Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Youth crime

Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (18:33): (1923) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police. On Saturday night in Cobblebank two boys, 15-year-old Dau and 12-year-old Chol, were ambushed and hacked to death by masked youths wielding machetes as they walked home from basketball. Many of us have seen the footage where you can hear one of them screaming. Many of us have sons the same age. The poor father had to speak to the news on Father’s Day about his child’s death. This atrocity occurred just days after the government’s machete ban took effect. Machetes are now prohibited weapons. There is an amnesty – you can put them into a box. And what has happened? Children are still being slaughtered, and it is just showing Victorians what we already knew, which is that laws that only live in press releases do not stop crime in the real world. When tragedies like this occur, people, it seems, are tempted to blame certain community groups. But the truth is, if we had a genuine culture of law and order in this state, there is no group in our society that would feel so free to commit crimes like this, no matter who they are or where they come from. It is this government that has incentivised criminal behaviour in every sector of society. When youth offenders are treated as victims, when violence carries no consequence and the only response to rising crime is tweaking the edges of the law, going back and forth, the message is very, very clear in Victoria. When the government says do not commit crime, criminals say, ‘Or what?’ And the answer is: nothing. My request is that you immediately take action to make Victorians safe.