Thursday, 15 August 2024

Bills

Youth Justice Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Harriet Shing:

That the bill be now read a second time.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:18):(By leave) I want to circulate the additional amendments that I flagged last night that were being worked on by Vivienne. I think the house could have the advantage of having them circulated now.

Amendments circulated pursuant to standing orders.

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (10:19): I rise today to speak in firm opposition to the Youth Justice Bill 2024 as proposed by the Allan Labor government. This is a youth justice bill in name only. It does not address the problem. It does not give police or the courts power, nor does it provide the resources that they need to keep violent and troubled youth off our streets. In fighting crime we must be proactive. We must look to support and reform our youth through a balanced approach with a combination of strong discipline and positive intervention programs.

I need to highlight that this bill does not align with community expectations. If passed, it will increase the age for being held responsible for a crime from 10 to 12 years of age. Labor’s initial intention was to then raise it to 14. After we saw outrage from the community and strong opposition from the Chief Commissioner of Police Shane Patton, the Premier has backpedalled. The Liberal and National parties have consistently opposed this because we understand the consequences. Using a broad brush to legislate that all children under 12 years of age do not understand what is right and what is wrong does not address the problem. You cannot paint a broad brush on every single kid across the state that they are all the same. Children are intelligent. They are no fools. They will utilise this ill-advised legislation, as is clearly demonstrated by the data from the Crime Statistics Agency, whose statistics show that there has been a 52 per cent increase in crime committed by 10- and 11-year-olds over the past years.

I just want to ask people: do they understand the consequences of this law being passed? I will give you a small example of what will happen at schools. All of those kids between 10 and 12 years of age will not be considered to be committing a crime when something happens at a school. ‘How can schools discipline these kids?’ parents will ask. When they commit no crime, what can the principal do to the kids? There will be issues down the track, consequences that will be a flow-on effect of this legislation. If anything, it is time to strengthen our approach to youth crime. Reports show that there were 3426 alleged child offenders aged between 10 and 15 involved in property crime, including a 16 per cent rise in aggravated burglary compared to the previous year. This was in an announcement from the Labor government last year in relation to the increase in responsibility for crime. The bill conveys to these youth that they are untouchable, which is not the case. It will send a false message to these kids of the reality of society. The prevailing perception that these youths are free to act without consequences, even in the event of serious crime, it does not meet community expectations. It is time to show strength and not react with weakness. The government’s plan to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12 seems like an avoidance of the harsh truth of juvenile law-breakers, not a genuine solution.

Groups like the Community Advocacy Alliance and the Police Association Victoria strongly oppose this bill. It is time we listened to the frontline experts. While it is true that there are very few individuals aged 10 and 11 who are placed in detention, this is because it is already in place in the system to make sure that these kids will not be incarcerated. The doli incapax common-law principle, which requires proof that a child between 10 and 14 understands their actions before they can even be prosecuted, already offers protection to all young people before the court. The government’s approach seems to lack this understanding of the consequences for young offenders. The government mentioned that in this latest legislation they are introducing doli incapax for children below 14 years of age. As a matter of fact, this has been in place in the system for decades. Thirty years ago, when I joined the police force, this was already preached and taught to police officers. Police interview kids from the age of 10 upwards. They need to prove and establish that the kid understands what is right and wrong. The court also establishes this when the kids are brought in front of the magistrate or the judge. What this bill does is complicate law enforcement’s responsibility.

The current bail laws enacted by this Labor government allow individuals to be released in spite of their actions. In recent times this has resulted in loss of life, sadly. I would like to quickly mention that, because of this, three tragic incidents in recent months involving youth criminals granted bail have cost the lives of three innocent people. Most recently, Davide Pollina was killed when a stolen car hit him while he was riding a motorcycle. The driver of the stolen car is still on the run, leaving Davide’s family devastated, yet the co-offender in the stolen vehicle was released on bail the very next day. Just a few weeks ago trainee doctor William Taylor was killed in a hit-and-run by another young offender, and earlier this year Dr Ash Gordon was fatally stabbed by two boys after his Doncaster home was burgled. The latest crime stats show that concerning trends have been continuing under this Labor government for a decade, with a 20 per cent increase in criminal incidents by youth offenders. Aggravated burglaries increased by 18 per cent last year, a whopping 146 per cent increase since 2014.

Many of those who committed those crimes are young people on bail. In the past six years 137 people have been injured by cars stolen from aggravated burglaries. This rate has continued to rise in the past 12 months, with 53 people injured, which is a whopping 82 per cent increase. So, when it comes to bail this government has a bad track record, whether that be due to influence by the Greens or to accommodate various groups in the community. The fact is there is one crime being committed every 3 hours by a youth offender on bail under Premier Allan’s Victorian government. The solution is not to make the law weaker. Instead, governments should be focusing on reducing crime rates and strengthening and investing in rehab and reform and intervention programs. That is why this bill is critically flawed; instead of working to prevent crime, the Allan government has cut funding for crime prevention. In the recent budget the government has cut $20 million from crime prevention at a time when crime rates are at record highs.

Addressing youth justice, the Armytage–Ogloff review highlighted two main key factors for a successful youth justice system. It should address the reason why young people offend, and it should address the community concerns about youth crime. This bill fails on both. The bill does not make the necessary changes and will be adopted by a government unwilling or unable to invest in early intervention programs. In conclusion, I urge the members of this house to reject this bill. It does not provide the solutions our communities need, nor does it effectively address the complexity of youth crime. Instead, we must work towards a more balanced rehabilitative approach and prioritise the wellbeing of our youth while ensuring the safety of communities. The Allan government has no real solution to youth crime in Victoria. This bill is not about helping young people or reducing crime. It aims to please a section of the community by keeping young offenders out of our legal system. However, it fails to address how to stop these misguided youths from committing crime in the first place or prevent them from committing more crimes in the future. The government should have focused on preventing crime from the start. Since 2017 it has been delaying important reforms. This bill does not serve the interests of our community. It does not address the community’s concerns, nor does it serve the best interests of the youth. I hope those opposite and those on the crossbenches agree and support the opposition’s proposed changes.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:28): I will start by saying what I think we all agree on: children being incarcerated is a failure of our society, of our government and of families. I do not think that anyone in this place wants to see children incarcerated. So I start on that basis. This bill in particular I have mixed feelings about. I feel that there are some things in it that are very good improvements to the youth justice system, and there are some things that I have concerns about. On balance I am not inclined to oppose this bill, but we will wait to see how the final product looks after the vast array of amendments that have been proposed.

The first thing the bill does, which is most significant, is raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years. I support this change. From my understanding, the majority of crimes committed by children in this age group are not of the most serious category, and it is certainly true that children of this age are very unlikely to be able to understand the acts that they have committed and the criminality of what they have done. So I support that. I note the Greens are going to be moving an amendment to raise the age to 14. I will not be supporting this amendment for a number of reasons, although in theory it sounds like a good idea to maybe do this. Many of the more serious crimes that we have seen in this state by youth have been by those in that age group, 13- and 14-year-olds. I am talking about very serious crimes – unfortunately things like rape and murder and terrorism and all sorts of horrible things like that – and I do not believe that there are sufficient alternative systems in place to deal with this.

I will point to an unfortunate thing that happened recently. This house passed a bill to remove the crime of public drunkenness, which I supported at the time, but I recall I did express concerns about the alternate systems to help people who are drunk on the street and how we might deal with them. Unfortunately the systems to support these people, in my view, have failed. Recently we have seen the death of someone who was drunk and could not be arrested. They ended up lying on the street and being hit by a car – that is my understanding of what happened. It is an absolute tragedy. I see that as a failure of the implementation of this. I feel that raising the age to 14 without sufficient intervention systems would be potentially even more catastrophic.

I would also make the point of the vast hypocrisy and inconsistency of the Greens. They claim that raising the age to 14 is justified because they do not believe that children should have criminal responsibility – they believe that they are incapable of forming that – yet they also believe that 10- and 11-year-olds are somehow capable of making decisions about puberty blockers and changing their gender and making lifelong decisions that will effectively sterilise them. I think that this is a gross inconsistency and should be pointed out.

Another thing that this bill has which I think is very good – on paper at least; we will wait and see how it is actually implemented – is a diversion system. Anything that we can do to keep children out of the criminal justice system is good, because we know that with children we have the most ability to influence their behaviour and hopefully put them on a path where they will be productive, law-abiding citizens of society rather than criminals. It is much, much more difficult to change the behaviour of adults that have fallen into criminality. For children there is a chance if we can get them back into school, if we can maybe provide support to their families and if we can get them associating with sports and community groups and more productive things rather than getting involved in gangs that provide them some sense of belonging. This is a good thing.

Another thing that this bill does which I am very supportive of is it expands the warning and cautioning system. This is an excellent option that should be given to police – to tell children that they have done the wrong thing and give them a warning and make it clear. Hopefully, for those that have not fallen into deep criminality, this might influence them to the point where they think twice before doing things again. Another thing that this bill does which I am very supportive of is it codifies the common-law principle of doli incapax. The law effectively assumes that a child is incapable of understanding the criminality of their actions and therefore the obligation is on police and the prosecutors to show that the child did have the mental capacity to understand the criminality of their actions. I am very supportive of this, for reasons I have already expanded on.

The other thing that this bill is hoping to expand is the idea of restorative justice. My team and I have done a lot of research on this on jurisdictions where it has been implemented. The idea of criminals and victims working together to both show the victim that justice is being served and show the criminal the impact of what they have done on the rest of the community and on victims – hopefully that will change their behaviour. I am cautiously optimistic that this will have some positive effects.

Now to some of the things that I am concerned about, I thank the many stakeholders that I have engaged with to obtain their views on this, including the Attorney-General’s office. They have provided much information on this, but also we have engaged very widely with many stakeholder groups on these issues. One issue, which has been raised by many, is the concern about powers of transportation for 10- and 11-year-olds – giving the police the powers to transport children. I do have very serious concerns about this. I would like to see better safeguards in this power, such as maybe forcing police to have body cams on or potentially having independent third parties there to witness what is happening. Nevertheless I accept that in certain situations it may be necessary or desirable for police to take children out of a situation – for example, if they are on the street and alone and they cannot contact their parents or guardian or whoever – and take them back to a police station until such time as someone responsible can take custody of the child. I do have concerns about this. Nevertheless I again draw attention to what I believe has been the failure of the implementation of the removal of the public drunkenness offence. I am concerned that without this power we might end up with a similar tragic situation. With concerns, I accept the necessity of this. I do think that there needs to be potentially better oversight of this and reporting, so let us see how that happens.

Electronic monitoring is another thing that I am very concerned about. However, one must consider the circumstances under which electronic monitoring would be utilised. My understanding is that the intention for electronic monitoring is that it is for children who otherwise would not be given bail due to being a risk of flight. Having that electronic monitoring offers the police and the courts the opportunity to potentially give someone bail that would not otherwise have had bail and therefore keep them out of remand and keep them out of a cell. We know that once children get locked up it sets in train an entire course of events which can lead to lifelong consequences, and if this is a method of keeping children out of remand, then I am cautiously optimistic about this. Also I note that it is a trial. The advice that I have is that there is not good evidence about whether this is effective or not for children. For adults there is reasonably good evidence that it works in certain circumstances. For children there is not good evidence; therefore it is appropriate that this is a trial. I would urge the government to do everything that they can to make sure that the data collected is sufficient for academic analysis so that we can make sure that this is actually an effective thing. I will be, I assume, one of many calling for it to be abandoned if it is not effective.

I often talk about root causes of crime. What we are looking at here are the consequences of children in bad situations resorting to crime. I think that there needs to be a more sensible discussion about some of these root causes. Everyone acknowledges over-representation of Indigenous people, also over-representation of other groups, such as South Sudanese. A few years ago there was an academic that did a paper on root causes and some of the factors causing children in the South Sudanese community to commit crimes, and they were decried as a racist, which was absolutely irresponsible. I think from both sides we need to have more sensible discussions about these things. From the left, anyone that wants to look into these things gets decried as a racist, and then on the other side we have people who smear people as ‘African gangs’. I think that there are real concerns about people that have been brought, especially from traumatic situations, as refugees from other countries. They do face special challenges. In many cases they only have a single parent. They might have large families. We need to look at what sorts of supports can be provided. I am not necessarily saying that those supports need to be from the government, but some simple things have been put to me like: if you have got a single parent without a father in the family, just getting the kids to school is a big challenge. If there are ways that we can help with that, that is a big thing.

I would also point to the fact that the children committing these offences are boys for the most part, and we need to really think about the role of men and in particular fathers – the role that they play. If children do not have fathers for whatever reason, then we need to look at how we can have better male role models for these children, for these young boys, because what happens is that if they do not have good role models in their life, they often get sucked into these gangs that provide them a sense of community, and these are not the sorts of role models that we want children to be looking up to. I would also note that these sorts of crimes are expensive. It costs taxpayers a lot of money to look after these things, and any way that we can divert them would be a good thing.

Another thing which I have spoken about many times – I go on and on and on about it – is the impact of drug prohibition. For many of these children, if they are charged with possession and those sorts of things, I think that is a total waste of resources. It unnecessarily criminalises children, and we need to look at how we deal with that.

Getting children into school – one of the things that has been clearly put to me is that pretty much the gold standard of getting kids on the right track is making sure that they go to school. Whatever we can do to make sure that kids are going to school, learning and getting an education and associating with teachers and other students who are also there to learn would be a great thing.

On the whole the Libertarian Party will not be opposing this bill, noting that I do have some concerns about some of the aspects of it. I do have some concerns about whether or not the government can successfully implement some of these programs that they are committing to. Nevertheless we have a problem at the moment, and something needs to be done. I hope that this will fix it, and I will be watching with great interest some of these new programs, such as expanding restorative justice and electronic monitoring. I think that this Parliament needs to pay very close attention to that. If it is successful, we need to call it out, but if it is failing, similarly, we also need to call it out and knock it on the head as soon as possible if it is not working as we hope it does.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (10:44): I rise today in support of the Youth Justice Bill 2024, a bill that will see much-needed reforms in our justice system and implement some long-awaited tools to keep Victoria’s youth out of the justice system. As many of us know, youth offending is a fraught and complicated challenge for our community to respond to. This bill takes an evidence-based approach to keeping kids at home, in school and out of the criminal justice system. The bill contains much-needed reforms, which will build on Victoria’s success in driving down the number of young people coming into contact with the youth justice system. These reforms aim to reduce youth offending and improve community safety while also providing genuine opportunities for young people who come into contact with the youth justice system to turn their lives around. This is about doing more of what works to keep the Victorian community safe. Can I take a moment to acknowledge the incredible and extensive work in coming to form this bill led by Minister Erdogan and Minister Symes from this place and of course by folks from the other place as well. But my deep respects go to the justice ministers here in the Legislative Council.

This bill follows the central recommendation of the 2017 Armytage and Ogloff review that Victoria establish a new dedicated youth justice act. It 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. Through this bill Victoria will become the first state to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years old. Changing one number in this legislation may seem small, but the message is significant. Our 10- and 12-year-olds do not belong in custody; they belong in school and with their families, carers and communities. We are doing this because we know that this is the right thing to do, not just for the children involved but because it is the best thing for the safety of our community. The evidence is clear that the younger a child is when they are first sentenced, the more likely they are to reoffend and reoffend more frequently, more violently and later on as adults. Focusing on helping these children address the underlying causes of their offending and getting them on the right path will keep the community safer in the long run.

We know that serious offending by 10- and 11-year-olds is very rare, as is a situation where a 10- or 11-year-old would come before the courts, and it is rarer still in fact that a child that young would receive a custodial sentence. We thankfully do not have any children in the system of that age, and with these important reforms, we never will again. In the rare situation in which a 10- or 11-year-old does engage in criminal activity, it stems from something going very wrong in their life, and this warrants a response of help and of support, one that is best done not through the criminal justice system but instead through support services with age-appropriate services. While some may disagree with this approach and offer a tough-on-crime approach for young children, the evidence tells us that this simply does not work. This is because very young children typically lack the maturity to form criminal intent, and their charges end up being withdrawn or ultimately not proven. We know that children and young people who come into contact with the criminal justice system need to be treated differently to adults, recognising young people’s extra capacity for rehabilitation and their developing maturity. 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. This is about being fair on young kids and ensuring that our youngest Victorians do not fall into the justice system and never come out.

There are also key reforms in this bill for victims of youth crime, including creating a new victims register for people impacted by youth offending. The bill is also a comprehensive reform across the full youth justice system and the first major reform of our youth justice system in decades, and it will see transformative changes. We are legislating more early, pre-charge diversionary opportunities – including warnings, cautions and early diversion group conferencing – and 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 precincts safer for those in custody and, just as importantly, for our hardworking youth justice staff. This bill before us also includes meaningful steps towards establishing a self-determined Aboriginal community controlled youth justice system in the future.

I want to be very clear: raising the age does not mean the child escapes consequences. It is entirely appropriate and expected that children be held accountable for their behaviour, particularly when this leads to serious harm. What raising the age does is recognise that the criminal justice system, as it stands, is not the most appropriate way to hold a young child to account. What does work is putting in place developmentally appropriate supports that put a stop to their harmful behaviour, as is the overarching objective of this legislation. Raising the age of criminal responsibility must be done in a way that prevents the exploitation of young people in criminal activity. This is why this bill proposes to make a series of changes to the charging framework for recruitment offences involving young children. This includes amending the definition of ‘criminal activity’ for the offence of recruiting a child, to make it clear that this includes conduct by a child who is under the minimum age or is presumed incapable of committing an offence because of the doli incapax principle. In practice what this means is that recruiting or inciting a child under 14 to commit an offence, or even conspiring to, will still constitute criminal activity for the purposes of prosecuting an adult charged with the recruitment offence. We are lowering the age to which the offence of recruiting a child applies from 21 to 18. Let me just repeat: that is the offence of recruiting a child to offend – that has been lowered from 21 to 18. Together these changes make it blatantly clear that involving young children in offending schemes offers no protection, and there are clear and further reaching consequences for this conduct.

While this bill raises the age of criminal responsibility to 12, the bill also codifies the existing common-law doctrine of doli incapax for 12- and 13-year-olds. What this means is that a 12- or 13-year-old child can only be found to have criminal capacity if the prosecution can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the child knew their conduct was seriously wrong in a moral sense as opposed to naughty or mischievous. This doctrine is a longstanding and fundamental common-law principle that exists in every jurisdiction in Australia and in other common-law countries overseas. Things that may be considered when making the determination include the age, the maturity, the stages of development, their history of offending, whether the child has any disability or mental illness or any other matter relevant to making the determination of their criminal capacity, as well as evidence from witnesses about what the child may have said or done in the lead-up to the offending. This leads to more efficient outcomes for children so that those 12- and 13-year-old children who do not, or are unlikely to have, criminal capacity avoid unnecessary contact with the criminal justice system.

This again builds on the overarching objective of this bill to ensure that the system is more attuned to and cognisant of responding to youth offending in a developmentally appropriate way. The bill will provide courts and youth justice with more tools to keep the community safe while giving young people the best possible chance to turn their lives around. This is how you keep the community safe over the long term – by implementing programs and systems that help our youth avoid the criminal justice system, help them get out of the reoffending cycle, which does not just benefit kids, it benefits all Victorians of all ages. The kind of programs that are frontline responses, like Operation Alliance, are aimed at disrupting and dismantling youth offending networks by focusing on new and emerging groups to prevent escalation into more serious and more violent crime – dismantling gang activity and helping kids get out of the cycle of criminal behaviour and peer-related crime. We also have embedded the youth outreach program, which aims to reduce long-term involvement in the criminal justice system by engaging with young people and their family, assessing their needs and referring them to youth-specific supports. Our partnership with local government, community and legal services is also working to reduce the involvement of young people in the criminal justice system.

Victims are at the very heart of the Youth Justice Bill, and this reform adopts a victim-inclusive approach so that we can support members of the community that have been affected by crime. We know the profound effect that crime can have on victims, and this bill will ensure that the impact on victims is considered in all decisions and that the victims have a voice. Under the Youth Justice Bill victims will have the opportunity to participate in pre-charge diversion as well as during the sentencing process and at the parole stage through restorative justice conferences. Youth Parole Board membership will be expanded to allow for the appointment of people with lived experience with youth justice, including as a victim or family member of a victim of youth offending, and doing this will allow our justice system to better reflect modern standards, with individuals that can accurately inform us on the genuine experiences felt by those involved in the criminal justice system. Continuing on about victims, I will say that this bill will also provide a new youth justice victims register so victims can provide information to the board to inform decisions around parole conditions. The changes to the minimum age will not affect the rights of victims, and the victims charter will continue to apply to victims impacted by harmful behaviour by very young children, which means that victims will still be able to access critical information, support and financial assistance. We want to give young people who come into contact with the criminal justice system the very best chances to turn their lives around and reform themselves, and that is what this bill is about: changing lives and keeping kids out of the criminal justice system.

Before I wrap up my remarks and finish my remarks can I just say that before I came to this place one of the jobs that gave me the most pride was finding opportunities for young people who had been in contact with the criminal justice system, helping them get traineeships and turning their lives around, and a bill that enforces this, that strengthens this and that says we believe in young Victorians and their second chance in life is something that I support wholeheartedly. In Brunswick about 1700 metres from my electorate office is Parkville, and I see each and every day the vans that I know are filled with kids. I hope that, through the incredible investments that will be made as part of this bill and as part of our continued commitment to the safety of our community, those vans run a little less frequently up and down Park Street. I know that our ministers have put in a lot of work. But before I commend the ministers more, I am going to say that our ministers have done an incredible bit of work. They have done this with stakeholders, with community, with the legal fraternity, with child advocates, with commissioners and with others. All of them have come together to bring in a bill that has waited long enough, and I am really pleased to see that it is finally here before us. I commend the bill, and I look forward to following its implementation over the years to come. I will leave my remarks there.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:59): I am pleased to make some comments on the Youth Justice Bill 2024 today and clearly state that the Nationals will be opposing this bill. The Nationals and Liberals do have amendments, and should they fail we will not be supporting this bill. We will oppose it in the division. I have been listening to debate, and it is a vexed situation, there is no doubt about it. But increasingly Victorians are feeling their personal safety is at heightened risk, whether it be in their homes, in streets, in shopping centres or in car parks. Sadly, there seems to be an element of youth offending that is just quite disturbing in nature. If we look at the statistics, it has been revealed that in the past children as young as 10 certainly have been offending. Those statistics say they are the highest over the last 10 years. We see that there is a 53 per cent spike in the number of offences committed by children as young as 10 or 11 and indeed that children are breaching their bail every 3 hours, with youth from 12 to 17 breaching their bail more than 2770 times. If we look to my own electorate in Gippsland, there has been a 20 per cent rise in youth crime among that 10- to 17-year-old group.

There is an issue here that is not being solved by a government that has been in for 10 years. There is an issue that is impacting people in my electorate very severely but also people across Victoria. Each crime or alleged crime – we can put that word in front of it – has a victim, and that victim has a shockwave of other victims within that family or friendship circle. We saw the latest victim, Davide Pollina, 19 years old, who came out to have a better life. My goodness, what are his parents thinking now? We saw trainee doctor William Taylor die at the hands of youths. We saw a story that I know all too well – poor, dear Dr Ashley Gordon and his bereft family in Traralgon in my electorate. There is nothing like sitting in front of a family who are bereft and crying to know the impact on victims of youth attacks and youth crimes. People think that they can operate with impunity, and if we increase the age of criminal responsibility, that will only embolden youth. I note that the Gordon family have a petition out, and indeed that petition calls for three things. One that the government has not addressed and probably will not address is to provide police with greater stop-and-search powers.

We know that the government has now walked back on its commitment to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. It has walked back. I am sure that is kind of a pleasing position, but for people who are victims it is all still a very bad taste in their mouth. We also note that the government has walked back and is partially repealing section 30B of the Bail Act 1977 – to a point. This is again a partial level of victory for people, but really this problem is emanating from a government that has not been responsive to these needs over time.

We have seen the Armytage report spoken to and looked at. The government should address the reasons for youth offending. It should address the community’s concerns about youth offending, and it clearly has not done that in all this time. I have a very direct and personal understanding of this. In my hometown a lady who I know very well – a dear, dear lady – had her car stolen by a youth a couple of months ago. She was so traumatised she had to leave town and stay with friends and family to cope with that impost. This child was 13, turning 14, and had an alleged litany of incidents over the last few months. The thing that is very frustrating for police in this situation is that this recidivism is turning up again and again. Now is not the time to reduce accountability for young offenders.

One of the things that this very voluminous bill does not do is address preventative measures. They were there in the Armytage report back in 2017. I believe that the government should be listening to private individuals and entities who are doing amazing work. We see the work of Bernie Shakeshaft in the BackTrack Youth Works program. He has got an Australian of the Year citizenship award. The work that they do is outstanding, and indeed it is being emulated in my own electorate by Mountain Track. Two most amazing people, Laura and David, and their small team are creating a safe space for these young offenders, and they can certainly be quite young. They are starting out this fledging operation. They are about creating boundaries for children, and this is what we are not seeing anymore – boundaries with hard love but love and consistency. These kids are given a purpose, and they are given skills. The skills that they have picked up are chainsawing, backhoeing, painting vehicles, mechanics, photography and the like, concreting and general building. These are important things that give kids courage and give kids a sense of self-worth, and this is what this government over the last 10 years has failed to do. It is a big problem, and I understand that, but doing this and putting this bill before the house is not part of solving that.

This bill focuses on restorative justice practices. I know when I was a teacher they talked about restorative justice, where you put the victim in front of the perpetrator and you tell the story. It sounds good in theory, but I am very concerned that this government has botched just about every department that it touches and works in. It is so frail in its ability to actually achieve things that I am concerned that this restorative justice will not do what it is supposed to do. This bill is largely silent on bail reform, and our victims do deserve better.

People have spoken on this before, but there is the doli incapax. There are systems in place now, and they are systems where the police and prosecution have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that these young people up to the age of 14 – between 10 and 14 – are actually capable of understanding. There are provisions there already. There are safeguards and due safeguards, and they need to be put in place. What will raising this do to actually stop young offenders? What will it do to save more victims? I do not believe it does. One of the key players in all of this is Victoria Police, our police force, and they have come out very strongly and said that they are firmly against raising the age of criminal responsibility. The fact is that early intervention and diversion services to target young people are wholly insufficient at the moment. Why provide another layer without actually tackling this problem? We see it time and time again – and I will keep my comments brief. The thin blue line is being asked to stretch thinner and thinner, and I understand that police get so frustrated with the youth justice system.

Finally, we need to certainly solve a number of problems. The government has made that comment that it will not be raising the age to 14. It is a hollow victory, but we will take it anyway. The government have ignored our private members bill in the past about repealing the repeal, and they have come back a short way. Rather than playing political games in this situation, responsible government should listen to solutions wherever they emanate from. They should be protecting Victorians from more perpetrators. They should be seeking preventative measures, and this is not the way through with this bill.

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (11:08): I rise to support this bill today not because I think it is perfect, nor do I even think this bill is great, but I am supporting the view that it offers some much-needed progress in our youth justice system and acknowledges and seeks to address the overcriminalisation of First Nations youth. This bill did have the potential to be great, and with the right amendments, this Parliament could have achieved something extraordinary. Instead this government chose at the last minute to move backwards. My position today is informed and guided by experts and those with firsthand experience through extensive consultation with the Human Rights Legal Centre, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and WEstjustice. I stand in support of the Greens and Legalise Cannabis amendments that are a direct result of these inputs from these stakeholders. I also want to put on the record at the outset how disgraceful this process has been this week. Key stakeholders and crossbenchers that the government relies on in order to pass its legislative agenda should not have to find out about policy backflips when they read the morning news on the very day that debate begins.

I want to make it known this government blindsided not only this chamber but every single community legal centre, every law authority, the judicial system itself and every single Victorian in announcing these revised amendments on the morning of the debate. This was a departure from the processes that we normally have in place in a bid to prevent those who oppose the amendments coming together and did not allow us time to hold meaningful consultations with the stakeholders we have been in constant communication with. I approach this debate not hopeful, like I once thought I would be, with not only the government performing a backflip so spectacular that it could win Olympic gold but the opposition wanting harsher and more punitive laws against our youth in their own amendments. It all feels to be without empathy, without reason and without consideration of what truly needs to be done to support vulnerable and marginalised youth in our state.

The guiding youth justice principle in clause 18 enshrines what we as a state have been calling for, such as the recognition of the underlying causes of children’s offending, the importance of support networks and the prioritisation of diversion. Division 3 of part 1.3 provides for matters specific to Aboriginal children and young persons, such as their over-representation in the youth justice system and in custody. The bill also speaks to the inequality and structural and institutional racism caused by colonisation and laws, policies and systems which explicitly excluded and harmed Aboriginal people and culture and led to this over-representation and the continuation of systemic injustice. It is a truly groundbreaking compromise for a bill, and one that is long overdue, yet one that the Liberals with their amendments wish to see overridden by the old common law.

The bill promises better involvement with Aboriginal support services, leaders or community members throughout custodial centres, strategic partnerships with Aboriginal communities in cultural support plans and the requirement for the secretary to publish information annually relating to the accountability measures to improve outcomes for Aboriginal children and whether the outcomes are being achieved. Further protection will be provided by moving division 3, specifically clause 23, into the purposes of the bill to inform all the provisions and actions taken with Aboriginal contextualisation and to entrench the aim of eliminating over-representation and institutional racism. We must now keep the government, custodial centres and police accountable in upholding these principles. However, what is a devastating shame is that the remainder of the bill is drafted in competition with these aims, with serious powers and initiatives introduced that are incompatible with these youth justice principles. This is not closing the gap, it is potentially intentionally widening it. For all of the talk of diversion in the bill, with these new amendments it is clear there is no intention of diverting children away from the criminal justice system and incarceration.

From what I have heard today in the chamber I think it is prudent to first remind everyone that we are talking about children, and often the most vulnerable children in our communities. They are not committing crimes out of a desire to inflict pain or destruction; they are committing crimes because of our own failures and because of the system’s failures. It is the domestic and family violence they experience at home. It is the ostracisation from society. It is the racism and stigmatisation imposed upon them from the moment that they are born. It is the social and economic disadvantages caused by colonisation and dispossession. It is poverty. It is inadequate access to education, housing and health care. There are a thousand factors that lead children to commit crimes. It is a simplistic reduction, and an inaccurate one at that, to blame the child and say it is something innate within them. It is not.

What is abundantly clear, through evidence and community wishes, is that the age of criminal responsibility must be raised to 14 years old, with no exceptions. This must be an immediate raise, or at the very least the government should legislatively commit to a future raising of the age with a timetable of implementation dates in this bill. But what we see in this bill is not even a genuine raising of the age to 12, because police will have additional powers to take 10- and 11-year-olds into the station, transport them and use limited force. This contact with police at such a young age can be fatal to the development and views of a child, harming them for their entire lifetime.

The bill must also be amended to prohibit the transfer of children aged 16 or over to an adult prison. It is wholly inappropriate and nonsensical. Clause 18 of the bill refers to children’s differences and vulnerabilities from adults. In no other circumstance do we treat children as adults. Again, this is where the bill contradicts itself. To place vulnerable and impressionable children amongst seasoned criminals and unsafe adults is, frankly, a foolish idea and only perpetuates the current problem. We should be ensuring that more children are diverted away from police contact and the criminal justice system in the first place, because we know that this contact substantially increases the likelihood of further offending in adulthood.

The Sentencing Advisory Council’s report titled Reoffending by Children and Young People in Victoria found that for every year a child was older when they appeared before a criminal court there was an 18 per cent decline in the likelihood of reoffending. But children aged 10 to 14 had reoffending rates of 80 per cent, proving that contact with police and the criminal justice system is fatal to young children under the age of 14, perpetuating a cycle of reoffending. The older the person is, the less likely they are to reoffend after exposure to the criminal justice system. Therefore our goal should be to keep children under 14 away from police contact and the courts with no exceptions. Young children have the highest prospects of rehabilitation and diversion. We must pour our energy into these avenues and not into further vilification.

This government talks the talk about violence against women, yet it has neglected to address any of the systemic issues in our criminal justice system that enable and protect perpetrators. There is nothing being done to better the so-called protection offered by intervention orders and the rampant breaches of these orders, yet this bill says to Victorians that using children in experiments of punishment is appropriate and that it is also appropriate to use $30 million of taxpayer dollars doing so. The children of this state are not here for our games of trial and error. The government has ignored evidence, expert advice and facts. We have been here before time and time again. It is kneeling to fearmongering and is blatantly ignoring the findings of the inquiry into Victoria’s criminal justice system.

I can tell you with confidence that there is absolutely no evidence in support of ankle monitoring devices. Let us talk about what electronic ankle monitoring has been proven to do though. It has been proven to be expensive, ineffective and unreliable, and it has a strong record of not reducing crime. It is criminalising children who have not yet even been found guilty of a crime. This bill proposes to make great strides in the overcriminalisation of First Nations youth, but the government cannot grandstand this motive while simultaneously proposing to chain them up, breaching their human rights and further contributing to the stigmatisation and racial profiling that they already face every single day.

Instead of fulfilling the guiding principles of this bill, the government wants to send a blaring physical reminder to our children of just how outcast we have made them. Decision-makers sitting in their offices with no experience practising criminal law and no firsthand insight into our justice system nor youth custodial centres find themselves fit to make decisions beyond their realm of knowledge that will have lifelong effects on children. Electronic ankle monitoring has received no support from any legal institution in this state nor any support from our justice system. The Victorian Criminal Bar Association has expressed its strong concern over this proposal for the detrimental impacts it will have on the rehabilitation of children. Similarly, Victoria Legal Aid has vocalised its opposition to the proposal, stating that children need support and connection, not ankle bracelets, and has criticised the government for shamefully moving away from carefully considered reforms and instead trialling an initiative that we know will not work. The Human Rights Law Centre is also adamantly opposed to it.

The proposal of electronic ankle monitoring shows just how out of touch we can be with the lives of youths in this state. It is not children who are the problem, it is the system that has failed them. Electronic ankle monitoring does nothing but exacerbate the underlying causes of youth crime. It is not possible to shame and humiliate them in the community into safety. Instead of funnelling $30 million into Big Brother type surveillance, the government should be investing in programs that reconnect children with support networks and their communities. These are evidence-based reforms that are already proven to be successful in reducing offending. This proposal seeks to turn us backwards. No matter how this government tries to dress it up by calling it a bracelet, it will not hide the fact that it is a chain, it is an internalised prison and it is incarceration by another name.

I, like the majority of Victorians, have no illusion about the conduct of our police force towards youth, people of colour, marginalised communities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The bill itself expresses this in acknowledging the system’s responsibility. Yet it goes on to create new police powers and new methods and opportunities for police to come into contact with and detain children. This is entirely counterintuitive to the purposes of the bill. You cannot reduce racial profiling by giving more power to the hands responsible for it. Police will have excess powers to search, use force and detain children at stations. Not only this, but the youth cautions and youth warnings will be police led instead of court led, allowing the decriminalisation to continue and placing those least equipped to decide on what are fundamentally judicial decisions. The bill says it all when it provides an exemption under clause 527, exempting officers from personal liability for the use of excessive force in custodial centres. This bill does not protect children, it protects those who have the power to harm our children. If this was not already wicked enough, the government announced at the last minute that it intended to expand the new powers, emboldening police to more frequently apply for bail revocation for repeat offenders. They intend to blur the lines between the judiciary and government bodies to allow police, who are largely responsible for the criminalisation of First Nations youth and racial profiling, to now have a stronger say in their incarceration.

With every progressive reform this government promises in this bill, it betrays it with another provision that overrides it. A Victorian coroner called these provisions in the Bail Act 1977 a ‘complete and unmitigated disaster’, and it is these reverse onus provisions that have driven an increase in incarceration levels, not an increase in crime. We saw this same overwhelming opposition in New South Wales, with Australia’s top legal and criminal justice experts and 60 organisations, including Save the Children and Amnesty International, signing a letter to the Premier opposing the introduction of the reverse onus youth bail reforms, similar to reverse onus provisions we have in this state. The government must acknowledge its mistakes and remove these provisions in the Bail Act as once promised.

The new inclusion of a council on bail, rehabilitation and accountability is an absolute insult to many of us. First, the council is made up of only government bodies, who will report as they please to exercise will with no independence at all. This must be amended to broaden membership to include the legal assistance sector and community sector. Secondly, they have insulted community legal services and law authorities that already told them what the driving factors are for young offenders and how to stop them. We already know because the evidence is already there, and it has been there for a long while now. We need diversion, we need to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, we need to reduce the contact of police with children, we need full bans on solitary confinement, we need to ban oppressive prison practices and we need to address the racial profiling and overcriminalisation of First Nations children. What we do not need is electronic ankle bracelets, more police powers, draconian legislation and kids in adult prisons.

This government had all the information before them and chose to ignore the majority of it. Not only that, but they lied to us in their initial announcement. They lied to Aboriginal communities, such as the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, who had engaged in good-faith consultations with them for the last five years on the Bail Amendment Bill 2023 and this bill. They trusted the government, and the government has betrayed them. They said they would remove the reverse onus provisions. They promised change and progress but instead gave us this draconian bill. I thank WEstjustice, the Human Rights Law Centre and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service for their briefings, input and passion for a better future for the youth of this state. We are sorry that you have been let down and we are sorry to the children who have been let down by this bill.

Fearmongering and false narratives should not dictate government policy. We owe the children of this state so much more. The families and children of this state will not forgive them. This government has let Victoria down with this bill today. As I said from the outset, I am supporting this bill but with no great enthusiasm. I am sure I speak for many of the crossbenchers in that we feel put over a barrel by the government to advance the small amount of good this bill does. I will not say I commend this bill to the house but rather the conversation will not end here today and we will continue to push for meaningful youth justice reform in our state.

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (11:25): It is a pleasure to follow Ms Purcell on a really important bill. I think you were underselling it in your sum-up there, but I do concur that there is never a full stop after a bill in justice. I know that all too well, and the conversations will indeed continue after this monumental piece of legislation hopefully passes the Parliament today or indeed tomorrow. I do want to start by acknowledging the significance and importance of the reforms that we are debating today. The reforms we make in this place around justice and around how we keep community safe and hold to account people who are offending are often the most challenging and nuanced. That is especially so when it comes to dealing with children. This bill – all 1000-plus pages of it, in two volumes – is about introducing comprehensive, evidence-based, long-term solutions to how we approach youth offending. I would encourage everyone in this place today to carefully think about the opportunity and the obligation that we have: our opportunity to do right by the youngest and often most vulnerable members of our community by giving them the best opportunity to contribute meaningfully to society, as well as the obligation as policymakers to intervene and to break the cycle of offending so that we are building a safer and more collegiate community.

As Attorney-General I have had the privilege to lead reforms on certain aspects of this bill. Today I am proud that we are a government that is seeking to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. The minimum age of criminal responsibility – or MACR, as it becomes known when you are talking about it so often and acronyms just become words – was last set 40 years ago. Many of us here would have been under the age of criminal responsibility then – a few were not born, actually. Since then we have learned so much about child and adolescent brain development and what works to stop youth offending. The reforms in the bill are guided by evidence that makes clear that children aged 10 and 11 do not have the capacity to form criminal intent. It is not about letting kids get away with criminal conduct. It is not about turning a blind eye to naughty behaviour. It is about approaching things in a way that works and that can ensure the community are kept safe and young children are supported.

That is why to coincide with this change we are introducing a set of carefully considered necessary powers for police to enable them to ensure that they can take steps when necessary to protect the community and the young people themselves. I am certainly aware that there are those who would prefer that we did not have to introduce police powers. They have concerns about how they will be implemented in relation to children. But I want to be clear that these powers are not about entrenching police interaction with children. They are powers that balance the need to minimise contact between police and children to avoid the criminogenic effects of police contact. Police will be first responders in many situations – that is unavoidable in dynamic situations – and they may warrant intervention. It would not be safe to leave children in situations where serious harm could result to them or anyone else, and it is the community’s expectation that if a young person is at risk of harming themselves, there is somebody that could step in and protect them. In instances where that is police, it is appropriate to codify that.

I do want to urge caution – and I am glad Mr Davis is here in the chamber at the moment – through discussions about amendments from both sides, Greens and coalition, in relation to police powers. It is the intention of the Greens to have no police powers. It is the intention of the coalition to have additional police powers. But we need to be careful, in addressing those amendments in the committee stage, that we do not have unintended consequences with that contest of ideas, particularly from the coalition, who I do not believe want to see a situation where there are no police powers. So I would, Mr Davis, urge caution in how we progress those, because at the moment, from what I am hearing, that may be an outcome that would be reached if you are not careful in how we vote on some of those. But I will talk to you after this.

I do want to also just touch on the codification of the long-held common-law principle doli incapax. I know that there are those who wish we were raising the age higher than 12. We are not raising MACR to 14, but there are provisions in the bill that certainly acknowledge those under 14. We are codifying the existing and longstanding common-law presumption of doli incapax. It is certainly not new. It is a balanced doctrine that begins with a presumption that children younger than 14 lack the mental capacity to form criminal intent by virtue of their age and relative development. The presumption is rebuttable, meaning that if the prosecution is able to establish that a 12- or 13-year-old knew that their conduct was seriously wrong and not just mischievous or naughty, they are able to be found culpable. These reforms do stem from feedback from those who work directly in the prosecution and defence of the youngest children in our system, and we have taken on board their feedback that this doctrine is important but can be better implemented when it is set clearly out in legislation. So that is what the intention is today, and I would just also inform the house that most other states have codified doli incapax.

We have spoken time and time again in this place, predominantly through question time, about our trial of electronic monitoring (EM). I want to make clear for the house not so much what it is – I think I have gone through that – but what it is not. Electronic monitoring is not a fix-all to bail offending. What it is is a further tool for our courts and police to ensure that those granted bail who are at high risk but not an unacceptable risk of repeat offending are complying with the conditions of their bail. I have been clear about this: when young people are complying with their bail conditions, they are given the greatest opportunity to turn their lives around. They are going to school, they are going to work and they are participating in programs. We want to get them back on track. EM, alongside those important programs, is all about improving compliance and really about supporting young people. It is a trial. I will be keeping a very close eye on the benefits that this can bring to young offenders.

Whilst talking about bail, it would be a good opportunity for me to run through the house amendments that have been tabled by previous speakers. I want to start with confirming that the reforms we introduced last year to bail, the reforms that came into effect in March of this year, did not weaken bail or make it easier for serious offenders to get bail. What the reforms did was ensure that our bail system had a more nuanced approach to different types of offending, between low-level nonviolent offending and serious offending that was causing the community harm and indeed concern. On this side of the house we know the difference. We know our system can distinguish between the two. When you do not, you have poor outcomes, and we are very proud that we have resolved those outcomes. The house amendments that have been introduced today reaffirm this approach, making it clear that serious offences such as aggravated burglary, home invasion, sexual offending, family violence offences and armed robbery must be recognised for what they are – crimes that cause harm to the community. Our amendments ensure that the bail decision makers can have absolute clarity around the risks of reoffending and when bail can be revoked. In doing so we are fostering a system that takes seriously the risk involved in offending and ensures that it is front and centre for considerations of bail, as it should be.

Based on Mr Mulholland’s contribution – and it is a shame he is not in the chamber, but I am sure we will have some conversations in committee – it is clear he does not quite understand the difference between the offence we are introducing today and the decrepit one that he has continually sought to bring back. So allow me to clarify: in line with our bail reforms, our focus is on ensuring there are serious consequences for serious offending. That is why those serious offences outlined in schedule 1 and schedule 2 of the Bail Act 1977 will be able to be charged with a standalone offence. This, again, does not capture low-level nonviolent offences that the previous coalition’s offence included and which we know had a significant contribution on the over-representation of nonviolent vulnerable offenders. We want to make sure our systems respond to offending in an appropriate, risk-informed manner that prioritises community safety, which has always been at the centre of our reforms and remains so today.

It would be a great opportunity – because I have got 5 minutes left – to acknowledge the many, many hands that have helped craft this important youth justice bill. To the advocates who have dedicated much of their working lives to striving for better outcomes for young people in the justice system – these are amazing people. They are on the ground day in, day out. They motivate my work, and I am in awe of theirs. Their expertise and commitment to building the best future for our most vulnerable is admirable. It is something that the community benefits from, and we should be so grateful for their efforts. I thank them for supporting this bill. Of course I recognise that the bill does not do everything that they would like. I know that it takes the first crucial steps, however, to building a better system for our young people, and we could not have done it without these stakeholders.

In particular I would like to acknowledge the work and contribution of those within the First Nations sector – Nerita Waight of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and Chris Harrison and Marion Hansen of the Aboriginal Justice Caucus and other members of the justice caucus and their teams; those within the justice sector and the courts, particularly the Children’s Court, the Office of Public Prosecutions, the Law Institute of Victoria and Victoria Legal Aid; and certainly those that are on the front line dealing with our youth in our streets and in their homes and dealing with the consequences of serious crime. To those that enforce the law, Victoria Police and the Police Association Victoria, you have approached these reforms passionately, comprehensively and with an unwavering commitment to seeing our justice system do better.

My colleague, co-justice minister and friend Enver Erdogan – what a legacy piece this is for him. Most of us do not end up cutting our teeth on such a massive bill, but what he is seeking to achieve is something significant. It is a pleasure to have been in a position to progress this with him. Can I also acknowledge the hardworking, dedicated department staff, some of whom have worked over years to see this bill come to fruition. In particular can I acknowledge the work of the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Safety Kate Houghton, deputy secretary Marian Chapman, executive director Katie Bosco, Janice Lim, Ben Russo, Jodi Henderson, Andrea Davidson and the many, many people in their teams that have worked tirelessly on this bill over its conception and its progression. They will be mightily important to its implementation. I commend the bill to the house and look forward to a lengthy committee stage where both the Minister for Youth Justice and I are looking forward to answering many questions and getting this bill passed through the Legislative Council.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:38): I too, like many people in this chamber, rise to speak on the Youth Justice Bill 2024. Obviously, this is a very, very big bill, and it is one that has a lot of amendments that have come into the chamber that will be there when it is time for us to discuss and pick apart this particular bill in review. But I just wonder – there are good things that are in here. There is no denial that there are some good things in here. You can randomly open to pages to see a few. As someone that has worked in this industry, I find it just incredible that we are actually having to put this in writing because it has not happened – things like, for instance, clause 491:

Actions after placing the child or young person in isolation

As soon as reasonably practicable after any child or young person is placed in isolation, a youth justice custodial officer –

(a) must inform the child or young person of the reason for being placed in isolation; and

(b) if the child or young person is reasonably suspected of requiring medical attention, or if the child or young person requests medical attention, must ensure that the child or young person –

(i) is examined by a health practitioner; and

(ii) receives the medical attention and mental health care the child or young person requires …

Things like this are good, but the fact that we actually have had to get to the point of writing these things into this is just phenomenal, because it stems from a greater problem.

I do not know how many people in this chamber have actually worked with young people at risk of being involved in crime or those who have been in crime. I myself have worked with young people. I have been in the court system. I have written court reports. I have been alongside young people when they have had to face court. I have been in the youth detention centres to visit young people who were vulnerable, who had lived in homeless accommodation and who were now having to live in detention, and I understand the number of issues that arise, the challenges and all the complications that go with the system that we have. We all know our history in Australia, our penal history; you do not have to go far across Bass Strait to look at Little Island to see where there were once young people that were being shipped across to our nation to actually have to do hard time for very minor crimes.

Clearly everybody in this place feels very strongly about our youth justice system and the need to get this right, and so do we here in the Liberal coalition. This is not about wanting to be unfair or unjust. We are genuinely concerned. That is why there are about 300 amendments that are coming from our side, where there has been tremendous scrutiny taking place on this bill. We all share, I think, a desire to get this right. I have to be honest in saying that in the beginning I was a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of 10- and 11-year-olds and the opportunity for them to be in detention. But I realised on closer examination that provisions are made and that we can say that we do not have 10- and 11-year-olds in detention – at least that was definitely the case at the start of the month, and I have not looked since. In this state we are not looking at that as a situation.

We do need to look at more preventative measures. It does bother me that we do not have police in schools anymore. It does bother me that we do not have support programs, particularly those private enterprises and community ones that have not been government funded and that are doing a wonderful job because they have some sort of story behind them or a narrative of a person that genuinely wants to make a difference and whose life was turned around and they want to do the same for someone else. There are some really good programs out there, and there are some really good people. There is a real concern that this bill, even though it is massive in size and there is some good content in it, really does not go far enough in addressing some of the major issues. It is not out of belligerence or a desire to be difficult that the coalition is turning around and wanting to object to some of these issues.

I cannot help but note some of the things that my colleague in the other place Michael O’Brien, the Shadow Attorney-General, mentioned in terms of some of the issues that we are concerned about, and I have to say, after listening to Ms Purcell, I really do not agree with her position at all. Having worked with young people, one of the baselines that we use in social work and youth work is consequences for actions. That is how we determine case management: teaching consequences for actions. If we do not have that baseline, then we actually do not have anything to work with when we are putting a case management situation together for a client. We know that especially those that are wards of the state, under the custody of someone else or in the system need to be taught about boundaries and there need to be consequences for actions.

One of the concerns that I genuinely have is that we do not want to have a society and develop a society for young people where they think that they can do terrible offences and that there are no consequences. Not only is that bad for society but that is bad for them too because it puts them at risk. It puts them at risk of organised crime. It puts them at risk of becoming long-term offenders, because there is no consequence for them to go out and actually be a perpetrator of something. I do not think it is actually protecting them, and I am glad that the government has at least seen the necessity to pull back on raising the age of criminal responsibility. I think that we do need to consider that we seem to have raised the ability for young people to mature through social media and their ability to understand and know what is out there. So sadly, as Mr Limbrick mentioned, we have 13- and 14-year-olds currently responsible for dreadful crimes, dreadful crimes of rape, dreadful crimes of abuse. Without having parameters in our society that can actually pull them back and make them responsible for that, we are just causing chaos.

You do not have to go very far to discover the issues that we have in our community. I can speak from the perspective of the south-east about the issues that we have in the community with crime. I do not have to go very far at all. I only have to knock on one door or go to a ladies meeting that is about something else and people are talking about crime. Only just last week a lady I hardly knew was speaking about how she had to give her children bats in their beds because young people had broken into the home to steal while they were asleep in their home. The dog had come in, so they had woken up not realising that there was someone in the house, thinking that the dog had just somehow got out. They went out and discovered and sprung these people actually in their home, and they all took off. But when they called the police in, the police said, ‘Look, they’ll be back because they’ve taken your car keys.’ Sure enough, a week later they were back.

A mother having to give her children bats to have in their beds in case they could be in a situation of risk and waiting a whole week for these people to come back – I mean, that is tremendous fear, and that is taking place not far from where I live. This is a mother – I do not even know her last name. I can tell you that when I went down to Carrum and doorknocked, I heard of a mother who went inside to visit her friend, took her baby into the house, took the nappy bag, went back to get a couple of things from the car and the whole car had been stolen by young people. We cannot have a situation where we are not getting it right on youth justice.

I know that there are a number of issues that we are concerned about, a number of issues to do with bail and bail reform. I realise that these are the things that we all need to address. I am running out of time and I have been asked to keep this brief, so I just want to make it known that there has been a great deal of thought gone into our position on this particular bill. We do have concerns. We do recognise that young people need to take responsibility for their behaviour and there have to be consequences for actions. We do want people to be safe in isolation. We do not have now a situation where parents can even smack a child on the hand and get away with it and say, ‘You can’t do that. You could get in trouble.’ We do not have that. Isolation in a bedroom is one way, timeout is one way, that parents use these days in order to be able to allow the child to actually decompress, have a little bit of time to think about their actions and then be able to try and reason with them and talk through how they were behaving and why that was inappropriate. We have to find ways to do this in youth justice as well. Prevention is always better than intervention. Early intervention is always better than late intervention. I recognise that a lot of work has gone into this, but the reality is we have so much more we need to do. I know it has not been rushed through. But it feels like there are still things that we need to talk about, and that is why there are so many amendments.

Sure, there are ideological perspectives that are different in this house from different sides of the chamber, but the reality is we are concerned about families in Victoria being safe. We do want young people to understand that there are consequences for actions, and I personally do not want 10- and 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds to be in a situation where they can be susceptible to people from organised crime situations using them because they personally will have no consequences. That cannot happen in the state of Victoria. We have enough crime here. We have enough embedded crime. You do not have to look far to see where that is. It is through organised situations in every sort of sector. We have talked about it. I do not want to get off the topic by bringing up the CFMEU, so I will not. I just think that we need to be very, very careful in what we do. We had 413 offences in the year to March 2024 that were committed by 10- and 11-year-olds. I think that that is just an awful lot. We cannot actually say that 10- and 11-year-olds are not committing serious crimes and that the age is not getting younger.

I do have genuine hesitations about some of the implications of this bill. I wholeheartedly will be standing with the Liberal coalition in our amendments that we have put forward. I will unfortunately have to oppose the bill, with our party, because we just feel this is not going far enough and there are some loopholes that could be very, very difficult for people in the future.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (11:50): My colleague Ms Payne last night circulated our amendments to the bill and indicated our support for the amendments circulated by the Greens. I would also like to commend Ms Purcell for her analysis just a few minutes back. Legalise Cannabis Victoria (LCV) has sought the views of many stakeholders on this bill, and we thank the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Youthlaw, the Human Rights Law Centre, the Centre for Multicultural Youth, WEstjustice, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) and others for their comprehensive briefings. These organisations played a significant role in the development of this bill, as the Attorney-General indicated before, with their advocacy resulting in the inclusion of important reforms around sentencing, cautions and diversions and youth justice principles. I applaud those organisations for their steadfast commitment to social justice and for the work they do day in and day out to get the best outcomes for some of our state’s most vulnerable people. They do not get nearly enough acknowledgement or funding.

By and large the sector is satisfied with the bill. VALS went so far as to commend the government for finally showing leadership and progressing critical reforms on youth justice rather than pandering to the dangerous agenda of conservative newspapers, although given Tuesday’s announcement they may want to qualify that. Whilst stakeholders generally support the bill, they have suggested amendments to better protect children and young people from the harms of the criminal justice system. Their concerns are largely addressed in the Greens’ amendments, which, as I have said, LCV will be supporting.

As LCV spokesperson on treaty and First Peoples, I might use my remaining time to reflect on the specific concerns raised by those legal services, particularly VALS, who represent young Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system and whose clients are directly affected by these reforms. The profound intergenerational effects of colonisation on our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Victorians still play out through their contact with the criminal justice system. We know that our First Nations people have long been over-represented in our youth and adult criminal justice systems. Despite accounting for only 3 per cent of the total Australian population, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people still make up 39 per cent of all prisoners. We know that First Nations children have long been over-represented in child protection services. Data from the Productivity Commission shows that in the last year 43.7 per cent of children in out-of-home care were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. That is close to half of all children in out-of-home care despite them representing only 6 per cent of all children in Australia aged 17 and under. As we know, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to be oversurveilled and overpoliced. Data from the Victorian Government Aboriginal Affairs Report 2023 shows the number of young people processed by the police continues to increase and that the rate of young Aboriginal people processed by Victoria Police is nearly seven times greater than that of non-Aboriginal young people. An even more confronting bit of data is that since 2008 there has been an almost 50 per cent decline in the rate of police processing of non-Aboriginal young people and basically no decline for Aboriginal young people.

Earlier this year the government abandoned its plans to reform its bail laws, memorably described by a Victorian coroner as a complete and unmitigated disaster. This includes the removal of the presumption of bail and reverse onus provisions for minors. Currently around half of Aboriginal children are in youth detention because their bail was denied after being charged for petty offences. Instead of reforming bail the government is trialling an expensive electronic monitoring program on children as young as 14. In announcing the trial the Attorney-General stated that:

… kids that have had significant trauma will be unlikely suitable for an electronic bracelet –

which makes me wonder what child would be suitable. I doubt there is a single child affected by these reforms who is not suffering from significant trauma, if not a range of other undiagnosed mental health conditions. How could they not be? The 50 or so young people who are the likely subjects of the trial have been known to child protection and the police since they were toddlers. Most have suffered a lifetime of abuse and trauma, with their first contact with child protection taking place before they had turned three and their first contact with the criminal justice system before they had turned 10. They have been in foster care, residential care or the last resort of home care for most of their lives. All have issues at school, most have been expelled and when these children have acted up in school or in resi care they have had the cops turned onto them. These traumatised young people have been aggressively policed and punished for behavioural issues long before they were involved in any criminal activity.

I would dispute that any of these young people should be on the electronic bracelet trial. There are alternative programs that could be trialled, many that are working successfully now, that do not involve further stigmatising, further traumatising and further entrenching young people in the criminal justice system. They are also a damn sight cheaper and I would hazard far more effective in encouraging young people to engage with school or a job and get their lives back on track. Shackling traumatised kids with electronic bracelets may go some way to appeasing the editors of the Herald Sun and their devotees opposite, but it will do nothing to break the cycle of trauma or to reduce crime. Eventually we will need to have a broader conversation about the costs of criminalising our young people.

One of the main reasons we turn up here to fight for cannabis law reform is that we know there are too many young people in detention because of our inhumane drug laws. We hear examples of this all the time – a young person on bail gets busted for possession of a bit of weed, and just like that they have breached their bail conditions. Look, we are not in the grip of a youth crime wave, and we should not be pandering to baseless beat-ups whipped up by sections of the media. Our young people are living through pretty tough times, and they need our support. Yet year on year we underfund those crucial services that do support our vulnerable young people and their families: domestic violence services, drug and alcohol services, mental health services, community legal services and early intervention programs. Services are underfunded, working at capacity and in many cases facing staffing cuts. But, hey, times are tough. Everybody needs money, and the government cannot fund everything. Yet they can find $34 million for an electronic monitoring trial that will inevitably fail. I am not suggesting that $34 million is anywhere near enough money to fix the issue, but off the top my head maybe diverting some of the $83 million we give to Victorian racing industry might help, because going by their latest annual report figures I reckon they are just fine without it.

Kids do not just end up as serious criminal recidivists, they become embedded in the criminal justice system because of systemic failures to care for them or support their family to care for them. As clichéd as it sounds, it all comes down to priorities. We can invest in prevention and early intervention, in housing and education and in reducing the harms of poverty and homelessness that propel our young people into the criminal justice system, or the alternative is we can throw more money at policing and build more prisons. I doubt it will make our state any safer, but I guarantee it will certainly bankrupt it.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.