Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Youth justice system

Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:10): The first question for this grievance debate will be quite simple: how many times should a young violent offender in Victoria get bail to go out and reoffend? Is it one, two, three, eight, 12? These are numbers that have been reported when young violent offenders have gone out and reoffended.

Members interjecting.

Brad BATTIN: The member for Yan Yean should have listened very carefully to the member for Monbulk then about trying to yell out and yell someone down while they are speaking and showing that respect when I am talking about people on bail and about people like Ashley Gordon, and I will go straight to Ash Gordon, who was a member of our community. The member for Warrandyte would know this very dearly because of the fact that he was killed by people on bail, and that should not happen anywhere in our state. Just three months prior, these offenders were charged with violently attacking someone in their home and were bailed, and the reality is this has been happening in Victoria because the bail laws here were weakened. Both of them were charged with aggravated burglary and going into the house of Ashley Gordon. I am going to go through some of the quotes from the papers.

Police will allege he was involved in a confrontation where he was injured and died at the scene.

This is not something that should be happening here in Victoria. This is a young man, a doctor, a professional, who whilst in his own home tried to confront people coming into his house with machetes. It is simply not the state that we want to live in, and we have to ask why these young offenders were out on bail at the time. As reported on Friday 17 May:

Ashley Gordon, 33, died following a confrontation with two teenagers who allegedly broke into his house in the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster on January 13.

The family of Dr Gordon said two 16-year-olds have been charged with murder and are in custody awaiting trial.

Dr Gordon’s sister, Natalie Gordon, said the family and the people of Morwell, where her brother grew up, were still struggling to make sense of what happened.

“This has affected more than our family,” Ms Gordon said.

“This has affected his patients, his friends – it’s reached our entire community.”

This family is calling on the government to make change, and they get offended when they read comments like this:

Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said the government took youth offending seriously.

“While Victoria has one of the lowest rates of youth offending in Australia, Victoria Police has identified a cohort of young people who are driving an increase of repeat offences,” she said.

If it is the case that it is a small cohort, as the government keeps referring to, I would say it would be easier to reduce that crime and target the services to those young people. As a report in the Age goes on to state:

Two teenagers charged with the stabbing murder of Doncaster doctor Ash Gordon allegedly showed a bloody knife to a friend.

…

“After, when the two offenders allegedly came back to the house … they allegedly showed him the weapon, the bloody knife …

So now we have got two young people who were bragging about the fact that they have murdered someone in the Doncaster community. If you think that is the worst it gets:

Dr Gordon’s grieving mother Catherine said she was woken by a call from his housemate, who was forced to deliver the news.

These are direct quotes from Dr Ashley Gordon’s mother:

“He said that Ashley had gone. And I said gone where? He’s gone. He’s no longer with us,” Mrs Gordon told A Current Affair.

“I said, ‘Don’t lie, you’re joking.’ And I hung up on him. Then the detective rang and I told him that I didn’t believe him … So then I hung up on him.

“We saw the police car coming up, and I just prayed to God they’d just keep going. I didn’t want them to turn into the driveway, but unfortunately, it happened.”

…

Dr Gordon’s father Glen said the Victorian government’s move toward softening bail laws for youth offenders was a “cowardly response”.

“The Victorian government’s a disgrace, they should get out of office if that’s the way they’re thinking,” Mr Gordon said.

Speaking directly to the Premier in another article on 4 July 2024, Ms Gordon demanded Jacinta Allan take action:

“Man up. Stop giving us empty promises. Start taking action. Stop saying that it takes a long time to get these things across the line,” she said on Thursday.

“Push harder because one day it is going to be your family that is affected by it and I really hope you do something before.

“I feel heartbreak for this man's family, anger that they’re not listening. They’re not doing anything, they’re talking a lot but they’re not doing anything,”

“They’ll probably continue to say there’s no problem until their families are directly impacted by it.”

There are so many quotes that go on with what the family of Dr Gordon said.

Unfortunately I think the worst case from this is that it is not a one-off death here in our state. William Taylor was killed by a 17-year-old in a stolen car. The 17-year-old was freed on bail straight after this accident. Police gave evidence specifically attaching him to the crime, yet he was released on bail. The police went and checked up on him, and just 48 hours later he had breached those bail conditions and was unable to be located. Victoria Police do absolutely everything they can to ensure they protect the community. They went out of their way then to use the resources they have to identify and find this 17-year-old, and they did. Unfortunately this young man was put on bail again after he had breached those bail conditions. We have got a court working within the system of the bail conditions implemented by this government. They cannot make up bail laws. A magistrate cannot change their decision based on what they think at the time. They have to work within the letter of the law of what they get. When we talk about Mr Taylor it is very important we put on record as well here Mr Taylor’s family and the comments from them:

“Will was a much loved son, brother, partner and friend,” the family wrote in a statement.

“He was a quiet, intelligent and thoughtful young man who loved his sport.

I grieve for that family here in Victoria.

I say again, if it was just two, it is two too many, but now we have got a third, and it is Davide Pollina, who was just 19, who died in the early hours of Sunday morning in Preston when he was hit by a BMW – a stolen BMW – stolen by youths. The quote from his sister:

“It’s unfair my brother lost his life,” she said.

…

A furious family friend told the Herald Sun: “It’s devastating for (his parents) Nicola and Eleanora as they came here for a better life and now they’ve lost their son, all because a 16-year-old (allegedly) wants to steal a car and have some fun. It’s bad. He was a really nice young man.”

Faiza Mahat, whose 25-year-old brother Khalid Mahat was stabbed to death by a group of suspected teenage gang members in Heidelberg West, told the Herald Sun:

… young criminals were not being held to account.

“They get released (bailed) because they’re young, but it doesn’t matter if you’re young,” Ms Mahat said.

“Everybody has been a teenager and we never would have committed this kind of evil stuff. It’s really hard. It’s an ongoing issue and there needs to be tougher laws. I hate to be in Melbourne because of this. It’s really sad.”

…

“It’s traumatising, to be honest. I just remember everything that happened to my brother,” she said.

“Every time we see someone that’s lost their life in the way that my brother did, or who has been hurt, it breaks our hearts.

“I never want anyone else to go through that again.”

These are ongoing crimes here happening in this state. The government changed the bail laws, which allowed so many of these offences to continue because these kids are getting bail. I know the Premier came in here today, and she wants to stand in this place and say, ‘We’re going to toughen the laws.’ First of all, you will never get a pat on the back from me for trying to rectify the problem that you created. You should just do that because it is the right thing to do. What is worse than that is the member for Malvern has approached the government – we have sat in meetings with them – and said, ‘You’re not going far enough.’ We have had comments on the radio from Justin Quill saying it is not going far enough. We need legislation with the original bail laws in place. The one thing we can all agree on is that two years ago we were not hearing in the media about young offenders on bail killing people or young offenders on bail eight times doing aggravated burglaries. We started to hear that when the government softened the bail laws. That is why crime is out of control. It is as simple as that.

We can talk about a 1000-page document which the government is pretending is going to fix the world. Half of it is a doorstop. It has got nothing in it that is going to make a difference. But the one thing they can do is reintroduce section 30B to the Bail Act 1977 so anyone who has committed an indictable or a serious indictable offence has the additional charge of committing an indictable or serious indictable offence whilst on bail. It makes your test to get bail harder. We have got people here who I will say would most likely still be alive, but the offenders who were involved had committed serious offences and continued to get bail here in our state. It goes on and on and on. Other crimes – ‘Teen allegedly in stolen car travelling 150 kilometres per hour days after getting bail over Beach Road cyclist hit-run’ was in the Age on 28 March 2024. The article says:

A 14-year-old accused of urging his friend to run down Beach Road cyclists was involved in a police pursuit in a stolen car and caught smoking drugs within days of being granted bail.

…

The 14-year-old was already on three counts of bail, the court heard, and back in the community for just three days when he allegedly fashioned a bong at his residential care home and consumed cannabis with another resident.

On Wednesday, he allegedly absconded from care at 12:30 am and was found in a stolen Mercedes-Benz seen travelling upwards of 150 km/h before being involved in a police pursuit which ended at Cheltenham when stop sticks were used.

…

He noted of particular concern was that the teen was accused of yelling, “hit him, hit him, hit him”, before the stolen car he was in struck cyclists on Beach Road, in Melbourne’s south-east, in January.

…

… Amid the laughter that followed … one said, ‘oh f---, shit, my bad …

It is not just a ‘bad’ when you run someone down intentionally on Beach Road, when you target a cyclist, an innocent person. These offenders here are 14 years old. We have had offenders here that are 13 that have been on bail. This government wants to raise the age of legal responsibility to 14. That is their goal in the next term. I do not care what they have been saying in the media this week; that is purely because it is impacting them in the polls. They are an ideologically driven government that will aim to raise it to 14. The reality is they have said they have done the consultation. Well, let me assure you, that consultation forgot the Police Association Victoria. It forgot to actually go to Victoria Police, who were openly saying they did not want to raise the age. You could go back and even see that Shane Patton said:

… the frustrations were being felt by police officers, who arrested young offenders only to watch as they were then granted bail.

Then they do it again and they have to charge them again. Of course members get frustrated,” he said.

I was so disappointed to see the Chief Commissioner of Police yesterday standing side by side with the government in relation to these changes when it comes to bail when he knows it will not fix the problem. The chief commissioner does not want the age raised, and he has said that publicly. Now he has come in here and stood side by side with it. You cannot have a government go out and politicise, like they have in the past, the chief commissioner. We have got to have respect for the Victoria Police. We have to make sure that Victoria Police are at the centre of our community safety. We all know Steve Bracks putting the epaulets on a chief commissioner was the first sign of the politicisation of Victoria’s police force. I am very proud of and I love Victoria Police. But let me assure you, when you have a chief commissioner who goes out and stands side by side with the government on a policy that he has openly criticised in the past, it is nothing short of disappointing.

The police association do not support raising the age. The Victorian Liberals and Nationals do not support raising the age. What we do support is returning to the bail laws that were there in the past that the Chief Commissioner of Police, that the police association and every person on this side supported. We want to make sure that those bail laws are in place to protect the community, because at the end of the day it is not about any single person sitting on the government benches, it is not about any person sitting on our side, it is about the families of Ash Gordon, it is about the families of William Taylor and it is about the families of Davide Pollina. If we cannot focus on those families and listen to them, who are saying it is a cowardly response to keep bail laws weak, then we have failed in this place. We must be passionate about what we do in this place when it comes to protecting the community.

To come in here, like the member for Bayswater did, and say that the opposition never delivered a police officer in our time in government is nothing short of misleading the entire community. We proudly delivered 2000 Victoria Police and over 900 PSOs, because that was about keeping the community safe. We will continue to keep them safe rather than coming in here for political pointscoring. But the political point I want is to fix the bail laws, and let us lock these kids up so they do not commit these violent crimes.