Motion: Attempt To Introduce: Bail Amendment (Strengthening Conduct Conditions) Bill 2024

MOTION

‘ATTEMPT TO INTRODUCE: BAIL AMENDMENT (STRENGTHENING CONDUCT CONDITIONS) BILL 2024’.

Thursday, 1 August 2024.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (9:44):

I strongly support the Member for Malvern’s introduction of the Bail Amendment (Strengthening Conduct Conditions) Bill 2024.

Victorians want bail laws strengthened. The victims of crime want bail laws strengthened. The police want bail laws strengthened. The only people who do not want to strengthen the bail laws they weakened are the Labor Party. That is a fact.

We have heard today from the Government that they want to think more and talk more. We know what they are doing. The Premier is doing Carpool Karaoke instead of dealing with the real issues facing this State.

Just this week in my community on Monday we had an incident where a disabled woman was driving her son to school and was hit by an offender in another car. It flipped over her car. Guess what, the next day the offender was out on bail. It is an absolute disgrace. On the same day at yet another place in my community three cars were torched. That is two days this week, and I could go through for hours the examples and incidents that have happened in my community alone.

There is a youth crime crisis in Victoria – we know it. The Government may want to deny it, and they may want to talk and think more, but this Bill will do something significant. This Bill will do something meaningful, and it will make sure that the open-door bail policy of this Government is actually starting to close. That is what is happening in this State. There is an open-door policy. When you talk to Victoria Police they call it out. I feel so much for Victoria Police because what they are now saying to me is that they are under pressure from their families, because they go out and do the hardest work. They go into the most dangerous places for us to keep us safe, and then the next day the people they are arresting are being let out again. So, their families are saying to them, ‘We are worried about you not just because of your job – because you’re working hard to make sure criminals are not on the street, but the next day they’re out again.’ So those same violent offenders have to be chased again and again and again – and we hear from the Government they want more time to think and talk. It is an absolute disgrace.

We in the Coalition have tried to make things better in terms of making sure the laws actually do what they should. We have tried to move Bills on move-on laws, machete laws and today on bail laws, because we are seeing what is happening in the community. We know of the 10 per cent increase in crime and the 20 per cent increase in youth crime just in the last year – an almost 20 per cent increase in residential aggravated burglaries. Some of the worst types of offences that people can suffer are to have someone come into your home, and this has been happening for two years in Bayside, as many will know. The Government, when this was raised, victim-blamed people in my community for calling it out – victim-blamed them. It is an absolute disgrace, and to think that the Labor Government are going to vote against this Bill being introduced is an absolute disgrace.

Look at the examples that occurred in my community this week. How can you have a woman driving her child to school – she has a special car to help her drive, and she was hit by an offender. She does not even have capacity to drive that car anymore; it was written off. How is it okay for the Government to sit there and say, ‘Let’s think and talk a bit more’? The sad thing is it is not just the incidents that I have raised. People have died because of these crimes; people have died in their homes. What does it take when people have died – Victorians have died? You would think you would get up. Stop thinking and talking. Get up. What is the Ministry doing in this place? How can you vote against this Bill?