Community safety
Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:04): This is the first opportunity since the Werribee and Prahran by-elections, and so I thought it would be useful to take this opportunity to pause for a moment but also to make a direct appeal to the government. Given that we also have Minister Tierney in the chamber as well, it is an opportunity to make an appeal directly – through you, Mr President – to the minister, because she sits at the cabinet table. Of course this is an appeal from the people of Ringwood, and not just the people of Ringwood but the people of the entire eastern suburbs and I suspect all Victorians. The appeal is simply this: we have got to a point in this state, very sadly, where families, women, children and young people are genuinely fearful – and I repeat that; they are genuinely fearful – to go out at night. It is the first time in my living memory that I have had a constituent say to me locally – she is a Singaporean Australian, and she is perhaps more familiar with Singapore’s safe streets – that she no longer ventures out from her home in Ringwood at night for fear for her own safety. We are not making this up. Just last week there was an armed burglary in Heathmont, where assailants – four of them – physically assaulted a service station worker. The week before that a 30-year-old walking home from Forest Hill Chase was assaulted by people unknown to him and left with a fractured skull and puncture wounds. I implore this government: you must get a grip on crime. You must have a Chief Commissioner of Police in place, for goodness sake.