Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Dandenong Ranges hoon driving

Ms BURNETT-WAKE (Eastern Victoria) (19:53): (2051) My adjournment matter is to the Minister for Police. The action that I seek is for the government to commit extra police patrols in the Dandenong Ranges to deter hoon driving and related criminal activity. Residents up in the Dandenongs have long been frustrated and fatigued by hoon drivers keeping them awake every weekend and any given weeknight. The ridge-top communities have become a hooning hotspot over the years, with car enthusiasts using the windy, narrow roads as a racetrack. Home owners feel like sitting ducks as they watch cars doing burnouts in car parks outside their homes and hear groups gathering until the early hours of the morning.

A few years ago residents created a Facebook group, Stop the Hoons in the Hills. They use this group to lean on each other for support late at night as they all sit awake to the sound of burnouts and antisocial gatherings. They speak of their children who are too anxious to go to bed and they speak about being too tired to function at work. This weekend just gone, a stolen car occupied by six teenagers lost control and crashed through Kalorama’s Kapi Art Space. It is alleged the driver lost control while driving along Ridge Road shortly after 3.00 am on Saturday, running through a stone barrier and decimating the shop and many of its artworks. It is sheer luck that the car did not instead crash through nearby homes with sleeping residents inside.

Previous calls for intervention have been met with the standard response that there are not enough police resources to have officers patrolling the mountain all the time. In a desperate attempt to stop the hooning, residents have in the past paid into a fund each week to have private security patrol the mountain. The fact it got to the stage where residents were paying out of their own pockets for their own safety and sanity is nonsense. People live in the Dandenongs for the peace and quiet. Many people move there thinking it will be their forever home.

I personally know of people who moved out of the Dandenongs and left their forever homes because the inaction on hooning became too much for them to bear. Police should be resourced to patrol areas of high criminal activity, and I can assure you that the Dandenong Ranges after dark is one of these areas. I live there. I hear the hoons too. The incident over the weekend is not the first, and it will not be the last if something is not done to deter these hoons. I call on the government to commit extra police patrols to the Dandenong Ranges to deter hoon driving and related criminal activity. This must be done before someone is killed.