Wednesday, 4 August 2021

Matters of public importance

Bail laws

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have accepted a statement from the member for Brunswick proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house condemns the tough-on-crime politics of the Andrews Labor government and its predecessors, which have produced bail laws that systematically imprison women, children and First Nations people for low-level offending, noting:

(1) from 2010 to 2020, imprisonment of women rose 174 per cent;

(2) more than half the women now in prison have not been sentenced;

(3) from 2015 to 2020 the number of Aboriginal people put behind bars rose by 70 per cent; and

(4) the growing calls from the community to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years.

Dr READ (Brunswick) (16:01): Can anyone remember a story that goes something like this? A man commits a particularly awful and violent crime which is widely reported, followed by calls for longer or harsher sentences. MPs are then quoted sternly vowing to outdo one another to be tougher on crime. Some time later laws are toughened and sentences are lengthened or they are made mandatory. We can all remember episodes like this. At election time it has even been called the law and order auction, where parties try to outbid each other’s promises of ever harsher retribution—and the notorious, awful crimes just keep appearing in the news. And when there is a lull our media outlets can be counted upon to find some past horror to resurrect.

However, attracting a lot less attention is the rising number of Victorians going into prison. About 25 years ago, when our prison population was around 2500, it started to grow rapidly, and in 2012, when we had almost 5000 people behind bars, the growth accelerated. But in 2014 something else happened. While the prison population kept growing, the increase was seen to almost all be in unsentenced prisoners—people on remand. Our prison population kept on rising until it peaked at just over 8000 before the pandemic-induced lull. And it is creeping up again now.

Back in 2014, 19 per cent of our prisoners were unsentenced—fewer than one in five. A month ago it was 44 per cent—approaching half. And for women and children it is over half. A couple of months ago the Commission for Children and Young People published a report on the inquiry into the over-representation of Aboriginal children and young people in the Victorian youth justice system, and I quote:

From 2010 to 2019, remand orders accounted for 98% of all custodial orders made in respect of children aged 10 to 13 years … raising serious questions as to why such young children needed to be incarcerated in the first place.

In 2019, 100 per cent of those orders were for remand, and one in three of those orders was for the detention of an Aboriginal child. To say First Nations children are over-represented in these figures is an understatement. Back in 1989, when the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was doing its work, Victoria was jailing 870 Aboriginal people per 100 000. Thirty years later it is more than 2½ times that, at 2220 per 100 000, and the biggest acceleration has occurred under this Labor government. That is the thing about this growth in unsentenced prisoners: the more vulnerable in our community are the most affected. The awful crimes that drive our tough-on-crime policies are committed by men, but it is women, children and our First Nations people who are most affected. And the scars last more than a lifetime; they can be handed down across generations. Many of these members of our community are already suffering homelessness, mental illness, intellectual disability, addiction and often some combination of these. Many have experienced trauma, and we traumatise them again in prison. So what are we doing here? Do we really mean to punish these people in this way for minor, often repeated, offences, or are we really punishing them for the ghastly offence committed by a man who dominated the media cycle for too long? Of course remand should not, strictly speaking, be punishment, but it is still jail time, and I am sure it feels like punishment.

Clearly more than one factor is driving this growth in unsentenced prisoners—our public housing waiting list is over 100 000, we are desperately short of addiction treatment beds and our mental health system has been underfunded for years—but ask any criminal lawyer, and they will point you to one driver that stands out: our recently tightened bail law. So what happened to our bail law?

Let us briefly return, then, to one of those stories. After the awful Bourke Street massacre our bail law was amended by this Andrews Labor government in 2017 and again in 2018 to the point where it is trapping ever-growing numbers of minor offenders, like quicksand, in prison. People charged with any one of a long list of offences are now no longer entitled to bail, and the onus is now on them to prove that it is okay for them to remain out of prison until their day in court. This is easier for a wealthy white male with a great lawyer, but an Aboriginal woman, for example, relying on under-resourced legal aid, will almost certainly be remanded. Many will simply plead guilty, regardless of whether they have even committed the offence, because it is the fastest way out of jail. It is not justice, is it?

Bail conditions themselves often require a person to be organised, so they can regularly phone a police station or nominate a residence to stay in, but a breach means jail, regardless of whether you are dealing with poverty, homelessness, mental illness or family violence. Another common trap, particularly for those battling addiction, is offending while on bail. That gets you inside in short order. Is it any surprise that the first person falsely imprisoned for weeks on remand for a COVID infringement for not being in his house was a homeless Aboriginal man with an acquired brain injury?

About three years ago when asked in this place by the member for Bulleen why one violent offender was given bail, Premier Andrews proudly responded that Victoria had ‘the toughest bail laws in our nation’ and that there were more people on remand on that day than there had been at any point in the state’s history. At that time, just before the last state election, I doubt the Premier was thinking of the women, children and Aboriginal people caught up in the quicksand of Victoria’s bail laws. I think he was happy to be seen as being just as tough on crime as the opposition, but if he had thought more about it, I doubt that he would really have wanted to brag that, following his bail reforms, we have had more Aboriginal Victorians in prison than at any time in history. Now, two months ago the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and 50 other legal, human rights and advocacy organisations wrote an open letter that actually quoted the Victorian government solemnly declaring that:

… too many Aboriginal Victorians are still dying in custody. Too many Aboriginal Victorians are in custody in the first place.

True. The letter’s authors observed:

And yet the Government is hardly a helpless bystander to an unexpected tragedy—this Government actively and willingly contributes to this ongoing crisis.

The letter’s authors went on to say:

Your bail laws inappropriately restrict the granting of bail to Aboriginal people.

And they demanded that:

the Victorian Government immediately begin the process of implementing the necessary legislative reforms to undo the failed policy of its punitive bail laws, which disproportionately impact on Aboriginal people, especially women, many of whom are victim-survivors of domestic and family violence.

This is not something Victoria can be proud of, and it is not something which makes Victorians any safer. Imprisoning people charged with minor offences brutalises them. Young people are introduced to criminal peer groups. Many are retraumatised. Mental health can deteriorate. You do not get rehabilitation or programs on remand. Many do not get drug treatment or opioid replacement. You lose your Centrelink payments. Basically you exit worse than you leave, normally within three months. So it should come as no surprise that reoffending rates are rising and that of prisoners released in the financial year 2017–18, 44 per cent were back in prison within two years. Add to that 10 per cent who were back on community orders and that is 54 per cent—more than half our prisoners are sentenced for reoffending within two years, and the trend is getting worse. If prison is our best cure for offending, it is not working very well. The victims of these notorious crimes that have such an impact on our justice system probably would not be too impressed if we told them that by denying bail to so many who commit minor offences we are increasing their rate of reoffending. We are making the community less safe. And we are doing it on a grand scale, because the total number of unsentenced prisoners—over 3000 today—is just a snapshot representing part of a much larger number when you add up all the people who go in and out of jail in a single year. That is because many spend just a few weeks in prison before release, either because the court decided that they did not require a prison sentence or because they had served enough time already. Forty per cent will be released either on time served or with no eventual custodial sentence; 60 per cent will be released in under three months.

And this is costing us a fortune. We spend around $130 000 to house a prisoner for a year, over half a million dollars for a child in youth detention. $1.6 billion every year—a rate of investment that is rising faster than spending on health care under this government. That would pay a lot of rent. It would pay for addiction beds or mental health care, but we are spending it on running a very expensive system. This of course does not include the billions spent building and expanding new prisons, such as the planned expansion of the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre to fit more women into the system. I do not believe the government really wants to put ever-growing numbers of vulnerable people into pretrial detention, but it may be that the government feels it has backed itself into a corner by making bail so hard to get and by making a virtue out of this.

So how do we solve this? Well, one group cries out for particular attention. Children aged under 14 would not be going to court at all, let alone prison, in the great many countries in the world with a higher age of criminal responsibility than Australia. Children’s brains are still developing at this age. Locking children up during these crucial years increases their risk of subsequent depression and self-harm. It results in school failure and it fractures family relationships. Reoffending rates are over 80 per cent in children remanded under the age of 14. This group needs more than bail reform: Victoria must raise the age of criminal responsibility without delay. The AMA is calling for it, the paediatricians, Amnesty and the Law Council of Australia. Victoria has a good story to tell about this, as we are jailing smaller numbers of children in this age group every year. Diversion programs are working. We know what we need to do to keep these kids out of prison. The Greens have second read a bill in the other place to raise the age of criminal responsibility, and I urge the government to support it or to introduce their own.

What else should we do? Let us come back to that letter from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and numerous others, and I only have time to acknowledge a few of these co-authors for their work campaigning for law reform: Liberty Victoria, Westjustice, Flat Out, Change the Record, the Fitzroy Legal Service, Youthlaw, Jesuit Social Services and the Human Rights Law Centre. This letter from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and others hands this government the opportunity it needs. It is an opportunity to listen, and to demonstrate that the government has listened, and to respond, and there is only one way to respond: the government must reform our bail law so that the default position is for an accused person to be entitled to bail unless the court finds that they pose an unacceptable risk of endangering the public, of failing to attend court or of interfering with a witness. We should abolish the reverse onus tests recently added to our bail law.

The government may prefer to tinker with reform but the Greens bill, soon to be debated in the other place, replaces the existing bail provisions with a single test of unacceptable risk, which will provide a real solution. If the government takes this approach, it will show that they have listened to the voices advocating for Aboriginal people and for women and for the many other vulnerable people who have hitherto been collateral damage in a battle that just got way out of hand. That would be a fitting response to the letter from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and their many supporters.

Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (16:15): I am pleased to have the opportunity on this Wednesday afternoon to contribute to debate on this matter of public importance (MPI). This is, of course, a matter of great public importance which does indeed raise a number of significant and important matters that I am sure are very important to all members of this house. These are indeed important matters, and they are matters that the government has wholeheartedly committed to addressing, committed to tackling and indeed over many years has made significant large-scale investments in. We on this side of the house will continue to invest as we have always done in those long-term significant projects, significant strategies and initiatives that make Victoria a fairer and better place.

This MPI was brought forward by the member for Brunswick, who we have just heard from—a member of the Greens political party. And what I would like to do in the 14 minutes that I have remaining is address a number of the points that are raised within the MPI, not through feel-good statements or feel-good sentiments but indeed by talking about those significant investments, those key projects and initiatives, that this government has been committed to since we had the great opportunity to come into office. I want to talk about a number of those projects this afternoon. This is work that I believe—and I am sure all members of this government believe—works towards addressing some of those significant underlying issues of crime and addresses those root determinants that mean people have experience with our justice system. These investments, these key pieces of work, are those that make a difference—those that support people that need the support the most at the time when they most need it. These are investments that work right across government, right across many different departments and right across many different ages as people experience their journey through life. The best way to reduce contact with the justice system and criminal offending is to prevent it happening in the first place. It is our government’s view that a whole-of-government approach right across those portfolios is exactly what is needed in this space and it is why budget after budget that we have brought to this house has made those record investments in health, in education, in social and affordable housing, in crime prevention, in police numbers and of course in mental health and the prevention of family violence.

There have been two royal commissions that are significant in relation to the MPI that is before the house this afternoon, both of which I am sure all members will be incredibly familiar with. The royal commission this government held in our first term was the Royal Commission into Family Violence, and the second royal commission, in this term, was the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. Now, there are some in the community who may doubt, may question, the work of a royal commission, but I am not one of these people. And I am sure—I should say I hope—that all members of this house realise that if you want to have a very detailed, very thorough look at a particular issue, something as significant as the prevention of family violence or something as significant as mental health within our community, a royal commission is exactly what is needed.

Whether it be the Royal Commission into Family Violence or the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, we know that these were significant pieces of work. It was not the Greens political party, but it was this government, members on this side of the house led by the Premier, that called for both of those royal commissions. And most importantly, rather than cheap political pointscoring, what is critical to the work of the royal commission is not just to have the thorough process of the commission itself; it is what comes after that. That is why I think what has been critically important is the commitment to all 227 recommendations from the Royal Commission into Family Violence, 25 days of public hearings, community conversations with over 800 Victorians and nearly 1000 written submissions. Areas that were investigated included criminal law, corrections, courts, the role of support services, the health system and alcohol and drug treatment services as well as all of those underlying issues that we know contribute to this significant issue in our community: housing, education, tools available to police. The government, as I just mentioned, committed to all of those 227 recommendations and made significant large-scale investments in making sure that we were tackling one of the most significant issues in our community.

We know that family violence related trauma is a significant contributor to criminal offending, and almost all women in our prison system have had some history of sexual, physical or emotional abuse occurring in childhood or as an adult. We know that much of the Corrections Victoria data suggests that approximately 40 per cent of women entering custody on remand are recorded as victims of family violence in the two years immediately prior to entering prison. I think what is incredibly important when we are talking about these most significant issues within our community is doing so in the context, in the frame, of much of the work that has already been done. These are huge investments. They are critically important to addressing many of those causes that in the first instance lead people down these pathways.

I do want to also just touch on the Royal Commission into Family Violence, which included the 100 recommendations led by the justice system. Five years on, 88 of the 100 justice-led recommendations have been implemented, with the focus now shifting to strengthening, embedding and integrating the justice system’s response to family violence. Of course we have got a whole range of different services, whether it is investing in specialist family violence policing, education and training or whether it is investing in specialist family violence courts. We know and we have heard a lot in this house about the Orange Door network. There is a whole range of work that is done on the back of those 227 recommendations.

We then look at the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System: 3195 pages, 12 500 contributions and 65 additional recommendations on top of the interim report. That is work that is not just groundbreaking; it rewrites and rebuilds the mental health system from the ground up. We know as local members the significant challenge within each of our communities that mental health challenges bring. It is very difficult, I believe, meeting with constituents when they are raising mental health issues within the community. I think this royal commission, with that local care, with the record investment in the last budget, will lead to some incredibly important steps and work that is going to underpin stronger, better collective mental health within our community. It is work that is a sustained investment, something that we are focused on of course—not just stunts, not grandstanding, but real investment that makes a difference. As I mentioned, it is $3.8 billion decade-long reform, delivering more community-based services, more help for those with acute needs, more early intervention and a new dedicated system to support our kids.

The royal commission told us that when it comes to accessing care—and particularly for communities like mine in the growing outer suburbs, we know—having that localised service makes all the difference, particularly when it comes to young people who face a whole range of transport challenges as well. There is an incredibly detailed and long package contained within this investment—a generational investment, a significant investment—that is going to, as I have said, improve the collective mental health of our community. Whether it is the $954 million to establish the 22 reformed area-based mental health and wellbeing services, the $300 million in acute care, there is a whole range of services within this package, and certainly the debate on the take-note motion on the budget, which I believe I made my contribution to in another sitting week, details many of those investments. I do reference this work—the work of both royal commissions—in the context of this MPI because we know that it is the holistic work, the large-scale work that is holistic in scope and monumental in impact, that addresses many of the drivers that relate to contact with the justice system.

Another area that is critical in addressing the needs and the causes of contact with the justice system is investing in our young people, and I am really pleased to be the Parliamentary Secretary for Youth, working alongside the Minister for Youth, who I see is at the table, making sure that we are engaging with young people in our community at each and every opportunity. We know that young people have experienced a very, very difficult time through the pandemic. What we know and understand is that we need to work with our young people in this state as we work towards developing our youth strategy, as we work towards understanding many of the conditions that our young people face. Whether you live in the city, whether you live in the suburbs or whether you live out in South Barwon, out in a region or in the country, we need to make sure that we do as much as we possibly can.

Mr Cheeseman interjected.

Mr J BULL: I know that the member for South Barwon spends quite a lot of time on a surfboard, and I am sure that he engages with the young people within his community each and every time that he has those opportunities. This is very significant work. It is something that I know the government takes incredibly seriously. It is something that the minister and I speak about often—making sure that we are investing in and supporting our young people, particularly those that have had contact with the youth justice system. It is fundamentally important.

I do want to talk, I should say briefly, in the crime prevention space. This government is of course helping upturn those young people that I have just mentioned, making sure that we are doing as much as we possibly can, and we need to continue to invest, as I mentioned earlier. We know that there is $4.4 million in the last budget for more of the programs that help to support some of Victoria’s most vulnerable kids. This is on top of more than $16 million that has been invested in youth crime prevention grants from 2016. We know that many of the causes of crime come from that disconnection and trauma, many of the issues that I have spoken about, but the projects aim to address offending and recidivism among young people aged 10 to 24 that have either had contact with or demonstrated a risk of being involved with the criminal justice system.

The projects engage with young people through coaching, through mentoring and through employment and education opportunities, making sure that we are doing everything we can to support our local young people and provide opportunities for support to them to be provided with wraparound services. There are a whole range of different projects and initiatives within this space, but if I can just run through a couple that were contained in the 2021–22 allocation: Anglicare Victoria, Latrobe, $350 000; Banksia Gardens Community Services in Hume, $350 000; Berry Street Victoria, Ballarat, $350 000; Barwon Child, Youth & Family, Geelong, $350 000 as well; the Centre for Multicultural Youth in Wyndham, $350 000; the Youth Support and Advocacy Service in Casey, Dandenong and Frankston, all $350 000—the member for Frankston is pleased about that, as he should be; the Centre for Participation in Horsham, $100 000; CVGT Australia, Bendigo, $100 000; Melton City Council, $100 000; Save the Children, Shepparton, $260 000; Sunraysia Community Health Services, Mildura, $100 000; the Youth Junction Incorporated in Brimbank, $100 000—our member for St Albans is happy about that as well, and the member for St Albans also is actually a very strong advocate for these services within her community; and Workways Australia in East Gippsland, $100 000.

I have got pages and pages of notes that refer to—I want to finish where I started—those projects, those large-scale investments and initiatives of this government since day one, from the very first time we had the opportunity and the great privilege to be elected to the Treasury benches in this house. We have been led of course exceptionally well by the Premier, but all members of this government have at each and every opportunity worked to create a fairer, a stronger, a better Victoria—whether it be things as big as a royal commission into mental health or a royal commission into the prevention of family violence; whether it be the $100 000 to Sunraysia Community Health Services in Mildura, as part of our large-scale investments, systemic reform, medium pathways and projects and initiatives in education and in health; or whether it be some of those smaller grants that on the ground make such a significant difference to the people that we are here each and every day to stand up for, to represent and to come in and make sure that we are supporting each and every Victorian, to make Victoria a better, fairer place.

Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (16:30): I rise to speak on the Greens matter of public importance:

That this house condemns the tough-on-crime politics of the Andrews Labor government and its predecessors, which have produced bail laws that systematically imprison women, children and First Nations people for low-level offending …

and it goes on.

Can I just say, particularly with that, it talks about predecessors, including the Andrews government. For 18 of 22 years this government has been in power. Labor has been in power for 18 of 22 years, and the justice system is completely buggered; it is stuffed. We have a complete shambolic mess of a justice system. We have the highest cost and the highest amount of reoffending. It is a revolving door of crime. We have people going in, and we are spending $323 a day per prisoner in our adult jail system. We are spending $2500 a day in our youth justice system—$2500 a day. 119 kids—it costs $165 million to keep 119 kids in the youth justice system, only to find that 60 per cent of them are back within 12 months for reoffending. That is an absolute failure. That is a failure, the fact that we are spending so much money—this government—on an absolute mess and getting no kind of rehabilitation whatsoever. Forty-four per cent of those in the adult system are back within two years. It costs $300 a day, more than you would spend on a top hotel, and yet they are back reoffending within two years. Why?

There are very rare occasions that we would agree with elements of what the Greens have got to say, but there are a number of issues here where the Greens are actually spot on—a number of issues. We have a whole lot of people waiting on remand—higher than we have ever seen before. COVID has seen no ability of the government to look at ways for people to have their hearings held. You have people waiting to be sentenced, people waiting on remand, people not getting programs—situations where you have got somebody that might wait 12 months to have their court hearing heard, only to find that they are literally back on the streets and told, ‘Right, your sentence has been effectively time served. No programs because you’re on remand—no programs’. So somebody that is experiencing a drug problem—no programs; they are back on the street. And no wonder they are back in the system within two years with no investment. The government stands up here: ‘Oh, we’re spending $100 000 on this and $300 000 on that’. Well, the government is spending $1.63 billion on prisons—$1.63 billion. And do you know what: 7 per cent of—one in 14—young offenders are receiving a referral or support program for a diversion program. One in 14—so you have got 119 kids and one in 14 is getting any kind of support. Twenty per cent of youth offenders have participated in a community reintegration program in 2021—20 per cent. Eighty per cent are receiving nothing. No wonder the system is completely broken—no wonder.

We have got breaches, we have got cover-ups and we have got the system in review. IBAC is reviewing our prison system at the moment because you have got assaults, you have got criminal records being shared amongst people, being disclosed amongst people, and you have got fight clubs that are being run. You have got kids in our youth justice system being babysat by giving them Nintendos, saying, ‘There you go. Here’s a Nintendo. Go and knock yourself out. Forget about an education program. Forget about a training program. Forget about a job. Forget about a pathway’. What is broken is that this government is certainly tough on the elements of crime but does not care about being tough on the causes of crime, and that is where we are focused. We are focused on ensuring in the early years that these kids do not end up in a life of crime.

Women—again, we have the highest number of women that we have ever seen participating, unfortunately, in our criminal justice system. The government themselves just said that nearly half of those women have experienced family violence and have ended up in our criminal justice system. Well, the government have recognised it, but what are they doing about it? They have had 18 of 22 years to tackle the escalation of women ending up in our justice system and young people ending up in our justice system, with no response and no investment. All they are doing is building more prisons, not providing the systems, not providing a pathway, not providing any options.

A member interjected.

Mr SOUTHWICK: There are no programs. One of the big issues is around child protection. We know that somebody that is in child protection, a young person placed in out-of-home care, is 16 times more likely than the equivalent in the general population to be under youth justice supervision in the same year, according to an Australian Law Reform Commission family violence report. We also know that when you go and visit any of the youth justice centres a huge proportion of those people have come from the child protection system. A huge proportion of those were under the care of the government. Now, rather than the government trying to support these kids in child protection, they are exploiting them. They are exploiting them with the way that they are managing them like you would not believe. We saw a report of a situation where kids were being groomed in out-of-home care and this government was covering that up. A former youth worker used personal information about vulnerable children that he should not have had access to to track down, groom and rape a 13-year-old boy. If this is the kind of stuff that is happening in child protection, take the word ‘protection’ out of the whole system because there is no protection there for those kids. No wonder they are ending up in the youth justice system when they are being exploited. Where are the programs for them?

I talked to Victoria Police, and they have had instances where one child has literally had to be tracked down 70 times in a year and brought back into the home because there is no support, there is nothing. The youth worker turns around and says, ‘Oh, he’s gone missing again. Johnny’s gone missing. Can you go and pick him up?’. So police drive around, find Johnny, pick him up and take him back to the home, and Johnny is back on the street the next day. Johnny has got knives; Johnny is experimenting with drugs. Where is the support for Johnny? What is the government doing about that? The government is just waiting. It is effectively a university of crime for these young kids. It is not about breaking the cycle but about just accepting it. It is almost a white flag being raised by this government, who turn around and say ‘We’re not going to invest’.

Women and Mentoring, which is a fantastic program that tries to support women in prison and tries to get them out of prison and give them a career and support, went cap in hand to the government and said ‘We need just a few hundred thousand dollars’—it is volunteer based—‘to run it’. They had to beg, borrow and steal from the government to eventually get some support. They were running a fundraising program just to keep their doors open. Why aren’t we using more of those volunteer support organisations? Why aren’t we looking to the community to try and get a community response? Why aren’t we looking at a different way, like other areas in other jurisdictions, in terms of looking at being tough on the causes of crime, such as kids being caught up in drugs? Where are the beds to actually ensure that they can get some rehabilitation? There should be a bed made available for every kid, for every family that is experiencing a kid that has suffered from a drug overdose or is suffering from ice. We had an ice inquiry with a whole lot of recommendations. I hear of kids all the time; parents ring us up in arms to say, ‘My kid wants a bed, and they cannot get one’. They are told the next available one is in three months. Three months is too late. The government is not providing support when it is needed.

The Greens talk about raising the age. I think no-one wants to see a young person locked up. It is absolutely a fair debate or discussion to be looking at what we need to do to be able to support those young people before they end up in a life of crime. We have got serious offenders, and we need to look at that. We saw Solomone, who was killed only last year at one of the shopping centres, and there are 11 young offenders as young as 12 in terms of who was responsible for some of that, so we need to look at that.

I know the New South Wales Attorney is looking at carving off some of what would be considered serious—murder, rape, terrorism—as opposed to everything else to ensure that we do not have young people being incarcerated when they should not be. I think they are discussions we need to have. I do not want to see young people locked up unnecessarily, but at the same time we need to ensure that the community is kept safe.

Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (16:40): Well, I always feel very humbled to follow the member for Caulfield, and I quite often feel that in this place I follow him all too often in many of these debates where we disagree entirely—and I must speak to someone about that. The reason why I am smiling is that for that whole 10 minutes my eyes were glued to that clock. I was waiting for the member for Caulfield to say one thing, one thing, that they did when they were in government that was good for crime and reducing crime here in Victoria, and—

A member interjected.

Ms CONNOLLY: Wait! I did not hear you say one thing your party would do if you were in government. Do you know what that says to me? Despite all of the criticism—and it is very easy to criticise, let us be honest, very easy to sit and criticise in this house—you do not have one thing that you would do differently. What would it be? Well, your 10 minutes is up and now it is mine, so I am going to talk about what we are doing.

Now, I have got to say I was really keen to get up and speak on this, not only because many moons ago—as I approach 40 this year—in my early 20s I started off in the criminal justice system. I wanted to be a criminal law barrister. So when this matter of public importance came across my desk and I was asked to speak I thought, ‘Oh yes, I love speaking on crime’, because we need more serious people talking about crime, talking about crime prevention and the issues and the challenges and the opportunities to go ahead and turn things around. We need more people up here having a stable, rational debate about crime.

It is a very, very complex issue, and I would say to the member for Brunswick: I am sure you are a very, very intelligent man as a doctor. We hold our doctors—I think you are a GP—to really high standards, so when I saw this matter of public importance that you had raised I was really disappointed. Do you know why? Because the community knows that the issues around crime are complex, but we get stuck in this place time and time again on this side of the house having to have such a complex, important issue in our community—and let me tell you, it is a really important issue in Tarneit. It is an important issue that affects many, many families. I have lots of conversations about crime, community safety and crime prevention, and when I see it reduced to a simplistic three-word slogan in this house time and time again by those opposite I feel disappointed—disappointed because our community deserves better. Whether they are a victim of crime, whether they are fearful of criminal activity in their own local streets, whether suddenly they think crime is running rampant in Victoria, the community deserve better. They deserve a higher standard of debate. They deserve at least an alternative view from an alternative government, which has failed to land in this place in the last 10 minutes from the member for Caulfield. Maybe he has gone away to think about it.

But to see us having a conversation again, it now comes down to this: it comes down to those opposite saying you are either too tough on crime or you are not tough enough. It is one or the other. Well, I have worked in the criminal justice system and out and about in a community that has a lot of social issues—a hell of a lot of disadvantage of working-class families through no fault of their own. Some of it is generational, systemic, low socio-economic disadvantage. You only have to drive around the local neighbourhoods to see that. I do not have to read it in reports to know about it, but to see this kind of debate reduced to being too tough on crime or too soft on crime is an absolute insult to our community, and they deserve better. So shame on you, member for Brunswick.

I am really well placed to make these statements, and I say that because I was targeted in the 2018 campaign. Tarneit was targeted as one of those places in Melbourne’s outer burbs that had a problem with crime—and, really sadly, African gang crime. And we had irresponsible journalism and reporting coming in and shining a light on a local community that caused hysteria that really damaged my community, disturbingly damaged them. It was irresponsible but, you know, I will stand here and say that in areas like Hoppers Crossing, for example, we are working really hard to deliver crime prevention programs. We do not call them crime prevention programs because, let us face it, young people do not want to be tagged with some kind of stigma that there is something wrong with them because they come from working-class families or that suddenly their future opportunities in life are defined by their postcode. We do not call them crime prevention programs; we call them youth engagement programs.

I talk to a lot of people who are running those youth engagement programs—sometimes funded by us as a state government, sometimes not. Sometimes they are run off the back of the community themselves by community leaders who see that there is a need. I think of the incredible work in Wyndham that our Maori Wardens do. They are just seniors, elders in their community, and they do great work. They ride our trains and our buses reminding any youths that start to get rowdy along the way to do the right thing and they look at engaging them in different activities in our local communities.

One of those activities in my local community that has been very successful at giving young people something to do but also diverting them away from ending up in our criminal justice system is through sport. We have got the Minister for Youth here at the table, and she would very well know about the great program that her office and our government are rolling out around the Get Active vouchers for youth from disadvantaged families who need a bit of hand. I think it is $250 they get in a voucher to help get their kids into some of the local sporting clubs and activities happening in the community. This is not just good for kids’ mental health and physical health; it is also a way in which we can help divert youth who are most at risk and vulnerable. That is not all youth, but there are particular cohorts that are most at risk. It is helping to get those youths into pathways and onto the footy pitch or the sporting oval out there and doing something that contributes to them spending time in a way in which they are not going to come up against the criminal justice system.

Now, I do want to put on record from the outset that, whilst those opposite will always seek to go ahead and manipulate the data in as many ways as they can, the simple facts are these: there has been a decline in the number of young people offending in Victoria over the past decade; there has been a decline in the number of young people under youth justice supervision across both community and custody over the past five years; and, importantly, Victoria has the lowest rate of young people under supervision in Australia. That is down to our diversion programs, and there are many of them. You know, the member for Caulfield talked about it as if we do nothing in this space and I thought, ‘Mate, where are you coming from?’. He is certainly not listening to contribution after contribution on this this side of the house. It means our diversion programs are working, our wraparound services are working and we are tackling the root causes of crime.

Does this mean that there is no crime? Does this mean that there are no challenges in our youth justice system that we as a government, we as a society and our local communities need to focus on and strive to do better? Of course we need to do better. We will always strive to do better. This side of the house has a plan. It has a plan to engage youth. It has a plan to try and reduce the number of women, yes, that are sitting there in our prisons and on remand. Yes, of course we do. And it is very important to have a plan. Perhaps the member for Brunswick is going to look at his party’s plan, which he might be looking for for some time. But this is a very complex issue. It has got many parts to it. For the people that engage with the criminal justice system it is not black and white. That is why it is so complex. People have serious problems, and if you want to address the criminal justice system in this state, you need to look at crime prevention.

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (16:50): I rise today to contribute to today’s matter of public importance debate put by the Greens member for Brunswick in relation to Labor’s broken criminal justice system and Labor’s woeful record when it comes to incarceration rates for women, children and Indigenous people. The facts are clear. Under the Premier and Labor, crime is up, youth crime is up, prisoner numbers are up, reoffending is up and Indigenous Victorians are being locked up in record numbers. Labor has failed, and Labor has no plan. Despite the fact that Labor will try to pull the wool over our eyes in this debate and say that they do, Labor has no plan.

Under the Andrews Labor government crime rates are unacceptably high. Many of the most vulnerable in our community have been allowed by Labor to fall through the cracks, and they have turned to crime. This is a tragic situation. Labor has failed and still is failing these people. Labor is failing these Victorians, failing to provide them hope and equality of opportunity, by being in government and being responsible for systems and structures that are failing, that are broken.

We know educational standards, nationally and internationally, are down. Unemployment and underemployment rates are the highest in Australia. Rehabilitation programs are inadequate. Housing waiting lists are getting longer and longer. It is Homelessness Week, and we know that the homelessness rate in Victoria is absolutely woeful.

Labor is failing. They love their headlines, but when you pull back the curtain the Labor government has dysfunctional systems that are failing. Labor loves boasting, but when you see incarceration rates as high as they are today in Victoria it is not something that Labor really wants to boast about. They are the most vulnerable people in our society, and the Labor government is failing them.

Under the Labor government the number of women incarcerated has skyrocketed, and I think that this is a really, really problematic issue. The number of women incarcerated under the watch of this Labor government has skyrocketed. Under Labor the number of Indigenous people incarcerated has skyrocketed, and it is alarming and completely unacceptable. I think that any government, any state, in this situation should find that a shameful record to have under the watch of their government. And when it comes to Indigenous Victorians and this significantly high incarceration rate, let us not forget that this Andrews Labor government is locking up more Indigenous Victorians than any other previous Victorian government. It is an absolute indictment on Labor’s record, and it is a really tragic situation for our community and our society.

Now, let us look at the facts. Under the Premier and Labor at 30 June 2021 there were 411 women in prison, and of these women, 190, or 54 per cent, were unsentenced. The Labor government needs to come clean and tell Victorians why the rate of women in prison who are unsentenced is so high. And they must not hide under the cover of COVID as an excuse, because that would be lame. The court system is under pressure and the backlogs, as we know, are immense. We heard that all too well through the recent Public Accounts and Estimates Committee process, and Labor conceded that fact. That is part of the problem. Their systems are dysfunctional, and they are failing these women who are incarcerated.

Now, the situation for Indigenous women is sadly much worse. Whilst the Premier and Labor have been in government the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women entering prison each year has risen by over 300 per cent. It is not something I think Labor should be gloating about. One of the key flaws is that the Andrews Labor government is failing to close the gap, and Indigenous Victorians continue to be significantly over-represented in the Victorian prison system. Labor will try to pull the wool over our eyes and say that they are putting Indigenous Victorians first, but the statistics in our prisons demonstrate a very different story.

When it comes to young Victorians the rates of imprisonment are worrying. Given the extraordinary challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the repeated lockdowns imposed by the Andrews Labor government, young Victorians have been disproportionately impacted during the pandemic, and I do not think there is any dispute about that fact. Disrupted education, disrupted job opportunities—job opportunities that young people typically take up in the events, tourism and hospitality sectors have been stripped away because these businesses and these industries have been forced to close. Now, this puts pressure on people; this puts pressure on young people and in some cases amplifies the propensity for them to get involved in crime.

Let us look at the stats. While Labor has been in government the imprisonment rate of males under 20 has grown by nearly 115 per cent, and for males aged 20 to 24 it has grown by 315 per cent. Now, incarcerating young people should be a last resort, and in looking at ways to tackle problems of youth crime as legislators and as parliamentarians we need to be very careful in relation to considering the age of criminal responsibility. This is not—and I think it has been said in the chamber prior to my contribution—a simple matter. This issue of youth criminal offending is complex, and it requires careful consideration. And a national framework would be a sensible response to this extremely important issue. For young Victorians who offend, it is vital that we have a real focus on rehabilitation and addressing the causes of any offending behaviour.

Also there unequivocally must be a focus on the victims. Victims of crime unfortunately are not even a feature of the Greens party’s matter of public importance today, and it is shameful. Their focus is on those that have committed crimes, but our systems and frameworks necessarily must consider the victims as central to any consideration and the protection of those victims who are made vulnerable when crime is committed against them. Addressing offending behaviours is crucially important, but so too is the protection of the community and the interests of victims of crime. It is complex, and a national approach would be sensible.

In fact the age of criminal responsibility is under consideration by Attorneys-General across Australia. All commonwealth, state and territory Attorneys-General collectively have agreed that further work in this area is required. Indeed the then Council of Attorneys-General in their July 2020 communiqué stated that there is a need for further work to occur regarding the need for adequate processes and services for children who exhibit offending behaviour. This really demonstrates how serious this issue is and how serious it needs to be in terms of any potential reform—and any potential reform really does deserve a national framework.

It is interesting also to consider the experiences and views of those on the front line, those tasked with keeping our community safe, and that includes vulnerable people who commit crimes. Both the chief commissioner of Victoria Police and the secretary of the Police Association Victoria have publicly outlined their serious concerns about raising the age of criminal responsibility, so it is important in debate to think about that also. The chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Shane Patton, in May this year in relation to the age of criminality said:

We need to be able to arrest young people between 10 to 14 who … commit significant, serious crimes. I think we’ve charged a couple of kids with murder in the past. We have numerous robberies and armed robberies committed by them. I’m all for diverting children from the justice system through cautions, diversions—a range of other therapeutic and restorative programs—but we need to be able to … take action and stop … serious offending.

And I think that thing about stopping serious offending is crucial in that statement by the chief commissioner. Also in May the secretary of the Police Association, Wayne Gatt, indicated he was in favour of a uniform national approach and not letting the state go it alone, because as he said—as Wayne Gatt said—there really are not any 10-year-olds going to jail at the moment, and the Children’s Court act de-emphasises punishment and supports rehabilitation as the highest priority.

Now, we all want to see fewer young people, fewer women and fewer Indigenous Victorians incarcerated, and if Labor and the Greens join up to introduce legislation on this serious and important issue, they must be very transparent with the Victorian public on what systems and programs would be put in place as an alternative and be open and transparent about budgeting and resourcing that would be required. And I think the member for Caulfield talked about the challenges and inadequacies in the last state budget when it comes to justice—criminal justice and youth justice particularly. Labor has failed Victorians, and Victorians deserve better. Victims of crime too deserve better.

Mr FREGON (Mount Waverley) (17:00): I too rise to talk about this very important topic. As much as in my previous career you would try and bring problems down to the simplest set of choices—keep it simple, stupid—this is certainly not a topic that any of us, as the previous member quite rightly said, can treat in a simple way. This is one of the most complex issues that many of the green books in front of us deal with—our criminal justice system. If I skip the part about how it is all our fault and go to one point the previous member talked about, the victims, I am very happy to hear that we are as a house considering not just the people who, unfortunately, find themselves on the wrong side of our criminal justice system but also victims of crime and the community as a whole.

The member for Brunswick, who raised this matter of public importance, spoke about an incident that we would all recall, Bourke Street, and I will not mention the man’s name, because frankly we should forget him and that he exists. Obviously that is one of those pivotal moments that, as Victorian society, we will reflect upon. The fact that the perpetrator was on bail at the time is obviously something that as a state we have had many, many conversations about. Bail was not a new thing to discuss just at that time. I recall, and I am sure other members of the house will recall, that the questions about bail have always been discussed, regardless of who has been on the government benches. It is a very difficult problem. I go back to my start. You cannot simplify this too much. It is so complicated. The causes of people committing offences are complicated. Nobody will be surprised when I say we will not fix this—this government, the next government or the next government after that. We will not remove crime from our society, no matter how hard we try—and we will try. Whoever is here in 100 years, there will still be crime. I wish it was not the case. I am sure we all wish it was not the case, but we have to accept that it is a fait accompli.

So how do we deal with it? How do we minimise it? These are the questions that we are here for. And it is good to have discussions today, because the number of people in our penal system, in our corrections system, is something that we should be aware of. It is something that we should discuss. But we should also discuss community safety, and we should discuss the importance of that. I go back to former Justice Coghlan’s review that was implemented post 2017, I guess. We as a government have implemented 23 of the 37 recommendations. Here is another example of where we have gone to experts to advise independently, to come back and say, ‘This is what we need to do’. Twenty three of the 37 recommendations which were contained across two sets of advice have been followed. Now, you may say that 23 out of 37 is 66 per cent or something like that, but some of the first recommendations were superseded by the second ones. The changes that needed to be made urgently to make the community safer have been made. Yes, we have very tough bail laws in this state, and as the member for Mount Waverley I do not apologise for that. For the people I speak to, the people in my community when I was campaigning in 2018, that never came up as a problem. Well, that is not true—there was one person who raised it who was a barrister, who raised it at a train station and we had a discussion about it.

Now, of the 14 remaining recommendations, six have been partially implemented, five are in the process and three are under consideration. These things can take time. Sometimes we wish they would be done faster, but it is not the sort of thing that you want to necessarily hurry. What are the effects of these laws? Obviously if you strengthen bail laws, you will have more people who are incarcerated for periods of time. Nobody wants to see anyone incarcerated, but offenders of crime must be treated the same under law.

Now, what others have spoken about is in regard to what we can do to prevent offences happening. What can we do in this house, what can we do as a government, to contribute to society to prevent crime? We fundamentally believe that the best way to reduce criminal offending is to prevent it from occurring in the first place, and we know, as has been raised, that women in prison are often there as a result of a complex array of social, health and economic issues which lead to criminal offending. That is why we are working to address the issues that lead to this behaviour. The member for Sunbury quite aptly talked about the royal commissions that we have held into both family violence and the mental health system—entwined in what results in our criminal justice system and for people who fall on the wrong side of that.

I recall Minister Neville opening the family violence centre at the police academy in my very own district in 2019. We have specialist police who are trained, and this all leads to crime prevention. Now, our government also understands that female prisoners present with a unique profile and set of needs. A clear understanding of the extent of trauma and instability in their lives is critical for a corrections system to provide appropriate and effective services. To address these multiple and complex needs, Corrections Victoria has developed Strengthening Connections, its new women’s policy.

I notice the member for Caulfield, amongst his contribution, was discussing that we are not doing anything, which is ludicrous—but fine, he has got his 10 minutes. On 21 June 2021 Minister Hutchins launched the Crime Prevention Strategy I just mentioned, backed by more than $30 million in the budget. The strategy recognises that each community has the expertise, knowledge and ideas to design solutions that are right for them. Now, this strategy builds on the government’s investment of $48 million for more than 820 successful community crime prevention projects since 2015. So again, there was talk about how there is nothing happening in the community. Obviously that is not correct.

The number of women in prison is growing worldwide. Nobody wants to see that. Between 2000 and 2016 the number of women in prison increased by 53 per cent, growing at twice the rate of the total prison population and more than twice the rate of the general population. None of us wants to see that. That is not a surprise.

Ms Sandell interjected.

Mr FREGON: And we are doing something about it, member for Melbourne. We acknowledge it, and we came to government with a clear agenda to put gender equality and the health and wellbeing of women and children at the centre of government business. It is why our government is addressing inequality, sexism and violence against women through our gender equality strategy, Safe and Strong, implementing the Gender Equality Act 2020 and Free from Violence, our strategy to prevent violence against women. All these things contribute to resolving social problems. It is why the 2021–22 Victorian budget includes $521.6 million to progress gender equality and end family violence. We are supporting the participation of women in the workforce with a commitment to closing the employment gap and improving the economic security of women, recognising the disproportionate impacts of caring responsibilities on women. We understand, and we are acting, and you know this. You can see it. You can have your argument— (Time expired)

Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (17:10): I want to start today by telling the Parliament a story about a woman named Rachael, although obviously that is not her real name. Rachael was charged with stealing cars and credit card crimes—crimes, yes, but not violent ones, so she was allowed to be out in the community while waiting for her date in court. But while on bail Rachael made a bad decision: she stole an ice cream. In her words, ‘I was having a bad day. It was my favourite ice cream. It was a stupid thing to do’. But because she was already on bail for another crime, this new crime—stealing an ice cream—was enough to send her to prison.

Last year another woman faced a similar fate to Rachael. Last year Ava’s adult son moved back in with her during COVID, like what happened to a lot of families. Ava had an argument with her son. She felt unsafe so she called the police. They came, they spoke to her son, then came inside, handcuffed her and forced her into the back of a police van. Ava learned hours later that her son had taken out an intervention order against her, banning her from her own home and all contact with him. At 2.00 am when she was released Ava sent an angry message to her son—she had just been banned from her own home. Yet this message was enough to send Ava to jail, because according to Victoria’s laws, breaching an intervention order and her lack of a home to go to prohibited her from getting bail. We might think these stories are so outrageous that they must come from America or another country with a terrible justice system. But they happened right here in Victoria.

Today the Greens had the opportunity to bring a debate to Parliament about any topic. We chose today to talk about the ways in which Victoria’s criminal justice system is harming women, children and First Nations people and to look at ways we can hopefully start to turn this around. I would like to read out some statistics to highlight the issue we are talking about here. In the past 10 years the number of women in prison in Victoria has almost tripled. The number of Aboriginal women in prison in Victoria has more than quadrupled. And more than half the women now in prison in Victoria have not even been to court yet; they are on remand. Most have not been found guilty of a crime, they are simply waiting for their court date, yet our system sends them to prison while they wait.

In the years that this Andrews government has been in power, jailing children—kids between 10 and 13—has increased by two and a half times. Jailing Aboriginal children has doubled. As a government which has prided itself on its progressive credentials, I imagine this sits pretty uncomfortably for many in the Andrews government. Ninety-eight per cent of the children in prison have not even been sentenced. I will say it again because it is so shocking: 98 per cent of children in prison have not even been sentenced for any crime, but we put them in a jail cell. Just 2 per cent are in prison because they were actually found guilty of a crime and sentenced to time in jail. These numbers are not just statistics. Behind every single one is a story like Ava’s, like Rachael’s.

Why is this happening in a wealthy, supposedly fair society like Victoria? It is not because crime has increased. In fact it has decreased. Labor will have you believe it is all too complex, but in fact the number of women and kids in jail is skyrocketing because strict bail laws have reversed some of the key principles of criminal justice: that someone is innocent until proven guilty and that someone should be given bail unless there is a compelling reason not to, like a risk to community safety. But in Victoria people are being denied bail and put in prison for reasons like they stole a bottle of whiskey, they shoplifted a dress, they had cannabis in their car, they were on drugs in public, they missed a court date because of a mental health crisis or their abusive partner took out a domestic violence order against them as a form of control, or they were simply denied bail because they do not have a home to go to. Locking these people up is setting them on a path of criminalisation, not recovery.

How did we get to this point? In Victoria in recent years we have seen several high-profile, horrendous acts of violence, including the Bourke Street massacre and the violent murders of Jill Meagher and Eurydice Dixon, committed by men in public places. These were horrific crimes. They sent shockwaves through our communities. Trading on this community fear, some elements of the media and some political parties, including the Liberal Party, saw a political opportunity and called for tougher bail laws. And the Andrews Labor government, well, they gave in to this right-wing pressure. They tightened the law and made it much harder to get bail.

What has happened here is because of a number of high-profile murders and crimes committed by men the government—a Labor government—has reacted by putting in place policies that overwhelmingly actually punish women and children as well as First Nations people, homeless people and the most vulnerable. Putting women in prison has huge effects on their kids, separated from their mums, and in turn on society. We know women are imprisoned most often for non-violent, less serious crimes like low-level drug offences or things like credit card fraud. We know nearly 90 per cent of them are victim-survivors of violent crime themselves. They need support, not prison. Labor MPs will get up in this place and talk about all the programs that they supposedly offer, but if you are in prison or on remand you lose your Centrelink and you cannot get access to drug and alcohol rehab. How is this helping?

While many people might think sending people to prison will fix them or keep us safe, the evidence shows it is just not the case. Reoffending rates have increased in three of the last four years under this government, so putting all these extra women in jail is not making Victorians safer. A first trip to prison can be that sliding doors moment, leading to long-term housing and family problems, mental health issues, drug use, further crime and further time in prison.

So what can we do instead of Victoria’s ‘Go directly to jail’ approach? There is a growing body of evidence from around the world that looks at what works and what does not, and today I am offering some solutions. I would love to see MPs from all sides of politics work together across party lines to seriously look at these solutions, because vulnerable people should not continue to be collateral damage in an effort to make politicians look tough or in control. The solutions are not simple but they are much less complex than Labor MPs here will have us believe.

First and foremost we need to reverse the onus when it comes to our bail laws. Going to prison, especially when waiting for your court date, should be a last resort, not the default. My colleague the member for Brunswick has spoken at length about this, so I will not cover the same ground. We need more diversion programs, secure and low-cost housing, drug and mental health support, culturally appropriate programs for First Nations people, and a women-centred strategy that acknowledges many in women are mothers too. The good news is not only are these programs far cheaper than imprisoning people, they actually reduce rates of reoffending, so they keep us safer. The Labor government is spending nearly $2 billion to build and expand Victoria’s prisons. We could fund so many public housing homes and rehab programs and so much mental health support with that amount of money, especially when we know most of these beds are being built for people who have not even been sentenced for any crime.

The one thing we can do right now to keep children out of prison is to raise the age of criminal responsibility. In Victoria the age at which kids can go to prison is 10. The UN, as well as countless other organisations, are calling on Australia to raise the age to 14. Most other countries already have a higher minimum age. Victoria says any change should be done as a national approach, but we have waited and waited for years and collectively our attorneys-general have not acted. So it is time for Victoria to act. The ACT has already done it, with a Greens-Labor government, and we can too.

Today in question time I was dismayed to see our own Attorney-General say that there had been 44 kids in jail over the last year in Victoria and we cannot release them to the community because we do not have the services to support them. Wow! Surely in a wealthy place like Victoria we can support the 44 most vulnerable kids in our society. Surely it is our moral obligation and responsibility to keep kids out of jail and show other states the way it can be done.

The good news for Victoria is we actually already have some of the solutions working well to keep kids out of prison. We already have good diversion programs and community justice programs that teach kids right from wrong without criminalising them. We know they are working because we actually already use these diversion programs to keep kids out of jail after sentencing. But because of our strict bail laws that put kids in jail before they are sentenced, a lot of the damage has already been done.

In the last few years the Victorian government have taken some positive steps to make our criminal justice system better. They have removed the crime of public drunkenness, a long-overdue reform affecting First Nations people overwhelmingly. And I have huge admiration for the strength of Tanya Day’s family in calling for this following the death of their mum. The government are also showing positive signs on the path to decriminalise prostitution. But these good changes are being totally overshadowed by tough bail laws and an age of criminal responsibility that is just far too low. The only people benefiting from this are politicians that are trying to look tough and the corporations that profit from running our prisons. Victorians do not benefit. It does not make us safe. We can do better in Victoria. We can, and I really, really hope that we do.

Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (17:20): I rise to contribute to today’s matter of public importance discussion and talk about issues pertaining to women and Aboriginal Victorians in our justice system and corrections system. I am very pleased to see that we have a former Minister for Corrections, the member for Niddrie, sitting at the table, who did very, very good work in terms of the first year and a bit of this government. I really want to thank the minister for the great work and the leadership he showed in this sector in terms of crime prevention, in terms of corrections and in terms of all that he did. You were a very, very good minister, so thank you very much for that.

It is also great to be able to stand with my Labor parliamentary colleagues and friends the member for Sunbury, the member for Tarneit and the member for Mount Waverley to talk about this issue and to really explain what the Andrews Labor government is doing in these important areas of public safety and crime prevention and in our justice system. The member for Tarneit gave a cracking analysis of the member for Caulfield’s contribution, and I would like to say that her analysis was that they are not defending what they did and not actually talking about what they would do seems to be the playbook, because the member for Evelyn did the exact same thing. She got up and she talked about a whole lot of things, and I would just really like to clarify—she talked about ‘skyrocketing crime rates’. To skyrocket, just in case we are unclear—and I hope the member for Evelyn is tuning in in her office—is to ‘shoot up abruptly’. She talked about the figure of 411 women being incarcerated in the two Victorian prisons, and she said that rates had skyrocketed. Well, actually it is down 4 per cent, so I do not think being down 4 per cent really indicates anything shooting up abruptly. So when I start to think about that stat, which I know off the top of my head, I really start to question a whole lot of her stats and her credibility. Certainly in my former role as a schoolteacher when people decided to just throw around points that were not actually based in fact, they certainly did not get marked very well. So I am very concerned that something is ‘skyrocketing’, yet it is down 4 per cent.

But look, I want to talk about what we do because we are a great government. We are a great government across the board, and we are doing a lot of things to boost community safety, to prevent crime, to invest in diversion programs and to improve the welfare of those who find themselves in custody. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the Minister for Corrections, Minister for Crime Prevention, Minister for Youth Justice and Minister for Victim Support and the important work that she is doing in the portfolio. Recently we had planned a fantastic crime prevention event in Ballarat, and the minister was going to come up. We had a whole lot of people lined up to be involved—young people, people from the LGBTIQ+ community, members of our multicultural communities—and we were all going to meet together and talk about it. Sadly COVID prevented us from doing that face to face, but we had a great online day really talking about the issues that matter—where we feel safe in Ballarat, where we do not feel safe in Ballarat—and the minister wanted to really get to the bottom of it. It was a really important exercise of allowing community members to speak and to be heard, and we have got some really great graphics that I have got up on my Facebook summarising the key issues about what we need to do to give youth other options, to give them entertainment of an evening and to be able to light up places and put CCTV in. So we have got some really good suggestions, and I really thank the minister for her commitment to my community, the electorate of Wendouree and the broader Ballarat community.

This issue is really important to me. I am interested in crime prevention and community safety and also corrections. I am honoured to chair the Victorian government’s Women’s Correctional Services Advisory Committee. I thank the Minister for Corrections for appointing me, and I would like to acknowledge the Deputy Speaker, who is a former WCSAC chair, and thank her for the work that she did in the role. It is a very, very important committee that does good work and has the opportunity to work with stakeholders, and I will talk a bit more about those. Feedback to the minister is another example of how we listen, how we really talk to experts, that we look at the data, that we look at the research. It is an area that I am very interested in—I did study sociology when I was at Monash—because there are issues of vulnerability, there are issues of disadvantage, there are issues of homelessness and there are issues of family violence, disability, mental health, abuse, alcohol and drug dependency and racism. They are often interconnecting factors that lead to women’s incarceration. These are issues that our government is working hard to address across our state to make things better and fairer for all Victorians, and by doing so we are making our communities safer and preventing crime. I am proud that we are focusing on health and education and housing and mental health and racism and the prevention of family violence and alcohol and drug services and the disability sector, because all of these factors contribute to disadvantage, and for some this leads them into the criminal justice system.

The WCSAC advisory committee was actually established under the Bracks Labor government in 2003. The advisory committee provides independent advice to the Minister for Corrections to inform gender-responsive approaches to policies, programs and services for women in the corrections system. Interestingly, the committee replaced the Victorian Women’s Prisons Council, which was established in 1953 by Dame Phyllis Frost, who chaired the committee. Our women-only maximum-security prison in Ravenhall, the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, is named after her in recognition of her great works helping women prisoners. It has been said that Dame Phyllis was passionate about the causes she believed in and that they were not popular causes. She would try to put wrongs right by speaking up for people who had no voice and was a champion for the underdog. As I was reading about that, I was actually thinking about the great work that our minister is doing in this space. They are very much values that the Minister for Corrections lives every day herself in terms of speaking up for the underdog, being a champion for those who do not have a voice. I thought there was a really lovely synergy between Dame Phyllis Frost and our minister.

WCSAC comprises key stakeholders with diverse backgrounds who have considerable working knowledge and experience of the complexities and challenges faced by women offenders. Due to COVID the committee has been meeting online, and I was very disappointed that our July meeting, which was scheduled to happen at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, could not proceed due to COVID restrictions. I would really like to quickly acknowledge the members of WCSAC who bring such a depth of understanding to the committee. They are Dr Kathryn Daley, senior lecturer and program manager, youth work and youth studies at RMIT; Nerita Waight, CEO, Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service; Michal Morris, CEO, inTouch Multicultural Centre against Family Violence; Julie Kun, CEO of the Women’s Information and Referral Exchange, WIRE; Melissa Hardham, director of policy and community at Westjustice; Serina McDuff, CEO, Federation of Community Legal Centres, Victoria; Deb Tsorbaris, CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare; Jill Prior, principal legal officer, Law and Advocacy Centre for Women; Rita Butera, CEO of Safe Steps; Claire Seppings, project coordinator, Deakin University; and Dianne Hill, CEO of Women’s Health Victoria. It is an extraordinary line-up of people coming around a table—women who understand the sector who are providing advice and feedback in terms of women in prisons and in the justice system. I would also like to mention and thank Tracy Jones, who is the general manager of the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, as well as Scott Hoctor-Turner, the general manager of Tarrengower prison in Maldon—in your electorate, I believe, Deputy Speaker, of Bendigo West.

It has been a particularly challenging time over the last 18 months for our justice system and our prisons. COVID-safe restrictions have been strongly enforced to keep our prisons COVID free, and our corrections department has done an excellent job. I thank the staff for their efforts and the work that they do. This has particularly impacted on the movement in and out of our prisons, and it has restricted visitor access for family and friends. However, I was pleased to hear that by pivoting to new ways of online communication, the women in custody have been able to remain connected with their loved ones during the pandemic. In June this year 411 women were in Victorian prisons—4 per cent less, as I mentioned earlier, than the previous years. Women make up 22 per cent of offenders in Victoria, and women who enter the criminal justice system are more often victims of crime themselves, with their time in prison following years of trauma, including family violence— (Time expired)

Mr ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (17:30): I also rise today to address the matter of public importance submitted by the member for Brunswick. I would like to say from the outset that I disagree with elements of what is proposed by the member for Brunswick and agree with other elements of it—perhaps the sentiment of some of the clauses contained within the member’s matter of public importance. To open, it is the responsibility of every government, the first responsibility of every government, to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. That is arguably the first responsibility of every government. That does not just mean personal safety or personal security. It could mean economic security. It could mean the security that people get from having a job and from holding a job, in many senses, but in the sense that is conveyed by the member for Brunswick I would like to limit my comments to the safety and security that every Victorian should be afforded through the principles and the context of our legal and our judicial systems.

The sentiments that I agree with in this matter of public importance submitted by the member for Brunswick are the quite shocking statistics that the member for Brunswick has identified here. The member for Brunswick asserts that the imprisonment of women has risen by 174 per cent, that more than half of the women now in prison have not been sentenced and that there is a higher percentage of Indigenous Australians who have been put behind bars. This is deeply troubling and deeply concerning to me, and it should be deeply troubling and deeply concerning to every Victorian—to every member of this place and to every Victorian as well—because what we should aspire to for every Victorian is for every one of our fellow Victorians to be contributing members of our community. Every Victorian who ends up arrested, who ends up before a court of law and who ends up in our prison system is a failure—every single one of them—because our aspiration for every Victorian is that they contribute to our community, that they contribute to our economy and that they help build this social enterprise that we as a society rely upon and rest upon in our state.

I think there are many things that could be done better. I think there is an obligation on the government to make our courts more efficient. There is a huge proportion of Victorians at the moment who are on remand, who are in fact being denied justice because they are on remand. Now, it may be the case that those people who are on remand are not afforded the rehabilitation services or opportunities that those who are imprisoned are extended by virtue of the fact that they are on remand and they are not within the prison system. That is a missed opportunity, and it is a missed opportunity through the prism of recidivism. As I understand it, our recidivism rate in this state is quite troubling, at around 40 per cent at the moment. Recidivism leads to a cycle of dependency, an intergenerational cycle of dependency, that every one of us in this place and in the other place should be concerned by. This cycle of dependency takes a great toll, not only on the economy of our state but on the opportunity for our state to grow and to flourish and on the opportunity for members of our community to contribute in a meaningful way to our community. I am quite concerned by that, not to mention the fact that those people who are within our remand system at the moment cost the taxpayers about $100 000 per year.

Now, the Greens’ response to this is to lower the threshold for those people who are considered on remand, and I think that the Greens should perhaps be guided by some of the recent examples of where that just has not worked. Keeping tough bail laws is important. It is critical to community safety. We have seen what happens when people who are on bail are not appropriately accounted for. They commit more crimes. They commit serious crimes. That is not good for our community. That is not good for the victims who are on the receiving end of those crimes, nor their families. That is not good for our community as a whole.

What we could be doing instead of lowering the threshold for keeping people on remand as the Greens propose to do is making our system more efficient. There should be a greater emphasis on dealing with those people within the remand system at a more rapid rate. Justice delayed, after all, is justice denied. These people are on remand for a reason, and after the Bourke Street incident, for example, there were many eminent legal experts who proposed that serious changes should be made. I note that earlier this year when the Greens first proposed to try and wind back some bail laws that was met with very strong opposition, not only from the police union and Mr Gatt of the Police Association Victoria but also by our Shadow Attorney-General, Mr O’Donohue of the other place, and the member for Caulfield in this place as well. The police association secretary at that point said:

… keeping our community safe does come at a price.

If laws are wound back to once again let violent criminals like sex offenders and drug traffickers act with impunity, the cost to community safety will be far greater …

I note the comments of Mr O’Donohue of the other place, who said that any changes to bail or parole laws:

… must be informed by clear, objective, expert advice that does not diminish community safety. Failing to get changes to parole and bail laws right puts innocent Victorian lives at risk.

The member for Caulfield and opposition corrections spokesman at the time said that spending more money on prisons does not equate to a safer community. He said:

Victoria needs new approaches of how to better divert at-risk individuals away from a life of crime …

And that is absolutely right. Sometimes I think in government and in politics generally there is a false inclination that throwing more money at something will actually render a better outcome, and I suspect that in this case that is not true, because if that was true we would be seeing better outcomes. We would not see a recidivism rate of 40 per cent.

I will end where I commenced and say that our aspiration for every Victorian should be that they are thriving, that they are contributing back to our community and that they are fully participating in our community, and any Victorian who enters the legal system, who enters the justice system, who is arrested, who is before a court and who ends up in jail should be considered a tragedy—should be considered a failure of the system.

We all have a collective responsibility to do better in this space. I am sure that in the course of the next 16 months, between now and the November 2022 Victorian state election, the Liberal-Nationals will do our very best to contribute in a constructive way to that conversation, once again with the aspiration that every Victorian who ends up in our prison system is a failure of our state, a failure of our system and a failure of our community. We must do better, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (17:40): Can I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and paying my deepest respects to elders past, present and emerging and to those with us here today—and I want to thank my local community for educating me so much about their culture. I acknowledge too that before Europeans arrived at this very site that we are standing on today a gum and wattle forest existed, and it was a traditional Kulin meeting place for interclan gatherings, ceremonies and corroborees as well.

Now, these are critically important issues we are talking about today for this matter of public importance. We have heard about bail reform and age of criminality; we have heard about Indigenous incarceration rates, sadly, and Aboriginal deaths in custody—and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the two most recent tragic Aboriginal deaths in custody. I do not think anyone disputes the figures. There is so much, just so much, to be done in this space. That is why it is a focus across several portfolios, and we have heard many government members talking about the funding and the many initiatives.

But this is also part of a larger piece of work, and that is the nation’s first treaty and truth-telling process, which is happening right here in Victoria. It is this government that established the nation’s first treaty process. We are the first government to welcome traditional owners into our Parliament, we introduced the first-ever bill with a dual-language title and we are the first government to include an Indigenous language preamble—and what a humble day that was. It was just electric. It was a day I will forever be proud of. It was capped off, might I say though, by the former Greens member for Northcote screaming at the elders as they walked out of the chamber, which as we will see, was not an isolated incident. Nevertheless I am proud of that day, and I know that there is so much more we need to do in this space.

Treaty is the greatest hope we will see in our generation to right the wrongs of the past and change the systems and structures that have got us where we are today and have delivered these horrific statistics that we have heard about today. Treaty is the tide that raises all ships. I mean, people need to consider that we are the only nation in the commonwealth without a treaty with our First Peoples, and it is to our detriment and to our shame. Treaty has the ability to address the issues raised in this matter of public importance, because all these issues grow from a greater issue—that is, that the Victorian justice system was not made for First Nations people—and we have to fundamentally change that.

So it is with a huge feeling of disbelief that I stand here today as we are being lectured to by a party—the Greens political party—with such an average record of listening and acting on these issues and being lectured to by a party that does not support the treaty path chosen by the actual traditional owners in Victoria. We will discuss that directly. It is quite audacious to bring up this matter of public importance when you consider that the most recent media around the Andrews Labor government and Indigenous affairs would have been the Andrews government announcing a truth-telling commission, but the most recent Greens media would have to be regarding a member abusing and bullying Aboriginal elders and refusing to say sorry. I am going to quote this article from the Age of 29 June 2021. I will go through it quite quickly:

An Aboriginal elder says a blast of verbal abuse from Greens senator Lidia Thorpe during a meeting at Parliament House left her physically ill, shaken and requiring medical attention. First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria co-chair Aunty Geraldine Atkinson is seeking a formal apology from Senator Thorpe—an Indigenous senator in her first term—for her conduct during a meeting to discuss Victoria’s treaty process at Parliament House in Canberra last Tuesday.

…

Jill Gallagher, chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and a former Victorian treaty commissioner, said she saw Ms Atkinson after the meeting in a lobby of Parliament House.

I quote:

‘She couldn’t even talk, she was that distressed,’ she said.

This is just abhorrent behaviour. This is not on and it should not be on anywhere, and I wonder if anyone contacted Aunty Gerry to see if she was okay. But I see that this matter of public importance is of that much importance to the Greens party that no-one is here. They have got their sound bites for Facebook and they are off. Furthermore, in that Age article it says:

Senator Thorpe walked out of talks for the Uluru Statement in 2017 and has been critical of Victoria’s treaty and process.

Some—

… argue her opposition to some Indigenous advancement processes works to stymie realistic reforms that have widespread support.

Further to that, you would have to suggest that it is all great to have sound bites, but when you actually need to take action and listen to First Nations people, they are just not there. The treaty and Yoo-rrook Justice Commission, or truth telling, as it is known, represents a once-in-a-lifetime or once-in-a-generation opportunity for systemic and structural reform to address the underlying causes of Aboriginal over-representation in our justice system—they being racism, the ongoing impacts of colonisation and social and economic disadvantage. It appears to me that the Greens are seeking to undermine the treaty process by asserting that the democratically elected First Peoples’ Assembly is not reflective of the 38 nations and that only 11 of the 38 are represented in the assembly.

The Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations released a statement today on this issue, and we have it here. I am happy to table it for any Greens members if they would like. It might be useful to quote the CEO, a Gunnai and Monaro man, Paul Paton, directly. The statement reads:

Some voices, including elected representatives—

that is, Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe—

have called for the breakup of RAPs into what they call the 38 nations model. The assertion of 38 nations is not based in Aboriginal tradition, but in a misunderstanding of traditional Aboriginal Languages and adaption of coloniser histories.

…

‘All groups in society have some divisions, and colonisation has done its best to divide us. However, we must build on the work of the past, strengthen our traditional bonds, and not be split by minor differences,’ CEO Paul Paton said.

The Greens are a party that apparently speak for Aboriginal people while effectively trying to hijack the treaty process—a process led by a democratically elected group of strong Victorian traditional owners from recognised groups who can speak for themselves and their community. When Aboriginal people are able to make decisions about the factors that determine their lives, better outcomes are achieved, and some might say they actually do not need Greens representing them or talking for them.

I am well aware I stand here as a privileged white bloke. I do not pretend to speak for Aboriginal people. I do not pretend to offer my opinion on the First Peoples’ vision. Nothing qualifies me to make these decisions, but I do note again in a Crikey article titled ‘The Uluru statement is not Lego. The Greens can’t rearrange it to suit their ideals’, and I quote:

The Greens have jettisoned an election promise in favour of a new position developed without any serious engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

… Greens leader Adam Bandt … declared the party was walking away from the ground-breaking consensus reached by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The Greens’ new position that has been developed without any serious engagement from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people is certainly nothing like the scale we saw in the process that led to the Uluru statement. Indeed we are hearing that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, who worked tirelessly for years to build that multipartisan consensus on constitutional reform, did not even warrant a courtesy call from the Greens party about this policy shift. They learned about it in the news.

So let us get this straight: 1200 Aboriginal representatives, who were consulted and came to agree on and support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, are left behind and ignored; 250 traditional owners actually met at the foot of Uluru to largely agree to the statement; and I guess the Greens politicians know better. They disagree. They have changed their policy without any consultation. You would think the Greens politicians know better than the actual traditional owners about their own future. It is amazing. Listening to our Aboriginal community and our traditional owners is not about bullying elders. Listening is not about making policy without consulting the people it affects. Listening is not throwing spanners into the works of a treaty process because you do not have the political power you want over it. Our justice system was just not made for First Nations people or by First Nations people, and whilst action is being taken, in the long term we have to fundamentally rebuild it, and all political parties need to get on board and invest in that traditional owner self-determined process and, if not, educate themselves about the crossroads we are at and the opportunity we have got to get things right.

Can I conclude with just one of the most beautiful passages in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the document the Greens have turned their back on—and those people have the audacity to lecture us about it. It says:

When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

It is a beautiful statement. Treaty is the greatest hope we will see in our generation to right the wrongs of the past and change the systems and structures that have led to these horrific statistics in our justice system. I thank the minister, the First Peoples’ Assembly and everyone involved in ensuring we acknowledge the wrongs of the past and build a future that is not whitewashed and one we can all be proud of.

Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (17:50): It is some time since I rose to speak on a matter of public importance. In fact if the truth is known, it is probably some years since I rose to speak on a matter of public importance, but I could not help wanting to contribute to this one because, when you look at a couple of points just in the text of the MPI itself, it has:

… the tough-on-crime politics of the Andrews Labor government …

Tough on crime? The Andrews government tough on crime? The reality is the Andrews government is not tough on crime, has never been tough on crime and will never be tough on crime. So there is certainly an issue with that assertion.

The second assertion that I take issue with is on the second and third lines of that paragraph:

… produced bail laws that systematically imprison women, children and First Nations people for low-level offending …

You may as well say ‘for stealing a loaf of bread’. The suggestion that any law passed by this Parliament is going to systematically imprison a particular class of people is just plain ridiculous. The law does not say bail should not be granted to females. The law does not say bail must not be granted to children. The law does not say bail must not be granted to any Aboriginal person. A law like that would not only not pass this Parliament, I would be very surprised—and we are the 59th Victorian Parliament—if a law like that had passed the first Victorian Parliament. It is just a completely ridiculous assertion. Such a law would not only be absolutely unacceptable; it would be reprehensible. It simply would not be passed. It is an unsubstantiated and totally false claim, and it is complete and absolute nonsense.

On the second point I wanted to make, again speaking of unsubstantiated claims, let us have a look at some of the figures in this matter of public importance:

from 2010 to 2020, imprisonment of women rose 174 per cent …

Well, the latest figures that I have access to are the published Corrections Victoria figures up to 30 June 2020, and they seem to be the numbers that the author of this motion was referring to. According to those figures, on 30 June 2010 there were 313 female prisoners; on 30 June 2020 there were 404 female prisoners. That is an increase of 29 per cent, yet this alleged matter of public importance—I do not dismiss the issue; it is an issue that is worthy of discussion, but for goodness sake let us get the facts right: 29 per cent is not 174 per cent.

The second point is:

more than half the women now in prison have not been sentenced …

On 30 June 2010: unsentenced female prisoners, 22 per cent of the total number; 30 June 2020, 43.1 per cent. Now, it is a big increase—it is almost double—but it is not more than 50 per cent, not more than half. It is not as bad an error as the first one, but it is still totally wrong.

When we move to the stats on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners the assertion is that from 2015 to 2020—and I do not know why the author of this matter did not go back to 2010:

… the number of Aboriginal people put behind bars—

and I love the emotional language in this, ‘put behind bars’—

rose by 70 per cent …

In 2015 there were 480 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, according to Corrections Victoria, and on 30 June last year there were 718, a 49.6 per cent increase. Again, it is not 70 per cent, it is 49 per cent. Is it an awful figure? Yes, it is, I do not argue that for a second. But if we are going to have these debates, and these are important issues—and from what I have heard of the debate this afternoon, people have generally taken the issue pretty seriously—let us, for goodness sake, get the facts right to start with. We have seen enough people working on alternate facts, alternate truths. We have published figures. Let us just at least confine the discussion to that.

The central assertion of this matter essentially seems to be that bail laws are the problem. And if you take that sentiment to its logical conclusion, if you bailed everyone, then prison numbers would be lower—and yes, they would. According to those figures, again, they would be lower by almost 2500 prisoners—2418. Of course it is a balancing act. You need to keep the community safe, and you need to be sensible in the approach to bail. But you do not solve the problem by pretending it does not exist. You do not solve the problem by pretending it will go away if everyone gets bail. After all, let us not forget what prompted the latest round of changes—Bourke Street. Five people dead, 30 people injured, God knows how much trauma and how many people are still trying to get over those events caused by someone who should not have been on bail? So let us not forget why the changes were made. You do not solve a problem, as I said, by pretending the problem does not exist.

Now, if the number of Aboriginal people in prison, the imprisonment rate, is rising, and it is, and it is rising steeply, as I said, and if you look at the numbers per hundred thousand, which are probably more comparable—1540.8 in June 2015, 1837.7 in June 2020—if that is what is happening, then you need to do something about the underlying issue. You need to find out why it is happening. We need to be tough on the causes of crime. We need to get to the root of the problem and fix it, and if we have got an increase in the imprisonment rate of that level, we need to find out why.

With regard to female prisoners, the unsentenced number has almost doubled, as I mentioned a few minutes ago. It has almost doubled. Clearly the courts are not keeping up with the pressure of business. We need to find out why that is happening and get the problem solved. We should not have almost 44 per cent of female prisoners in prison and unsentenced. It just should not happen. But the fact is that it is. We need to find out why we have such a huge backlog, and we need to do something about it. But pretending this is not a problem and pretending that simply granting bail to everyone is going to solve the problem is not going to do a thing. It is simply going to place members of the community who should not be in danger potentially in danger, and that is not acceptable, I am sure, to anyone in this Parliament.

I just want to briefly comment in the time remaining on the final, fourth, point, the calls from the community to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years. We know the attorneys-general have a national working group looking at this issue. It is an issue that must be taken seriously. The Chief Commissioner of Police put his points fairly forcefully on 3AW a couple of months ago about the police view. I personally have great sympathy for that view, but let us not try to solve the problem here. Let us leave it to the experts, the attorneys-general, and see what they come up with when they put their heads together.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (18:00): It is with some pleasure that I rise very, very briefly to today make a small contribution on the matter of public importance proposed by the member for Brunswick. I must say I have had the privilege this afternoon to sit both here in the chamber and in my office and hear many wonderful contributions by Labor members—the member for Sunbury, the member for Mount Waverley, the member for Wendouree, the member for Tarneit and the member for Frankston—who in their contributions have highlighted in very passionate terms what it is that a reforming Labor government does. And I must say, when you contrast that to what the others who seek to be government in this place, the Liberal Party, do when they are given that great gift of government, they always, at every opportunity, go to making cuts to our justice system, making cuts to our courts and indeed not taking up that opportunity to engage with more police officers, to have police out in the community and to make our justice system as fair as possible for everyone to participate in it. Labor makes those investments, and that is why we are proud to be here. (Time expired)