Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Groom for bringing forward this important motion. Not a week goes by when I do not receive correspondence from distressed constituents witnessing break-ins or youths clambering up drainpipes, waking them up at three in the morning or kicking in their doors while children are at home. These accounts are terrifying, and they're coming from the leafy suburbs in my electorate, hardly known as hotbeds of violence. On a street walk one day, I met a couple painting their parapet wall in anticipation of gates being installed due to local crime. On another walk, I encountered an entire street who are on a WhatsApp group due to local crime related to young people loitering in a school up the street.

Knife crime takes risk to stratospheric levels. Earlier this year, a couple of teenage boys in my electorate were set upon by a group of youths in an unprovoked attack. One boy incurred life-threatening injuries requiring major thoracic surgery. The mental scars take much longer to heal. Knife crime has surged since 2019, resulting in an increase in hospitalisations, which suggests an increase in the severity of these injuries. A trauma surgeon and former colleague at the Alfred actually described this as some type of madness. My local police commander said it is becoming normalised for kids to walk out of the house and grab their keys, their phone and their knife. I thank my local police in Stonnington, Boroondara and Malvern for their assistance. As frontline responders, they put themselves in harm's way for our safety. It is risky work, which they discharge with professionalism.

There is no doubt that the online world is amplifying the notoriety of young offenders. Social media is the accelerant of all society's ills. The algorithms are skewed to shock, captivate and polarise, not to soothe, educate or unite. So what levers does the Commonwealth have? The Online Safety Act already provides the eSafety Commissioner with powers to require the removal of material that would be refused classification in Australia, including material promoting, inciting or instructing crime or violence. The eSafety Commissioner works directly with law enforcement and online platforms to remove offending content.

The minister is bringing forward the independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act, with public consultation to commence in early 2024. In the 2023-24 budget, the eSafety platform was provided with an additional $132 million over four years, with an increase in base funding from $10 million to $42.5 million each year. In other words, it was starved.

The 2022 October budget confirmed the government's election commitment of $6 million over three years to roll out the Alannah & Madeline Foundation's eSmart Digital Licence+ and Media Literacy Lab in all Australian schools. It starts with education amongst our children in schools. Regulation, however, does not fix an unloved upbringing, a violent parent, the discomfort of sleeping in a car, the shame of illiteracy, the barriers arising from undiagnosed mental illness or birth trauma. It does not erase the revolving door of out-of-home care. Young people do not grow up aspiring to take the pathway to jail. Somewhere, they have missed the foothold on the ladder of opportunity. Perhaps there were too many setbacks in their formative years, with their downward spiral now threatening to take innocent people in quiet communities like mine down with them.

We can't, however, arrest our way out of youth crime. It demands a multiplicity of measures, starting from the early years: secure housing, access to health care—starting with a bulk-billed GP, supported by tripling of our bulk-billing incentive—and an educational safety net provided by astute educators, who we are trying to attract and retain with scholarships and fee waivers. It requires listening to young people like those in our youth advisory councils and removing cost barriers to skills for our oversubscribed TAFE courses, supported by foundational skill training for those who missed out on reading and writing in school. Evidence shows that, when children and young people are healthy and given opportunities to flourish, be inspired and learn, they are far less likely to offend. Replacing a punitive mindset with a therapeutic one is not easy, but it is necessary.

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