Thursday, 1 August 2024

Bills

Youth Justice Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (14:58): Before we adjourned I was talking about the Labor values in the Youth Justice Bill 2024, but I would like now to turn to the details. It is of course a very substantial work of reform, at almost 1000 pages. But given that the Liberals and Nationals have walked out of the chamber, I guess I will mainly focus on the comments made by the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS), by the Fitzroy Legal Service and by Dardi Munwurro, who operate out of Preston and Reservoir. Those organisations do very important work in our community, and I think it is worth stepping through their comments in some detail. But just before I do that, I would like to touch on an important distinction in this discussion. There are some people who think that all contact with the justice system is equally damaging, and those people are critical of today’s bill from what is really an abolitionist perspective. That is clearly not the government’s view, and I think it is clearly not the view of communities across Preston or Reservoir either. Certainly when we are out doorknocking and when we are in some parts of our electorate that are economically disadvantaged, I find that the prevailing view is not that those communities are overpoliced –

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Member for Richmond and member for Brunswick! Member for Richmond, I have asked you not to wear that in the chamber.

Nathan LAMBERT: but in fact that they would be grateful and are always grateful for additional presence of police in their communities. But there is a separate view that it is incarceration in particular that we should be most concerned about, particularly with respect to children. Certainly I think the criminological evidence is much stronger there and very suggestive that the act of incarcerating a child is in many ways an order of magnitude, if you like, more significant than something like a police warning, for all the reasons that we might imagine: the way it cuts off children from their families, from their loved ones and from their workplace and places them into what can be a very negative environment.

While there has been a lot of high-profile debate about the minimum age of criminal responsibility, I do think there is a very important parallel debate about the age at which a child can be incarcerated, and on that specific question there are some very important and valuable reforms in this bill. There are of course all of the changes to pre-charge diversions and pre-charge considerations of doli incapax. But then also if we think about what is happening after a charge, there is the new presumption in favour of proceeding by summons, which will limit the use of remand. There are the new fast-tracked protections to address the risk of self-incrimination when young people are dealing with pre-trial interventions, and again that will ameliorate the effects of remand. There is the updated sentencing hierarchy. There are the new Aboriginal sentencing principles. There is the new long-term view of community safety and, most importantly, the new presumption against custody for children under 14.

I would add electronic monitoring to that list. Electronic monitoring is contentious. It is clearly not a positive thing; none of us would personally volunteer to be monitored in that way. But it does not involve the separation of people from their loved ones, their workplaces and their connections to their daily routine that they use to manage their life, and it does not involve the placing of them into what can be a very negative environment that we see with incarceration. All the evidence out of countries in Europe that use this extensively is that you can debate how it is used but if it serves to reduce rates of remand then it is certainly something worth trialling. Obviously, that remains a point of debate.

I think it is important to say that for those reforms I have just listed there is a great deal of support amongst stakeholders. Indeed I have got some particularly positive feedback in my discussions about part 2.3 of the bill, which allows more of the work and decision-making with respect to First Nations young people to be made by First Nations organisations, and I would like to recognise the work of the Aboriginal Justice Caucus and its constituent organisations in delivering that piece of reform. We recognise their work, and we will continue to listen to those organisations. I was talking to Alan Thorpe, who is at Dardi Munwurro, and I think there are some good suggestions from him on the language we use in these bills. I think he would like to see language that goes towards thinking of parts of this system more as about healing than about delivering punitive outcomes, and I think it is certainly worth listening to the suggestions of Alan and others.

I might finish by just returning to those age threshold questions which have been at the centre of the debate. I think it is a very important principle for us as a government, particularly as a Labor government, that we are always responsible for 100 per cent of people in 100 per cent of situations. In many organisations, if you are running a bank or a supermarket or whatever, you can get away with only thinking about 99 per cent of people who you might serve and not worrying about the final 1 per cent. But in government you cannot do that; you have to think about every Victorian. The most extreme circumstances you can think of are circumstances that are always the government’s responsibility. If we think about, for instance, the prohibition of custody, it is not a question of what the average 15-year-old might do; it is not a question even of what those 15-year-olds currently in Cherry Creek might do. But it is a question of what is possible. We know, sadly, that history shows that it is conceivable and it may happen that you have a 15-year-old who has committed multiple homicides and who is intending to attack their family or to commit further homicides and is making that clear.

I think the member for Melbourne in her contributions yesterday, grossly unfairly, alleged that we are only considering these things because the Murdoch media make certain comments about them. I do not think it is in any way fair to suggest that when thinking about that particular circumstance, where you have a clear threat to someone’s life and you might need to use detention and that could in rare circumstances come from a 15-year-old. I do not think is a fair characterisation. I note that Poccum’s Law, which the Greens support, effectively reduces the Bail Act to one sentence, and I think there are cons as well as pros to that suggestion. But even if we look at that, it allows the immediate safety of another person – a loved one, a family member or any other person – to be a consideration in the use of detention in pre-trial circumstances. I have discussed this with VALS, but I still think that there is work to be done to explain why it is that we would not carry that principle across to post-trial detention.

But as I said, we will continue to have a discussion with VALS, the Fitzroy Legal Service, Dardi Munwurro and others. They are great organisations that do important work. They have some further comments about physical activity and so forth, which we will keep chatting to them about, but I would like to conclude by thanking the Minister for Youth Justice, the Attorney-General of course and the Minister for Police and their teams for their work on this bill, which is very substantial. It is progressive; it is thoughtful. But as I said in my opening remarks before the adjournment, it is above all a hopeful bill in the way that it looks at our young people. I would like to commend it to the house.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (15:06): I rise to speak on the Youth Justice Bill 2024, and I do so after consideration of the reasoned amendment from the Shadow Minister for Youth Justice. I support his stance on the bill. I will not go into the detail that he has already outlined during his address to the Parliament earlier, but I will focus on some of the areas that are of great concern.

Clearly under the Allan government we are seeing an explosion in crime rates, particularly with crime in the youth space. Crime is at a crisis level in Victoria. We really need to address this, and I am afraid the reason we oppose the Youth Justice Bill is because this is very poorly timed. The reasoned amendment points out that a comprehensive and fully funded program to target and divert at-risk individuals and cohorts of young people to prevent crimes occurring is to be agreed to by all stakeholders. These things that should have been done and been in the bill are not there. That is why the timing for this is all wrong.

A report was done in 2017. Penny Armytage and Professor James Ogloff published a document called Youth Justice Review and Strategy: Meeting Needs and Reducing Offending. It was a landmark study into Victoria’s youth justice system. The report stated that:

The Review provides an opportunity to redesign the system to create an evidence-based response to youth offending and youth crime that is reflective of the needs and attitudes of young people and the broader community.

Since this review was done seven-plus years ago not one thing has been addressed by this government. Frankly, this legislation completely misses the mark.

No-one wants to see children incarcerated. No-one wants to see that. In fact it is very disappointing to see that this government are trying in this youth bill to take away the opportunity for the youth services, which they have not developed, strengthened and designed – those that are currently there – to actually help a child and divert them away from the system. That is what this youth bill should be doing. It should be aiming to keep the community safe, diverting children away from the system but also making sure that children understand what they have done and have the opportunity to be directed in the right way rather than heading towards a life of crime.

By changing the age of responsibility it is actually doing something I think far more damaging than good. What we are doing by raising the age is taking away the ability for a child to actually have committed a crime. When children commit significant crimes, there is already a legal principle called doli incapax, and this legal principle protects children by the prosecution and the court having to without a doubt prove that the child understood their actions, had the capacity to understand their actions and had the intellect to understand their actions. That is very, very hard to prove; it is a very difficult principle of law. We already saw earlier this year where a 12-year-old committed a significant crime and the court made the decision that they were not able to take responsibility for their crime.

To prove the fact that this is a very difficult legal principle to get past, there actually are no children in the prison system at 10 or 11 years of age at all. All of us would agree that we do not want to see children in prisons. That is absolutely a given, but at the same time if you take away the ability for the police and the system to actually help a child who has done something wrong – and let us face it, stealing, society has decided for thousands of years, is wrong – under this law a child can walk into a store, put an iPhone in their pocket and walk out, and it is not theft. So we are giving children a very, very wrong understanding of what they should and should not be doing. We should be saying to that child, ‘That is actually wrong. If you continue down this path, your life could lead to a life of crime and incarceration. Instead of that, let’s put the wraparound services around you you need that are going to help you realise what will happen if you don’t recognise stealing and the consequences of that.’ Children need consequences; they need boundaries. For us to take away the right or the ability of the wraparound services to actually get involved in that child’s life at that point I think is actually sending a really bad signal. All children, in my mind, are looking to have boundaries and consequences set for them so they can mature into adults and know how to work together in a cohesive society.

We do not have children in the system. Of course it sounds good, because none of us want to have a child incarcerated, but there are already the principles of law that are protecting children. Effectively, by putting this bill through we are giving children a green light to do crime. If the government were serious about addressing the youth crime issue, I do not know why they would cut $20 million from youth crime in this year’s budget. Why would you cut $20 million from diversion programs that help the youth? This is, once again, a bill that plays to an audience where if you do not look into it, it makes sense – oh gosh, we do not want to see children in prison. But that already exists to protect them, so I think what we are doing is a disservice to the youth.

We all know that under the Allan government we are seeing incredible crime rates right across Victoria. In south-west Victoria we do not usually have higher crime stats, but what we are seeing is a very different environment in the township of Warrnambool, for example. I have had a number of shop owners come to me recently and say they are frightened. Their staff are frightened to lock up. We had an incident where a shop owner’s customers were hiding in the shop from someone who was bashing on the window and bashing on the glass. We had a shop owner assaulted recently. Lea Watson, who owns Pitstop, came to speak to me about her staff being too frightened to lock up on their own at night because the streets have really got quite bad. At Heatherlie, an independent living facility behind my office, the elderly community in there are actually really frightened because of the amount of people that are loitering around there and frightening the elderly – so much so that one of my friends actually goes around each night and locks the door for her elderly aunty who has not got the capability with her fingers to be able to do it herself. So they are that frightened that they are asking for help every single night to be locked in.

It is really quite significant the amount of crime we are seeing. A lot of the issues the police are not able to manage, and they keep saying, ‘We need more resources. We need more instruments.’ No-one in our community is saying the police are not doing as good a job as they can possibly do, because we know that they just are not getting the resources. They are often even called to Melbourne to back up the metropolitan area, and we are left with less and less resources. I was told recently by one of the police that we only have one paddy van in the area for the whole of the district.

John Mullahy: That’s a racist slur. Don’t use paddy wagon, thanks.

Roma BRITNELL: The wagon that we put people in who are criminals. I am not familiar with –

John Mullahy: Divisional van.

Roma BRITNELL: Divisional wagon; thank you for the correction. But the reality is there is only one, and the police really do need extra support, and the community have a right to feel safe. So bringing this Youth Justice Bill in now when the work has not been done – not one single thing has been done in the seven-plus years since this opportunity was presented to the government in the form of the review done by the experts in the field – really does say here we have another example of where the government refuses to actually do the work and make a difference.

We have got increased crime rates. We have not got enough houses for people. We have got an education system that is collapsing. We have got a health service that is having cuts and mergers being threatened across. We have got roads that are falling apart. This is the worst Labor government we have seen probably in the history of this nation and certainly in the history of this state, and we are certainly seeing them unravel before our very eyes, where we are seeing cuts to programs – like a cut to youth diversionary programs of $20 million, at a time when youth crime is exploding – and a bill getting put through without the work being done on actually developing the systems that would help youths stay out of prison. They just go with the populist comment of ‘Let’s not put kids in prison.’ Well, kids are not in prison, and the law already protects children with the legal principles that exist. What we really need to see from this government is investment in our youth and support for our youth ‍– more investment, not less. It is extremely disappointing to see this bill come in in 2024 when the government has had seven years to do the work on putting wraparound supports in place to actually assist those children and do more, not less.

Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (15:16): I too rise to speak in support of the Youth Justice Bill 2024, a very weighty tome indeed. I want to just acknowledge at the outset the hard work that the Minister for Police, the Minister for Youth Justice and also the Attorney-General have put in to bring this bill into the chamber. It does deal with a wide number of issues, which have been touched on already, and I will go into a bit of detail but I want to just initially reference something that the lead speaker for the opposition, the member for Berwick, was saying.

He was talking about an incident that occurred very close to my electorate during the break. That was the tragic death of William Taylor in a car crash. The member for Berwick then spelt out the prosecution’s case for why the alleged driver should not have been bailed. But he failed to mention that the actual media report quoted the magistrate as saying that the prosecution’s case was very weak and that he did not feel that the evidence was there. I think we need to always remember that we must maintain obviously faith in our police to do their job but also faith in our criminal justice system. The presumption of innocence is a fundamental tenet of our legal system and our criminal justice system, and we always must respect the law with any of these cases.

In relation to the bill at hand, obviously, as has been referred to, this started with a key recommendation from the Armytage and Ogloff review of 2017 that the state should commit to a new standalone Youth Justice Act. This is exactly what this bill seeks to achieve. We have not really had a comprehensive review of the system for many, many years – since 1989, in fact – and obviously times have changed and society has changed a lot in that time. The current system does rely on a number of outdated assumptions and approaches to youth justice that do not accord with our contemporary understandings around rehabilitation and recidivism. It is really important that we as a government ensure that our justice system keeps our community safe and gets better long-term outcomes by evolving and becoming more responsive end to end.

We know that children and young people who enter the criminal justice system require different responses to those for adults. We have to recognise that the individuals’ brain function has not fully developed. There is a capacity for rehabilitation and helping get young people back on the right path in life, and we do have an obligation to do that. As parents, as friends, as family members as well as legislators, I think we accept that as a vital part of our task. I know we have seen a lot in the news recently, and there are a lot of media reports about a youth crime wave, but the rate of youth offending in Victoria has actually been trending downwards in the last 15 years. As reported by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2022–23 Victoria had the lowest rate of young people aged 10 to 17 under youth justice supervision on an average day, which was almost three times lower than the national rate. Victoria also had the lowest rate of young people aged 10 to 17 under community supervision and in custody as well as the lowest rate of Aboriginal young people aged 10 to 17 under supervision on an average day.

That said, I do acknowledge that it is an issue for the Victorian community and for the community in Box Hill, and I mentioned the recent crash and death of a young man nearby in the electorate as well as the very sad and tragic murder of a local GP earlier this year. I know it is tempting sometimes to call for a more punitive approach, and particularly we see that repeatedly from the opposition. That is their clarion call, the one consistent message – it is always about locking up and throwing away the key. But disproportionate criminal justice interventions can actually increase the risk of offending for young people. The current evidence is that the younger a child is when they are first sentenced, the more likely they are to reoffend and to reoffend more frequently and violently as adults. We have to focus on helping these children and address the underlying causes of offending, and get them on the right path to keep the community safer in the long run.

I have to disagree with the points made by the member for South-West Coast in terms of saying that raising the age of criminal responsibility to 12 is basically giving a green light to committing criminal offences. We know the issues of people who are at that age and their ability to actually form a mental capacity to commit a crime. You might not have a criminal trial, but there are still avenues and opportunities for individuals in that cohort who in many circumstances come from a very disadvantaged situation and need assistance, and there are still those crime prevention and assistance programs available. It does not require the criminal justice system to lead them on the path and get them into a program and make sure that their lives are better. Putting them into the criminal justice system at such an early stage is not going to be leading to better outcomes in the longer term.

On that point, current medical evidence is clearly showing that young children, particularly younger than 10, lack the cognitive maturity to form criminal intent. Through what we have learned about child and adolescent brain development, we know that the current minimum age of criminal responsibility in Victoria is too low. As I said, it is not so much about how many children of that age are currently in the criminal justice system, it is about their capacity to actually know what they are doing and about what we can do as a community and as a state to ensure the betterment of their lives and ensure that they can fulfil all of their potential.

There are a number of other important elements to the bill. I know a particular element of the bill that has been talked about in the media is about a trial to allow up to 50 young people at any one time to be subject to electronic monitoring of their bail conditions and provide additional support to high-risk young people on bail who do not have electronic monitoring conditions. It does need to be reiterated that this is not just for any young person who gets bail. It is intended to target those who are considered to be at high risk of repeated high-harm offending but where their risk can be mitigated through the use of monitoring, and youth justice will be tasked with preparing a suitability report on the child to assist the court in determining whether the imposition of electronic monitoring conditions is appropriate in their circumstances. The court will be provided with technical information about whether there are sufficient electronic monitoring resources available to monitor the young person and whether electronic monitoring is able to be supported at their home. There have been a number of different views put forward on the electronic monitoring trial, and I think it is an important trial for a particular cohort of offenders. There are, as I said, many different elements to this bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

Tim READ (Brunswick) (15:26): I too am speaking on the Youth Justice Bill 2024. It has been quite a while since we last considered a bill of this scope, with over a thousand pages addressing issues of substance across a number of portfolios. Our task now is to consider whether the bill matches our vision of how we think young people, children, should be treated by our criminal justice system by police, by the courts and by youth corrections facilities. Prisons harm children. They punish but rarely help. The criminal legal system takes children away from their families, communities and other supports and pushes them down a path that often leads to adult prison. Encouragingly, there are indications throughout this bill on rehabilitation and reform, and there is a focus on diversion programs. The evidence is clear that diverting children away from the legal system has a positive impact in reducing their risk of reoffending.

I would like to draw attention now to the substantial amount of advocacy by many people and organisations who work with young people. We know you have spent many hard years advocating for reform. Given the bill has clear principles and a commitment to working with Aboriginal communities, I would like to give a special acknowledgement to the tireless work of the Aboriginal Justice Caucus, among other groups and organisations. There are provisions that we should welcome in this bill as well as things to criticise or improve. Let us start with some of the positive points in the bill. We are pleased to see restorative justice principles and processes integrated into the youth justice system. The bill raises the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years without exception, and while the Greens would like to see that raised to 14, we do recognise this is a significant first step.

There is a focus in the bill on diverting young people away from the criminal justice system. We know that minimising contact with the system will reduce the criminogenic effects such contact can have on children’s development and wellbeing. Diversions, which are alternatives, include warnings, cautions and family group conferences. In this bill there is an important legislative prohibition on solitary confinement in youth detention, and in fact I introduced very similar provisions in this place in the last term. There is a clear presumption of doli incapax. This means that 12- and 13-year-olds do not have the capacity to differentiate between right and wrong, and that will be enshrined in legislation. There are improved provisions around sentencing and improved definitions of ‘use of force’ and ‘use of search powers’, areas in which police now have clearer and we hope stricter guidelines in which to operate.

Most importantly, we know that First Nations children are over-represented in Victoria’s youth justice system for many reasons beyond their control, so we welcome the following measures in the bill. There are guiding principles specific to Aboriginal children and young persons. There is an obligation on the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Safety to develop strategic partnerships with Aboriginal communities and to consult with representatives of the Aboriginal community on justice-related issues. The bill establishes Aboriginal youth justice agencies, and there is the provision of additional measures for Aboriginal children and young persons, such as cultural support plans for Aboriginal youth.

I now want to raise four negative elements of the bill. First, raise the age: the Greens will put forward an amendment to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years without exception and establish a presumption of bail. It has been longstanding Greens policy that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised to at least 14. Whether sentenced or unsentenced, children cannot appreciate the negative impacts of their actions and do not belong in prison. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has called on countries to raise the age to at least 14 years.

Second, we do not believe that the electronic monitoring trial will work as envisaged, and we will be moving amendments to delete powers to conduct that trial. I have seen a lot of law enforcement technology introduced on the understanding that it only be used in narrowly defined circumstances, and before long it becomes commonplace. Capsicum spray was a case in point, and now it is being sprayed on unruly crowds at the tennis.

Three, while the bill does strengthen diversion options, (a) we believe there needs to be a stronger presumption in favour of youth warnings, cautions, youth justice conferencing and diversion, (b) there should absolutely be a right to and a requirement for legal advice offered automatically for any child prior to consenting to diversion – it should not need to wait for the child to ask for legal help – and (c) there is no need for prosecution to consent to a diversion pathway.

The fourth concern is that there are new police powers that enable police to transport children aged 10 and 11 in a police vehicle; to detain them, including at police stations, without time limits; and to use force on them and subject them to searches. By creating various approaches to engaging with children aged 10 and 11, aged over 12 but under 14 and aged over 14, the bill does run the risk of becoming too complex for police to use. This has proved dangerous in the past. During the coronial inquest into the death of Veronica Nelson members of Victoria Police admitted to being unable to understand the Bail Act 1977, and therefore they established an unwritten policy that contravened their obligations under the Bail Act. Veronica died in custody only a few days after being remanded on minor offending charges by police officers who did not understand or properly apply the then bail laws of Victoria. The Greens think it is important that appropriate legal frameworks exist to regulate the exercise of police powers, and we will be moving amendments to strengthen these in the other place.

The bill raises the minimum age of detention to 14 years, with significant exceptions. Due to the exceptions this will affect very few people; however, increasing the minimum age of detention to 16 would have a material effect and decrease the number of Aboriginal children in custody, and it would support progress towards achieving the youth detention goals in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and the Victorian Aboriginal Justice Agreement. Prisons are not safe places for children, and consistent with the recommendation of the Yoorrook Justice Commission and international human rights standards, another Greens amendment will be that the minimum age of detention should also be raised to 16 years without exception.

In the bill there is a clause that isolation is permissible if necessary:

in the interests of the security or safe operation of the youth justice custodial centre …

This clause should be deleted. It is so broad that it could justify any potential isolation of a child, including due to such reasons as the understaffing of a facility. A unilateral power to place a child in isolation is inappropriate given the disproportionately negative impact isolation has on young people. As highlighted by the Victorian Ombudsman in her investigation into the use of isolation of children in custody, isolation carries different consequences in relation to children, and custodial staff have a limited understanding of the dangers of isolation, its impact on mental health and its effects on behaviour. We think that wellbeing requirements should increase. There should be clearer definitions as to what constitutes ‘meaningful human contact’. In my view, simply handing a child a book does not qualify. Allowances for exercise should increase from the current 1 hour per day to 3 hours per day for children. There should be a stronger and clearer requirement to collect and publicly publish data on the number of warnings, cautions, summonses and prosecutions that proceed against children, and that should be a requirement for Victoria Police, for prosecuting agencies, for youth justice, for the Commission for Children and Young People and for all courts.

We will also be moving an amendment to remove the clause that prohibits a child or young person held in custody from altering their record of sex if it ‘would be reasonably likely to be regarded as offensive by a victim of crime or an appreciable sector of the community’.

I would like to conclude by acknowledging the work of the Smart Justice coalition, the community legal sector and many others, who have tirelessly advocated for a humane and rational approach to these laws so that we have an evidence-based criminal justice system rather than just a penal system with provisions motivated by medieval notions of revenge or 19th-century notions of the therapeutic power of the deprivation of liberty. We will have more to say on this in the other place.

Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (15:35): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the Youth Justice Bill ‍2024. I also want to start by acknowledging the ministers, the Attorney-General, the police, youth justice staff and organisations in the legal sector for their input into this bill and their commitment to young people in Victoria. This is an important bill that aims to reduce offending and improve community safety while providing genuine opportunities for young people who come into contact with youth justice to turn their lives around. This legislation will establish a robust end-to-end framework for Victoria’s youth justice system that is all about improving community safety. This is the next important step in our reforms to deliver modern and effective responses to youth offending guided by evidence, and I think that is the important fact here. It is guided by evidence. I think that is an important part of the work that has been done by us as a government. As a community we want to ensure that not only the community is kept safe but we are doing the right thing by young people.

In my previous life I worked with many young people for many years, and it was not necessarily directly in the youth justice area. It was in the homelessness area, but you could see young people coming into that environment who we would call pretty innocent who we would then say were contaminated by older young people who were already in the criminal justice system. I think we need to look at preventions to ensure that we are not putting young people into institutions where they do not benefit unless they have got the rehabilitation supports and the programs to be able to turn things around. This bill does contain nation-leading reforms which build on Victoria’s success in driving down the numbers of young people engaged with youth justice. This is a result of a significant amount of work following the central recommendations of the 2017 Armytage and Ogloff review that Victoria establish a new dedicated Youth Justice Act. This is about ensuring we have a modern and robust youth justice framework that is focused on community safety and guided by the evidence of what works.

We know that children and young people who come into contact with the criminal justice system need a different response to adults, recognising their immaturity and capacity for rehabilitation, and the best way to do that is to divert young people away from the criminal justice system as early as possible while holding serious and repeat offenders to account. There are also key reforms for victims of crime, including creating a new victims register for people impacted by youth offending. I recently had the opportunity to have a work experience young woman in my office who was really keen to have a look at this bill, and that was Effie, who took the opportunity to read the bill as a young person and offer up her views on the challenges of youth justice. I do want to quote some of what she said because I think it is very relevant. She wrote:

… by continuing diversion programs and community-based initiatives, the aim is to continue steering young people away from revolving doors of incarceration and towards opportunities for growth and fulfilment. This is a proactive approach that not only reduces recidivism but also strengthens the fabric of our community by fostering resilience and empowerment.

Effie went on to highlight that it has been 40 years since the minimum age for criminal responsibility was set to 10 years of age, and during this time we have been able to progress in our knowledge about adolescent brain development and the needs of youth. She concluded that increasing police powers and pipelining more children into youth prisons is never the answer. I want to thank Effie for her contribution.

I think it is important that we are listening to young people. I also often talk to young people about many issues that are impacting them. In recent times I have spoken to them about youth justice and what this bill means, and a lot of those young people initially were saying, ‘Well, why are we all being tarred with the same brush?’ ‘It is always young people that are the causes of significant crimes in our community’ – that is what we keep hearing, particularly from those opposite, who beat up this fear about young people out in the community running rampant. I think at one stage they were saying young people were running down Geelong streets with machetes, and it was just so far from the truth it was not funny.

So young people are taking notice of what they are seeing, on social media in particular, and they are feeling quite offended by those comments. I know that in my community of Geelong there is a small group of repeat offenders that are committing some of those crimes, and that small group has been diverted into a program, which we have been funding for some time now, which is highly successful. That program is really a wraparound service for those young people to keep them out of the justice system. That is what this bill is about, and that is what this government is about. We do not want to be locking up children. That is not what this is about. What we do need is to have those programs, which are wrapping their arms around those young people, to keep them out of the justice system and out of institutions.

The bill will make Victoria the first state in Australia to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12. It includes electronic monitoring trials for young people on bail. The bill is also a comprehensive reform across the full youth justice system. We are legislating for more early pre-charge diversionary opportunities, including warnings, cautions and early diversion group conferences, supporting better outcomes for victims of crime. The bill includes clear principles for sentencing, custody and other important factors that must be taken into account when a young person comes into contact with the criminal justice system. We are legislating a new custodial framework to make our youth justice precinct safer for those in custody, and just as importantly, for our hardworking youth justice staff. In addition to electronic monitoring, the bill includes other measures to respond to a small cohort of serious repeat offenders, with enhanced measures to target high-risk, high-harm offending.

This bill also includes meaningful steps towards establishing a self-determined, Aboriginal-controlled youth justice system in the future. I think it is worth noting that the recent Closing the Gap data, which came out yesterday, actually shows a decrease in Aboriginal young people entering the justice system, which is really heartening to hear. On the success of the Koori Courts, in my electorate of Geelong the Koori Court operates I think once a fortnight. I often talk to the elders who sit on that Koori Court, and they are really happy with the way the court operates. They can see that it makes a difference for those young people, and those young people are listening to their elders and their community, which is really important. I am really pleased that we are taking our time to allow the community to form their views on what they think should be happening for Aboriginal young people.

Obviously the Yoorrook Justice Commission has also identified a great deal of information and stories from young Aboriginal people across this state, identifying the impacts of incarceration and what that means for their communities. I hope that we will be looking at the evidence that has come through that commission in terms of developing further work on Aboriginal young people and the impacts on them regarding incarceration and what programs can be put in place that are actually run and controlled by the Aboriginal community, because we know that when they are led by First Nations groups, they are generally very successful. We have seen that through the Koori Courts. I think we do need to do more, and that is exactly what we are doing as a government. The Aboriginal community here in Victoria are working very hard to come up with the best possible options for Aboriginal young people. I commend the bill to the house.

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (15:46): This afternoon I wish to contribute to what is an important bill that has come before the Parliament today, and that of course is the Youth Justice Bill ‍2024. It is important because how we deal with young people, how we support young people and how we enable young people to live their best lives and move forward are always important matters that the Parliament needs to be cognisant of and at all times be prepared to put the resources and the support into. What is disappointing for many in the opposition’s point of view, and me in particular on this one, is that this bill has its genesis in a report done in 2017. That was some seven years ago.

The important issue of youth justice and dealing with young people is something I am quite passionate about, because as a country MP I know young people are often dealt a really short straw in life – in education, in health services and in mental health services and even in terms of getting employment, jobs and opportunities. It is always uppermost in our minds. This government has claimed to have had this as a priority in its legislative agenda, but the genesis for this came from back in 2017.

For something as important as this bill – and it is a significant bill and, I must say, one of the most impressive tomes that I have seen in my eight years in the Parliament, and there has been a lot of work put into it – the question has to be asked: is this government actually putting its money where its mouth is? Is this government really showing a true commitment to helping make the lot of a young person in Victoria better? The reason I ask that is because it is understandable that it is a significant bill and one that would take a lot of time to come to the Parliament, but in the process you would think a government that really cared about this would actually be putting the resources into the support of young people as they get there so that when the bill comes to the Parliament it is a natural progression that the law is tightened, improved and reformed and it matches in with the actions of the government over the last seven years. Sadly that is not the case. We know, for example, that just this year alone there has been a $20 million cut to funding of diversion programs and support programs for those facing the criminal justice system. What sort of government, who at the core and the basis of its reform says, ‘We’re going to divert people out of the criminal justice system, out of our prisons, out of our detention,’ actually significantly cuts back the funding for that? That is a real concern to me as to what is going to happen.

I guess as a country MP I reflect on the reforms that the government made last year on alcohol abuse and public drunkenness. Once again it was a similar sort of rhetoric: ‘We shouldn’t be criminalising people for just being drunk and it’s important for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and some of the most vulnerable cohorts that they’re not instantly caught and thrown into jail and the other consequences of the criminal justice system.’ But what have we seen as a consequence of that law? When you move outside of the inner circle of Melbourne of course there are no support services at all. If you are a person with an alcohol abuse problem in regional Victoria now – and this is a growing and significant problem – you cannot go to the local hospital, because the funding has been cut and there are no support services there. The police stations have been cut and you are not allowed to go there, and the police certainly cannot in any way assist a drunken person. There are no mental health services. There are no overnight emergency accommodation or bed services. There is literally nothing. I speak from the experience of my own community, where we have for the first time in my 52 years regular occurrences of people sleeping rough on the streets in our country towns. That is something no Victorians have really ever seen before, and it is because there are just no support services. Nothing can be done.

My great concern with this is we are going to say now to a cohort of people, potentially even more vulnerable than drunk people, that they will not have the services and support they need and require in order to ensure not only their safety but their progression through life and adolescence. This legislation will effectively say to the police in particular that if they come across a young person who may or may not have committed a crime but is probably not up to any good, they have very few things at their disposal to help, because if you are in that case in a country community there are no youth services available. You are not able to divert that young person to help. Traditionally in a country town the police run a role not just of a punitive, criminal enforcing role but as mobile support services. If you talk to a country copper, they have regularly put someone in the back of a car and taken them back home. They have taken them to their grandma because they know Mum and Dad are perhaps not capable of looking after them and they know where their relatives live and where support services are. They might know of a relative or a friend or even someone at the local school or whatever that might be able to assist.

The notion in this bill inherently says that common sense and practical decision-making are not something that our justice system does. There are plenty of examples of when they get it wrong, for sure, but no-one ever sits and collates the many, many times that they do do a good job, that they do provide a functional role and that they do actually support communities and try to keep people out of trouble. It is the hallmark of the way the system works, and what we are actually doing is, by having this notion that all interactions with the criminal justice system are bad, we are actually throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This bill does not actually seek to find the happy medium that says that sometimes we can get it right, particularly in communities in Victoria where there are no options, where there are not going to be the street support services. It is all very well here in Melbourne, where there are all sorts of food kitchens and there are all sorts of youth drop-in centres and all sorts of other paid-for services. They just do not exist in so much of Victoria. My concern is: what will happen to those people? What will happen to those young people?

Take, for example, the electorate of Polwarth. The young people in the electorate of Polwarth for the last five years across my P–12 and secondary schools are running at an average of nearly 50 per cent non-school attendance in the state school system. Not one dollar from this state government has been applied to supporting those children. In fact if it were not for the philanthropic nature of the St Joseph’s learning centre here in North Melbourne, who have come and brought a small self-funded campus to my community in my electorate of Polwarth, there would be 100 kids today, young people that fit the bill of what we are talking about today, who would not be getting an education. They are being educated by a third party, who are giving them the youth support, who are giving them the counselling, who are giving them the drug and alcohol support, who are giving them clothes, who are giving them food, who are giving them the support that the state is just not giving them. We are a lucky community in that someone has filled that gap, but across the electorate of Polwarth I have some 40 towns. One out of 40 towns has some youth support – no-one else does.

This bill does not provide that support. This bill does not come with a commitment from this government that every young person will have the support for education, will have the support for drugs and alcohol and will have somewhere to go at night when Mum and Dad do not provide a safe environment to be in. Every single person in this chamber comes across these cases. We know that it is that background – that lack of a consistent, fair and safe home to go to or a lack of an example in their lives – that so often leads to the problems that this legislation today is trying to deal with. While it has been an important process to come to a reform of youth justice and we can always do better, this bill does not accept the reality that Victoria faces today. It is a bill that has been written through the lens of bureaucrats and others who are not fully cognisant of the poor state of support for young people in this state today.

If I can just reflect, in the last minute, as Shadow Minister for Housing, for example, we have seen in every single reporting period since this government has been in place a family escaping domestic violence and needing accommodation has waited longer and longer and longer. We are now two years on, and they cannot even provide housing and support for a mum and two kids on a regular basis. Once again, in country Victoria the wait is even longer. That is reflective of just the basics of looking after people. We are now saying to our 10- and 11-year-olds, and there are many in this place that want this to go for 13- and 14-year-olds as well: if you have been involved in an incident and you have needed support or a first responder, and particularly in the country it is the police, they are powerless to intervene and provide the care and support that you will need. This bill is an important one, but unfortunately the government has again missed the mark, and I find it difficult to support the bill in its current state.

Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (15:56): With some indulgence, I would like to start by acknowledging the tragic passing of William Taylor, who was a constituent of the district of Ashwood. Obviously that has been in the news in recent times. I will not go any further into matters that may be relevant in any future court proceedings. I know some others have canvassed things, but I am just going to be very careful and not do that. I cannot and I am sure we all cannot imagine the grief of a family losing a loved one in tragic circumstances such as those. It was just senseless, and I just want to put that on the record.

This is, as I think one other member mentioned, a very weighty tome – the bill is very thick – but it is a very important and weighty topic as well. I actually think as a house we have done a fairly good job so far in all agreeing that this is complicated. Whether we agree or disagree on some of the finer points of it, I think we can all agree that we would rather there were no children in the corrections system, that there was no youth crime. That is obviously not a possibility and has never been one. I support this bill, and I thank the Minister for Police at the table, the Attorney-General, the Premier and all members for their input on this, because I think this is an area of balance in a system.

I take the member for Polwarth up on his point that we do not often talk about when the criminal justice system gets it right, because we tend to focus on where it seems to have got it wrong. It is difficult to understand without detail sometimes decisions that may have been made by our judiciary, and I have spent a lot of time on the phone in the last few weeks in particular, although in my district of Ashwood this is something that has been a topic of conversation for some time.

I will come to other aspects in a moment, but I will go to the part of this bill on how we are trialling electronic monitoring for repeat youth offenders. I know there is contention on both sides of the argument for this trial. I think the member for Malvern – and I am not trying to paraphrase or verbal him – made a comment that the youths may see this as a badge of honour. That is possible. I would argue that we are in a position now where we need to provide our judiciary – at least this is what I am getting from constituents in Ashwood – with some other options. There is a sense in the community, rightly or wrongly – it does not really matter – that there are a number of offenders who are young who are going round and round.

The trial of up to 50 youth offenders to be monitored, as I think the member for Preston said in his contribution, might keep one of them out of the corrections system. I do not think that any of us would argue against the idea that children are better off not in incarceration. I think we would all tend to agree. Again I am not trying to put words in people’s mouths, but I know the member for Berwick has in the past said pretty much – now I am using my words – that diversion programs are important. We are doing work in that space. The numbers in our youth correction facilities are a third of what I believe they were 10 years ago. There is a lot of good work. To take the example from the member for Polwarth talking about the criminal justice system, there is a lot of good work that gets done. But when we see examples, which appear to be on the increase, of where it does not go right, the public has a valid right to expect that we are taking that seriously. I have said this to many constituents over the last 12 months, especially the last few weeks: that the Premier is taking it seriously, the Attorney-General is taking it seriously, the Minister for Police is taking it seriously – we are all taking it seriously. I would happily suggest that that is everyone on all sides of this house.

For those who are concerned about the trial of electronic monitoring, I will just make a couple of observations. Firstly, I do not think that anyone in here is pretending it is going to fix all the problems. No single step will remove all crime from the state of Victoria, as much as we would all like that to be the case. That said, I would argue when you have a young person who is maybe – let us face it, they are not the sharpest tools in the shed, these people. They are making some pretty bad choices. Those who are making those choices more than once and appearing before the court system, if they are given a condition of monitoring, even if they do not think that matters, a lot of the offences that are happening ‍– the aggravated burglaries, those type of things – are happening in groups. And I put to you that even though they might not be the cleverest people, if little Timmy comes in to do whatever activities they were planning on doing in the evening and he is wearing a bracelet, even though he might not think it matters, I reckon the other three or four of his friends might think it matters. So hypothetically there is one less child – youth – out there committing crimes.

The statistics seem to report that there is a very small cohort of kids who are, let us face it, going down a bad path, and who knows when they will realise their life is not going the way it should be. But if a number of them are then taken out of the system by monitoring, by diversion, by investment in keeping them on their conditions, then maybe we break that business model, whatever that business model is. Maybe we make enough of a dint that this pattern that seems to be occurring, if not stopped, is decreased, and I am hopeful that that will be a part of it.

It is not the only part of this bill by a long shot. I spoke to the good police down at Mount Waverley station about a month ago. We talked about the bill that was introduced into the house, and I will just say this briefly: one of the things that they were very. very happy about was this change in the age of the solicitation offence. At the moment if you are over 21 and you solicit a youth to commit a crime, that is an offence. If you are 18 to 21, it does not qualify. We are changing that in this bill so that it goes to 18. There was a terrible incident in Ashburton about two years ago, I think, where a number of older people were with a younger group, but the older ones stayed away and the younger group attacked someone. I find it very disconcerting that we may have adults doing that. Maybe they used to be in the youth justice system or the youth criminal system and now they are not. They do not want to go to the grown-up jail, because that is all very scary, but if they are soliciting younger people they should be punished for that. I recommend the bill to the house.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (16:06): I rise to talk on the Youth Justice Bill 2024, and in doing so I would like to thank the member for Berwick for his lead on the bill. As has been mentioned a lot through everyone’s speeches, which I have listened to, it is a lengthy bill – over 1000 pages – so I have listened with interest to everyone’s contributions. In the Latrobe Valley community we have a worrying, continuing spike in crime, including youth crime and in particular violent crime, both in home invasions and also crimes on the street. It is an issue that is raised constantly with my office, and I would predict that it would be the same with every member’s office, whether you are in regional Victoria or inner-city Melbourne. It is something that is a hard issue to fix, but we need to be proactive in the space to make sure that we are getting stuff right with it.

Our youth justice system is meant to be a sort of diversionary pathway, and we have pathways in the Latrobe Valley. One in particular, Youth Space, is in Morwell and has over 700 or 800 clients, as they like to call them, that use this particular facility as a diversionary program for youths that have not got the greatest home life, and I think this is where a lot of troubles and issues do start. As the member for Frankston said, behind every issue with a child you can probably pick up that there is an issue at home, and I think that is 100 per cent right. We can see the significance of getting the Youth Justice Bill right ‍– it is not an easy one – and I think everyone in the chamber here recognises that. Car theft, breaking into houses, running through shopping centres, carrying concealed weapons – these are a lot of the things that we put up with in the Latrobe Valley, in our shopping centres. Mums and dads are at home at night-time with the kids, and young people are breaking into houses and stealing cars so they can do what they want to do.

We just heard from the member for Ashwood, and he was being very respectful and very delicate, obviously, on an issue that has happened in his area. I have also had a similar thing happen in my area, and I am lucky enough that I can stand here today. We see one side where we are trying to fix the youth justice system, but on the flip side we also have the victims of crime. I am lucky enough that I can stand in the chamber today and I can be a mouthpiece for the Gordon family, who are people from Traralgon. On 13 January their son Ashley Gordon, Dr Ash – he was a young Victorian doctor – was fatally stabbed by two 16-year-old criminals. The system failed Dr Ash and the system failed the family. I say that in part because the perpetrators that committed the crime were out on bail. I think that there is more to the justice system. You have got to balance up what we are trying to achieve and, if we do not achieve it, what happens on the flip side.

I was lucky enough to sit down with the family, and if I stood here and spoke how Mr and Mrs Gordon spoke and the anger and the want for change in their minds and in their hearts for their son Ash, you would be telling me to sit down, because I think the words would be definitely unparliamentary. There is a lot of anger that comes through with the family, but in saying that, they know that there has to be a difference made so this never, ever happens again to another family member. I sat down and my colleague Melina Bath in the other place joined me, and we listened to the family start off talking about Ash but then talking about changes that they wanted made. They wanted changes made to the concealed weapons law because that is what took their son’s life. He was a doctor living a great life in Melbourne. He was the life of the party; he lit up the room when he came home for family functions, birthdays, Christmas time and weekends. It is a family that will never, ever get over it.

They are very lucky they have a daughter Nat who is very articulate and will not let this go until significant changes are made in this chamber on behalf of her brother, because he paid the ultimate price for people that have committed crimes and gone through the justice system and been back out on the street. That is a great tragedy not only for them but obviously for other members in this chamber that have gone through sitting down with families. It is pretty hard. I am a father with children, and to think if it was me and one of my children had been left lying on the ground, I cannot really imagine getting that phone call after it had happened from the police. I think that is one of the most harrowing things that Mr and Mrs Gordon will never, ever get over. It consumes their life continually every single day, to the point where Mrs Gordon says, ‘I keep expecting Ash to walk through the door and sit down and have a cuppa with me and make me feel better,’ but that is never, ever going to happen again.

They rely on us being able to make significant changes to our justice laws but also, as we go through, to our bail laws, giving police every law that they need to be able to search people on the street. I know we try to look after the people that commit the crimes. I have spoken about diversionary programs and Youth Space in Morwell, who look after this. But speaking about that, they just had their funding pulled before the budget. It was only because we jumped up and down and proved the point to the government about what they achieve in keeping people off the streets and making a difference – you could actually have the data that they were making a difference – that they got a 12-month reprieve. We need to make sure, when we are sitting down and reading these bills, that if we are going to have these diversionary programs we need to keep funding them so that for children that are on the street that do not have a great home life and are in and out of gangs, so to speak – because as the member for Ashwood said, they do walk around town in groups – there are places for them to go.

As I said, as I stand here being able to relate the pain and suffering that the Gordon family daily go through, we need to make sure that right across the board we do the right thing and we leave no stone unturned so no other family ever has to go through that phone call at night or in the morning telling them that their son or daughter has been killed in unforeseen circumstances. It is something that should not have happened, because people should not have been on the street, but it did. I note that we do oppose this bill going through because we think that there need to be more changes.

Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (16:16): I rise today to speak in support of the Youth Justice Bill ‍2024 and to add my thoughts and contributions to what have been really thoughtful contributions from other members in this place today. I suppose in a quick summary this legislation really is to establish that robust framework that Victoria’s youth justice system needs, and it is about improving our community safety. Before I get into the parts of the bill and linking it a little bit to my own electorate, I do want to recognise or take this time to recognise the profound impact that crime does have on individuals, on families and on communities. It certainly has a ripple effect and touches every aspect of life. I have spoken to constituents who have reached out to me or who I have encountered out in the community who have been victims of crime. It has been mainly theft of property and scams ‍– online scams are a big problem in my community – but it is really that invasion of privacy. It is distressing. They have concerns about their personal safety, and it certainly has that deep lingering effect on people, so I would like to start with acknowledging that. And that is why this bill really is so important. This bill and future reforms that we have committed to doing as a government are things that I also have personally committed to doing to keep our community safe.

Addressing youth crime, though, particularly does require that multifaceted approach, and it is about tackling the root causes and providing support for both prevention and rehabilitation. We are certainly as a government really committed to making sure that reform is done properly for our youth justice system. We have committed to a review of our system and have come out with some recommendations to improve it. The Youth Justice Review and Strategy: Meeting Needs and Reducing Offending is a comprehensive review that was undertaken, conducted by Penny Armytage and Professor James Ogloff, and it really just marked that first examination of a system and aimed to modernise and strengthen our youth justice framework. Some key recommendations around legislation were early intervention and diversion, which is what we have done, but also some systematic improvements and of course investment, which we have also done in this space. Overall the strategy does aim to create a more effective and humane youth justice system by addressing those underlying causes of offending, improving our support services and ensuring that interventions are appropriate and timely. The bill today is clear in its intentions. It is there to reduce reoffending and improve our community safety.

I think it has been mentioned today that we do have one of the lowest rates of youth offending in Australia, but Victoria Police have identified that a small number of reoffenders are driving an increase of serious offences, and they are being committed by young people. That is where that Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2020–2030 plays a large part in our reforms in going forward. The plan also recognises the harm caused to victims, and we also recognise that many young people who end up in the youth justice system are also victims and maybe in their background have experienced abuse, trauma and neglect. There may be mental health issues, drug and alcohol issues, and they may be not engaged in what would be traditional education, training or employment. A significant proportion of young offenders also have been in various services and interventions, such as child protection, family support, disability and homelessness services, and that is before they have entered into any involvement in the youth justice system. These young individuals face challenges in education, health and the family setting. This is a complex issue. There are many layers to the problems, but there are also many layers to the solutions. Many children and young people who may enter into the youth justice systems usually respond pretty well to those diversion and rehabilitation services. They will mature and grow out of the offending and crime and get their life back on track.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about a Geelong region program that is absolutely amazing at diversion and supporting our young people who are at risk. It is called the Geelong Youth Engagement program. This program literally saves lives and transforms the lives of young people who are at risk. The CEO is a former Victoria Police officer who throughout his whole career was working with youth. He has created this wonderful program that takes young children who have been identified as disengaging from school or on the brink of engaging with the youth justice system. They give them an intensive year-long program to get them back on track – wraparound services – but they also get them healthy and well again in an active lifestyle sort of space. At the end of the program they take them on the Kokoda Track trek. It literally has transformed lives. I have spoken to a couple of those young people who have participated in that program, and they have all said it has turned their lives around and put them back on track, knowing that whatever negativity or obstacles may occur in their lives, they have got the resilience to overcome them now and have a mentor, someone supporting them and around them as they go forward in life. It is a fantastic program.

There is another thing locally in my electorate. Before I was the member, Lisa Neville was the Bellarine member, and she had created a group. I call it the bSafe group, but it was the Bellarine Community Safety Group. What that is is community representatives from each of the towns across the Bellarine come together directly with local police, and they are able to share their concerns. We talk to local police about what they are seeing and how we as a community can come together to really be in the space of preventing any crime in our area. I have continued this group, and it is absolutely wonderful to be able to have that direct line to local police and command. This group raises really important issues. I will just touch a little bit on these. Each town has unique challenges, so some have talked about road safety with police. They have talked about theft, mainly from cars, which the local police are telling us is very opportunistic. If people are not locking their cars, then unfortunately the opportunistic robber is taking things that are left in the car, and especially with tourism, down on the Bellarine we see a spike in that over the tourism season. E-scooters have been an issue for the bSafe group. What that has meant is that really proactive community initiatives have come out of this. We even had the local school put up posters around caravan parks over summer saying ‘Lock your car’ or ‘Lock your valuables’, and it is a really great message and education piece that the community are engaged in.

We also sometimes discuss the local crime data that comes out. Unfortunately in the Bellarine a lot of the crime data is related to domestic and family violence, and education is certainly a big part of that discussion. The police now are also so proactive in going out to community. They are doing scam awareness sessions, they are talking to local businesses and they are going to shopping centres. There has been a really dedicated approach by local police to go out into the community and be proactive. Talking about youth crime, they are also visiting kinders, schools and high schools in my area, which really develops that great relationship between students and police and sometimes families. I am really proud of this group. I really would like to say that I am really proud of not only that group but the local police in my electorate, and I am confident in saying that this initiative has made a difference in my electorate.

In conclusion, this is a really important bill for our state. A justice system really is designed to balance rehabilitation and accountability, but also we are there to protect the community. This reform aims to reduce offending. We do not want to see young people entering the youth justice system. We need them to have opportunities to turn their lives around. I commend this bill to the house.

Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (16:26): I rise to address the Youth Justice Bill 2024, a bill brought to this place by the government for consideration. It is a rather large bill. This is but volume 1 of the bill – many words over many, many pages. But the fundamental question that I would like to pose to the chamber this afternoon is this: do any of these words over these many, many pages do anything substantial or substantive to keep our community safer, to not just give our community a sense of safety but protect them from crime – protect them and their families from crime – that many, many Victorians have been victim of, and more so in recent times?

At the outset I would like to say to members of Victoria Police: we respect you. We are grateful for the work that you do to keep our communities safe. We respect you and we honour you for the personal sacrifice that you make, the personal sacrifice from you and your families to do everything you can to uphold the right, to uphold the law in Victoria and to keep our communities safe. We deeply, deeply respect Victoria Police. Unfortunately I contend, and my colleagues do as well, that Victoria Police, in terms of our current situation with crime in this state, is not the problem. The problem is the system around Victoria Police to support them to do their work, to catch the crooks, to bring them to justice and to, where found guilty, deal with them in an appropriate way – whether that be locking them up or putting them on programs – to make our community a safer place.

I fully support the member for Berwick’s reasoned amendment. I think it is entirely appropriate for the member for Berwick, the Shadow Minister for Police, to bring this reasoned amendment for the chamber’s consideration. It is true that in this bill, these many words over many pages, some things are simply not addressed and some things have simply not been considered. That is why the member for Berwick in his reasoned amendment is asking for a comprehensive, fully developed and fully funded program to target and divert at-risk individuals and cohorts of young people to prevent crimes occurring, for community safety concerns about the current level of youth crime in Victoria to be addressed and for there to be further assessment of and consultation on more binding powers to manage young people where it is deemed that their behaviours pose a risk to the safety of others as well. It is an eminently sensible proposal brought to this chamber by the member for Berwick, which I fully support.

Sometimes in this place, and sometimes in politics generally, we speak about numbers and we speak about statistics, and frankly, these numbers and these statistics do not lie. Crime data is quite clear – there has been a 20 per cent increase in criminal incidents by youth offenders. Aggravated burglaries increased by 18.4 per cent last year, a 146 per cent increase since 2014. What else happened in 2014? The Labor government, the former Andrews government, were elected to govern in this state, and since they were elected there has been a 146 per cent increase in aggravated burglaries in this state.

In July this year the Deputy Premier, the member for Niddrie, claimed that Victoria has some of the toughest bail laws in Australia. I challenge the Deputy Premier – respectfully, but I challenge him all the same: Deputy Premier, please come into this place and demonstrate to this place, demonstrate to the Parliament and demonstrate to the Victorian people how in fact Victoria has the toughest bail laws in the country. That is simply untrue. As we discussed earlier today in addressing the member for Malvern’s bill to strengthen bail laws in this state, it is quite clear that earlier this year, in March this year, the Labor government weakened Victoria’s bail laws, and frankly the state has not recovered since. We need to strengthen bail laws. The amount of crime that has occurred since the weakening of those bail laws is absolutely abhorrent.

Earlier today I drew attention in the chamber to some of the notes that I have received from constituents. I want to read into Hansard an email I received from Lee, and I will make it available to Hansard at the end of my contribution. Lee wrote to me:

The first attempted aggravated burglary of our residence occurred on the 9th of October 2021. Three youths came to our door at 10.50pm and attempted to enter our home through a number of entry points.

Lee says they caught them on their CCTV footage, but sadly this report was disregarded as the police felt the group were children. Lee said:

The second instance occurred on 13 May 2022 at 2.20am. Two (stolen) vehicles full of masked youths in hoodies arrived and again attempted to enter our home and vehicles. Again, we were unaware of this until the next morning.

The email goes on:

Next was the 21st of April 2023. At 2.13 am, various vehicles arrived at our house and a group of hooded and masked youths alighted, attempting entry to house and vehicles. Again, fortunately they did not persevere with their attempts and left.

…

On the 12th of June 2023 at 6.25pm … 2 youths alighted and attempted to enter one of our cars. I spotted this immediately, and my husband went out to confront them … He caught one of them attempting to scale a neighbour’s fence. When confronted, the kid … told him he was “just having a look” and calmly walked away.

Lee went on:

The most recent entry attempt came at 3.47 am on the 15th of February 2024 …

just a few months ago.

Two hooded, masked and gloved youths attempted to enter our house through the front door. By now we had installed new cameras with sirens, which triggered and caused the offender to flee. Unfortunately, we did not hear the siren so could not report immediately.

Lee went on to say:

… I cannot stress enough the impact that it has had on our psyche. My first act every morning is to check every camera to ensure that nothing has occurred overnight. My husband and I are hesitant to leave our children at home alone overnight … although they are now 20 and 18 years old … Indeed, we initially shielded our daughter (who already suffers from anxiety) from knowledge of the first few events, as we did not want her to be any more anxious. At the 3rd instance, we decided that she needed to know for her own safety.

Lee concluded by saying:

I hope that this email serves to strengthen any response to the current Government’s argument that this is a non-existent issue.

In this place, in the people’s house, Lee deserves to be heard. Lee and the story of her family deserves to be recorded in the Hansard of this place. This is why we are here. If it is not to strengthen our community safety, then why are we here? But I am sad to say that every indicator over the last 10 ‍years, and certainly in the last few months of this year, is that the Allan Labor government really do have their head in the sand when it comes to the youth crime crisis.

Raising the age of criminal responsibility is not the answer – raising the age of criminal responsibility is not the answer. Weakening bail laws is not the answer. I encourage members of the government to stop the denial and to actually understand and listen to the community about the legitimate concerns that they have and act appropriately to deal with this. I am sad to say that the Youth Justice Bill 2024 ‍– again, many words over many pages – does little, in my view, to address the legitimate concerns of people like Lee in my community and, more broadly, Victorians.

There is a better way. There must be a better way. There are some things that the government could be considering, some things that the government could be looking at. It could be looking at, for example, Japan, where young people diverted from the justice system can attend small-scale specialised schools where their bespoke needs are met. We have programs like the David Scott School, which does an amazing job, but they just do not get support from the government. There is the Cheshire foundation, as mentioned before, targeting the highest risk young people using departments, local government and non-profit organisations to find best options to prevent these kids entering the system. There are other options. Of course ideally young people should not enter the justice system in the first place, but frankly, until this government recognises and acknowledges that they have got to be doing more than they are currently doing to get on top of this problem, nothing will change.

Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (16:36): I rise to join the speakers on this side of the house who have previously made contributions on the Youth Justice Bill 2024. I would like to join them in supporting this important bill. This is another important bill and one that is important for many of my constituents for a whole host of reasons, which I would like to state in my contribution here today. I have a number of constituents with really strong views on this issue. Firstly, there are some constituents who have contacted me and have expressed that they do not feel safe. I want to make it very clear that that is unacceptable for me as a local representative and also unacceptable for this government. Everyone has the right to feel safe at their home and in their community, and that is what this government will deliver.

Over the past few weeks we have been in dialogue with the office of the Minister for Police and the Attorney-General in response to two incidents in our community. I am happy to hear some of the feedback following the stepping up of the patrols in the district and across the community. Police do an amazing job and take aggravated burglary offences, especially those potentially connected with gang violence, extremely seriously, with dedicated resources and a taskforce. We are proud to be part of a government that supports and invests in our police and their work. In terms of youth crime, while Victoria has one of the lowest rates of youth offending in Australia, Victoria Police has identified a small number of reoffenders who are driving an increase of serious offences committed by young people, like we heard from the member for Bellarine in her contribution. Today represents an opportunity to make it happen. With the plans to trial electronic monitoring and other diversionary measures, we know the bill will help keep young people away from the justice system. The trial will be implemented alongside more intensive bail supervision. This will help young people with education, employment programs and other initiatives that address the underlying causes of offending.

It would be remiss of me if I did not say what I am just about to say. I came to this country at the age of 16, to Springvale. At the time, between 1996 through to mid-2000, it was a known place, Springvale. But my family and I and many of my friends who have settled in this part of the world are very, very happy. We came looking forward to a new life and to make new friends. Some friends came with smaller families and some came by themselves – a difficult path. Some may have survived many years in a refugee camp. Different neighbouring countries, Cambodians and Vietnamese, used to see each other after school every now and then back in high school, there we go, so we tended to congregate or walk in a larger group. Of course when you are in a bigger group, without intent, you sometimes fall into a difficult situation. The one thing I would like to say here is that there were many of my friends who after school did not go home. At the time I wondered why. Much later in life I realised that there was nobody home. The parents were newly arrived, and they would do whatever they could to make a living. One could work on a farm and come back home at 7 o’clock, so many of my friends would stay back and play basketball or whatever they could do at school. Then I remember one of the social workers, one of the teachers, wanted to have extra activities after class. But some other friends, like in my case, would go home straight after school because we had other young siblings to look after.

These are the things in terms of youth offending that we really have to dig into: not only the root causes but also the diversion programs into the multicultural communities. Some multicultural communities may not have the same approach or sentiment towards the diversion programs. Elders in the community may be a good contact, but for some others there is no elder in the community. In some communities there may be no role model to look up to. There may be no activities for younger kids who would have otherwise grown up to be good adults. I remember clearly one of the former police officers in Springvale said that some of the kids are not supposed to be in year 10 or year 11, because there are other places for them. For example, trade schools or other places would make them feel like they belong and could make a positive contribution to our community.

I would like to say that there are things that no-one wants to see our young children do. As a father of three I want to see our children grow up in whatever community to make positive contributions and never fall into the cracks of the justice system, so I would just like to make a note of that. Otherwise, this bill will introduce a new sentencing principle that recognises the impact on any victims and provides opportunities to address harm through justice measures. We will also recognise the need to protect our community from any reoffending by the child and expand a lot of the court monitoring to keep young people on track.

Victoria’s sentencing framework for young offending will be reformed to ensure sentences and conditions can be tailored to each young person’s risk and needs. We have heard the member for Geelong talk about the Koori Court. I had the opportunity two weeks ago to take my work experience students with me to visit the Dandenong Magistrates’ Court. We sat there for about half an hour to observe the Koori Court, which is a fantastic court where you see the magistrate, the elders of the Aboriginal community, the police and the prosecutors sit at one long table together with the youth. I think it is a very positive outcome. That would be the place where you could encourage youth and also acknowledge the potential risks, so that youth have no doubt that for offending there will be serious consequences. These are the programs that are really, really good and that I believe would change our justice system.

It goes without saying that the Dandenong multicultural police unit also does an amazing job in terms of engaging with our multicultural community, and this helps, I believe, to reduce the numbers of reoffenders in the multicultural community. I am not saying that the multicultural community has high numbers of youth offending, but I am just saying that this is one of the factors that could help to reduce any potential offending or reoffending. As we know, people in the multicultural community come here for a better life and want to make a positive contribution, and for them to see their brothers or sisters, their young children, go through the justice system here destroys all the hope, all the aspirations, that come with them to this country. In the case of our program here, the bill will address many of these potential issues, so I commend the bill to the house.

Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (16:46): I am pleased to rise today to contribute on the Youth Justice Bill 2024. Youth justice is always a very, very difficult space. There are a lot of moving wheels in youth justice. People react in different ways; people have different backgrounds. I know when I was a kid I was not a perfect kid by any stretch of the imagination.

Paul Edbrooke interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: Or adult. I was an absolute ratbag, I really was. I am sure everyone can imagine that. And, yes, I did get myself into trouble as a young fella.

Paul Edbrooke interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: I am not going to elaborate on that, member for Frankston. I think we have to appreciate that in this space every child has a different set of challenges. It is actually quite important to remember this. You can get a child that is suffering at home in a home with domestic violence. That child will be living through hell. We freely admit that. Then they leave home or they try to escape home. Most of the time they are escaping and they are acting out. A lot of the time they are acting out. I do not think any child, at 10 or 11 years old, should be incarcerated for doing dumb things. We all do dumb things as kids, and some of us continue to do them as adults as well.

I think we really have to look at this in perspective and have a look at it in the way that every individual case in youth justice comes with a certain set of individual challenges that people have to deal with and even children have to deal with. For a child at 10 or 11 years of age, I struggle with the concept when people say, ‘Oh, they don’t know what they’ve done is wrong.’ I actually think they do most of the time. I think most kids by the time they are 10 or 11 years old are a pretty good judge of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. But unfortunately in Victoria we have a problem with youth justice, and it is a big problem. In June 2024 it was reported that youth offending increased by 52.6 per cent. That is a big increase. I know the government gets up and states that we have the lowest levels of offending in Australia, but I think if you talk to Victorians they do not accept that as a great milestone. This is where Victorians are really starting to get nervous and have real anxiety about our youth justice system at the moment because night after night it is a smash-and-grab into someone’s house, it is an assault or it is kids joy-riding in a car, having an accident and killing someone.

I do not think this is the time to raise the age of criminality, and I say this because we have not got it under control. This is where I am going to come to the reasoned amendment that the member for Berwick has put forward. He has done an enormous amount of work on this and an enormous amount of research, and knowing the member for Berwick he has probably read all thousand pages. I probably would have given up halfway, but I know he is very committed to this portfolio –

Brad Battin: 998.

Wayne FARNHAM: 998. And point (1) of the reasoned amendment is actually quite important. I am going to tell you why this is important. It says:

(1) a comprehensive, fully developed and fully funded program to target and divert at-risk individuals and cohorts of young people to prevent crimes occurring is agreed to by all stakeholders …

I can give you an example of this, of a local policewoman in my area. Paula Fowler, her name is. She is an angel to the youth in our area, she really is. We have a school out my way. It was called Blackwood Annex; I am not sure of the name now. This is a school for troubled teens. They do not fit into mainstream schooling because they are aggressive, they have committed crimes, they have done those things. So they have set up this Blackwood Annex, and these troubled teens go out there. Paula Fowler goes out there and works with these kids. Some of these kids were the worst of the worst, but Paula Fowler walks into that school and these kids run up and give her a cuddle. That is the difference in having a program to change their behaviour, and she has created more programs. She created programs for Indigenous youth. It was not government funded. This policewoman did this in her own time. She created these programs to divert the kids away from crime, and that is why point (1) from the member for Berwick’s reasoned amendment is extremely important. This is where we need to be investing the money. We should not be raising the age at this point in time until we get it under control. We need to channel funding into where it is going to make a real difference.

My concern at the moment is – I know people are probably going to sledge me on this, because it is very pessimistic – I actually think raising the age gives the government an opportunity to data shift, because if the crime has not been committed, it will not get reported, and therefore the crime statistics will show that it has improved but that has not necessarily happened. When you raise the age, you get the opportunity to data shift, and I do not think it is going to be a true reflection of what the problems are in our youth criminal system or our youth justice system if we actually raise that age.

Another thing concerns me about raising the age, and this takes me to the bill briefing. I am going to use this example: if I have an 11-year-old break into my house and he is trying to steal my car, what do I do? Apparently, I cannot intervene – they are 11 years old – but I can guarantee you I am probably not going to ask for his ID. The response to this from the minister’s staff was, ‘Just call the police.’ Well, here is the problem in regional Victoria with just calling the police: the police can be 40 minutes away – or more. For example, if I live in Rawson, which has now lost its single-man police station, and I have to ‘just call the police’, those police, because Trafalgar does not have a 24-hour station, have to come from Warragul. That is a good hour and 15 minutes away. So am I expected to sit back, let little Johnny break into my house, probably threaten me on his way in – I will have my partner there; she will be absolutely terrified – and say, ‘Look, here’s the keys, Johnny. Just watch the gear, it grinds a bit on the way through’? That is not practical.

Here is the other problem: we have victim after victim now that are really, really very nervous about what is going on. The member for Brighton touches a lot of times on what is happening in his electorate, and the same is happening in mine. I had a lady ring me the other day that wants to have a meeting with me. At her house cars have been stolen twice by the same offenders within a two-week period. This is the problem when the government softens the bail laws: it gives them literally a little pat on the bum and says ‘Off you go’. We cannot have that.

The Victorian community are searching for answers to the youth justice system. I do not want to see kids locked up; I really do not. That is why I support the reasoned amendment. I do not support this bill because I do not think it does enough to protect our community. That is the problem we are having. People are so terrified now. I cannot believe this happens in my community, but people are installing security systems around their homes. We never used to have to do that. Houses are locked up like Fort Knox. We have a constant stream of youth offenders breaking into homes, stealing cars, getting tapped on the head and told ‘Don’t worry. Off you go,’ and then they repeat the behaviour. This has been a failure of the government over the last decade. I cannot support this bill. I support the reasoned amendment because it makes sense.

Steve McGHIE (Melton) (16:56): Today I rise to contribute to the Youth Justice Bill 2024. I know I have only got a short period to speak on it, but firstly I note there have been many contributions on this bill from both sides. I acknowledge some of the good contributions, but I just want to raise the issue of the local members of police and the great job that they do in my electorate, but also other groups like the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) and other agencies that support the youth. The African Youth Initiative do amazing work. We come in here and talk about the negatives, but there are a lot of positives going on out there in our communities through a lot of agencies. We need to continue to support those agencies. Some of those other agencies are things like local sports clubs and the things they do not only trying to keep kids involved and active and healthy but again mentoring them and keeping them out of trouble. They play an enormous role in the sports area.

The main issue that I want to talk about is alternative pathways and diversion strategies as a key initiative that I think really exemplifies our whole-of-government approach to youth justice. I want to talk about the Dex’s project. That project equips young people at Parkville College, which is within the Parkville youth justice centre, with the skills and the training that they need to secure employment upon release. This pilot program aims to build strong connections with employment service providers, which is inclusive of Jobs Victoria and their mentors and other community organisations. As I said, I have already alluded to things like the African Youth Initiative and also CMY. Of course these connections are crucial in helping young individuals to transition smoothly into the workforce. They are trained through certificate courses while they are in detention or even on release from detention, and those are the positives of these projects and the Dex’s project.

There are employment pathway coordinators who assist these young adults in being trained up to be provided with an opportunity to get employment. That is what we need to do with these kids through these diversionary programs. It connects those students to the most suitable employment and training services, and that is a great thing. There has been such a great success rate with that: 46 young people have secured employment after leaving custody and 55 more are currently participating in training and acquiring job-ready skills. They are the positives that come out of this whole-of-government approach. It is not just about the negative side of youth crime and youth justice. I commend that program. I really wanted to talk about that today. This is a really important bill, and I commend it to the house.

The SPEAKER: Order! The time set down for consideration of the remaining items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business. The house is considering the Youth Justice Bill 2024. The minister has moved that the bill be now read a second time. The member for Berwick has moved a reasoned amendment to this motion. He has proposed to omit all the words after ‘That’ and replace them with the words which have been circulated. The question is:

That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Those supporting the reasoned amendment by the member for Berwick should vote no.

Assembly divided on question:

Ayes (54): Juliana Addison, Jacinta Allan, Colin Brooks, Josh Bull, Anthony Carbines, Ben Carroll, Darren Cheeseman, Anthony Cianflone, Sarah Connolly, Chris Couzens, Jordan Crugnale, Lily D’Ambrosio, Daniela De Martino, Gabrielle de Vietri, Steve Dimopoulos, Paul Edbrooke, Matt Fregon, Ella George, Luba Grigorovitch, Bronwyn Halfpenny, Katie Hall, Paul Hamer, Martha Haylett, Sam Hibbins, Mathew Hilakari, Melissa Horne, Natalie Hutchins, Sonya Kilkenny, Nathan Lambert, Alison Marchant, Kathleen Matthews-Ward, Steve McGhie, Paul Mercurio, John Mullahy, Tim Pallas, Danny Pearson, Tim Read, Pauline Richards, Tim Richardson, Ellen Sandell, Michaela Settle, Ros Spence, Nick Staikos, Natalie Suleyman, Meng Heang Tak, Jackson Taylor, Kat Theophanous, Mary-Anne Thomas, Emma Vulin, Iwan Walters, Vicki Ward, Dylan Wight, Gabrielle Williams, Belinda Wilson

Noes (24): Brad Battin, Jade Benham, Roma Britnell, Tim Bull, Martin Cameron, Annabelle Cleeland, Chris Crewther, Wayne Farnham, Sam Groth, Matthew Guy, Emma Kealy, Tim McCurdy, Cindy McLeish, James Newbury, Danny O’Brien, Michael O’Brien, Kim O’Keeffe, John Pesutto, Richard Riordan, Brad Rowswell, David Southwick, Bridget Vallence, Peter Walsh, Jess Wilson

Question agreed to.

Assembly divided on motion:

Ayes (54): Juliana Addison, Jacinta Allan, Colin Brooks, Josh Bull, Anthony Carbines, Ben Carroll, Darren Cheeseman, Anthony Cianflone, Sarah Connolly, Chris Couzens, Jordan Crugnale, Lily D’Ambrosio, Daniela De Martino, Gabrielle de Vietri, Steve Dimopoulos, Paul Edbrooke, Matt Fregon, Ella George, Luba Grigorovitch, Bronwyn Halfpenny, Katie Hall, Paul Hamer, Martha Haylett, Sam Hibbins, Mathew Hilakari, Melissa Horne, Natalie Hutchins, Sonya Kilkenny, Nathan Lambert, Alison Marchant, Kathleen Matthews-Ward, Steve McGhie, Paul Mercurio, John Mullahy, Tim Pallas, Danny Pearson, Tim Read, Pauline Richards, Tim Richardson, Ellen Sandell, Michaela Settle, Ros Spence, Nick Staikos, Natalie Suleyman, Meng Heang Tak, Jackson Taylor, Kat Theophanous, Mary-Anne Thomas, Emma Vulin, Iwan Walters, Vicki Ward, Dylan Wight, Gabrielle Williams, Belinda Wilson

Noes (24): Brad Battin, Jade Benham, Roma Britnell, Tim Bull, Martin Cameron, Annabelle Cleeland, Chris Crewther, Wayne Farnham, Sam Groth, Matthew Guy, Emma Kealy, Tim McCurdy, Cindy McLeish, James Newbury, Danny O’Brien, Michael O’Brien, Kim O’Keeffe, John Pesutto, Richard Riordan, Brad Rowswell, David Southwick, Bridget Vallence, Peter Walsh, Jess Wilson

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Third reading

The SPEAKER: As the required statement of intention has been made under section 85(5)(c) of the Constitution Act 1975, the third reading of the bill must be passed by an absolute majority.

Assembly divided on motion:

Ayes (54): Juliana Addison, Jacinta Allan, Colin Brooks, Josh Bull, Anthony Carbines, Ben Carroll, Darren Cheeseman, Anthony Cianflone, Sarah Connolly, Chris Couzens, Jordan Crugnale, Lily D’Ambrosio, Daniela De Martino, Gabrielle de Vietri, Steve Dimopoulos, Paul Edbrooke, Matt Fregon, Ella George, Luba Grigorovitch, Bronwyn Halfpenny, Katie Hall, Paul Hamer, Martha Haylett, Sam Hibbins, Mathew Hilakari, Melissa Horne, Natalie Hutchins, Sonya Kilkenny, Nathan Lambert, Alison Marchant, Kathleen Matthews-Ward, Steve McGhie, Paul Mercurio, John Mullahy, Tim Pallas, Danny Pearson, Tim Read, Pauline Richards, Tim Richardson, Ellen Sandell, Michaela Settle, Ros Spence, Nick Staikos, Natalie Suleyman, Meng Heang Tak, Jackson Taylor, Kat Theophanous, Mary-Anne Thomas, Emma Vulin, Iwan Walters, Vicki Ward, Dylan Wight, Gabrielle Williams, Belinda Wilson

Noes (24): Brad Battin, Jade Benham, Roma Britnell, Tim Bull, Martin Cameron, Annabelle Cleeland, Chris Crewther, Wayne Farnham, Sam Groth, Matthew Guy, Emma Kealy, Tim McCurdy, Cindy McLeish, James Newbury, Danny O’Brien, Michael O’Brien, Kim O’Keeffe, John Pesutto, Richard Riordan, Brad Rowswell, David Southwick, Bridget Vallence, Peter Walsh, Jess Wilson

Motion agreed to by absolute majority.

Read third time.

The SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.