Benita Kolovos
Premier Jacinta Allan’s announcement highlights the government’s fear of losing the crucial western suburbs seat of Werribee – where crime is a persistent issue
It’s clear the Victorian Labor government is in panic mode ahead of this weekend’s Werribee byelection. It’s the only explanation for its hasty proposal to review the state’s brand-new bail laws – and possibly others.
At a press conference at the parliament on Tuesday, ostensibly to announce an inquiry into a recent landslide on the Mornington Peninsula, the premier, Jacinta Allan, confirmed she has instructed the attorney general and the police minister to review the laws just six months after they were passed.
The laws, which make it harder for repeat offenders to be released into the community and introduce a new offence for committing a serious crime while on bail, only came into effect in December.
The attorney general, Sonya Kilkenny, on Tuesday even said the laws are only now “working their way through the system”, leading to an increase in the number of people on remand.
But Allan said the government needed to “respond to what we’re hearing from the community” and “go further”.
She denied the move was a response to the byelection or polling last month that showed Labor’s statewide primary vote slipping to a low 22%; instead framing crime as a working-class issue (convenient given Werribee’s demographics).
“It is not acceptable to me that families, women, children, working people who’ve worked so hard for what they’ve got, don’t feel safe,” Allan said.
However, there’s no denying the link between the premier’s intervention and the crucial byelection. For weeks Labor MPs have been raising concerns crime is a persistent issue in the western suburbs seat.
As one Labor MP quipped last week: “You can’t knock on a single door without crime coming up.”
There have been several high-profile incidents in recent weeks, including the discovery of a man’s body at a Mambourin playground and the stabbing death of a 24-year-old in Wyndham Vale, as well as local stories of carjackings and burglaries.
According to the crime statistics agency, criminal incidents in the Wyndham region – which largely aligns with Werribee’s boundaries – rose by 13.3% in the year to September 2024. Theft and car theft were the most common offences, though the offending rate itself remains consistent with pre-Covid years.
Overall, the number of offences across Victoria is the highest since records began, though again, when accounting for population growth, the rate is lower than it was in 2016 and consistent with 2020.
But talk of a crime crisis by conservative media and the opposition has stuck. There is growing apprehension within the Labor caucus that despite holding a 10.9% margin, the party could lose Werribee – and the bail laws announcement is “too little too late”.
Others, however, say it will help ensure they hang on to nearby seats, including Melton, Point Cook and Tarneit, at the 2026 election.
Some MPs are even speculating over whether Allan can survive a disastrous result, though there are no moves to oust her just yet.
“You hope it will be a wake-up call. But given there have been so many warnings up until this point that continue to be ignored – both here and federally – it probably won’t be,” one MP said.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Allan refused to answer basic questions on the review and pivoted from bail laws to family violence midway through.
When asked about the connection between bail laws targeting repeat offenders and family violence – which often involves individuals with no prior criminal history and occurs within the home – she became defensive.
“I’m not going to put women’s safety in a corner,” Allan said, before adding that the review would extend to “all laws” related to crime. (Her team, however, insist the focus is solely on bail.)
The current debate also fails to take into account earlier reviews into bail, including a 2022 parliamentary inquiry, another by the state’s truth-telling commission and the 2023 coronial inquiry into the death of Indigenous woman Veronica Nelson.
The coroner found Victoria’s bail laws were a “complete, unmitigated disaster”, thanks to changes made in 2018 in the wake of the Bourke Street tragedy, which directly contributed to the doubling of the rate of Indigenous female imprisonment.
The government made changes as a result in 2023. A two-year statutory review was included in those laws.
Allan’s announcement provided a perfect opening for Brad Battin, the new Liberal leader, who has embraced a “tough on crime” position.
In his first question time, he unleashed on Allan, accusing her of “loosening” the state’s bail laws and failing to keep Victorians safe from being “bashed, murdered and terrorised in their own homes”.
But he, too, struggled at a press conference to articulate what exactly he would do to improve bail beyond scrapping the 2023 changes.
However, Battin delivered one line – describing Allan as a “premier who leads by political convenience not by principle” – that could stick.
Last year, she abandoned a proposal to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14,walked away from plans to reform the state’s hospital network, ignored a recommendation to open a second injecting room in Melbourne’s CBD and another to ban duck hunting.
While Allan’s team will argue her latest move shows she is willing to listen to community feedback, it risks her not being known for anything other than policy reversals.
