Thursday, 4 December 2025

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (10:13): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. From the outset, I place on record that the Liberals and Nationals will not be opposing this legislation. We take this position not because we believe the government has finally discovered a genuine plan to restore community safety but because Victorians honestly need any improvement that they can get. For too long the government has refused to act on the community crime crisis that has been gripping our state. After front page stories in newspapers and the months, if not years, of public anger, the government has rushed into the chamber with an urgent bill that represents an abrupt shift from a previous stance. The question that every Victorian is entitled to ask is: how did we actually get here? How did we reach a point where the government has spent more than a decade resisting calls to get tough on crime and is now trying to rebrand itself as the so-called champion of community safety?

How did we arrive in a situation where the government has abandoned its supposed ideological principles overnight because it is frightened by the headlines? And this bill does tell a story. It is a piece of legislation designed to create a headline without actually offering substance. I spoke, on several other bills, about legislation via media release – legislation seeming more like a media release than an actual piece of legislation. I have said this before: this Premier, more than any other Premier – at least you knew what the previous one actually stood for – only acts when her job is on the line. We know the Deputy Premier is talking around and speaking to different unions and just biding his time, and so the Premier has been forced to act and get this into position, not because she is genuinely concerned about victims of crime or has spoken with community members who are concerned about crime as an issue, because we know in several other iterations she has said, ‘This is it.’ I mean, the last bill we had was literally named the toughest, and that was it. There was no need for it. I am old enough in this chamber to remember when the government was raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14. That was their stated position. And now we end up in a situation where the government wants to lock up 14-year-olds for life. How on earth did we get here?

The government wants Victorians to believe that this bill is a long-awaited shift to adult time for violent crime. Instead it is a shallow imitation of what the Liberals and Nationals under David Crisafulli in Queensland have actually introduced with strong results. Imitation is the best form of flattery, they say, so I am sure Premier Crisafulli and his Attorney-General Deb Frecklington are flattered by this government’s attempt, such as it is, to imitate their laws. The Liberals and Nationals know that the most fundamental responsibility that we have in this place is to keep Victorians safe. That is why the Liberals and Nationals have been calling for years to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and to look closely at what other jurisdictions are doing.

Queensland has actually done the work. Queensland has shown that tough adult consequences for violent offenders can be implemented while also properly funding early intervention. They have actually done the work and looked at the model years ago. They implemented something very similar to what I have spoken about and what criminal justice reformers have looked at and what we have announced in our $100 million package, which is very similar to the Queensland package but also very similar to what reformers across Europe and also in states like Texas and Georgia have done – they have created what are called ‘intermediate sanction facilities’. By a different name they are called ‘discipline training camps’. They are facilities where people would receive educational training, TAFE training, discipline programs, behavioural programs, counselling and psychological support – that kind of wraparound service for someone who is on the pathway to a life of crime but has the ability to turn their life around.

The government’s slogan was ‘Real consequences, early intervention’ – except for the last few years the government in every single budget has funded the very early intervention programs that would deal with this. They have cut funding to programs that were successful for the African community to be able to rehabilitate offenders within their community, which is why as part of our community safety package we announced Restart and Youthstart – Restart so that we can have these facilities based on the Queensland model for better discipline, training, health, psychological support and educational support, but also Youthstart, whereby there is a structured program of mentoring within people’s own community.

I spoke at length both in my maiden speech and in a chapter in a book, Markets and Prosperity by Harry Stutchbury – a well-put-together book on reform that the centre right should take – and said that there is a difference and that we should always differentiate between the people we are afraid of and the people that we are just mad at. What the government is doing by introducing a bill like this and not properly funding, to catch people, the early intervention supports, the rehabilitation programs and the proper structural programs is locking up the people that we are just mad at, and that is going to end up with devastating consequences for young people in this state.

Again, Queensland’s laws were based on years and years and years of very detailed work. I know people like our friends in the Greens and the crossbench might look at the slogans of the Queensland laws and say how terrible they are, but there is actually money there that goes into structured rehabilitation for people that enables young people to have a second chance in life. I think the idea of a second chance in life is a universal principle, and it is not something that we should throw away. People are better than their worst day, and what we do by offering people no second chances is consign them to punishment for their worst day, not their best day. We know that people can turn their lives around, because the evidence says they can. This government honestly should be ashamed of the amount of rehabilitation programs they have actually cut, and they are putting forward a rushed bill. When the government announced it they spent more time in focus groups and drafting the slogans for pull-up banners than actually drafting the legislation. Having received legislation that has been turned around within three weeks, it is quite clear that this is more about a political fix for a Premier than actually dealing with the root cause of the issue.

We can have real consequences for offenders while also not treating those offenders like animals. We have to have a structure that properly turns their lives around. That is what we need, and that is what our policy offers. Our policy offers structured rehabilitation for people. The Queensland policy offers structured rehabilitation for people to turn their lives around, to get out of the justice system and onto a pathway – into careers, into education – to a better life. I do not think any of the Labor backbench have seriously looked at this legislation, because it does not do that. It says ‘early interventions’. I would love one of the Labor members speaking on this in the future or the minister to provide some examples where the government is moving on early interventions. The government say they are adopting a Scotland model or whatever. Those are not the structured supports that we are talking about that will seriously work to turn people’s lives around.

For years the Allan government has not acted on this issue. I remember clearly when we moved amendments to fix this mess and reinstate the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail, and when we moved a bill to do the same thing, I was told by Mr Galea and others that I was doing it for a 3AW grab or interview or a Herald Sun headline against the government. That is what I was told.

They were all repeating the same Premier’s private office talking points, that crime just was not an issue with Victorians, that in fact people cared about the Suburban Rail Loop more than the issue of crime. Ms Terpstra in Hansard said, ‘the government had a one-seat increase in their majority, so you must be wrong.’ Now, looking at the opinion polls, staring down the barrel of electoral defeat, with the Premier staring down the barrel of losing her own job, they finally decide to act. They all have to eat humble pie because of the way they have acted and not listened to their communities. They have not listened to their communities.

Across the northern suburbs the evidence has been undeniable of a crime crisis. Police have reported repeated melees involving youths armed with machetes, knives and improvised weapons. In my electorate, particularly communities like Epping, Roxburgh Park, Craigieburn and Broadmeadows have been left to feel unsafe in their own neighbourhoods. It is not the Victoria we should accept, it is not the community people deserve and it is not the situation that would have arisen had this government listened when they were warned.

Labor wants the public to simply forget about the last 10 years of being soft on crime, with repeat offenders cycling through the system and victims being told that the offenders have had a difficult upbringing and deserve another chance. Victorians know better. Nobody believes that for a moment, and nobody believes that this government are capable of fixing the issues that they have themselves created.

Queensland’s model includes 33 distinct offences that constitute serious violent crimes eligible for the ‘adult crime, adult time’ framework. These offences include a wide spectrum of serious violent conduct, including manslaughter, rape, grievous bodily harm, kidnapping, armed robbery, torture, trafficking, unlawful striking causing death and numerous vehicle-related crimes involving lethal risk. This is a comprehensive and serious list. It provides clear consequences. It ensures that offenders who commit genuinely violent acts receive sentences that reflect the gravity of what they have done. It sends a message that community safety comes first. By contrast, this bill only creates five offences. So ‘adult crime, adult time’ in Queensland, 33 offences; ‘adult time for violent crime’ – a copy-and-paste edit here in Victoria, just five. It does not resemble a comprehensive scheme. It is not a serious package. It is not ‘adult crime, adult time’. The government knows it cannot use that phrase because it has presented something that bears almost no resemblance to the Queensland model. It is a focus-grouped phrase. It is a political fix for this Premier – for this deeply unpopular Premier.

Not only is she deeply unpopular in the community, we know her negative approval ratings are actually worse than Peter Dutton’s were at any point, possibly the lowest in recent history for any state leader, and we know it is even worse in the Labor caucus than it is in the community. Other than waste and mismanagement, the government’s hallmark feature is the inability to recognise a good idea if it is not wearing a Labor shirt. A good idea, a good policy should be considered a good idea.

Members interjecting.

Evan MULHOLLAND: They are working on it, I tell you. The walls have ears, my friends.

Members interjecting.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Gab versus Ben – which one will it be? I know Mr Galea will support his friend Ben.

A good policy should be considered a good idea.

What the government has introduced here is ‘adult time for some violent crime’. Even then, there is a further problem. The government loudly declared it would be giving 14-year-olds life sentences. That was the headline: 14-year-olds, life sentences. That was the spin. It created the impression the government had suddenly become the toughest law and order administration in the country. Firstly, how draconian is giving a 14-year-old a life sentence? When the detail of this legislation is examined, the claim falls apart. No 14-year-old is getting a life sentence under this bill. All the penalties are maximums. But seriously, I have not heard one member of the Labor caucus, particularly the bleeding-heart left caucus, promote the benefits of doing that, because they do not believe in it. No-one honestly believes in it. It was a headline for the Premier’s political fix. In fact I know that when that headline came out both ministers and members of the Labor caucus were shocked – and so they should be. Who on earth thinks it is a good idea to lock up a 14-year-old for life without early intervention supports, without rehabilitation programs?

As I was saying, people are better than their worst day and people can turn their lives around, and a 14-year-old probably should not be locked up for life. This is the same government that two years ago wanted to increase the age of criminal responsibility to 14 – raise it – and now it wants to lock 14-year-olds up for life. Can you see the absurdity of this backflip? There is no consistency. As I said, at least with the previous Premier you knew where he stood on things. You just cannot with this Premier, because she is run by focus groups and polling rather than what is going on out there in the community or taking a particular stand for herself which is true. They create the illusion of toughness while maintaining the same revolving door that has been operating for years, and Victorians have honestly grown tired of the stunts. They know spin when they see it, and they have worked this Premier out. They have grown tired of being told that something is tough when the government knows full well that it is not.

We had a tough bail bill come to this place, and the government members basically said, ‘This will be it. This is the fix.’ It clearly was not the fix. We told you at the time the weaknesses. As my friend the member for Malvern has said, the loopholes were so big in that bill you could drive a stolen car through them. We told them this. We told them the solutions. We told them. We moved amendments, which they did not support, and they basically declared victory at the time, saying it was all going to be fine from then. And we continuously see the government coming back to the well on law and order issues.

There has been no serious end to offending, and there have been no consequences under this government. That has been a hallmark of the Allan Labor government: It has consistently failed to deliver consequences for serious offending and has failed to deliver community safety for the community. The public is not safer, because dangerous offenders are repeatedly released. The public is not safer, because courts are flooded with bail applications and youthful offenders with multiple charges who have learned the system will not hold them to account. I have literally spoken to police officers in the north that will arrest someone and then rearrest them later that night because they have been released on bail. They are continually having to arrest them. The public is not safer, because this government treats violent crime as something that can be excused rather than confronted.

At the other end of the spectrum is the question of crime prevention, which must be the foundation of any long-term approach to safety. I know many of my colleagues on the opposite side know this to be true in their hearts. They know that early intervention works. They know that when a young person receives support early in life, they have a far better chance of staying away from criminal behaviour. They know that with programs which support families to deal with trauma, address substance abuse and provide stability, they can change lives. Yet they know this government has run out of money and cannot fund any of this, like programs in the western suburbs which worked that have been cut under this government. They know that early intervention programs have been gutted. In fact I was at the African Music and Cultural Festival the other weekend, and they were telling me about the programs that help their community that had been cut. Supposedly there was an African working group which was meant to have enormous amounts of consultation but was not actually being told about programs that have been cut that had been working.

In Queensland the ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws are accompanied by a hundred-million-dollar package of early intervention supports. Queensland recognised that getting tough on serious offenders must be matched by serious investment into prevention. They recognise that every dollar invested early saves many more dollars later and, more importantly, saves lives from being derailed. Queensland understood that the justice system is not just simply reacting to crime but should be part of helping people avoid the cycle in the criminal justice system in the first place. But Victoria has none of that. Victoria has no serious prevention package. I believe it has a unit, or it is looking at a unit. That is not a serious crime prevention package. The Allan Labor government continues to waste money on unnecessary vanity projects while refusing to fund the programs that help keep kids out of the justice system. This is all occurring while at-risk young people cannot access the programs that would give them a chance at a better life. It is a disgrace.

Victorians want safety, not spin. They want substance, not media releases. They want measures that will take machetes out of the hands of criminals, not gimmicks like the so-called machete bins. We saw that $13 million has been spent on these bins, and from the looks of what is going on in my community, not a single one of them has actually handed any in. All law-abiding people with a machete have, but violent armed offenders are not walking into Craigieburn police station to drop off their ill-gotten machetes. We know the example from Broadmeadows Central, where almost every second day there is machete incident. The police station is literally across the road. It might have been taken away now, but there was a machete bin there. Do you think any of those offenders are going to walk across the road and hand in their machete? Of course they are not. This is the incompetence of this government – the absolute incompetence of this government. The government has spent $13 million, and Victorians are no safer.

Victorians expect that those who commit violent crimes will serve sentences that reflect the seriousness of their actions. They expect dangerous offenders will not be allowed back on the street to reoffend. At the same time, they expect funding will be provided to programs to help young people stay out of crime in the first place. This is the balanced approach that the opposition supports, which is why a Wilson Liberal and Nationals government will commit $100 million to early intervention programs modelled on the successful Queensland approach. We have done what the government has not done. We have looked at the evidence that works. We have modelled our policy based on international examples, based on countless amounts of meetings and based on domestic examples that have worked.

The government started drafting this legislation after they designed the pull-up banners. Three weeks is not enough time to consider in detail the gravity of the laws that we are dealing with at the moment, and government members know this. Some of them are after a political fix. Others are completely shocked at the situation the government have gotten themselves into. On this issue the government have not earned Victorians’ trust, they have betrayed it. The hardworking men and women of Victoria Police know this better than anyone. They put their lives on the line every day and they respond to violent incidents involving knives, machetes, stolen cars and aggravated burglaries. As I said, they repeatedly arrest the same offenders. This is the same government that closed Malmsbury, then hinted at reopening it. They closed Port Phillip. And the cost of these decisions are borne not by government ministers but by taxpayers. These are decisions made in panic, without planning and without regard to the impact on community safety at all.

If the government had any genuine intention of fixing crime it, would replicate the ‘adult crime, adult time’ bill rather than seeking to rebrand a much weaker and less-effective version. It would pick up the phone to Queensland Attorney-General Deb Frecklington and ask what kinds of supports they are giving, how their early intervention programs are working, how they are supporting people and how they are investing in early intervention and rehabilitation programs rather than cutting them. The government could introduce a full suite of measures next sitting week, maybe next sitting day. It could restore public confidence. It could protect Victorians instead of having this weak imitation that we have now, designed to create an illusion of action.

The Liberals and Nationals will not oppose this bill, because Victorians honestly deserve any improvement at all. But this bill is not the answer. It is not. It is a start only, in the most superficial sense. Victoria needs a government that takes community safety seriously, invests in prevention, listens to frontline police and provides real consequences for serious offending and that stops relying on headlines as a substitute for policy. I would like to inform the house that I did have a reasoned amendment, but I would like to withdraw it. I think the points were made in the lower house regarding our reasoned amendment. We think the government needs to go back to the drawing board. I understand there are a whole lot of other amendments, and I would like to inform the house that the opposition will not be supporting any of the crossbench amendments. The government needs to take a serious, hard look at itself. As I said, locking up 14-year-olds for life – even the possibility – is not a real solution. It is draconian. I know the Labor members are deeply ashamed of this bill, and the opposition will not get in the way of it.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:43): I too rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. This is another shameful day in the chamber. I was reflecting on this week. I was wondering if this is the worst week of Premier Jacinta Allan’s leadership – so-called leadership – of this government, and I had to, sadly, stop myself and say, ‘Well, actually, it’s only the worst week so far.’ Labor under Jacinta Allan has abdicated responsibility for an effective justice system. With this latest frantic flurry of media releases and rushed bills Jacinta Allan scurries along in a perpetual race to the bottom, with a dysfunctional opposition, and she is grabbing madly now for the failed ideas of an interstate Liberal government.

This is a bad law. It is based on a bad precedent. It will not make our community safer. But what it will do is do real harm to children in this state. The Greens will vehemently oppose this bill. We have seen under Jacinta Allan this government stumble further and further to the right and abandon any pretence of evidence-based policy. It is absolutely shameful. Under this Premier we are not living anymore in the state of Victoria; we are living in the prison industrial complex of Victoria as she madly grants more and more powers to police, more and more crackdowns on people’s rights and more and more capitulations.

What is happening here today, and the reason this policy is before us in this chamber, is the Premier has chosen to throw the fight. She cannot put forward a coherent argument against an opposition that is a shambles, so she capitulates over and over again on important policy decisions – vitally important, because we do need safe communities and we do need to restrain the harm that the state can do through the really strong interventions that we make into people’s lives through the criminal justice system. It is an absolutely shameful topic to continue capitulating on. We have got a Premier who has less moral authority than an FM radio shock jock. That is what she admits every time she gets up and puts out a media release to try and kill headlines and a story and get herself out of a mess. But those actions have consequences, and they have very severe consequences when we get piece after piece of rushed legislation brought to this chamber, the government not giving enough time for that important work to be done so that we have good bills coming before this Parliament and the Parliament not getting enough time to scrutinise bills that will have huge impacts on people’s lives.

All of this is in the context of a state that is crowing about having just signed the treaty. The ink is not dry, and we have seen two bills this week come through this place that we know have had inadequate, if any, consultation, not only with stakeholders broadly but most importantly in this context with First Nations stakeholders. Next Tuesday the Premier is going to stand up and give a formal state apology to First Peoples, apologising for, among other things – this is from her media release – ‘laws, policies and practices that contributed to injustices against First Peoples in Victoria’. Notice the past tense in that quote. But what I observe in this place week after week is continued disrespect and continued bringing of legislation to this place that we know, based on the track record of the bail reforms that have been rushed through, will have a disproportionate impact on First Nations kids. The Premier has the utter gall and the complete shamelessness to roll this legislation out that will create a new wave of injustice and violence, targeting the next generation of young First Nations people. I will have that in mind when we attend the apology next week.

So what does this latest capitulation to the Liberals’ policy agenda and the Herald Sun’s campaigning actually do? I was shocked when we received a briefing on this bill. We received a briefing late on Monday as a requirement for the government to bring the bill as an urgent bill. The Greens opposed the progression of this as an urgent bill. What we perceive as actually urgent is the Premier’s need to shore up – I do not know – internal support, I imagine. What should not be rushed is the consideration of this legislation, which will have dramatic impacts, as the Attorney-General admitted in the statement of compatibility, on young people in this state.

Firstly, what this bill does is change where a list of serious matters involving children are heard – the court system that they have access to. Children’s matters in this state are dealt with in the Children’s Court, a specialist court that we developed and that we should be proud of in Victoria which is staffed by specialist magistrates trained in youth offending, child development and trauma and with a statutory framework around its work that centres rehabilitation and the best interests of the child. We have created that structure not only because we are required to under international human rights conventions that we have signed up to, including on the rights of the child, but because it works – because children have special developmental needs that we have previously recognised in this state and you get better outcomes when they are dealt with by specialised services and justice frameworks.

Ordinarily only a very narrow class of the most serious offences are excluded from the jurisdiction of the Children’s Court, but this government is flipping that on its head. I agree with Mr Mulholland’s comments that it is shameful, shocking and just absurd, frankly, to see this approach coming from a government that previously had the spine and the guts to stand up and recognise that we need to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. We have seen any kind of rigour and gumption completely erode in this government. It is like a balloon that the air is slowly leaking out of under this Premier. First they rolled it back and pretended that it was never a solid promise – the idea that they were going to raise the age to 14. We got it raised to 12. The government, because of the Premier’s lack of moral fortitude, continues to erode its own legacy here. It is its own opposition. It is just, frankly, depressing.

For a list of selected offences under this Bill 15- and 17-year-olds will now be forced into the County Court in every case. For 14-year-olds that default is also uplifted unless the child can prove exceptional circumstances, such as a cognitive impairment, or where it is assessed to be in the victim’s best interests that the matter be heard in the Children’s Court. What this means in practice is that children will be tried in an adult jurisdiction, potentially in front of a jury. They will be exposed to more adversarial, formal and intimidating processes, and the maximum penalties that can be imposed on them will just skyrocket. From up to three years detention by the Children’s Court, this government is proudly waving around that it will now expose children as young as 14 to sentences of 25 years or even life.

This bill will erode the role of specialist youth magistrates. I observed before that that is crucial because they understand the developmental, cognitive and trauma backgrounds of the young people that are coming before our court system, and they have been trained to apply those very important youth-specific principles. We have, as I said, been clearly warned since the media release on this – which came out, as has been observed, three weeks ago – by the howl of fury and disappointment and the clear, clear warnings from the sector that this law will fall most heavily on children who are already marginalised, children that this state is already failing, such as children in out-of-home care, Aboriginal children and those with a disability or significant mental health or cognitive impairments. They are the ones who are going to get sucked into this more frequently than their peers. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Human Rights Law Centre have described this approach bluntly as ‘inhumane’ and ‘a moral failure’. In reality this is just a race to the bottom, and the practical effect of this is going to be that it is going to deepen and entrench inequality.

Moving kids into adult courts is also, infuriatingly – the worst part of all this – ineffective. It will just increase the likelihood that, one, they are warehoused in prison for longer, cut off from family, culture, education and supports that actually help support people to turn their lives around. They are therefore made more vulnerable and more institutionalised and exposed to more connections with people who are also struggling to turn their lives around. Therefore the crazy thing about all this, and the thing that you should be most ashamed of – it is hard to pick with this bill, those on the government benches – is that this will not work to make the community safer. In fact it will entrench the problem. It will deepen it, because we know that the younger people are when they come into contact with the criminal justice system, the more likely they are to reoffend.

The second part of this bill is a direct attack on the sentencing principles that this Parliament only recently agreed should guide our youth justice system. In August last year – just last year – we passed the Youth Justice Act 2024, and we did so after many years of consultation with experts, community organisations and legal services. The contrast with this bill could not be more stark. We, as a Parliament, centred on principles that reflected the overwhelming evidence that the best way to keep communities safe is to support children in their development and to rehabilitate them when they are on the wrong track.

We have a number of amendments to this bill. We have a reasoned amendment that the government go back and actually do the consultation that they have clearly not done in the three weeks since the Premier stood up and made this announcement. We also have amendments that preserve some of these important principles that we only put in place a year ago. I ask that the amendments in my name be circulated now. The amendments in my name aim to retain core principles of sentencing that will support rehabilitation, positive development and, importantly, detention as a last resort, which is an international rights obligation that Victoria has signed up to. The effect of my amendments is quite simple. They delete clauses 12 and 13 of the bill. In the government’s bill, clause 12 removes from section 204 of the Youth Justice Act the principle that ‘efforts to support rehabilitation and positive development are the most effective ways to reduce reoffending’. I cannot fathom a government that would bring a bill to this place that deletes that, as a core function of our justice system. The government’s bill also, in clause 13, removes from section 208 the principle that custodial sentences for children must be a last resort and imposed only for the minimum period appropriate and necessary.

Stripping these principles out is terrible policy. It ignores proven and empirical evidence from criminology, psychology and social science that rehabilitation and positive development are the most effective ways to reduce reoffending. It is absolutely disrespectful, frankly, that the government is moving in this direction, because it disregards the years of consultation and advocacy that went into the Youth Justice Act and, as I have said, it is dangerous, because it invites courts to impose longer sentences on more children without the guardrails that were deliberately built into our Youth Justice Act statute that we brought into practice barely a year ago. It is also, as I have said, inconsistent with our international obligations. The principle that detention must be a last resort and for the shortest appropriate time is the bare minimum required under article 37(b) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it is reflected in the UN’s Beijing rules on juvenile justice. Removing it moves Victoria further away from accepted minimum standards for the treatment of children, in conflict with international law, and it just compounds issues that we have already seen in this state – issues around this government’s need to comply with the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. We know that conditions in our youth justice facilities are challenging and that children are still not receiving the minimum that they need to have their human rights respected and support their rehabilitation and reintegration at the conclusion of their sentences.

The government’s own statement of compatibility effectively admits as much – that we are breaching our obligations. It acknowledges that the sentencing principle changes are ‘likely to be out of step’ with children’s rights – which is a huge understatement – as they are universally interpreted, and they may not be capable of being justified. Astonishingly, the statement of compatibility then says the government intends to proceed anyway and even applies these more punitive principles retrospectively to offences that have already been committed, exacerbating incompatibility with the charter.

Let us be absolutely clear what the government is asking us to do today: this Parliament is being asked to knowingly pass laws that our own Attorney-General concedes are likely incompatible with the fundamental rights of children and that could see children who offended under one set of principles sentenced under a harsher regime after the fact. It is deeply troubling, and I hope that members will reflect on the sober occasion this is, the huge degradation of the role that we have taken on in providing good leadership and policy direction for this state and how far this government is taking us out of line with that.

Thirdly, this bill ratchets up maximum penalties for a suite of offences. The maximum penalties send a symbolic message about the gravity of crime, but they do not themselves reduce offending. The evidence from Australia and overseas is crystal clear: longer sentences do not deter youth crime or improve community safety. They may actually increase reoffending, because when embroiled in the justice system, children of course are cut off from education, work, family and culture, and the disruption of those supports can be devastating to young people’s lives and increase the possibility of reoffending.

The Federation of Community Legal Centres, Victoria Legal Aid, Smart Justice for Young People and many other wonderful stakeholders, who I want to acknowledge because this has been a very, very difficult week for that sector, who do so much work to put the evidence before the government of the path that they should be taking and then have it thrown back in their face time after time, have all warned that this arms race on penalties will disproportionately capture children already experiencing violence, trauma and abuse, and it will fall most heavily on Aboriginal children, kids in out-of-home care and those with a disability. And all of this will cost a fantastically huge amount of resources and divert funding even further into prisons instead of the preventative supports that keep kids and communities safe.

This law is not a targeted response to this very small group of people that the Premier keeps talking about. It is a very blunt instrument, and it shifts the whole system towards being extremely punitive. It has not been mentioned much in debate, but these uplifts to the maximum sentences obviously do not just apply to young people. They are a really draconian shift in sentencing that will apply to all of these offences. I remark, again, that we are considering this bill a mere three weeks after the Premier got up and spewed out a media release, and we are doing this in Victoria, dramatically shifting our justice system, because Jacinta Allan has a political problem, not because of the evidence.

Fourth, the bill creates a new standalone knife offence, which will make a separate crime of using a knife in the commission of certain offences, which will attract an additional three-year maximum penalty, which can be sentenced separately to the underlying offence or accompanying offence. No-one in this chamber is unconcerned about knife violence, and we already have a wide range of offences that capture this conduct as evidence of that. Armed robbery, affray, causing serious injury, possession of controlled weapons, more and more – police do have tools available to them already to respond to violence involving knives. The government’s own second-reading speech concedes that these offences exist and that they already criminalise the use of knives in these circumstances. So layering on a new offence will not be effective in terms of making conduct that is already criminal more criminal, but it does create a risk of charge stacking and then longer cumulative sentences and adds further complexity and discretion to a system that is already complex and overburdened. As a result of this government’s frenetic backflipping on its justice policy, we now see courts clogged, police cells overflowing and people serving entire sentences in police cells that may be longer periods of incarceration than they actually receive when they arrive to sentencing. The government is wilfully breaking our justice system for no positive benefit.

We know that the system, in layering on these new offences, is also likely to impact Aboriginal children and children of colour, who we have seen in the last few weeks, with new reports coming out, are already disproportionately targeted by police in the exercise of powers such as their stop-and-search powers. These kids are already overpoliced, policed more heavily and stigmatised, and the government is adding another tool for that to continue, sending another political signal that the answer to every social problem is a new criminal offence, more jail time and tougher penalties, when the government’s own obsession with thickening the statute book is already increasing complexity, clogging the courts and overflowing our jails with unsentenced citizens of this state.

There is no evidence that supports the government’s approach of adding one more offence to the Crimes Act 1958 so that it will stop a teenager in the middle of a fight from picking up or pulling out a knife. There is ample evidence that investing in youth work, outreach, mentoring, housing and mental health does reduce violence and harm, but this government is only interested in the media release. Finally, this bill also expands the offence of carjacking to include theft of a vehicle when a child under 10 is inside.

As I come to the end of my contribution today, I want to turn to who these laws are really about, because the children who are going to be uplifted to the County Court and exposed to life sentences are not a random cross-section of Victorian teenagers. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has been very clear that these laws will see Aboriginal children, already massively over-represented in both child protection and youth justice, locked up earlier for longer and further away from country, community and culture. We know from the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council’s Crossover Kids work that almost 40 per cent of children sentenced or diverted in the Children’s Court have also been the subject of a child protection order. One in five of the children sentenced to a custodial order had been in residential care. We know from Victoria Legal Aid’s data that two in every five children living in residential care face criminal charges within a year and half of them within two years, and that is often for behaviour for which, if that kid was in a family setting, they would probably never be charged. They might be scolded, they might be reprimanded or they might be punished at home, but they probably would not get sucked into the criminal justice system. This disproportionate impact of these laws on kids that the state has responsibility for is a galling shame. In other words, many and perhaps most of the children that we are talking about who are going to be affected by this law are children that the state has taken into its care, children who have been removed from family because of abuse, neglect or violence and placed into systems that are supposed to take care of them. But too often they criminalise them and they deepen their trauma instead of healing it.

When the government gets up and tells the public that this bill is about thugs and brazen youth criminals, what it is actually doing is further abandoning children that it has already failed – children from families in poverty and crisis, children cycling through motels and residential units, children who have grown up surrounded by violence and instability. And instead of meeting its obligations to care, to support and to repair, this Premier in all her gutless glory steers these kids on a fast track into adult courts and adult prisons. The Greens do not accept that this is inevitable, unlike the Premier, who just cannot find a fight that she can take up. We can keep our communities safer, and we can do that without sentencing 14-year-old children to life in prison, but to do that we have to stop pretending that longer sentences and escalating rhetoric are the substitute for the hard work of prevention, early intervention and support.

Some of the things that we could do if we lived in a sane, evidence-based state would be: address poverty and housing, not demolish public housing, so kids are not couch surfing, sleeping rough or bouncing between unstable placements; and invest in mental health, family violence services, drug and alcohol support and youth work rather than this endless resort to increasing prison and police budgets. We could keep kids in school and re-engage them in flexible and supportive education, like the Pavilion School, which we have seen highlighted in the media recently, where young people with complex needs, including those in care and in the justice system, are succeeding when they are given the right supports. The government urgently also needs to reverse its funding cuts to public education, which, when you consider the problems that our young people are facing, are just so deeply shameful.

We should properly fund trauma-informed, culturally safe support which is led by communities, especially Aboriginal controlled organisations and those communities that are instead being overpoliced currently, overcharged and stigmatised through this government’s acceptance of a tough-on-crime narrative. It is galling that we are seeing cuts to all of these services that have been proven to work over and over. Why is the government at all surprised that when it cuts these proven programs we end up in this situation? It is a crisis of your own making. As much as it is a crisis, it is of your own making. You know what works, and you just cannot invest the funding to support those important programs. The government’s own Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2020–2030 and countless inquiries tell us that the best predictor of future offending is past trauma, disadvantage and disconnection and that every child in youth justice will one day return to the community, so if we do not support them to heal, to complete education, to find housing and to work, all programs like this and policies like this will do is harden them into more serious offending.

While crime prevention and youth services have had their funding slashed, spending on prisons under this government has continued to rise. That is the choice that Jacinta Allan’s Labor has made: cut what works and pour billions into cages. I cannot help but think that the most shameful part of the Premier’s failure on this is that she just wants to warehouse these kids away from sight and wants the problem to go away, rather than to support them to recover in their communities to heal.

On behalf of the Victorian Greens, on behalf of the children who have already been failed by this state and on behalf of the communities who deserve real safety, which is built on housing, education, health, culture and justice, I urge this Council chamber to reject this bill today. It is within our power. We can choose care over cruelty, we can choose evidence over fear, we can choose pride in our work over capitulation and we can choose a future where children are given every chance to thrive in their communities instead of being written off and caged.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:12): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. We have seen in past years troubling changes in the types of offending, particularly by youth offenders but also across the board. Indeed it is something that we have seen not just in Victoria but in other jurisdictions as well. We know that the actual rate of offenders is a figure that has largely stayed stable. What has gone up is the amount of crimes being committed per offender, and we are seeing at this much more serious end a number of types of offending that are wholly and utterly unacceptable to the community.

Good governments do not just get stuck in their way and say, ‘No, we did this years and years ago. We did this 10 years ago, and that’s what we’re going to do.’ That is what a stale government would do. But we have a good government here in Victoria that is prepared to listen, to learn and to respond to evolving and changing situations. That is exactly what we have with this bill today, and that is why I am proud to stand with our Premier in making the very tough calls that she has made, because we must be able to fully hand on heart say: we need to keep Victorians safe.

Whether it has been out doorknocking, at street stalls or indeed from having people reach out to speak with me, I have heard from many of my constituents who have expressed to me their concerns and their valid and genuine fears about some of the types of offending that we have been seeing, particularly in our suburbs. I will not name this individual because I did not speak to him before about this speech, but I had one constituent reach out to me very distressed because he had been the victim of one of these crimes that is listed in the uplift provisions of this bill. He has not been getting much sleep now because he has to console his eight-year-old child every night because his child is too scared to go to sleep. As elected members of this place, how can we hear these stories? How can we hear these valid concerns from our constituents and say everything is fine?

There has been a change in the type of offending that we have seen in this state and beyond. This is a government that is responding to those changes, and that is what this bill before us today does.

We need to have serious consequences for violent offending. We also must have those early interventions, and that is why I am very, very proud as well to see measures such as the violence reduction unit, which is going to be novel for Australia but is indeed taking some of the world’s best practice from places like Glasgow, from places like London, to bring in these reforms to provide every opportunity. We must continue to provide every opportunity, because we know that early intervention programs, including the ones that we already have, by and large, are successful. They are not the types of offenders that are then going on to commit these crimes. But there are a very small number who, despite any opportunity given, will still offend, and that is what this bill is about today. It is not about anyone who gets in contact with the youth justice system. It is about targeted responses to specific types of offending at the most extreme level. That is why there are specific offences for which young offenders aged 14 to 17 will have their cases uplifted to the County Court. Those offences are: aggravated home invasion, home invasion, aggravated carjacking, carjacking, intentionally causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence, recklessly causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence, serious and repeat armed robberies, and serious and repeat aggravated burglaries. I repeat: this is not the low-level ‘made a few wrong decisions, done a few wrong things’ type of offending. This is at the most serious end that we are talking about here, and it is why we are putting the most serious consequences for that most serious type of offending.

I note the comments from Mr Mulholland attempting to walk both sides of the street by saying that we are somehow not doing enough but we are also doing too much. These eight offences have been specifically chosen to target that offending at the highest level, not just go to a broader brush like Mr Mulholland was appearing to suggest that we do in the vein of other states. I do actually note that in Queensland they do not have any cases uplifted to the District Court – their version of the County Court – at all. This is a Victoria-specific measure. For Mr Mulholland to come in here and say we are doing too much but we are not doing enough – just like the Liberals have been saying, ‘Do this faster. But no, you are doing this too fast’ – is disappointing. As other members like I think Ms Copsey went to, there are some other exemptions for 14-year-olds in terms of this County Court uplift where there are particularly relevant and pertinent circumstances which allow it. There are also, as has been noted, longer maximum sentences. I will not list every single one. But for example, the maximum penalty for intentionally causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence will be uplifted from 20 to 25 years, and that is of course for all offenders of any age who are covered by this, including adults.

There will also be a new knife crime offence. A new separate and standalone offence to target knife crime will carry a maximum penalty of three years for the use of a knife in the commission of certain indictable offences where knife use is known to be common. The six specific offences are: causing serious injury intentionally; causing serious injury recklessly; causing injury recklessly or intentionally; assault; affray; and violent disorder. For these offences where a knife is used, the offender will be sentenced for two or more offences, with a maximum penalty for the principal offence effectively increased by up to three years from the inclusion of this new knife offence. Carrying a knife alone would not be sufficient to make out the elements of the new offence, but rather the actual use of a knife in the commission of one of those crimes.

In order to acknowledge the very distressing circumstances of stolen cars or carjackings with young children inside, there will also be some changes to reflect the severity of a car being stolen if there is a child under the age of 10 inside. This will now attract a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment or indeed life if it is an aggravated incident.

Knife crime is something that is deeply, deeply troubling to many of us as well. I do note again the comments of the opposition on the machete bins program. We know from data we heard in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee last week that 14,000 machetes had been handed in as of a couple of weeks ago – we will get the final figures, I am sure, soon – of which around 3000 to 4000 were from retailers. So that means clearly over 10,000 people have surrendered their machetes or other bladed objects as part of the amnesty program. Mr Mulholland said, ‘Well, the offenders are not going to put in their ill-gotten knives.’ Where does he think they get the knives from? If they are stealing these knives from people, they are going to have less of an opportunity to do that, with 10,000 of these knives not in people’s homes or on the street, or in a place where an offender may be able to steal them from. The misinformation that has been put out about that campaign in particular is not surprising from the opposition. At no point has the government said, ‘We’re doing the machete bin amnesty, and that’s going to fix every problem.’ But this is one part of it, and it is an important part of it. Indeed, from those early initial figures, we know it has been a successful part of it, and I look forward to seeing the ultimate figures when they come out as well. I am sure, despite the disappointment of opposition members, that such large numbers being handed in is still a very, very good thing.

Whilst the opposition are happy to keep infighting and focusing on crime and then knifing their leader, they are shown up by a government that actually acts and listens and delivers in the interests of the Victorian people. This is a government that is focused on community safety, on keeping Victorians safe, responding to evolving situations as they develop and evolve, and making sure that Victorians like the constituent that reached out to me with his genuine concerns about his sense of safety and his son’s sense of safety can have some rightly deserved peace of mind. I commend the bill to the house.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:22): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025. The Liberals and Nationals will not be opposing this bill. Our communities have been calling out for action on crime, and when the Parliament is presented with measures that move in the right direction, we have a responsibility, I believe, to support them. But supporting a bill is not the same as believing that it is adequate. This bill is a response to pressure, not a product of principle. This is a government reacting to headlines, not a government leading with conviction.

For years now Victorians have been raising genuine concerns about the rise of violent youth offending, about home invasions in our suburbs and our regions, about carjackings and robberies that have shocked families and left them traumatised – this is a reality – and about the growing brazenness of offences committed by young people who have learned that accountability is often delayed, diluted or even avoided altogether. A responsible government would have come and acted earlier. It would have listened to police, victims and communities. Instead, what we have today is a by-product of pressure and discomfort, not long-term policy work. When the opposition was briefed on this bill, it became immediately clear that meaningful consultation had not taken place. The government could not point to a single stakeholder – not one frontline justice organisation, not one community legal centre, no peak body – who had been shown the substance of this bill prior to its introduction. When I reached out to those who work daily in our justice system, they confirmed this truth.

These are the organisations that any competent government would have consulted with as a matter of course. Instead the government chose to move quickly with an eye on the media cycle rather than carefully working through this with an eye on the long-term consequences of this legislation. Victorians were promised adult time for adult crime; that was the regime they were promised. They were told that the government would model its reforms on Queensland. They were told that eight serious offences would be treated as such and that penalties would increase significantly. But the bill before us does not meet even those requirements. It does not meet the requirements set out by the Premier herself. Only five of the eight offences she announced were actually designated as serious. Only four carry an increased penalty. The reality is that half of what was promised is missing before the ink is even dry. That is the reality. Victorians expect honesty from their government, not policy announcements that evaporate when it comes time to legislate it.

The contradictions continue in the detail. Queensland’s ‘adult time for adult crime’ regime is clear. Certain serious offences committed by youth offenders attract adult consequences because they are adult crimes. In Victoria the government appears to be introducing adult time for adult crime unless the offender asks not to be treated as an adult. This bill literally provides mechanisms for a carjacker to apply not to be treated as an adult. This is not what Victorians were told to expect. We cannot credibly tell the community that we are taking strong action on carjackers while writing into the law processes that allow offenders to apply for an exemption. If the government is serious about consequences, consequences cannot be optional.

There are also inconsistencies that highlight the rushed nature of this bill. Under these changes kidnapping a child in a vehicle becomes a serious offence and must be heard in an adult court, yet kidnapping a child from a pram on a street will still be sent to the Children’s Court and attract far lower maximum penalties. The Attorney-General acknowledged that the distinction exists but could not explain the logic behind this. The location of a child should not determine the seriousness of the crime. The safety of a child is not conditional on where they happened to be the moment they were kidnapped. This is an example of what happens in legislation that is drafted in haste to address headlines, rather than moving with consultation to address harms.

This bill also proposes new penalties for the use of knives in the commission of serious offences and for adults who recruit minors to these crimes. These are areas where we absolutely need action. Knife crime remains a significant concern, especially in outer suburbs and regional communities. Organised adults targeting vulnerable teens for criminal activity is a major and growing problem. We welcome efforts to strengthen these areas, but again, the legislation does not align with what the government has promised. Victorians were told that recruiters of minors would face life imprisonment. Instead the maximum penalty for this crime has been lifted from 10 years to 15 years, with the government saying it will introduce further offences later. It is again the government rushing through things to deal with a headline but saying, ‘But we’ll actually deal with the detail and the substance of this later.’

The deeper issues with this bill, though, go far beyond these inconsistencies. The rushed drafting increases the risk of unintentional consequences across the entire sentence hierarchy, with maximum penalties being raised in isolation without adjusting related offences.

Judges are left with distortions that make sentencing less practical, not more effective. That creates uncertainty, not deterrence.

This bill also ignores a well-documented reality in Victoria’s justice system. Prosecutors frequently engage in charge bargaining – it is a fact – especially with youth offenders. Legal bodies such as the Law Institute of Victoria and the Sentencing Advisory Council have for years warned that tougher offences can simply be negotiated around. If prosecutors downgrade charges and secure plea deals, the higher penalties that this government is relying on will never be tested in court. This undermines both the deterrent value and the public confidence that this bill seeks to restore.

Another critical omission is the lack of any plan for youth justice capacity. If more young offenders are to be heard in adult jurisdictions or detained for longer periods of time, the systems must have the infrastructure, staffing and security measures to manage this change. As it stands, this bill risks placing greater pressure on an already overstretched system and overstrained facilities. Overcrowding leads to violence, instability and higher rates of reoffending – outcomes directly contrary to community safety.

Finally, this legislation does nothing to address the causes that feed youth crime: disengagement from school, organised networks that deliberately exploit vulnerable teenagers, the growing influence of social media in encouraging notoriety-driven offending and the failure of early intervention programs in high-risk communities. All of these issues sit outside the four corners of this bill, yet they are essential to reducing the problem. Tougher sentencing has a place, but it is not a substitute for a comprehensive approach that prevents crime in the first place.

As Liberals, we believe in personal responsibility. We believe in the rule of law and the right of every Victorian to feel safe in their homes and in their communities. We believe that consequences matter, but we also believe that rehabilitation must be real. We must have interventions that are meaningful and that work, because we have got to give young people off-ramps. We support giving young people the chance to turn their lives around, but that chance can never come at the expense of victims, nor should it undermine public confidence in the justice system.

This bill is not as tough as the government claims. It is not as comprehensive as Victorians have been led to believe, and it is not a product of deep, considered policy work that genuine reform requires. But something that as an opposition we have put on the record many, many times is that we are willing to work with the government today, tomorrow or at any other time to take the necessary steps to strengthen laws that protect Victorians. We owe this to our communities. We owe them far more than that – we owe them honesty, coherence and a justice system that does what it says it will do. The opposition stands ready to deliver that. The question now is: does the government?

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:34): ‘We know that disproportionate criminal justice interventions actually increase rather than decrease the risk of offending for children and young people’: that is what Minister Carbines had to say when introducing legislation to reform the youth justice legislation only last year. The worst part of this ‘adult time for adult crime’ bill – which is what it is – is that the government know it will not work in the long term. They know it will breach human rights, and they know it will force our most vulnerable into the criminal justice system.

This government likes to talk about serious consequences when it comes to children, so let us talk about some serious consequences. These are so often children who have already been failed by the state – children in out-of-home care, living with disability, experiencing homelessness, trauma and family violence. This legislation will have the serious consequence of entrenching them in the justice system. It will increase the number of children in custody, increase the number of children on remand and perpetuate the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the justice system. Harsher sentencing, incarceration and adult processes all significantly elevate the risk of long-term involvement in the criminal justice system for these kids. But it does not really matter to this government, because all it cares about is looking tough.

Yesterday, not even an hour after someone disrupted question time in the Assembly to protest these laws, the government put out a media release to let us all know that they are not deterred and no MP will be able to leave this place until this bill passes. You want to sound tough, but you all sound incredibly weak. You are locking up kids and throwing away the key, all so you can stay in power for just that little bit longer. Shame on you. Shame not just on this Premier, not just on these ministers, but on every backbencher of this government who has remained silent. You could speak up publicly, but you do not. All you can say is that you want to stay in power for just that little bit longer. Your silence allows these laws to go through unchallenged by the major parties. This will fundamentally alter the trajectory of lives of our state’s most vulnerable children – and yes, these are children. Can anyone else remember when they were 14? You probably had not started shaving yet, and it was not that long ago that you had lost your baby teeth. You recently started high school. You really do not know who you are and you are just trying to find your place in this world. Now kids this age will be banned from social media in an effort to protect them from harm. Under these new laws, these same children can be sent to adult courts and potentially sentenced to life imprisonment. It is outrageous.

Alongside my colleagues on the progressive crossbench I will be moving amendments to try and address some of the most troubling parts of this new bill. In doing so I want to acknowledge the tireless advocates of the community legal sector, including but not limited to the Federation of Community Legal Centres, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Youthlaw and the Human Rights Law Centre. I will ask that my amendments now be circulated.

Under this bill, children whose matters are uplifted to the County Court are no longer able to bring a de novo appeal, losing a right they had in the Children’s Court. A de novo appeal is an important part of the justice system. It is the right to a new hearing heard afresh in a new court. For this kind of appeal the higher court has no regard to what happened in the initial lower court, and the accused is not bound to their plea or evidence as it was presented in the initial case. My amendment seeks to address this issue by allowing a child whose matter is uplifted to appeal to the Court of Appeal, who would then order a new trial by the Supreme Court. I look forward to the government not supporting this amendment, or any amendments that will help mitigate the harms of this legislation. I am sure this will make you all look very strong. You will forgive me for not believing it.

We are still about a year off from the election. Already the Allan Labor government has adopted so many Liberal Party policies on crime. Let us hope they do not continue their habit of introducing sweeping reforms to the justice system before past ones have even taken effect. There have been so many changes to the justice system laws in Victoria that I think we have all lost count. This government pride themselves on their increased incarceration rates as a result of these changes. All of these, alongside the whole CBD being a designated area for six months, are sure to land more people and more children in prison. The demands these changes will place on the already overloaded County Court system are massive, and these changes to sentencing will apply regardless of whether the offence was committed before the commencement of the reforms. So kids who are stuck on remand for months, who thought they would go to the Children’s Court, will end up going through the adult court system. I could go on about the harms and the hypocrisy of this bill. Goodness knows we have been forced up here many times in the last year to speak on the government’s kneejerk justice agenda.

But again, this government already know exactly what it is they are doing and why it is fundamentally wrong.

‘A society that treats its children in the same way that it treats its adults is a society that’s lost its way’: these are the words used by Queensland’s former human rights commissioner Scott McDougall when describing ‘adult crime, adult time’. And it is true – this government has lost its way. As Minister Carbines again put so well when introducing legislation to reform the youth justice system only last year:

Children and young people are at a unique point in their maturation and development. They have a greater capacity for rehabilitation and change, as long as they receive the proper support.

This government knows better. Shame on you.

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:41): I also rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Community Safety) Bill 2025, and may I say from the outset that we are where we are today because this government has chosen to bring us to this point. They have chosen to allow young people to be targets for organised crime. They put them out there in a situation where they could be scooped up by mastermind criminals and organised criminals and used in the worst possible way, so that now we have crime spiralling out of control. And why all of a sudden is this bill being rushed through the house with all of its failures and loopholes? It is simply because we are on the cusp of coming into the election year of 2026. Suddenly this government realises that it has failed to bring crime into a situation where there is proper law and order.

Our communities do not feel safe. They do not feel safe in their own homes because of the amount of home invasions, and these home invasions are becoming more and more violent and more and more prevalent. They do not feel safe when they leave their cars out in their own driveways. They do not feel safe when people can actually come to try to take their cars from them and be violent in the process. We have a failed machete bin situation that has cost the taxpayer enormous amounts of money, with the only people that are putting their machetes in there being retailers and good citizens. Those that are using them for violent crimes still have their knives and their machetes.

So what does the government do? It responds with an overreach, an ill-thought-of overreach that is long overdue in terms of trying to bring some sort of reform to law and order. This government simply does not know how to reform law and order. I have listened to what people have said in this house, and yes, we have situations when it comes to children where we need to be looking at how we bring reform about. But clearly this government has failed when it comes to reform, and so we have a bill that is wanting to introduce extreme measures.

I would like to talk to some of the things that are coming in through this particular bill. This bill is not bringing in what the Liberals and Nationals wanted. We proposed a Youthstart and a Restart and a Smartstart program so that we could actually teach young people – youth offenders – discipline and responsibility. The Restart program was simply put together for that reason. It was for serious and repeat offenders aged 12 to 17. It is not a holiday camp. It was going to have strict routines and outdoor challenges and build resiliency and hopefully through therapy and behavioural support would address drug use, anger and trauma to allow criminals to turn around and have a new pathway in their lives.

[The Legislative Council report is being published progressively.]