Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025

Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Second Reading
26 August, 2025

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

I rise to speak on the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025, and I would like to start out by echoing the comments of my colleague Rachel Payne that everyone has a right to feel safe in their homes or in the streets. This is a very live issue in my electorate.

A recent survey by the RACV and Neighbourhood Watch focused on how safe people feel in their homes. People in Western Metro recorded the state’s lowest safety rating. They are concerned about home invasions and carjackings, as residents have been increasingly subjected to these terrifying crimes. So we are in no way discounting those people’s concerns or dismissing their fears. They are entirely legitimate, and I am sure that sentiment is shared by all my colleagues in the Legislative Council.

Where there is not such unanimity is how as a society we respond to these crimes and these perfectly reasonable concerns. In our view and that of a wide cross-section of the legal fraternity, the police, community leaders and community workers these new laws, the Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025 and the one before today, are reactionary responses to complex issues which will push more young people through the revolving door of disadvantage and incarceration.

The government claims its first tranche of reforms are working. The Premier stated:

… the changes we made earlier this year … are already working. The number of bail revocations and people on remand has increased.

If the goal were to simply lock up more people, then you could say that those laws are working. However, if they are supposed to reduce crime and make our communities safer, then we have to say, as I think most of the community would say, they are not working at all. The Premier went on to say:

… we’re … bringing more prison beds online … almost 1,000 additional adult prison beds will open … and a further 88 beds will open at Cherry Creek and Parkville youth justice facilities.

I find the Premier’s enthusiasm for bringing more prison beds online quite depressing and, frankly, deeply frustrating, because evidence shows us that jailing young people does not decrease crime or enhance community safety.

We are not the only state in Australia to go down the ‘lock ‘em up’ tough-on-crime route instead of addressing the underlying factors that see young people ending up in the criminal justice system. The Northern Territory government is very big on jailing young people – very, very tough on crime. Indeed, if the Northern Territory were a country, it would have the second highest incarceration rate in the world, second only to El Salvador and well above Russia, China or the US, and surely no-one wants to be at the top of that particular ladder.

The NT recently amended its youth justice laws to remove detention as a last resort for children, despite overwhelming evidence that it inflicts profound harm on children and inevitably sets them up for re-offending. But with all those bad kids in jail it must be the safest place in Australia. Well, sadly, no. There is no evidence that putting more people in jail reduces the crime rate or makes the community safer, and the Northern Territory is a case in hand.

In New South Wales we have more proof of the failure of detention to create safer communities. In 2024 the Minns government – in another example of headline-grabbing, tough-on-crime posturing trumping evidence-based policy – introduced its own reforms to its Bail Act 2013.

Warned that it would increase prison populations – namely, with more vulnerable children, who are already over-represented in the justice system – and do nothing to prevent crime, New South Wales passed legislation which made it harder for children to get bail than adults. A year later the results are in: youth detention rates have increased by 34 per cent in just two years, with nearly 60 per cent being Aboriginal. Do the good burghers of Sydney feel any safer as a result? Of course not.

Every jurisdiction that has adopted tough on crime bail laws for children has seen higher rates of children detained and higher rates of reoffending, with no improvement in community safety. If people are not moved by the trauma inflicted by these policies on vulnerable, over-represented communities, maybe the very high price tag will bring a tear to their eyes. We know that young people who end up in the criminal justice system are far more likely to experience greater levels of poverty, social and economic exclusion, family violence and housing insecurity.

Of course people need to be held accountable for their actions, including children. It is not about minimising crime or its impact, but we cannot keep funnelling young people through the justice system only to spit them out into the same cycle of disadvantage that led to their offending in the first place and that will most certainly lead to reoffending. We need community-led solutions for the things that actually do build community safety.

One thing that does help and is certainly a damn sight cheaper than locking kids up is keeping them in school. I have seen this figure so many times, and it never ceases to blow my mind: it costs $7500 a day to keep a child in detention and $6000 a year to have them in school.

I have spoken before about Target Zero, a program aimed at ending the criminalisation of vulnerable young people in Brimbank, Melton and Wyndham and reducing their over-representation in the criminal justice system to zero. Project 100 runs concurrently with Target Zero, with the goal of 100 per cent year 12 completion, and there is no doubt that there is a correlation between these two percentages.

Foundational supports that address the drivers of crime lead to greater community safety and a reduction in crime. Better supports for schooling, drug and alcohol dependency, mental health, family violence, and homelessness – alas, we never seem to find the money, but it is blindingly obvious that these are better and cheaper alternatives to building and staffing jails – $7500 a day to detain a young person, $6000 a year to educate them.

Another cost-effective way to reduce crime in my electorate is to fund the Wyndham Law Courts precinct for its full suite of therapeutic court lists. It will be to the detriment of the whole community if Wyndham opens without them. The government committed to a range of therapeutic courts, including a drug court and a Koori court, in the 2021 budget, but it is unclear whether these specialist courts will ever be resourced, despite being cheaper to run than mainstream courts and effective in reducing recidivism.

It is profoundly depressing that these amendments will pass and become law, but at least we knew that we were in for it this time around – it is no less disappointing, however. These new measures will not make the community one jot safer. To quote that most eloquent of American baseball players Yogi Berra, ‘Oh no, it’s deja vu all over again.’ I like the irony of that quote given this legislation introduces a second-strike rule, a whimsical coincidence in this discussion but a tragedy for the marginalised communities who will be traumatised by that rule and the consequent uplift provisions. We need to stop seeing this as a binary issue – tougher policing and harsh justice versus therapeutic and restorative measures.

For all the shrill headlines about youth crime wave epidemics, we are talking about maybe a couple of hundred kids who are recidivists and who are generally known to the police. I might add that I am very heartened by the fresh approach to policing that our new Chief Commissioner of Police is seeking to bring to the force. In the past we have seen police taskforces established to deal with these particular cohorts instead of passing sweeping laws that disproportionately impact upon a broad swathe of vulnerable people, but perhaps those sorts of solutions do not lend themselves readily to pithy, biting sound bites.

My colleague has circulated an amendment to include a sunset clause in the bill to review the high degree of probability test after three years, and we will support further amendments requiring additional safeguards for vulnerable and over-represented groups. We do not support the government’s bill. There are effective and proven ways to reduce crime and keep communities safe. The bill before us today contains none of these.

[Council divided on Bill]

[Bill passed 28 votes to 6]