Thursday, 5 March 2026

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (14:53): Well, here we are again, speaking on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. I think this is about the third or fourth time I have spoken on the actual mechanisms in this bill, and hopefully this time we actually get it right. This bill is simple, and this bill is narrow in scope. It removes the requirement for the Director of Public Prosecutions’ consent before serious hate speech charges can proceed, a single measure correcting a flaw in the original anti-vilification legislation – amendments we actually voted on at the time. I remember who stood up for those amendments and who did not, because you did a deal with the Greens political party.

Members interjecting.

Evan MULHOLLAND: You did. Instead of doing what was right and addressing a flaw in the reasonable person test that we took issue with, they went to where I think they wanted to be in their heart of hearts and changed the legislation.

This should have been included when the government brought in the legislation. The amendment fixes a structural problem that made the laws ineffective. The government knows it made the previous laws ineffective and made these laws ineffective. The government had originally inserted the DPP consent requirement, and then the government publicly admitted this was done to secure Greens support. The Liberals and Nationals warned at the time that the consent provision would make the laws unworkable. The former Shadow Attorney-General the member for Malvern attempted to work constructively with both the Attorney-General and the Premier, and the Liberals and Nationals did offer cooperation to ensure workable anti-vilification laws, but the government refused to accept amendments that would remove the consent requirement. The number of convictions under these provisions is said to be zero. The number of charges laid under these provisions is zero, as confirmed by the Attorney-General’s office to the member for Brighton. So in effect the law has not operated at all. Despite government claims, the laws have provided no actual protection, and the Premier claimed the reforms would fix the hate speech problem. The outcome shows that the laws did not work. We called out Labor’s deal with the Greens during the original debate, warning clearly that the consent provision would negate the law. We said the law would not function in practice. Both the member for Malvern and I predicted that no prosecutions would result. That turned out to be true. We offered to support a model without the consent requirement. We sought laws that worked, not symbolic legislation. The government ignored those warnings, and as clearly shown by the practical outcomes, created symbolic legislation.

The ongoing antisemitism and hate speech we have seen on Victorian streets have been appalling. The community has been calling out for action for a long time. We see outrageous and illegal behaviour occurring weekly, and the Jewish community has been particularly affected. We have seen hate speech described as ‘vile’ and ‘rampant’, and the lack of prosecutions undermines community confidence. Passing ineffective legislation amounts to accepting the status quo. The government created an illusion of protection without the actual enforcement behind it. We are supportive of this legislation, and as we have consistently stated, we want to see it passed. No-one on this side of the house was surprised when the government got up and said, ‘We got it wrong.’ It took months after enactment for them to admit error. There was not any apology for doing a deal with the Greens, just an implicit acknowledgement through amendment, which suggests stubbornness. I know they have got a pattern of difficulty in admitting mistakes, and this is a pattern of delayed accountability. What you have done is you have created a law that has resulted in zero prosecutions, and you have created a law that is simply symbolic.

On the omnibus bill that we heard about, the government inserted this amendment into a broader justice bill. This bill was otherwise supported by the Liberals and Nationals. No-one should have been surprised to hear that members of the other house felt that, because it was just an omnibus bill. They had the opportunity to add other amendments to it because it was an omnibus bill. The upper house decided to attach amendments strengthening IBAC powers. The government opposed those IBAC amendments, which resulted in a bit of a stalemate. The government further blocked debate on the omnibus bill. The government adjourned it off, stopping debate of that particular amendment, effectively shelving the content of this bill to avoid a successful amendment on follow-the-money powers. I say to the government: we will get those follow-the-money powers. Regardless of what scheming is done, we will get those follow-the-money powers passed through the upper house this year, and it will be on the government to accept them in the lower house. That will happen.

It is extraordinary that this kind of reform was delayed to avoid anti-corruption scrutiny and to avoid IBAC having the powers to follow the money to contractors to get to the bottom of the biggest corruption scandal in Victorian history. You have to ask: what have they got to hide? What have they got to hide in not giving IBAC the follow-the-money powers to investigate the corruption that is going on on Victorian construction sites, corruption that the government has been scrambling to get on top of on our construction sites? Let us just give IBAC the powers to follow the money. But no, they had to create an entirely new piece of separate legislation to avoid an actual debate on the follow-the-money powers. The anti-corruption agency publicly called for those powers in a parliamentary committee, and the government has been unwilling to allow Parliament to consider those amendments. We have raised serious concerns about the government’s priorities. The Liberals and Nationals support both. You can support both these hate speech reforms and stronger IBAC powers; it is not one or the other. The government created a false choice between the two.

I am a little bit concerned by other consequences of the government’s action as well. The omnibus bill included an extension of the Drug Court, and with that bill shelved, the Drug Court extension is at risk.

Jaclyn Symes: On a point of order, President, whilst there is merit in this chamber in discussing topics that Mr Mulholland is talking about, they are outside the scope of this bill. This bill is a really important bill. It would have passed last week if people had been committed to getting this outcome. I am actually really interested in Mr Mulholland’s position on the bill, as are, I know, many people watching online. If his comments could come back to the bill, that would be appreciated.

The PRESIDENT: In upholding the point of order I do say that the first speaker has some latitude. But it seems to be outside the scope of the bill, so I would ask the member to come back.

Evan MULHOLLAND: I know that people are interested in our views on this bill. I was merely explaining the wider consequences of introducing this legislation instead of the other one. Of course we are supportive of the swift passage of this particular bill. If people go back and search Hansard, they will see that we have consistently voted in favour of this change on amendment after amendment, which I think is a good change and a worthwhile change. I think the breakdown in social cohesion we have seen in this state has been deeply troubling. I know I, the Leader of the Opposition Jess Wilson and my colleague the member for Caulfield David Southwick visited Caulfield Hebrew Congregation the morning after the Bondi terrorist attack. Hearing from some of the community leaders, but particularly the young people and their stories, was heartbreaking. The Jewish community is not as big as other communities. They are more like one big family in that everyone knows each other in that community, and everyone knew someone that was affected and had a personal story. Anything we can do, we should, to support them at their time of need, particularly with some of the concerning incidents that we have seen. Jewish kids going on a school excursion should not have to put up with the behaviour that we saw at a museum here in this state. Jewish kids should not have to cop graffiti of any kind on the outside of their schools. As has been discussed widely, it is an indictment on all of us that Jewish schools need to have security around the clock.

I think as a society we should do better and we should enact laws that work, that respond to the community need, and we certainly think that hate speech must be confronted by enforceable laws. The government’s drafting failure led to zero charges and zero convictions, but it is important that the government now corrects this error. Victorians deserve protections that operate in reality and not just on paper – and unfortunately, the previous amendment was merely symbolic. We need real consequences for hate speech in this state. I will leave my remarks there to ensure the swift passage of this legislation.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (15:07): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. In this Parliament we have become, sadly, very accustomed to Labor trying to rush through bills. But this today is something else. Let us be very clear about why this bill is before us today: because Jacinta Allan’s Labor government is running scared. Just last sitting week a broader omnibus bill, the Justice Legislation Further Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025, was before us. Then the government realised part way through its debate that it did not have the numbers to block Greens amendments to strengthen IBAC – sensible reforms that our integrity agencies themselves have been calling for for years, sensible reforms that would finally give our anti-corruption watchdog the basic tools it needs to do its job and prevent catastrophic corruption within this state – so Labor adjourned debate on that bill.

This week we see this copy-paste, five-page bill brought forward on its own, and Labor are asking Parliament to pretend that this is about good lawmaking. But actually what this is about is avoiding accountability. Victorians expect our integrity agencies to be able to follow public money wherever it goes. ICAC in New South Wales can do that. The federal NACC can do that nationally. But in Victoria, once public money flows to a private contractor, which it often does given the extent of privatisation in this state, IBAC’s jurisdiction can fall away, and that is not good enough. It is not nearly good enough, and our integrity agencies have told us that themselves repeatedly. Now we see Labor is desperate to keep it that way. At a time when billions of dollars have blown out on major infrastructure projects and integrity scandals keep piling up, people in this state are entitled to ask: what is Labor trying to hide?

While Labor is running away from IBAC, running away from its responsibility for good governance, it is doing something else that is deeply cynical and dangerous: teaming up with the Liberals to rip out a safeguard that the Greens secured for our hate speech laws less than six months ago in our anti-vilification laws. That safeguard is the requirement for the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the DPP, before prosecution of the most serious vilification offences. Labor now wants to strip that safeguard away from adults. That safeguard matters, and the Greens continue to maintain that it matters. Without DPP consent, police can arrest, charge and prosecute someone without any independent oversight. Legal and human rights experts warned this Parliament during the debate on the original bills that, unchecked, these powers can be weaponised. They can be used to intimidate and to silence political communication; they can be turned against the very communities that these laws are meant to protect. When we were passing hate speech laws just months ago, the Greens maintained DPP oversight – based on that expert advice from community legal centres, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Human Rights Law Centre, among others – because we know how laws operate in the real world. Overpolicing, racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement are not abstract concepts but lived realities, particularly in a state that still does not have an independent police ombudsman and where police investigate police in more than 98 per cent of cases of complaints against police behaviour, and that is tied also to the underfunding of our integrity agencies.

DPP consent is a basic integrity check. It ensures an independent authority reviews the evidence, assesses the public interest of charges and weighs human rights implications, including freedom of assembly and freedom of political communication, before a prosecution proceeds. It keeps these serious offences for serious cases with consistency and oversight, rather than becoming a tool for overpolicing or political strongarming, which is not what anyone wants. Everyone wants these laws used for their intended purpose. When Parliament criminalises speech, safeguards are not a technicality; they are the difference between targeted protection and political oppression. This government’s sneaky, visionless flip-flopping – negotiating safeguards with the Greens and then tearing them out with the Liberals – breaks trust, and it tells communities that their protections can be traded away the minute that those become politically inconvenient for Labor.

We have already seen the negative consequences playing out from Jacinta Allan’s backflips on justice policy: our courts jammed with the predictable backlog of cases resulting from Labor’s regressive bail laws, police cells overflowing with unsentenced people and the police unable to facilitate transfers of accused people to court. Children as young as 14 are facing life in prison when we all know, and we have been told time and time again, that early contact with the criminal justice system only increases the chance of later reoffending. Of course, as predicted, already marginalised communities are bearing the brunt of these changes, with Aboriginal women most at risk. We know that 65 per cent of Aboriginal women who are denied bail will be released without serving any time under sentence, and since Premier Jacinta Allan introduced punitive bail laws, the rate of women being remanded has increased more than men despite the fact that men are more likely to commit violent offences. Happy International Women’s Day for this week, by the way. Jacinta Allan has handed increased stop-and-search police powers to Victoria Police despite evidence that racial profiling continues to persist. The racial profiling data monitoring project found that in 2024 alone Victoria Police were 10 times more likely to use force against a person that they perceived to be Aboriginal. The data also showed that Aboriginal people were 15 times more likely to be searched than white people, African people were nine times more likely to be searched than white people and Middle Eastern and Pacific Islander people were five times more likely to be searched than white people.

This week we see yet another rushed, hastily put together, regressive change to our justice system from Jacinta Allan’s Labor. In their desperation to avoid the success of the Greens amendments to strengthen IBAC and improve integrity in our state, this cut-and-paste bill has been pulled out of the omnibus legislation already before this chamber. This bill is Labor on the run from accountability. As I have said, the DPP consent requirement was a sensible and necessary oversight mechanism, given the patterns we have seen with use of police powers in this state, and the government agreed to that just months ago. Now Jacinta Allan flip-flops, negotiating safeguards with the Greens and then tearing them out with the Liberals once more in a desperate attempt to look like she is taking action, all while the recommendations of the Greens-initiated inquiry into countering extremism sit unactioned. The Greens do not support this state of government from Labor, and we will not support this bill.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (15:15): I am pleased to make a contribution on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026 before us today. We know that words lead to actions, and we also know that hateful words lead to hateful actions and divisive discourse leads to division. As leaders in this state it is incumbent upon all of us, particularly in this chamber, to bring our diverse Victorian communities together and celebrate difference rather than fostering hate and division. That is why the changes in this bill are so critical and form an important part of the implementation of the Allan government’s response to hate crimes. This bill will allow police officers to prosecute adults for serious vilification offences without the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the DPP. It will also provide that a prosecution for a serious vilification offence may only be commenced by the DPP or a police officer, not any other party or individual. It will also remove the requirement for the DPP to explicitly consider all the social, cultural and historical factors when deciding whether to commence a prosecution.

This is now the third time this important amendment has been before this place. It is disappointing for our Jewish community that government needs to continually bring in this important change. The opposition voted against these stronger protections only 12 months ago. They have allowed themselves to be wedged by the Greens into not supporting our miscellaneous bill, which also contained this change. Mr Mulholland just said that we need real laws to combat hate speech. Well, those were the anti-vilification laws that went through this chamber last year, which they voted against.

We know that the Greens do not support this change. They have attempted to prevent this change from happening through their attempts to stall the Justice Legislation Further Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025. But Victorians deserve to live free from hate, discrimination and intimidation. This must be so frustrating for our Jewish community, that both the opposition and the Greens teamed up to block a bill which was designed to crack down on people who want to whip up racism and hate against their fellow Victorians just because of who they are. We now know that the amendment proposed by the Greens 12 months ago has the potential to create substantial delays in these hate crimes being heard in court. This is because Victoria Police are currently required to get consent from the DPP in every case before it can proceed to court. In reality, this means that alleged offenders will have more time to continue to commit these unlawful offences.

Justice should be swift and transparent. We need to remove the requirement that the DPP consent to police prosecutions for criminal vilification unless the alleged offender is under 18 years of age. The changes we are making now reflect the serious acts of hate we have seen against Jewish people in Sydney and more recently in Melbourne. We know this change will ensure that offenders face justice as quickly as possible, rather than avoiding accountability for longer due process and bureaucratic paperwork. One of the important principles in being able to implement a law is that it can actually be policed and practically implemented, and this amendment does exactly that.

The government is committed to doing what is within our power to prevent extremism, combat antisemitism and keep our state safe, strong, proud and united. Bondi laid bare the need to legislate against the shocking rise in racist and antisemitic incidents, which have been increasing over the last two years. As the Premier said on 22 December 2025:

As a Government, we feel a profound sense of duty to stand with the Jewish community in its darkest hour. We are acting to stop hate and anti-Semitism everywhere.

She went on to say:

We also need a long-term path to normal, with big, clear goals to reduce hate and elevate visible Jewish participation in society – goals that are up in lights for everyone in the state to see, own and be a part of.

Stronger laws are designed to keep all of us in our community safer. There are no easy solutions to youth crime, but as parents we know that children need firm boundaries. They need guidance to keep them on track and consequences when they do something wrong, and these boundaries need reinforcing at home and school and on the streets and in the justice system.

This is another example of our work in the community safety and crime prevention space. That is why our government is backing police resourcing. We will always give Victoria Police what they need to keep the community safe. Victoria’s police force is larger than that of every other state and territory, and we have invested over $45 billion in giving Victoria Police the resources they need. We have funded more than 3600 police. Since 2014 the government has provided more than $1 billion to build 19 new police stations and upgrade 15 more as well as building and refurbishing other essential police facilities.

Tough new bail laws have also recently come into effect, making it much harder to get bail if you have been charged with the worst of crimes. There has been a 26 per cent increase in adults on remand and a 71 per cent increase in young people on remand. We have hired a thousand new staff across youth justice and corrections in the past year. Last year’s budget had a $727 million investment to create a further 320 roles in youth justice and 400 roles in corrections to respond to our tough new bail changes.

We have banned machetes under our laws, and you can now go to jail for owning one. We have taken over 35,000 dangerous weapons off the streets thanks to our machete ban and Victoria Police’s stop-and-search powers, and we have legislated adult time for violent crime. Children 14 and over charged with violent crimes like home invasions and carjacking will face adult sentencing in adult courts. We have changed the law to make community safety an overarching principle in sentencing decisions by judges, because that is what matters. Under our plan we will put more police where the crime is, like shopping centres. Armed PSOs have been deployed in major shopping centres over the summer in a new trial protecting families and workers across the state. We also have established the violence reduction unit, and in addition we are dealing proactively with retail crime with another piece of recent legislation.

In conclusion, the Crimes Amendment Bill strengthens Victoria’s response to serious vilification offences by removing unnecessary barriers that delay justice, and it does so in the context of the list of other law and order changes that we have made in recent months and years. We will continue to work in that space to make Victorians safe. By allowing Victoria Police to prosecute these offences without requiring prior consent from the Director of Public Prosecutions, the bill ensures that cases can proceed more quickly and offenders will be held accountable sooner. Victorians deserve to live free from crimes of hate and discrimination and free of intimidation, and those who do not respect our laws will face consequences.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:25): I am pleased to rise today to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. Indeed I follow Mr Mulholland as our lead speaker. The Nationals, along with the Liberals, will be supporting this piece of legislation. Reforming Victoria’s hate speech laws has been a long time coming. It is a long time overdue and urgently needed. The original law was flawed from day one. The government has a lot to answer for for the lack of safety, the lack of security, the lack of respect and the lack of action in this state.

I will make some comments in relation to the Labor Party member of Parliament who has just spoken, because she actually had quite a wide remit, which was permitted by the Chair, so I am happy to respond. One of the things that she said that was really important was that words matter. Words do matter, but actions matter even more than words. They need to go side by side. What we saw with the government over time is that the law that is in place requiring the DPP to consent before prosecution was flawed. That barrier made the legislation effectively useless. Since commencement there have been zero charges and zero convictions, leaving vulnerable people and vulnerable communities unprotected. This was predictable. This was always going to happen. The writing was on the wall.

Members interjecting.

Melina BATH: Members will have a chance to have their say, and I am sure they will. It is my turn at the moment. They were repeatedly warned that consent being required would not stop these sorts of events; that was ignored. Communities were left exposed, and escalating hate speech was functioning to an alarming degree. Since October a few years ago we have seen it flourishing. If you ever end up in Melbourne on a Sunday, you see it flourishing in a variety of capacities. That is driving people out of the city – that is one by-product. It is shutting down businesses – that is another by-product. Does that matter? Well, it does to small businesses, who generate wealth and employ people in our regions and in our city.

Police were not empowered to intervene directly. Officers could not initiate prosecutions for serious hate speech incidents on our streets, as I have said, at rallies and in public spaces. They went unchecked. The law in practice protected offenders and not the victims. The government’s delays were worsening the problem. Months passed before the whole issue was even acknowledged. Talk about ‘words matter’ – well, actions matter. Fixes were bundled into an omnibus bill that we saw with unrelated integrity issues and integrity disputes. The bill stalled, the government withdrew it and communities continued to suffer. For six years inquiries and experts recommended removing the DPP consent barrier. Again, that advice was ignored. Opportunities to fix the problem just sat and were rejected. The consequences have been real.

We know that our Jewish Australians have been vilified in the most frightening way. I have sent my children to primary school in regional Victoria. How would it be if there had to be security guards stationed outside of the local school to protect those children due to threats that were live and real? That is not Australia, it is not Victoria, yet these are the consequences of what we have been seeing. Vulnerable groups also – women, LGBTI people, First Nations people and people with disability – have faced different forms of hatred and sustained threats. Not a single prosecution has occurred under the previous framework. Private citizens have often been left to pursue civil action, when it was almost like they are punished again. They are exhausted. They have been threatened, they have been vilified, and yet the only thing they felt able to do was to take it to civil action. The bill finally acknowledges this failure today. It empowers police to act, it restores a sense of common sense – I find it hard even to say that for the Labor Party, but it does, finally – and this is the right space to be in. Hate speech across the board – I am sure we have all said this before – should have no place in Victoria. Communities deserve to be protected. They deserve laws that work, not laws that fail from day one after they were introduced.

In relation to the former speaker, I just want to go through a couple of the points that she raised and make some contribution and give some thoughts on those. The member spoke about community safety and youth diversion programs. As part of those youth diversion programs from the government, if words matter, they should actually uphold what they said they were going to do, and that is uphold and introduce youth crime prevention and early intervention programs. The member said it before: we need early intervention. Well, we are still waiting in regional Victoria for a program that was slated in 2024. Nothing has come. It is very important to divert youth. It is very important to give them opportunities to hold on to positivity in their life and to turn away from negativity and maybe a highly traumatised childhood with drugs, alcohol, whatever that be. That is not the child’s fault, but they need direction and they need support, and there are fantastic people out in our communities doing good work on this. This government promised it right across a number of city-based and regional centres, including the Latrobe Valley – crickets. Nothing – not there. If words matter, actions matter too, and return for this matters.

The Nationals and the Liberals understand that you need intervention. You need youth focus. You need to see education, opportunity, confidence building and also respect building, and that comes from within and comes with good leadership, good direction and mentoring. This is one program that apparently works, and there are other great examples that I said I know of in my region. But there is nothing; it does not exist. We talk about deterring people from hate speech. Part of that should be about early implementation and turning people to a solid, supportive, productive and stable life. Part of that is youth diversion. We have seen youth crime – and I could talk about that until the cows come home – unfortunately, rising in my Eastern Victoria electorate as well. It is across the board. We heard the member talk about machetes. Well, if you want to find a way to waste a lot of money, go and spend multimillions of dollars on tin boxes and call that reform. Only the people who were prepared to put their machetes in the bin – only the law-abiding, responsible people – decided to do that. There are still machetes out on our streets. I might say there has been a devastating case again in Morwell – and I had the honour to go to the funeral – where a machete took the life of a young man, whose family are heartbroken and whose community are heartbroken. They do not feel that this government has served them well with the laws. They want retrospective laws, but unfortunately we cannot give those to them. But I so feel for their pain and their passion and their loss – and this has happened during this government’s watch.

The member also spoke about Victoria Police. If you go and have a chat to Victoria Police – pick a space, pick a station – many of those stations have been closed or have had their hours incredibly diminished, and I could list them in my electorate as well. The government speaks to increasing Victoria Police members. There is a list of about 1200 gaps and losses in police shifts that policemen and policewomen cannot fill. You have got around 2000 officers that are off the beat. That is not productive. That is not supportive. I also heard the member talk about resources. Again, if you look to the facts, there have been cuts in the budget of Victoria Police. These are some of the things that we are dealing with.

I take the opportunity to round out my contribution on this very important bill. We need to stamp out hate laws. We need to ensure that prosecutions occur through Victoria Police or, if there is a chance, through the DPP, and that they receive the full weight of the law, that there is a responsibility out there and that there is action. This bill should at least begin the action that all Victorians need.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:36): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026 today. I do not want to give a long contribution, but I do want to say a few things. We are here today because when the government tried to pass the anti–hate speech laws in March last year the Liberal Party voted against them. The Liberal Party last year decided what was most important was to try and prevent anti–hate speech laws, the criminalisation of hate speech and anti-vilification laws from passing the Parliament, contrary to the expressed views of people like the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, who called for the Parliament to pass those laws. Instead of leaving laws to criminalise hate speech stuck in the Parliament, the government secured their passage. As part of securing their passage we had to make amendments. Fundamentally, we would prefer the substantive laws – the anti-vilification laws and the anti–hate speech laws that the Liberal Party voted against – to not have the provision that this amendment bill seeks to withdraw. We brought this legislation to the Parliament today to overcome the problem that was created last year when the Liberal Party voted against our anti-vilification and anti–hate speech laws.

Forgive me if it is a little difficult to sit here and listen to the hypocrisy spewing from the mouths of the Liberal Party, who claim to want to see action against hate speech in our society. But when they got the opportunity to vote against hate speech and when they got the opportunity to criminalise hate speech they said no. When they have got the opportunity in this place to stand up for multicultural communities in this state they sit down. That is their track record: the Liberal Party vote against laws to criminalise hate speech and vote against laws to try and stop racial vilification, religious vilification and vilification against people on the basis of their sexuality. That is the Liberal Party’s track record. They are too afraid to get up and admit they were wrong last year. They are too afraid to get up and admit that the Liberal Party made a mistake in March last year when they voted against the government’s laws to criminalise hate speech. Ever since they took that vote last year to vote against the laws to criminalise hate speech they have been unable to go outside these walls into the community and tell the truth about what they did and about their desire to make it legal for people to vilify people on the basis of race, to vilify people on the basis of their sexuality and to vilify people on the basis of their religion.

That is the reality of what we are seeing from today’s Liberal Party. I do not know if the Liberal Party’s position against hate speech laws and against anti-vilification laws is because they are trying to do all they can to get the preferences of Pauline Hanson and One Nation at the upcoming election. I do not know what the price of the deal is that the Liberal Party is doing with One Nation, but I suspect, based on their voting record of opposing Labor’s laws to criminalise hate speech, that the price the Liberal Party have to pay is letting people spout hatred in our community. I can reassure the multicultural communities of Victoria, I can reassure the faith communities of Victoria and I can reassure the LGBTQIA+ communities of Victoria that Labor stands with them. Labor stands with them against vilification. Labor stands with them against hate speech. The Liberal Party lets them down every single time. When the Liberal Party has the opportunity to stand up against hate speech in Victoria, they sit down. If the next speaker from the Liberal Party wants to get up and explain to this chamber why they voted against Labor’s anti–hate speech laws last year, I will be listening.

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:41): I am pleased to rise and speak on this bill. It goes without saying and I think the whole chamber would agree that the level of hate speech in our state has risen and risen to horrendous and horrible levels – unprecedented levels, probably. It is unrecognisable to any right-thinking person in the state, whether it is against our Jewish community, LGBT community or any community. It is probably the product of creeping tolerance; when you tolerate the intolerable, when you walk past certain standards, you suddenly find yourself in deeper and deeper water. If you had just had the moral fortitude to do something about it in the first place, you would never have got to the state you are in, and then you would not need such draconian reactions to address it. It is a cultural problem, ultimately. I think most people who work in organisations – the organisation in this case being the state or the government – know that the fish stinks from the head, as they say, and the culture comes from the top down in the way they represent themselves and the way they take difficult decisions when they need to be taken. The reason we are here debating this today is because the government has completely lost its moral anchor around law and justice issues.

John Berger: Coming from you – you have got no morals.

Richard WELCH: No, we are not talking about me. We are not. It is not my bill, it is your bill. We are talking about you. We are talking about your government. I have been in this Parliament just two years and the litany of things that have gone out and come back in and that have had to come back in again, where the government has gone from one position to another position – this bill is just the latest version of that. They are at pains to say what they believe. The Greens and the Liberals and the Nationals will not agree on much, but at least we stand by it. We stood by what we believed; we did not flip-flop for the convenience of the polls or for impressions of how we were going to put bills through.

You flip-flop. The very first thing in my experience was the machetes: ‘Machetes are fine; machetes aren’t the problem.’ We were told, week after week, ‘Why are you going on about machetes?’ Then, lo and behold, machetes are terrible: ‘Wow, we must ban machetes. Look, we’re acting fast. We’re being really tough.’ Bail laws – ‘Bail laws aren’t the problem. How horrendous that we’re locking up young people. It’s morally repugnant, the idea of locking up young people.’ And then before I knew it the super-fast, most impressive ‘lock ’em up’ bailing bill came before us. All Labor bills these days start with ‘better’ and end with ‘faster’ – it was the ‘better lock ’em up better, quicker, faster bill’. I reckon you can apply the suffix and the prefix to every new bill going forward – the ‘better machetes, lock them up faster bill’ et cetera, every single one – which is the window dressing of it. Then of course we had hate speech, which was not really hate speech – but it does not just apply to the legislation. It is prison closures: ‘We’re closing all these prisons’, but now, ‘We’re not closing all these prisons.’ Well, that is a sudden and interesting turnaround: ‘Oh, we love PSOs’. Except now they are not going to be on stations anymore. We had IBAC powers: ‘Oh, we’re going to get to the bottom of all this CFMEU corruption. Oh my word, are we ever going to get to the bottom of this.’ But ‘Oh, hang on; not so fast. We’re not going to put IBAC powers into it.’

I am not trying to make it humorous. It is really actually more serious than that. But it all points to the fact that if you do not have an anchor about what you truly believe, you are going to flip-flop with the breeze. If the level of conviction was so great, as we just heard from Mr Batchelor – that adamant conviction – then you should have put the bill through and said, ‘Well, it’s going to sit or fall on its own merits, and if the Greens don’t vote for it, they don’t vote for it.’ You could have done that. But the conviction was not there, because ‘We can massage our way through this problem.’ It is the massaging and the tolerance – that is what has got us here, and the lack of moral clarity in what you have done.

To the matter of the IBAC powers yesterday: the bill was there. We could have put the powers in. To hear Mr Batchelor literally twist himself into a human pretzel to avoid explaining why he was not supporting and why the government could not support further powers for IBAC, it was extraordinary how convoluted it was. The cognitive dissonance that had to occur to explain why you did not want IBAC to have follow-the-money powers, not just yet, because you know –

Katherine Copsey interjected.

Richard WELCH: It’s very complex! But suddenly, within weeks, it will not be complex anymore and they will bring it through – because they will have to, because that will be the next line of retreat that they will have to make before we get to a royal commission. That will be the ‘Maybe we won’t have to do a royal commission if we give them that.’ But again, it is about deal making. It is about massaging your way through the problem. It is not about an actual point of belief or where you stand or genuine conviction on any of this. So we come to a point where the community does not really know where it stands; it does not know what half these bills are going to mean or what they are going to do in practice. All the stakeholders are upset on all sides of the equation. Everyone is frustrated. It has actually harmed and created more division. In your cack-handed attempts to solve the problem you have just sown the seeds of deeper and deeper antagonism between groups. It is the sign of a very poor government, and not a poor government in one instance; I am talking now – in my experience – about two years around this whole justice and crime issue. It has been a mess, an appalling mess, because at any given point the government could have just stood up and taken control of it. And do you know what, people might have disagreed with some of it, but they would have had at least the respect to say, ‘We’re taking a definitive direction on this.’

But the flip-flop and the flip-flop means that I do not believe any of it. I do not believe anything the government says comes from a point of actual conviction or principle or science or approaches that people who know best believe. It is ‘What can we get through with our agenda?’ And they put it through in an omnibus bill. What better example do you need of it? It came through as an omnibus bill. Omnibus bills maybe have their place when you are talking about administrative and trivial things, but this was not trivial stuff. An omnibus bill by definition is an insult to the chamber. It is an insult to the intellect of everyone here and to the community as well. When you play with fire on omnibus bills with a lack of conviction, that is a nice meeting point, because this is what happens. You will get voted down by one side, and then you will get voted down by the other side, and it is your own fault. It is your own fault, because you thought you were smarter than you were. You really think you are smarter than you are. You think you are playing this game really well because you have been in government for 10 years. Well, guess what, you are not that smart. You are not that clever. The game has been decoded. Your incompetence has overtaken you such that the whole process, the whole gameplay, has fallen apart for you.

I am glad this bill is going through today, even if the Greens are not, because I know that I have conviction that this is the right thing to do. I will not waver from that. The examples of hate we have seen in our streets will finally be addressed. Well, let us see if it gets implemented properly, because we had the ‘sooner, faster, better bail laws bill’ and people are still getting bailed after doing violent crime. So I will reserve some judgement till I see this actually implemented in practice, but it is certainly a step in the correct direction, because I want my Melbourne back. I want my Victoria back. I think every person in Victoria wants a sense of civility back in our society: the ability to disagree agreeably. We want the right to protest preserved. We want the right to freedom of speech preserved. It is unfortunate that it takes laws to do it, because there are lots of conventions in our society that do not need laws. The convention that you get out of the way of an ambulance does not need a law. That you should respect other people regardless of their race, religion, sexuality or anything of this nature should be a convention that does not require a law. If we were a genuinely civilised country with good education, we would not require it.

But sadly we are not, and every step we take in having to codify these things leads us further away from the true principles of these things, the classical liberal principles. It is a bit like living between an analogue and a digital world. A digital world is very mathematically precise. We can put things in neat silos, but it does not have the freedom of an analogue Rome, which is more flexible and more human and brings out the best in us. We are correcting and solving for the worst of us instead of inspiring and leading towards the best of us, and that is sobering. It has happened within a generation. I am going into the realm of reflection, so I will end there. I commend the bill.

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:53): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. I would like to begin by reminding the chamber that the right to peaceful protest is central to both our political system and our way of life. We must preserve this right in both theory and practice. Legalise Cannabis Victoria is a party that is built on protest, and I say that with immense pride. While the conservative media and some sections of this chamber deride protest, without it, great and necessary progress would never have been achieved. Whether it be Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement or the brave protesters standing up against immigration and customs enforcement agents in the US right now, protest matters. Without protest, it is likely that the Berlin Wall would still be standing. Apartheid would remain in South Africa. We would not have anything like an 8-hour working day, and many women in this chamber would not only be unable to work but be unable to vote. Protest is disruptive; that is the point. It creates discomfort. But that does not mean it should be criminal. Safety and community harmony are also important.

In 2025 I was proud to be part of the changes to the anti-vilification laws passed by this Parliament. I am a proud member of the LGBTIQA+ community, and I assure you that I understand firsthand how important those changes are. At the time I supported an amendment by the Greens to these laws that required the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions to commence a prosecution for certain vilification offences. We supported this amendment because it provided real and necessary checks and balances on these new powers, making sure that they were not misused by police to, among other things, crack down on peaceful protesters. Now the government say they need to get rid of this amendment on the basis that it will make it easier to prosecute these offences. Firstly, what behaviour are we talking about? It should be noted that no member of government has been able, in media or elsewhere, to answer exactly what behaviour would be easier to prosecute. Does this mean that certain chants at protests could lead to jail time? In a recent interview with Raf Epstein the Attorney-General herself could not answer specific questions about scenarios that were currently taking place in protests around Melbourne, which are happening right here and right now. This simply is not good enough. Without clear guidance on exactly why it is necessary to remove the amendment, we are left with the conclusion that this is power for the sake of itself. I would like the chamber to keep that in mind and that the original amendment has been in effect for only six months. We have not seen any evidence that the consent requirement is creating any delay in prosecuting offenders. In fact, as far as we understand it, in the six months since the amendment has been in effect no charges and no prosecutions have been made. To now roll back safeguards, absent from evidence and community consultation, is unjustified, and we cannot support it.

To be clear, we understand that this is a balancing act. Legalise Cannabis Victoria wholeheartedly supports the anti-vilification measures that were enacted by the Parliament in 2024, indeed with support from us at the time. We are proud to have been part of creating new serious criminal vilification offences where someone intentionally or recklessly, on the grounds of a protected attribute, incites hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule of a person or group that threatens physical harm towards another person or group or threatens damage to a property. Those changes also introduced a civil harm-based protection to restrict hateful, serious, contemptuous, reviling or severely ridiculing public conduct that is directed at any person or group because of their protected attribute. That bill incorporated a five-year statutory review to allow us to understand how the changes in the bill operate in practice and whether it is operating as intended. The checks and balances were already built in. Anti-vilification legislation recognises that we cannot allow hatred to be spread. We know inaction allows hate to fester and our most marginalised communities suffer the brunt of that harm, but we also recognise that marginalised groups are almost always subject to greater abuses of power than the mainstream. Marginalised people protest. Oftentimes protest is their only way to be heard in the corridors of power. And yes, sometimes people protest on their behalf, as they should if and when they see injustice.

The intention of anti-vilification legislation is to protect vulnerable communities, not to silence them. It is certainly not intended to give police the power to shut them down. Victoria Police should never be granted powers that could be used against peaceful protesters. No matter if you think the protesters are courageous and just or fringe elements and out of step, they must be allowed to have their say. The 2025 Greens amendment to protect the rights of protesters should remain intact. I remind the chamber that it has been in place for six months with zero issues. To repeal it now is empty symbolism at best, chronic overreach at worst. To this end we cannot support this bill.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:59): I also rise to speak on this bill, the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. Part of me is quite tempted to support this bill, but seeing as I am pretty much the only person in this Parliament with a perfect record on protecting free speech, I do not feel that I can support it. Let us think about how we got here, shall we? Last year, when the original bill passed, the Liberal Party at the time, the opposition, did something great. I know that the government keeps deriding the Liberal Party for opposing the social cohesion laws, but actually at that point in time – I will give the coalition credit – they stood up for free speech by opposing this bill. Despite what the government say, that they are going to protect these communities and all this sort of stuff, the government’s track record on their legislation actually protecting people is abysmal. There is no evidence whatsoever that any of the government’s actions are doing anything good. In fact there is ample evidence of them doing the exact opposite. The obvious case in point is the Nazi salute ban, which has created more Nazis in Melbourne – totally ineffective and counterproductive. But at that point in time the Liberal Party said they were going to stand up for free speech and were going to oppose it.

On the other side of the chamber the Greens have been pushing for these sorts of laws for years. In fact in the last term of Parliament they had been pushing for these laws. They have been pushing and pushing and pushing through inquiries, and almost every week in Parliament in the last term and in this term the Greens would stand up, pressure the Attorney-General and say that they wanted to get these laws through because they want to protect all these communities. Then when we actually come to this bill coming to Parliament, the Greens start to worry, because they start to think – which is what I have been saying all along – that maybe the libertarians are right, because the Greens’ supporters are going to be the first victims of these laws, and actually I think that is totally true. Their supporters will be the first victims of these laws. All of a sudden the Greens get really worried and they do a deal with the government to try and make it more difficult to use the very laws that they have been pushing for for years, by requiring it to go through the DPP, which makes it much more difficult, as the government has pointed out, to actually use these laws. The Greens wanted to put a handbrake on the laws that they had been pushing for for years, because they were worried that their own people were going to become victims of these laws, and I think that they are right – they will be. That is why I am tempted to support them, because it would be fun, but I cannot do that.

Ms Payne was speaking about examples of what sorts of things would be criminalised, and she could not come up with any examples. I can come up with a number of examples. At many of these protests – not just pro-Palestine protests; other different protests – many people attend who are supporters of the Greens, and they have said things that might fall well foul of these laws. Let me give you an example. There have been many protests by women about women’s spaces, gender medicine for children and this sort of thing, and one of the common things that the Greens and their supporters call women in a derogatory way is this term ‘TERF’, which stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’. What it really means is a woman that believes only women can be women. When you see these signs that they carry at the protests, and I have seen them with my own eyes, that say ‘Punch a TERF’ what they are really saying is ‘Punch a woman’. That is what they are talking about. When you see it in that context, you start to see how evil some of these people really are. There are some other examples which would fall foul of this. The Greens had better explain to their supporters that they can no longer say stuff like this, and that will be an uncomfortable conversation, because when that conversation happens, their supporters will be saying, ‘Who are the evil right-wing fascists who campaigned for and brought in these laws?’ and they will have to say, ‘It was us. It was the Greens that did it.’

There are some other expressions that I think will fall well foul of these laws – in fact they will almost certainly be inciting revulsion, contempt or hatred based on a protected characteristic. Many times we hear the expression ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ What they are really talking about there is the area of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which is currently occupied by the State of Israel. What they are calling for is effectively – or it could be interpreted this way; in fact I think it is how they interpret it, and it is certainly how Hamas interprets it – the annihilation of the State of Israel and everyone in it. That is what they are calling for. ‘Globalise the intifada’ – well, ‘intifada’ can mean many things to many people, but in the Second Intifada it meant sending in children with suicide jackets and in fact that happened many times. ‘Globalise the intifada’ could also mean something like what happened at Bondi. It could also mean IS-inspired jihadists bashing gay people, which we have also seen in New South Wales. Other things: ‘Glory to the resistance’ could very easily be interpreted to mean ‘Glory to Hamas’. It could very well mean that. ‘All Zionists are terrorists’ is another expression we have heard. Someone used that recently in a case, only a few days ago actually, and that was found under the old Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 to be a breach. Another one they say is ‘Glory to the martyrs’. I think what they could interpret that to mean is ‘Glory to those who have committed terror acts against the Israeli state’. These are just some examples – I am sure there are many, many more if we wanted to use our imagination – of inciting contempt or hatred based on protected characteristics, which Greens supporters do themselves.

It will almost certainly be open season on the people that supported these laws in the first place. I for one am all here for it. In fact that is why I supported the amendment to bring forward these laws to June this year. I think that the people of Victoria need to see how this works before the election. I am very happy that the government is bringing forward even closer, to April this year, the civil component of these laws. It is true that we have not had any prosecutions under the criminal components of these laws yet, but maybe now, after this bill passes today – not with my support and not with the Greens support either – police all over the state will be able to use these laws. I think everyone knows what the police are going to do with these laws. The Greens supporters, these protesters, are going to have the book thrown at them. That is what is going to happen. I look forward to seeing what happens when these laws come in without my support, but I look forward even more to the Greens trying to explain to their supporters what they have actually done.

 Enver ERDOGAN (Northern Metropolitan – Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice) (16:07): I want to thank all members for their quite colourful contributions to this debate – I was not expecting that today – as we respond to such an urgent matter and a matter that really does deserve the utmost importance in this chamber today. I might add there was quite a bit of revisionist history there, for those of you who enjoy your history, during that debate. I think for the efficacy of this chamber we have had quite robust debate, which is healthy for a well-functioning democracy like the state of Victoria.

In that spirit I will say that these changes at their core are about ensuring the laws we passed last year operate as originally intended by the Attorney-General at the time and that our justice system can respond swiftly to serious vilification when it occurs. This bill makes amendments to ensure criminal vilification matters can proceed without unnecessary delay. The current legislation creates an additional procedural barrier to respond quickly to serious acts of hate. When the anti-vilification legislation was debated in this place in April last year, amendments made in this chamber by the Greens introduced the requirement that the DPP consent to any prosecution for a serious vilification offence. That requirement was not the intent or a part of the government’s original bill, I might add, and I think that is important to state.

It is important to also state that the opposition’s lack of support for the broader reforms meant that amendment had to be accepted to secure passage of legislation that was way too important. The protection of people from hate is too important. That legislation was more encompassing and had many elements, which I know some in this chamber have touched upon, but they are about protecting people from antisemitism, from racism and with any protected attribute. Those anti-vilification laws were vital, and ultimately this amendment was moved without the support of those opposite. I am pleased to hear that those opposite had the opportunity to reflect and recognise that they had made an error last year, and now they are supporting our changes today and supporting this bill today.

I think this bill restores the framework to the original form introduced by the government. Currently prosecutions for serious vilification offences require the consent of the DPP, and this bill removes that, in particular for adults. That means that when Victoria Police choose to prosecute, the process can begin immediately, and it will streamline the system and ensure alleged offenders are brought before the courts as quickly as possible. Importantly, the safeguard will remain for those accused under 18. I think this is a recognition that children have particular vulnerabilities and in many cases an educative approach is best rather than a punitive one for people so young. The reforms enshrined in the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Act 2025 deliver stronger protections for Victorians to live free from hate, discrimination and intimidation. This bill builds on that work, and it reinforces the government’s commitment to combating extremism, tackling antisemitism and keeping Victoria safe, strong and united. I commend the bill to the house.

Council divided on motion:

 Enver ERDOGAN (Northern Metropolitan – Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice) (16:17): I move, by leave:

That the bill be now read a third time and do pass.

Council divided on motion:

The PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.28, the bill will be returned to the Assembly with a message informing them that the Council has agreed to the bill without amendment.