I too rise to speak on the Youth Justice Bill 2024, and it is interesting to follow the member for Malvern. I do not know if I would describe him as a dinosaur, but I will say some kind words, which I know some of my colleagues will think are unkind words, really: the member for Malvern really is a Liberal through and through. And that is the great divide that is sitting here in this chamber when we are talking about really serious issues involving children.
[Interjection]
Kids, really young kids. I do want to before I begin my contribution tell a story, that last weekend I was talking to a bloke doing some work on a building site at my house. I will say, member for Malvern, he was not from my part of town, he was closer to yours. I did check that out. I always know who voters are when they come around to my patch. But listen, I will say –
[Interjection]
Well, I am a renter, so I hope they got three quotes – the landlord. But what I will say is that he was just a regular bloke, and we were talking about youth crime and youth justice and things that are happening and we were sort of having this big D & M about kids and raising kids and kids going off the rails and kids doing truly horrendous, appalling things to other kids and other adults, and things that we see in the papers in the community. I am not downplaying any of that. And then he sort of opened up and he told me a story about his 14-year-old stepson, who a couple of years ago had completely gone off the rails. He had gone from being completely normal, living in a fully functional household. He had gotten a girlfriend, his first girlfriend – completely random – and his girlfriend, it turned out, was a little bit older and she was on drugs. So there they are, the parents and the stepfather thinking, ‘My 14-year-old, he’s talking about a girl, wow,’ only to suddenly start getting calls – the first call he remembers quite clearly – from the police talking about his stepson getting involved with breaking into cars and looking for money, because it turned out the girlfriend was hooked on ice and had passed that appalling addiction and habit onto the 14-year-old stepson.
His wife was absolutely traumatised. He talked to me about how grateful he was that there were services – diversion services and rehabilitation services – that could deal with his stepson’s addiction, because they had never been addicted to anything in their lives. What a terrible thing that was to have happen to his family. But he was using the services and also working with some of the incredible police programs that are in place involving sport – no, this one was I think something to do with rope climbing. It was something really physical, really intensely difficult. He had to complete this program – he did it with a whole lot of other kids – but along the way he was being mentored by local police. This builder was just saying it was absolutely remarkable. His son is going on to finish year 12, I think. We were sort of having this big D & M, all starting from youth justice and crime. No-one wants to see the types of things happening in our community unfolding, and what we need to do is make sure that they are prevented in the very, very first place from ever happening. Those sorts of prevention measures, which I do not think have been talked about in this place today, certainly on that side of the chamber over there, start when a child is born.
To say that the Labor government has done nothing when it comes to preventing crime and youth crime in this state is absolutely outrageous, because the Minister for Children in the other place is doing a plethora of work. Millions are being spent. In fact I was with her on Monday. We were talking to maternal and child health nurses dealing with bubs in the first weeks after they are born, at home with high-risk, vulnerable families in my community. It was really sad talking about new mums and dads that have come from refugee backgrounds and have experienced all kinds of horrendous war trauma and appalling domestic violence and drug addiction. You wonder what kind of start these kids are going to have. That is in the first couple of thousand days. To say that we are doing nothing is absolutely outrageous. This bill is about locking down some of those things.
We want to see a system that works for everyone, and that is why talking about crime, youth justice and bail in this place always gets people’s backs up. They feel quite passionate about it, and I have no doubt that those on the other side of the chamber do feel really passionate about this. My concern time and time again is when we have these types of conversations, we need to have them with the reflection in our minds that every now and then the community is paying attention to what is happening here. I think that if anyone in this chamber took the time to right now get on their phone and check out what the Libs are putting up on their social media, it will be that terrible photo of someone in a hood, masked, doing something illegal. I really hope that those sitting opposite today – the member for Berwick and the member for Malvern; I know the member for Gippsland South would not be doing it – do not put up those kinds of crime pictures saying that Victoria is the most dangerous state to live in, because we know, through the data and the crime stats, that is simply not the case. That is the biggest problem when we talk about crime and when we bring bills like this Youth Justice Bill before the house: we cannot have a sensible, rational conversation.
In spite of all of this, I think that it is important to reiterate this to my community – I spend a lot of time listening to my community and having conversations with victims of crime, with perpetrators of crime and with the people providing the services to try and steer kids clear of getting involved in crime in the first place: I think that we should take some comfort from the fact that we do get some things right in this state when it comes to dealing with youth crime and youth offences. They are not always on the front page, and the likelihood of them being on the front page of local newspapers like the Herald Sun is quite rare; it would be telling a good news story. But they are important stories to tell the community, because they reassure the community that Victoria is not the most unsafe place to live; it is one of the greatest places to live.
As someone who was not born and bred in Victoria, in Melbourne, some people might call me an interloper. I hope they do not. There are many people in my community that I could call that. Melbourne in Victoria is a great place to live, and people choose to come here and be part of our communities and be part of neighbourhoods in the western suburbs that have indeed suffered from systemic social disadvantage for generation upon generation upon generation. So when we come into this place and we want to have a conversation about youth justice, youth crime, these are really complex issues. They should not have simple throwaway three-word slogans attached to them. As the member for Tarneit back in 2018 I had to fight an election with those opposite saying that Tarneit was the most unsafe place to live and raise a family. I think it was actually Peter Dutton who said that. He was on radio, maybe 3AW, saying the people in Tarneit were too scared to go out for dinner. Well, that is absolute rubbish because restaurants in Tarneit night after night are bloody well packed time and time again. But that kind of stigma, that kind of aspersion on a community like Tarneit, set back multicultural inclusivity and understanding differences. It set that back. There were families from our wonderful African community that said to me, ‘You will go to an election, you have talked about youth crime. The Libs have run on being tough on youth crime. But by saying that there is a gang crisis in Tarneit it is kids like my son and my daughter that will be targeted because of the colour of their skin.’
I do not want to see that happen again at the next election. A lot of these conversations and a lot of these slogans – and I guarantee you the social media posts of the Liberal Party will be going off like wildfire today – are detrimental to every community here in Victoria. They are detrimental; they are untrue. While we can talk about violent offences happening on our streets, we also need to be telling the community the truth. This is not the most unsafe state to live in. It is completely irresponsible of those opposite. I commend the bill to the house.
