Second Reading
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:01): I am pleased to say a few words on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025. I have probably said those words a few times over the decade, because we seem to have one of these bills several times a year. I seem to be the lucky one on this side that gets to speak on them too, often following the member for Malvern, who, as I have indicated before, is a far more learned colleague than I will ever be on matters of legal opinion. The best I can offer is from having done legal studies 101 as part of an economics degree, and that does not qualify me for much, but I am indebted to the member for Malvern for his contribution and for his guidance on this legislation, which as the member for Albert Park indicated, we are not opposing.
Largely these are – I will not say inconsequential – certainly not controversial amendments in this legislation. We have some changes to secret commissions to trustees in return for a substituted appointment. I will not go into the detail of that, but I was interested to see that this was originally introduced in 1905 in the wake of the Royal Commission on the Butter Industry. It must have been something of a scandal at the time. Of course at that time there was only butter. I am reminded that I have in my possession in the office a Country Party central council minute book from the 1930s, which is replete with references and motions calling for government to ban margarine, highlighting that butter and margarine have been issues of political consideration for some time now.
The other issue that I want to touch on is the further delay in the commencement of the abolition of de novo criminal appeals, which was first proposed by the government in 2019. Here we are in 2025, and we are delaying it again. Indeed the government is delaying it for a third time now. At the moment if there is a criminal appeal from the Magistrates’ Court, that is heard in a completely new hearing in the County Court, that being a de novo hearing. That allows for entirely new evidence to be admitted and new legal arguments to be made. That is different from that for a criminal conviction in the County Court, which can only be made to the Court of Appeal on the basis of legal error, meaning there is no rehearing of the evidence. The government argued that these changes would lead to a more efficient appeals process and one that offered a lower burden on witnesses, on the courts and on the evidence that would have to be provided. At the time we did not oppose those changes and we took at face value the government’s claim that this would lead to efficiencies in the courts. But the commencement date was postponed. These amendments were scheduled to come into effect in July 2021, but that was initially postponed to 1 January 2023 on account of the disruption caused by the pandemic. I might say that governments around the world have been using the pandemic as an excuse for things for a long time, often with good reason but sometimes one does wonder how accurate in fact they have been. The second time the default commencement date was postponed to 5 July 2025 by a bill in 2022.
Here we are a third time – I was about to say ‘final’, but we are not even sure whether it is the final time – and the default commencement date for these changes now will not be until 1 July 2028. That will make it nine years since this reform was first proposed before it is actually implemented. The government’s excuse on this occasion is the significant time and resources required to implement the summary appeal reforms on top of these other reforms, so it is necessary to further delay the commencement. That may well have something to do with the budget for Court Services Victoria, as the member for Malvern indicated. I recall asking in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee last year about the budgetary cuts to Court Services Victoria – $19.1 million in the current 2024–25 year and a further $58 million cut in the 2027–28 year. On those cuts, I remember asking questions of Court Services Victoria, and it was clear that despite their best endeavours, this would lead to service changes within the courts and clearly put more pressure on the courts.
I think this is where the dividend of bad financial management is delivered. When the government does not handle the budget well and when it overspends – particularly in this case on infrastructure and infrastructure blowouts, and we have seen $40 billion-odd of infrastructure blowouts – there is a dividend for that, and it is not a pleasant dividend, it is a negative one. It is these cuts to areas like Court Services Victoria and it is cuts, like we heard in question time, to the Department of Education budget and to the proposed Gonski rollout, with it being delayed by three years and costing the sector $2.4 billion. That is the dividend of poor financial management, and we are seeing that now with this – another delay in these reforms, nine years after they were first proposed and seven years after they were first proposed or scheduled to actually commence these de novo reforms. If the government is serious that these reforms will deliver more efficiency, one wonders why it keeps putting them off.
There are other aspects to this legislation that I will not go into detail on, but there are clauses that improve the operation of the case management system in the Magistrates’ Court. There are amendments to the Worker Screening Act 2020 in relation to NDIS checks and working with children checks, there are amendments to the Social Services Regulation Act 2021 and further there are some obsolete regulation-making powers being removed from the Magistrates’ Court Act 1989. While I do not have any issue with any of those, I would highlight that the references to NDIS checks and working with children checks are yet another area of poor public service at the moment, where we are seeing very, very slow turnaround in some of those checks and frustration from people who are seeking to work particularly in the NDIS but also those wanting to get a working with children check. That is the consequence of a government that does not put public service first within its bureaucracy, and that is a criticism that I hear almost daily from my constituents.
I think when we are talking about the Magistrates’ Court we cannot ignore the fact that we have seen a significant increase in crime in this state under this government. In my own electorate it is more than significant in some areas. South Gippsland shire is a beautiful place and a beautiful place to live, and it is a predominantly very safe place, but the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria reports have actually shown that we have seen a 72 per cent increase in crime in South Gippsland shire, year on year, in the 10 years that Labor has been in office – a 72 per cent increase. In Wellington shire crime has increased 23 per cent in that time.
In the most recent statistics the number of criminal incidents reported in the three local government areas that make up my electorate show that it is continuing to rise. Wellington Shire criminal incidents reported rose 17.5 per cent in the 2024 year, 6.3 per cent in South Gippsland and 11.6 per cent in Latrobe, of which I have some coverage along with the member for Morwell. These are concerning statistics for my constituents, but they are far more than just statistics. Behind each of them is a victim, and there have been plenty who have contacted me, particularly from South Gippsland – from Leongatha and Korumburra – in the last year or so in respect to youth crime, home invasions, aggravated burglaries, theft from cars and theft of cars. That has been a significant issue, and the government’s bail laws passed recently, while the government likes to claim how successful they are, still will not address those youth issues. That is a significant concern for my constituents.