Statement from James Newbury

Statement from James Newbury

Something changed in the minds of Victorians on Thursday, as they watched footage of a senseless stabbing on the streets of Melbourne.

The victim, who every Victorian’s heart goes out to, was innocently walking in our city and was stabbed.

The crime was committed two weeks earlier, allegedly by an offender on bail.

The footage was strikingly similar to the innocent attack on 23-year-old Ukranian refuge Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, as she rode on a train. The two violent crimes show that crime knows no borders. But how governments respond to them matters.

Immediately after the senseless attack in the United States, their government developed a wide-ranging package of law reforms, that have already passed.

Though not all appropriate in our context, the government strengthened the law to make it clear that it has zero tolerance for senseless violent crimes.

By contrast, we have no recognition by the State Labor Government that our laws need fixing nor that Labor’s ‘catch and release’ bail policy doesn’t work.

We also know that the crime occurred two weeks before footage was publicly released. And over that time that government, from the Premier down, has assured Victorians that the law, and the bail system, are working.

The crime on Melbourne’s streets is another shocking example, which prove that the ongoing assurances that we are safe is not true.

We are also yet to hear, in concrete terms, when the government, the Premier, and her Ministry, became aware of the crime.

The bigger question we still do not have the answer to is simple.

What will it take for Jacinta Allan to acknowledge that our streets aren’t safe and urgently introduce a wide-ranging package of law reforms to fix it?