Matters of public importance
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:32): I am pleased to rise and support the member for Caulfield on this matter of public importance, which is of critical importance to our state. But before I do I want to again express our condolences to the family and friends of the two police officers tragically murdered, allegedly, at Porepunkah yesterday, express our best wishes to the officer who was injured and more particularly extend our heartfelt thanks, warmth, condolences and support to every single member of Victoria Police, because they will have felt it today and last night, and they will be feeling it right across the state. There are few jobs where you go to work every day and such a tragic, horrific outcome as this can occur, and we know it does occur, sadly. We thank them for the work they do. We thank them for being that thin blue line between us and the criminals, the crooks, the danger, the emergencies, and for all of those things that they do. Whether they are on the beat, whether they are in the station, whether they are in prosecution or whether they are in offices around the state, we thank all our police officers for the work they do.
The event highlights the value of our police and why we need them. The government likes to pretend that when we raise issues of crime we are attacking the police. Nothing could be further from the truth, because we know, because we speak to the police all the time in our electorates, how hard they are doing it and how frustrated they are. That revolving door – they pick up criminals, they arrest them, they charge them, they book them and they are back out again days later on bail, or they get a weak sentence. They get so frustrated with it, to the extent there was a horrific incident in my electorate on the weekend where a group of youths came from outside the football ground at Sale and allegedly bashed an 18-year-old Sale player who had just played in the thirds, and police told his family they were probably better not to press charges because, firstly, there would be repercussions for that and secondly, they were under-age, they would just get off. That is the sort of message that we are getting under this government, and the police are frustrated at that because that is the message that they are having to give. It is partly about the resources they have. I was astounded to hear in the debate on bail legislation a couple of weeks ago the member for Ripon make the comment on bail:
… it is actually our side of the chamber that is doing the most and has done the most in the past.
What they have done the most of is weakening those bail laws. Now they are trying to catch up because they have seen the crime explode across the state, and that is occurring everywhere in the state. Indeed the member for Ripon went on and said:
I have had feedback from police officers and others in Ripon that they have been more resourced in their police stations than ever before.
I do not know which police the member for Ripon might be talking to, because the ones I talk to are constantly saying how under-resourced they are. Do not even take it from me and our anecdotal evidence. Let us have a look at the crime stats. In the member for Ripon’s electorate, the Pyrenees shire, the crime rate went up 35 per cent. The Ararat Rural City Council was up 25 per cent in the most recent annual figures. That just highlights the disconnect, and I know it can happen in government. When you are in government you think everything is going well, and I think that is what is happening with members opposite.
Jade Benham interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: They do live in a bubble, member for Mildura. They are told that things are going well – ‘We’ve put all this money in’ – and get figures from the minister’s office about how much money is going in and how much is happening, and they start to believe it. That is a problem for our state, because this government has been dragged kicking and screaming even to make changes to the bail laws that it weakened in the first place, and it has still not gone far enough now with two tranches. The first tranche, apparently the toughest bail laws in Australia, were so tough that they had to come back for a second tranche and still have not gone as far as what the Liberals and Nationals have committed to do with our ‘break bail, face jail’ laws, and the police are frustrated with that, I know from my own electorate. If I go to the first point on this MPI:
(a) the recent spate of violent knife attacks and home invasions across Victoria –
David Southwick interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: It is across Victoria, member for Caulfield. It is not just in the urban areas. In places like Leongatha for the first time ever we are getting regular home invasions, and it is predominantly kids breaking into homes, finding keys, stealing cars and often driving them off. It is not even for crime, it is for the post and boast more often than not. That is happening repeatedly in places right around regional Victoria. I spoke to police a few months ago – and I raised this in question time last year – about a youth who had been arrested and bailed 50 times in South Gippsland, not in Melbourne, and it happens repeatedly. The second point in this MPI is:
(b) the disturbing rise in aggravated burglaries targeting supermarkets and small businesses …
If you talk to your IGAs, your FoodWorks or those smaller supermarkets in the suburbs and in regional areas, they are feeling the pinch. I spoke to one a couple of months ago who said he is just so sick and tired of dealing with offensive people but actual criminals as well who are literally walking into his store, grabbing what they want and walking out. He says, ‘What do I do? I have to tell my staff not to challenge them. You’ve got to look after your staff. You’ve got to look after their safety.’ But the brazenness of this, which is occurring time and time again, is costing Victorians money, is costing businesses money and is costing the community safety feel. When people hear that, they say this is terrible. Likewise the Sale Business and Tourism Association had a community meeting a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, Parliament was sitting. I could not make it, but that was about the level of shoplifting and assaults on the street in a place like Sale. It is a great frustration of our communities right around the place.
Point (c) is the chronic shortage of frontline police. As the member for Caulfield pointed out, we currently have 1100 vacancies. We have got 700 officers off on WorkCover, 300 on extended sick leave and another 300 expected to go under the new EBA. This is at a time when the government promised at the last election an additional 500 officers, and we have actually gone backwards. When the member for Ripon says they are better resourced than ever, I do not know how that can possibly be the case in terms of the numbers of police. I talk to my officers. They often say, ‘On paper we’ve probably got about the right number.’ But once you take out a few on WorkCover, a couple on maternity leave, two or three on secondment to somewhere else and the rest on leave – some on long service leave – suddenly they are down 10 or 15 across a local government area. They do not get replaced, so they simply do not have the resources that they require.
Finally, the one that I think really hits home for so many people I speak to – and I am doing listening posts and mobile office visits around my electorate and around regional Victoria – is the lack of consequences. That is the big, big thing that people are so frustrated about, that they see people repeatedly. We know it is a small cohort. Indeed the statistics show children aged 10 to 17 make up just 13 per cent of all offenders, but they were responsible for 63 per cent of robberies, 46 per cent of aggravated burglaries and 20 per cent of car thefts. That is a very small cohort repeatedly doing the same thing because there are no consequences, and that is the issue that this government failed to understand when it weakened the bail laws several years ago. I remember standing literally right here and speaking next to the member for Malvern, who said we supported some of what the government was doing, but it was going too far and it would suffer the consequences in terms of the crime rate. And it absolutely has. But the issue is that there are not enough consequences for those people doing the wrong thing.
I will take up what the member for Mordialloc said. We absolutely understand that we need to target both ends, and we need to divert people, particularly young people, away from a life of crime. It is not just ‘lock them up and leave them’. We absolutely get that, and we will have policies to that effect to make sure that we actually can get people on the straight and narrow and that we can address those causes of crime. But at the moment this government’s policies after 11 years have absolutely failed Victorians, and we are seeing crimes skyrocket. We are seeing Victorians feeling unsafe in their homes. We are seeing Victorians feeling unsafe on the streets and in their cars because of the number of home invasions, carjackings and assaults on the street. Government’s job is to keep the people safe, and on that score this government is failing.