Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:42): (1987) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police, and the action that I seek from the minister is multifaceted. I would like (1) the minister to guarantee that the Epping, Mernda, Mill Park and Whittlesea police stations will return to being fully staffed, (2) the minister to advise me of a date when that will be achieved, (3) a guarantee that the Epping station will remain open on weekends and (4) the Mernda station to return to being a 24-hour, seven-days-per-week operation.

In the middle of Victoria’s crime crisis the Allan Labor government has cut police funding and has left over a thousand positions unfilled. Now it is planning to close police stations on the weekend because there are not enough police to staff them. I recently spoke in Parliament to raise the matter of Epping station being forced into unplanned closures because of staff shortages. Epping and Mernda stations are operating at only around 50 per cent of their staffing, and Mill Park is even worse, with estimates that it operates at 30 to 40 per cent. This is barely enough for responsive policing, and with only three vans on the road I am informed that there is no proactive policing being done in the police service area (PSA). I have also been informed that the decision has been made to close Epping station entirely on the weekend and only open from 10 to 6, Monday to Friday.

Nearby Mernda station is a relatively new police station, which opened just in 2017 at a cost of $15 million for a state-of-the-art facility with modern interview rooms and high-security features. Mernda is supposed to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but when Liberal leader Brad Battin tried to visit the station recently he discovered that it was closed in the middle of the day. The government boasted that the new station would be opened with 45 extra frontline police officers, but they are not boasting anymore. The decision has been made to close Mernda police station on the weekend, and only open from 10 to 6, Monday to Friday.

Further, Whittlesea police station will now be open just two days a week and probably also closed on the weekend. This means that in the Whittlesea police service area, which covers around 250,000 residents, three of the four police stations in the PSA will be closed every weeknight and all weekend because the Allan Labor government will not properly resource and staff Victoria Police.

From 2 November only one police station, Mill Park, will be open to serve the entire municipality on Saturdays and Sundays and every evening of the week. This comes at a time when the latest data shows that crime increased by 28.5 per cent in the City of Whittlesea last year. Even worse, the police officers are telling me that people walk in to report domestic violence in the evening, and these stations will be closed.