Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Bills

Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Harriet Shing:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (14:06): I rise to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. It is great to finally have the opportunity speak on this bill, given it has been about 113 days since its first reading in the other place. Some bills can take a very quick time to come through here; others sit in this sort of purgatory. We come to this debate after a summer of crime and of course after the Premier’s very substantial backflip on crime in the face of pressure from the Liberals and Nationals and indeed from the community on the machete crime crisis that has gripped our state.

There are two main components to this bill. One is dealing with the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003. The other is dealing with the Control of Weapons Act 1990. To start with the first act, the amendments to this act introduce two new intervention pathways for individuals in Victoria who are identified as being at risk of radicalisation towards violent extremism. These intervention programs are voluntary and managed through a case management scheme designed to support individuals participating in these programs. The intention is clear: to prevent individuals, particularly young people, from progressing down the pathway of radicalisation and engaging in extremist activities.

The essential feature of this initiative is the establishment of the Countering Violent Extremism Multi-agency Panel. The panel serves an advisory role, providing oversight and case management to the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Safety in relation to the voluntary case management scheme. Notably this scheme has been operational since September 2022, but the eligibility criteria has previously limited its reach. Specifically, individuals who might have benefited from the intervention have been excluded from participation due to existing legislative constraints.

The amendments in this bill seek to rectify these limitations, expanding the program to include a broader range of individuals who might be at an early stage of radicalisation or who were previously engaged in countering violent extremism programs. These include expanding the functions of the secretary under part 4A of the act to enhance coordination and implementation of deradicalisation efforts; strengthening the framework of the Countering Violent Extremism Multi-agency Panel to ensure more effective oversight and management of cases; refining the eligibility criteria of the voluntary case management scheme, allowing more individuals to access crucial intervention programs; making minor adjustments to align with amendments to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 at the Commonwealth level; and introducing relevant changes to the Control of Weapons Act 1990 to strengthen Victoria Police’s ability to respond to violent extremism, which will be discussed separately.

While the intent behind these amendments is commendable, significant challenges do remain. The effectiveness of this initiative is questionable due to limited uptake of the program. According to the most recent update provided to the member for Caulfield, there were only six active participants, with two additional new participants enrolled. This means that despite the program being in existence for over a year, there are only eight individuals currently participating in it. This does raise some concerns about the program’s reach and also its effectiveness.

Furthermore, the government’s funding for this initiative has been inconsistent. The Victorian government initially allocated $1.2 million for the program, but that funding has not been consistently available. Instead, there has been increasing reliance on federal funding to sustain the initiative. If this program is to be taken seriously and if Labor are serious about the deradicalisation and removing risks from our streets, then funding must be reinstated and guaranteed on an ongoing basis; otherwise legislative change alone will not suffice to address the root causes of radicalisation as they keep going – as with many other portfolio spaces – cap in hand to the Commonwealth.

I would like to turn now to changes to the Control of Weapons Act 1990. Part of this bill introduces further measures impacting planned or unplanned designated area weapon searches to give police greater flexibility to combat weapons offending where there is a heightened risk to community safety. I understand that the Premier’s announcement on the weekend is going to lead the government to move an amendment to its own bill to do what the opposition has been begging it to do for quite a while, and that is to crack down on machete crime. What did we hear on that side whenever we suggested this? Jeering. What did we see on that side? Thumbing their nose at community concern and thumbing their nose at the opposition, saying ‘We knew best. We knew best; we listen to our community as well.’ This is what those on the other side were saying.

We tried not once, not twice, not three times, but four times to change the machete laws to introduce a ban on machetes, responding to significant community concern. On 8 December 2023 we introduced a private members bill to amend the Control of Weapons Act 1990 and classify machetes as prohibited weapons. This proposal sought to ban the possession of machetes without lawful excuse. The Labor Party opposed this bill. On 22 February 2024 we moved an amendment to the Firearms and Control of Weapons (Machetes) Amendment Bill 2024, the one where the government has had to come back and clean up its efforts from last time, in the Assembly to reclassify machetes from ‘controlled’ to ‘prohibited’ weapons. This change would have imposed stricter regulations on their sale and possession. And Labor opposed our amendments. On 21 March 2024 I moved an amendment to the Firearms and Control of Weapons (Machetes) Amendment Bill 2024 in the Council to reclassify machetes from ‘controlled’ to ‘prohibited’ weapons. This change would have imposed stricter regulations on their sale and position. And of course, Labor opposed this.

I kept the receipts, because I remember, and I am sure Dr Heath remembers, significant jeering from those opposite about our amendments and about the fact that we were moving an amendment to change machetes from controlled to prohibited. There are a number of members on that side of the chamber who clearly do not listen to their communities, who clearly do not know what is going on in their communities. There are several of them that are always good for a quote when Jacinta Allan does a backflip. There have been several of them, and I have quite enjoyed every time using the resources that we have available in the parliamentary library and our Hansard to research and look up what people said during debates.

A number of them are always good for a quote, and I have got a few to go through in the bail bill. But I have got one now; my friend Mr Galea is always good for a quote when the government does a backflip. I have got several banked up from him and the other side for when the government eventually backflips on the Suburban Rail Loop, which will be amusing. He said, on our amendment, that:

What this would do is effectively criminalise a raft of people who currently use machetes for legitimate purposes, including, and chief amongst them, farmers.

He went on to say:

If you are going to outright with one stroke of a pen, under your amendment, decide that all these farmers who currently use machetes are going to be subject to these onerous restrictions, they are going to have to scramble to register themselves, else they will find themselves inadvertently on the wrong side of the law merely for continuing a practice that they have legitimately been doing for a long time.

He also asked where the Nationals were on this. He tried to poke the bear a little bit and asked what the Nationals thought about the amendment, which they were supporting. He also pointed out the differences between the Liberals and the Nationals, of which there were none. I am really looking forward to hearing from Mr Galea when he eventually speaks on this bill in this debate, once the government has moved its amendments, to ask what he actually meant by saying that the government is acting decisively by doing something it refused to do a year ago. I am looking forward also to his backflip on his comments that it will set onerous restrictions and that it will be bad for farmers. I am looking forward to him explaining whether he has actually listened to his community, as he should have this time last year, and personally changed his mind on a machetes ban.

I have certainly heard a lot of stories from my community. I particularly want to go to a shocking incident that occurred to one of my constituents, Gurinder Singh, when there was a violent armed robbery at his home in Kalkallo, where people broke in with a machete, holding it up over his elderly grandmother, who they pushed to the ground, and slashing him several times in the arm. This is the kind of daily, frightening incident that has taken place because people like Jacinta Allan have refused to listen to our community. There have been so many shocking incidents of knife crime, particularly in my electorate. Whether it be in Kalkallo or whether it be in Preston, it is horrifying. Just a couple of days ago it was reported that a rideshare driver and international student lost two fingers after a horrific attack by a group of armed men who allegedly forced their way into a car, beating and stabbing him. A few weeks ago a man was left fighting for life after a machete attack in Footscray. The 24-year-old was stabbed several times after a group came to blows with locals and diners. In December, in Preston in my electorate, Frank Bonnici was on a stroll over the Darebin Creek footbridge with partner Mykey O’Halloran on a Saturday night when four young people approached them and started to yell slurs. He was later slashed with a machete. Whether it be Fountain Gate or Highpoint, several shopping centres, particularly in the cities of Wyndham and Melton, have become absolute hotbeds for machete crime.

And what did we have from this government over the last year and a half when we continuously pointed this out? Denial. We had complete denial from Jacinta Allan to do anything about it until it was a political issue for her own leadership, until she started reading the opinion polls. I take this message to the Victorian people: this Premier of Victoria is not at all concerned about your safety, she is only concerned about her own job, and she only acted once the political pressure started because of her tanking opinion polls. That is not leadership. That is not standing up for your community. That is a Premier moving from crisis to crisis, whether it be crime or CFMEU corruption or fleecing of taxpayer money on construction sites, and a Premier that has only moved on this to save her own job, not to actually protect the community – not to protect people like Gurinder in Kalkallo, not to protect young people who are facing machete crime, not to protect business owners who on the daily see youth offenders with machetes that have no legitimate purpose to have a machete in this state. Yet we have a Premier that has only acted on this because it is a political problem. She does not care about the safety of these Victorians, but she does care about her own job and that is clearly what we have seen.

The Liberals and Nationals will be moving amendments to this bill. I ask that my amendments be circulated.

Amendments circulated pursuant to standing orders.

Evan MULHOLLAND: These amendments have two purposes: to bring the proclamation date in section 54A forward by three months and prohibit the sale of machetes immediately. That would mean retailers would be required to treat them as a prohibited weapon and they could only be sold under the prohibited weapon provisions. Ask any Victorian, whether they be in Wallan, Werribee, wherever, and they will tell you that this is a crisis that needs fixing – and not in three months or when the Premier feels like it. It is a problem that needs fixing today, and that is what our amendments do. The Premier can go out and do whatever morning radio she likes and say that she is tough on crime. But you cannot kick it off into the long grass and at the same time pretend that you actually care. We need more solutions to Labor’s crime crisis, not more dithering and pushing solutions off into the never-never.

I will go through some of the details of the proposal. The purpose of our amendments is to enhance community safety by introducing immediate restrictions on the sale of machetes by bringing forward the introductory date for the prohibited weapon classifications by three months. We have seen too many examples to kick it off to later in the year. We recently saw a teen attack a man in St Kilda with a machete; a woman’s hand slashed in a random machete attack at a car wash; violent crime sprees including machete attacks on elderly people; a 24-year-old killed in a vicious machete attack in Lyndhurst, where he was stabbed to death after a fight broke out at a shopping centre, the 10 assailants still on the run from police; and a 25-year-old rideshare driver and international student left with maimed fingers, as I said.

I think to myself, ‘Some of these incidents could have been prevented.’ It is nice to go through and read all the comments from the other side of the house – and how hypocritical they are now in bringing this back – but some of these attacks could have been prevented. That 24-year-old could still be alive if not for the actions of this government in not acting sooner. That is why it makes me and my community so angry that Jacinta Allan, the Premier of Victoria, the leader of this state, only acts when it is a political crisis to save her own job, not to protect people in this community and not to protect the safety of this community. This government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a solution to this crisis and to admit that they stuffed up, but ultimately it is Victorians that are paying the price. And sadly, over the last year many Victorians have paid the ultimate price because of this government.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (14:26): I rise to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. This bill amends two different acts. The Greens are thoroughly supportive of the government’s efforts in relation to one and have serious concerns in relation to the other.

In the first section the bill seeks to amend the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003 with regard to existing powers for the voluntary case management scheme, a diversionary tool for people identified as at risk of becoming radicalised. The bill allows the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Services to delegate those powers to the department case manager and to allow co-design of the case management plan with consent of the participant or a parent or guardian. There will be more flexibility to vary a plan if a person’s circumstances change, and the changes also allow the case manager to disclose information to a parent or guardian. The Greens are broadly supportive of these changes, which enhance this diversionary program. We are especially supportive of those programs that have early intervention as their approach, schemes that are voluntary and ones that use co-design, simply based on, as the explanatory memorandum sets out, best therapeutic case management, which is more likely to result in positive outcomes for program participants and therefore more likely to help the case management system achieve its aim of removing that risk of radicalisation.

The second part of this bill, however, seeks to amend the Control of Weapons Act 1990 with regard to searching people for weapons in planned and unplanned designated areas. This state has already handed over extraordinarily broad search powers to Victoria Police. Under existing powers for designated areas, from various amendments since the principal act in 2009, a member of Victoria Police may search a person without a warrant or any reasonable suspicion or belief that that particular person is in possession of a weapon, so this means that there is no legal requirement for a member of Victoria Police to have any basis to search someone other than the mere fact of their presence in a declared search area during the designation. The police have powers in designated areas to detain any person without reason for as long as necessary to do a search, to request people to remove face coverings such as masks or scarves, to conduct a pat down and to issue charges and fines for refusals to comply. Currently Victoria Police can already designate a public place for up to 12 hours with either a planned or an unplanned designation. What we see in this bill, and in the house amendments that we understand the government will be bringing forward – and that many of us have only just seen in the last few hours – is a broad suite of new powers for the Chief Commissioner of Police to declare a designated area for, as we understand it, up to six months, even when there is no evidence of a previous incident of violence.

The bill also removes the requirement for notice of designated areas to be published in newspapers – it only requires that notices are published on the Victoria Police website. Let me tell you, those notices are not easy to find on that site. It is almost as though it was designed to obscure what is occurring under everyone’s noses. We know that extending police search powers without a warrant or reasonable suspicion is failing to protect communities while also dramatically increasing stigmatisation of communities experiencing disadvantage.

This issue of how the designated areas are currently working is compounded by a lack of empirical data and reporting that should be required when exercising these powers. The designated area search power is designed to regulate non-firearm weapons and body armour. But without any empirical analysis of the outcomes of the searches that Victoria Police are undertaking during these designations, there is a reasonable basis to be concerned that these designations are serving a secondary purpose in relation to seizing non-weapon items, such as drugs. Victoria Police may be using these powers to manage non-weapon-related offences, which is not a lawful use of the designated areas power.

There is evidence to support this, obtained by Liberty Victoria’s rights advocacy project. Their report is titled Unreasonable Grounds: Reforming Victoria Police’s Stop and Search Powers. Using FOI laws, the rights advocacy project requested and then analysed Victoria Police data relating to these search powers. The FOI data revealed that between January 2021 and January 2023 Victoria Police authorised and implemented 61 designated areas. A total of 18,906 wand searches and 4812 pat-down searches were conducted. Of those 27,718 combined searches, only 252 of them resulted in ‘objects or substances being found’. What were those substances? Were they found illegally using these powers? Because we do not have proper reporting, we simply do not know. We do not know about the outcomes of those searches.

These 252 outcomes, these find rates, comprise just 1 per cent of the people that were subject to search using the existing designated area powers, showing that in 99 per cent of cases where police have stopped and searched a person in a designated area that person has been subjected to an invasive, stigmatising and unnecessary public search when they have not done anything wrong, apart from being present in an area that has been declared. With that 1 per cent find rate, I really question if this is a wise use of police time and resources. We are concerned that with the broadened scope these police powers will have an increased negative impact on community members who are most likely to be subjected to a ‘no reason’ police search in public. We know from the evidence that being young or of a perceived racial background does mean that you are more likely to face a search under these existing police powers.

The Greens urge the government to withdraw the section of the bill that increases police powers relating to designated areas. Police have significant existing powers. The evidence is showing us that the outcomes do not seem to be efficient in relation to the designated areas, and we do not think that the expansion is going to assist the government to achieve the intended purpose of this bill. The Greens have three amendments to this bill, and I ask that the amendments standing in my name be circulated now.

Amendments circulated pursuant to standing orders.

Katherine COPSEY: The amendments are on three sheets, and I will speak to them separately. 37C standing in my name deletes part 3 of this bill. Part 3 is the portion of this bill that deals with the designated areas: clauses 55, 56 and 57 and other relevant clauses that relate to designated areas. For the reasons that I have outlined above, we have concerns about the way that the designated area powers are currently impacting communities of colour, First Nations people. We also have concerns about the efficiency of the searches and their outcomes, so we are not supportive of the expansion that is proposed by this bill.

There are amendments on sheet 38C in my name. This bill already has a clause for review of the voluntary case management system terrorism element of the bill. What my amendment does is require a statutory review of the designated areas power, so that is on 38C.

The final amendment that the Greens are proposing to this bill is on sheet 42C in my name and is an amendment regarding better reporting on the searches that are conducted in designated areas. It is beyond belief to me and my colleagues that we require less reporting in designated areas, where police have extremely broad powers, than we do in general field contact reports, where police have contact with members of the public. Our amendment asks that reporting on designated areas be raised to the standard that is required on general field contacts. I have outlined our concerns, and my colleague Ms Gray-Barberio will speak further to the concerns that we have about the way that the designated search powers are already impacting particular communities and particular individuals and deepening overpolicing of marginalised communities.

At the very least, we think, the government should be interested in this issue and that the government should inquire as to the alarming findings that have come out from fantastic stakeholders like the Centre Against Racial Profiling, who have also conducted an analysis of the disproportionate impacts the designated area searches are having on communities and people of colour and First Nations people in this state. Our reporting amendment would require an uplift in the types of reporting and the data that is recorded by police, and we would ask that that be published so that stakeholders do not have to go to the extent of FOI-ing in order to get access to what we think is a pretty important piece of information about how our laws are impacting our community generally but most particularly marginalised communities that we know already face overpolicing. That concludes my contribution.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (14:37): I too speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. This legislation deals with one of the most important objectives of this government, and that is keeping Victorians safe. Our government remains vigilant to any changes to the threats facing our communities, whether they be motivated by extremist ideology or simple criminal behaviour, and we are responding. This bill will bring a range of measures to protect Victorians and support our police and security services in combating terrorism and crime. Specifically it amends the Control of Weapons Act 1990 to strengthen the ability of Victoria Police to conduct planned and unplanned weapons searches. These changes are in response to advice from Victoria Police and will ensure that police can use existing powers to search for weapons more easily, more often and for longer periods of time. It also refines the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003 to strengthen the operation of the voluntary case management scheme. This scheme creates pathways for Victorians who are at risk of radicalising towards violent extremism. The bill also makes minor amendments to reflect changes to the federal Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 relating to warrants.

Looking at the issues being addressed here, Victorians have a right to be safe and to feel safe, and the reality is that a healthy society must be based on a balance of rights and responsibilities. Individuals should have rights that give them the ability to live with dignity, but individuals also have a responsibility to ensure that their actions do not harm others, and carrying a knife in the form of a machete around the streets should not be a right in a safe and secure society. We know of the devastating impacts of weaponised citizenry in the USA.

In 2024 alone police seized a record 14,797 knives, swords, daggers and machetes, the most at any time over the past decade, and we are determined to face this emerging problem. We are listening to our community. We are reading the data and analysing the data. If you put others at risk by carrying knives and other weapons, society has a right to expect that you face the consequences. Victoria Police keep us safe by holding serious youth offenders to account and bringing them before the courts. A small number of repeat offenders are driving increases in serious offences committed by young people. Victoria Police are making more arrests than ever, but they also do incredible work diverting young people away from the justice system and we have invested more than $40 million in funding to the youth crime prevention program. That program provides essential wraparound support and social engagement to at-risk young people. Our investment is working, with an evaluation showing that completing the program drives a 29 per cent reduction in offending for participants and a significant reduction in the severity of offending when it does occur. Through our crime prevention programs we have invested more than $100 million in over 948 initiatives since forming government, because our government understands that the best way to keep people out of the criminal justice system is to prevent them coming in contact with it whenever possible. Just to extrapolate on that, there is plenty of evidence that supports our focus on early years development and our investments in making sure that more little Victorian children than ever before have access to all of the developmental, learning and socialisation opportunities that kinder, pre-prep and good quality child care provide.

Our laws need to strike the right balance between ensuring a young person who makes a mistake has the opportunity to turn their life around and holding serious repeat offenders to account. It is such an easy thing to say here in a speech in a chamber like this, but when it comes to practice and a judicial system and policing system and the system that provides support programs and the support, there is enormous complexity in this space. I think the principle is important, but we also need to be adaptive in the tools we provide our authorities based on what is going on at any point in time in history in our state. So make no mistake: if you commit a serious violent offence, there are serious consequences for your actions.

Strengthening the Control of Weapons Act 1990 will help our officers to detect weapons and deter people from using them in the first place. The changes relate to the random weapons search scheme, and that scheme has been a key tool for Victoria Police for over 15 years. It allows Victorian police to combat the unlawful possession and use of weapons in public places by allowing them to conduct random weapon searches in ‘designated areas’. These powers have been used with positive results since 2009, but Victoria Police are telling us that they need more flexibility with the way they operate, which is why this bill is before the house today. We know that every day in any weather at any hour our hardworking police officers are out patrolling the front line, often putting themselves at risk to keep our community safe. I want to take this opportunity to thank every single Victoria Police member and their families for the service they provide our state.

A huge portion of the daily work they do involves interacting with people who are traumatised or being involved with traumatic events themselves. This comes at a terrible cost for some police officers, and I just want to thank them all for their commitment and for the role they play in our society here in Victoria. The Allan Labor government is proud of its record of working with Victoria Police to ensure they have the tools and resources they need to keep doing this important job.

I want to talk a bit more about the major changes to stop-and-search events – when they can be made, how often and on what basis. Currently a planned event declaration can only take place while an event itself is happening, not while events are being bumped in and not while crowds are leaving venues. This bill will give police the ability to make a declaration over an area both before and after an event takes place, as the Chief Commissioner of Police deems reasonable. In practice, this change means that police will be able to use their powers to search for weapons that might be stashed while an event is being set up – bumping in, as they say – if the chief commissioner determines it to be necessary. It will also give officers the power to search after events while people are leaving, and this will help with community safety when large crowds are leaving at the same time and with regional and rural events where there is often one road in and one road out.

We are also reducing the gap required between designations of an area, which is currently once every 10 days. This limitation is stopping police from being able to protect high-risk areas. Take, for example, a situation where a public park or a shopping centre has become a venue for conflict between gangs. The police may know that there is potential for violence, particularly on weekends. Right now the police would be unable to conduct planned stop and searches on consecutive weekends even if the threat of violence remained ongoing. This bill will mean that Victoria Police are only required to leave a gap of 12 hours. It also provides greater flexibility in the test for designating an area, to make sure Victoria Police can be agile and respond to new and emerging events.

We are also extending the 12-hour window for planned or unplanned search operations to 24 hours, on advice from Victoria Police. They told us that in situations where retaliation attacks can be expected, a longer window of time gives them the flexibility they need to keep the community safe. When an effective response can be provided in less time, a declaration will be made for a shorter period.

On obstructing PSOs, the bill also provides a penalty for the offence of obstructing a PSO while they are using their stop-and-search powers. This will mean that the same penalties will apply whether it is a PSO or a police officer who is being obstructed.

Last sitting week I stood in this chamber and spoke about the threat of violent extremism to Victorians. This government is determined to stamp out violence and vilification driven by extremist views. All Victorians have a right to feel safe at home, in their neighbourhoods or anywhere in this beautiful state. Our anti-vilification proposals are one way in which we seek to achieve that. This bill deals with another of this government’s initiatives to reduce the risk of violence and extremism. The voluntary case management scheme, or VCM scheme, is an example of this. The VCM scheme establishes pathways for Victorians who are at risk of radicalising towards violent extremism. It is a voluntary program providing support for people who are at risk of radicalising towards violent extremism. The scheme helps these people access the services they need and identifies ways to reconnect them with the community.

Now that this scheme has been in place for a few years we have a good sense of what is working, and these amendments respond to the needs of our experts working in the sector. The amendments will make a range of changes in the operation of the scheme to ensure best practice, such as ensuring that case management plans are developed in collaboration with the participant, making changes to language to reduce the stigma associated with joining this voluntary program and clarifying the role of the Countering Violent Extremism Multi-agency Panel as being that of an advisory body. The amendments also allow for a wider cohort of people to be eligible to access intervention, reducing the likelihood of them posing a risk to the community.

In summary, I just want to say that there is a lot of talk about people having rights, and sometimes we get the balance wrong or distorted. I would say that there is an equal balance between our responsibilities as citizens of this state and our rights as citizens of this state, and the task here today is to address that balance in relation to this bill. I commend it to the house.

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:51): Rights and responsibilities – I will pick up where the last speaker left off: rights and responsibilities. Clearly those opposite have a talking sheet. Clearly they have talking points, and so far today they are clearly sticking to their talking points. Rights and responsibilities – that is the best this government could come up with. Now, I am not quite sure how to tackle today’s debate in this chamber. I would like to do so with a sense of humour, but this subject does not accord itself any humour at all, very sadly. A bit of levity – again, this subject accords us no levity, because it is a very serious matter. I have also got to be very cautious that I am not just plain angry, because that never goes over well, and all it would illustrate is my absolute frustration and lack of faith and confidence in this deplorable, despicable, hopeless government. You can get a bit of a sense already with the words I am using that that anger is coming out. But there is a very good reason for this anger, because if you were to listen to those opposite today, you might well be in a parallel universe – not dissimilar to the member in the chamber not too far from here who spoke just a couple of weeks ago in his maiden speech and said that crime was not an issue, and then lo and behold, guess what, it is an issue. It is an issue right across Victoria, and it is not simply a case of rights and responsibilities.

Michael Galea: On a point of order, Acting President, not only is Mr McGowan misrepresenting another member, but he is misrepresenting a member in another place who does not have the opportunity to respond, so I ask Mr McGowan to withdraw.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): I do not uphold the point of order.

Nick McGOWAN: Rights and responsibilities – where was I? Rights and responsibilities. Well, I am a bit frustrated, so I apologise to anyone out there in the universe that is watching this, at home or at work, and listening to my dulcet tones yet again – apologies in advance. But some people might recall, in history we have had – this is not a new issue. It is not a new issue, very, very sadly. Back in November, in fact, in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, a committee that I serve on with some of those opposite, I raised this very issue with the then police commissioner. Of course, that police commissioner is no more – gone. Where’s Wally?

A member: He fell on his sword.

Nick McGOWAN: He fell on his proverbial, that is exactly right. That police commissioner is no longer with us, but I did raise this with the police commissioner. Then it was 2023. I raised with him machetes. This is two years ago, keep in mind – two long years ago – and that speaks to my frustration. Anger is probably an appropriate word, but I would like to choose a more sophisticated word because anger does not actually help on many occasions. But I am angry at this government because they were warned, they were told and they did very, very little. They ignored the obvious, that machetes – certainly in my view – had no place in Victoria in 2023, much less in 2025.

And yet here we are today debating a bill the contents of which still leave most of us asking more questions than having answered questions. We do not know, for example, what the exemptions will be – no detail there, none whatsoever. For all we know, for all Victorians know, this could be an act of smoke and mirrors, because we know Labor is so good at that, and that I give them credit for, smoke and mirrors. They are the perfectionists. They are the true artists of such things. Back in 2023 I raised this with the police commissioner, and I actually followed that up. I wrote to the police commissioner in the following year, in early 2024, and I said:

Dear Chief Commissioner,

I am writing today following the presentation of new legislation from the Victorian Government to make machetes a “controlled weapon” in our state.

As you may recall, l asked you about this very issue at the most recent hearings of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) in November last year.

That is true. Mr Galea, you were there too.

Michael Galea: I was, and you even turned up –

Nick McGOWAN: I did turn up even though it is a government-controlled committee and its value is somewhat questionable. Nonetheless, I was there that day –

Ryan Batchelor: What? Why are you disparaging the Parliament?

Nick McGOWAN: I will take up the objection – questionable because unfortunately the committee that is charged with responsibility in this state for scrutinising the government, those opposite, and their budget and the way they spend money – we know what their record is like; it is horrendous – is controlled entirely by government members. We know that, like clockwork, any time we try to have a thorough investigation, it is shut down immediately, because they use their numbers to block any true questioning. They use their numbers to make sure that every PAEC, like clockwork –

Harriet Shing: I have answered all the questions you have ever asked me.

Nick McGOWAN: Minister, I long for the days that you were on PAEC. I am sorry that you are not there. If it would help, I can write to the Premier –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: Well, you do appear before the committee, that is true, but you are on the wrong side of ledger these days, I am afraid. You have got to be on our side asking questions, penetrating questions. I could even take count this coming estimates hearings of how many penetrating questions the government members will ask. No disrespect to those opposite – I know that they feel like some of those questions are quite investigative. Nonetheless, I have digressed if just for a moment, and I will continue on with the letter that I wrote to the police commissioner, who is now sadly no longer with us of course. I said to the chief commissioner:

While the draft legislation makes these weapons illegal for under 18’s to purchase and for anybody to be carrying around in our communities and on our streets without a “lawful excuse”, such as relevant and related employment, it is my view (and that of the State Opposition) that these weapons should be classified as a “prohibited weapon” –

wow, this is like looking into a crystal ball, isn’t it? It is like having a teeny, tiny, little crystal ball, Minister. There it was, and the government just refused to look at it. There it was – the teeny, tiny crystal ball. And I continue:

effectively banning them from the State –

keep in mind, it was November 2023 when I first put this to the chief commissioner. Then I wrote to him in the new year, in 2024, saying precisely this:

… effectively banning them from the State, and making it illegal to sell them to a person of any age in Victoria.

Personally, I do not believe that there is any legitimate reason why someone should require a machete in the state of Victoria in 2024.

Of course I would now add to that 2025, and given the rate at which the government that is opposite is anticipating implementing this legislation, it could passably be in 2026 as well. Who knows?

Minister, you look quizzical, but if you look very closely at what you are proposing, some of the timelines for the implementation of these aspects of this bill stretch all the way up to December of this year. I would say to the current government, ‘Bring it on. Let’s get rid of these things.’ In fact, has the government even considered a buyback? Silence.

Harriet Shing: I thought it was a rhetorical question, because you are not allowed to invite interjections and you have to go through the Chair.

Nick McGOWAN: But I will take that interjection up nonetheless, and I thank the minister for her interjection. The minister nicely interjects, and it is a legitimate question, because we know the success that the Howard government had in their buyback program with weapons. But the question of course to those opposite is: have they considered it, or do we know if this is part of your scheme? How do you anticipate bringing these weapons of violence into police stations? Again, we assume that is where they are going to go for their collection points. We do not know that, because yet again we do not have the exact detail. Yet again the amount of detail missing here is quite extraordinary.

I am happy to be corrected on this by the minister or anyone opposite, but if the purpose of this bill is to make a prohibited weapon any knife, a machete so-called, of 20 centimetres and larger, that is going to be very interesting indeed, because most machetes well and truly exceed 20 centimetres. I do not know how this government thinks it is going to possibly implement that. In fact if you go into any house in Victoria, I would wager that there is a 99.99 per cent hit rate of that house having at least one knife that is a 20-centimetre knife. Under this government’s proposal, potentially that constitutes a machete – does it not, Minister? Nonetheless, we will find out perhaps in the committee stage. I concluded to the commissioner:

As always, I appreciate the work that is done by you and your colleagues –

that is true –

to address the rising crime in this state –

and this was two years ago –

and the level of youth crime that is occurring.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and I look forward to your response.

You can imagine my disappointment when I received a response. In February 2024 I received a response from the police commissioner, the independent police commissioner. Those opposite, even today in question time, like to wax lyrical about how independent the police commissioner is. He was so independent he was pushed out of his job. But nonetheless, putting that aside for a moment, the police commissioner wrote back to me on 22 February 2024:

Dear Mr McGowan:

I write on behalf of the Chief Commissioner to acknowledge receipt of your recent letter concerning the classification of machetes under the Control of Weapons Act 1990.

The Minister for Police and Chief Commissioner of Police Inter-Office Procedures require all correspondence from Members of Parliament raising policing issues with the Chief Commissioner to be addressed to the Minister for Police in the first instance, except when written as a private citizen on a private matter.

What? What happened to his independence? So if I am writing to the police commissioner with a concern for my constituents and my community more broadly, the advice from that police commissioner is that that would need to go to the minister. Wow, what a spectacular display of his independence in this case. If that is what I need to do, I will just write directly to the minister. I mean, this is part of the halfway house that obviously that last police commissioner chose to occupy. Either he is the independent police commissioner giving fearless advice to government and also to opposition members and the crossbench for that matter, or he is not. To redirect my letter, a sincere letter written after a conversation with the police commissioner himself, and to simply palm that off to the minister was in my mind discourteous at best and contemptuous at worst, I will be very honest.

Fast-forward to 5 August 2024 and a letter from the minister – because, remember, that is where the letter has ended up; it has gone straight back to government, with no independent verification and no input from the police commissioner himself in terms of what has occurred anyway. This is a somewhat lengthy letter and I do not intend to read every part of it, but the critical part is the third paragraph. I am happy to table it for those opposite who are interested, but nonetheless, I quote Minister Carbines here:

As you are aware, the Firearms and Control of Weapons (Machetes) Amendment Bill 2024 –

Remember the government did this last year, and we are now back here doing it again this year. I mean, this is how inept this government is. They simply got it wrong last year. They are getting everything wrong every year, so it is not surprising. Every year we come back, and unfortunately the opposition and crossbench are in the position where they are saying, ‘Told you so. If you’d listened to us in the first place, we wouldn’t be here.’ The sad reality is this: while I am talking about letters and exchange of ideas and beliefs and views and all those other things, too many Victorians have actually been victims of attacks by knife, and that is the greatest tragedy here today. Rajneesh is a 25-year-old rideshare driver and an international student. He now has life-changing injuries as a consequence of the frenzied machete attack that he was subjected to out west. A 24-year-old son by the name of Timothy was also slain outside a shopping centre in a frenzied machete attack in the south-east.

There is barely a week that passes – in fact I would proffer to say that there is not a week that passes – where a Victorian is not either maimed, seriously injured and/or killed by knives and knife attacks, and yet for two years this government has blundered its way through, has ignored the crime crisis and has let every part of our community down no matter where you live. It has actually done such a disservice, and when constituents of mine – men, women and children – have voiced their concerns to me that they no longer feel safe going out at night by themselves, and women have said to me that they do not feel safe in their own homes by themselves at night, you start to understand that there is something seriously wrong here in Victoria.

Crime has been allowed to flourish under this government. All the warning signs were there. This government were told time and time again. The minister wrote in his letter – he talked about the clarification in terms of the definition of a controlled weapon, of a machete:

This important clarification in the definition will enhance the community’s understanding that machetes may only be possessed, carried and used with a lawful excuse and cannot be sold to children or purchased by them.

What a joke. That was on 5 August 2024. Here we are seven months later and only now is this government acting – and even when they act, it is smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors. We do not know how many classes or people or Victorians they will exempt from this legislation. We know less than we did before. I can have no confidence that this will be effective whatsoever.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:06): I would also like to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. The bill does two main things. One is related to voluntary case management for countering violent extremism. This part of the bill I do not have a problem with. I actually think that deradicalisation of people who have been swept into violent extremism is a very important thing, and I think the improvements to this scheme are a good thing, and I support that part of the bill.

The bill also does another thing, which is that it amends the Control of Weapons Act 1990 specifically around the idea of designated areas. I think it is important to understand what a designated area really is. Long ago under English law there used to be a problem with the Crown searching houses. At the time it was around people being searched because they had dissident literature in their house. In fact these searches were really an infringement of freedom of speech and freedom of association, because they would search these houses and find what they thought were seditious pamphlets et cetera. So the general principle was established that you should not be able to search a person’s house without some sort of warrant, some sort of probable cause – some reason to think that this person had committed a crime. This principle was very, very important after the American Revolution. There are lots of things I do not like about America, but one thing that I really do like about the United States is their bill of rights. They thought that this principle was so important in the United States that they included it as the fourth amendment in their bill of rights. In the United States you cannot search someone – either their house or their body – without either a warrant or probable cause, and probable cause means you have some actual reason to believe that they have committed a crime.

Indeed in Victoria in most cases we follow that principle, even though we do not have constitutional protections, which I would dearly love. We generally follow that principle. If you want to search someone’s house, you need to get a warrant. If police want to search someone in the street, they need some good reason to do so. They need to suspect them of a crime or have some reason. They need to have witnessed some sort of conduct, this sort of thing.

What a designated area does is effectively allow the police to draw lines on a map and designate a particular time under which those rights disappear, and they can search anyone at random.

Like all government ideas, the intent is good, but actually what is happening is large numbers of people get searched without probable cause and their privacy gets invaded. Maybe they have some seditious pamphlets in their possession, I do not know, but they would also get found out about those seditious pamphlets. I first became concerned about these designated areas actually soon after I got elected, when they declared the 420 rally, which is a cannabis legalisation rally which I was attending, a designated place, and then later, during the pandemic, they were used extensively to search people. They would designate the entire CBD quite regularly as a designated area so that they could search anyone at random.

As was pointed out by Ms Copsey in her contribution, Liberty Victoria, through their rights advocacy project – I would say as a matter of disclosure I am a member of Liberty Victoria – did some great research on how effective this is. In fact in less than 1 per cent of cases they find prohibited weapons. I think Ms Copsey might have overlooked the fact that much of this data that was collected for the rights advocacy project was around people who were not trying to invade people’s houses and were not trying to go and initiate a revolution or anything like this but were protesting against the government’s pandemic restrictions. That is what a lot of these people were searched for. In fact many of them, when they were searched, might not have been wearing a mask, or maybe they were more than 5 kilometres from their home or not following many of these other restrictions. Many of the people who were stopped, although they were not carrying weapons, were suffering consequences for protesting against the pandemic. I became very, very wary of these designated areas, to the point where my team regularly checks where they have been declared through the Government Gazette and this sort of thing, and it is what it is. It is a mechanism for the police to bypass the longstanding principle of liberalism that you need probable cause or a warrant to search someone. It is bypassing that.

What this bill does is expand those limitations of rights. Despite the fact that these violent crimes that the government through their good intentions are trying to stop by trying to stop people carrying weapons to hurt other people, as always, for a very small number of people that are committing these crimes they are taking away the rights of everyone. We cannot keep doing this. I have seen this so many times in this Parliament, where we have this kneejerk response to things, then the government takes away people’s rights yet again. My understanding is that we have an amendment to this bill from the government to expand the timeframe for this taking away of rights to up to six months. For six months you can just search anyone you please for whatever reason and check if they have got weapons. Of course the objective is to check weapons, but they might find other things. Maybe they find seditious pamphlets, maybe they find people who have some drugs or maybe we have another pandemic and they are not wearing a mask or something like that – or maybe they are wearing a mask. I know the government wants to bring in laws to ban masks now, ironically, as was mentioned a while ago.

What we need to do is have a really hard conversation about what the root causes are of some of these crimes that are happening. I will start with one that I have spoken about many times in this place. I know the root cause of at least 130 of these home invasions that have happened in Victoria, and that is our tobacco regulation regime. Every time there is an arson attack on a tobacco shop, what they do in order to commit that crime is steal a car.

Modern cars you cannot hot-wire, so what they need to do is they need to go inside the house to get the keys to the car. That requires a home invasion. In every single one of those attacks they use the stolen car so that they can just take the car, commit the arson attack, get away in the car – sometimes they might steal two cars, so that is why I say at least 130 cars, and it is probably many more – and then they destroy the car. Because it has got evidence in it, they destroy the car.

This is one thing that has incentivised this sort of crime. I do not necessarily blame the state government for this, but it has certainly been caused by the federal government. Organised crime has been finding young people who are not connected to their organised crime network necessarily – they pay them some money and they go and carry out these home invasions, they steal the car to commit the arson attack and then get rid of the car. That is one cause.

I hesitate to speak about another cause, because every time someone does they get into trouble. Back in 2021 there was an article by Dr Stephane Shepherd, and he did some analysis of crimes and how Sudanese-born youth were over-represented in criminal statistics. I have met Dr Shepherd. He was attacked by everyone at the time. They called him a racist and all sorts of horrible things. I have met him, and he came across as a very thoughtful man who was very engaged in the issue and very passionate about trying to prevent this type of crime and trying to stop these young people, many of whom come from traumatic backgrounds, and trying to prevent this happening in the first place. I think we do need to talk about this.

Another thing that is going to happen with this bill is it is going to be amended. There are a number of amendments, including my own, which I will get to in a minute. The government also wants to amend it to declare machetes a prohibited weapon. I note Mr Mulholland earlier spoke about how crimes could have been prevented if only we had declared this earlier. I think he imagines that because Parliament says so all of the machetes are going to instantly disappear and the people that were going to use those machetes all of a sudden will not be able to substitute them with some other weapon like a kitchen knife or anything else and all of a sudden they will turn into good people and will not commit crimes. I am sorry to inform both the government and the opposition that this is not how this will work at all.

It is quite easy to find within anyone’s home something that can be used as a deadly weapon. I need to go no further than my own kitchen. I have got a very nice cooking knife, which now I think about 100,000 people have seen on social media. It is a very nice knife, but it can also be used as a deadly weapon. With any of these people that are committing these crimes, if people think that the idea of prohibiting a machete is going to stop people committing violent crimes, they need to think again. It simply does not work. You can easily substitute another weapon. I know the government has backflipped on this – I wish they did not backflip on it – but ultimately it is going to have no effect. This is purely symbolic. Invading someone’s house is already a crime. Carrying a weapon on the street for the purposes of harming other people is already a crime. Stealing cars is already a crime. Committing harm to other people and murder are already crimes. The idea that making machetes a prohibited weapon is going to make weapons disappear and instantly go away is just fantasy. It is nothing more than symbolic legislation that will have no real-world effect.

What would have a real-world effect is if the law-abiding citizens of this state, the people who fear crime and who do not like criminals, had some legal option through which they could defend themselves. At the moment there is nothing at all that they can carry for the purposes of self-defence, that they can legally carry to defend themselves against violent criminals. That is exactly why I am proposing an amendment. I have spoken about this many times in this place, and I am proposing an amendment to not only remove capsicum spray from the list of prohibited weapons but to allow it to be carried as a form of self-defence.

It is nonlethal. As I spoke about last time we had this debate, it is rarely used in offensive crimes because it is not scary. You cannot go near the person that you spray with it. It is not very good to use indoors for robberies. It is very useless for crimes. I know that some people would say, ‘Well, why don’t you go even further? Why don’t you want to legalise firearms for concealed carry like in the United States?’ Ms Ermacora was talking about the United States and how dangerous it is. I note New Hampshire has a much lower crime rate and murder rate than Victoria does, and their firearms laws are very liberal.

What I would say is this: even in places in the United States where concealed carry of firearms is legal, most people that want a tool for self-defence do not choose a firearm; they choose pepper spray. The reasons are abundantly clear: firearms are heavy, they are expensive, they require training, they are lethal, they require lots of maintenance and all sorts of other issues. They are big and bulky and hard to carry around. Pepper spray, on the other hand, is cheap and does not require significant training. You can carry it in your handbag or in your pocket. It is quite small. In many, many, many places in the world, it is commonplace for people, especially people who are vulnerable like older people or women, to carry pepper spray, and it is quite an effective tool for stopping crime. That is abundantly obvious by the fact that police carry it. They use it for this purpose as well. When they want to stop a criminal without shooting them dead, they use pepper spray. They also use tasers and other tools, but they use that. I would like to distribute that amendment now, please.

Amendment circulated pursuant to standing orders.

David LIMBRICK: Although I do like some of the parts of this bill that talk about the deradicalisation of people who have been caught up in violent extremism, the Libertarian Party will not be supporting the expansion of designated areas powers. They are clearly a mechanism through which to remove the rights of Victorians. I will not be supporting an ineffective machete ban, because I just think it is not going to have any effect at all. But I do hope that members of this house – if they really do think that they are tough on crime, and I note that the government now is talking about being tough on crime – if they really want to be tough on crime, give Victorians the power to fight back.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): Mr Batchelor, very enthusiastic.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:23): I am always an enthusiastic contributor, particularly on legislation such as this, which is going to make some significant and real improvements to the safety of our community with respect to the use of controlled and prohibited weapons and also more broadly to terrorism and the protection of our community from acts of terror, which is where I might start in dealing with the two elements of the bill.

Obviously we know that acts of terror in our community are designed to spark fear in the community to achieve political goals – that is what terrorism by its definition is. We know the trauma that that practice inflicts on members of the community who are the intended targets. Our community has felt it. Late last year in December we had an act of terror committed in Southern Metropolitan Region. The attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea on 6 December was a very vivid expression of terror, and it was clearly an attempt to instil fear in parts of Melbourne’s Jewish community through the use of politically motivated violence. I will not forget what it was like walking through the scorched remains of that synagogue: the smell of the burning building, seeing the twisted metal and the holy books that had been burned on the floor.

Thankfully, we know that many of the sacred Torah scrolls and prayer shawls were able to be retrieved. Some of the scrolls had to be buried. The act of terror that we saw there was designed to divide our communities. It was designed to make part of our community feel unwelcome and unsafe, and I think this bill in its broad measure seeks and the specific amendments that are being made to the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003 today seek to ensure that terrorism will not win, terrorism cannot win and the acts of violent extremism and the acts of violent extremists do not have a place here in Victoria.

We know that particular communities, including Melbourne’s Jewish community, are very resilient in the face of these acts. I do note and welcome the commitments that have been made today by the federal government with respect to the rebuilding of the Adass Israel Synagogue. A $30 million commitment was announced by the federal member for Macnamara Josh Burns today. It will go towards making sure that that synagogue is rebuilt, and I welcome the announcement of that funding.

The way that we try and deal through legislation with people who may commit terrorism is in measures that are in the terrorism act, and in amending that terrorism act this bill deals with the pathways for Victorians who are at risk of being radicalised towards violent extremism. We know that in August 2024 ASIO raised the terrorism threat level from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’, and I have mentioned the attack that occurred in December. Violent extremism is an ongoing threat to the safety of the broader community here in Victoria. In addition to tough penalties and adequate police powers, the Allan Labor government recognises the need for therapeutic intervention for those people who may be vulnerable to violent extremism, and the amendments before the Council today will improve the operation of Victoria’s voluntary case management scheme to make sure it operates flexibly and responsively. The amendments will allow for a wider cohort of people to be eligible to access intervention, reducing their likelihood of posing a risk to the community.

The case management scheme has been operating in Victoria since 2022 as a voluntary program that provides tailored intervention and wraparound support for people at risk of radicalisation, which can include psychological counselling, career counselling, mentoring, tutoring, legal aid and access to community support groups. It provides support to those at risk of radicalisation and provides them with the services they need to reconnect them with the community, turning them away from radicalisation and away from violent extremism and putting them back on track. The amendments that this bill proposes will ensure that this scheme’s operation aligns more closely with best practice, providing holistic and bespoke intervention so we can continue to keep Victorians safe from the threat of terrorism and violent extremism.

This is part of the larger suite of measures that we will be taking. I mentioned in the last sitting week comments by the Director-General of Security Mike Burgess earlier this year about the way that violent extremism and political extremism are playing an increasingly dangerous role in the community. It is something that our security intelligence agencies are closely monitoring. What the Victorian government is seeking to do through changing the terrorism laws is to make sure that there is this voluntary program that is designed to assist those who may be at risk of going down the pathway of extremism to pull things back and turn themselves around and to ensure that the support services that they may need are available. I commend those elements of this bill to the house.

The rest of the bill deals with the Control of Weapons Act 1990. Through some substantive proposals in the bill and also some amendments that the government has flagged we will be moving, we are seeking to address real concerns in our community about the prevalence of knife crime, and in particular the prevalence of machetes being used to intimidate and threaten people in their homes and in the broader community. Whether it is in the streets or in people’s homes, we should be doing everything we can to protect Victorians against the threat of violent crime.

We know that those crimes have lasting effects. I think for anyone who has been following the recent debate and listening to the words of recent victims of crime, they tell very powerful stories about the effects that this violent crime has on them and on their family. Anyone listening to those stories in particular can understand that we need to make sure that we do whatever we can to stop these crimes from taking place. We need to do whatever we can to make sure that our laws are working as best they can.

Obviously earlier today in the other place we introduced some tough new bail laws, and this chamber will have the opportunity to consider those in the near future. Today, now, this bill is dealing with amendments to make machetes a prohibited weapon. They are a weapon that has been used far too frequently in serious crime across our state and in parts of the communities that I represent in southern metropolitan Melbourne. It is clear from these recent criminal activities that machetes need to be banned, and there will be tough and serious consequences for those who carry them. Under the framework of the Control of Weapons Act, the substantive act, prohibited weapons are the most strictly regulated in Victoria. They are banned and there are penalties of two years imprisonment or a fine of over $47,000 for being caught in possession of them.

In implementing this framework there will obviously be small-scale exemptions put in place. The framework for exemptions will be put in place for very tightly controlled circumstances, and the government will consult with industry on the exemptions framework. To get weapons off the streets safely, an amnesty is going to run from September to November so that people will be able to safely dispose of their machetes without committing a crime. Things like secure bins at safe locations will start to be rolled out from the beginning of September in an attempt to get the existing stock of machetes out of the hands of criminals and to be destroyed. There is no requirement for someone to have these weapons when roaming around our streets, instilling fear in others and using them to threaten others in their homes. Under the laws that we are passing, that will no longer be legal and there will be a mechanism in place to try and make sure that those weapons get out of the hands of those people and into a secure place where they can be dealt with.

The bill is going to amend the Control of Weapons Act in several ways. It will increase the period of time where a planned designation at an event can take place with respect to seizures of and searches for knives. Currently planned declarations can only take place while the event itself is happening, not while people are being bumped in and not while crowds are leaving. In practice, it means that police will be able to use their powers to search for a weapon that might be stashed while an event is being set up, if the Chief Commissioner of Police determines it is necessary. The amendments will reduce the time that Victoria Police need to wait before returning to an area to search for weapons. Currently under the act police are only allowed to return to a place to conduct a search operation once every 10 days, and that limitation is stopping Victoria Police from being able to target high-risk areas.

The changes that are being proposed mean that there will be more police searches in the streets of highest risk where they are needed most, and they will allow Victoria Police to declare an area based on intelligence. Right now the practices, the protocols and the requirements for the declaration of designated areas by the chief commissioner are too restrictive. The new changes will allow the chief commissioner, if they have intelligence that a new event or an event in an area that has never seen an incident before might see weapons-related violence, to declare the area as a designated zone to search.

The length of time for a search operation will be increased, and extending that search window will allow Victoria Police to conduct their operations successfully.

There will also be further amendments that will be proposed to extend these zones for a longer period to enable police to stop, search and seize weapons without warrants for a period of up to six months in a particular area. Under these reforms the chief commissioner will be able to declare known hotspots such as train stations or shopping centres for longer periods of time, so that the police have more tools available to them in these hotspots to make sure that they can apply the existing powers that exist for search and seizure. It will give police more tools in their toolkit and allow them to use their search powers when they determine them to be appropriate.

It is very clear that there is a legitimate concern across the community about the rise in aggravated burglaries, about the rise in car thefts and about the associated harmful behaviours that are going along with this – that is people breaking into homes with machetes demanding keys and other devices, causing fear amongst residents. The government is listening to the community, who are expressing these concerns. The legislation we are dealing with right now is one part of our comprehensive and significant plan to change laws to give police the power and resources that they need, but it will also ensure that through our broader criminal justice system, including the tough changes that we are making to bail laws, we are making sure that serious crimes are being taken seriously and that community safety is front and centre of everything that we do. As I say, this bill will have a significant effect. It will bring significant advantages in our determination to keep our community safe, our streets safe and our citizens safe, as will the other bills that we will consider during the course of this week. They have my wholehearted support.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:37): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. We have heard today that this bill makes amendments to two major acts: the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003 and the Control of Weapons Act 1990. The Liberals and Nationals certainly know the importance, the value, the need and the priority of keeping Victorians safe. We have had that focus in my time – in the last 10 years – but this government has not held those values and those needs. They hold the rhetoric, but not the action. Today we have seen the government being dragged kicking, screaming and biting to present to this house some amendments to a bill that was already through the lower house previously and sitting on our notice paper – to present a machete-ban backflip.

The government is proposing to reclassify machetes into the prohibited weapons list from September 2025, with an amnesty for a period of two months on the way. I want to just start off and make some comments in relation to exemptions. We are told that there will be exemptions for certain permitted purposes such as farmers in agriculture and also hunting. I listened to my colleague Mr Mulholland, who was relating information that in previous attempts, which I will go into shortly, in relation to farming members of the government started to try and fling very minor arrows across the way, going, ‘Oh, don’t the Nationals support farmers?’. Well, the Nationals have always supported farmers. We actually, once upon a time, emanated from the farming movement. We have of course diversified now to be for the whole of regions, but we have never forgotten the importance of our agricultural industry nor, for that matter, hunting. With the use of these machetes for intended purposes, for legal practices in farming operations, we want to see what those exemptions look like. We have not yet seen them, but we have backed farmers all the way.

We backed them in 2019 when there was a spate of on-farm terrorism, and that is what it was. Recalcitrant people thought they could go on farm and terrorise farmers, farm workers and animals and create biodiversity hazards as well. We backed them when we had the inquiry. The government again came kicking and screaming to this house to support in the end, without any choice, an inquiry, and we backed them when we developed laws from that inquiry to protect farmers from these extremist activists. Again the government took some year and a half to come to the party to produce some laws in relation to this. The thought that that does not exist and that we do not back farmers is laughable and shows just how desperate those on the other side are to thwart what is now being presented today, which is a ban on machetes.

When we look at this we see some incredible backflips at four particular times. In 2023, twice in 2024 and now in 2025 we saw these backflips. We saw this government saying, ‘No, no, no.’ On each occasion Labor opposed in the Assembly our amendments to the Firearms and Control of Weapons (Machetes) Amendment Bill 2024. We proposed to reclassify machetes; Labor opposed. In March 2024 we did it the Council; Labor opposed that. Again in March 2025 we moved amendments in this very place on machetes; Labor opposed. Lo and behold, they have done the stats, they have gone and looked and they have done some polling, and it is very unpalatable for the Premier to continue to defend an indefensible position. They have not really cared up until now about the victims of these crimes, the victims of these attacks, but the government is now looking at the polls and thinking it better finally do something about it and will beat its chest about how sincerely caring it is for Victorians. It is a charade, and we are calling it out.

We have heard other members talk about crime statistics. We heard Mr Batchelor speak about crimes in people’s homes. I want to drill down into a couple of those in my region. We are seeing a rise in knife attacks not only in metropolitan, suburban Melbourne but also in regional Victoria, and the stats do not lie. In Eastern Victoria we have seen crime surge. We have seen assaults up by 25 per cent in the last 10 years. We have residential aggravated burglaries up 210 per cent over the past 10 years in Eastern Victoria Region, motor thefts up 100 per cent and family violence and common assault – how tragic is this, with them already too high – are up 63 per cent. If I drill down a little bit more, Latrobe Valley crime offences are up almost 13 per cent; Bass Coast, almost 24 per cent; Baw Baw shire, almost 39 per cent; South Gippsland, over 100 per cent; Cardinia, 46 per cent; East Gippsland, almost 50 per cent – 49.37 per cent; and Wellington, 26.5 per cent. Victorians are feeling less safe under this government than they were a decade ago.

Sadly, let me point to some other more specific examples in my electorate to do with knife crime and the impact not only on the victim but on the community, with the feeling, that terrible feeling, that their own local town street is unsafe. No-one wants to go to that level. No-one wants to be there. I thank the police from the bottom of my heart. They are continually frustrated by a lack of resources and are quite often overworked and underpaid, as we have seen in their protracted negotiations. We saw on 28 February a 38-year-old man was – we say ‘allegedly’, but there was blood and there was a knife and there was someone taken off to hospital – stabbed out the front of a wonderful business, a beautiful business, that has been there for 20 years. It is called Viva shoes. It is a fantastic business.

Fancy going to work in the most glorious business and having this attack right outside your business, and not only that but in Commercial Road. I went for a walk with my good colleague Martin Cameron, the member for Morwell, the other day. We had a conversation with people from Vinnies, from Manny’s Market and from the Gippsland cardiology clinic. They are having to triage people who are coming in frightened to be on that street. What does that do for business? It puts people off, and people are staying away. We also see that in Traralgon a 70-year-old man was held at knifepoint, robbed and stabbed by a woman in an unprovoked attack. In October last year we saw a group of teens taken into custody after attacking a security guard at Traralgon Centre Plaza. They were wandering around with a hammer at that stage. And we saw that a most beloved man, a 90-year-old man living out his days, loved by his family, died – an alleged murder after an aggravated home invasion. We see these things time and time again, and this is just a travesty. I am sure many of my colleagues will have local content to discuss and terrible stories of victims in all this.

Ms Ermacora raised the issue of PSOs, protective services officers, indicating that when the bill eventually goes through the house it will be illegal and there will be increased penalties around obstructing PSOs conducting their duties. That is also a very sad indictment on this government. Both my colleague Mrs Broad and I have raised in the house this week and last week the issue around there being a deficiency, a lack, a dearth, of PSOs in regional Victoria – with PSOs assigned to four train stations across the regions as opposed to over 200 stations that have PSOs in metropolitan Melbourne. It is an indictment that we need them, but we do need them.

Let us look at Labor’s amendments to do with this machete ban. It says the amnesty will run from 21 September to 30 November. People will be able to dispose of their machete without committing a crime. We are told that there will be bins potentially in police stations and locations. These amendments will define what a machete is, there is a penalty of two years imprisonment or a $47,000 fine, and the Victorian government also plans to write to the federal government about actions on machete imports and reducing those imports.

I had the pleasure of walking Kokoda with my colleague Tim Bull and others and students – they have been doing that for a number of years now – almost two years ago. In Papua New Guinea machetes are used as daily implements. It is not a wealthy country. It is a Third World country, a beautiful country with beautiful people. But machetes are used to chop vines and they are used to chop vegetables. They are used in a variety of modes. It is their whole kitchen equipment in many cases. But we are not that country, and Australians do have overall a good standard of living. Victorians, despite this government being in for 10 years, have adequate options in their kitchens to use, and these knives are not necessary. They are huge. I did see them in Kokoda. In Port Moresby there was a child who was just about as high as the machete carrying it along the road, I am sure to hack through the bush and do whatever they needed to do.

But getting back to the bill, we also know that this bill will look at declaring designated areas for search and expand the time from 12 hours to a period of up to six months. In some cases those areas could be train stations, and in my case they could potentially be areas, sadly, in the Latrobe Valley.

We also see our amendments to bring forward the date from which machetes are banned by three months. We are also bringing forward the ban on the sale of machetes. These are sensible amendments. They are important. They provide for something that should have been done 18 months ago but the government has obfuscated on.

In discussion around other elements of the bill of course we always make mention of the importance of the move-on laws that Daniel Andrews removed in 2015. He thought that was a fabulous idea, and woe betide the poor Victoria Police, who have been desperate for them ever since. Not only that, woe betide the Victorians who have been caught up in needless violent protests that could have well been kept far safer with these laws in place. I again call on the government, which has rethought a ban on machetes, to rethink the repeal of the move-on laws that we introduced in the 2010–14 Liberal–National government.

Finally, just on the discussion around deradicalisation of extremists, we do not have a problem with the government wanting to expand the voluntary case management scheme, but by the same token, it is cutting the funding. It slashed the program funding by around $1.2 million. And while it is important to try and reshape, reform and rehabilitate these extremists, at the moment, we were told in the briefing, there are only eight participants. Well, I am sure that there could be a room full and the next room down the corridor.

I want to see this bill passed. I know there are amendments from a variety of others, including the Greens and Mr Limbrick so far. We await to see and discuss the bill in committee of the whole, but the Nationals certainly will not be opposing this bill. We wanted to see machetes brought in many years ago.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Just before we go to Mr Ettershank, I want to recognise a former member in the gallery, Heidi Victoria.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (15:52): I rise to make a contribution to the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. The proposed changes to the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003 enable the Countering Violent Extremism Multi-agency Panel to provide more holistic, therapeutic care to those vulnerable to radicalisation and provide early intervention services. These are fairly uncontroversial, and we have no issue in supporting these changes.

The reform to the Control of Weapons Act 1990, however, are unsupportable from the Legalise Cannabis Victoria (LCV) standpoint. These broad changes are, frankly, disastrous. They are dangerous, they are excessive and they are unnecessary. The existing designated search area powers are already significant. They allow police to stop and search any individual within a specific declared area without a warrant or any reasonable grounds for doing so. Human rights advocates and other stakeholders already have concerns about the way the existing powers are used to target certain communities. These changes in this bill will dramatically broaden those powers.

Firstly, the bill increases the time the Chief Commissioner of Police can declare a designated area – that is, an area where police can stop and search a person without a warrant and without any justification – from 12 hours at a time to a staggering six months. It lowers the threshold for declaring a planned designated area from one where multiple previous incidents of violence with the use of weapons have occurred to an area where there is no evidence of incidents of violence or disorder having previously occurred. Under clause 55 the chief commissioner need only be satisfied that there is a likelihood of violence or disorder involving weapons occurring in that designated area. It sort of sounds potentially reasonable, but what is this concept of ‘likelihood’ based on? Well, we will never know, because the commissioner does not have to make that information public, nor are there any proposed criteria to test the accuracy of that information. So there is no transparency, no obvious reason, no public vision of the problem – none; nada.

To add to our concerns, the minimum time that must elapse from the end of a declaration of a designated area to the beginning of another one in that same area has been reduced from 10 days to 12 hours. This means that certain areas could essentially be subject to continuous day- or night-time monitoring for six months. The bill allows for a planned designation of an area to operate during any time before and after the event that the chief commissioner considers reasonable. There are no guidelines around what might be considered ‘reasonable’ when applying this extension, and again, the chief commissioner is not required to disclose the information on which that decision was based. It is entirely subjective, it is entirely opaque and it is entirely at the discretion of the chief commissioner. These unnecessary and unjustified new powers stem from the same fear-driven reflex as do the bail reforms the government is currently ramming through the Legislative Assembly. They are certainly not based on any evidence of improved community safety. They are based not on what is objectively reasonable, but rather, on what the chief commissioner believes to be reasonable. It is entirely up to the chief commissioner’s discretion. And do we really need to give police yet more discretionary powers? They are not exactly famous for wielding them with restraint.

Putting aside the fact that police already have sufficient powers to declare designated areas and to stop and to search people, there is no evidence to show that these searches are effective in preventing crime or making the community any safer. There is no evidence whatsoever. In fact, it is to the contrary. Liberty Victoria’s rights advocacy project looked into searches conducted in designated areas between January 2021 and January 2023. Over that two-year period Victoria Police conducted nearly 24,000 warrantless searches of individuals in 61 designated areas. Of these 24,000 warrantless searches, only 250 led to objects or substances being found. That means around 1 per cent of those searches turned up anything, so hardly a raging success. And we are not even sure that during those 250 searches any weapons were actually found. It is far more likely they turned up the odd bag of weed and a few pocketknives – maybe a slingshot if they were lucky. Anyway, in 99 per cent of those searches the person undergoing the search was being subjected, for no reason, to an invasive and humiliating public search when they were not guilty of any crime. What do these operations cost the taxpayer – all for a possible 1 per cent success rate?

There is the issue of these new powers being used on overpoliced communities, which we know happens already. Stakeholders we met with are very concerned that the new laws will lead to an uptick in racial profiling, and let us face it, those fears are held with very good reason. The racial profiling data monitoring project was established to monitor Victoria Police’s so-called ‘zero tolerance’ policy on racial profiling. Despite these policies being in place, and being in place for around a decade, data obtained by the project showed that First Nations Victorians are still 11 times more likely to be searched by police than white Victorians – 11 times more. This fact was reinforced in the evidence given to the Yoorrook Justice Commission, which called on Victoria Police to address the systemic racism and the unequal use of discretionary powers in its ranks, specifically in relation to First Nations people.

Smart Justice for Young People data also confirms that police searches disproportionately target over-represented groups of young people, including Aboriginal young people, young people from racial minorities and children in out-of-home care. But here is the kicker: despite police in Victoria disproportionately subjecting certain groups to searches based on their appearance, based on their age and based on their perceived racial background, the actual find rates for illegal weapons, drugs or other illicit items are actually lower with those groups than when they search those they perceive to be Caucasian. That is shameful. We know the harms associated with being repeatedly stopped in public and searched by police for no reason, not the least of which is having to deal with criminal charges.

Werribee train station in my electorate is often declared a designated area. Recently we heard from one of our community legal centre representatives about a young person picked up during a search for having a pocketknife in his bag – one of those Swiss army knives – and that pocketknife was identified as a weapon. The community legal centre was able to get the charges dropped against this young person, who was in their final year of school, but that person had to cope with all the stress of dealing with the justice system when really they should not have been charged at all and should not have been searched. They should have just been doing their VCE. Surely a schoolkid with a pocketknife should not be the target of these searches. Really, is that what we have come to? Is that really the optimal utilisation of scarce police resources? It beggars belief. It is a ridiculous waste of police and is a ridiculous waste of court and legal resources, and we are about to enable that to happen more often and with less due process. It is shameful.

Yes, these searches do have a disproportionate impact on people of colour, on young people, on vulnerable people and on people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but make no mistake, this kind of overreach is an infringement on everyone’s rights. We all suffer from the loss of these rights. Police already have sufficient powers and already have too little oversight. I ask: what is the point of these reforms other than to relieve police of doing a bit of paperwork? Let us be clear: police already have these powers. All these changes do is make it more convenient for police. It is to make it easier for them to exercise those powers, and that is wrong.

These reforms, plus the overly hasty tougher-on-bail laws, show a government floundering in thrall to the fearmongering of the right-wing media cabal and coming up with policy on the run to placate it. The reforms leave the community no safer, while marginalised, vulnerable people, young people and overpoliced multicultural communities continue to feel the brunt of these discriminatory practices – and for what? As I mentioned earlier, the success rate of stop-and-search powers used in designated areas is 1 per cent. There appears to be a creeping erosion of civil liberties right across this country. It is beyond depressing that we are joining this race to the bottom in terms of protecting our civil liberties. Is that 1 per cent success rate really worth the continual targeting of overpoliced communities, the profound breaches of human rights and the harms experienced by those targeted by these searches, not to mention the incredible cost of these operations and subsequent legal matters? We say: no, it is not worth that, and no is how we will be voting on this bill.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (16:04): I rise to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. This bill has been prepared in collaboration with my good friend the Minister for Police in the other place, Minister Carbines, and the Attorney-General. It will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the voluntary case management, VCM, scheme under the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003, the TCPA, and it will also make amendments to the Control of Weapons Act 1990. This will give Victoria Police the powers that they need. It means that Victoria Police can exercise unlawful weapons search powers in public places, in areas declared by the Chief Commissioner of Police to be designated areas. He can do this in a more flexible way and for longer and in expanded circumstances.

This bill is designed for two reasons. The first is to ensure that the VCM scheme aligns with best practice case management, and the second is to ensure that Victoria Police is responding effectively to the challenges presented by the unlawful possession, carriage and use of weapons in public. The Allan Labor government is committed to keeping our community safe – make no question of that – and we are adapting. We will do what is right. Last year in March in this place, in a second-reading debate, I talked about the problem of youth crime relating to the use of machetes and knives. At that time I said that machetes are a weapon, and I talked about how we had seen over the previous year the use of knives and long-bladed knives like machetes as weapons. I said then and will say again today that the machete is not a tool, it is a weapon and a dangerous one at that. I firmly believe that there is no need for a young person to own, let alone carry, a machete. That is why I am happy to say that one of the key elements of this legislation is that it clarifies and enshrines into law the status of machetes.

At the time we clarified that machetes are knives, a controlled weapon, and I said at the time that purchasing a machete would require the seller to seek an ID when someone comes in to purchase a machete. I said at that time that our bill in early 2024 was designed to fight crime and keep our streets safe. I said at the time, and I want to reiterate this, that we wanted to take machetes out of the hands of criminals and young people. Just last month I spoke about the work our police officers do in the community of Prahran. I said proudly, just six weeks ago, that we are combatting the scourge of knife crime with discrete search powers.

I acknowledge that more needs to be done. Each year, in and out, our government is working to get more done. In fact knife-related crime in 2024 reduced by 3.6 per cent compared to 2023 levels. This is due to the work that we have done, including the work that we did last year, but there is more to do, and I acknowledge our community’s concerns. Just the other week I walked a few hundred metres from my office to a street where residents are concerned with crime. I listened to what they had to say. The good thing about our government is we want to respond to what the community wants. The Allan Labor government is listening to our community, and we are doing that by taking even more action today to keep knives off our streets to keep the community safe

As part of listening to our community, we consulted. That means we listened to what the community and the key stakeholders needed, and we delivered. On this bill the key stakeholders were Victoria Police, the Department of Health, the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, the Department of Education and youth justice. On consultation, many of the amendments to the act were proposed by Victoria Police in the first place, and I am proud that we listened and are delivering today. I would like to thank Victoria Police for all their constructive advice, helping guide our approach to these weapons.

In consultation with Victoria Police, since coming into government, we have invested a record $4.5 billion into the police. We know that every day, in any weather, at any hour, our hardworking police officers are out there patrolling on the frontline, often putting themselves at risk to keep our communities safe. They are the ones who see what happens firsthand and are trained to deal with some of the most violent criminals in the state. That is why I am happy to help deliver these reforms as proposed by Victoria Police, helping keep our community safe.

I want to highlight some of the specifics of the bill. A ‘terrorist act’ is defined under section 4(1)(b) of the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act as an action that is done or a threat that is made with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. This is among the most serious offences that can be levelled at any Victorian, and that is why we must take every precaution necessary to stop these events from happening.

Clause 55, ‘Planned designation of an area’, substitutes a new section 10D(1) of the Control of Weapons Act and provides that:

(1) The Chief Commissioner may declare an area to be a designated area if –

…

(i) either –

(A) more than one incident of violence or disorder has occurred in that area in the previous 12 months that involved the use of weapons; or

(B) an event is to be held in that area and incidents of violence or disorder involving the use of weapons have occurred at previous occasions of that event (wherever occurring); and

(ii) there is a likelihood that the violence or disorder will recur; or

(b) the Chief Commissioner is satisfied that –

(i) an event is to be held in that area; and

(ii) by information known to the Chief Commissioner, there is a likelihood that violence or disorder involving the use of weapons will occur in that area during the period of intended operation of the declaration.

What does that mean in practice? It means that the police will be given the flexibility to respond to emerging situations based on intelligence that there is a risk of violence at an event. In practice the amendments to the Control of Weapons Act will do five major things. They will increase the period of time when a planned designated area at an event can take place, further reduce the time that Victoria Police need to wait before returning to an area to search for weapons, enable Victoria Police to declare an area subject to this act based on intelligence, increase the length of time a search operation can take place from 12 to 24 hours and modernise the way that search operations are communicated to the public. The fact that these amendments were drawn from consultation with Victoria Police should demonstrate the seriousness and importance of this bill.

Over the past decade we have listened to and cooperated with Victoria Police to ensure that they can keep our community safe and have the resources they need to stamp out criminal behaviour. I mentioned earlier that we have funded, in addition, 3600 new police officers since coming into government, for example. Something less known perhaps is how we invested in new equipment for our police, including $214 million to roll out tasers to all frontline police officers and PSOs. This is to help ensure that they have another nonlethal tool at their disposal to respond to potential violent offenders. They are an effective means of neutralising dangerous threats on the streets while ensuring everyone is safe. That is the crux of the Allan Labor government’s approach to tackling crime. We have a commitment to tackling crime, keeping our community and our police safe from harm.

As I mentioned earlier, I was happy to see machetes rightly classified as knives and weapons under the previous amendments. Last year Victoria Police seized almost 15,000 knives out of offenders’ hands. That is about 40 knives a day. When you see that nearly 70 per cent of knife crime victims are adults and that nearly 20 per cent of the offenders are young people and a further 11 per cent are youth gang members, it paints the reality quite well. Knife crime is down 3.6 per cent, but we have a serious problem when young people are acquiring machetes and terrorising older Australians.

We will always move to stamp out this antisocial and criminal behaviour from our streets, and it starts with empowering the police to thoroughly investigate and act as necessary. Both the Police Association Victoria and Victoria Police are in support of our efforts and these new reforms because they understand that at the end of the day the government, just like all our police officers, is driven to keep the community safe. Nobody wants knives on the streets; nobody wants offenders roaming around terrorising Victorians. The cooperation between Victoria Police and this government in steering these changes is constructive and productive and will no doubt pave the way for a stronger, more dynamic and effective policing strategy around knife crime.

There is sometimes pushback in this chamber against expanding the capabilities and powers of Victoria Police. It needs to be stressed that this bill relates to keeping more of our community safe. This is a bill that is designed to make sure, based on the intelligence gathered by and for our police force, that they can then act accordingly with the threat. This is also only done at the satisfaction of the chief commissioner. It has the necessary checks to ensure that police officers do not arbitrarily declare zones of interest as dangerous, but also provides the police force with the expanding ability to dynamically approach situations of varying threat levels. It is safer for police officers and safer for residents. It goes hand in hand with over 948 crime prevention initiatives since forming government, raking in over $100 million of investment from this Labor government.

A two-pronged strategy against crime and stamping out criminal behaviour requires dealing with offenders and stopping people from offending in the first place and falling into the system. The Allan Labor government is ensuring more young people are set on a more stable path that does not lead to violent criminal conduct further down the track through these programs. Concurrently we are giving Victoria Police the ability to properly deal with the unlawful weapons used in these crimes by empowering them to conduct searches in designated areas.

Another key aspect of this bill deals with the pathways for Victorians who are at risk of radicalising towards violent extremism. I note that the terrorist threat level was raised from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’ by ASIO in August 2024, and we know that violent extremism is an ongoing threat to the safety of our community in Victoria. The attack against the Adass Israel Synagogue in my constituency of Southern Metro has proved that violent domestic extremism is on the rise and a number of young Victorians are being radicalised into terrorism or other forms of violent extremism, and the Allan Labor government is taking the necessary steps to stop this in its tracks.

We are taking steps to improve the operation of Victoria’s voluntary case management scheme to make sure it operates flexibly and responsibly. This scheme is voluntary, complementing the work being done by Victoria Police with high-risk individuals, providing tailored intervention and support for people at risk of radicalisation. This includes psychological and career counselling, mentoring, tutoring, legal aid and other community support services. The bill also amends the language used to reduce the stigma associated with joining this voluntary program, making it a more appealing and socially viable option for those at risk of radicalisation. Furthermore, it makes amendments to the role of the Countering Violent Extremism Multi-agency Panel to clarify that their role is as an advisory body. It currently has some legislative functions, but for the most part the work is conducted by expert case managers who are best suited to deliver this work. As such, case management will now be left to the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Safety, with the CVEMAP providing advice. This signifies the dynamic approach the Allan Labor government is taking to keeping our streets safe. We are doing our part to fight extremism and the radicalisation of Victorians by helping provide alternative pathways, opportunities and counselling for those at risk.

Simultaneously we are acting to stamp out criminal behaviour on our streets. With the power to sensibly declare areas to be of higher potential risk, Victoria Police will be able to search individuals for unlawful weapons. This is for locations where the police have determined there will be a planned event, or where there was a past event, of high risk to the community and the general public. All the while, we are ensuring our police force is better protected with our $4.5 billion investment since coming into office, with more non-lethal defensive equipment such as tasers and more officers on the ground. Together this forms a coherent and decisive strategy to keep Victoria’s streets clean. It means more police protecting our community and a more empowered police force that can seize unlawful weapons such as knives by conducting searches in areas of risk. A prevention program which steers at-risk individuals away from violence, extremism and radicalisation will help drive down the number of Victorians turning towards violence and becoming repeat offenders while simultaneously ensuring that those who do commit those crimes are dealt with effectively and swiftly. It is all about being tough on crime and even tougher on the causes of crime.

The Allan Labor government has an indisputable record of protecting our communities with stronger law enforcement and strong prevention programs, and this bill continues to build on that record by providing reforms developed in conjunction with Victoria Police with the support of the police association, making it safer for police to engage on scenes and easier for them to stamp out violent criminals. Our work has ensured that there are more police on the streets protecting all of us and that they are better equipped with tools and powers to pull criminals off the streets. This is just another step towards ensuring that they can take even more knives and dangerous, unlawful weapons off criminals in critical areas of risk. For that, I commend the bill to the chamber.

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:19): I rise to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. I guess we are talking in three parts here: deradicalisation, designated search areas and prohibiting machetes. I am going to talk about the first two briefly before talking about machetes in particular.

Deradicalisation is a very, very good idea, a good program. We have got lots of young people who are radicalised in our community. We have a social environment in which radicalisation is very, very common and easy to do, whether it is through social media, through selective consumption of materials or through bad actors who want to influence our children in bad ways. Deradicalisation is a very valuable thing, if you are willing to put some money behind it and actually make it work. If it is just a program in name and it is not funded in a commensurate way, what is the point? You might as well say, ‘We’re legislating to put in a moon base,’ and then not have any money to go to the moon. It is good, but back it up with an actual program that matches it, because at the moment it does not match it.

On the deradicalisation aspect of the bill there is one thing that concerns me. It is very good in principle, but there is the risk that at some point in the future it would be applied selectively – that we would be selective about how we defined ‘violent’ and how we defined ‘radicalisation’ and that we would categorise some kinds of radicalisation as violent but some we would selectively ignore, because we do it already a lot. There is a lot of selective policing going on in our society these days around protests, where one group are allowed to protest and another group are not allowed to protest, where some people get diverted and other people do not get diverted. I am not saying those things are wrong per se, but when you look at a piece of law, like with any contract, you have got to look at, ‘What is the worst-case scenario?’ and ‘What is the unintended consequence?’ of what you might apply And in here because so many terms remain undefined, we do make it possible for future powers – future governments and future police forces – to be selective because, as has been pointed out already in this chamber, there does not have to be justification, and the duration can be defined at will. So it is not the principle of deradicalisation at all; it is the selective use.

To put some context to that, look at some of the radicalisation we have got now. Would you consider that Extinction Rebellion are leaning towards violence? Certainly some of their acts appear that way to me – whether they are disrupting traffic or gluing themselves or damaging valuable private property or damaging artworks – assuming a sense of high moral ground for themselves that means any act is justified. What they did around the Land Forces event certainly leaned towards violence. Are they radicalised under this? Should they be deradicalised, when children who leave their schools to go to Extinction Rebellion events in school hours? Are they being amongst people who are radicalising them, because there are certainly people in those protest groups whose aim is to radicalise people, particularly vulnerable young people.

When we had the endless pro-Palestinian protests here there were many young people brought to those. We had the issues of people waving terrorist flags et cetera and promoting points of view that were radicalising. Nothing in this bill here gives us any way to measure the distinction between when you are going to say it is radical and it is leaning towards violence, and when you are not. That is the danger of it. That is the concern I have about it, not the principle. We must deradicalise kids, because they are so vulnerable to it, and early intervention is always the key. But the law here as prescribed is loose, and I think it opens the door to unintended consequences down the track. Hope is not a plan. We hope that a future government does not misuse this law, but we are leaving the door open for them to misuse this law.

The same can somewhat be said for the designated search areas. Again, in principle I agree with this. I feel slightly torn about this, because I think both the Libertarians and the Legalise Cannabis Party make sounds points about the fact that this is yet another degradation of civil liberties.

For all the good intents of it we must not – we cannot – simply skip over the fact that we are further expanding police rights to do things without warrant, without probable cause. That is not a good thing. That is not a good thing in a democracy. It is not a good thing where we have equality before the law. We should not be flippant about the fact that we are doing it. We should understand the significance of what we are doing. By doing it we are debasing civil liberties. We doing it on the justification that we are going to keep people safe, and that justification is that we are debasing civil liberties because the behaviour of people has become more and more debased. The way people protested a generation ago is very different to the way people protest now. There is far more violence involved. There is far more terrible behaviour involved. The behaviour of our society is debased, and we are saying as part of the remedy, ‘Let’s also debase our civil liberties, because that seems to be the only way we can contain, corral or manage it.’ I feel torn about that, I really do, but we have to deal with the reality before us. The reality before us is that we have people with slingshots throwing ball bearings at horses and putting them under their feet. We have people throwing urine on people. We have people carrying knives and machetes with impunity. Dealing with the reality we have got before us, this seems to be the way, but it should be done with a heavy heart, and it cannot continue to be the endless solution, because we will just end up in a police state for the sake of keeping us all safe. We should be looking at other ways to prevent it, and I will talk a little bit about that later on.

The third part is the machete prohibition. We last voted on this in about March last year. It was one of the very first bills I ever participated in, and it was one of those little rude awakenings. You think Parliament can be unreasonable, but surely people would see logic about something. We debated and we put up an amendment to prohibit machetes then. I was incredulous and felt very affected by the fact that that amendment was shot down, because it just seemed so illogical when you had the opportunity to prohibit something that only on a matter of semantics was not a weapon. Butterfly knives are prohibited and batons are prohibited but a machete is not, in this day and age. I said at the time, and I will say it again now, you had the opportunity to do it right and you did not do it right. I said then and I will say it now: for every family that has had a machete held to their throats or to the throats of their children, you are accountable for that.

John Berger interjected.

Richard WELCH: Tell those families to calm down!

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Order! Mr Welch, through the Chair, please.

Richard WELCH: It is all very well for someone to say, ‘Calm down.’ There was an opportunity to prohibit it. More crimes happened at the end of a machete. We had another opportunity to prohibit them. More crimes happened at the end of a machete. There are lives that have been destroyed and traumatised, children who cannot sleep in their own beds. The party over there are accountable for that, and I want to make sure everybody in Victoria knows that they are accountable for this. To come back through this chamber now as if you are doing something magnanimous, to call it a reform, is insulting at the least to every one of those victims. I am speaking on behalf of every one of those victims and everybody in the halo of those victims who needs to be addressed. It is unacceptable.

We do so in a situation where even now under this law we are not doing it immediately. We are postponing it – we are pushing it out until September. At the Whittlesea Monday Market, machetes are laid out on a table for sale.

What is the point if we are not doing it immediately? Because there are some small logistical issues to address? Because somebody has a supply, a stock, of machetes in their back room? Who in the last two years is buying and importing machetes, and who are they selling to? What is their marketplace? If any of those vendors and businesspeople are doing that, surely they know what these weapons would be used for. I have no sympathy for any business that has capital tied up in machetes – none – because they should not have them. They should not be selling them, and if they had any moral fibre, they would not be doing it anyway. Delaying banning machetes because of that is puerile, stupid and unacceptable. We should be doing it now.

This is in a context where the government itself has created the perfect storm, because obviously when banning machetes, as has been pointed out time and time again, the machete isn’t committing the crime. It is the person whose hand it is in who is committing the crime and maybe if it is not a machete, it will be some other instrument, so why carry on about machetes? Well, machetes happen to be, right here and now, the weapon of choice of these criminals, so let us address the weapon of choice, and if it evolves into a new weapon of choice, then let us address that weapon too when it comes up.

We are living in a society where the government has police shortages: it has less patrols, it has insufficient PSOs and it has closed police stations or shortened their hours. It has cut funding for mental health; it has cut funding for early intervention. It has given ideological direction to judges to put people back out on bail even when they have committed violent crime. We have bail laws like that. We have closed down Children’s Courts. In that context, when the Attorney-General and when the Minister for Police and when the Premier get up and say, ‘Look, we’re listening; we’re doing it,’ frankly, it is nauseating. It is nauseating to the majority of Victorians who know it is only happening now because they are under pressure, not because they have actually seen a problem they want to solve. The problem they are solving is their polls, and everybody in Victoria knows it. You are fooling no-one, and until you address all these other things, then from your perspective this is a quick solution to your immediate problem, but it is not the solution to crime in Victoria or to the families whose lives you have destroyed.

We will support this bill. There are flaws; there are holes. It is still better than it was, but it is not the whole solution. I look forward in due course to also talking about the bail laws.

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (16:33): I am pleased to rise today to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024 and join the cause of my colleague Ms Copsey. This is a bill that has two distinct elements: one to mitigate radicalisation in our communities and another to expand police powers. But what we cannot support, and what must be removed entirely from this bill, is the expansion of police powers in ways that undermine civil liberties, disproportionately impacting First Nations and multicultural communities and reducing transparency and accountability. Policing, and expanding police powers, does not exist in a vacuum. It is a core function of governing, and our responsibility as members of Parliament is to ensure that governing does not unfairly target economically and socially disadvantaged populations.

We know which communities will be bearing the brunt of overpolicing. These communities know very well the experience of pervasive structural racism and discriminatory practices. These are our Indigenous communities and our multicultural communities, particularly African and Pacific Islander communities, and that last one – Pacific Islander – is my community. I have seen firsthand that when you see a group of black and brown kids walking along minding their own business, they are automatically labelled gangs, but when you see a group of what is perceived to be white kids, they are called a group.

The rhetoric that this exacerbates serves the narrative of ‘those to be protected’ and ‘those that are seen as a threat’.

The government claims this bill is about giving police more flexibility. But let us be clear: flexibility is power. The bill increases the duration of designated areas from 12 hours to six months. It allows back-to-back declarations, meaning an area could be under continuous police enforcement. Not only is this incredibly dangerous, but it ignores fairness and equity and it breaches the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. How can this government sleep at night knowing that they are introducing a bill which actively opposes the human rights of Victorians?

The bill allows the threshold for police to declare an area a planned event designation, making it even easier for stop-and-search powers to be used without reasonable suspicion. Since 2009, Victoria Police have been given extraordinary powers to conduct no-reason searches. Through these designated search area powers, any area can be designated to allow officers to search anyone in it for a certain period of time without having to prove reasonable grounds or obtain a warrant.

Let us talk about where these powers are used. We know very well that the so-called designated areas are not going to be in places like Toorak or Brighton. They are going to be declared in areas where migrant, refugee and First Nations communities work, raise their families and gather. They are going to be declared in areas where I grew up, Broadmeadows, and areas like Sunshine, Dandenong, Frankston and Melton.

The nature of policing remains focused on petty crime and maintaining order, while white-collar crime is handled by separate units. The daily pressures of policing can cause anxiety, leading officers to rely on quick judgments, often reinforcing racial profiling and bias. Imagine how different Victoria would be if white-collar crime was instead the priority, where police were stationed in your children’s schools, in your workplaces, in your local train stations or even in this chamber. I have seen the impacts of overpolicing in my own community. Pacific Islanders make up less than 1 per cent of the Australian population. Unfortunately, they make up 14 per cent of the population in juvenile detention. The evidence is clear: expanded police powers lead to racial profiling, which often involves abusive behaviour, a phenomenon that was outlawed in 2015. This bill will put entire communities under permanent suspicion, intimidation and alienation simply because of where they are or what event they are attending. By targeting racialised populations at higher rates, police directly influence the colour of the criminal justice system.

Most concerning in this bill is the lack of safeguards to prevent Victoria Police racial profiling. This bill will not require police to collect data on race or ethnicity. How can the police be actively working against racial profiling if they are not even monitoring the size of the issue? The Greens have spoken many times in this place against laws that grant police disproportionate powers over racialised communities. When stop-and-search powers were first introduced, we highlighted the risk of systemic discrimination, and we were right, because data showed that these laws were not applied equally. A 2010 survey commissioned by the Flemington Kensington Community Legal Centre found that young men of African descent were 10 per cent more likely to be stopped by police, in contrast to young men of Australian descent. Respondents of African descent reported a more negative experience when stopped and expressed greater levels of worry about being stopped than Caucasian Australians. A consequence of overpolicing is being stopped without an explanation. This is something I saw a lot in my own community when growing up. The research found police were consistently less likely to find something when they searched a person believed to be African, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean, Indian and Asian compared to someone perceived to be white – so more likely to be searched but less likely to have something found. Wand searches and pat-downs have negative ripple effects on those randomly searched, humiliating people who have done nothing wrong and discouraging them from trusting the system or engaging in communities.

The Centre Against Racial Profiling used freedom of information to examine all Victoria Police search powers where the data is recorded. It found Aboriginal people were 11 times more likely to be searched than white people in 2023. People perceived to be African were six times more likely to be searched. It is likely that the over-representation will be just as bad or even worse for designated search areas and consent searches, where we do not have access to the data. The over-policing of First Nations and other communities of colour in Victoria through excessive searches is a direct contributor to their over-representation in the criminal legal system and a continuation of the intergenerational harm of colonisation. And here we are again with another bill, more unchecked police powers, more risk of racial profiling.

What do you think happens when a group of young people who are not committing a crime are unfairly stopped and searched? What type of message does it send to these young people? Most importantly, what behavioural and psychological effects do you think this has on those targeted for the colour of their skin? When we racially profile communities, we are feeding into the social divisions. Victoria Police data obtained by researchers and provided to the Age in recent days revealed officers conducted 23,718 searches at 61 designated areas over a two-year period between January 2021 and January 2023. Of those searches, only 252 resulted in objects or substances being found. But what about the harm caused to the remaining 23,466 people? How do they treat their trauma from being racially profiled?

You can have all the designated areas you want, but public safety is more likely to come from redressing poor education and unequal job opportunities. If this government is serious about preventing crime, it needs to stop with the law-and-order theatre and start investing in community-based solutions that actually work. The government should instead be investing in our young people – in schools in the north like Coburg High School, Glenroy College, John Fawkner College and Hume Central Secondary College, to name a few. The government should focus on addressing the problems at their roots, not at the branches where they are snapping and vulnerable.

Over-policing isolates communities and erodes trust between police and the people they are supposed to protect. It creates a two-tiered society where some people can go about their daily lives without fear of being stopped while others are constantly monitored, questioned and searched. This is not just unfair; it is a direct breach of Victoria’s commitment to multiculturalism, social cohesion and equal rights. We should be bridging the gap in the us versus them mentality. We need to be centring community leaders from Indigenous communities and migrant communities and working with them as partners.

We call on the government to delete the expansion of police powers from this bill entirely. If you are serious about tackling extremism, then do that properly without creating a new set of problems for the communities that already experience the brunt of police overreach. To my colleagues across the chamber, if you believe in fairness, if you believe in equality, if you believe in justice, if you believe in upholding human rights, then vote to strip these dangerous provisions from this bill. Safety is not just about preventing crime; it is also about making sure that everyone, every single person, in Victoria, despite their race or ethnicity, feels safe in their own community.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (16:44): I would say it feels a bit like groundhog day, but this is certainly not a comedy, to be speaking today on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. It brings back memories of speaking in this house exactly one year ago this week on the Firearms and Control of Weapons (Machetes) Amendment Bill 2024. At the time we said very clearly that the bill did not go far enough, and I will quote from my contribution:

At a time when we are seeing violent use of machetes in home invasions and other serious assaults, we need to move to clarify confusion around a machete’s status, because this bill does nothing to solve the actual problem. It is just more spin from the government, who have refused to acknowledge the real problem. Machetes really should be classified as a prohibited weapon.

That was 21 March 2024, a year ago this week. Just a month prior to my speaking on that bill there was a teenager involved in a home invasion in Bendigo with a machete, and we called it out then – the need to reform – but here we are, 12 months later. The Liberals and the Nationals have made numerous attempts to impose stricter regulations on the sale and possession of machetes as prohibited weapons, which Labor and the Greens opposed. In the last 12 months there have been 265 aggravated burglaries in the state that involved machetes. Machetes have been used in street fights, assaults, carjackings, aggravated burglaries and home invasions. Some of us are fortunate enough that for us it is just something that we have seen or read about in the news, but for many families this has been a personal experience. They know too well the difference that it has made. In 2024 in Victoria nearly 15,000 knives, swords, daggers and machetes were seized – 40 weapons a day. When this bill was introduced at the end of last year, at that time it did not restrict machetes. That ban was introduced this year.

When it comes to crime, this is a go-slow government. They have been slow with this ban on machetes. They have been slow with tobacco licensing. When I spoke on that bill last year, at the time there had been 40 incidents of tobacco stores being firebombed; now there have been well over 100. This government has been slow on bail reform. We were very clear: we warned the government back in 2023 about the need for bail reform and the weakening of the bail laws that came into effect in March last year, and yet here we are again, 12 months later. The Premier recently told ABC Central Victoria that the government was wrong to relax the bail laws. The Premier said:

I have acknowledged that we got it wrong …

Then we see the ‘tough on bail’ bill introduced today, with a bill briefing just this morning because yesterday’s briefing had to be cancelled because we had not actually received the bill; there was nothing that we could ask questions on. But as Michael O’Brien said very clearly, this bill is weaker than last year, and it is now being introduced in two parts. It is important for people to be aware of that – the government has attempted to get a media headline, but there are further changes to be made in part two, which is not going to be till the middle of the year.

I know the community is so frustrated. To hear the government today say that they are being tough on crime, many would consider that an absolute joke. They have been very soft on crime, and we have had young people get off on bail 55 times in the local area. There have been protests in front of the Premier’s office. Crime has been skyrocketing in Bendigo. We have seen stealing at retail stores double. Aggravated robberies are up 69 per cent, residential aggravated burglaries have risen by 89 per cent and motor vehicle thefts are up 50 per cent. We know that with machetes we have had incidents in Bendigo. We have seen recent reports of people being killed in Melbourne by machetes, and I have heard other members of Parliament talk about their local McDonalds and staff having experienced 12 incidents involving machetes and the impact that this has on the young staff. People are living in fear, and they have had enough. We need to make our streets safer, we need to make our homes safer and we need to make our community safer.

Trauma is felt for a very long time. I know – I was speaking with a family who had experienced a home invasion, and I have mentioned it before in this chamber. The lady’s home was invaded, and a couple of days later she opened her windows to see intruders trying to come in again to her home. That was traumatising for her, and for six months she needed to have a family member – her father or her husband – home to go through the whole house to check that there was no-one there before she came into the home. That is the trauma that people live with. These are not just statistics – the people that experience these things do find it very hard to recover.

I was speaking with another local constituent who has been a victim of crime. They had a horrific incident that involved a stabbing, and I have spoken before about that. The frustration they had trying to get assistance from the victims of crime tribunal – it took 12 months. They did not even have enough money to undertake the counselling, because they could not wait for the reimbursement; they just did not have the funds. It is incredibly frustrating. But we have put forward a number of amendments to bring forward the start date of the machete ban by three months, to bring forward the ban on sale of machetes immediately. We are aware, as Ms Bath my colleague has spoken to, of some exemptions that will be permitted for valid purposes, but we are yet to see the detail.

I know the community does want action. They want machetes to be a prohibited weapon. They want to see bail reform. They are aware that we have a thousand vacancies in our police force, and this needs to be addressed. Local residents have also raised concerns about the drug issues that plague our community. Bendigo has been called the ‘meth capital’ of Victoria, so there are significant issues there that do need to be addressed. We also need to look at rehabilitation, job training and placement programs to help break the cycle of crime, and we need to address issues in our residential care system. It was very disturbing when I spoke with a lady just on the weekend who lived herself in a residential care environment. Of the 30 people that she knows in residential care, 20 have died, either from drugs or self-harm. It is atrocious that we are seeing that in our state. We have foster carers leaving the system; we have the lowest foster care allowance in Australia. These things need to be addressed. School attendance is an issue. There are young people dropping out and a significant increase in absence from school. Local residents want to see change and they want to feel safe again. This bill has aspects of reform, but further reforms are needed to help reduce crime in our area.

Twelve months ago I referred to a person that I was speaking to who said that they felt as though the government had lost control of this state when it came to crime in their local area and across Victoria. The government likes to say that they are listening. I would say they have had earmuffs on, because they have not been listening to our community at all. The Premier and Labor have been too slow to introduce changes to keep our community safe. We do not oppose this bill, but we do ask the chamber to accept our amendments and introduce the changes sooner.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:53): I also rise today to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. As has been said by many of the victims, this is too little too late. This could have been avoided. There are people who are not alive today or whose bodies have been mutilated or whose lives have been traumatised because this government has failed to act. To simply come up with, ‘We’re bringing in some tough bail laws now. We’re bringing in some tough laws on the machetes now’ – you have had plenty of time to do that. There are people alive today without family members because it is taking too long for this Premier and the Allan Labor government to act.

I want to speak because so many things have taken place in my area, and I commend so many of my colleagues today for addressing so many of the issues. But the south-east is something we cannot avoid talking about, because so many attacks have taken place in the south-east. They are not limited to the south-east, but there have certainly been a lot of machete attacks out there. I note that I have raised in this place before concerns that have come to me from young people working at McDonald’s – issues of safety and issues of machete attacks. Since June last year between 12 and 15 attacks have been recorded in a number of McDonald’s restaurants.

That is a tremendous concern, because as a mother I would like to think that my children, and I am sure that the people in the community and the public would like to think that their children, are going to be safe when they take on a job at somewhere like McDonald’s. The last thing that would be on a parent’s mind is that there could be a terrible attack, and that it could be an attack from knife-wielding people. The fact that we can have people owning machetes and going out in our community to make it unsafe is just appalling. This government should have acted sooner so we would not be in the situation that so many families find themselves in today.

Let me start by mentioning the situation that took place in Marriott Waters, where we now have a family without their son Timothy. He would have been alive today if the laws were different. This young man was attacked and was the victim of a knife crime when a group of 10 men armed with edged weapons surrounded him while he was sitting in his car. Marriott Waters shopping centre is in the south-east; I know it well. I have shopped there. I have been to the Coles. I do not know why the member for Cranbourne’s office is there, because it is not actually in her electorate, it is on the other side of her electorate, but her office is there. Marriott Waters shopping centre is a nice family area. To think that a young man, alone in his car, had to flee his car at 8.30 at night and be chased down the shopping centre’s loading dock area and eventually be found to have been stabbed to death in a frenzied machete attack is just heartbreaking. Now this family mourn the passing of their beloved Timothy, who they remember as an extraordinary individual with an infectious sense of humour.

As a mother I just cannot imagine what it would be like to lose your child in such an outrageous way. But it is not limited there when we look at the south-east. Eight months ago Noble Park husband and wife shopkeepers bravely fought back against a gang of machete-wielding teens in a terrifying hold-up in Melbourne’s south-east. It is not limited to just the south-east, though; it is in the southern region and areas around. For instance, in Black Rock a Melbourne family, in disbelief, had a brazen home invasion by three men who were armed with machetes. Their comments were:

‘It’s just frightening. It’s frightening that they’re so brazen …

The list goes on and on and on. If we go back to April 2024, a victim of youth crime pled with the Victorian government to tighten bail laws following a string of violent offences across the south-east, and what did this government do? Not much.

You do not have to go very far in the south-east to hear stories of crime. I have mentioned some of them in this chamber before – for instance, of a mother in an area of Berwick. I know the road, but I am not going to say it. Her family slept with baseball bats for a couple of weeks after a home invasion, because they found that the home invaders had taken their car keys and when they called the police the police said, ‘They will be back for the cars.’ For two weeks this family were terrified, with no idea when these people were going to come back – and they did come back. Fortunately for them the husband’s protective instincts were so strong and he was so angry that these invaders would come back that he was in a rage when they came back – by then they had put in all sorts of security things, such as lights and cameras – and he went roaring after them. They had a dog as well, and the offenders took off.

It is just outrageous. You can go anywhere – I mean, I got that story from a gym. People are talking about crime in this state everywhere you go. Only recently at an iftar dinner a policewoman shared with me information about criminals – young people – who were out on bail nearly 60 times. They were there again, and the young man had the audacity to say to the policewoman, ‘They don’t do anything to us. I can do anything, and I’m gonna get out on bail.’

It has taken a long time for this government to decide that it needs to do something, and for some of these families in Victoria it is too little too late. As one person said, they come here to be safe – they migrate to our nation to be safe. They come to Melbourne thinking that this is a safe country, and it has not been safe for many, many people. It does not matter what nationality you are. There is no list of nationalities that are going to be attacked. The reality is everybody is in danger of being a victim.

I appreciate what members of the crossbench have been saying, and I understand these issues, with a social work background and an interest in social sciences; I have had that since I was a young adult. I understand that there are issues about different groups appearing in prison more than others. At the end of the day that is a concern, but the reality is that if you are doing the crime and there are no consequences for actions – as I have said before in this chamber, consequences for actions is a basic principle of social work, a basic principle of youth work. I know not everybody agrees with that, but the reality is that if we have zero boundaries and zero sense of teaching someone that there is a consequence, it is not just that a person loses their equipment or their car or that they are terrorised, there have to be consequences for people who are prepared to do this and to realise that it is not okay. It is just not okay. Where do we get that moral compass from if there are not any consequences for actions? Yes, education is incredibly important. Yes, it needs to be available for reform. But the reality is that if we do not set boundaries and do not impose boundaries to some degree – you have to do it. I have been a schoolteacher. Why do you think the teachers are leaving in droves? One of the reasons is that there is no way for them to have those boundaries, because there is that much mental health and there are that many issues out there in the community now. It is too hard, and there are no repercussions in a lot of cases, because they have all been removed. I totally respect the need for reform in individuals’ lives, but you cannot do it without consequences for actions. There have to be some boundaries, there have to be some rules, and there has to be a limit so that people understand when they have crossed that boundary.

The coalition – the Liberals and the Nationals – have been banging on about this for a very, very long time. Our leader is a former cop – that is no secret. And it is really important to us because we know. In my area the police station in Narre Warren is meant to be under renovation. Through my office we have managed to get on to police there, but the reality is that we have police stations that have been closed and police stations that are not operating 24 hours. This does not make the community safe when we have people out there with machetes. I understand they have been a controlled weapon. I understand they should be able to be used for farming, but when you can access them as easily as a bunch of journalists could in the south-east, where they could go and pick up machetes so easily – and suddenly we are going to bring in some tough bail laws.

We are concerned because we do not even have time to look at the bill. Fancy calling a bill briefing and not even letting us see the bill? What kind of bill briefing is that? How is that a bill briefing, if we cannot see the bill? To give us the bill with just moments to spare before we have to get up and speak on it – this is a government that is in chaos. It is out of control. It does not know what it is doing. It has lost the plot, and it is letting Victorians down. Complete chaos. ‘Oh, we’ve stuffed up’ or ‘They’ve found something out that we didn’t want them to find out.’ And my question is, as it is for all of my colleagues: if this is so tough and so necessary, then how come there is a delay in wanting to implement the provisions? Why are we going to wait so long? What is there to hide? Who are we protecting? Are we going to protect some over others? No.

If it is going to be illegal then it is going to be illegal, and therefore there are boundaries. We do not have special favourites – ‘We’re going to let these guys know and quickly get rid of their machetes’. No, go get them. Bring in the laws now. People are dying. It is simply not fair to Victorian families and Victorian civilians, who just want to be able to go out shopping or have their businesses and their shops open to the public, or who just want to go to bed at night and have a good night’s sleep in their own home.

The dangers that Victorians are facing are real, and we are not convinced this bill is going to do enough. We see issues with it, and we have amendments. You know what, if you had given us more time, we might have been able to have a better look at it, but you did not. I understand, and we all understand, the importance and necessity of doing something and doing it urgently, but rushing through something shows everyone in Victoria that this Premier has lost the plot. She is out of control. The government is out of control. They do not know what they are doing, and they are rushing stuff through in some sort of hotchpotch effort to try to patch something up so they can shut the journalists down and stop them from saying ‘Look at this issue’. This issue is not going to go away with this bill. It is not going to be effective enough, and everyone is going to see it, because the reality is that in my area in the south-east people are terrified. They all have their stories, and if it is not them, they know someone who has one. It is simply not good enough. And if you cannot address it, then what is the point? It needs to be addressed effectively. It needs to be a bill that is well thought out. You just simply cannot have young people laughing at the law and saying, ‘They can’t touch us. They don’t want to do anything to us.’ Parents are begging you, ‘Help me help my child by giving it some boundaries’.

This government is out of control. This bill is just – I do not know, a taster? But if it is not even going to come into effect until the end of the year, to me that is hopeless. It is not good enough. It is not. There are people who are going to die in the meantime, and the blood will be on this government’s hands. The blood will be on your hands for not doing the right thing by the Victorian people. It is not okay. When is enough enough? What has to happen before things are properly fixed? That is all I have to say. We will be supporting the bill.

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (17:08): I rise today to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. I rise to contribute to this bill, which is designed to define the functions of the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Safety for the Countering Violent Extremism Multi-agency Panel and better align the operations of voluntary case management with best practice case management.

This bill also expands the eligibility criteria for referral to the voluntary case management scheme, allowing for the scheme to provide programs and services to family members and close contacts of participants, enhancing the chances of success of early intervention.

The other key component of this bill which I will talk about is the amendment of the Control of Weapons Act 1990 in relation to planned and unplanned designations of areas to search for weapons and make various improvements to the operation of the scheme. A component of this bill will broaden the power of the Chief Commissioner of Police to declare a designated area for up to six months and removes the requirement for notice of the designated area to be published in a newspaper. Provision will remain for notice to be published on the Victoria Police website. This provision will provide greater flexibility for the police force to carry out operational matters to combat weapons offending where and when there is a heightened risk to community safety.

The other component of this is in relation to the banning of machetes. Before I go into that, I just want to briefly speak about designated areas, which have been highlighted in some other members’ speeches, for unplanned and planned operations. To speak about a designated area, you need to know when and why police actually require utilising this power. It is only as a result of a high number of critical incidents or activities that cause harm to the safety of the community and that affect a large area. This is a last resort. They do not just out of the blue, on a certain day, pick an area as a designated area. It is as a result of a high volume of activities that this is happening, if things are out of control. It does not relate to other elements where they can use other police activities to resolve incidents. It is as a last resort that they actually consider using the unplanned or planned designated areas.

It is a scheme suitable for crime or incidents which happen in an area which is quite large, so please understand when and why it is in an area. It just so happens that in this area when you are being searched and are being asked to speak it might inconvenience you as you are travelling through, but God forbid you are inconvenienced for one instance of maybe 5, 10 or 15 minutes when police ask to speak to you and ask you why you are there and look through your personal property, like your bag. It might inconvenience you, but on the other hand, how many people might be affected in relation to weapons being seized, and how many lives might it save because of your inconvenience? Have a sense of proportion in relation to your inconvenience and people’s rights and what it is that the police are trying to do.

But in relation to this bill, one area I really want to speak to is the revision of machetes and their ban under the Control of Weapons Act. While I acknowledge the government is bringing this bill before the Parliament, it is difficult not to be a little bit cynical about the timing of the bill, given the Allan government has pushed back against this legislation on multiple occasions. This would have helped alleviate some of the violence we have seen break out in the Victorian community. It has happened again and again. We have seen it on TV not just last week and not just last month; it has been going on for years.

I will take you back to a couple of items I have raised. I have raised this in the last 12 months and prior to that, because incidents have happened in my electorate that have caused death to my constituents. I will just bring you back to the most recent one in Wyndham Vale, where a couple of youths chased a gentleman down the street to steal his key to his car. What were used were machetes, as a weapon. That just highlights how frequently these weapons have been used. Over and over again you see on TV and on the news – through security cameras, through personal cameras and through videos – intruders break into a home and sneak around, and what do they have on their person? Their weapon of choice, their machete. It is something that has gotten out of control in relation to the weapons being used by all types of offenders of all ages.

The Victorian community expects action. The government needs to start taking crime and safety seriously. As a police officer for several decades I understand the fear when people start asking what is going on with these weapons being used over and over again. We understand how they feel, and this is a story you hear over and over again. It is heartbreaking when you hear people are concerned about their safety in their own homes.

For example, in my electorate, just down in Werribee, a young tradie was violently stabbed in a random attack when getting off a train. This was in the middle of the day, at 3 pm. That should not happen in any community at any time. This was in broad daylight, 3 pm, stepping off a train in Werribee and he was stabbed with a machete. This is something that is happening on a regular basis, so I rise to speak in this place about youth violence and the use of machetes and knives with fatal consequences. Regretfully many of those in my constituency have paid the ultimate price due to the lack of government response.

This bill promotes efforts to detect and deter weapons related to violence and disorder in areas of high risk and to reduce the time that people can carry weapons in an area. The bill will also reduce the time from a minimum of 10 days to just 12 hours to conduct planned operations, which gives the police the flexibility to coordinate their operations in areas when they see fit. Of course it has been notified and people know it is going on, but it heightens the security of people who are living in the area. It also gives police the opportunity to detect and deter offenders.

People carrying weapons and attacking families must stop. For a start, the immediate effect of banning weapons that can cause fatal injuries is to remove them from easy access, especially for minors. Then we can look at tackling the intermediate and long-term strategies and policies such as bail reform and crime prevention programs for changing social behaviours and the mindset of the youth cohort and young offenders and their associates. There is never an excuse to wander around the streets of Melbourne with a machete tucked away in your jacket or down your pants. There is no excuse for concealing a machete in the early hours of the morning, getting out of a stolen car to terrorise families in their homes.

The machete has become a weapon of choice for these violent thugs to commit aggravated burglaries, carjackings, assault – whatever they see fit. Why is it a weapon of choice? It is because of easy access. Due to the size and the design, the implement can cause real damage. I have explained and spoken about the damage a machete can cause to a person in this chamber before. Just imagine a tennis racket swinging at you at full pace. It does not matter what age the person is. A tennis racket hits you in the face – imagine that as a sharp weapon, a sharp blade, straight through your face. If you put your hand up, it would cut through your fingers. It would cut through your forearm. That is the kind of damage a machete can cause with just a normal swing like a tennis racket.

For far too long, for 10 years in office, the Labor government has sat on their hands with no significant interest in the safety of the community. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Premier finally admit last week that Labor has got it wrong on this issue. Premier Allan has been forced to apologise for her government’s mishandling of these issues while at the same time asking the community to trust that it has the answer to fix this mess. Yes, banning machetes is a step in the right direction, but we must get them off the streets right now. For the sale of the weapons, we need to do it now. If you are going to do it, do it properly. Do not do it half hearted. It is not hard to get this fixed and stop the sales, and slowly the weapons will get handed in over the months to come, but for the sale of the weapons, you must act now.

Those who are selling those weapons know where they are going. Only last week I received correspondence from a constituent with a picture taken at a flea market of a bunch of machetes laid out along a car for sale. This was a flea market; anyone could come up and buy them. This was a pensioner, and I wrote down what she said to me:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

My husband and I are pensioners and my husband is legally blind. We are extremely scared to venture out into the community with the thought of being attacked by anyone that may have a huge machete like this.

These are serious weapons on sale, easily purchased from a local flea market. It is not acceptable in our community. This is not the first time I have raised this, the sale of machetes, as I have mentioned. We need the government to act right now to ban the sale of machetes.

On a good note, this bill before us does have some good elements which I think are positives for the Victorian community – namely, the timely review of eligibility criteria for the voluntary case management scheme, which currently exclude some individuals who may benefit from treatments and intervention in the countering violent extremism program. This initiative will help target individuals who are at the early stage of their own path towards violent extremism or may have previously engaged in the countering violent extremism program. We are very positive about this initiative and expanding the eligibility criteria to include a wider cohort. We also support any measure expanding the voluntary case management plan to help vulnerable people reduce their interaction with violent extremists, but we urge the government to revisit the bill in relation to banning the sale of machetes and move the ban earlier. It has been designated for November, I believe. Move it forward, and get them off the street, because our community are in fear at the moment in relation to this type of weapon being readily accessed by all types of offenders and all types of criminals of all ages. I leave my contribution on this note.

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (17:23): I rise today to speak on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. I actually approach this with some mixed feelings. Part of it, the terrorism part, I have no great drama with. I was reading it earlier and I am not sure how changing the wording of some of it is going to work, but I am willing to take that at face value. Also woven into the whole thing is warrantless searches. I think there is a government amendment to expand those up to six months.

As an ex-copper, I tend to be more on the side of law and order and things like that, but I actually think six months is unreasonable for this. Expand it to a day or two days – you would possibly get away with a week – but with six months all you would have to do is declare it once every six months and you would have a permanent warrantless search area. If there is a reason to have these powers, absolutely. If the police can prove it, then happy days. But just to have a six-month declaration does not sit well with me.

I will not call it unhinged, but Mr Ettershank was saying some kind of strange stuff about how these powers were going to be used by police. My understanding of it was that I think he expects that the police are going to cruise around for minority groups and just search them because they can. He said 1 per cent of the searches turn up anything. Well, let us talk about insurance – or security guards are a better thing. Let us say we have a security guard out the front of a place and it does not get robbed; therefore if it is not getting robbed, we get rid of them.

[The Legislative Council report is being published progressively.]