Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Jacinta Allan:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Michael O’BRIEN (Malvern) (13:36): I felt very sorry for the Clerk there, having to mouth the words Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. What a debasement of the Parliament and what a debasement of the legislative process. This government is now so desperate that it has to resort to political sloganeering in the name of its legislation. Previous incarnations of bail reform have said ‘bail amendment bill’. But no, we have a government that is now so desperate, scraping the bottom of the barrel, that it has to insert the phrase ‘tough bail’ into the short title of this bill. Well, I was told when I was younger that if you have got to say you are tough you are not very tough, and that sums up this bill entirely.

Tim Richardson: How many times did you say you were tough?

Michael O’BRIEN: Well, I could talk about the old George Smilovici stand-up comedy routine, member for Mordialloc.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Through the Chair. Without assistance, member for Mordialloc.

Michael O’BRIEN: It was quite funny back in the day, but this is not a laughing matter. I might discuss that with the member afterwards. Not only is this attempt to politically sloganeer in the legislation a bit of a joke, and it shows how desperate this government is, but it is actually misleading and deceptive conduct. If this bill was in trade or commerce, the Labor government would be up before the ACCC, because this is not tough bail at all. This bill, far from being the toughest in the country – which is the claim made by the Premier and the Attorney-General ad nauseam – is not even as tough as the bail laws were in Victoria 12 months ago. Twelve months ago if you committed an indictable offence whilst on bail, not just was it an offence but you automatically faced an uplift in the test for you to stay on bail. Even under the changes in this bill that does not happen. Yes, they have finally reinstated the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail, which they dragged out and they defended deleting from the bail laws time and time again.

On three separate occasions I sought to introduce private members bills to this place to reinstate the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail: on 20 February 2024, 1 August 2024 and 6 February 2025 – three times. Every time it was blocked by those in the Labor government because they were defending their weak bail laws. They were defending abolishing the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail because they wanted weak bail laws – because that is where their heart is. Their heart is not with this ‘tough on crime, tough on bail’ rhetoric that we have seen from a spooked Premier and a spooked Attorney-General over the last week. Their heart, their bleeding heart, is with weak bail laws, because they genuinely believe society is to blame. They do not want to see individuals held accountable for committing crimes, because it has always got to be somebody else’s fault. Otherwise why would they have knocked back our attempts to introduce tougher bail laws, not once, not twice but three times? Three times, and then a cock crowed. Three times we were denied, and then a cock crowed.

Juliana Addison interjected.

Michael O’BRIEN: I was never a carpenter.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Through the Chair. The member for Wendouree!

Michael O’BRIEN: That is just one example of how these so-called tough bail laws are not even as tough as existed on 24 March last year. 24 March was the day before the government’s weak bail laws came into effect. So I have given one example.

Here is another example. It used to be, just a year ago, that if you breached a condition of bail in this state then you were guilty of committing an indictable offence of breaching a bail condition. And not only were you guilty of committing an indictable offensive of breaching a bail condition, but you automatically faced an uplift in the test – a tougher test – to stay on bail. That reflected the principle that bail is a privilege, not a right, and that if you abuse that privilege by failing to meet your conditions then you should face a tougher test to stay on bail. But what does this bill do, this so-called tough bail bill? It does reintroduce in some form the offence of breaching a bail condition, but is it an indictable offence? No, it is not. It is only a summary offence. And, guess what, that means it does not come with any uplift in the test for bail, so you can keep breaching your bail. You might get a slap on the wrist as a summary offence, but it does not mean you face the risk of a tougher test to stay out on bail, so you can keep offending and offending and offending again.

The government says they do not believe that even that offence of breaching your bail conditions should apply to minors. Oh, great, so the 17-year-old, the serial thug, the one running around with a machete in people’s living rooms, can keep breaching bail conditions as much as they like, and do you know what the criminal penalty is for that under this so-called tough bail bill? Nothing. There is no criminal penalty for anybody under 18 for breaching a condition of bail. How on earth does this government claim that these are tough bail laws? They are not even tough. They are about as tough as a marshmallow, these bail laws. It is extraordinary. Far from being the toughest in the country, these bail laws are not even as tough as we had in Victoria 12 months ago. That is how weak they are.

What else? The government says they are recategorising certain offences to make sure that they are going to be schedule 1 and schedule 2 offences, which means that they will have a tougher test to get bail. That is well and good as far as those particular individual offences are concerned, but there are a lot of gaps. For example, this government does not believe that the offence, the crime, of robbery is deserving of a tough bail test. This government does not believe that the crime of burglary is deserving of a tough bail test. They are not schedule 1 or schedule 2 offences. This government does not even believe that arson – not even arson – is deserving of a tough bail test. It is not schedule 1 or schedule 2. How many tobacconists across the length and breadth of Victoria go to bed every night wondering if they are going to have a business to wake up to in the morning or if the firebombers will have been there? But this government says, ‘Oh, no, arson, that’s only a moderate crime. We’re not going to make that a schedule 1 or a schedule 2 offence. That’s fine. You keep committing arson and you keep facing weak tests to get bail and weak tests to stay on bail.’ That is what this government has done in this so-called tough bail bill, which is a disgrace to its name because it is nothing of the sort whatsoever.

Then, when the government announces what are relatively minor changes in this bill, they do not even reflect what the government said last week. Remember the big press conference where the Premier did her big about-face, ate a slice of humble pie and said ‘I’m sorry’? She is not sorry for Victorians; she is sorry for her poll numbers. That is all the Premier is sorry for. She is sorry for the rumbling in the caucus. That is all she is sorry about – only sorry for her poll numbers and the caucus rumblings. In this big announcement the Premier said, ‘We are going to have a new test for bail. We’re going to have the toughest test in the country for repeat serious offenders.’ That test was going to be that the bail decision maker had to have a high degree of confidence that no further crime would be committed – a high degree of confidence.

Where is that test in this bill, I ask. I ask rhetorically, Deputy Speaker, because I am sure you know as well as I do it is not in here. There is no super tough, strong test for high degree of confidence. It is not in here. The government says, ‘We’ll think about that later on in the year. We might do it in a few months time. Maybe around midyear we might think about rolling something out.’ What a government beset by panic, absolute panic, making a big announcement about a big, tough new test – it is nowhere in the bill at all.

You cannot trust this government. You cannot trust this Premier. You cannot trust this Attorney-General. Apparently they were out there this morning at their press conference trying to verbal me, claiming that I was out at a dinner last night and that is why I was not briefed on the bail bill last night. I think the only dinner I was at last night, and my kids could attest, was my homemade chicken burgers. I was cooking chicken burgers for my kids, and I was poring over the bail bill, which the government only sent through after 6:00 pm. That is how disorganised this rabble is, or that is how secretive this rabble is. Or, why not both: this is how disorganised and secretive this rabble is. If you cannot even produce a bail bill before 6 o’clock the night before you are going to introduce it, you are not trying very hard – you are not trying very hard at all.

Tim Richardson interjected.

Michael O’BRIEN: I do not know where the member for Mordialloc was; he was probably out on the turps. But I was working hard, poring over the bill, reading it, doing my job. For the Premier and Attorney-General to go out there and question where I was last night – I was at home going through the bill. Where were they? That is my question.

Bridget Vallence interjected.

Michael O’BRIEN: That is a very good question, member for Evelyn – where have the government been for the last 12 months? They have been defending the indefensible. How many members opposite stood up here when I sought to introduce legislation to toughen bail laws only to say, ‘Not necessary. Unnecessary. This is just politicking. You’re wrong.’ Now we see that the government is now trying to basically steal our homework. The only trouble is they cannot even do that properly.

Tim Richardson interjected.

Michael O’BRIEN: If you are going to copy someone’s homework, at least do it faithfully. You will get a far better outcome, member for Mordialloc, than you will trying to do it yourself.

There are significant problems with this bill – it only starts with the title. We are not going to have an opportunity to introduce textual amendments in this house because the government have made it clear they will not allow us to go into consideration in detail, therefore no textual amendments can be dealt with. What I would say is if the government think that we are going to sit by and vote for title called Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025, they have got another thing coming. It would be a very dark day in this Parliament if cheap, ridiculous political slogans like that made it into the title of legislation on the statute books of Victoria.

For all the government’s talk about the urgency here and the ‘This is why we couldn’t get you a bill until 6 o’clock last night and this is why we need to curtail debate on bail today’, the default commencement of this bill is 29 September 2025. So the government needs to apparently think about things for a very long time. They want to get the statutes on the books, but they do not want to actually implement large slabs of it until the grand final. This government talk about urgency – they are not urgent at all. If they were acting urgently they would not have a default commencement date of 29 September 2025.

In the bill briefing today the Attorney-General was completely unable to say how many extra resources would be provided for the justice system to take account of the changes the government seeks to make in this bill. In discussion on the Family Violence Protection Amendment Bill 2025, which this house has just considered, I noted that this government has made savage cuts to Court Services Victoria – a $19.1 million cut this year alone and a really significant cut coming up in two years time. A cut of $58 million is already in the budget papers, locked in. The budget cuts by this Labor government to Court Services Victoria are $19.1 million this year and $58 million in two years time.

What on earth does the government think that is going to do for the justice system? How is getting people to trial quickly and efficiently going to occur when this government is making savage cuts to Victoria’s court system? You are going to see mistakes like we have seen with the family violence intervention order issue, which we are trying to rectify today. You are also going to see blowouts in the time to get to trial. And what happens when you face long delays in getting to court? Magistrates will be much more willing to grant bail. Yes, we support the principle of putting community safety first – who wouldn’t? – but whatever the government says in this bill, if a magistrate is faced with a 12-month delay in somebody going to trial for an offence for which at best they could likely face six months imprisonment, that person is going to get bail. Whatever the government writes in this bill, that person is going to get bail. So this government’s budget cuts to Court Services Victoria are actually undermining community safety and undermining the effect of any other bail laws it makes, because when the time on remand exceeds the maximum time somebody would be facing in prison if guilty, they will get bail, and that means more people, potentially dangerous people, will be released into the community on bail regardless of what the government says in this bill.

We do look forward to the budget to see if the government will admit that it has got it wrong. It is admitting to an extent it got it wrong in this bill on bail, but it needs to put its money where its mouth is, it needs to put its money where its rhetoric is, and it needs to ensure that budget cuts to Court Services Victoria are reversed in the forthcoming state budget. It is not just Court Services Victoria, of course; there are other aspects of the judicial system under serious pressure as well.

I have already gone through a number of areas in which this government has weakened bail laws, and this bill will not actually seek to change that at all. I have already flagged that we do not oppose the idea of the primacy of the principle of community safety as being one that operates under the bill. I would say, as a matter of common sense, that most Victorians would probably agree with that. I do have some questions about the wording. I think it could be a little bit stronger. When the government puts in a section 1B(1AA) saying that:

The Parliament recognises the overarching importance of maximising, to the greatest extent possible, the safety of the community and persons affected by crime …

before the act then talks about the other factors to be taken into account, perhaps, I would have thought, the words ‘subject to 1AA’ should precede all those other factors, because I think we need to send a strong message that that is the overriding and pre-eminent factor that judicial decision makers and bail decision makers must take into account when applying the Bail Act 1977. I am not sure that the drafting in this is actually tight enough to have that effect, but that is a matter for the government. The government is responsible for this Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025, and if it fails to have the desired impact, it falls very much at the government’s feet.

Perhaps the government can explain why it does not believe that young people, people under 18, should be subject to any sanction for breaching bail conditions. I am not sure how this keeps the community safe. If it is good enough for an adult to be told ‘If you get bail, you must stick to these conditions to stay on bail,’ why shouldn’t it be the same for somebody who is 17? It makes no sense at all, particularly given the rash of serious crime we have seen committed, sadly – very sadly – by under 18s. The idea of saying to those young people ‘We’re going to give you bail and if you breach your conditions of bail, there’s no criminal penalty,’ to my mind, undermines the whole intent of what the government is seeking to do here.

Once again, the government comes out, issues press releases and makes statements through the Premier and through the Attorney-General, talking loudly and saying nothing. When you look at the detail here, it just is not fit for purpose. I can flag now there will be a number of amendments that the opposition will be seeking to make to this bill to strengthen it in the other place, to at least get back to where we were 12 months ago. Far from being the toughest bail laws in the country, they are not even as tough as Victoria had a year ago. Victorians are being let down, not just because of this government’s poor judgement and the Premier’s poor judgement.

It was very interesting to see the Premier try and quietly duckshove responsibility for the weakening of bail laws onto the former Premier Daniel Andrews. In fact Jacinta Allan, the member for Bendigo East, was the Premier when that weakening of bail laws passed through the Parliament. It was the current Premier who was responsible. You might recall that the current Premier said to the then Attorney-General she wanted her to pull some of the youth justice laws as well, so there were some changes made. This Premier is personally responsible for what has gone through with the weakening of bail laws. She is personally responsible for the devastation and sadly in some circumstances the death of some Victorians caused by people – criminals – who never should have been on bail, who should have been held on remand to protect the community They were not, because Labor decided to go off on an ideological frolic and weaken bail laws.

Well, the Liberals and Nationals have been strong on bail laws from day one. We always have been, we always will be. We knew the government got it wrong when it weakened bail laws. We have come into this place time and time and time again trying to strengthen bail laws, which the government refused to do. Now the government comes out with this bill called ‘tough bail’ – not tough at all. We will have another go at trying to strengthen these laws in the other place. This is not the answer to Victoria’s problems, because the answer lies with a change of government and people who genuinely believe in community safety, not just paying lip-service to it because the polls are turning against them. That is what we have with this government – a government that does not have its heart in it, a government that does not believe in strengthening bail laws and a government that does not really believe in putting community safety first. That is why these laws will be ineffective. This government not only cannot get the detail right but do not have the heart to make it happen.

In deference to my colleagues, many of whom want to speak on this bill, I will conclude my remarks there, other than to say that the opposition will not be opposing this bill, but we have got a lot of amendments to make it better, to make it stronger and to genuinely give Victorians the protection they deserve.

John LISTER (Werribee) (13:57): I rise to speak today to wholeheartedly support the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. Despite the BuzzFeed-like articles of a certain tabloid, community safety is one of my top priorities. This is not only because nearly every other night I am in a fire truck responding to another call for help in our town or because I have worked with students who have had contact with the police, it is also because when my team knocked on around 20,000 doors in the by-election a number of people told us they were concerned about safety.

This bill is difficult, and it is not the first time we have visited the issue of bail in this place. However, it is not something that sets and forgets. Our role here in this place when we act maturely is to make sure that our laws continue to meet our community’s expectations and the responsibilities of the state because every victim of crime is one too many. I apologise for raising my voice like certain members over there, but I will get back to what I have to say about bill. I will use my teacher voice in a moment. This is the first collection of reforms that will see Victoria have the toughest bail laws in Australia. Most importantly, this bill will put community safety above all in every decision about bail, toughen those bail tests for serious offences and ensure there are consequences for those who breach their conditions. We do expect to see the number of people on remand increase as a result of these changes. The system has capacity, and we will ensure that it is resourced.

The first package of reforms will deliver on our government’s commitment to act with urgency to ensure that our system responds to the risks posed by repeat offending and reflects the expectations of Victorians. Unfortunately we have not seen the expectations set by this Parliament being followed through. Offenders are thumbing their nose at the law, and while you are entitled to your day in court, you are not entitled to keep offending. While I do not expect those who break the law to be reading transcripts in Hansard, I do expect every member of this house to echo this principle.

The tough bail laws will make two big changes to bail-making decision principles to reduce the risk of reoffending and ensure the system meets community expectations. It will make it unequivocally clear that community safety is our priority. The legislation will provide this as a clear and unambiguous signal to magistrates or judges who preside over bail decisions. Under these new laws, community safety will be the overarching principle for bail decision-making for offenders of all ages. Right now, under –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for me to interrupt business for question time. The member will have the call when the matter returns to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.