Wednesday, 17 June 2026

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:27): I rise today to speak on the budget papers 2026–27 and particularly page 100, which talks about youth crime prevention programs. I was very encouraged at first when I saw that over 2026–27 there will be $19.9 million invested into crime prevention for youth, until I looked a bit deeper and saw the number of young people who will be supported by the youth crime prevention program. You would think for $20 million or thereabouts it would be quite a number. No, it is 330 people – 330 people are covered by $19.9 million. This is important because that means that if 330 people get to go through this crime prevention program, that is going to help, well, 330 kids, but at a cost of $60,000 per person. I thought, ‘Maybe it’s an investment that is somehow worth it. Of course any crime prevention is.’ Then I dug down deeper to the proportion of young people that exit the crime prevention program and achieve successful completion of the program. It is paying for 330 people – $20 million, so $60,000 a person. But then the number of people expected to actually go through this, be successful and complete it is 45, which means that that would cost $420,000 per person. This was staggering to me. I thought, ‘Wow, 13 per cent of participants are actually then expected to complete it and get something out of it.’

However, this is what the statistics say is happening. We are in one of the worst crime crises that this state has seen. Crime Statistics Agency figures from 2025 show that youth crime rose by 2.3 per cent in Victoria last year, with minors completing 57.6 per cent of carjackings, 52.6 per cent of home invasions, 47.8 per cent of ag burgs and 62.4 per cent of robberies. Overall, police arrested 1223 children a combined 6997 times in that time, yet our whole budget is going to helping 45 of them. The crime statistics show that every single day in Victoria 750 people become victims of crime, yet this program, if every single person was to complete it and be successful, would only reach half that amount of children per day over a year. There are 750 new victims of crime in the state of Victoria every day – that is over 270,000 victims per year, and our whole budget is going to, hopefully, helping 45 of them.

I have some more statistics. Victoria is not doing well in this regard. In terms of kids that return to crime, 56.6 per cent of young people released from sentence supervision in Victoria returned to crime within 12 months. You might say that could be normal. It is not normal. In New South Wales it is under 40 per cent, so we are well above that average. Not only that, we are spending so much more on youth detention per day than any other state. In Victoria per day it costs over $7000 for one youth to be detained, as opposed to around $2000 in New South Wales and $2700 in Queensland, the national average being $3600. I tell you what, we are in the middle of a crime crisis, and we need to address it. We need to think bigger than just reaching 45 children, because it is the community that is unsafe and it is their lives that are going down the drain.