I recall before the end of last year speaking to a constituent of mine who lives in Truganina with his family; it was a really difficult phone call. He was a victim of a terrible, terrible aggravated burglary where there were two individuals who broke into his home and threatened his family with machetes to steal his car. I recall this incident ended up being reported on Channel 9, and sadly I acknowledge that this incident is not one that is isolated in my local community. Youth crime is very real, and I do not shy away from talking about it with my community. We know that it is at the highest level we have seen since 2009 for offenders between – really sadly – the ages of 14 and 17 years. As of September last year there was 133 offenders under the age of 18 years who had more than 25 alleged offender incidents recorded against them. Sixty-four per cent of aggravated burglary offenders are currently under the age of 20. Those stats are pretty awful. They are not ones that anyone in this house should feel proud to stand up and repeat. It is these criminal incidents – repeat burglaries, home invasions and carjackings – that we are targeting with these bail reforms.

I want to be very clear: we do not want to go back to a system where people are left languishing on bail for months for minor offences like shoplifting. We do not want to see a situation like what happened to Veronica Nelson, who died whilst in remand for a simple case of shoplifting. We do not want to see vulnerable communities, including CALD and Indigenous communities, reprimanded for minor offences, and we will not be drawn into warped ideas about locking up people for being poor. Non-scheduled offences will continue to have a presumption in favour of bail being granted, and the framework for magistrates to consider a person’s Indigenous heritage will remain in place. I reiterate that it is our government’s focus to prevent crime before it happens by diverting potential offenders away from the justice system in the first place; that is so important and is work that we will continue to do. We should not forget that a lot of these youth offenders come from vulnerable backgrounds. These are conversations I have in my community; we know they come from vulnerable backgrounds. They are usually the victims of or witnesses to family violence. Their families may experience homelessness or housing stress. There is substance abuse. There are all kinds of factors that we know contribute to criminal behaviour at any age.

These are things that we have known for a very, very long time. That is why crime prevention programs and youth diversion programs – like the great ones run by Junubi Wyndham and Le Mana Pasifika, for example – are so important in engaging vulnerable young people from African and Islander backgrounds in my local community, because as much as we talk about these criminal incidents, for every repeat youth offender there are two or three more that have been diverted away and do not commit crimes in the first place. This is something that this place should acknowledge but those opposite continue to ignore and never, ever stand and speak about the incredible work that those people are doing in their communities and here in Victoria. It is absolutely critical that we continue to support and invest in these kinds of programs, because we know that they work.

That being said, it is clear that there is more to do and a line has to be drawn for those serious offenders whom these programs have not reached, have not worked for or are never going to work for. It is these criminal acts that we are looking at with this bill. It is breaking into homes and terrorising parents and their children. They scar families for life and they take away a sense of safety, and for some they never actually ever recover from the trauma.

These laws are intended to strike hard at this behaviour. The bill will do exactly this by making the following changes. It is going to raise a number of offences from schedule 2 to schedule 1 offences under the Bail Act 1977, including armed robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion and carjacking. This is also going to mean that these acts are considered some of the most serious criminal offences when it comes to bail, and they will have a presumption against bail being granted by a magistrate unless the accused can show very tough exceptional circumstances to justify bail being granted. The bill is also going to amend the bail test for schedule 2 offences, which includes serious firearm offences; serious arson; committing an offence with a controlled weapon, like a machete; or indeed theft of a vehicle. These changes will mean that when a person is charged with these kinds of offences they will have a presumption against bail being granted on their first offence unless they can show compelling reasons to justify bail being granted.

These changes reflect the serious nature of these offences and the community’s expectation that committing these crimes is unacceptable in any circumstance. The bill will bring back the offences of committing an indictable offence while on bail and breaching a bail condition without reasonable excuse. These offences are going to have a maximum penalty of up to three months imprisonment or 30 penalty units, which means just roughly under $6000. These are for indictable offences, many of which carry a sentence of imprisonment, so these offences will recognise, punish and, importantly, deter a person who is currently on bail from knowingly committing a further offence while awaiting trial.

Finally, these new laws will make a big change to the decision-making principles to reduce the risk of reoffending and ensure that the bail system meets the expectations of our community. This bill will enshrine community safety as the overarching principle for all bail decisions. It is meant to be a clear and an unambiguous signal that community safety comes first. When considering whether a person is granted bail, we must consider whether they are likely to continue to pose a risk to the safety of the community – in other words, are they likely to reoffend again?

In addition to this, the bill will also remove the principle of remand as a last resort. Under the current legislation an accused youth offender is remanded only as a last resort. For offences like the ones we are talking about here today this will no longer be the case. How the system will work now is if a young person is accused of a schedule 1 or 2 offence, the bail magistrate – I note that we recently appointed a new magistrate precisely to deal with youth offenders – will consider not only the safety of the community in making decisions on bail but, most importantly, whether the person is likely to go ahead and reoffend again and risk that safety.

This bill is the first step forward in ensuring that Victoria has one of the toughest bail laws in the country when it comes to serious offences. Communities like mine in Melbourne’s west want to see that community safety is front and centre of our bail laws, and that is exactly what this bail bill is doing. We are cracking down on serial youth offenders who engage in serious crimes like carjackings, home invasions, aggravated burglaries and armed robberies, which leave families absolutely traumatised and scarred from these incidents. But we have drawn a line in the sand, and it is now very, very clear: if you are someone who commits these kinds of offences and thinks you can keep doing it again and again, you can think again, because more likely than not under the new system there will be a presumption of bail against you and you will likely be remanded.

While our government continues to do the great work before us to ensure that crimes are not committed in the first place and make sure that our community not only are safe in practice but feel safe in their homes and in our communities, we are getting on and putting through the legislation that will indeed not only make our communities safer but make people feel safe in their own home in their own neighbourhoods. This is an incredibly important bill. I commend the ministers who have been involved in this power of work. This has not been an easy thing to do. I do commend the ministers, and I wholeheartedly commend the bill to the house.