rhetoric around high levels being targeted to high levels of harm. For example, this charge could be satisfied by a person coming into a house, requesting a glass of water and then stealing a phone on the way out. Lumping all aggravated burglary offences into the new section 4F will result in non-violent bail applicants being subject to an impossibly high bail test. Our amendment seeks to remedy this and, in line with the government’s rhetoric, tries to target this more appropriately.

The second amendment amends the guiding principles of the Bail Act to include taking into account issues that arise due to a person’s Aboriginality. This bill significantly diminishes the obligation of a bail decision maker to have consideration for section 3A when they are applying the high degree of probability test. That test limits the consideration and applicability of section 3A in those circumstances, because it requires the bail decision maker to focus only on the purported risk of reoffending and for community safety to be paramount in the guiding principles. The bill’s statement of compatibility confirms that this makes consideration of section 3A irrelevant or less relevant. Section 3A contains key considerations about a bail applicant’s Aboriginality, which a bail decision maker must consider as per Coroner McGregor’s recommendation after Veronica’s death in custody.

The Supreme Court of Victoria has interpreted section 3A to mean that Aboriginality is a significant and crucial consideration in all bail decisions and one that is ‘no less than a radical transformation to the decision-making process’. The court noted that section 3A should inform every aspect of the process and encourages decision-makers not to contribute to overincarceration without ‘good reason to do so’, so the second amendment will ensure that Aboriginality is taken into account by bail decision makers.

Our third set of amendments includes two additional vulnerabilities for consideration by bail decision makers: being a victim of family violence and experiencing homelessness or unstable housing. We know that criminalisation of vulnerable victims often occurs in the context of family violence and that primary or secondary homelessness is a psychosocial factor that indicates vulnerability. In line with the government’s move to include pregnancy and caregiving responsibilities, the Greens believe that the bill must be amended to require consideration for these special vulnerabilities, which apply to many accused who are seeking bail.

As our reasoned amendment argues, we believe that this bill should be withdrawn. What should we do instead? We should implement Poccum’s law, the package shaped by Veronica Nelson’s family and First Nations organisations to make bail fair and effective. That approach would honour the coroner’s findings, and it would also save lives and result in clearer, more streamlined decision-making for bail decision-makers, who can still take into account the risks posed by accused persons to the community. We should be putting a presumption in favour of bail back at the centre, repealing the failed reverse-onus provisions that capture low-level and poverty-related offending. We should prohibit remand where a person is unlikely to receive a term of imprisonment on sentence. We should remove standalone bail offences that turn technical breaches into new charges and enhance criminalisation. And we should definitely invest in therapeutic bail support, housing and services that enable compliance and start contributing to rehabilitation. We must fund housing, health and justice programs that actually make communities safe, and we must embed accountability for the way that this system operates through meaningful data collection and independent oversight of the system.

We urge the house to refuse a second reading and to require the government to engage meaningfully on these issues with the over 100 sector organisations that oppose this bill. The government’s own human rights statement admits that this bill limits liberty and the presumption of innocence. The coroner, unfortunately, has told us where that road leads. First Peoples have shown us a different road, and we should take it.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:41): I also rise to speak today on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. This year already we have seen the government take strong legislative steps as part of our priority to improve and ensure community safety. This has included implementing tougher bail laws in March of this year, which are in line with community expectations, banning machetes and providing Victoria Police with the necessary powers to help keep our community safe. Those bail changes introduced in March were the first of two reform packages to the state’s bail system. That first legislative reform strengthened bail tests for serious crimes and reintroduced specific bail offences. This bill is the second package of these reforms and implements stronger bail tests for repeat high-harm offenders and a second-strike rule for those who commit indictable offences whilst on bail.

The Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 introduces a new high degree of probability bail test for those accused of repeat serious offences committed whilst on bail, including home invasions, carjackings, armed robberies and burglaries. It provides for an uplift to the bail test for individuals accused of committing an indictable offence whilst already on bail for another indictable offence, and specifically lists pregnancy and caring responsibilities as surrounding circumstances to be considered. In addition to these key changes, the bill introduces further amendments to improve the operation of bail laws, including ensuring that individuals released on bail pending family violence intervention order proceedings can be charged with contravening their bail conditions and providing for reforms in the bill to be captured in the scheduled statutory review of the Bail Act 1977. It is very important to note that this is not a slapdash approach. It is not an approach that prioritises slogans over solutions. It is not a kneejerk response to leading reform, unlike from those opposite, where a one-size-fits-all, lock-up-everyone approach seems to be the order of the day. We hear from the knife sharpening already in the Liberal party room plenty of slogans but no real policy process or actual clear plan of how this is going to work. The reforms before us today prioritise community safety, not merely locking up vulnerable individuals who pose no grave risk to community safety.

The Victorian government is committed to striking the right balance when it comes to bail law and delivering a system that meets the expectations of Victorians. The first legislative package in March took strong steps to strengthen bail. These changes have already begun to have an effect. We know that more needs to be done, which is why the government has been working to develop this second tranche of bail reform, which builds upon those earlier changes. This bill means that for repeat or serious schedule 1 offences, which include things such as aggravated home invasion, aggravated carjacking, armed robbery and aggravated burglary, there will be a new high degree of probability test.

Those charged with one of these schedule 1 offences must first satisfy the bail decision maker that exceptional circumstances exist that would justify their release on bail. The new test obliges those decision-makers to be fully satisfied that there is a high degree of probability that the accused will not commit another serious offence – not just a preponderance or a likelihood but a high degree of probability. If you continue to pose a serious risk to the safety of Victorians under these laws, you will not be granted bail.

In terms of the uplift, it is also really important to note that these reforms will not automatically introduce a double uplift. The bill has been carefully drafted to avoid the possibility of a person being double uplifted to the exceptional circumstances or high degree of probability test where the offence they are alleged to have committed is neither schedule 1 nor schedule 2 – that is, that it is in neither of those most serious categories.

The reforms that were passed in March include the reintroduction of the offence of committing an indictable offence on bail. Currently if an accused is on bail for a non-scheduled indictable offence and then charged with committing a further non-scheduled indictable offence, they are subject to the unacceptable risk test only. The uplift changes in this bill mean that an accused will be uplifted to the show compelling reason test if they are on bail for an indictable offence and it is alleged that they have committed a further indictable offence, unless the further offence has been excluded from the uplift. This is about ensuring accountability, not targeting minor transgressions. But for those who repeatedly disregard the law whilst on bail, the safeguards are built in to ensure that low-level non-violent offences like minor shoplifting, low-value theft, low-value property damage or low-level drug possession do not automatically trigger this uplift. This component of the bill directly ensures that we do not see a walk back down the path that Ms Copsey referred to – that we do not see vulnerable people finding themselves increasingly at a disadvantage in the system.

The reforms introduced in this bill will not subject the offence of breaching a condition of bail to a reverse onus – a presumption against bail test. This is an important point to make, which also demarcates another significant difference between the approach that we are taking and that of the opposition. Subjecting the offence to a reverse onus test and the presumption against bail would not meaningfully protect community safety but would undoubtedly lead to more vulnerable people being remanded unnecessarily, with all of the advanced outcomes that come as a result of it. Tough bail does not mean locking up everyone who breaches bail regardless of the detail. For example, someone missing an alcohol and other drug session does not make Victorians inherently unsafe; further criminalising people who, say, come home after a curfew 5 minutes late does not make Victorians safer. This is a bill that targets the offending that Victorians are genuinely and rightly concerned about, and that is things such as home invasions and people being fearful of being threatened by someone whilst they are in their home, out and about or working a shift at the local supermarket. These are the offences that people are concerned about, and these are the egregious types of offending that this bill specifically targets.

This government has been steadfast and has worked consistently and constructively to deliver on its promise to introduce two packages of reforms to get bail laws right in order to ensure community safety, in order to ensure that vulnerable people are not unnecessarily caught up but also, importantly, to meet community expectations. We have already seen the impact of the first package of our bail reforms, and whilst they are still relatively new and there is still much, much time to see further evidence, it is clear that already they are starting to have an impact. Last week in fact I had the opportunity of attending the Southern Metro Region Casey police service area neighbourhood policing forum, which was a terrific opportunity to hear from our local police in the Casey area, to hear from residents and business owners about their concerns, for them to speak up and raise their issues with crime directly with the police and for the police to report back on the trends of crime that we have seen in Casey. It was very good.

Ann-Marie Hermans interjected.

Michael GALEA: I hear your comments, Mrs Hermans. I note that you were not there. I am not sure if the opposition leader was not there either, despite Casey being in his council area, but it was a very instructive and informative session hosted by Victoria Police, which all members of the community were invited to attend. We had local councillors there as well, and there were certainly things that could be taken back by me as a state representative, by the councillors and indeed by the community as a whole. Certainly there was some very good feedback through to the police as well from people on their individual or broader concerns.

The presentations went through a number of key areas of concern. They started with family violence. We know that family violence remains one of the most serious and most frequent types of offending that we are seeing in this state, and there are some very concerning figures that we continue to see in that space. Whilst there are increasing support services, such as the new Orange Door in Cranbourne in the Casey example, there is still much work that we all have to do. We take on the police’s point that family violence is not just a societal issue, it is a community safety issue and it is a policing issue and one that we should continue to take very seriously. They also then talked extensively about some of the trends we have been seeing in youth crime and offending, and indeed they made the very worthwhile observation of the correlation between youth crime offenders and those who have come from being not perpetrators but victims in family violence situations and the distressing cycle that we see there.

It was a very, very engaging forum. It is not Victoria Police’s role to provide official commentary on the legislative process, but certainly from talking with many of our local police officers it is clear that the first tranche of bail reforms implemented by this government and passed through this chamber earlier this year is already starting to have an impact and starting to make a difference. There are a number of incredibly important diversionary programs that are in place, especially for young offenders. There are many I could list off just in the City of Casey alone, run by community groups, by organisations, by non-profits and many indeed by Victoria Police itself, and we heard about some of them on the night, including the program of police officers playing basketball with some at-risk teenagers and then going through the process and at the final graduation rocking up not in their basketball shorts but in their police uniforms and explaining the importance and letting those young people at risk see the police as real people and as people who are invested in and part of the community. There were indeed some very promising results out of that program as well. We know that for the most part these programs work. The best thing that we can do to support people and to reduce these rates of offending is to stop them committing crimes in the first place. These sorts of diversionary programs and early intervention programs are so critical to doing that.

Where the bail laws come in and where the toughening up of these laws comes in is at that extreme end – I would hazard to say it is not even the majority – of offending that we are talking about here today. It is about that effective deterrent – basically the statement that we are going to provide especially to young people every opportunity possible to improve their lives, to take a step back away from offending and to make a positive contribution to society. We will provide every opportunity, as much as we can, but there needs to be a consequence for not taking that path and for wilfully continuing to offend. It is a small number. In relative terms it is a small number who are continuing to do that. But there need to be effective deterrents and effective consequences for those actions.

Whilst these reforms will come into effect, and whilst I very much hope to see this bill enacted by the chamber today, that does not in any way take away from that incredibly important work of deterrence, of getting to the source and of changing those outcomes from the early point. Because not only is that the way that we will support those young people and lead to them having much better and more prosperous lives, but it is also the way in which we can make all of our community safer. That is not a one-or-the-other solution; that is something that will continue even following the passage of this bill today, should it pass this chamber.

That is a really important note to concentrate my remarks on. There is a clear community expectation about what needs to change. It is not for those of us in this place to extend too much into commentary on the judicial system, but there are decisions that we see come out and that we have seen come out that cause us to scratch our heads. Every opportunity needs to be provided for offenders, including young offenders, to reform and improve their lives. But there need to be consequences for those few that do not in order to preserve and protect community safety. The community have been very clear that they expect stronger laws in this space, and this is a government that is listening to those concerns and acting in the interests of those community expectations. I have heard from some of those police officers who spoke so favourably about the first tranche of bail reforms how much they think this second tranche will make a difference not only to the final outcome, to addressing these crimes and taking the worst of types of offenders off the streets, but by providing that real and meaningful deterrent. This is a bill that, in my view and in the view of the government, strikes the right balance between keeping Victorians safe and not unnecessarily criminalising a whole batch of young Victorians. I commend the bill to the house.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (14:56): It is very important that we do have this debate today because community safety is so important. I would say it is one of the biggest issues we face in our state at the moment. Cost of living is a significant issue, but if you cannot feel safe when you are walking on the street or when you are travelling or when you are in your home, then we have a major problem, and that is what we have in Victoria at the moment.

This bill is a further amendment to bail because this government got it wrong, and they admit that they got it wrong. But I feel it is a bit like the Groundhog Day movie. It just feels like waking up and here we are again repeating history. There were changes made back in 2013 by the Liberals and Nationals, and they were weakened in a bill that passed in 2023 and took effect on 25 March 2024. The weakening of bail laws had the predictable effect of seeing repeat serious offending continuing as bail remained easy to get and easy to keep. As a consequence of sustained political pressure, public outrage and media attention, the government was forced to apologise for its weakening of bail laws and make some amendments. But in March this year, under Labor’s so-called tough bail laws, there was a removal of the principle that remand is a last resort for under-18s. Community safety was expressed as the paramount consideration for bail decision makers and there was a reintroduction of bail offences, although with none of the consequences that previously existed under the Liberals and Nationals. At the time the government promised the toughest bail laws in the country. However, the laws in place are not even as tough as had existed prior to 25 March 2024. The government has now introduced the second tranche of bail laws designed to strengthen the system further. However, these changes do not restore bail laws to what they were.

It is important to reflect on the statistics we have seen in this state. Crime keeps going up. We just saw in the media today that it has been reported the chief executive of Coles has referenced Victoria being an absolute standout in terms of rising crime. I have spoken to some of the statistics, the terrible statistics we are seeing right across Northern Victoria. When you look at bail, when you consider what has been happening in this state, it is extraordinary. There was a case in August that was covered in the Bendigo Advertiser, following the Long Gully kidnap. A man was re-released on bail after he was charged with breaking his bail conditions and harassing a witness. Then there was a case of a 13-year-old who has been found to have viciously assaulted dozens of people but was released on bail. The types of things that he had done included stomping on people’s heads, chasing them down in the street with a gang and kicking them in the face. I mean, this is extraordinary, the type of behaviour we are seeing. And then there was a 16-year-old released on bail who within 48 hours was out breaking into homes, invading homes, including a home in Huntly with four young children inside.

He has 42 charges. He was also driving dangerously in a police pursuit. Then there was another case of a 27-year-old who committed burglaries while on bail, and he was joy-riding in a car at 220 kilometres an hour. He also was involved in an incident at the BP in Rochester. This is extraordinary. Then this year a car thief was let out on his 55th count of bail – 55 times. This is extraordinary. I would ask where the government is in all this. What are they doing to address the rising crime in this state?

Right now there are over 1100 vacancies in Victoria Police. What is being done to address that shortfall? I have spoken with people from mental health services that work with the police force, and there have been about 30 jobs lost, including at the Mildura police station. People were there in a program that had been set up to support the police and provide that mental health support, and that has since been removed. Then we see it with the protests. We have had about 500 protests, I think, in Melbourne. I think we are now up to about 22,000 police shifts that have had to go to resource those protests, and yet the government is not taking action on that. Yet what they have done is they have closed prisons in this state. We have seen that at Malmsbury and have seen that at Dhurringile. They are extraordinary, the decisions that we have seen made. Yet, as of recently, we now have machete bins out there. After they have cut money to the police force, they have spent $13 million on these machete bins that are currently sitting there covered up until the ribbon is cut. They are about $320,000 per unit. They have been likened to a Ferrari. They have been likened to a house being built. That is the kind of sum that is being spent by this government on one bin. It is quite extraordinary.

Our police do an incredible job, and we know how risky it is – we have been reminded of that today. I support the comments made earlier by Ms Lovell. We have a situation in Victoria today where two police have been shot dead and one has been wounded, near Bright. That is the risk that they face and the devastation that can be caused, not just to the families and the colleagues but to the police force right across this state. We want to send our condolences to them and the people affected.

I was reminded just recently of the incredible service done by members of our police force. I had the privilege of being able to attend the celebration of Nigel MacDonald’s retirement with Brad Battin. He came to Bendigo. Nigel has served in the force since 1976. It was wonderful that his wife Sue was there and was also acknowledged for her contribution through the support that she has shown to him in all those years of service.

It is so important that we support our police, and our plan in the Liberals and Nationals is to make this bill better. ‘Break bail, face jail’ provides reinstating the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail as a schedule 2 offence, triggering an uplift in the bail test. By contrast, Labor’s legislation exempts dozens of indictable offences, and they will not see an uplift in the bail test. We also want to reinstate the offence of breaching bail conditions without a reasonable excuse as a schedule 2 offence, triggering an uplift in the bail test. By contrast, Labor does not provide for bail uplift for breaching a bail condition. Also, we want to remove the current exemption for youth offenders who breach bail conditions without a reasonable excuse, ending the free pass for under-18s. By contrast, there is no penalty for minors who breach a condition of bail under Labor. Listing robbery and burglary as schedule 2 offences will mean tougher tests apply. By contrast, Labor’s legislation will only see these offences incur a tougher bail test when they are for a repeat offence whilst on bail, not for the initial offence.

I feel that we have a responsibility in this chamber on both sides of this house – every member of this chamber – to uphold community safety. I think of the people that I have met in the last year. There was a newsagent who had contents robbed from his store. I have spoken to countless families that have had their car broken into or stolen from their home. I have had people that have had an attempted stabbing – well, it did occur; the husband was stabbed – after their home was broken into. And I have met many police officers who are frustrated and sick and tired of this revolving door. They do the work, but they need the law and the courts to back them up. It is important to be fair, but to be fair requires consequences, not an endless free pass.

I was surprised to hear Mr Batchelor earlier saying our proposed changes will not work, yet here we are. Is the government’s way working? No. That is why we are looking at this Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 today. We will support this bill, but we have put forward amendments because it is clear that the government’s approach has not worked.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:07): It is clear that the current bail laws are not meeting the expectations of Victorians. I, like I am sure every other member of Parliament, have spoken to constituents, and those constituents have almost universally said to me that they are concerned about crime in this state and they are concerned about the way that it is being managed. As Mr Galea pointed out earlier, some of us are scratching our heads that some of these people have gotten bail. In one case someone was bailed after being charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault. How someone can kidnap someone, one of the most serious crimes that you can imagine, and somehow get bail is totally beyond me. I was scratching my head at that. There are many of these crimes that have been committed, where many Victorians have been scratching their heads. Certainly the judicial system and the laws in this state are not meeting the expectations of the community, and something needs to be done.

We have debated bail laws many times in this place, and we have not got it right. I am reluctantly supporting this; I am hoping that this fixes it this time. I went over my speech and what I said last time, and I said almost the same thing that I am saying now. I hope that it fixes it this time, so the Libertarian Party will not be opposing this.

But I think that we need to look at the wider picture here. There are many, many causes of crime. Sometimes crime is just from greed or passion. Sometimes it is from lack of social integration. Sometimes it is caused by drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it is caused though – as we have seen this morning, rather darkly – by foreign nations that are influencing this country. It is clear from what has happened with the announcement about the severing of relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran that Victoria and indeed our nation are under attack by foreign forces. That is pretty clear. ASIO has said that they suspect that these antisemitic attacks were funded and orchestrated by foreign forces. God knows what else they are doing here. We can only look in horror when we have this new information – when we look at the streets and we see the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran and we see on television pictures of people holding up a portrait of the Ayatollah and then realise that we are being attacked in our state. This is very concerning.

I have been raising for some time my concerns about the connections between organised crime, Islamic extremists and the tobacco trade, frankly. I think it is very clear, that there are clear connections here.

The federal government needs to do something immediately about what is happening with tobacco excise. If I was in the federal government, I would initiate an emergency pause on tobacco excise, which would starve these organised crime groups of money temporarily. The federal government is not collecting much anyway at the moment because no-one is buying legal tobacco – they are all buying the stuff from organised crime. I note that the largest brand of tobacco at the moment – the one that seems to have won the gang wars, which is why many of the arson attacks have stopped – is the Manchester brand, which comes in from the UAE. It is owned by a businessman in Syria. There is so much smoke here. We need to do something to stop this. They can pull the plug on it immediately by hitting the brakes on excise tax. We need to do it for the national security of Australia, frankly. This is a very serious thing.

I would also say that many of these crimes are incentivised by government policy itself. Tobacco excise is one – that is a federal policy. I do not blame the state government for that, although I would urge them, as I have urged them many times, to be screaming at the top of their voices at the federal government about this, because the federal government needs to be held responsible. Indeed the people that have advised the federal government need to be held responsible. Every health bureaucrat that has pushed for this policy of increasing excise tax needs to be immediately sacked – that is what I call for. They need to be sacked right now because they have put us in a situation where organised crime has taken over a billion-dollar market and put our national security at risk. These people need to be held to account. They need to be sacked immediately.

Other areas that have incentivised of organised crime – I spoke about this in the last sitting week of Parliament – are our government procurement policies. We had the Local Jobs First Amendment Bill 2025 go through Parliament last sitting week. That initial legislation created more opportunities for organised crime to get involved. The government knows this because the bill itself had measures to try and deal with those incentives that they were creating – it had increased penalties and those sorts of things. The government knows that this sort of thing incentivises organised crime. We have seen it on construction sites where you have government procurement quotas for certain numbers of a certain gender or a certain amount of people from an Aboriginal background or local goods content. All that seems to be doing is creating opportunities for organised crime to get involved and supply those things through all sorts of means. It is a recipe for disaster. We need to look at stopping incentives for organised crime.

Many people have this weird impression of Libertarians that we are soft on crime because we think that lots of things that are crimes should not be crimes, but actually there is a very clear principle that we all follow, which is the non-aggression principle, which is if you initiate force against another person, then all bets are off. The crimes that we are talking about in this bill certainly meet that threshold. We are talking about going into people’s homes, we are talking about assault – these sorts of high-level crimes. If you commit those sorts of crimes or are accused of those sorts of crimes, you are potentially a severe danger to other citizens, and people that are convicted of those crimes should not be part of Victorian society. They should be removed. If they are citizens, they should be jailed. If they are not citizens, they should be deported.

I do not know if this bail bill will have a significant effect. I hope it does. I hope that it fixes some things. I hope that it stops some of the things that have been happening. I know that there are many people that are fearful of having their homes invaded, for example. I still do not understand why we have a situation where people feel unsafe and yet we say to people who want to defend themselves through things like pepper spray, which the Northern Territory very soon is going to legalise – at the start of September actually, so there will be a lot more people looking at Northern Territory and wondering, ‘Why the hell can’t Victorians defend themselves against criminals but Northern Territorians can?’

I think a lot of people are going to start asking that. In fact they should be asking that, because actually what is happening is, as was reported in the media recently, it is very easy to buy pepper spray and people are already ordering it in Victoria. People are arming themselves with it, and it is only a matter of time before someone who is an innocent law-abiding person in other circumstances ends up getting in trouble for carrying a prohibited weapon. The government will have to answer to the people. The government will have to answer to the fact that they think that someone that wants to defend themselves against thugs and criminals should go to jail, because that is what the current laws say. The current laws on this are wrong, and I think that there are going to be more and more people that agree with me on this.

Also on this idea of castle law that I brought up last week in Parliament, people already have the right to defend themselves in their homes but it is not clear at all, and that is why I asked for a review. My time of being nice on that is over. Now we are asking for castle law. I think that there are many Victorians, thousands of them in fact – tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands – who believe that if someone comes into their home the law should have their back. The law should have their back if they fight back against these thugs. It is time for the criminals in Victoria to start feeling scared, because I am sick of innocent Victorians feeling scared. Let us hope that this bail bill actually does something. I am not certain of it, but I am very hopeful. I am hopeful that it will have some effect. We need to do more to fight crime and not only fight the consequences of crime but enable citizens to fight back against crime and take away the incentives that drive crime in the first place.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:17): Today I rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025, which will play an important role in keeping Victorian communities safe and holding serious offenders to account. This bill builds on the tough new bail laws which we passed earlier this year and which were intended to ensure that our justice system puts community safety first at every part of the bail process. These laws are going to give Victorians the toughest set of bail laws anywhere in Australia, demonstrating our government’s commitment to keeping Victorians safe. The bill which passed earlier this year removed the principle of remand as a last resort so that community safety would be the primary concern when considering whether bail was appropriate in any given case. We have also added new offences for committing an indictable offence while on bail and for breaking or breaching conditions of bail. We did not just make these changes to the law and ask the justice and corrections systems to adapt it, we backed them in with new funding in the budget. This will help them deal with the increased workload that these changes will induce.

We know that so often it is many of the most vulnerable in our society who become victims of crime. For example, it is often the lowest paid workers in our society who have to face the realities of violent crime and anti-social or threatening behaviour at work, not the highest paid. Workers, especially in retail, hospitality and the transport sectors, are often faced with this sort of behaviour, sometimes being placed in physical danger at work. Every Victorian worker has the right not only to feel safe at work but to actually be safe at work. And we have all heard in recent months about the violent crimes being committed in retail settings, which has placed workers, shoppers, businesses and their owners alike all in danger.

As part of a separate bill, the Allan Labor government is also introducing a new offence for post-and-boast crimes. This applies an additional penalty to an existing crime where an offender has posted about it on social media for the purpose of generating clout and attention and encouraging others to also commit these sorts of crimes. This sort of behaviour is unacceptable. Not only is it completely offensive to the dignity and privacy of victims, but it can encourage copycat and repeat offenders, which only makes the situation worse. Posting and boasting is a disturbing trend which goes against everything we believe in in this state.

This bill which we are debating today builds on these reforms, following the overarching principle that community safety must always come first in Victoria. This bill is intended to build on these important reforms by implementing a number of further measures. Importantly, these measures include the introduction of a high degree of probability test to be applied in instances where a person has been charged with a certain serious repeat offence. This high degree of probability test will apply in instances where someone is accused of a serious crime which they have committed while on bail for having already been charged with a serious crime.

The schedule 1 crimes with this change apply to crimes already defined in the act and include home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, aggravated carjacking, armed robbery and aggravated burglary. These were chosen because they are serious crimes with a serious impact on public safety. Under this change, the high degree of probability test will be applied to the existing unacceptable risk test already applied in bail decisions. This new test will mean that the accused can only be granted bail in a situation where there is a high degree of probability that someone who has already reoffended with a serious crime while on bail would not reoffend once again if re-granted bail. The test will not be easy to pass – that is by design. That is because when someone has already broken the conditions of their bail once, the system will now have to take into account a stronger consideration when assessing if they are eligible for bail at another time.

There are two key principles which are following this change. First, this sort of behaviour we are talking about is completely unacceptable in any circumstances but doubly so for those who are currently out on bail. For bail to have a social licence, it has to be accepted by the community as an important part of our justice system. It needs to maintain the trust of the community. There are good reasons why people are given bail, but if they abuse the bail, they undermine the faith in the whole system. The second principle is that for those who have already reoffended and already demonstrated that they do not respect the conditions of their bail, it is fundamentally unfair to the community to let them out on bail if they are still considered a threat to public safety. When people are abusing the system in this way, it is the responsibility of the government to act and ensure that the system is working in a way that it is supposed to and the way that the public expects it to. That is why the Allan Labor government is making these changes.

Another aspect of the bill is the introduction of the second-strike rule for indictable offences. In practice this new rule means an uplift in the bail test in instances where individuals are accused of repeat indictable offences. Like the introduction of the high degree of probability test, this change will apply to people accused of crimes committed while already on bail. These changes will place a reverse onus on the accused to show compelling reasons why they should be entitled to be granted bail again when they have already abused the terms of the bail before. By applying a second tier of bail tests for those who have offended while already out on bail, we are ensuring that the system is fair to the community, who expects the systems to keep them safe, because we want to ensure that these changes are applied proportionately to the crimes committed and the risk to the community. And we are being clear about which indictable offences it applies to and which are subject to a carve-out. The offences which change will apply to include burglary, stalking, assaults, conduct endangering life, and others. Offences will be carved out of this reform so that we can ensure proportionality will include low-value theft, criminal damage, nonviolent property and deceptive offences, and low-level drug possession offences. It is important that these offences are not subject to this new bail test uplift, because they are offences which are not quite as directly threatening to the public safety as others are. We did this because when drafting this bill there were many factors which the government considered. The first and most important among them was the safety of the community. We judged that the offences which do not always put the safety of the community in jeopardy do not necessarily justify placing someone in remand in all situations. We do not condone these offences, but we recognise that it is more important to focus our resources on offenders who are violent and those whose crimes are seriously damaging to public safety, which is why the changes to the bail tests are being made specifically to the certain serious and indictable crimes which I have already listed.

Another safeguard placed into law by this bill is the requirement to consider surrounding circumstances in the process of making a bail decision. Surrounding circumstances could include a pregnancy or parental or carer’s responsibilities. These circumstances will be added to the existing list of surrounding circumstances already in the act. These are important, and is it crucial that we have not only a system that is proportional in its determinations but one that treats each individual case individually. Another important provision of this bill is to prohibit the use of electronic monitoring as a condition for granting bail, unless it is provided by an entity which is approved under the regulations. Additionally, the bill will ban the use of electronic monitoring provided by private companies in all circumstances.

There is a lot of well-founded concern in the community about this issue of whether private electronic monitoring companies are generally capable of securing the long-term safety of our communities. This can be an issue in cases where a company ceases to be commercially viable or just closes overnight. Earlier this year a contractor, BailSafe, closed suddenly without alerting the relevant authorities beforehand. The result of this was that the offenders who were in the community under the condition of being monitored electronically were left unmonitored.

When the private sector fails in this way, it leaves the community less safe and makes it more difficult for the victims of crime to have confidence in the system that is supposed to protect them. This is why the law has now been changed to ensure that the providers of this sort of technology must always be accountable to the community and must always be willing to put community safety above any other consideration. New South Wales made this change last year and it worked. Further, this bill does provide for the fact that we may in future look to expand electronic monitoring once again, but in those circumstances it would be done in a way that would maintain the confidence of the public by undergoing strict regulatory oversight.

Another important provision of the bill is the fact that we are taking the existing statutory review in the Bail Act 1977 and including the requirement that this review specifically examine the impact of bail reform and bail laws on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. These laws are important, but they must be applied equitably. This aspect of the review is important, because we need to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not inadvertently disadvantaged by these changes. We also need to ensure that existing disadvantage does not lead to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people being disproportionately made the subject of these laws. That includes what we are doing outside this bill to work with communities to address the causes of crime.

As part of the Allan Labor government’s community safety agenda, the bill recognises what is patently obvious: the people who are most likely to offend in the future are those who have offended in the past; also, the people most likely to break their bail in the future are those who have broken bail in the past. If someone has abused their bail already, it is fair to take that into account when determining whether they should be granted bail again. But we also recognise the issue of tackling reoffending relates not just to punishment but also to rehabilitation. In this light I think it is important to remember that the Allan Labor government’s community safety agenda is not just about new penalties and new bail laws.

Take the Youth Justice Act 2024, for example. We debated it in this place last year, and it was Victoria’s first ever dedicated, standalone act relating to the youth justice system. One of the key aims of the act is to do everything we can to provide young people at risk of offending or reoffending with every possible alternate pathway so that they can make better decisions, lead better lives and help the community be safe. It was about giving police more tools for early intervention, including legislated warning, caution and diversion systems designed to help police prevent behaviour that is simply antisocial from escalating into something much worse. Further, the act made greater provisions for restorative justice, which in many cases is an effective way of allowing a young offender to recognise what they have done wrong, set it right and learn from it. This is important so that they can move past the mistakes of their youth and into a more fulfilling, law-abiding adult life.

That bill was an important part of the Allan Labor government’s community safety agenda. Similarly, the tough new bail laws from earlier this year were also an important part of that agenda. It is not just in this bill, it is in others already passed and others soon to be debated, each addressing different aspects of the issue, because it is only by tackling all aspects of the issue that we can come up with solutions which are fair and, crucially, solutions that work. Sometimes the causes of the crime are simple; other times they are complex. And I think all of us on this side of the chamber know that you do not fix the issue of crime with slogans; it takes serious work. It is only by acknowledging the complex reality of crime and its causes that we can genuinely address the issue. Sadly, there are those who take the highly emotional approach to criminal justice issues, who do not follow the weight of evidence and experience but instead look for slogans and simple answers. The problem with simple, one-size-fits-all approaches to complicated issues is that while they might fit nicely into a one-page press release or a 240-character social media post, they do not always stack up to the reality of the challenges we are facing.

There are situations in which remand is inappropriate and does not contribute to protecting public safety, so we have made concessions for those cases. In other situations, remand is the only appropriate measure, and the courts need to be able to deny bail. Our policy has logic to it; public safety comes first in bail decisions. If someone commits a serious or indictable offence while on bail, a new, stricter bail test should be applied the second time around. This bill is carefully targeted to deal with repeat serious offenders who pose a serious threat to public safety, because protecting Victorians from violent crime is at the heart of the Allan Labor government’s public safety agenda. Therefore I commend the bill to the house.

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (15:30): I rise to speak in opposition to the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 before us today. While I am in firm opposition to this bill and to the approach the government has on crime, I do acknowledge the real and genuine fear that exists within our communities at the moment. This government seems to have a twisted sense of pride in having the so-called toughest bail laws in the country. It is hard to think that this is the second time this year alone that this government has changed our bail laws against all evidence and in full knowledge of the very real potential harms. In fact this is the fifth change to Victoria’s bail laws since March of last year; that is an average of once every three to four months. This back and forth has made our already complicated criminal justice system even more complex to navigate for both those working within it and those impacted by it. Community legal centres and Victoria Legal Aid have faced waves of new and intensified demand. With the system being repeatedly re-engineered so many times, I am not sure how the government can have any confidence in what they are doing actually working. It seems that ever-increasingly when it comes to crime, both major parties are far more interested in appearances than they are in outcomes. The Liberal and Labor parties have been in a race to the bottom, trying to be tougher than one another, and from down there in the gutter is where they pull out legislation like this, which is having a real impact on marginalised people’s lives. These laws are a shameful step backwards for our state, making it harder for some of Victoria’s most vulnerable people to access bail even when they pose little or no risk to our communities.

We have already seen a major increase in the number of people incarcerated from the first round of bail amendments passed just months ago. Over 60 per cent of the youth justice population is currently unsentenced and 40 per cent of the adult population. All of this comes at a time when our prison and remand population is already booming and feeling the effects of a system that is at capacity. Victoria Legal Aid has reported that our overflowing criminal justice system has resulted in people being held in police cells overnight because there is not enough court time to hear their cases, as well as delays in accessing mental health care and assessments for people facing remand. It was just months ago that I spoke in this place about the use of at least 106 lockdowns at the maximum-security Dame Phyllis Frost Centre since July 2024. This was brought to public attention due to the bravery of former inmate Kelly Flanagan, who documented lockdowns lasting longer than a day and several repeated suicide attempts by fellow inmates. It is clear that the government is failing to meet the basic levels of care required for our incarcerated populations.

Those who will be impacted by these laws the most are the very same communities who are already disproportionately impacted by ongoing marginalisation in our state – the most vulnerable in our society. In fact among Victoria’s existing prison population 33 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men have an acquired brain injury. We know who will be hit the hardest here – Aboriginal Victorians, who are already over 10 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal Victorians. Since similar high-harm tests were introduced in New South Wales, the Aboriginal legal service in New South Wales has seen over 90 per cent of Aboriginal children being denied bail and locked in youth prisons. A Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service program has seen a 300 per cent increase in the number of its young clients being denied bail since just June last year.

There is a cruel irony to a government who are very close to the signing of a treaty with this state’s First Peoples also passing a policy which will drive their overincarceration. These laws will impact women, who are often imprisoned for offences linked to family violence, poverty or trauma – offences that are done out of nothing but desperation – and they will impact young people, who will be dragged further into the criminal justice system rather than being given the chance to turn their lives around.

The government and the opposition will tell us that these laws are about community safety, but the evidence tells us exactly otherwise. Experts like the Victorian Ombudsman and the Sentencing Advisory Council have repeatedly warned that punitive bail regimes disproportionately criminalise vulnerable groups and do not improve community safety. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence which demonstrates that pre-trial detention increases a young person’s likelihood of later recidivism – even shorter periods in remand.

Others in this place today have also spoken of the tragic and preventable death of Veronica Nelson. Veronica was a proud Gunditjmara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman who died in custody at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in 2020. Veronica, or Poccum as she was fondly known by her family, died alone in her cell after begging for assistance for hours. At the time Veronica was on remand for alleged shoplifting offences. She had not been convicted of any crime, but as a result of being on remand she was denied her liberty, she was denied her health and she was ultimately denied her life. There was a coronial inquest into her death. The coroner’s findings were unequivocal: our bail laws are discriminatory, they are unsafe and they are in urgent need of reform to prevent further deaths. The laws following the inquest came into effect in March 2024 and they lasted just one year. The bill before us today brings back the two strike, which was described by the coroner during the inquest as a complete and unmitigated disaster. Veronica’s story should serve as a constant reminder of the human cost of unjust laws. But instead of heeding that warning, the government has doubled down on the very approach that cost Veronica her life. I, alongside many others, am incredibly concerned that due to these reforms it is just a matter of time before we see another preventable Indigenous death in custody.

Other politicians will tell you, as I said, that these laws are about building safer communities. But if they were serious about that, they would tear up this bill and increase investment in housing, in mental health care, in family violence services and in community-led justice solutions – the things that stop people falling into the criminal justice system in the first place. But no, that might have the awful effect of making them look soft, look empathetic or look compassionate.

In closing, we know too well the devastating human cost of Victoria’s broken bail system. We have seen it in the needless incarceration of Aboriginal women, in the deaths of people like Veronica Nelson and in our remand prisons full of people accused of just minor offences. This bill does not fix any injustice and it does not make our community safer. It doubles down on a system that is punitive, that is discriminatory and that does not acknowledge the realities of poverty, of mental illness and of systemic racism. The organisations that have been supporting vulnerable people in the justice system will be forced to deal with the repercussions of this dangerous bill before us today: the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Victoria Legal Aid, the Federation of Community Legal Centres, the Koori Youth Council, the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women and many, many more. They have begged the government to reconsider its approach, and I want to acknowledge and thank them for their life-saving work and advocacy. This Parliament has a responsibility to learn from its past mistakes. We should not be making another one, and we should not be passing more laws that will only cause more harm, more deaths and more injustice.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:39): I also rise today to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 and will say at the outset that the Liberals and Nationals will not be opposing this bill. We do not think that the bill goes far enough to address the issues of community safety and the concerns that people and the public have on a regular basis. Certainly in the south-east it is no secret that nearly every sitting week I bang on about issues of crime in the south-east, issues of public safety and concerns that people in my community are facing. I hear on a regular basis of armed robberies. I hear of home invasions. I hear of car thefts all the time. This bill certainly does not go far enough to address the situation and to make Victorians safe.

I cannot get over the furphies that I have had to listen to in this chamber today regarding crime and these bail laws. The bottom line is that I know of a situation where a young person bragged to a police officer after being released from bail for the 58th time, ‘I can do anything and they will do nothing to lock me up.’ We need to keep the community safe, and not just the community who are completely innocent in their homes, in their workplaces and in their cars. We need to keep people safe from being pressured into organised crime. One of the ways that people are being pressured into organised crime by criminal gangs is they are being told ‘There are no consequences for you’ or ‘We’ll do what we can to make sure that things are softer for your group of people’ – no. We are all Australian. The law applies to us. Yes, we have some work to do because there are minority groups that are being targeted and they should not be, but we are not protecting them when we do not have a law that actually allows Victorians to feel safe and also able to resist pressure from becoming involved in organised crime.

I heard Mr Limbrick mention quotas that are being put on in workplaces, for instance, where we have construction, and we know that there has already been an investigation into the CFMEU and organised criminal activity. How far that goes I do not know, but I know that there are quotas on particular groups and marginalised groups who then can be targeted for organised criminal activity. Young people can also be targeted for organised criminal activity, and this bill does not go far enough to protect them by having consequences for actions.

I understand that once a person ends up in the system it is difficult for them to break out of that system, and that is something else that needs to be addressed and looked at – not by this bill. Certainly in the time that I was out just recently at the Narre Warren station with my leader Brad Battin and we were handing out DLs that said ‘Break bail, face jail’ one of the people I happened to meet clearly had a background where they had been on the wrong side of the law. One of the things they said to me was ‘Some of us come from homes where we weren’t given a chance in the first place. If we had simply been able to access some sort of counselling when we got locked up, it might have made a big difference so that we could make different choices.’ There is an idea – not relevant to this bill of course, but there is an idea. We are not providing early intervention. We are not providing genuine prevention strategies. Having a weak system where every Victorian does not feel safe is ridiculous.

In this bill it mentions something about if you have a car theft of less than $2500, somehow that does not count. Well, let me tell you in the south-east not everybody is cashed up, and some people are doing it pretty tough. Some of our P-platers have cars that they may have purchased that might not be worth a lot today. I can tell you that in our hospitals – for instance, at the City of Casey in the parking lot – cars have been stolen, particularly the P-platers’ cars have been stolen in recent times in the last few weeks. They have been targeted and used for armed robberies and then torched.

I just do not think that we are thinking this through enough with these bail laws. This is not about having no empathy, because if there is anybody in this chamber that has worked in a field for virtually no money to work with people to help them, it is me.

It is no secret the professions I have worked in to be able to help people, and at times I have even done it free of charge, back when it was so much easier to do voluntary work and be protected. I have always had a heart for those who have been struggling, and I will continue to have it long after I leave this chamber. This is not a political act for me. It is real life and real people – real people in the south-east that are struggling.

These bills that come through this house need to be able to protect regular Victorian people. Our IGAs are being targeted. It is just a disgrace to think that people that work in an IGA are not being protected and will not be given the opportunity for sufficient counselling and support. It is a disgrace to think that IGAs can be a target for organised crime, that organised crime can be using our young people and our marginalised groups and that our laws are allowing them to do it. There are a number of furphies that I have heard today in this chamber about this. I understand that this needs to be debated and needs to be debated fairly and squarely, but do not ever justify helping organised crime in this chamber by passing bills that will allow them to continue to do things and to use our marginalised Victorians.

It is important that we look at the fact that it was under the Liberals that the bail laws were actually much tougher and that in 2023 under this government they were weakened significantly. They had been weakened before, and then we had an incident that required them to toughen them up again in 2017 – that was the Bourke Street situation, and they realised that their laws were not tough enough. Then they went and made them a lot more loose in 2023 under Minister Symes. Now here we are after they tried to make a little bit of a tweak, which they called their ‘tough bail’ laws, which now they realise are not tough, and they have to go and do it again and are going to have to make amendments. We do not feel that these amendments are going to solve the problem, and we could be back here again in four months time – after goodness knows what has happened to a Victorian family, a Victorian individual or a Victorian business – to have to go through this all over again. Yes, there is a little bit of tweaking in this, but it does not go far enough. A tweak is not ‘break bail, face jail’, is it? A tweak is not a guarantee that Victorians in their homes are going to be safe from home invasions. It is not a guarantee to the P-platers of the south-east who park their cars to go and visit family when they go into hospital that their vehicles are going to be in that parking lot when they get out. It is not a guarantee that when you go to your local IGA or you go to work in your local IGA you are going to be protected and are less likely to have offenders stealing, being violent and running in with weapons.

As for those machete bins, what a disgrace to spend millions and millions of dollars. Yes, we need to have these machetes gone. We should not have even allowed them out in the first place. But since this government has allowed them, now they are trying to figure out how to bring them back. They have not changed the laws to stop online purchasing; they have only changed the laws to stop you being able to go into a store in Springvale or wherever to purchase your box of machetes. Now they expect people to bring them back, but they cannot legally bring them back until, what is it, 1 September.

Let us think about this particular bail law. It does not come into effect until March 2026. What is supposed to happen in the meantime? Why do they need so much time to implement their bail laws? I mean, how many people do they need to have running around in organised crime before they decide that it is time to actually implement it? We are waiting until March so they can say, ‘Oh, look, we’re cleaning this up.’ Well, are you really? How many people are going to lose their homes or their cars, suffer injuries or have a situation where they lose a loved one or have a loved one severely beaten or injured permanently because they are not cracking down on this properly? To have a young person in my area brag that they can come out on bail 58 times and have nothing happen to them and that there are no consequences for their actions is sheer negligence.

I am pleased to see that there are some things that people will not be able to get out on bail for, and it is good that they have actually made this little list. But the bottom line is that if you go outside this list, it does not apply to you and somehow you are going to be able to avoid some of the consequences. As I have said before, basic rule-of-thumb law in youth work and social work is this: consequences for actions. It does not always mean that the best place for a person to go is to jail first up, but if you are doing nothing to protect young people with laws that actually show that they are involved in criminal activity and make them feel that they are going to have consequences for their actions, then there is nothing to stop them from going out again and again and again. You are not protecting them, you are not helping them and you are not helping all Victorians.

The most talked about issue out in my community is crime. It does not matter whether you go out to a forum on something else, crime always comes up. People have stories either of themselves or of their neighbours or their friends. Every workplace knows of or has a story. Businesses do not feel safe to stay open, especially if they are small businesses, and if they cannot afford to have those additional protections, people are worried. It was mentioned here about the illegal tobacco industry. I mean, honestly, what is this government doing? Are they in bed with organised crime? Why aren’t they cracking down on stuff and making it safer for every Victorian and for every business?

This is simply not doing enough as a bill, and we have amendments that will help tighten it up. We do hope that we will get support, because yes, great, we are looking at itemised offences of armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking and aggravated carjacking, but you go outside that and suddenly we have an issue with bail laws. We are saying that more needs to be done. We are advocating for laws that are going to protect every Victorian. You cannot just make an amendment to a bail act for only six serious offences, and then if somebody gets out and they do something else outside of that somehow they are exempt from the law. That is ridiculous. It would not pass the pub test if you tried. We are looking at a number of things to make changes to. We really do not think that leaving laws to come in on 31 March 2026 is doable or fair on every Victorian or reasonable.

We have looked seriously at what happens. You have got down here in this bill that after the first time a person gets bail the accused must bear the burden of showing that there are exceptional circumstances. That is reasonable, and I am sure that in the courts circumstances will be taken into consideration. But as I have said, we are very concerned that we are not homing in on enough of the laws that were loosened by this government in 2023. They have not got back to a point where we can actually bring law and order under some sort of control in Victoria. By changing the law in 2023 this Labor government failed all Victorians, and all Victorians are paying the price. Everybody knows somebody that has been burgled, has had their car stolen or been under threat of having their car stolen or has been a victim of violence. Everybody will know someone in one of those categories, and just having bail laws that do not address every situation simply does not allow every Victorian to feel safe.

These are the concerns that we have, and that is why we are commending our amendments to the house. We are asking for support, and we do not feel that some of the amendments that have been brought forward by the crossbench actually go so far as to help people to understand consequences for their actions. This is just a general principle. As I said, it is a rule of thumb. It is a rule of thumb even in raising children – (Time expired)

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (15:54): I rise to support this bill. Liberty is meant to be blindfolded – we have all seen the picture of the blindfolded woman holding the scales and all that sort of thing – but at times we have issues that come up when it would be imbecilic of me to expect that that is going to be a constant, and bail laws are one of them. Whilst I am hard on bail and it is easy to say that if you break bail you should go to jail, we have got to look at the totality of the circumstances. I believe we will be back doing this again in the near future. Bail is one of those things that, from the times I can remember, has been messed with time and time and time again, trying to find a perfection that just will not exist. It is always difficult to find something that keeps the rights of the individual alleged offender protected but also protects public safety. In the end we need to look at public safety, because public safety comes first.

There are a lot of people that break bail with minor offences, shop stealing being one of them. In the end, I find that the constant reoffending with that, whilst annoying, is not exactly a huge problem, and I feel that there should be services that that person is directed to, rather than it just constantly being: steal, bail, steal, bail. But when we have home invasions, when we have carjackings, when we have those sorts of things, whether the alleged offender is a youth or not is completely irrelevant. Public safety comes first.

So we will see how these go. What I would love to see is less boasting and less carjackings. In fact I remember 25 years ago or so an aggravated burglary was cause for comment and carjackings were just not done, so something has changed. We need to find out what it is, and we need to fix it. But, again, public safety comes first.

Adem SOMYUREK (Northern Metropolitan) (15:57): A former policeman is a pretty hard act to follow on this particular issue, but I will try. I rise in support of the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. While I agree with the opposition that the bill could have gone further to cover additional crimes, I take the view that a small step is important on this particular issue. Certainly I think more needs to be done, but I take the view that a small step is important.

In the current milieu with home invasions and serious crime seemingly out of control and our system of bail being severely criticised in the media and the community, I think it is fair to say that the community has lost trust in the system of bail in this state, and the fact that the government have brought in this bill indicates that they perhaps agree with me. A natural reaction to this erosion of trust in the bail system is to simply say, ‘Throw them all in jail; throw the accused him into jail, and don’t deal with them until they come to trial.’ That is a simplistic, pragmatic approach, but it overlooks one of the most fundamental principles of our legal system, and that is the presumption of innocence. Taking away the liberty of people who have not yet been found guilty is a profound breach of this principle. On the other hand, as legislators we have a responsibility, we have a duty, to empower the courts and the police so that they do have the power to safeguard the community and the community’s safety. Bail therefore is about striking a delicate balance between protecting the presumption of innocence on the one hand and protecting the community on the other.

This bill I think goes some way to recognising that balance by strengthening bail in cases of repeat offending. For example, when a person is already on bail for an indictable offence such as burglary, robbery or assault and is then charged with another indictable offence, they will now face the tougher show compelling reason test. What this test does is flip the usual presumption. So rather than the state having to justify or show cause why the accused should be kept in custody until trial, the onus now flips to the accused to demonstrate or show that they are trustworthy enough to be able to be let out into the community whilst they are awaiting trial.

This is important because repeat offenders undermine the integrity of the bail system and put community safety at risk. Again, like the speakers before me – certainly the opposition speaker before me – this is not the panacea, it is simply a step in the right direction. This step on its own is not going to be able to win over public trust in the bail system, but you have got to recognise a positive step when the government takes one. With that, I commend the bill to the house.

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (16:00): I rise today to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. We are debating further bail law reform not because the government wants to make the community safer but because the government needs to rectify its soft approach to crime. The Labor government watered down and weakened bail law reform back in 2023. Now we are seeing the consequences. This has come about because of public and political pressure on the Allan Labor government to act as Victorians experience wave after wave of crime. The bill we are debating today follows bail changes passed in the Bail Amendment Act 2025, the first tranche of reforms to reverse Labor’s previous actions which weakened our state’s bail laws and profoundly made our community far less safe. We debated these reforms earlier, as I mentioned.

I will go through the purpose. This bail bill amends the Bail Act 1977 and the Summary Offences Act 1966. With regard to the amendments to Bail Act 1977, I will go to two provisions to keep this brief. The first one is introducing a new high degree of probability filter to add to the unacceptable risk bail test for persons charged, noting the high degree of probability for an unacceptable risk bail test only applies after the offender is released on bail and happens to be caught again committing one of six offences while on bail. I will just go through those six offences: armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking and aggravated carjacking. It is absurd that only six offences are listed, but this government is not really fair dinkum about bail. I will give you an example. If an arsonist burns down a house or premises and there was the possibility of some people being in there, that offence is not serious enough to be on this list. Kidnapping, abduction or even a sex predator sexually assaulting an innocent victim who is walking about are not worthy of making it on the list of serious offences for the government. Other key changes that have been mentioned are uplifting the bail test for those charged with certain indictable offences while already on bail for indictable offences. Again, the government is trying to rectify its mistake in weakening bail over the years.

I can remember when a person was apprehended for a serious indictable offence with overwhelming evidence, and when he or she was brought to the court or bail justice seeking bail he or she had to provide reasons why he or she should be granted bail. He or she needed to convince the bail justice or the magistrate at the time. This is not happening at the moment. It is a revolving door that we are seeing. Youth, age, a person’s situation and background et cetera are all factors that a bail decision maker has to take into consideration. They should and they must, but being a young offender does not mean a remand- or jail-free card as we have seen under this Allan Labor government.

I will continue on in relation to some of the examples but keep it brief. In relation to offences committed whilst on bail, we are reminded of the debate on this earlier this year. The Allan government’s so-called tough bail laws were brought in following sustained pressure for change. It was essentially to remove the principle that remand be the last resort for people under the age of 18, and therefore the government re-introduced bail offences, although without the consequences that existed when the Liberals and Nationals were last in office.

I will just bring it back to where we are at the moment. Coming back to the present in Melbourne’s western suburbs, which I proudly represent, we are becoming far too accustomed to many of these offences being broadcast in daily media. My community wants the strongest possible action taken to stamp out these offenders, and no doubt the rest of Victoria – east, north – wants the same. If we want to get a handle on bail laws, implement the ‘break bail, face jail’ policy. Call it what you want, package it how you want to, but implement the policy, because it is the right balance.

I have some concerns about this bill, as I just outlined, but the opposition will not oppose this bill, because it does in fact make some minor improvements to the bail laws – for example, those six offences I quoted – which we all welcome. But it still leaves Victorian bail law exposed and weak thanks to the Labor government. The six offences the government wants to focus on will mean bail will be tougher for those six offences, but this bill masks weak bail laws for a range of other indictable offences, which is concerning. Also, listing robbery and burglary as schedule 2 offences, meaning tougher tests would apply, is absolutely something that should be included, but unfortunately under this bill it is not. So there are some concerns we have, as outlined, and I am sure this will not be the last that we hear of them, because this is just a reactive government.

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:07): I rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. I have said it before and I will say it again: here we go again. Only a few months ago we were in this place debating the first tranche of bail reforms, and only a few months before that we were debating an overhaul to the youth justice system. It is still incredible to think about how this government undertook a massive reform of the youth justice system and then, before the changes had fully come into effect, changed bail laws. Reforms to the youth justice system were evidence led and largely unpoliticised; the same cannot be said for changes to bail laws.

It is disappointing to see the government turn a blind eye to the relationship between incarceration and recidivism. With that being said, it is not surprising. This is a government that turfed out plans to improve the bail system for young people and backflipped on their promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility. There is a reason the government had to do their bail reforms in two tranches: they know the dangers of what they are doing in tranche 2. There is a real risk of repeating the perverse outcomes from similar previous laws, like the doubling of the rate of Indigenous women in prison. While we are thankful that, unlike with tranche 1, we were able to receive a briefing on the bill well in advance of it coming before our chamber, consultation was still lacklustre. With the opposition’s support, the laws will fly through. This has left the government unwilling and uninterested in improving these laws. Amendments that could reduce the impact on marginalised and vulnerable communities were not given real consideration. We want to be clear: everyone has the right to feel safe, but we need to do the hard work to address complex motivators of crime, looking at schooling attendance, rates of family violence, mandatory treatment services, timely access to mental health support and cost-of-living stresses. More should be done to ensure, wherever possible, the justice system can play a rehabilitative role in people’s lives, particularly for children who have not even fully developed consequential thinking. Entrenching children and young people in the justice system just leads to reoffending, and in the long term it does nothing to make the community safer.

Turning to the bill itself, it makes sweeping changes to the Bail Act 1977. Central to these changes is the introduction of a new high degree of probability test and the creation of a second-strike rule. The new high degree of probability test will form part of the existing unacceptable risk test for people accused of committing a specified schedule 1 offence while on bail for another specified schedule 1 offence.

This will require the bail decision maker to be satisfied there is a high degree of probability that the accused would not commit a specified offence while on bail. Specified offences include armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking and aggravated carjacking. You do not have to read between the lines to see that these offences have not been selected because they are the most violent and gruesome of offences, but because they allow this government to target young repeat offenders.

The second-strike rule created in this bill is where someone is accused of an indictable offence and they later commit an indictable offence while on bail for the first offence. This will create an uplift where an applicant for bail will be required to pass the reverse onus compelling reasons test rather than the lesser unacceptable risk test. Importantly, the bail decision maker will be required to consider circumstances surrounding alleged offending as well as Aboriginal-specific and child-specific factors where relevant. It was pleasing to see that the bill provides a lengthy list of carve-outs for lower level offences, including low-value theft and criminal damage, non-violent property offences and lower level drug possession. These carve-outs were included to avoid capturing non-violent offences that are often linked to disadvantage, homelessness and other factors. Unfortunately, these carve-outs are limited in their application. The value limit of these offences is less than $2500 for theft and criminal damage and less than $5000 for non-violent property and deception offences. If someone steals a backpack, they may find that they unknowingly stole a phone and laptop, and then all of a sudden they are subject to a strict reverse onus bail test. While it was excellent to see that this bill carves out lower level drug possession offences, it only does so for small quantity possession, and a wide range of drug-related indictable offences will continue to be captured by this new strict bail test.

Alongside some of my crossbench colleagues, we will be putting forward questions during the committee-of-the-whole stage to understand if it is the government’s intention to capture so many non-violent offences and particularly non-violent drug offences. While the Herald Sun talk about the crime wave in Victoria, we get the sense they are not talking about your neighbour quietly growing some cannabis plants in their backyard. These laws apply to them all the same. It is good to see that this bill amends the existing statutory review to include these reforms and examine the impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. However, this review could be as late as two years from now, and we have no guarantees about the transparency of this process and whether any findings will be made public. We do not trust that this government will act on any negative findings of this review, particularly if the media hold up its pressure. On that note, we will be moving amendments to this bill, and I ask that they now be circulated.

This amendment will include a three-year sunset clause for the high degree of probability test, meaning that after three years it will cease to operate. In April 2024 New South Wales introduced somewhat similar changes to their Bail Act 2013. These changes included a temporary additional bail test for young people aged between 14 and 18. Under this test, unless the bail authority has a high degree of confidence that the young person will not commit a serious indictable offence while on bail, bail is to be refused. This test was originally subject to a 12-month sunset clause, which was extended for an additional four years earlier this year. When extending this test, the responsible Labor minister made clear that the bail test was only ever intended as a circuit breaker to immediately respond while broader community-based programs were implemented.

The decision to extend the sunset clause was not taken lightly. It was justified by reference to continued efforts to reduce youth crime through therapeutic and community-based solutions that aim to minimise a young person’s contact with the criminal justice system over the long term. The three-year sunset clause proposed in our amendment will bring us in line with the New South Wales 2028 sunset date and the expected completion of the statutory review.

This government talks a big talk about investing in bail support and interventions to tackle the underlying causes of crime. Now here is your chance to prove those were more than mere words.

As we have no assurances from the government about the transparency and reporting obligations of the statutory review, there is no guarantee that any perverse outcomes of these laws will be addressed. Including a sunset clause means that if the government wants to keep their high degree of probability test, they can come back to Parliament and be held accountable for that decision. This will give us the opportunity to properly scrutinise the outcomes of these changes to bail laws. We encourage all parties to support this amendment.

Our amendment does not affect the operation of the bill here and now. What it does do is give us the chance to change course if needed so that we can achieve the long-term goal of reducing youth crime through therapeutic and community-based solutions. We understand there will be further amendments to the bill for additional safeguards that will minimise unintended consequences on vulnerable and over-represented groups. We will be supporting these and the need for further consultation, because when we get it wrong, lives are changed forever and people die.

I would like to close my contribution, as I did my contribution on the first tranche of these bail reforms, with a message for the government. If police resourcing is an issue, regulation of cannabis offers a possible answer. In Atlanta decriminalisation led to a 20 per cent drop in crime despite fears it would do the opposite. Thanks to these changes, police could shift their focus to serious violent offences rather than dealing with low-level cannabis arrests. If this government is so set on bail reform, the least they could do is focus on violent crimes rather than making bail even harder to get for nonviolent offenders.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (16:17): I rise today to contribute to the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 because Victorian families, businesses and the community just do not feel safe anymore. The primary responsibility of Western governments is to maintain law and order and to protect their citizens. Victorians are now demanding that there is a system that works. That means bail laws that keep repeat violent offenders off our streets, backed by a justice system with adequate police, court capacity and prison infrastructure.

Let me be clear from the outset. Despite the government’s claims about having the toughest bail laws in the nation, this amounts to little more than chest thumping. Every department briefing acknowledged that the high degree of probability test largely mirrors that in New South Wales. This is not groundbreaking. It is not new, like they keep saying. It is a copy and paste from New South Wales. This is a narrow scope of reform. This bill takes a small step where a stride is desperately needed.

Let me explain what it accomplishes. First, a tougher rule for repeat offenders of six specific crimes. If somebody is already on bail for armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking or aggravated carjacking and is again charged with one of those six offences while on bail, then bail must be refused unless the court is satisfied there is a high degree of probability that they will not commit one of those six offences if released. As I mentioned, it is the same standard found in New South Wales. Second, an uplift or tougher bail test for those offenders who are already on bail for indictable offences but with significant carve-outs and exemptions. If you are already on bail for a serious indictable offence and are charged again with a serious indictable offence, the test for bail gets tougher.

I was thinking last week, Minister Erdogan, that if I was arrested and charged with a crime and I got one phone call, who would I call if I got with that one phone call. I would call Minister Erdogan. Why? Because I would want to sleep in my own bed. For those who are watching at home, Minister Erdogan is the Minister for Corrections and the Minister for Youth Justice, yet under his leadership every 50 seconds there is an offence committed in Victoria. There is a serious assault every 29.7 minutes. There is an aggravated robbery every 2.6 hours and a motor vehicle theft every 16 minutes.

He is the one I would be calling, because I am going to talk to you about some of the carve-outs that the minister has allowed in this bill. It is not a strong bail bill at all. It is another one of these bills that gives a lot of exemptions. Let me go through a couple. The first one is youth offending. There has been a huge surge in youth crime driven by repeat offenders, yet the very offences that fuel youth crime are being excluded from the tougher bail test. The bill maintains a youth exemption for breaching bail, and the carve-outs mean that the most common youth offences, like car thefts, often will not even trigger the tougher bail test. Here is an example. Just say there is a 17-year-old kid on bail for burglary. Whilst on bail they can steal a car, go for a joyride through the suburban streets, terrorise some families and put lives at risk, but under this bill, because it is theft of a motor vehicle and that is a schedule 5 exemption, the tougher bail test will not even apply to them. The same teenager who has already been given a chance on bail can walk out of court free to steal another car the very next day – even the same day. In fact in Victoria often youth are arrested, charged and then released on bail within 90 minutes. It is absolutely disgusting, and we have witnessed this repeatedly. This is not fearmongering, it is the truth backed by facts in this state.

A few months ago a magistrate sentencing a teenager who was a repeat offender – who had accumulated more than 400 charges – ruled that the youth had effectively proven incapable of complying with bail or community orders and ordered that he be immediately released. Over the past year he admitted to six aggravated burgs, 14 car thefts, four robberies and three shop break-ins, along with multiple offences including dangerous driving, trespass and handling of stolen goods. The magistrate said:

I’ve lost count of how many times I have given him bail.

It is unbelievable.Then last week another article detailed how furious traders said that they were disgusted by a magistrate’s decision to bail two teenage boys for violently holding up five supermarkets with machetes.This bill, however, would not affect them, because there is yet another carve-out – they are the wrong age. One shop owner said his young workers would continue to be terrorised by armed thugs without stricter penalties at court, adding that the court’s decision was expected. Responding to comments that one boy wiped away tears with a tissue as he sat on the dock, the shop owner said:

What about the tears of the retailers and staff held up by –

this young man.

…  It will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

If I was arrested for a drug crime or an organised crime and had one phone call, I would also call Minister Erdogan, because I tell you what, he would give me an exemption for that too. This bill exempts numerous drug and organised crime offences from the tougher test, including possession of drugs at trafficable quantities,tablet presses, precursor chemicals and the proceeds of crime. This defies common sense when the backbone of organised crime is the drug trade. Picture this: a dealer is already on bail for burglary. Police catch him with 50 grams of meth, enough to destroy dozens of lives and families. Under this bill, because drug possession at trafficable quantities is a schedule 5 exemption, they can walk out on bail again. Meanwhile the same dealer can continue to poison more in the community and put lives at risk. This is absolutely unbelievable.

Community safety is not something that is restored by words alone – if it was, it would have been restored in this state long ago, because this government loves a good slogan – but it is restored by results. The numbers that we are seeing are deeply concerning.

Statewide criminal incidents in the last year have climbed to 474,937 – that is up by 20 per cent. The crime rate rose 13 per cent, driven by property and deception offences, car thefts – lucky they will be exempt through this one! – and retail crime. The majority of those criminals will probably be exempt too if they are the right age. Youth offending surged – again, under this bill those ones will get an exemption – while child offenders reached their highest level since records began in 1993. Yet a lot of these people will be exempt. In Cardinia, or the area I represent, in Pakenham and around there, incidents jumped approximately 32 per cent in the year to March. These are not just statistics, they represent real families whose lives have been shattered. I have spoken about Jack in this place, an 18-year-old who had his whole life ahead of him, who was bashed within an inch of his life. The ambulance never came. These kids were put on bail. This young man’s life has been forever changed because of the injuries that he sustained, and the family have even chosen to leave the state. So there is just a little bit about some of the real effects and some of the exemptions that this bill allows. Businesses and families are bearing the consequences of this because of Labor’s soft-on-crime approach.

Just in closing, while this bill represents a move in the right direction, it falls short of what Victorian communities actually need and deserve. It is narrow, patchy and riddled with exemptions that will allow too many offenders to slip through the cracks once again. Victorians deserve better than just political gestures. You can laugh, you can think whatever you want of that, but this is the fifth time in a year that we have tried to get the bail laws right. Why should we have trust this time? Five times within a year is absolutely ridiculous. Victorians deserve a justice system that works, one that keeps them safe so they can go about their daily lives. That system must be built on clear consequences for those who repeatedly offend, even if they are under the age of 18 years; proper resources for those who enforce our laws; and a genuine commitment to community safety over political convenience.

Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (16:27): I too rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025. As we have heard, this is yet another attempt at tinkering around the edges of bail. It is packed full of exemptions and special considerations. In fact it has been noted by many people in this chamber that this is a baby step. The standard has fallen so low in Victoria that even a tiny little baby step towards justice is something people are actually happy about, instead of all of us being able to rejoice in the right thing being done from the start. In Victoria it is pretty clear by now that the criminals are in charge. They are facing judges who say, ‘What’s the point?’ They are facing police who are demoralised at the catch-and-release system. And when the government say, ‘Please, please, would you please put your machetes in this box?’ you know that the attitude out there is, ‘What are you going to do about it? Nothing. Make me.’ And why would they have any other attitude at all? They have called this government’s bluff.

Bail was never meant to actually be a free pass. Its purpose from the beginning was actually very clear. If someone was released before trial, someone else had to vouch for them, and if the offender broke the rules again, the guarantor paid the price. Accountability was built into that system. But today, under Labor, accountability has collapsed. Offenders are bailed over and over again, and nobody in government pays the price. Instead, again, it is the ordinary Victorians who are left to bear the cost. They are unprotected, they are attacked and then they are ignored and vilified. Labor yet again, true to their pattern, only ever act when a media cycle forces them to. Their bail policies are forever driven by media outrage, not by community safety and not by principle. That is why Victorians never feel safer under Labor – because Labor only reacts after the harm has been done, never before it. And we all know that the deeper problem, as usual, is a philosophical one. Labor’s socialist worldview shifts blame away from offenders and onto society.

They talk about how so much crime is caused by disadvantage and race and gender and trauma and youth – anything but the offenders’ own choices or their own systematic failure to put in disincentives. Yes, it is true that hardship does make life harder and it makes doing the right thing harder, but it does not erase responsibility. Human nature tells us the simple truth that, just like children, people will do whatever they can get away with. That is why consequences matter, that is why being the adult in the room matters, that is why good governance matters and that is why the Liberals believe in equality before the law and that you can never sacrifice that.

Diversion has been mentioned, and it does have a place. We know that if a teenager steals a bike or shoplifts or does something else terrible for the first time, we want them to have a consequence, but we do not want to ruin their whole future, we want them to be rehabilitated on a better path. Yet Labor have treated bail, which is supposed to be a legal safeguard, as if it were a social program. That leaves dangerous people on the streets and victims completely unprotected. Bail was never supposed to be about that; it was supposed to be a balance between safety for the community and justice.

By the time a 15-year-old is caught hacking at another man’s neck, as happened to one of my poor constituents, and then mocking him while he scrambled around looking for a phone, the time for hot chocolates and gentle counselling and ad nauseam chances is long, long gone. Some will say that stricter bail undermines the principle of innocent until proven guilty, but the presumption of innocence was never meant to be a presumption of release. It has always been about liberty for the accused on one side and protection of the community on the other. Under Labor that is completely reversed, though. And who gets ignored? The victims. Nobody in this state feels safe anymore. Obeying the law is supposed to give you benefits in society. In Victoria it is reversed: you are victimised, you have no rights and no protection, no-one stands up for you, excuses are made and justice is just thrown under the bus. That is why I am proud to stand with the coalition’s amendments. It is true that if you break bail you should face jail. Our position is simple – it could not be clearer: the way that you protect families, restore trust in the justice system and deliver what this state needs is that you respect the law, you do not corrupt it, you apply it fairly, you apply it equally and you act in the best interests of the innocent.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:32): I move:

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

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until later this day.