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What I've Learnt - David Southwick MP · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as Shadow Minister for Police and Corrections in Victoria and also for Youth Justice, David Southwick, MP, member for Caulfield, is in a very important role, particularly with crime reaching the highest level on record in Victoria.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Criminal incidents have reached their highest record figures since the commencement of reporting in 2004.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Police respond to a family violence incident call every five minutes.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Residential aggravated burglaries increased by 24%, with 19 homes a day in Victoria being violently invaded in the year to September 2024.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Motor vehicle theft rose by 33% in the year to September 24, meaning a car is stolen in Victoria every 20 minutes.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm thrilled to welcome David Southwick, MP, to the What I've Learned podcast.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, David.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Great to be with you, Dave.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've actually known David for quite a long time, somewhat arm's length though, but uh I must say the work you're doing, David, is pretty extraordinary, but also pretty challenging.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at some of the stats which I have mentioned in the introduction.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, crimes reached the highest level on record in Victoria.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh criminal incidents have reached uh record figures, and basically, I mean, even things like I was reading, uh, police respond to a family violence incident call every five minutes.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what is going on with our beautiful state that you and I have both grown up in?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: What do you put this down to?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think is happening?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's really interesting because Melbourne, as you know, for so many years was known as the world's most livable city.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the measures for that is safety.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they actually have that in the measures when they judge uh judge cities and states.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we've lost that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's probably one of the most key important things that everybody expects a government to do is to keep their communities, keep their neighborhoods safe.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've had now of um just on 25 years, 21 of those years has been with Labour governments, and Labour have had a very different approach to crime than what we would have.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it, don't get me wrong, I've I've I've had a number of years, which you probably know, working with kids at risk, and we can talk about that later, in dealing with causes of crime.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the government have kind of moved in this really more left of center approach where they keep giving people excuses for committing these crimes.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, when there are no consequences, people keep stretching the boundaries.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got to a point, particularly with young people, where some young offenders have been bailed 50 times, and these are serious offences.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just you know, where the likes of turning up uh in someone's home in the middle of the night with a machete standing over their bed and they're bailed again.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not talking about those that steal a Mars bar, that's a very different situation, or somebody that is doing something, you know, steal a bike or something, which is a smaller crime.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it needs to get onto that early so they don't graduate some more serious crime.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: But we've got a situation in Victoria where it's just got to a point where we used to have one home invasion from a from a young offender every three days.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're having three home invasions every day, and that's in the last decade.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's tripled and and so it's serious crime, the stuff that keeps people up at night, which has really caused a real problem and concern for the community.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose there's a few factors.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's the cause, what has what has changed?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let's maybe talk to that initially, and then we can talk about ways.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, bail laws is a huge issue, and I saw the late, you know, they announced yesterday leading into the election that they're going to change bail laws.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: We'll come, we'll come to that.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about the cause.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think our beautiful city and sort of surrounds is being sort of inundated?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: What do you put this down to?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you is there is there some other than obviously there's a change in the in the way the government has dealt with it as opposed to how you'd prefer to deal with it, there must be a change in the cause.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes all the way back into our education system.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got young people that the the education that they're being provided doesn't meet their um requirements, then uh they divert into other areas.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you can actually track truancy rates of kids that are dropping out at very, very young ages and not attending school to what they then do.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of this might be boredom.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: There is, I just met with somebody today actually looking at some of the community programs to try and help kids keep on the right track.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also an issue in terms of mental health, uh, there is disability.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So a large group of kids that might be an age of, say, 15 or 16 have a mental capacity of about seven.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: So these young people haven't provided the services at the early age.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the earlier you can deal with young people in providing them the support systems and the care, the more chance they've got of being able to intervene and get them into a better life.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: One of the big factors is to look at how many kids that are committing crime in that are in residential care.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So they're being supported outside of uh a family, and for whatever reason, their parents have having different lots of situations, so they're in residential care, and in that instance, they've got half a dozen really bad role models, and they're bored, they don't go to school, and ultimately they're out there committing crimes.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the change is particularly now than what we saw maybe a decade ago, a lot of these offenders used to do it because they needed the money.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're doing it because they need the notoriety.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got this thing at the moment which is called post and boast.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas years ago, a young person might break into your home, steal your keys, take the car, and sell the car for money.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what they do is exactly the same thing: steal a car, drive it as fast as they can, videoing themselves behind the wheel of a car.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: When they're finished, they might set fire to it and actually take a video of that and put it online and they get celebrity status from doing that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Very different now to what it used to be, but unfortunately, unfortunately, the consequences are the same, and it leaves a family, a young kid, those people that are sleeping at night in what they would used to think was a safe environment, feeling um traumatized for years.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: The impacts on the victims of crime in all of these issues are just untold.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've had so many young people and families that have come to me and said, say their daughters, their sons just don't sleep any night anymore anymore.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's taken them years to pick up the pieces because of the home invasion that they've had.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's interesting because we've also got this sort of high, I mean, that is a very relevant point.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I mean, I do a lot of work with the World Literacy Foundation.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I do a podcast for them as well.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And literacy and illiteracy and education is sort of critical to make sure that people have access to.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you touched on that, that the impact of them not having access to certain education or or certainly choosing not to have access has an impact.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like that flow on is that they're then ill-equipped to deal with the world.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's they don't have to do that.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't need to be the standard education that you and I had.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what what and this is where it's failing is one size doesn't fit all.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got to find things that actually engage a young person.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I was told about six young offenders today, actually, that were committing horrendous crimes.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: They were taken away by three youth workers.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: The total cost of the program was$200,000 over 12 months for three youth workers.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And these young offenders literally rebuilt motorbikes and then went into motorbike racing and all the rest of it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And these young offenders that were committing crime after crime didn't commit a crime again because they found a purpose, they found something they enjoyed doing, and they kept themselves busy.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, but we need to actually think about what we can do.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the flip side of that, when we stick a young person in a used detention facility at the moment, it costs about$9,000 a day, over$2 million a year for one offender.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's largely because there's fixed costs and everything, and there's not a lot of young people in them.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: But think what you could do with a tenth of that money in providing support services, programs, opportunities for young people that will keep them busy, keep them passionate, and engage them to be good citizens rather than what they're choosing at the moment.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a that's a great example.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose lateral thinking, thinking outside the square is what you're saying, is very critical because not everybody has access to traditional educational resources.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a very good example.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also there's a lot of areas where we need young people to be trained and to be, you know, like trades and various things where you don't have to necessarily be on the trajectory of a traditional education.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think that is starting to change and what can be implemented?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is there funding towards this?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is there some sort of do we need private sector involvement?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: You pick an Alan ahead.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So my biggest, biggest bugbear with all of this is all of the, not all of it, but a lot of the work that's done in this space is created an industry.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost a good thing for people that are working in these sectors that you have young people that constantly need their help and they're not making that change.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not to say everybody's like that, but it's it's a number of these big agencies that are getting millions and millions of dollars from government to run these programs.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: What I want to see is grassroots stuff, really grassroots approaches.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And where I see the change, and you and I would have seen this in so many in our communities and what have you, particularly where philanthropy turns around and say, I'm gonna back this, and it could be a home grown food program, I'm gonna back this because I know the organization, I know who they're connecting with, and we can measure their outcomes.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the approach that I'm looking for is actually where philanthropy and community are backing something, that's when government should roll in behind it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So government don't leave it to them to pick winners and losers.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let the community and the grassroots pick the programs that make the difference.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you talk about Aboriginal communities that and they they represent probably about a third of youth offenders.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's huge.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, don't have white fellas running the programs.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get some indigenous um leaders that are working on these programs and let's measure it.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Let's have them outcome-driven and let's make them um more responsive to what the needs of young people are.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's that's also a good point.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, at the end of the day, that's going to serve everybody's needs, particularly if they're not getting that they don't connect.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, the Currie Court, which has been established, is interesting because that's dealing with, because actually my mother, who was a magistrate, was involved in setting that up.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually an extraordinary way of dealing with things differently.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about the indigenous community, but that's a particular example of that, where if there is crime committed, it's dealt with differently than in the traditional system.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So a little bit of tailor-making and and being and saying they the way it works, I don't know if you know about the curry court, but it's amazing.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you have an offender, yeah, and they come in and then they actually have an elder that comes in and sort of speaks to them in a much more communal and uh inclusive way and then works with police to deal with ways that could be, is it therist jurisprudence, they call it, where it's where you actually it's it's more about guidance, opportunity, healing rather than punitive.
• 12:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Correct?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and look, I mean, I was involved before way before politics when I had um my cosmetics business called the body collection.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: We gave 10% of our profits to different causes.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I came across Rdoc Youth Foundation, which you're probably aware of.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was involved in RDoc for a number of years and on their board.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Rdoc didn't rely on government funding, it relied on um community, uh uh corporate funding.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: We used to run programs with law firms that would be literacy buddies to kids at school.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the law firms would get reward for it because they would have a more of a positive engagement rather than just turning up to work every day.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids would get great reward because they had a role model.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they're the kinds of things that they need to leverage in sport.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just common sense, makes sense.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think government uh do that stuff.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're not judged.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's not out, none of this stuff is outcome-driven.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it needs a better approach into what we're doing that is real outcome-driven, has a community wraparound service around it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, the flip side of this is there are some serious offenders that need to be uh put up in put in a youth detention facility because they've had a number of chances and they're mucked up, and there's the community safety needs to be first and foremost there.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there is that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing for me too is I've got another portfolio which is um Youth Justice.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, youth justice, which is kind of what we've been talking about.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I've got youth and future leaders, which is the positive part of all these fantastic, our future, all these young people that are doing such wonderful things.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it all kind of intertwines, and I'd like to have something, I'm really keen, maybe people listening to your podcast might have some ideas, but where everyone has a mentor.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd love to be able to have people have career mentors, life mentors, kids, peer mentors, a kid from an older um cohort mentoring a younger kid.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Having somebody outside the family unit being able to support younger people all the way through in their journey, I think would be so powerful.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so they're the kinds of things that I want to look at doing differently, and I really want to focus on that aspiration and empowerment piece.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, they're the kind of things that I'm staying to work on at the moment.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think dovetails really well into the other side of it, with it, which is youth justice.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so coming back to obviously there's a lot of uh where we started, which was a lot of very scared and angry residents who are really not sure what's happening in the crime wave that we're seeing.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: The bail laws, as you mentioned early on, um, I saw that there was obviously a change in those yesterday, or you know, the Labour government are saying they're going to like finally deal with some of that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: What's your take on that?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think what do you see as some of the solutions for the hard-nosed crime wave that we're seeing at the moment?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, other than, you know, if we do a full circle back, what what do we need to do?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because it's urgent.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually urgent.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So some of these other things are long-term and they're strategies and we can implement them.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what are sort of the coal-face stuff we can start to implement?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Queensland, when the Liberals won the Queensland election, they went to the election uh last year with adult crime, adult time.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And pretty much what that implies is if you've got a young person and they are committing serious crime against the person, then they're judged that way.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what you're doing when you're turning up uh with a machete in somebody's home in the middle of the night, standing over their bed and threatening that particular individual.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where it does need to be consequences.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the government have taken away all kinds of tests and everything else.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other issue that's been happening is there used to be a test if somebody offends similar while they're on bail, then they have to prove why they shouldn't be bailed again.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that was removed 12 months ago.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they had removals of a number of bail laws to weaken the bail laws, which has had the intended consequences of opening the floodgates.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got a whole lot of people where judges have said, oh well, uh the likelihood of them not offending again, they're we're better off just putting them out into community, and and they and they give them all these chances, if you like.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids know it know it.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the other issue is these young offenders are pretty well networked as well.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: We had one young offender that was again, he was driving at 200 kilometres an hour, stupid speed limits, and again stole a car, knife crime attack as well.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And his comments were, I will be released out in the streets before the police officer finishes their shift, and knew that that's the way the system works, and literally just, you know, put the middle finger to the government and said, You're not going to do anything.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So come and get me.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's unfortunately because there hasn't been those consequences.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Kids know, and kids work it out.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're using social media in a bad way.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's very well organized, what they need to say, what they need to do to get off uh and get onto bail and to be let out again.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the government, because of peer group pressure, or community pressure, sorry, and and also we've had three attempts to try and bring in private members' bill into parliament to strengthen our bail laws, and the government's rejected it.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: So finally, I think the government's worked out that if they don't do something, it's just gonna get into a horrible, horrible, not that it's already a mess, but even worse.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other side of it is we've been pushing for a ban on machetes.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And today the government's come out and said that they're gonna finally ban these machetes.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we had four members' bills, private members' bills, I think over 420 days ago was the first time we tried to introduce a bill in parliament to ban these machetes and the government rejected it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can imagine if these were banned 420 days ago, you meant it would meant that you couldn't buy these machetes at the Dandel Market, Laberdan Market, Anaconda, so which they can buy them now.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you can buy a machete for 50 bucks, 70 bucks, uh, walk, walk in the middle of the day with it in your backpack and do whatever crime you want to do.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's just crazy.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's no need for these dangerous weapons, and that's why we've been pushing to have them banned in Victoria.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think that would proceed, that ban?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so as I say, we're we've been we've pushed the government into doing this, and finally they've said today that they're going to do it.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: There was uh a bill before the parliament last week, and I tried to have that amended to have them banned last week, and they they kind of scoffed at that only to today say they're now going to do it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's actually a good example of the opposition being able to do something by keep pushing, uh, which we'll continue to do.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we now need to know what the details are and how it'll be worked out.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: The um the claim is that the government will have machetes banned in Victoria by December of this year, and there'll be an amnesty to hand these machetes back into police stations and what have you.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll have to see what that works, and that includes knives over 20 centimetres.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that goes some way to dealing with things along with strengthened pay laws.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: But then the other issue, which uh is not talked about, is that in strengthening laws, you need money, and the government's run out of money and they're not spending money on things that you need.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a really basic issue.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about your mother before in terms of um in the courts, right?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the biggest problems with bail is because of the clogging up of courts, what should take eight weeks or 12 weeks for a case to be heard could take six to 12 months.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got a person, young or old, being remanded for that period.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: At that stage of the game, people have forgotten a bit of evidence.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: That person can't get programs and support.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And even worse, let's say they've been remanded for 12 months and they end up getting found guilty for six months and get a six-month, six-month um sentence.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: They've served six months when they shouldn't have.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the clogging up of the courts, so you need money to unclog the courts, and the government's actually taken money out of the court system.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: They've taken money out of the prisons, they're about to close Port Phillip prisons, 600 beds.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So when these bail laws come in, they will probably have a shortage of up to 600 people.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: The Northern Territory did this a few months ago, and they've got prisoners sleeping on the floor because they've run out of prison beds.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: So because the government haven't thought this through, that's an unintended consequence.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the last thing is our police, the government has said to police, in a crime crisis, we want you to save$1.9 billion out of the police budget and not remove frontline police.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: The annual budget's$4 billion.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they want to save about 12% off the police budget.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: The police couldn't do that, and we saw a sacking of a police commissioner as a result of him stepping up and asking for these changes to happen.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in the middle of a crime crisis, you need to spend money at these things to get it right.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the government are making these announcements, but we're really concerned that you won't have the prison beds, you won't have the court flow, and ultimately you won't have the police to do their job.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: So ultimately, you're not going to get the um the success that one would hope going forward.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and that then at the same time, and we won't go into this, but the government's wasting money on suburban rail loops and billions and billions of dollars of other projects.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think, and I'll be interested again to what your listeners think, but I think if you don't feel safe, then a lot of other things don't matter.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean you've got you you really I mean, safety is is I mean, I was as I mentioned earlier on, I mean, the other thing that's quite scary and and quite confronting is the increase in family violence incidents.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: What are you seeing any?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was reading here, um there's a family violence incident call every five minutes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is that That that's actually insane.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And really quite terrifying with all of the sort of domestic violence awareness, all of this.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there is a lot out there now that never used to be.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, are you seeing any change in that arena?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's uh it's only getting and that's the reported stuff, because there's still a lot of unreported um family violence cases.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and police are stretched, they're they're just not getting to a number of these incidents.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you're seeing, we saw that particularly in the likes of, say, the lockdowns, right?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where you had um perpetrators that were locked down in with the, say, the wife or partner, the victim.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that was just horrible during that time.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not getting any better.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there isn't a holistic approach to a lot of this kind of stuff.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And police, even though they've got dedicated family violence units, uh, it's still not making a dent in the problem of just how many offences there are each and every day in this space.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's terrific.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So are you feeling in your position, other than obviously pushing the government on change and trying to improve and get certain bills passed, what do you see as some short-term solutions that you'd like to see implemented?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think one of the things is visibility is a big piece, and crime prevention can be done when you've got visible policing, community policing.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was talking about some of the basic stuff.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that police are doing at the moment, and every six months they move police around from different stations.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't understand really their community.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got family violence offenders and stuff in a community, you know some people that have you've got real issues, you've got um some mental health issues, you've got kids that are in residential care in a particular area, the police can get used to that and understand that and start to work around those areas.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened in recent years is for whatever reason, they don't want uh police to be too familiar with their communities.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: They keep moving them.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: So they move them around.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have police really with good knowledge about what's going on.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: They've got police in all these task forces, not in um patrols.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: So in our area of Corfield, we've only got one divisional van for 150,000 people.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: They should have two, but we've only got one, and that's because we don't have enough police.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's 1,100 police short, plus you've got 700 police on work care, work cover, on stress leave.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um because they're burnt out, they're completely burnt out.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got a couple of thousand police shortage, which means if you take an area like mine in Glen Ira, um the police rosters are down to 40%.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go into a station, sometimes it's not open, even though you expect it open.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we're hearing situations where police will deter you from actually uh putting uh putting in a statement because they can't afford the time to actually process the crime.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So for every one hour of police work, there is three hours of paperwork, which is just insane.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: So police wear body worn cameras and and they're recording things as they unfold, you could do that, and AI could actually transcribe that instantly, and you would save hours of paperwork the police have to do.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: But because police have become admin officers, not police officers, they're not out there stopping crime from happening in the first place.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're reacting and responding to crime.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to see an overhaul in the way we do policing.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: We need to build trust and confidence in our police force.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that used to be not police scaring people, but just walking around the community saying G'day, all that kind of stuff.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Our shopping strips is horrific, horrific.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: We had um, you might you know know Los Chicos in Belaclava Road, a great cafe, the owner of Los Chicos has owned that for 18, 19 years.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was telling me he's no longer a barista, but he's a healthcare worker because people are coming in bashed after incidents that are happening on the streets.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he had a drug-affected person just the other week climbed up onto the um the bridge, the footbridge railway, yeah, and was throwing bricks onto oncoming traffic, trying to hit cars.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And police couldn't respond because they didn't have enough police.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is the kind of stuff that is happening each and every day, and until such time as we deal with it, and yes, there are drug problems, drug and alcohol problems where people are being located into housing without services.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just a police problem.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: You asked before about the issues.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is a whole of community problem.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you're just putting people, no, no different to putting them in a prison.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you're putting them into a home in the middle of a neighborhood without services, without transport, without a job, and you expect them to actually just integrate with community, it's just not going to happen.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got a broken system at the moment, and unfortunately, we're all feeling it because the safety issue is what is the first unintended consequence of it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's an interesting concept you raised, the AI.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're right, admin is is it's crazy that the police are trained.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: What about a second-tier security service, as they have very much like in the Jewish community, as we know, which is very useful for some of that sort of uh day-to-day grindy stuff that is not necessarily requiring police attention but needs to be addressed?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: What about that sort of notion of a second-tier security system, you know, like security team, or is that being done?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: You must be reading my notes because yeah, no, you've done very well.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because um, I'd want to join the police force.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you should.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'll join the security team.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing very, really well.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so I met with police veterans the other day.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Police veterans is about uh 6,000 that are active member police veterans.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this is horrible.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they they go from active police officers to nothing overnight, and some of them are in uh late 50s, 60s, where they're retiring, and they've got nothing to go to.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, other states and other places will allow them to come back and do things like staff a front desk and do the paperwork and work with community as needs basis.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they might be paid something, but not at the same kind of level.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it gives them something to do, it keeps them connected, and and that's what police veterans would love to do.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a lot of mental health issues from somebody that goes to such an active job to nothing overnight.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we could fix that literally tomorrow by engaging police veterans to become, as you say, a backup police force that could do a lot of this stuff.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: They could do a whole range of monitoring support services to our police.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: It would be a fraction of the cost.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: It would give them something really positive in their lives and would fix the holes that we've currently got.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: There are things like that that I think are really, really important.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had something the other day which was quite um it really touched on my heart.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I had somebody who contacted me from who she's been in the force for a number of years, so she's a uh an office, a station commander, and she had somebody that was retiring after 40 years of service.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, you know what, this person doesn't even get a certificate, gets nothing.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: They just leave.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: We give them a cake and they walk out handing out, you know, their badge, they call it a Freddie, handing their Freddie in, handing their stuff in, never to be seen again.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Do you think you could give them a certificate?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I do certificates for kids at school.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't the government or the police do it or something?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Said, no, no one does this.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I literally did up a certificate that I do for my school kids and signed it and put it in a frame.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't get there because we're sitting in parliament.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: But she sent me photos of this officer after 40 years of service in tears because he left with a certificate.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can't do something as basic as that for the people that are trying to keep us safe, that put their lives in danger each and every day, then I think we've got stuff wrong.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that for me are just basic, basic things that we need to change.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's been really interesting to hear, David, because some of the solutions are actually, as you say, quite simple to start addressing these things.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly, I love the notion of the security second tier and the certificates and honouring.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, surely we should be using the wisdom, you know, and and the experience of some of these people who know their community and who also have been through probably every possible crime challenge as former police officers.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it makes a lot of sense.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: So very interesting times, and hopefully there's a re um a rethinking, a recalibration.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds just all just very stuck, and our and the residents are paying the price.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: What about you just briefly personally?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: How are you finding it?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you've also been very helpful and effective because we've had sort of you know rampant anti-Semitism, which you and I are both aware of, and that's a whole sector in itself in terms of crime and in terms of feeling trying to protect the community.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Many of your constituents are Jewish in the Caulfield area.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how are you yourself staying hopeful and optimistic?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: If if you are, that is.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I am, I am, and you're right, it's a whole other podcast talking about the Jewish hate that's going on at the moment.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but I am really optimistic and and I love Victoria.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: I still think it's the best place to live.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And these are things that are not, I mean, they sound really huge to do, but I actually don't think that they are.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it just it takes a just a different mindset, and we've got to restore confidence in our state and confidence in what people do.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: And to do that, when people are doing the wrong thing, there needs consequences.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, so and and I'm really excited about having that opportunity to be part of that and make those changes going forward.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is a tough job, particularly at the moment when every day you wake up and you know I'm up at five o'clock every morning reading media and then doing media.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and unfortunately, it's it's not positive stuff, but they're pretty horrible stories that you're responding to.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I am, I am very much glass half full, and I think that there are so many good people doing great things in Victoria, and it's just about leveraging that and highlighting that.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think on the Jewish stuff as well, uh a lot of what's been going on has been just unAustralian, and people have woken up, and the silent majority are starting to speak up because they just don't like people being targeted just because they're from a different group, whatever that group might be.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm seeing that as a real positive way.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And to leave you with a with a story that I've told a few people is I was out in um I was out in Ballarat a few months back, and it was after the firebombing of Adus, and I was talking about just general stuff, and and a guy came up to me and he said, Now, you're that Jewish guy as well that uh I'm talking about what you're saying today, because it wasn't about the Jewish stuff, and he said, You're that Jewish guy from your area that had the fire bombing of a synagogue.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, and I didn't know what he was going to say.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he pulled out$50 out of his pocket and he put it in my pocket and he said, That's to help, you know, with rebuilding the synagogue.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this was just a pensioner that put out$50 of his own money to help.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that really resonated strongly with me that these there's everyday Aussies that are out there that just see what's happening as just being wrong.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I think goodness will always prevail.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's always kept me going, as I'm always glass half full, you have to be.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think together we will, by making a difference and keeping strong, we will get to where we need to be again and make the grow make Victoria the great state that we all know and we all love.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, David, on that note, you're one of the good ones, and the work you're doing is great, and I know it takes a lot of uh a lot of effort to service your community the way you do.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to thank you so much for taking the time um out of Parliament to um to talk to us at the What I've Learned podcast.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I look forward to seeing uh what happens next.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right, thanks, Deb.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind and curious.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Love Deb.