Bail Amendment (Tough Bail) Bill 2025

18 March, 2025

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (15:43): I rise to speak on this bill because community safety is my first priority, as I have been very clear to my community. As the member for Morwell was suggesting, it is important that we listen to our constituents. I have listened to mine, and I know that the Minister for Police and the Attorney-General have listened to me and other members of this government who are representing their communities and their imperative for safer communities that they represent. I want to thank community leaders within my community as well as constituents. I speak with hundreds every week, whether that is doorknocking or at street stalls or in the context of community meetings that I regularly facilitate, and I have heard very strongly people’s expectations that they will live in safe communities, that it is unacceptable for a perception or a reality of a revolving door where young people, and other people generally, thumb their noses at the premise that bail, as the member for Bayswater said, is a privilege not a right, where people do not appreciate that privilege, where they perpetrate additional crimes having already been bailed and where they place the entirety of our community at risk.

I also want to thank the police in my community, who are working tirelessly, as well as many other agencies, to keep my community safe. As the Minister for Police said in his contribution, the police are making more arrests than ever before. They have been given more resources by this government than ever before. But there has been an issue whereby magistrates and others in the court system have not implemented bail laws in the way that has been intended. It is very important, therefore, that we make these reforms to the Bail Act 1977 to ensure that community safety comes first.

It is important to have wraparound services that additionally seek to be tough on the causes of crime. I worked as a teacher, as I know a number of people in this house did, and one of the most rewarding dimensions of that work was working with young people who did not necessarily have positive adult role models in other dimensions of their life and who were at risk of being swayed, being pushed into habits which were really destructive to them and the community around them. Working through schools and also as a coach and as a committee member of lots of community sports clubs along the way, I saw how those forums of community – schools, sporting clubs and, in my own community now in Greenvale, churches, mosques, youth groups – build social capital, they build connections, they enable young people to be exposed to positive adult role models that they may not have in other dimensions of their life, and it keeps them out of the systems that we do not want them to be in.

As the Leader of the Nationals said, we do not want to be locking up young people. It is not the starting proposition of this place or of a civilised society. However, ultimately those who commit crimes and inflict misery on communities as older teenagers, as adults, they do have agency. We accept that young children are not fully able to comprehend the consequences or the impact of their actions, and that is fully reflected in very ancient legal principles – doli incapax, which we have already talked about in recent debates in this place. At a certain point, however, individuals are responsible for their actions and the impact they have upon the communities around them. Ultimately it is residents in my community whose homes have been invaded or whose cars have been stolen, the law-abiding business owners and the retail workers who are threatened and/or whose livelihoods are taken away and the community members whose lives are threatened or even tragically taken – they are the real victims of crime and they are the people who we need to be representing and advocating for today. That is why this bill, the first tranche of reforms at least which will see Victoria adopting the toughest bail laws in Australia, is so important.

I acknowledge the comments of the Shadow Attorney-General, and I have listened to the contributions of others on that side, and the substantive opposition with the bill seems to be with nomenclature rather than the policy dimensions, and so I am awaiting where these additional ideas are coming from. We have had a lot of challenge and exception to the title, but where are these measures which they believe would be additional to the bill which will already bring in the toughest bail laws in the country? I look forward to hearing those, but I have not so far.

Contrary to the Shadow Attorney-General’s suggestion, this bill is all about addressing repeat offenders who breach bail, who break bail. We are making it an offence to commit an offence on bail and an offence to breach a bail condition. The bill more broadly, as I have said, will better protect the community from repeat and serious offending by introducing the toughest bail laws in the country. The current system, in particular in relation to high-harm, repeat and serious offending, has not been tough enough and does not adequately protect victims, families or the community I represent, nor the expectations of the community that I represent and the victims who are subject to crime. We must place community safety first, and in doing so we are removing the principle of remand as a last resort to prioritise community safety.

I want to thank, as I said, the Minister for Police and the Attorney-General, but I also want to thank the Minister for Corrections and Minister for Youth Justice for his commitment to ensuring that we have the capacity and the wraparound supports that we need to rehabilitate and to support young people and others who are convicted of crime or who find themselves on remand. I do note, as the member for Laverton said in her contribution, that remand is not a punishment in itself. It is a tool that is there to keep the community safe until that person has the opportunity to go before the courts and to be tried by a jury of their peers or by the appropriate judge for the action, the crime, of which they are accused. But that principle of community safety has to be the core of the bail system and the system of remand, so it is important that we have capacity in our remand system for the increased number of people on remand that we will expect to see as a result of these changes. But as I say, I make no apology for that. Community safety must come first on all bail decisions, and remand is no longer a last resort. These laws will remove that principle of bail as a last resort, because it has been I think improperly applied in some instances, without wishing to impugn any member of the judiciary. The use of that provision has not been in keeping with community expectation, and that has I think a very corrosive effect on the trust that the public have in the legal system more broadly. That is a real concern, so it is important that we get that right.

I want to thank people like the member for Bayswater, who brings a really expert perspective to debates like this, having been a police officer serving our community and also acted as a police prosecutor. As he mentioned in his contribution, we are amending schedule 2 of the Bail Act so that people charged with a number of very high risk offences will have a presumption against bail on their first offence, unless they can show compelling reasons to justify bail. That includes serious firearm offences; serious arson; committing an offence involving a controlled weapon, including machete violence, prohibited weapon or offensive weapon; and vehicle theft when co-charged with conduct endangering life, conduct endangering persons, failure to stop or possession of a prohibited weapon or controlled weapon. There must also be consequences for the breach of bail. As I have said, bail rules should not be broken. There must be consequences for breaking the rules, and this bill, the amendment of the Bail Act 1977, will introduce the offence of committing an indictable offence while on bail and breaching a condition of bail without reasonable excuse.

In making my contribution on this bill I am mindful of a particular case. While seeking to avoid any commentary that could possibly be construed as sub judice, there is a specific case that I am very mindful of when making my contribution. Having spoken at length and listened to the loved ones of a young man called Will Taylor, who lost his life last year, I am extremely cognisant of their pain at his tragic loss and the treatment of the young person accused of having caused his death in its aftermath. I will not talk about the specifics – I think I need to avoid any comment that is sub judice – but as I have just indicated, schedule 2 of the Bail Act will be reformed to ensure that people charged with offences in that category must satisfy a bail decision maker that a compelling reason exists to justify the granting of bail. It is unacceptable that there are offenders out on bail stealing cars and using them to endanger the public. It is unacceptable, and it will stop as a consequence of this bill. Additions to schedule 2 will also ensure that people who are charged with that theft of the motor vehicle – with the provisions that I mentioned earlier – will need to show a compelling reason to justify their release on bail.

In concluding my remarks, I believe that these changes will make Victoria and Victorians safer, including the constituents I represent, who I have listened to, who I have spoken with and whose positions, including that of my own, I have advocated to the Minister for Police and the Attorney-General. I commend this bill to the house. I hope that those opposite will enable it to have a swift passage.