Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I associate myself with the comments of the member for Isaacs but in so doing I share my concern with him about the way in which this issue has been politicised by the motion which is currently before this chamber. I would like to refer to a number of the comments that have just been made by the member for Chisholm. The member for Chisholm has outlined her concern around a range of crimes that have occurred that she has described. Of course any person shares the concern and the outrage associated with those crimes, the people who perpetrate them, and shares empathy, concern and consideration for those people who have been the victims of those crimes. But nothing is made safer, we do not make our communities safer by needlessly politicising areas of policy which do not require it and by seeking to make political mileage in circumstances which are blatant and crude, which is what we are seeing now.

The contributions that we are hearing from the other side in their description of the way in which Labor is behaving to the question of crime is just plainly wrong. The member for Chisholm is right in describing that there have been a number of measures which have been undertaken by the Turnbull government around counter-terrorism but all of them have been done in a bipartisan way with Labor. We are the party that has ensured that all of this has been placed above the political fray so that we can be acting in the national interest to make Australians safer. That is actually what we need to be doing across the board.

In my constituency there is a real concern around the question of crime, as there would be in constituencies all over the country. That can be from the reports we see in the news in relation to acts of terrorism, to serious crimes people are also watching on the news, to smaller crimes such as graffiti people see around their neighbourhood. All of that is a matter for concern. What makes people feel far less safe in their house is when matters are needlessly politicised for political gain and when the positions of both parties—the position of Labor, in this case—are being totally misrepresented around the question of dealing with crime.

Here are the stats. We see in this motion a suggestion that there has been a 13.4 per cent increase in crime—which in fact is not right—over the last financial year. The increase is around just four per cent. Indeed, there has been a stabilisation in relation to significant crime, where the offence rate has risen by only 2.5 per cent in the last financial year. Bear in mind, Deputy Speaker, that throughout every year of the former Liberal government we saw an increase in crime. In terms of the total amount of crime there was a 21 per cent increase during the period of the last Liberal government, and a 14 per cent increase in terms of the rate of crime. So if we are actually going to look at stats the reality is that crime rose during the last Liberal government. It has been stabilised under this government.

We hear claims suggesting that parole is easy in Victoria and that the Victorian government and judicial system is soft on parole. Yet the reality is that from the time of the Napthine government the number of those on parole has dropped from 1,700 to 800—more than halving the number of people who are on parole. That occurs by making it far harder to get parole. We also need to bear in mind that parole plays an important role within our society and within our corrections system by providing an incentive for those who are within the corrections system to behave more appropriately, as well as giving rise to more graduated integration of those who have left the correctional system into our society. I do not think anyone is suggesting that we should be doing away with parole. The reality is that compared to the situation as it was during the last Liberal government the situation in Victoria is far tougher in respect of parole numbers now.

Add to that the fact that under the Victorian government's community safety statement made in December last year we have seen a $2 billion investment into new officers and resources throughout Victoria—the single biggest investment in Victoria Police's history. In my constituency, in Geelong, what that has given rise to is 32 new police and a whole range of programs which have involved increased resources, increased patrols across the Bellarine and in the Geelong CBD, and an additional $700,000 being provided to specific intervention programs to work with young people who are at risk of offending.

There is a lot of work being done in relation to this. It is absolutely essential that we take the politics out of this issue. (Time expired)

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