Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (14:14): Caught up in Melbourne’s 24-hour news cycle, it is easy to think Victoria’s crime crisis stops at the outskirts of Melbourne. But in Wodonga, crime jumped 34 per cent last year. That is no shock to the people who have had their home broken into, their car stolen or watched local shops hit by brazen thieves. It is also no shock to the man who lost his finger in a machete attack or to the doctors and nurses who were terrorised by kids as young as 10 after late-night shifts at Wodonga hospital.

One in five offenders last year were school-aged kids. There were 10 crimes a day, and nearly half remain unsolved. Recently an 18-year-old girl was released on bail after being in a stolen car doing 140 kilometres an hour in an 80-kilometre zone. Five days later a 16-year-old girl was dead, allegedly because she was with this young woman at the wheel of another stolen car, driving on the wrong side of the Hume Freeway.

The Liberals have already put forward some serious and sensible solutions to Victoria’s ever-expanding crime crisis. All have been rejected by the Labor government. Labor continues to ignore the suffering of Victorians, but the Liberals are willing to listen, and that is why we are holding a public community forum in Wodonga next week. Crime is not just a metropolitan problem, it is everyone in Victoria’s problem, and it needs fixing. (Time expired)