Hulls won’t act on weak bail laws

Hysterical personal attacks by the Attorney-General in response to the Victorian Coalition’s bail laws plan show once again that Labor is completely out of touch with the grief and fear being caused across the community by record levels of violent crime.

“While Victorian families are desperate for action to protect them against violent thugs, John Brumby and his Attorney-General are doing nothing to tackle the problems of re-offending while on bail, lack of penalties for breaching bail conditions, bail shopping and inadequate records of prior bail history,” Shadow Attorney-General, Robert Clark, said today.

“Labor is also infamous for deriding the Coalition’s policies then adopting them, as it has done with 66 of our policies since the 2006 election including the abolition of suspended sentences.

“Rob Hulls clearly doesn’t care that his soft on crime approach is failing Victorians.

“It is typically arrogant of Rob Hulls to claim that bail laws are working well when:
· 6,000 people on bail each year fail to turn up at court;
· around 25 per cent of all crimes are committed by people already on bail;
· judges and magistrates increasingly feel obliged to give bail to violent offenders because of the ever-growing delays in our courts;
· alleged offenders like Puneet Puneet can flee Australia;
· a young thug can cut a victim’s throat with a box-cutter after boasting on Facebook about getting bail despite already being on bail for multiple offences; and
· alleged killers on bail are involved in mob violence claims at the Australian Open tennis.

“The Attorney-General pretends the current penalty of up to 12 months jail for failing to appear at court applies to breaches of bail conditions, when he either knows or ought to know that it does not.

“He also claims that tougher penalties aren’t needed for offending while on bail, on the grounds that judges can already take that into account.

“However, he either knows or ought to know that there is no obligation under the Sentencing Act for judges to do so, that the penalties currently being applied are often woefully inadequate, and the Coalition’s additional penalty is on top of whatever sentence would already be imposed.

“It is ridiculous for the Attorney-General to also claim that because the Coalition opposes home detention, and home detention uses electronic monitoring, that the Coalition opposes electronic monitoring.“Since August 2007, he has done nothing about a Law Reform Commission report that slammed the inadequacy of current bail records and recommended extensive changes to bail laws.

“When all the Attorney-General can do after almost three years of considering this report is promise ‘minor’ changes to bail laws later this year, it is clear that he is either lazy, soft on crime, or both,” Mr Clark said.