Peta Credlin: National ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws needed to stop young crims

Australia needs a nationally consistent approach to protecting people in their own homes – and a good place to start would be a version of Queensland’s ‘adult crime = adult time’ laws, writes Peta Credlin.

The Victorian Labor government wants credit for introducing what it says are the toughest bail laws in the country.

What it actually deserves is condemnation for relaxing bail laws two years ago and triggering a crime wave that’s taken home invasions, car thefts, shop stealing and family violence to record highs.

Last year, there were over 7000 home break-ins, mostly due to hardcore gangs of teenage criminals. Last year, there were almost 25,000 crimes by minors, the highest figure on record and 16 per cent up on a year earlier.

So far, what’s happened in Victoria almost exactly replicates what happened earlier in Queensland, where a green-left Labor government relaxed bail laws, only to fuel a youth crime wave. North of the Tweed, it took the election of a Coalition government to produce effective change – as is likely to prove the case in Victoria too.

Weapons seized from young criminals in Melbourne's southeast. Picture: Victoria Police

As for the supposedly tough laws, they won’t actually come into effect for three to six months, even the statewide machete ban that the Coalition forced a reluctant government to accept, supposedly because the government needs time to gear up prisons and recruit more staff.

None of this would be necessary if the Allan government’s natural green-left instinct hadn’t been to water down bail laws in the first place. The basic problem is that Labor’s first impulse is to regard criminals as victims rather than wrongdoers and to blame society for their crimes rather than bad character and wilfully poor choices.

There are now few Victorians who have not been scarred by the collapse of law and order in that state.

We need a nationally consistent approach to protecting the right of people to feel safe in their own homes.

And a good place to start would be a version of Queensland’s new “adult crime = adult time” laws that the Liberal-National Party enacted across the board.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm