Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:08): I move:

That the petition be taken into consideration.

I rise to speak on the petition that I tabled on 2 June this year, which calls on the government to ensure that the Mernda police station is fully staffed and returns to being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The paper petition had 2257 signatures, qualifying for debate in Parliament, and there were also 1523 people who signed the petition on my website. That is a total of 3780 people who have put their name to this demand to return Mernda police station to being a 24/7 station that is accessible to local residents all day, every day.

Mernda police station originally opened in 2017 as a 24/7 station, with the promise of extra staff to serve the growing community. But earlier this year opening hours at Mernda station were cut for a second time. They were first cut in November last year and have been cut for a second time this year, and now the station is closed most of the week and only opens on a Tuesday and Thursday from 10 till 6 – a seven-day-a-week station that has gone to two days a week from just 10 till 6. Residents want a police station where officers are ready to assist at the exact time that help is needed. Let us be honest, residents in the Whittlesea police service area, which largely overlaps with the Yan Yean electorate, need more and more help from the police because under Labor there is more crime than ever in the area. Since 2022 the number of criminal offences in the Whittlesea municipality has jumped by 44 per cent, burglary and break-ins have gone up by even more – a massive increase of 88 per cent – and this crime wave has had a devastating impact on my constituents.

I have spoken to families in Donnybrook who are traumatised by home invasions and cannot sleep because they are so anxious. In one case, two women were terrified by attackers trying to smash through the front door while the women held the door shut. Motor vehicle theft has skyrocketed by 183 per cent. Residents now send alerts to each other on their WhatsApp groups when they see suspicious figures lurking at night, looking for easy opportunities to steal cars. Thieves prowl the streets of isolated new estates with torches, peering inside utes in search of tools to snatch. Stealing of goods from a motor vehicle has exploded by 114 per cent.

The residents in the areas of Donnybrook, Doreen and Mernda are sick and tired of Labor’s crime crisis. They feel unsafe when they are at home, and they are scared when they go outside to shop or catch public transport. In June last year there were three machete attacks in one weekend. One of them was at a petrol station in Doreen, where a teenager was brutally slashed. A few months later the Laurimar shops went into lockdown as youth gangs brawled along a shopping strip armed with machetes. Since 2022 offences on public transport in the City of Whittlesea, which includes the Mernda train station, went up by a staggering 162 per cent – the Mernda train station is only a few hundred metres from the police station.

Earlier this year there was the tragic death of Aidan Becker, who was murdered at the Mernda train station. Aidan bravely stepped in to help a young schoolboy who was being assaulted. The thugs followed Aidan and then stabbed him to death with a machete. It was a horrifying event that shocked the community, who are upset and angry at the lawlessness that has spread throughout Victoria. Soon after, I called on the Minister for Police to increase the hours for PSOs at Mernda train station so that they would start their patrols earlier, when students were travelling home from school. A month after I did that, the minister had not responded, but there had been another attack on a teenager at Mernda station. A 15-year-old girl was on her way home from school, and she was bashed and robbed at the same place where Aidan Becker lost his life. Jacinta Allan said she was sending her violence reduction unit, but it is clear that the unit has not made Mernda train station a safer place.

Crime has surged to an all-time high under Labor, and the government’s response is totally inadequate. Labor has failed to fix the staffing crisis, and there are more than 1500 vacancies on police rosters across the state. Stations in Whittlesea police service area are operating with as little as 40 per cent of their designated staffing level. Instead of boosting staff levels, Labor has responded by closing police stations. Now Mernda station is only open two days a week, and there is not a single 24-hour station in the whole police service area. It is vital that at least one station in the area is open at all hours to help residents late at night when they have emergencies. I am thinking particularly of the many women who I have heard from who say that domestic violence typically occurs at night or on the weekend and that when they need to leave the house at a moment’s notice, when they go to a police station, there is no-one there; there is nowhere for them to seek refuge. The minister must listen and open Mernda police station 24/7.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:14): I welcome the opportunity to speak to this petition today. Community safety is of vital importance to this government, and from the very many conversations that I have had with her, I know it is a particular priority for the member for Yan Yean in the other place, Lauren Kathage, who is out and speaking with her community and fighting for them on a daily basis. Policing hours is, of course, not a new discussion for this place, and I find myself again, for the benefit of Ms Lovell and others in the chamber, explaining how Victoria Police’s proactive policing model works. Ask any police officer and they will tell you that they do not spend their shifts sitting at a station waiting for something to happen. Rather, they are out and about, in car patrols and on the street, and ready to respond where and when they are needed. This brings me to a point which is important to emphasise: Mernda and Doreen are protected by an active police presence 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In fact in large part as a result of this model, burglary rates in both Mernda and Doreen have reduced by 20 per cent in the last 12 months to March this year. So any attempts by those opposite to suggest that reduced counter hours means less or no police presence in the community is not just misleading but an outright falsehood.

Notwithstanding the results of the model, we do of course know that there is a legitimate community concern about the public operating hours of police stations. Indeed I know it is something that the member for Yan Yean herself has been advocating for on behalf of her community, and that is why this government is investing in deploying former and retired officers as reservists in police stations across the state to assist with administrative work, freeing up the resources for sworn officers to do what they do best. Although Victoria already has the largest police force in the nation, funding remains in place for more police officers to come on board. We do want more people to pursue a career in policing. I note the member for Yan Yean’s excitement that two of her local CFA volunteers are currently involved in training at the academy, and they are joining the ranks along with a record number of recruits in recent years.

Whilst the member for Yan Yean remains a fierce advocate for expanded counter hours at the Mernda police station, it is also necessary for me to correct the record here on some of the opposition’s claims. The government does not set the hours of police stations. These are, and have been for a long time, an operational decision for Victoria Police. We can perhaps forgive the Liberals for not understanding this, given that they are apparently averse to consulting with Victoria Police. After all, this is the party who completely failed to even talk to them when they were proposing a major change to police operations, and when asked if they had spoken to the Chief Commissioner of Police, the best they could say is that they had consulted Brad Battin. But sadly this has not stopped them from spreading the falsehood that the Mernda and Doreen communities are being underserviced by police. There is nothing honourable in taking a genuine community concern, misleading the community and using it for cynical political gain. I do welcome the genuine community concern and the opportunity to talk about this important issue, and I acknowledge everyone who has signed this petition. You deserve to have your voices heard. But the wording of this petition created a worry in the community that police were not operating in the area 24/7, which simply is not true. It gave the impression that the government sets police station counter hours, which also is not true. When cafe owners who had displayed this petition in their windows then took them down after asking a police officer about coverage gaps and finding out that they had been misled by Liberal staffers, I do question the motives of those opposite.

This government will always prioritise community safety. Whether it is the bail reforms that passed this Parliament, whether it is adult time for violent crime or whether it is the record investment we are putting into Victoria Police, giving them the resources they need, we will continue to do just that. The member for Yan Yean will be at the forefront of that, working tirelessly to listen to and fight for the community that she loves.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (16:19): I rise to speak in support of Ms Lovell’s petition calling on the government to open up the Mernda police station so that it is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If elected, the Liberal government will open every one of the police stations that Labor has cut, shut down and reduced the hours of. Not only that, but we will increase the police force by 3000, because no matter what the government says –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Renee HEATH: Yes, you might not make these really operational decisions, but I tell you what, if the state has run out of money, you cannot pay for the receipts.

Harriet Shing interjected.

Renee HEATH: I actually should get out some details on that because once again Ms Shing is misleading the house. While I am looking for that, I will just say that we will replace every PSO at the 119 stations that this government has stripped them away from and we will add another 200, and we will do these things because community safety matters. Unlike Labor, we will not be a government that puts the rights of perpetrators above the rights of victims. There has been an inverted sense of justice under this government, and we are going to restore justice.

In 2017 this station was open as a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week police station, and the reason it was is because the first job of any government is to keep its people safe. There was a promise from the government of extra staffing that would keep up as this community began to flourish, but last year the government cut those hours. They shut it down on weekends.

Members interjecting.

Renee HEATH: They did. And if that was not bad enough, then they opened it from 10 am till 6 pm during weekdays, and then later they further restricted it to just 10 until 6 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Police are not a nice-to-have, they are a must-have, and people need a place that is consistent so that when they go there, there is going to be someone there. There was that story recently about the lady that drove her car while she was being followed to a police station. No-one was there, and you know how that ended up.

Statistics estimate that there are roughly 6547 crimes committed per 100,000 people in the area of Mernda. Crime in Mernda is not rare. Communities in and around –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Renee HEATH: The minister – well, actually, Ms Shing, the former minister – should not be spruiking how good things are and what they have done. Let me tell you why this is important. Mernda has been through unspeakable tragedy. These communities have felt completely betrayed, because despite the fact that their communities have faced some of the most tragic circumstances, their police stations have been cut down. Following the death of Aidan Becker, who was stabbed to death – he was an off-duty security guard who stepped in to protect a 14-year-old kid who was being attacked; he stepped in to help him, and that good Samaritan got stabbed to death at Mernda station – a few days later Ms Lovell, Jess Wilson, Nick McGowan and a few other colleagues all gathered there, and we stood shoulder to shoulder with a community that was just in shock. That night a bunch of kids came up to me and showed me videos from just a year prior in exactly the same spot, where one of them had been chased with a machete.

I have got a minute left, so I am going to have to speed through these, but Ms Lovell spoke about the young kid who has been chased since then in the same spot. And please, I do not want you to forget about Celeste Manno, who in the year 2020 was murdered in her own bed in Mernda. These things happened in Mernda; we are not being abstract here. It is harrowing. I have spoken about it many times in here. These things deserve our attention.

In terms of drug offences in Mernda, crime data tracking for early this year recorded approximately 70 drug-related offences in Mernda, covering use, manufacturing, dealing and organised crime. Victoria Police say that there were connections in that region to larger crime networks, including motorbike gangs and industrial extortion, and from 2024–25 – (Time expired)

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:24): I rise to speak on this petition, and I think the community of Mernda – 5000 of them – would have been really, really disappointed to hear that their concerns were just so arbitrarily dismissed by those opposite: their concerns were not material, were not real; it is all in their heads, and these are operational matters. I will just remind the house that Victoria Police’s operational decisions are made within the context of the resources they have got, so if they have only got so many resources they are limited in the range of operational decisions they can make. It is not an accident that 43 police stations have either been closed or had their hours reduced; it is because there are not enough police. Everybody acknowledges that we are 1500 short, with another 500 to 800 who are on long service leave or on sick leave or on stress leave. We need more police. That is why these police stations have been closed.

Harriet Shing: You never funded a single one.

Richard WELCH: And the crime statistics also reflect the fact that in the areas where police stations have been closed or had reduced hours, crime has –

Renee Heath: On a point of order, Acting President, Ms Shing is misleading the house by saying that we never funded a single one police officer, where – I have looked up the facts – there were an extra 2000, under us, delivered. So you need to stop misleading the house. She is telling porkies.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): Thank you, Dr Heath. That is not a point of order.

Richard WELCH: I take up the interjection. Thank you, Dr Heath, for that important stat. The fact is of course that not only do we not have enough police but we continue to haemorrhage numbers of police. There are less police now than we had when Jacinta Allan became Premier, and there are probably less police now than when Ben Carroll became Premier because senior police are retiring or quitting. They have had enough because of the weak bail laws, because of the lack of resources and because of the cumbersome compliance requirements and reporting. There have been no updates to their system, failed IT projects, a lack of legislative support for them in terms of Jack’s law, where you can check people for knives, weak bail laws and a judicial system that creates a bail merry-go-round or revolving door.

The people of Mernda are perfectly right and entitled to raise these concerns, and they have used the democratic mechanism available to them – that is, raising a petition to Parliament – and good on them for doing it. I think it is absolutely shameful that, having done that, what they were met with on the other side was nothing more than contempt – ‘Well, there, there, Mernda,’ patting them on the head, ‘we know better. All these silly concerns you have about the lack of police in your area. It is really just an operational issue.’ What an insult to the people who have had their lives disrupted or harmed – or worse, who have lost their lives – that their concerns can be minimised and trivialised in this way.

Harriet Shing: How dare you.

Richard WELCH: Easily, because if you look across Victoria and look at the state of our state – ‘how dare you’? How dare you, Ms Shing. How dare you to have the temerity to say that Victorians are safe when we have record crime across the state. How dare you. It is an absolute disgrace.

Harriet Shing: On a point of order, Acting President, it is deeply unparliamentary for Mr Welch to be suggesting that there is any minimising of tragedy and of loss in this community as a consequence of the discussion we are having here today. Mr Welch should hang his head in shame.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): Mr Welch, I would ask that you direct your comments through the Chair.

Richard WELCH: Yes, you are quite right. I should direct them through the Chair, so I will direct them through you. It is absolutely shameful the way this government and their contributions, on this very worthy and correct petition, minimised it – that ‘It’s just operational matters that are a problem, just operational matters. Don’t you worry about it.’ Well, I think the people of Mernda deserve better. They completely deserve better. We have an excellent Liberal candidate in the seat of Yan Yean, Amanda Dow, who actually takes these matters seriously, like the Liberal Party takes these things seriously, and we will actually do something about it.

Harriet Shing interjected.

Richard WELCH: While others want to chirp, chirp, chirp away, it does not take anything away from the truth, because you cannot chirp away the truth. The truth is the evidence from people’s eyes and ears and in the headlines that we see every day. So distract and deflect all you like and be worried about hurtful words. I think the bigger problem is people’s lives – people’s lives in Yan Yean and people’s lives in Mernda – that have been affected. And do you know what, the sooner this government goes, the better for the whole of Victoria.

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:29): This petition was started when the government reduced Mernda station from being open 24 hours to being closed on weekends and after 6:00 pm on weekdays. That was last November. After the petition started, the Labor government responded by reducing opening hours even further, closing the station every day of the week except Tuesday and Thursday. Those opposite claim that it is better to have officers out patrolling the street instead of being behind the counter. Why can’t we have both? The answer to that is that Labor has failed to fix the staffing crisis and is forcing stations to choose between patrolling and keeping the station open.

There are fewer police on the beat under Labor, and crime continues to increase. Only the Liberals have a plan to hire 3000 more police, which will allow us to reopen police stations that have been closed or had their hours reduced. Even the local Labor MP Lauren Kathage supports our petition and has said that the police station counter hours must be increased, but this is too little, too late. The member has been missing in action while crime has exploded in the area. Her Labor colleagues are ignoring the call for a 24/7 station because Premier Ben Carroll has written off the seat of Yan Yean and refuses to invest more police resources in the area. It is a disgrace what is going on for these people in the seat of Yan Yean. They were sold the Australian dream with housing estates in the outer urban suburbs, but what they are doing is living the Australian nightmare. The government has not invested in the infrastructure, the roads, the schools and the hospitals that they need, and the government is now putting their lives at risk because they do not have enough police officers to adequately service the growing area of the seat of Yan Yean.

Motion agreed to.