Matters of Public Importance
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:32): I am pleased to rise to support the member for Caulfield on this matter of public importance (MPI), and I fully expected of course that the government would defend its record on crime and policing in this state with the Minister for Police just a moment ago, but the minister suggested that Labor is tough on crime. If Labor is tough on crime, I will be playing centre half-forward in the Carlton premiership this year. That is how ridiculous that statement is. Fair go, actually, I am probably a fair chance compared to this minister actually demonstrating that he is tough on crime. What an absolute joke.
I love my footy analogies when it comes to politics. I never thought I would use this one, though. It was this minister that did the equivalent of the president of the footy club coming out publicly and saying the coach has the full support of the board; the board is right behind the coach. We all know what that says. That says, ‘Pack your bags, coachie, because you’re out.’ We did not expect that would happen with the Chief Commissioner of Police, though. You might think that in a situation as serious as policing and crime, at a time when we have got a crime crisis, the police minister might come out and back the chief commissioner and that he might stay backing the chief commissioner. You would think he might, but no, the footy analogy held very true, because what was it, member for Caulfield? Five days later?
David Southwick interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: Five days later: ‘Sorry, Shane, you’re gone.’ I reckon the footy president, though, would have the courage to actually call the coach in. Mostly that is what happens. The president calls in the coach and says, ‘You’re out.’
James Newbury interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: In this case they just got the CEO to do it, because in this case it was the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, which, as the member for Brighton indicates, suggests that perhaps it was the Premier pulling rank on this police minister, who seems to have buggered everything up.
It is unbelievable that the minister will stand there and say everything is hunky-dory. Ask the people at the service stations that are getting held up every night. Ask the people in the suburbs of Melbourne and in regional Victoria who are having offenders come into their homes at night to steal cars to go out and commit more offences – the same people over and over and over again.
We have a car stolen in Victoria now every 20 minutes. We have got teens breaking into homes three times per day. It was the police in Bendigo who told us recently that once upon a time it was almost unheard of for there to be an aggravated burglary in a regional city like Bendigo, but now there are two a day – two a day in somewhere like Bendigo, let alone somewhere like Brighton and many of these other suburbs. This is happening, and it is leading to Victorians taking matters into their own hands, and I do not mean necessarily in vigilante style but having to go out and employ their own security guards. If that is not an indictment of this government’s record on crime, what is? Victorians are not only voting with their feet, they are voting with their wallets and simply saying, ‘We don’t trust this government to provide the police and security we need in our neighbourhoods. We’re going to have to go out and do it ourselves.’
All of this is at a time when the government is at war with the police service. We have had this enterprise bargaining agreement going forever. We know that since previous public service EBAs were done, like the nurses and co, the government has just got further and further into a deep hole financially. No doubt that is one of the reasons why the government has not been able to come to a deal until just recently, and it is still not even finalised, the deal with the Police Association Victoria, because Labor cannot manage money, and it is Victorians that pay the price, and in this case it is our police force that pays the price. As the member for Caulfield reminded me, the Treasurer had to be called in to assist because the police minister could not handle this EBA, and once again we have got what we have got.
I want to pick up the police minister’s comments about the vote of no confidence from the police association in the chief commissioner and highlight that under a Labor government former chief commissioner Christine Nixon also had a vote of no confidence in her passed. The Minister for Police said a couple of times that it was unprecedented that there would be a vote of no confidence in the chief commissioner. Not true at all. It has happened multiple times over the years. I think the great Mick Miller actually had a vote of no confidence in him, if you read the papers. Former chief commissioner Nixon said of the sacking because of a vote of no confidence in the Age yesterday:
If that was relied on to depart a police commissioner, it doesn’t feel right and doesn’t set a good foundation for the future …
That is very true. Greg Davies, former police association secretary and no particular friend of chief commissioners, described the treatment of Patton as ‘small-minded and nasty’. He said:
Never in these situations is there a need for them to be carried out in such an unedifying and public manner …
And an unedifying manner it was indeed. A bloke spends 45 years devoting his career to the police force and he does not even get the courtesy of a text or a phone call from the minister or the Premier, sacked by a public servant, and the government still has the temerity from across the chamber to say he resigned. I mean, seriously.
We are in this situation so often now that whatever the government likes to say about police numbers and resources, that is only half the issue. The big issue we are facing at the moment is not the police’s inability to catch the crooks. They are doing that all the time, every day. Indeed there were more arrests last year than ever on record. But what is happening because of this government’s weak bail laws is –
A member interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: It is a revolving door, it is catch and release, and those criminals are repeatedly going on to commit crimes. We know from previous debates in this place what the government has done with respect to bail laws. With the assistance of the member for Malvern I remind the house of the three key things. The government removed the offence of committing an indictable offence while on bail, removed it altogether. It brought it back last year but just for some offences, not for everything.
Michael O’Brien interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: Half-baked, exactly. They removed the offence of not meeting your bail conditions. What is the point of having bail conditions if there is no consequence if you do not meet those conditions? Thirdly, they removed the responsibility of the decision-maker to consider the likelihood of an offender committing a further offence while on bail. They removed that. So what is happening? We see that young people are actually bragging on social media, ‘I can just go out and do this; I’ll get arrested, but I’ll get released again.’ For those three reasons, and the third one in particular, there is no consequence for the people that are doing this – so why not? ‘I’ll go out and I’ll steal another car tonight’. And I have seen it. Forget Brighton, member for Brighton, forget Caulfield or Malvern where this is happening. In Leongatha I have got a 14-year-old kid – he will be nearly 15 now – who has also been charged and released 50 times – 50 times. The people of Leongatha are outraged about the number of times – it is not just this kid; it is not just one. There are more than one, as there are in many areas, who are breaking into homes, stealing cars, and they are actually doing it most of the time simply for social media notoriety and to brag about how the police cannot touch them.
I think there is nothing that sums up this MPI and this issue of the crime crisis at the moment better than the scrawl on the police cars that has the two arrows. I think it sums it up very well. It points to the police in the front seat as overworked; it points to those in the back as bailed. We see that, and that sums it up very well – because the police are doing their job. The former police chief commissioner, whatever you might think of how he was doing his job, was trying to do his job, but the government, this Labor government, has constantly let the police and the people of Victoria down by its failure on bail in particular.
We can say again – I know the member for Malvern has said it; I have said it in this place – they were warned. We told them in 2023 when they did this. We said, ‘You are getting this wrong, and you are allowing people to get away with crimes,’ and it is continuing. That is why we have got a crime crisis in this state – because those repeat offenders are continually going out and doing this and we do not have any answers from this government. Their only answer is to take it out on the chief commissioner, to sack him on a Friday night without even having the courage to actually speak to him directly – either the minister or the Premier. It is an indictment on this government’s management of crime in this state. They stand condemned, and that is why I support this matter of public importance of the member for Caulfield.