Thursday, 20 March 2025

Bills

Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Enver Erdogan:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (09:56): I stand to speak in support of this legislation. This first package of reforms will deliver on our commitment to act with urgency to ensure that our system responds to the risks posed by repeat offending and reflects the expectation of Victorians that community safety is the government’s top priority. The first package of reforms includes putting community safety as the paramount consideration in bail decisions and removing the principle of remand as a last resort, ensuring respect for the rules with new bail offences and elevating the worst of crimes to tougher bail tests to make it harder for alleged offenders to get bail.

The new bail laws will make two changes to bail decision-making principles to reduce the risk of reoffending and ensure the system meets community expectations. Community safety comes first on all bail decisions. Under the law community safety will become the overarching principle for bail decision-making for offenders of all ages. It will be a clear and unambiguous signal: community safety comes first in all considerations. Remand is no longer a last resort. Right now under section 3B of the Bail Act 1977 an accused youth offender is remanded and detained in custody only as a last resort. The tough bail laws will remove the principle of remand as a last resort.

The bail laws will uplift many offences so that tougher bail tests will apply and bail is less likely. We will amend schedule 2 of the Bail Act so that people charged with the following high-risk offences will have a presumption against bail on their first offence unless they can show compelling reasons to justify bail: serious firearms offences; serious arson; committing an offence involving a controlled weapon, including machete violence, a prohibited weapon or an offensive weapon, including use of everyday implements fashioned into or used as weapons, such as baseball bats, kitchen knives and shivs; and vehicle theft when co-charged with conduct endangering life, conduct endangering persons, failure to stop or possession of a prohibited or controlled weapon. We will also elevate the following offences from schedule 2 to schedule 1 of the Bail Act, meaning that for those charged with these offences there will be a presumption against bail, even on their first offence, unless they can show the very tough exceptional circumstances to justify bail: armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion and carjacking.

Bail rules should not be broken. These bail laws will restore respect for bail and its conditions at all levels of offending, with consequences for breaking the rules. We will introduce the offences of committing an indictable offence while on bail and breaching a bail condition without reasonable excuse.

This is about preventing reoffending and keeping Victorians safe. The number of youth offenders on remand has increased following changes in 2024 for serious repeat offending, but more changes are needed. The government will make sweeping changes not to punish people who have not yet had their day in court but to reduce the risk of someone on bail reoffending in the community.

Reoffending is a serious problem for males in their mid- to late-teens. Males both adults and youth make up the most alleged aggravated burglary offenders by far. These bail laws will deal with the risks with these younger serious offenders. We will create new offences and change what decision-makers consider to create the toughest bail test ever for the worst offences.

I was hoping I was going to speak last night, but I did not get the opportunity as we finished where we were. It was quite interesting listening to the only – sorry, there are now two – Liberal MP in the chamber. I listened to Mr Mulholland’s contribution. He did not spend much time talking about the content of the bill and seemed to spend a lot of time, I do not know – I know in opposition you get afforded a little bit more time as a luxury, Mr Mulholland. But to have spent your time – hopefully your nights; hopefully not your days, when you should probably be out formulating policy, as you are an aspiring alternative government in this state – googling Hansard for backbench members’ comments from two years ago, I am sure that is very helpful to the state of Victoria. However, you failed to mention, in your googling and your talk of leadership, your own leader’s absence in the past week. You were pulling out lots of news articles, and we did not pull you up for having props. We let you go on that, but you failed to mention your own leader. I did write down a couple of comments – I did it last night when I was meant to be speaking – that some of your colleagues made about the deceptive and selective, at best, mode of your leader, your new leader, your fifth or sixth leader that you have had since –

Evan Mulholland: On a point of order, President, I am really struggling to see the relevance of where Mr McIntosh is going to the bill.

The PRESIDENT: I will call Mr McIntosh back to the bill.

Tom McINTOSH: I have a distinct memory of Mr Mulholland talking about our leader during his contribution, so I just wanted to reflect on his leader and his absence and his colleagues’, as I said, deceptive or selective at best commentary on his leader’s absence. I do not begrudge his leader taking leave. I want to make that very clear. Everyone is welcome to go on leave, but obviously it was not made clear to his party colleagues. In your contribution, Mr Mulholland, you strayed a lot, so I think I have a little bit of liberty to observe –

Evan Mulholland interjected.

Tom McINTOSH: I think I have. Given that you talked about leadership, and given the number of leaders that you have had on your side, I think it is worth us noting that. It was just interesting that, as I said, you spent so much time going through backbenchers’ comments in Hansard. You obviously have high aspirations. When Dr Bach left you quickly came to the front bench. I think you were sitting here, but it jogged my memory that you were sitting back there at the time. Once Dr Bach left you made your way through, and I admire your aspirations for leadership. You were making a number of comments in Hansard from back there. I have not had a look, but I do recall your comments in your first speech talking about your dedication to yimbyism and housing. Since you were reflecting on so many comments from those opposite, I thought it would be worth raising your vacation of space in your ambition for leadership around housing. You are being straitjacketed and abandoning those in your generation.

Anyway, that being what it is, this legislation is incredibly important for Victoria. It is incredibly important that Victorians feel safe in their own homes. I would like to hope that everyone in this chamber can agree to that. It is clear that too many people have not been feeling safe in their own homes, and this legislation is an important action to take to ensure that that is not the case. We want people, particularly families and young people, to feel safe in their homes and to be able to move around Victoria in a safe manner. I think the flow-on effects of that not being the case are just simply too big and too costly. We know the trauma that is associated with people being on the receiving end of whether it is a car theft or someone breaking into their home. Even petty thefts have massive implications and trauma implications, let alone far more serious events which can remain with people for a long time. Again, what I say is that I think this legislation is so important. I will leave my comments there.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (10:05): I am pleased to be able to speak about this Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025, but I will say that it is tough on bail in title only. We have been calling for reforms to bail since 2023. We warned the government that the weakening of the laws come March 2024 would have a serious impact, and that is exactly what we have been seeing. Over the last 12 months we have seen a huge spike in the number of repeat offences. We had a young man from central Victoria on bail for the 55th time. It is extraordinary that we have got this happening. We know that the proposal being put forward now, whilst it is being rushed through, is going to be done in two parts. We are not going to see changes for many months to come, and we are very conscious of the crime that has been happening in the last 12 months.

I have been speaking to people in the Premier’s electorate of Bendigo East, where my office is located, and the fear that people live with every day is very real. I spoke with a newsagent who talked about young thugs coming into his retail store and him being threatened. He has experienced shoplifting. He had a lady that he asked to leave, and she then went and damaged cars in Bath Lane. His wife experienced an attack in the main street of Bendigo, and we know that there was an attack at the marketplace as well. That was absolutely appalling. This is a place where kids hang out, where my kids have hung out, and so many people go after school. But it is in broad daylight that these events are happening.

We have also had incidents happen in the middle of the night, intense bashings. We have had incidents where people are popping onto public transport right in the centre of Bendigo and their lives are being threatened. This has got to stop. We have had cars being stolen. I have lost count of the number of people that have told me about their cars being stolen. Quite often these are repeat offenders. These are people that have had incidents time and time again, yet they have been shown no consequence, because that is the restriction that the law places. Police are doing their work. They are getting people off the streets, but then they are going to court and very quickly are getting put back on the streets, and that is very concerning.

We have seen the crime statistics continue to rise. They are spiking again. We have had the latest statistics come out today. But these laws that have been put forward are weaker than the laws were before they changed them 12 months ago. This is extraordinary. We have put forward a number of amendments, including changing the name of the bill, because it is certainly not tough. That is what we want the chamber to consider today. It is just worth noting that this is extremely important legislation. This will have long-term consequences, and we pointed that out back in 2023. But the government have done nothing in that time, so this is an issue of their own making.

The Premier has said publicly that she acknowledges that they got it wrong, yet what we are seeing is this legislation being rammed through, coming very quickly into the Parliament. A bill briefing was held. Usually with a bill brief you get the bill first and then you can ask questions about that bill, but we turned up to the bill briefing and there was no bill. That is the issue here. Where is the detail? The detail has been kept away from the opposition, yet that is what we are here debating today.

I am also on the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, and usually that committee assesses all legislation that comes through the Parliament to consider the impact on the rights and freedoms of individuals, yet this legislation could not be considered by SARC because it is being rammed through so quickly. An urgency motion was shifted on Tuesday, and yet the government adjourned it off for debate later this week. So it may be a long night. As Mr Mulholland said, we all have our pyjamas because we know that this is important legislation, and we have been calling for it for such a long time.

There was an incident that really showed the fear that people are living with. I spoke with a lady who had intruders break into her home, and in the process a neighbour was stabbed. This person went before the courts and was let off and has been doing repeat offences. This is the challenge: community safety has not been prioritised and it needs to be prioritised. But as I mentioned, this bill now being in two parts, we are not going to see the elements of it that need to be implemented for some time – we have been told the middle of the year. Again, it will be many months before we see any change actually on the ground, and change on the ground is what people want to see, particularly in the Premier’s electorate. There have been protests outside the Premier’s own office because of the number of people that are so frustrated at this spike in crime. And it does not just impact Bendigo; this has impacted residents in other towns, like Goornong.

I spoke of an incident where a lady had her home invaded, and she needed to have her husband or her father there for the next six months to check that no-one else was in the house before she went in. That is the kind of long-term impact and the fear that people have because they have experienced this directly themselves. It is not just statistics; these are real-life experiences. Gwen, who spoke at the rally, talked about the fear she has and the impact on her and of not wanting to go out at night in Bendigo. She experienced an intruder coming into her home and also a horrible situation at the local train station, where she heard someone abusing the staff there. I, with the Nationals, have called for an increase in protective service officers located in regional areas. We know there are 212 stations that are manned in Melbourne but only four across the whole of regional Victoria – and there are over 1000 vacancies in our police force.

These elements need to be addressed, but they are not all of the solution, as was pointed out by Cailah, one of the people that spoke at the protests in Bendigo. She really highlighted a lot of the community sentiment and that bail reform is part of it. I guess the other reforms that we have helped pass this week with the machetes being banned with some limited exemptions can be enforced, but there are other elements that are contributing to the rising crime in our region that also need to be addressed. We have seen news reports this week of 80,000 young people missing from our school system – attendance is very low. We know drugs are a huge issue in Bendigo; it is known as the meth capital of Victoria. So these are some of the challenges that also need to be addressed. There is also the need for rehabilitation services, which we have called for in our region, because right now there is not a lot of support in regional areas and we know the system is overwhelmed. We do want to see these reforms come through, but strengthened. I know Michael O’Brien has called for many of those changes, and we have been consistently calling for these changes, as I said, since 2023. A lot more needs to be done to address rising crime, not just in regional Victoria but in all of Victoria. But it is clear at this point that Labor has lost control of what is happening, and this is a very knee-jerk response to something we have been calling for for a very long time.

Community safety is so important. We know the cost of living is causing a lot of stress amongst families, but if you do not feel safe in your own home, if you cannot drive a car to get to your job because it has been stolen – the impact of crime on our community is huge. That is why in Bendigo there was recently a survey done by the local paper. They were talking about the federal election and the issues that are important.

Crime topped that list in our region, along with the cost of living. We need to see change, because the most important priority of this state government should be keeping people safe. But time and time again they have let this community down with the number of repeat offenders that have been out there, as I said, getting out on bail, not once, not twice but tens of times. This is just incredible. We have got to see it stop, because our priority needs to be to keep the community safe.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:15): I rise to speak on the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025, this shameful bill, which the Greens will not be supporting. It is a week of shame for Labor, and it is absolutely a week of deep shame for the Premier, a panicking Premier who is more interested in the optics and playing politics with laws that risk First Nations deaths in custody than implementing evidence-based policies that are proven to improve community safety.

On Tuesday I was honoured to join and speak to the large community protest on the steps of this Parliament, protesting about these regressive amendments to bail that this place looks likely to pass today, changes that will once again fill our prisons in Victoria with unsentenced people on remand and risk more deaths in custody. That case for reform was and remains overwhelming in terms of research and on-the-ground evidence in terms of what we know does work to reduce crime, to reduce recidivism and to keep our community – all the members of our community – safe.

The case for bail reform was sharpened and illuminated by the tragic death of Veronica Nelson in 2020. Veronica was a Gunditjmara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wurundjeri and Yorta Yorta woman, and she died in Victorian custody in 2020. She died in a cold prison cell after her calls for medical help went unanswered. Sitting on a train on the way to visit her mum, she was arrested and denied bail for alleged shoplifting of minor items. When Coroner McGregor released his findings into Veronica’s death in custody in January 2023, he called that previous bail system in Victoria ‘a complete and unmitigated disaster’. He said that it led to ‘grossly disproportionate’ rates of remand for First Nations women.

Veronica’s family, the community and legal experts called for the implementation of bail reform, which they christened Poccum’s Law, named after Aunty Donna Nelson’s nickname for her beloved daughter. Poccum’s Law called for urgent changes, and still does, and for fairer bail laws. In 2023 this place, so recently, changed the law in response to those calls. Although Poccum’s Law was not adopted in full, it has already saved lives. The recent national Closing the Gap results, published only a fortnight ago, show that Victoria had proudly reduced the incarceration rate for First Nations people. That is in part because we improved bail laws with those 2023 laws. Now we have this kneejerk, desperate reaction undoing all of that. It is necessary to remind the house, sadly, that recommendation 92 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody called upon governments to legislate that imprisonment should only be used as a last resort. Why is the government going back on this recommendation?

There is no doubt that everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities and their homes, and recent incidents are incredibly distressing. No-one should endure that. What the government is doing today is not going to make communities safer. It will have the opposite effect. As we saw over the last decade, when a similar regressive bail system was in place, the vast majority of people are not and will not be a risk to community safety. There are current levers and powers to revoke bail that are not being adequately used by Victoria Police, and I will speak more to that later.

On Tuesday, at the protest on Parliament steps, the pain was even sharper as the crowd learned, via a speaker who conveyed a message from Veronica’s mother, Aunty Donna Nelson, that Tuesday, the day the Premier introduced these rushed and panicked laws into Parliament, would have been Veronica’s 43rd birthday. The bill passed the Assembly as the crowd was gathered on Parliament’s steps, and the shock and the sadness and the anger and sheer disbelief that rippled through that crowd were palpable. It is beyond shocking that the Premier made a decision to introduce the bail bill on what would have been Veronica’s birthday. I assume it was not calculated, but this could not have been more cruel. As First Nations and other stakeholders have told us, there has been little to no consultation on this bill, so in the absence of sitting with First Nations organisations and Veronica’s family of course the Premier would set herself up to make this appalling blunder.

I would now like to introduce my reasoned amendment and ask that it be circulated. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with ‘this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government engages in meaningful and comprehensive consultations to address the concerns of expert human rights, legal and First Nations stakeholders.’

The Greens also have two substantive amendments to the bill, and I will speak in detail about both of those. I ask that the Greens’ amendments to the bill, in my name, now be circulated.

Amendments circulated pursuant to standing orders.

Katherine COPSEY: I have spoken about the content of the reasoned amendment, and it is self-explanatory. The first set of textual amendments retains remand as a last resort for children, and the second set of amendments would stop the two bail offences that are being reinstated in this bill, those being committing an indictable offence while on bail and breaching bail conditions.

In relation to the first amendment, we need to retain remand as a last resort for children. Making it easier to put children in prison does not improve community safety. It significantly increases the chance of a young person reoffending, which in turn makes the community less safe in the short, the medium and the long term. A system with a revolving door of incarceration is literally a system designed to decrease community safety, and it is beyond evidence and beyond belief that members in this place will vote for that today.

We know where the results of this will hit hardest, with First Nations children being disproportionately incarcerated. Early interactions with the criminal justice system have been proven to significantly increase the likelihood of a young person reoffending, whereas programs that support children, such as diversion and early intervention as well as preventative services, significantly decrease the likelihood of reoffending. And when bail is granted, that is one of the best opportunities for intervention. Shamefully, it has been revealed today that the Allan Labor government has cut funding to effective and established youth crime prevention programs by 46 per cent. Our amendment seeks to delete clause 5 of the bill, which removes the principle that imprisonment is a last resort for children. The government’s bill would omit the words ‘with the remand of the child being a last resort’ from a bail decision maker’s consideration of bail for children.

If our amendment is not successful, and I fear it will not be, what will be the effect of clause 5 of this bill in practice? In Queensland the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service has identified a similar legislative change as a driver of bail refusal and that that has led to a huge increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people on remand. Over a four-year period from 2019 to 2023, the rate of young people aged 10 to 17 in unsentenced detention increased in Queensland – it almost doubled. On an average night in Queensland in 2024 there were 317 children and young people in detention, of which 87 per cent were unsentenced and 71 per cent were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has provided similar expert advice to MPs that there is a strong likelihood that this legislative change that the Labor government is bringing in will have a similar effect in the Victorian context. VALS are deeply concerned that this will trap children in care in prison, especially those in residential and out-of-home care, with less accountability for the state to provide these children with support and care in the community. This is contrary to commitments under Closing the Gap and the Aboriginal Justice Agreement. A clear risk is this will prevent children and young people from accessing therapeutic and rehabilitative supports, because they will be remanded in detention with limited access to services and supports.

The Youth Justice Act 2024 that we passed in this place passed after five long years of consultation with Aboriginal community controlled organisations and the legal sector. Other than a panicked, kneejerk reaction, why on earth are you changing the bail laws now, including for children and young people, before the new youth justice framework has even really had a chance to begin operating and positively affecting the trajectory of children involved in Victoria’s youth justice system? What the government is seeking to do with this bill is contrary to international human rights law and Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that detention only be used as a last resort. Australia ratified that 3½ decades ago in December 1990. This means that governments in Australia have a duty to ensure that all children in Australia enjoy the rights set out in the treaty. From today, signing that convention in 1990 seems like a different time and place when governments, Labor governments, understood their obligations to uphold and enact human rights. That is not what is happening in this place today. It is shameful, Labor, shameful.

Our second set of amendments is to delete the two bail offences that are being reinstated by this bill, those being committing an indictable offence while on bail and breaching bail conditions. Simply speaking, bail offences are harmful and they serve no purpose other than to further criminalise people who are already criminalised. One of the regressive changes in this bill, of the many regressive changes, is reintroducing the offence of committing an indictable offence on bail in place of the current offence of committing a schedule 1 or schedule 2 offence while on bail with the same penalty to the Bail Act 1977, which is in clause 8.

Our amendments also seek to delete clause 13, which adds the offence of contravening certain conduct conditions of bail undertakings without reasonable excuse to the Summary Offences Act 1966. It is a small measure of comfort from this bill that the offence of contravening conduct conditions will not apply to children. Clause 13 also introduces a provision allowing a bail decision maker to refuse bail for breach of bail conditions offences. The reinstatement of these bail offences once again puts women and children in the firing line – mistakes that we corrected only a couple of years ago.

When these bail offences were first added in 2013 in Victoria, it became quickly clear that they were affecting women and children the most. Half the women who entered prison on remand in 2018 were charged with one of the two new bail offences introduced in 2013 and were interacting with double uplift provisions to be needlessly driven into prison. Legal experts are concerned that that is what is intended here again, that the reintroduction of these two bail offences will trigger the two strikes, or uplift, provisions in tranche two of the bail reforms that the Attorney-General has provided a short briefing to us on. I also note that removing bail offences was a specific recommendation from the coronial inquest into the death of Veronica Nelson. By reintroducing these offences, the government will funnel women and children in circumstances of disadvantage to high bail tests. Notably, the offence of breaching bail is criminalising conduct that is not itself criminal in nature.

The previous Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes herself stated in her second-reading speech for the 2023 bail reforms:

I want to make it clear that these are standalone offences on top of the offences that a person would already face for committing the breaches themselves. These offences do not make our community any safer. We know that they do not act to deter people from reoffending. But what they are doing is most often they are uplifting a person’s bail test to make it more likely for them to be remanded because of the quantity or the cumulative effect of their offending rather than for the risk of the offending itself.

There are a range of other problems with this bill from which there are intended and unintended impacts and consequences. I will take some time to talk about clause 4 of the bill, which adds:

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

as a guiding principle in the Bail Act 1977. At the moment the safety of community and persons affected by crime is already one of the four guiding principles of the Bail Act, alongside:

(b) taking account of the presumption of innocence and the right to liberty; and (c) promoting fairness, transparency and consistency in bail decision making; and (d) promoting public understanding of bail practices and procedures.

By making community safety the overarching principle of the Bail Act 1977 this bill will downgrade the consideration of these three other guiding principles. This is contrary to international human rights law and to Victoria’s charter, which provides that individuals are innocent until proven guilty, that pre-trial bail should be the presumptive norm and that any restrictions on the right of liberty must be for a legitimate purpose, proportionate and necessary in all the circumstances.

The bill’s statement of compatibility does not address how the prioritisation of public safety over the presumption of innocence and right to liberty will impact human rights. This is a glaring omission in the statement of compatibility. There is a significant risk that the prioritisation of public safety in the guiding principles could result in an entirely new approach by bail decision-makers to all bail decisions. So this bill is not targeted, as the Premier keeps trying to make out. It is sloppy work. It will erode the presumption of innocence, the right to liberty, the right to equality, the right to not be arbitrarily detained and the rights of children in the criminal process.

The government has – I will be frank – shown zero interest in moving to a more progressive pathway on this bill or in exploring possible amendments with the Greens, so we will be exploring a number of the many other problems and issues with this bill in the committee stage. For example, similar bail reforms in Queensland and New South Wales have led to significant increases in the number of adults and children remanded in cells before they have been found guilty of a crime. In Queensland we are seeing children held in adult watch houses. What is the government’s plan for ensuring that the children’s prison system is able to cope with the influx of children that are going to be warehoused in Victoria’s jails, without putting young people’s rights and safety at risk? The report on government services found that it costs over $1 million annually to lock up a child. Wouldn’t the Victorian government be better placed spending this money on addressing the factors that drive youth justice involvement, including the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis and poverty?

Last year children in youth detention were subjected to ongoing lockdowns due to staffing issues. These young people were disconnected from schooling and family visits due to these lockdowns. Labor, how will you ensure that these reforms do not result in lockdowns that equate to isolation and confinement for children on remand before they have been found guilty by a court? Last year the government deferred raising the age to 14 years old because it wanted to first scope the design and implementation of the alternative service model. Remember the alternative service model? Can you advise on the progress of this panel’s work and when we can expect to see that final report? These are just a few of the things that we will be asking the committee on this bill.

As the justification for breaking Labor’s own bail reforms again, the Premier has claimed that these bail laws are a necessary circuit breaker regarding young people, but we know that existing circuit breakers already exist, and they are not being used. For example, when police have evidence that a young offender has breached bail conditions, they are already equipped to take an application to return to court and apply to have bail revoked for that individual. It has been reported that senior police have privately admitted to journalists that not enough officers are willing to do the paperwork required.

As well, for children involved in serious crime, the police already have powers to go to the Children’s Court and make an application for uplift so the matter can be heard in the County Court. Instead of turning around to police and telling them to use their already extensive powers, or engaging in discussions around what further support they need, the Premier has chosen the easy route of optics.

Why on earth are we here debating changes to bail laws that will dump a whole lot of people, including vulnerable women and children, unnecessarily in prison on remand? We know that we are warehousing children, young people and adults in prison because we are not investing in crime prevention programs that we know to be effective, and reporting this morning tells us that they are being further defunded at a rate that defies understanding. When you warehouse people in prison the longer term result is simply more reoffending, so the bill is going to do the opposite of what the Premier is claiming in her media releases. The fact that the Premier has cut and gutted multiple key crime prevention programs that we know are proven to prevent young people from reoffending just truly crystallises that this week it is all about optics. If the Premier cared about improving community safety, she would back in the evidence-based solutions that we know are proven to work and that stakeholders and those who run these programs have been crying out to have funded.

These changes to the Bail Act are a complete betrayal of First Nations people and Veronica Nelson’s family, and they are completely at odds with the evidence. The Premier has chosen to use the lives of children, vulnerable people and First Nations people for her own political gain, so she will be the one that needs to explain why these laws result in more deaths in custody. The Greens will not be supporting this bill.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:37): I also rise to speak on the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. This is an important bill that we have before us today. It is important when we are assessing and reviewing the nature and the conditions of our bail settings in Victoria that we are responding to community concerns – and genuine community concerns. It is important that the people of this state can have faith in our justice system, and that includes our bail system. The government has listened, and we are acting. I would like to acknowledge that it is not always an easy decision for those in power to say a few words, ‘We got it wrong,’ and that is what the government has said.

I personally spoke on previous bail bills that passed through this place, and I probably do not need to recite any of that because I understand that Mr Mulholland has already extensively gone through some previous contributions made in this place. But one thing I did note in a previous speech two years ago was the importance of community support and community safety under any bail laws. I have seen, as many members in this place have, some horrific examples of crimes, or alleged crimes, committed by people who have been out on bail.

We know that for a great many, indeed the majority of people who are out on bail, they are not out committing crimes day after day. We have many successful diversionary programs. But it is important, for those programs to be successful, that they are used. It is disappointing that there are, in relative terms, a very small number of offenders, but a significant number nonetheless, of people who have been granted bail and have repeatedly, time after time, refused those support options out there and have offended again. The community should not tolerate that – the community does not tolerate that – and this government will not be tolerating that.

I have seen countless examples in my region, as have others in other regions, and I have spoken with constituents of mine who have been affected first or second-hand by some of these crimes – families who were going about their business, driving down the street or who were at home where they deserve to feel safe. There is no good answer that I can give them as to why their liberties, their freedoms and their right to feel safe should be compromised.

Bail is an important part of our justice system. I reiterate: it is not the majority of people we are talking about here; it is a relatively small number, but a significant number. That is why I am proud to be part of a government that is taking action, that is prepared to say, ‘We got it wrong,’ with a Premier who is prepared to make a tough decision, and also to be part of a Labor team who is prepared to discuss this, to review this and to take a new approach – my caucus colleagues, including my friend the member for Bayswater, who I know has been very active in this space, the new member for Werribee and many others.

It is a tough thing to get bail right. You do not want to deprive someone of liberty, when they are of course presumed innocent until proven guilty, unless it is imperative. But in some cases it has been imperative but bail has been applied when in many cases it should not have been. This is a bill that addresses that, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:42): I too rise to speak, with mixed feelings, on the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. I have mixed feelings. Let us take the title. This is a slogan that simply should not exist. This is not a tough bail bill. I can say that this government has no idea what a tough bail bill looks like, so they put it in the title to try to convince the public and everybody else that they are doing something when they are not doing enough at all.

You only have to talk to the average Victorian out on the streets to know that this not a tough bail state, because we have repeat offenders consistently going out, time and time again, breaking into homes, breaking into cars and causing all sorts of havoc so that people in Victoria do not feel safe. They are losing things in their homes, in particular their cars, but we also have tradies constantly losing tools. Offenders are now able to break into cars without having to break windows, which is what they were doing in the past.

We have a problem in this state. You only have to talk to the average Victorian to hear they either have had something happen to them or know somebody who has. People are now constantly having to check everything that they do. Many families are getting dogs to make sure that they feel safer. Why? Because we have a state that is in chaos and a government that is consistently in chaos. They just fluff something together at the last minute when they suddenly get caught out on camera with some of the news reports. They think, ‘Oh, quick. We’d better look like we’re doing something, so let’s call it the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill.’ What a ridiculous thing to do. People are getting sick of the gimmicks of this government.

We want tough bail laws, because we know that so many of the offences taking place are being committed by young offenders who are consistently getting out on bail. They are going out and repeating similar offences on other people or at different homes or places. We have not had a chance to get the full statistics yet – the crimes statistics were released today – but we know that home invasions in Victoria are at a record high. They are at a record high in this state, so clearly this government has not been tough on crime, and it has certainly not been tough on bail.

Our concerns with this particular bill are, number one, it was rushed when it was put together. We were waiting to do a bill briefing and there was nobody there to show us what we are doing. We had someone talking but there was nothing for us to actually look at until the last minute. We all find it incredibly concerning that here we are having to rush through this particular bill without having the opportunity to really sit down and scrutinise it effectively. And yet we have put together amendments because we know that this government takes such a soft approach that people now are less and less safe in their homes and on the street. I have consistently reminded the house of the number of home invasions and car thefts that have taken place in the south-east, in my area. I have told you stories – they are true stories – of actual people in my region sleeping with baseball bats because they are afraid of the next time the home invaders will come for their cars. They are afraid of what impact that might have on them or their family members who might get injured in the process, not just what else will be taken. What a fearful way to live. Who would have thought that in Victoria we would be living like this.

I was listening to Mr Galea, and repeatedly he said on behalf of the government, ‘We got it wrong.’ ‘We got it wrong,’ he said. Yes, the government got it wrong and it still has it wrong. This is not a tough bail bill, and what is more it is not even going to come into existence until later on because they have not actually figured out how they are going to implement it effectively. One of the biggest problems that we have is that the Labor government under the current Premier has refused to reverse its cuts to Court Services Victoria. We have had a $19.1 million cut this year alone and a $58 million cut in 2027–28. This cut in funding to court services contributes to trial delays, which sees more alleged offenders offered bail, and that has been the problem. What are you going to do, I have to ask the government, if you are going to continue to clog up the court system? We are going to have to patch up the court system. Is that going to be another amendment? I am not really sure how this is going to work.

We do have genuine concerns, because we know that Victorians in this state deserve to feel safe. Once upon a time they did, but we have seen that clearly eroded time and time again, day after day, because this government has failed the Victorian people. I do not see how we can have a title of Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill. To me it is nothing more than more hot air and more of a gimmick than actually providing Victorians with the safety that they require. It is not going to work, can I say, because you cannot just change a title and put some amendments in and think that Victorians are going to buy it. They have been buying the hot air for such a long time that they just do not listen anymore. It does not work anymore. They have become numb to the hot air that this government gives them. They have become numb to all the slogans that it throws out there because the reality is they do not feel safe. They do not feel safe in their homes and they do not feel safe on the streets, because there are consistently situations where offenders are repeating the same offences over and over again.

Like I said, it would not pass the pub test, because if you go out anywhere, certainly in my community, you will hear the stories. Everybody knows someone. One lady in Carrum went to visit her friend. She took her baby inside the house and then came back out to get more belongings – nappy bag and whatever else – and her car, from the driveway of her friend’s house, in that short moment, had been stolen.

There are so many stories, and honestly I cannot retain them all. I remember that one because of the thought of how frightening it must be to take your baby out of the car, go into your friend’s house, put the baby down and then go back out to get the things and find that the car has been stolen. I just cannot imagine what that would feel like. These are Victorians who are doing it tough under this government. The cost-of-living crisis is meaning that people are going without medication. They are choosing not to get their medication, because they cannot afford to. I think something like 8 per cent of Australians are in that situation now. Right here in Victoria we have massive problems with the cost of living, and you need to be completely out of touch to be saying people are doing well and everything is going great, because there are so many people in my region in the south-east who are not going great. Life is difficult for them. There are more bills. Even those who were once comfortable have enormous tensions in their lives trying to come up with massive land taxes that this government is hitting them with. It is an extraordinary jump in what the government is asking in taxes, because tax, tax, tax means people have less to live on, and that is also putting pressure on families.

Now we are seeing an increase in crime. When we have weak bail laws, where people are constantly reoffending, that is what we see. As I mentioned, and I had hoped that would have been sufficient, I have heard stories in my region in the last couple of weeks directly from those who have to enforce things of young people who are offending up to 60 times coming out on bail like a revolving door. Yes, there are going to be some changes in this bill. But if you are not going to fund your court system effectively, then you are going to have people jammed in there for long periods of time without the opportunity to have their trials and we really will not be helping anybody.

I have heard the Greens talk about education, and they gave a lot of examples that were concerning. But the data is all to do with other states, and I think that we need to remember that we are looking at what is going on here in Victoria. I am all for education. Everybody knows my background. It is no secret that I have come from an educational background and from a family where my mother, my grandfather and a whole lot of my grandfather’s sisters were all school principals. I have been a teacher, and maybe if I had not gone down this pathway I would have been a school principal too. But I really believe in education. I love education, I enjoy seeing young people learn and I want to see as many of them as possible have that opportunity. But that does not mean that I also do not hold to the principle that if you are responsible for crime, then there have to be consequences, and I have said that before. It is a basic rule in social work, particularly youth work, that there are consequences for actions. You cannot have people going out and committing crimes and just give them a slap on the wrist.

I hear the Greens saying, ‘We’re concerned that we’re not having reform, that we’re not giving them opportunities, that people are going to be in there for doing minor crimes.’ Yes, that is part of our nation’s history, and I do not like it probably any more than anybody else. But the reality is that we do have to get people off the streets that are repeat offenders and we do need to allow people to feel safe. What is happening now is not working. It distresses me that the government has had so much time, and we have attempted as an opposition to put forward options for this government to have tougher bail laws. We want to see the system work and we want to see people in Victoria feeling safe, but we just feel that this government constantly puts this mishmash stuff together with dates down in the future. I do not know how you can call it ‘tough’ if you are going to bring out sometime in the future, months down the road, these laws and you have not even cleaned up the court service system; you have actually defunded it. I do not know how this is going to work.

Alleged offenders will receive a presumption of bail, and they will have the weakest test to receive it under this bill.

While this bill does reinstate the offence of breaching bail conditions, it is being reinstated in its weakest form.

We have repeatedly tried to provide the government with options. Let me just quote some of the members in this chamber from the Labor government. Minister Shing said:

There should be consequences for breaching bail –

but then went on to say –

… but it is clear that the current consequences are too harsh and too broadly applied.

So now they are admitting that this is not a tough bail bill.

Let us have a look at what Mr Berger said:

Victorians need a legal system that is tough on crime. We should all feel safe living in a state with a zero-tolerance policy for reoffending.

Yes, we should all feel safe; the problem is we do not. We do not under a Labor government. Under this Allan Labor government Victorians do not feel safer. There is not zero tolerance for crime, as Mr Berger said. He said we should be a state that has zero tolerance for crime. Mr Berger, I say to you, have you read these amendments? Because that is not what this government is proposing to do. You are going to need, once again, our support for amendments in order for things to happen. We know that this is not going to do enough.

But we are prepared, as Mr Mulholland has said. The opposition has brought its pyjamas. We are all prepared for a long night or a long day or however long it takes, because Victorians deserve to feel safe. At the end of the day we do not have the numbers to perhaps go through bringing in the things that we want to see, and it is going to possibly take two years to have a change of government to allow this state to really change and for Victorians to feel safe.

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (10:57): I rise today to make a contribution on the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. I join the cause of my colleague Ms Copsey in expressing my concerns about this government’s impulsive so-called tough bail laws. Make no mistake, this bill has not only been ill conceived in its passage but is absolutely racially motivated. We know exactly which individuals, young people and communities will be on the front lines of criminalisation and over-representation in these draconian and regressive reforms. In case it is not obvious, it is our First Nations communities and multicultural communities. It is communities that are struggling with structural poverty, violence and abuse – communities that intimately understand how the political is connected to the personal.

This government’s impatience to restore respectful bail and its conditions starkly goes against the evidence and advice of legal experts, human rights organisations and international human rights standards, as well as family violence and First Nations community controlled organisations. It also continues to disregard the expertise and advocacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This government claim these measures will improve community safety, but what they do not tell you is which community they will be keeping safe and which community will be targeted and punished by these inhumane laws. The reality is that they will disproportionately harm some of the most vulnerable members of our society: children, First Nations people and multicultural communities.

This week not only marks the rushed introduction of the government’s harmful tough bail laws but also a tragic anniversary, as already alluded to by my colleague Ms Copsey and reported by the National Indigenous Times. This past Tuesday would have been Veronica Nelson’s 43rd birthday. She died in custody at the failed hands of this bail system, an Indigenous woman whose death was a direct result of these broken laws.

Even the former police commissioner Shane Patton acknowledged that Veronica’s death was a direct result of poor bail laws. Coroner Simon McGregor described her passing as an unmitigated disaster that discriminated against Aboriginal people and was incompatible with the Victorian human rights charter.

This bill completely disregards the recommendation that came out of the inquiry into Veronica Nelson’s tragic death. Her family and the community have been unwavering in their calls for real change, and the Greens will continue to stand by them. It is impossible to ignore the connections between the previous discriminatory bail laws and her death, and it is unconscionable that this government would push forward reforms that will only exacerbate these injustices.

How many more people must die for the government to do the right thing? We cannot afford knee-jerk reforms that will cost more lives. We should instead be asking ourselves: what does justice look like for all people, particularly First Nations people and culturally and linguistically diverse people, who are already overrepresented in the system? It certainly does not look like this bill, which continues to erode the gains that could be made in the fight for a fairer, more humane system of justice.

Let me remind the house that the Yoorrook Justice Commission, an important step in acknowledging and addressing the wrongs done to First Nations peoples, has provided clear guidance on what must be done to protect our most vulnerable community members. Yet despite these recommendations, we are now considering a bill that directly contradicts the calls for reforms that are rooted in justice, equity and safety.

The Yoorrook for Justice report highlighted how changes to bail laws in 2013 and 2018 led to a rise in the number of First Peoples locked up in remand while awaiting trial or sentencing. Aboriginal women were particularly impacted and frequently denied bail and imprisoned for minor or nonviolent offences. The government is repeating past mistakes by ignoring its commitments to self-determination and reducing over-imprisonment, and further undermining the trust established through justice-related forums intended to engage with and consult Aboriginal communities.

This bill will disproportionately harm Aboriginal youth, perpetuating the cycle of overincarceration, a longstanding issue within the justice system. Indigenous young people are often caught in a system that fails to recognise the broader social, economic and cultural factors that contribute to their contact with the law. Instead of addressing these root causes, such as inadequate access to education, mental health support and culturally appropriate services, this bill will only increase the likelihood of Aboriginal youth being locked up without consideration of their unique circumstances. This highlights the urgent need for culturally informed alternatives that have been shown to support young people in their communities, such as diversion programs and restorative justice models. Instead of empowering Aboriginal communities to lead the change, this bill continues to impose harmful measures that alienate and further marginalise these young people, further entrenching distrust in the justice system.

Youthlaw reported a significant drop in youth crime in the past 10 years. However, when crime rates do spike, they are often linked to the same factors that have been present for decades. These factors include economic hardship; lack of services and support for young people and their families; issues like family violence, childhood abuse, mental health and disability needs; and the over-representation of certain youth groups. These groups include Indigenous youth, disadvantaged multicultural youth, those with a history of childhood trauma or involvement in the child protection system, and young women with complex needs. But this bill does not seek to address any of these underlying issues.

This is not justice. This is punishment for the sake of punishment, and it will not make our community safer. It does not improve social outcomes and it will cost taxpayers more in the long term. Let us be clear: the removal of the principle of remand as a last resort will mean more young people in custody before they have even had their day in court. We are talking about 13- and 14-year-olds, children who are too young to drink, drive, vote or even work, yet are considered to somehow have the maturity and responsibility of an adult when they come before the court.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Australia is a signatory, defines a child as every human being below the age of 18 years. Australia signed this convention in 1990, meaning this country has a legal duty to make sure that all children in Australia enjoy the rights set out in the treaty.

These rights include protection, education and the opportunity to grow up in a supportive environment free from unnecessary harm. When we consider policies like locking up children as young as 13, we need to ask: how does this align with Australia’s commitment to upholding children’s rights as defined by international law? Putting young people in prison increases the likelihood that these young people will be trapped in the justice system for life. It isolates them from supports that would help them thrive in the community and instead strengthens their ties to criminal activity. The incarceration of children and young people increases chance of reoffending rates and intergenerational incarceration. Evidence shows that youth sentenced at a younger age are more likely to reoffend within six years than those sentenced later in life. Even after considering other factors, each additional year of age at the time of their first court sentence reduced the chances of them reoffending by 18 per cent.

If this bill was truly about reducing crime and improving safety, we would not be considering putting children under 18 in prison, because the evidence is clear: it simply does not work. I am exhausted by the whiplash of rhetoric coming from the government. Just months ago the Minister for Police and then Minister for Crime Prevention Minister Carbines said the minimum age of criminal responsibility is too low, pointing out that:

… 10- and 11-year-olds belong in school, not in prison.

He was calling for the law to change. Yet now the same government is pushing a bill to lock up 13- and 14-year-olds who have not even been convicted of anything. How can the government possibly justify a drastic shift in policy, and how does a matter of just a few months between the ages of 12 and 13 determine whether a child belongs in school or behind bars?

This bill is not just a question of youth justice, it is a question of child protection. We know that many caught in the legal system come from backgrounds of trauma, abuse and neglect. The government instead should be focusing their efforts on early intervention programs and investing in agencies and courts responsible for child protection. With this bill, we risk taking more parents from their children. By locking mothers away from their children instead of providing them with support, rehabilitation and pathways away from crime, this government is choosing to cause further harm. The inquiry into children affected by parental incarceration found that Aboriginal children are losing their parents to incarceration at a greater rate than they were last century when we were removing them from their families. This discriminatory bill will only further exacerbate this disturbing statistic, and the government is not only complicit but responsible for the political decision to continue to inflict more harm.

We are also alarmed by the introduction of a summary offence for breaching bail conditions, such as failing to attend bail support services. This completely ignores the multidimensional factors that lead an individual to be involved with the law. Many people on bail are dealing with housing instability, mental health issues or disabilities. Criminalising them for missing an appointment or breaking curfew does nothing to address the root causes of offending. Instead it forces them further into the criminal justice system, cutting off their chances of rehabilitation. It is disappointing to see this tough-on-crime rhetoric from the government that fails to look at evidence, to consider lived experiences, to hear our communities and to truly stop crime. Instead all we will see with this bill are more people in our prisons who will come out and commit more crimes after being traumatised and removed from all of their community supports. The Greens are horrified that the Premier is willing to play politics with the lives of our First Nations and vulnerable communities, and for that I condemn the Premier and this bill.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:09): I rise to make my contribution on the so-called ‘tough bail’ bill of 2025. My very esteemed former leader and mentor, and someone I have always looked up to, Peter Walsh, has always said: if you are explaining something and you have to explain it in the title, you are failing. You are losing if you have to explain it overly. Well, the government is trying to explain this bill by saying, ‘It is really, really tough.’ When I think about this, it is like – taking another path at the moment – the thing they called the ‘fast train’. They called it the ‘fast train’, and then it got to be the ‘slightly faster train’. I feel like this is one of those examples where the government are trying to convince the community that they are doing the work.

They have been in for 10 years. This government, in November, will have been in for 10 years, with Daniel Andrews and now Premier Jacinta Allan having had 10 years to get it right. We have heard my colleague Mr Mulholland and others talking about those on the other side, the government members, talking about getting it right and how they do not want to just introduce something that is undercooked. Well, this is undercooked. This bill is rushed. This bill is the result of pressure from polls. It is not considered. The Victorian population have been under significant pressure, with significant concern about significant safety issues and their own wellbeing, over the past 10 years. This is a rushed and flawed bill. Now, the Liberals and the Nationals will not be opposing this flawed bill, because in its flawed state it is still better than what we have today. But we will be moving amendments in the committee of the whole to improve this flawed bill.

I want to just talk a little bit about the bill. We got the bill – when was it? It was Monday night at about 6 o’clock, I think, that our shadow minister Michael O’Brien got hold of it. On Tuesday at about 10:30, again early, we saw a bill briefing. That is no way to run a government. That is no way to respect the Liberals and Nationals – the opposition – or the crossbenchers. The proposition that you can dump something and then just convince us – that attitude is unwelcome, it is unparliamentary and it is undemocratic. I just want to talk a little bit about the bill that we saw back then, all of two days ago.

The bill will amend the Bail Act 1977 and the Summary Offences Act 1966. It will introduce two bail offences: committing an indictable offence whilst on bail, for inclusion in the Bail Act; and contravening conduct conditions of bail in the Summary Offences Act. It incorporates offences into schedule 1 that were previously in schedule 2, and I just want to put these on record: armed robbery and aggravated burglary. My goodness, aggravated burglary across the state in the last 10 years has been growing to absolutely frightening proportions. I will read some stats in from my own Eastern Victoria electorate, which I hold no joy in sharing with this house. Home invasions again increased over time. Carjacking – we have heard some terrible stats on that. The crime stats are actually out today. I have not had time to go through them, but that is right; they are rising, rising and rising in all the wrong directions for the safety of our humans in this state.

It is also going to incorporate additional offences into schedule 2, and these will be to satisfy the bail decision-maker that a compelling reason exists to justify the granting of bail in serious firearms offences; serious arson offences; offences involving a controlled weapon, which now includes machetes because the government again has seen fit under pressure, overwhelmingly from the community and overwhelmingly from the Liberals and Nationals, to finally put machetes in as prohibited weapons; and also motor vehicle theft.

[NAME AWAITING VERIFICATION]

It does not do a number of things. It does not include serious offences such as arson. They will not face a tougher bail test. It does not include serious offences such as burglary – and aren’t we seeing that more and more on the rise? When my colleague Martin Cameron and I went for a walk, as we do from time to time, around the streets of Morwell the other day – beautiful Morwell, where I have shopped, visited and known friends for so many years – at the St Vinnies, which is open, useful, supporting the community and putting funds back into the community, the manager Dion spoke to us about how again and again people are walking in, acting with impunity, creating a huge disturbance, being antisocial and then just filling their bags or whatever and walking out, and people fear for their own safety.

This is not an anomaly; this is happening time and time again. Burglary and robbery are in that same boat. They are not listed in the schedule 1 or 2 offences, meaning alleged offenders receive a presumption of bail and the weakest test to receive it. This so-called ‘tough bail test’ for repeat offenders is not in the bill. The offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail is being reinstated, but it will have no impact on raising the test for bail. Surely if you have committed an indictable offence, surely if you are a repeat offender, surely if you are known and you are rotating through the system, surely that should be a trigger for a tougher test for bail. But no, not in this bill. The offence of breaching bail conditions is being reinstated but in a weakened form as contravention will not result in the offender facing a stronger bail test. People under the age of 18 face no criminal sanction for breaching bail conditions, undermining the reason why bail conditions are imposed in the first place.

I want to talk more about youth offenders and something that has been happening in this state for such a long time. Sadly, in our patch – I see Mr Bourman is in the house for Eastern Victoria Region – again indicative across the state, we are seeing the ravages of rising crime, and this is backflip has certainly come too late. Let us look at some of the stats, because it is not just a centralised Melbourne impact; it is happening in country Victoria. In Eastern Victoria in the past 10 years assault is up 23.4 per cent. Aggravated burglary, as we have talked about, in my region is up 200 per cent. This shows the desperation of those committing those burglaries, but it also shows that there must be, there have to be, repeat offenders who are acting in the system, getting bail, going through, feeling as though they are invincible and working on that theft and burglary. Motor vehicle thefts are up 100 per cent in my region. Family violence – again this is a terrible statistic – is up 63 per cent. There are victims at the end of every one of these statistics. I could go through: Latrobe, in terms of crime, is up almost 13 per cent; Bass Coast, up almost 24 per cent; Baw Baw, up 38 per cent, a growing and beautiful area; South Gippsland, up 100 per cent; Cardinia, 46 per cent; East Gippsland is up almost 50 per cent, as is Wellington shire.

We have seen time and time again examples. I relayed many of them in the machetes terrorism bill, so I will not repeat them other than to say that, unfortunately, beautiful Traralgon – again a place that I know and love very well – is making the charts for all the wrong reasons. Over the weekend it was reported what locals in Traralgon already know – they know this; they know it is happening – that the town is becoming one of the worst in the state for youth crime, along with the Melbourne CBD, Frankston, Tarneit, Truganina and Bendigo. I know my colleague Gaelle Broad has raised the issues happening in Bendigo on multiple occasions, and in Mildura my good colleague Jade Benham is doing her work there to highlight these issues and call for additional police resources in our regions. We see the need for more PSOs in regional Victoria as well.

In boys aged 15 to 17 there is an alarming rise in this space. No-one wants to be the parent of a child who has gone off the rails. No-one wants to be like this mother – I am going to read this article very shortly – who said we need these tougher bail laws, we need to see this happening because something has to stop her son from being out on the street committing crimes. Something has to bring him in; something has to turn his life around. This cannot go on. Although the bill includes some provisions for youth offenders, many in the community feel that it does not go far enough, and we agree with them. They argue that more needs to be done to deter young offenders.

Here is a parent quoted in a Nine News article on 17 March 2025, a few days ago regarding parents of repeat offenders. It says:

… for parents losing control of their children for the first time, there was nowhere to turn –

‘Kate’ is the parent’s name in the article –

“What I went through at that time was so isolating, and I was so ashamed,” Kate recalled.

Another parent watched her son get bail over and over again in a never-ending cycle. The son was preparing to attend court for his 18th appearance. She said:

“When this all started, I was pleading for him to be locked up …

That is a parent who loves her child and was pleading for him to be locked up. She goes on to say:

“Once they’re in Parkville, there’s no rehabilitation, no programs in place. My son gets to choose if he wants to go to school, he gets to choose what classes he’d like to go to. He gets to swim in the pool, he gets to go to the gym … There’s not enough being done in there, and I just feel it’s an absolute waste of time.

I just want to reiterate that in terms of the frustration that these parents must feel. We have heard comments certainly in the space of our First Nations youth and our multicultural youth – all Victorian youth deserve to have a good chance in life. We know that early intervention can make a huge difference. We know that prevention can make a significant difference. We know that even though they sound a little bit soft there can be some tremendous diversion therapies. But what are we seeing after 10 years of Labor? We are seeing escalating youth crime.

There is a fantastic organisation in the Latrobe Valley that is philanthropically funded. On the one hand we have got youth crime getting out of control and we also have an example where people are doing amazing work with amazing results. I want to do a shout-out to this small number of people. It is called Mountain Track and it is out the back – I am trying to think where it is – past Churchill; I have forgotten the name of the specific location. Mountain Track connects and engages with young people in the Latrobe Valley who most need support and are likely to end up incarcerated without intervention. They provide hope, they engage, they provide skills, they organise diversionary activities, they support personal development, they provide learning, training, work experience and employment opportunities and they help people connect and feel self-worth. This is a fantastic initiative. Guess how much government subsidy it gets? Nothing, zero, nil. Yet these are fantastic things that we see.

We also have seen the important work that our police are doing. Police in schools is an incredibly important activity that occurred very widely between 2010 and 2014. That has been cut back. I also give a shout-out to Victoria Police in my region. I was speaking only recently to VicPol, and they lament the fact – they must do the paperwork they have to do and they respect that – that as they are walking in to do the paperwork to charge someone, that someone, who is often a youth but not always, is walking out the door after being bailed again. We need to see this working better. When do youth understand that they are a victim of whatever it is, when are they being a pawn and when do they know that they are working with impunity and they can get away with these things? These are critical issues.

This government has had 10 years to get it right. The Productivity Commission talks about how Closing the Gap is not working in this state, and neither are education, health, children in out-of-home care and First Nations people in the justice system. This bill is a start, but it is not good enough. I ask people to accept our amendments and make this bill better.

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (11:24): I am pleased to speak about the bail amendment bill. I will not call it ‘tough bail’ – that is a political title, but it is no less political than the amendment to take it out for being political. We should just leave it the way it is as far as I am concerned.

Remand is a vexed subject for any society because you are locking up unsentenced people, so that is why you have bail.

Bail is an undertaking that you do not reoffend. Bail can have various conditions imposed; some of them are fairly light, some of them can be quite onerous. The problem with bail is that when someone does not abide by those terms of the bail, what happens next? Contrary to popular belief, I am not going to say we chuck everyone in the can. There are certain circumstances where you can have a reasonable excuse for breaching bail, like if you have a reporting condition and you are in hospital, well, you are not going to report from hospital, or if you have got something else that is a reasonable excuse – happy days – there needs to be a system around that.

What we have at the moment though, is serious offenders – and we are not talking about youth offenders where it is a kid doing a bit of shoplifting. You do not get remanded first time for that. We are not talking about kids’ high jinks, as we used to call them back in the day. We are starting to talk about serious offenders here. Ironically for the tough bail bill, the offence of breaching bail should have never gone, because honestly, if you are not going to get remanded for breaching bail and you are not going to get a penalty for breaching bail, why wouldn’t you breach bail: you get caught, they let you out again; you get caught, they let you out again. And some fairly serious offences – home invasions/aggravated burglaries; I am still a little bit bemused that there are two separate offences because they are the same thing – you are not just talking about kids having a bad day. You are talking about the invasion of someone’s home, generally with weapons.

We dealt with the machete thing yesterday, but it is not just machetes, there are a number of things, and we are talking about a fairly serious cohort of people, including youths, that are turning Melbourne and Victoria into a place that is worse than it was in the 1980s. For those of us that are old enough to remember the 80s fairly clearly, it was quite a violent time, but it was fairly localised. I do not use names of criminals in this place, but it was fairly well contained within the criminal community. But what we have got now is the wider community supplying the serious offenders, and as they are coming in and out of police stations I am pretty sure they are high-fiving each other because they know that they will be going the other way shortly. And that has led to where we are here today.

Probably the biggest problem I have with this bill is that youthful offenders do not get the offence of breaching bail, because then we go back to the same thing: what is going to happen to them? The whole point of having a penalty is that if you do it, you get a little extra – maybe you can serve concurrently or whatever; that is up to sentencing at a later date. That is not the point of the police, it is the judiciary’s problem. But if there is no penalty other than remand, then they will just keep on doing it. Everyone can have their own opinion about whether it leads to an escalation of offences or not – that is beyond the scope of my speech today – but I think this is a little bit too long in coming. I think youth offenders should be included in the offence of breached bail – again, it goes up to the judiciary to deal with the seriousness of it – because we have a youth crime problem.

Locking people up, remanding unsentenced offenders – I call them offenders, force of habit – also comes with some personal risks to those people on remand. One of the things I would like to have seen in this bill is more support for people in a custodial setting for the first time. There was a study done in 2016 by the Australian Institute of Criminology about suicides in custodial settings, particularly for first-time people. You are 50 per cent more likely to take your own life in the first three months of a custodial setting if it is your first go at it. It seems to me, because of, let us call it, the weakening of the bail laws, this bill will have a lot more first-time people in a custodial setting, but there is no – the government loves this term so I will use it – wraparound service for these people. There are people that are going to be remanded in a decent prison, and there needs to be culturally appropriate people available to help them out when the time comes.

I have been involved in the death of a prisoner in custody. It is no fun at all. Obviously it is not for the person in custody, but it is no fun for the family, the police and, in this case, a lot of the prison staff either. It is no fun for anyone. If we can prevent a death by having someone to help them through these times – I do not know what I would be like my first time in custody; my plan is to never find out, but it would not be fun – then I think that is something the government probably wants to look at. If we are going to have more people in custody, there needs to be more support, particularly for first-time offenders.

I am going to finish my speech on the Greens, my favourite subject. I have been listening over the last few days to various things. What I have heard is sticking up for ducks, wombats, offenders with visa problems and repeat offenders. Where are they sticking up for the victims of crime? These are people that have been in their own homes – we are talking about home invasions, which is the topic du jour – generally asleep when armed offenders have come into their place and invaded their home, invaded their sense of wellbeing. I live in Melbourne – I do not hide that – and in the area where I live home invasions have become so common that they are not even reported; I read about them on Facebook community noticeboards. Where is the concern for the victims of these people? I do not know which Victoria the Greens live in, but it is not the same Victoria the rest of us live in.

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:32): I rise to speak on the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. I think generally in life it is not what you say that matters, it is what you do that matters. It is not what you say, it is what your actions are that matter. At a time when we have record crime, families being terrorised and a genuine sense within the community that things have got out of control, you really need to be walking the walk on these. It is what you do that matters.

We have seen rising crime. We have had new stats out today that show we have reached yet again unprecedented levels of crime. There is an article in the Herald Sun which has numerous data points to sum up what is happening. We are now passing 30,000 burglaries a year. We have got more crime by youth than ever before, since records began. There are stats upon stats upon stats: 38,750 recorded store thefts last year, and on and on. It is nothing short of a horror story for the people of Victoria. They rightly turn to the government, they turn to the Parliament, they look to us and say, ‘What are you going to do about it?’

If ever a bill represents the modern Labor government, it is this bill. It is a bill where the title says ‘tough’ but there is no substance behind it. You stand for nothing. It is a bill briefing where there is no bill; that is where it starts. It is a bill where half of the content is literally left blank for a future bill. It is a hollow shell of a bill. It puts ‘tough’ in the title to win a news cycle to save the Premier’s blushes. But for committing an indictable offence while on bail there is no consequence, there is no action. They say it, but there is no action. There is breaching bail, but there are no consequences for breaching bail. There is no breach of bail at all for under 18s, among whom the stats that came out today show crime is at the highest level since records began. Burglary and robbery still have the presumption of bail. There are trial delays because of the underfunding of the court system, so the threshold for bail drops because you might be remanded for too long, so it is a hoax.

It is a cruel hoax on the people of Victoria, who want action. Everybody opposite, we know you are here arguing for something you do not believe. You argued aggressively against stronger bail laws in the past. You are trying to make this work somehow with the Greens, who – and I hope those opposite take this up – make outrageous statements that tougher bail, and your bill in this house, is racially motivated. That was the statement. It is outrageous. It should not stand. It must be challenged. It is offensive. It is offensive to everyone in this chamber. But you will not admit it.

If ever a bill was ripe for mocking of the government, it is this, but I am not going to go there because it is too serious. You have all said things you would now regret, in the context that your Premier has recognised and admitted that you regret them, because you have made a mistake around this. But it has not happened without context. It has happened in a context where we have police shortages, we have cut police station hours, we have cut funding from mental health services, we have cut early intervention programs, we have less police patrols, we have selective enforcement of law, we have less support within custodial settings and we have magistrates acting on the basis of harm minimisation alone. That was a big part of the case for reform, but if you are not true to the principle and you fail on the implementation of that, then everyone suffers. If you want accountability for the impact on vulnerable communities, you do not get to implement a policy in name only. You do not get to implement policies about harm minimisation and then only implement part of them. It is a little bit like putting a tougher bail bill forward and then having no tougher measures. So in the harm minimisation you have failed, because you have only implemented the part that weakens the bail laws. As we have just said, there are less PSOs, there are less police, there is less early intervention, there are less mental health services, there are less magistrate actions around custodial services in court services. If you are advocating for harm minimisation and if you want to convince people that harm minimisation is actually a sensible way to approach it, you have failed. You have failed to do it. You have probably ruined your own argument.

We inevitably come to the human cost of that failure, and it is a pretty universal cost, actually. Again, people are very happy to talk about lived experiences. Well, let us talk about the lived experiences of families who have had their homes invaded or their cars run through or their essential tools for their jobs stolen, or in some cases goldfish stolen, or the shopkeepers who have to put up with endless aggression and theft and thuggery, and the whole of the community, where people are now afraid to go down their streets. The vulnerable people, yes, they pay the cost too; they share the cost, because the community does care about vulnerable communities and First Nations people. It does care and it does want better, but when the community is exposed and scared, it needs action. If none of the other components of harm minimisation have been implemented, then they have a right to expect action that changes the situation, that does not maintain the status quo.

I have had many people say to me, ‘Well, what’s the point of harm minimisation, because if someone’s pointing a machete at my throat, they’re already a serious criminal. What serious crime are you stopping them entering into? Well, they’ve entered into it.’ That is what people say. That is what the community say; that is their lived experience of this.

Within this contribution that is really whom I want to speak to most – the community. The Parliament keeps dodging its responsibility to you. The buck stops with us. We want compassionate laws when it is sensible to be compassionate. We do not want to lock people up just for the sake of locking people up. People are not actually asking for tough bail; they are asking for commonsense bail. That is the law we need in this state, and we do not have it and this bill does not provide it. If you ever want to know what the Liberal and National parties stand for on this, just look at our list of amendments to this, because they are common sense. It is not taking away compassion, it is not taking away sensible evidence-based reforms; it is common sense that if you breach bail again and again and again there is a consequence. No-one can argue against that.

Again I refer to the outrageous Greens statement that, ‘Oh, this is a racially motivated bill directed at certain groups.’ I will tell you what, the certain groups are also victims of crime in this state. I represent a very multicultural community, proudly. They are the victims of these crimes. There is the basic principle of equality before the law; there is also safety behind the law, and we do not have it. Young people need to understand there are consequences of actions, and that is at any age. Just because you stop recording the stats on certain crimes – just because you make a semantic change to a law where you declassify something as one – it does not mean that does not happen. We decriminalised all crimes by anyone between the ages of 10 and 12. It does not mean those crimes are not taking place; it just means they are not in the stats. For every one of the stats that goes through the official records, we now know that crime is so rampant that that is merely the tip of the iceberg. So many people no longer report a break-in of their car, a break-in of their house, petty crime or shoplifting. This is the tip of the iceberg. No-one should be thinking this is the sum of it. It goes far, far, far beyond it.

I say to people who commit crime: do not confuse our compassion for weakness. Those who have been trained and conditioned by the current laws to believe that bail is a slap on the wrist, that bail is a privilege to go and do what you want, have got to learn that it is not; they have got to learn that there are consequences. And the people of Victoria, on their lived experienced, expect that from us. This bill does not far enough. It is window-dressing. The amendments that we are proposing go to consequences for breaching your bail. That is just the basic benchmark. Talk to anyone in the community and explain to them, ‘Look, we’re reintroducing the crime of breaching conditions of bail’ – ‘Oh, what are the consequences? It will be harder to get bail next time, right?’ – ‘No, there is no consequence.’ What is the point? It is about the same point as the point of putting ‘tough bail’ into the heading and then not having tough bail. But we do not want tough bail, we want commonsense bail that will uplift and restore the community’s trust in police, trust in the criminal justice system, trust in each other, frankly, and trust in natural justice ultimately. People of Victoria, the buck stops with us today in this house. I strongly commend the amendments to the house, and we will stay as long as it takes to make sure we get this bill passed.

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (11:44): I rise today to speak on this Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025. Before I go to my speech I want to stress in relation to this particular bill that it is as important as any other bill but so much more important now due to the issues we are facing in Victoria in relation to the youth crime crisis that we are trying to address. When I will talk about the bill today and the amendments put forward by members in this chamber, it is not to say whether the government is wrong or this side is right – who is right, who is wrong. We are trying to address an issue which the community is facing at the moment, and this is what the bail bill will hopefully do. When we point out some holes in this bill, it is not to say they are right or they are wrong; it is mainly to point out what needs to be changed to improve the bill for the benefit of our community.

I note at the start in relation to this bill, as many members in this chamber have mentioned, that the word ‘tough’ is straight from the spin of those who are trying to legislate this bill. I want to be clear that legislation needs to be fair, just and appropriate to the people about which it is trying to decree. When a law’s title declares that it is tough, already it does not meet expectations or the principles it is trying to adopt. Clearly this bill is being rushed through his chamber for debate.

Let us go on the record that bail reform is something that the opposition has been demanding from this government for many years now. Bail reform is something this government has repeatedly failed to take serious action to strengthen the law. In most cases since coming to office they have repeatedly watered down the law. As a consequence the Victorian public is now bearing the brunt. As I mentioned, we are going through a crime crisis, and that has gradually built up over the years.

Let me briefly explain what I mean by ‘watering down’. Under this government we have seen offenders get caught for an offence and then get released soon after being interviewed and charged by police. Offenders are released on bail over and over again regardless of whether they have committed a summary offence or an indictable offence. They are breaking into someone’s house or car or lighting up premises while people are sleeping or breaking into someone’s car, dragging the driver out of the vehicle in the middle of the road and trying to steal the vehicle. Offenders who are arrested for indictable offences like aggravated burglaries, robberies or carjacking need to justify to the court or the bail justice why they should be granted bail and satisfy the court or bail justice that they will not reoffend and that they are not a risk to the community when they are seeking bail. When you apply for bail you acknowledge and sign an undertaking, as I mentioned above, that you will not breach those conditions and reoffend. We should automatically ask, when an offender has been brought in to be interviewed by a bail justice or a court, if he has offended previously. Under the Allan Labor government we see offenders get released for serious and indictable offences over and over again. We have seen and heard in the news that offenders are being caught after being released on bail 10, 20, 30 times.

At the outset I want to acknowledge that the real concern for the Victorian community is bail reform, as I mentioned. These laws will rehash our old laws in some respects as they existed previously. Before I go on to the youth offender aspect of this bill, people making legislation on bail in this chamber need to understand what bail is, why we grant bail and why we are remanding those offenders. It is not a right; it is a privilege that you are granted bail.

You must justify why you are being granted bail. You must justify it by not reoffending, and you must justify it by not being a risk to the community. An automatic assumption of bail for reoffenders is something this government needs to understand, and those legislating this bail reform need to understand that, if there is crime, the court or bail justice need to understand of those persons brought before them seeking bail whether that person has offended previously, how many times they have offended and how many times they have committed those crimes. It is not like a series of thefts. We are talking about breaking into people’s houses, carrying weapons and firearms and taking invasive actions on people’s privacy and properties.

Another concern in relation to this bail reform bill before us regards youth offenders. My concern – and I think this was mentioned previously by Mr Bourman – is in relation to no penalty for youth offenders. I understand they are underage, but if they commit certain crimes, they need to understand that if they are granted bail, there will be consequences if they reoffend or breach bail. If there are no penalties for those who breach bail and reoffend over and over again, they will continue doing so. That is one of my concerns in relation to youth offenders not getting penalties in relation to breaches of bail. This will continue in relation to this bail reform.

If people under 18 years face no criminal sanction for breaching bail conditions, it undermines the reason bail conditions are even imposed. We are told just to hang on tight by this government in relation to strong reforms later in the year regarding youth offending. We are in the middle of a crime crisis, and the big issue is youth offending. We are trying to combat or tackle these issues regarding youth offenders and yet we are not addressing what is happening. Now, we have not just got those who have offended for a first time. There are criteria when a bail justice or court sees a youth offender brought before a court for the first time. The presumption mostly is that those youth offenders would be granted bail. However, we are talking about youth offenders who commit series of crimes and reoffend with series of crimes involving indictable offences and serious indictable offences, yet they are not being addressed. That is the real issue in relation to this that we are concerned about.

Serious offences we are concerned with and talking about are aggravated burglary and breach of bail. It is time to debate that reform, and we need to do it now to address the issue. We cannot wait several months down the track and then debate it. The community are crying out about what this government is doing regarding the youth crisis and the granting of bail. We have been told this bill is one of two bills being brought before the Parliament and that later this year there will be another revision of the granting of bail for repeat offenders.

We need to address repeat offending now, whether it is youth or adults. While the government have been light on detail about this bill, we need to discuss it now and debate and seek those various amendments from those in the chamber. We need to debate those amendments seriously to see why they need to be included to improve the bill moving forward.

I am now going to mention those amendments. It is not to say we are right or you are wrong, it is to better the bill and improve the bill so that once it is legislated the community can have confidence that governments are putting legislation in their best interests forward and tackling crime and tackling repeat offenders. It is too often and too regularly that we see, sadly, on the news and in the papers repeat offenders being caught and then stating that they have been bailed and rebailed.

I know the government has been spinning a lot on this issue this week regarding its attempts to strengthen efforts against crime, using words like ‘tough on crime’ and ‘tough bail’, but we need to be positive in talking about these amendments to improve the bill and convince them to achieve the desired outcome. When we are in a crime crisis and this bill is trying to improve the law, any measures to strengthen the bill are a benefit and any amendments to strengthen the bill are a good thing.

As I stated initially, although this bill has holes in it, we will not stand against it passing. Nevertheless, we will attempt to make some amendments to better reform the bill moving forward. A lot of us have spoken many times in this chamber regarding strengthening bail. This is my sixth time in my short time in this place. As I have said and will relate again, bail as a concept is a fundamental principle of a free democratic society. It needs to be tough but fair. Legislators are elected by our communities to implement legislation and strike the right balance, which means engaging constructively with the community, who we hear from regularly, and also those across the benches in this chamber. Listen to concerns and understand that we need to make certain amendments to better this bill. Also I agree with many of my colleagues, and I mention it again, that bail is a privilege, not a right.

Before I finish off on this bill, I want to state that my colleague in the other place the Honourable Michael O’Brien has tried to introduce bills to strengthen bail laws, including reinstating the offence of contravening conduct conditions to commit indictable offences while on bail, on three separate occasions in the last 12 months, all of which have been knocked down by the government. Hopefully with these amendments put forward by us on this side of the chamber the government understands and embraces those amendments, as we are trying to improve the bill put forward to us in the chamber today. It is also a concern of Shadow Attorney-General Michael O’Brien that serious offences, including burglary and robbery, are not listed as schedule 1 but instead are schedule 2 offences, meaning an alleged offender receives the assumption of bail. Instead the applicant should need to justify and show compelling reasons why they should be granted bail, as I mentioned, when they are submitting an application. It makes no sense. It contradicts the Labor government’s claim that this is a tough new bail law.

I would be glad to see the commencement date of the bill brought forward from late September to the end of June. I hope the government understands that bringing this forward would address the issues that we are facing at the moment. It is clear that there are a lot of holes in this bill, but I urge the government again to plug those holes by accepting those amendments put forward by this side of the chamber and those who have spoken before me. In the last 30 seconds I want to mention that this bill has various loopholes, although it is going in the right direction, and we want to see that it tries to address certain concerns within the community.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.