Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (18:52): (1991) My adjournment matter is to the Minister for Police. I recently had the honour of attending the Victoria Police National Police Remembrance Day in Ballarat with my good colleague here Mrs McArthur. I was reflecting that day on the police I had come in contact with in my electorate and the extremely difficult challenges that they face on a daily basis. Ballarat police recently arrested a teenager for threatening to stab his neighbour with a machete. That teenager was given bail. Officers in Ballarat had to respond to an incident involving a 39-year-old threatening to use a blowtorch to burn down his ex-girlfriend’s house. He was also given bail. When I called into the Melton police station recently and I spoke to the officers, the mood was sombre because they had responded to that awful incident in Cobblebank where two young teenagers were murdered in cold blood. I cannot imagine the horror the police members would have come across and what that scene would have looked like. Sadly, these were not one-off incidents.

Victoria Police have had their funding cut, and the government’s solution to knife crimes in this state is machete bins, while bail laws are nowhere near as tough as what they need to be despite the expensive government advertising campaign on multiple platforms trumpeting the ‘tough new bail laws’ which are neither tough, nor new, nor do they have any real effect. So when I was sitting there in the church reflecting the other day, thinking about all these things and the police and how they go about their business, I thought to myself, ‘Why would anyone actually want to be a police officer in Victoria?’ There are over 1100 vacancies in VicPol at the moment. Police are already stretched as thin as they can be and working in circumstances that are extremely challenging.

My simple question to the minister is this: Minister, when are you going to start supporting Victoria Police officers by providing them with the resources to do their job and do their job safely? To all our men and women in blue: thank you, thank you, thank you for the work that you do every single day, for protecting our communities and for keeping us safe.