By Paul McClure
9 October 2022

When James Gargasoulas ploughed his maroon Commodore into a bustling Bourke Street on the afternoon of January 20, 2017, he could not have known how his lethal actions would impact Victoria’s criminal justice system.

The revelation that Gargasoulas was on bail at the time outraged a public already being bombarded with media reports of armed robberies, aggravated burglaries and carjackings.

Consistent with its tough-on-crime stance and responding to a public clamouring for reform, in 2018 the Victorian Government overhauled the Bail Act, making Victoria’s already strict bail laws the most onerous in the country.

Bail has long been an integral part of our criminal justice system.

In addition to managing risk and protecting the community, its primary purpose is to ensure an accused’s attendance at court.

When seismic changes were made to Victoria’s bail system in the aftermath of Bourke Street, court attendance took a back seat to community protection.

The presumption against bail was extended to more than 100 offences meaning that, by default, bail is refused unless an accused can demonstrate the existence of ‘compelling reasons’ or ‘exceptional circumstances’.

The Bail Act does not define what constitutes compelling reasons or exceptional circumstances; magistrates, judges and lawyers must look to case law for guidance.

Previously, the exceptional circumstances bail test applied to only the most serious offences – treason, terrorism, commercial-scale drug trafficking, and murder.

Now, a person on bail for shoplifting who commits a further offence and wants to make a fresh application for bail must meet the same threshold test as someone charged with murder.

If bail is refused, an accused remains an unsentenced prisoner, on remand until their charges are finalised, which can take months.

Victoria’s Sentencing Advisory Council reports that between 1977 and 2021, the number of unsentenced prisoners increased from 13.1 per cent to 43.9 per cent.

In March, the Legislative Council’s Legal and Social Issues Committee released their inquiry into Victoria’s criminal justice system which made 100 recommendations, nine related to bail.

Reason Party leader and member for the Northern Metropolitan region, Fiona Patten MP chaired the inquiry.

“Sometimes government is so reactive, particularly when it comes to law and order,” Ms Patten said.

“I would absolutely say they [the changes to bail laws] were a knee-jerk reaction,” she said.

Ms Patten is of the opinion that the current bail laws disproportionately affect the disadvantaged, women, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

“Incarceration should be the last resort and that is not the case right now; incarceration is often the first resort,” Ms Patten said.

“We are seeing women escaping family violence, finding themselves homeless, committing a minor, non-violent offence, and we’re jailing them for that.

“The breakup of families, the loss of jobs, the loss of housing – all of those [are] consequences of that incarceration,” she said.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data shows that between June 2020 and June 2021, the number of female prisoners in Victoria rose by 2 per cent, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners by 6 per cent.

The 2020 death in custody of 37-year-old Gunditjmara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman, Veronica Nelson is illustrative of the problems created by the current bail laws.

Ms Nelson was denied bail for shoplifting and died three days after being remanded to the Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison where her repeated requests for medical assistance were ignored.

“She died from heroin withdrawal – not many people in our community die from that these days,” Ms Patten said.

“She should’ve been in hospital,” she said.

Of equal concern is the continued rise of violent offending despite Victoria’s strict bail laws.

ABS data shows that in 2020-21, the number of unsentenced prisoners charged with a violent offence increased by 45 per cent.

According to the 2022 Report on Government Services, throughout 2020-21 more than half of Victoria’s magistrates’ court cases – 56.5 per cent – took six months or more to be finalised.

For an accused on remand for minor charges, that is a long time to wait to be sentenced, especially when the outcome might not be a term of imprisonment.

Sally Vardy is an accredited criminal law specialist who has represented accused persons for close to 10 years and has operated under both the old and new bail legislation.

She said current bail laws lead many of her clients to plead guilty to avoid a long period of remand.

“Even when people potentially have a defence or the case is not particularly strong, the advice you give is ‘you’re not a chance at bail’,” she said.

“In that situation, they will say ‘do what’s going to get me out’,” Ms Vardy said.

In addition to the slow movement of cases through the court, there are lengthy delays in getting access to important support services, leading many to re-offend.

“In my practice, 90 per cent are repeat offenders, usually with the trifecta: homeless, drugs and mental health,” Ms Vardy said.

“It’s an indictment on the system that [clients with] mental health and homelessness and drug addiction don’t have adequate supports or options for treatment available or readily accessible.

“People assume you get supports in custody but the reality of it is – and particularly in the last two years with COVID – on remand, there is nothing,” she said.

It has become clear that society’s marginalised population are placed at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to bail.

“They can’t front up with a $40,000 surety, or grandma’s house [as surety], residential rehab or anything like that,” Ms Vardy said.

“Those sorts of things really do seem to push magistrates into passing that [compelling reasons or exceptional circumstances] test but for recidivist, low-level offenders it is near impossible,” she said.

Ms Patten said there have been missed opportunities for improving our justice system.

“Ensuring someone is not homeless, ensuring someone gets a good education, ensuring that someone has access to health – [addressing] those three elements would empty our prisons out,” Ms Patten said.

“The opportunities to do things differently would achieve the goal of keeping the community safe but also rehabilitating people so that they don’t re-offend.

“Those should be our two first principles and we are failing on both,” she said.

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I will fight to end native forest logging in Victoria if re-elected in the 26 November Victorian election.

My candidate for North-eastern Metropolitan, Nina Springle, will re-introduce a bill to end such environmentally and economically unjustifiable logging in Victoria immediately, should she be elected.

First introduced to the Parliament by Samantha Dunn MP in 2018, the Bill repeals law allowing logging to continue in Victoria.

The problem?

Fresh research shows native forest logging in our state generates up to three million tonnes of carbon emissions each year – the equivalent to that produced by as many as 700,000 medium-sized cars or double the state’s domestic aviation sector.

One of the main species logged in Victoria is the Mountain Ash, the most carbon-dense species on the planet.

Logging occurs in our water catchments and threatens Melbourne’s water security.

The solution?

Cannabis’ sober cousin, hemp.

Hemp is a plant with stupendous potential as native forestry ends.

Industrial hemp crops can be grown three times a year. Timber plantations require thirty years for one crop.

There simply no need to log native forests, and hemp will provide replacement jobs to create sustainable security for the families that have depended on this industry whose time has come.

Hemp can readily replace most building and timber products, including concrete. There are also profitable opportunities in food, beverage, cosmetics, and pet food.

This is a policy in which there are no losers, only winners – most of all the environment at a time of climate catastrophe.

Quotes attributable to Nina Springle:

“The Andrews government have said they will stop logging by 2030, but if logging continues at the current rate, the wood will run out well before 2030.”

“If the Andrews government have a genuine commitment to fighting climate change, and leave our native forests intact for future generations, logging must stop immediately, before it’s all gone. “

“The 2018 bill was voted down 33 to 6 indicating there was zero care or political will from most political parties at that time. The time for tolerating the status quo is gone. Our future depends on us taking action now.”

“Reason has a comprehensive transition plan for those workers currently employed in the logging industry that involves substantial investment in the help industry here in Victoria. There is no reason to leave anyone behind.”

“Just as we are transitioning out of coal, and reskilling those workers, we can equally support logging industry employees to transition to more sustainable options.”
 

ENDS

If re-elected at the 26 November Victorian election, I am determined to continue to lead community debate on sensible drug law reform and on harm minimisation.

Reason Party’s drug law reform policies will save many thousands of lives and many millions of taxpayers’ dollars.

I often say we should not let the perfect get in the way of the good as we mount the cases for change, as we fight for progress. There is a lot of good progress overdue on this.

It is disappointing – indeed unacceptable – that the Victorian Government has failed to meet its duty to respond within six months to the Parliament’s official inquiry into the use of cannabis in Victoria.

We need a second medically supervised injecting centre, this one in the CBD.

Evidence from the first one, opened in North Richmond in 2018, shows hundreds of people have been kept safe, rather than needlessly dying in laneways. More should be trialled elsewhere in Victoria.

More and more countries and jurisdictions are decriminalising drugs. Not to encourage their use, but to reduce the harm they cause individuals and communities by treating drugs as a health issue, not a criminal one.

Some other key elements and details of Reason Party’s drug law reform platform include:

• Reforming laws to allow front-of-house drug checking (‘pill testing’) facilities in areas of need, including music festivals and other events.
• Legalisation of electronic vaporisers and liquid nicotine as recognised treatments for smoking.
• Decriminalisation of the use and possession of all drugs, harm-reduction, and improved access to healthcare – especially services targeted at early intervention.
• The creation of a regulated legal market for adult use of cannabis.
• Increasing the number of opiate treatment program (OTP) prescribers and subsidising dispensing fees for OTP medicines.
• More Overdose Prevention Centres (medically supervised injecting centres).
• Trials of the safe supply of hydromorphone as part of the OTP.
• Reform to electronic vaporiser and liquid nicotine access schemes to reduce complexity for prescribers and individuals and protecting children.
• Multiple fixed-site pill testing.
• Amending drug driving laws to test for impairment, not presence.
• Allowing the cultivation of a defined number of cannabis plants in their principal places of residence.
• Regulations that allow for the establishment of Cannabis social clubs.
• Regulation of the potency of THC in legal cannabis products.
• Market controls to avoid the creation of a ‘Big Cannabis’ industry.
• Restrictions on cannabis-related advertising, marketing, and promotional products.
• Competitive pricing to undercut the illicit market.
• An appropriate tax framework to help fund cannabis- related programs.
• Expunging all historical personal-use cannabis criminal records

More than a year ago, the Legislative Council’s Legal and Social Issues Committee, which I chair, made 21 findings and 17 recommendations including that the Government investigate the impacts of legalising cannabis for adult personal use in Victoria.

The Government set up a working group to in June in response to my Bill to decriminalise the use and possession of drugs but has not released its report.
I am seeking trialling a diversion program for people apprehended with small amounts of illicit substances in two locations in the state – core to treating drug use as a health issue, not a criminal issue.

I will do everything I can to bring that about if re-elected. Meanwhile, the case for broader law reform is overwhelming.

To deny the evidence about drug policy is similarly indefensible as denying climate science.

The half-century so-called `War on Drugs’, based on prohibition, is self-evidently one the most catastrophic failures in modern political history. It has destroyed countless lives, wasted an obscene amount of public funds, and generated a massive black market.

Prohibition is being replaced with successful harm-reduction across the world. Change here in Victoria and throughout Australia is inevitable. And overdue.

Policy Big Picture: 

DATA BASE: My time in electoral politics since 2014 has been driven by a desire to make the place a bit fairer and better. I have done that through evidence-based policy and first principles including equality of opportunity, accountability, transparency and compassion.

GETTING STUFF DONE: Achievements include assisted dying legislation; improvements in women’s health; better and extended protection for minors in state care; exclusion zones around abortion clinics; harm minimisation reforms in drug law, including a medically supervised injecting room saving countless lives; spent convictions reform; pandemic-specific legislation to force the government to tell us its reasoning behind health measures.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS: The agenda includes further drug law reform to reduce harm; increase mental health care; tax profitable religious charities; prevent publicly funded hospitals and hospices from refusing to provide abortions, family planning and assisted dying; robust action on global warming; a new hospital for Melbourne’s north; formal inclusion of childcare in the education system; religious equality in Parliament, including respect for the non-religious.

Fiona Patten Gives a Sh*t About Housing & Homelessness

We can fix homelessness. It might seem intractable, but there is much more we can and must do.

The Andrews Government’s `big build’ is welcome but falls far short of what is required to go close to fixing one of the deepest and most distressing forms of social exclusion.

Victoria needs to build more social and community housing. The government has a leading role in that.

Public policies to end homelessness are central to my re-election platform.

They will both alleviate and prevent suffering as well as save taxpayers’ money overall.

Reason Party believes housing is a human right and that Australia is in a housing affordability and homelessness crisis.

My party supports implementing recommendations of the 2021 Victorian Inquiry into homelessness, which I chaired. These include:

• funding additional crisis, emergency and transitional accommodation, and associated support services including pathways to long-term accommodation, for people at risk of homelessness
• federal government to ensure the availability of an appropriate proportion of social housing and transitional, crisis and emergency accommodation which is accessible and appropriate for people with diverse needs
• work with state and territory governments to review public order offences and other offences that disproportionately affect people experiencing homelessness, particularly rough sleepers, and those in a cycle of homelessness, with a view to minimising enforcement-based responses to homelessness
• work with state and territory governments to implement strategies to address the risk of exiting into homelessness from state institutions, including hospitals, mental health facilities, correctional institutions and out-of-homecare, including developing a nationally consistent approach to discharge planning and a national definition of ‘no exit into homelessness’.

This was the most comprehensive of the many inquiries in which I’ve been involved in my eight years in parliament. It took more than two years, with 450 formal submissions and 18 hearings.

Reason Party supports:

• Tax reform to remove distorting incentives in the housing market and include reforms which support build to rent.
• The introduction of inclusionary zoning into the Building Act

The Victorian Government’s housing build, which will see 9,300 new social housing dwellings constructed, about a 10 per cent increase in Victoria’s social housing stock, was announced towards the end of our inquiry.

Despite the unprecedented size of the program, it will still not ensure that Victoria will meet the national average of social housing as a percentage of total dwellings, at 4.5 per cent.

Youth homelessness is a particular concern.

Victoria is facing an exponential increase in homelessness over the next two decades unless it acts immediately to cut the number of young people currently experiencing the crisis.

Experts estimate Victoria needs to create five thousand homes in five years for young people.

The government’s tender for building properties for young people closed in March with only $50 million being made available – even though tenders for $150 million were received.

Why is the government just sitting on these tenders? It needs to approve them now and get moving. We are in a crisis and there are solutions sitting on the minister’s desk.

The government has the inquiry’s recommendations and has not responded to the report despite being required to within six months.

The government has committed just one per cent of the $5.3 billion of housing investment in its 2020 budget for youth housing. Almost one in five people accessing homelessness services are between 18 and 24.

Addressing youth homelessness is an absolute social and economic priority – not doing so not only denies these people a home but the opportunity of education and employment and leaves them forever vulnerable to being homeless.

Policy Big Picture

DATA BASE: My time in electoral politics since 2014 has been driven by a desire to make the place a bit fairer and better. I have done that through evidence-based policy and first principles including equality of opportunity, accountability, transparency and compassion.

GETTING STUFF DONE: Achievements include assisted dying legislation; improvements in women’s health; better and extended protection for minors in state care; exclusion zones around abortion clinics; harm minimisation reforms in drug law, including a medically supervised injecting room saving countless lives; spent convictions reform; pandemic-specific legislation to force the government to tell us its reasoning behind health measures.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS: The agenda includes further drug law reform to reduce harm; increase mental health care; tax profitable religious charities; prevent publicly funded hospitals and hospices from refusing to provide abortions, family planning and assisted dying; robust action on global warming; a new hospital for Melbourne’s north; formal inclusion of childcare in the education system; religious equality in Parliament, including respect for the non-religious.

Health is such a crucial issue in this state election because the health system is failing.

Nowhere is this more evident than in my electorate, the Northern Metropolitan Region – the north of Melbourne doesn’t just need its existing health infrastructure buttressed; it needs an entire new hospital.

The north needs more than an expanded Northern Hospital. It needs a new, well-resourced facility to meet demand. 

Neither the Government nor the Opposition are proposing anything near sufficient to deal with the needs of the region. The Northern Health catchment includes three of the state’s six largest growth areas – Hume, Whittlesea and Mitchell.

The Northern Hospital has only 400 beds. It is basically overwhelmed. Staff are exhausted and require better support.

It has the busiest emergency department in the state, treating approximately 100,000 patients each year. There can be distressingly long wait times for emergency beds.

The swift development of new suburbs in the north will see our population grow by 17 per cent, or 85 000 people, in the next five years alone, and by more than half by 2036.

Reason Party’s overarching platform is: 

• A well-resourced second hospital in the north, not merely an upgraded Northern Hospital. 

• An urgent recovery plan for our health system – perhaps via public inquiry. 

• Increased investment in mental health. 

If re-elected, I will work hard to secure a new hospital for the north, and for much-needed improvements to the health system, including a greater focus on prevention, early-intervention, and mental health.

When Reason Party talks with residents in the Northern Health catchment, we continually hear about impossibly long wait times, burnt-out healthcare workers, and people with chronic illnesses and disabilities being unable to access crucial care. 

From rising fees and impossible-to-find appointments at GP clinics to excruciating wait times at emergency departments, the Victorian system is overburdened and failing to meet the needs of our growing population.

Reason Party and I believe building an accessible, comprehensive, strong healthcare system should not be viewed as an ‘expense’, but as an absolute necessity.

Policy Big Picture: 

DATA BASE: My time in electoral politics since 2014 has been driven by a desire to make the place a bit fairer and better. I have done that through evidence-based policy and first principles including equality of opportunity, accountability, transparency and compassion.

GETTING STUFF DONE: Achievements include assisted dying legislation; improvements in women’s health; better and extended protection for minors in state care; exclusion zones around abortion clinics; harm minimisation reforms in drug law, including a medically supervised injecting room saving countless lives; spent convictions reform; pandemic-specific legislation to force the government to tell us its reasoning behind health measures.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS: The agenda includes further drug law reform to reduce harm; increase mental health care; tax profitable religious charities; prevent publicly funded hospitals and hospices from refusing to provide abortions, family planning and assisted dying; robust action on global warming; a new hospital for Melbourne’s north; formal inclusion of childcare in the education system; religious equality in Parliament, including respect for the non-religious.

===========

Women’s health has been central to my career – as an advocate, activist, and parliamentarian.

The reproductive health of women and the gender-diverse community has been ignored for decades, harming their quality of life and interrupting workforce participation.

Primary among my unfinished business is expanding access to abortion and family planning by stopping publicly funded denominational hospitals from denying people’s rights to these services.

And today I commit, if I am fortunate enough to be re-elected, that in the first 100 days of a new parliamentary term I will introduce new legislation to broaden public health system access for abortion and contraception.

It is change I am confident that we can achieve and will add to Reason’s record of establishing Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics.

Reason Party’s policies for this election include:

• A fully integrated endometriosis and pelvic pain centre for Victoria to cut diagnosis delays and increase treatment access.
• Significantly increased access to abortion, contraception, and family planning advice across the Victorian public health system.

• Menopause and menstruation support for Victorian workplaces.

After the recent US Supreme Court decision to overturn decades-old law protecting abortion rights, it is clear these rights cannot be taken for granted.

Just this weekend in Melbourne, a current member of the Victorian Parliament marched with supporters intent on overturning abortion law in Victoria.

We must not let that happen.

Fundamental rights are already being denied in publicly funded denominational hospitals that receive hundreds of millions of your dollars each year. People who pay for the health system are being mistreated by the health system.

Others pay in pain. One in nine women experience endometriosis. It is costing the economy close to $10 billion a year in acute healthcare and lost productivity.

By investing a minute fraction of that, the Victorian and Federal governments can not only save the community a fortune but reduce extreme and undue suffering.

I am calling for not only the establishment of Australia’s first endometriosis and pelvic pain centre for Victoria, but a complete Victorian endometriosis policy and strategy.

Endometriosis is a crippling condition involving tissue similar to the lining of the uterus growing outside it in other parts of the body.

I want to be back in Parliament to help ensure these life-changing projects go through.

And to continue to fight for reproductive and other health rights.
 

Policy Big Picture: 

DATA BASE: My time in electoral politics since 2014 has been driven by a desire to make the place a bit fairer and better. I have done that through evidence-based policy and first principles including equality of opportunity, accountability, transparency and compassion.

GETTING STUFF DONE: Achievements include assisted dying legislation; improvements in women’s health; better and extended protection for minors in state care; exclusion zones around abortion clinics; harm minimisation reforms in drug law, including a medically supervised injecting room saving countless lives; spent convictions reform; pandemic-specific legislation to force the government to tell us its reasoning behind health measures.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS: The agenda includes further drug law reform to reduce harm; increase mental health care; tax profitable religious charities; prevent publicly funded hospitals and hospices from refusing to provide abortions, family planning and assisted dying; robust action on global warming; a new hospital for Melbourne’s north; formal inclusion of childcare in the education system; religious equality in Parliament, including respect for the non-religious.

— ENDS —

Media Statement by Fiona Patten MP

I welcome news the Victorian Government is examining adopting my policy of a four-day working week with no loss of income.

Media reports, sparked by coverage in The Age, show the policy is among a number being considered by the Andrews Government to take to the November election.

At the start of this year, I called for a four-day working week trial within the Victorian public service, with a view to rolling out this common-sense option across the economy as we recover from covid and capitalise on the widespread benefits of greater workplace flexibility.

Governments and businesses the world over have been trialling a 4DWW and finding it boosts productivity and profits, saves non-wage costs and reduces absenteeism caused by physical and mental ill-health.

It is the logical, rational next step in the reduction in working hours and improvements in conditions that have been happening since the industrial revolution began more than 250 years ago.

The successful adoption during the pandemic of flexible working arrangements opened the way for a 4DWW.

I have been fighting for this change for a long time. Reason Party took this policy to the last election.

The potential to simultaneously improve working conditions, work/life balance and productivity is huge; the Victorian public service accounts for about one in 10 of the state’s jobs.

We risk little by conducting a simple, limited trial, but much should we ignore the opportunity.

In 2018, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated a trial within Treasury and Finance for 12 months would save the government close to $4 million in non-wage expenses.

Imagine that across the entire bureaucracy. Those savings could go to alleviating homelessness, mental health, front-line health workers, and so much more.

International evidence shows pretty much everyone wins from a 4DWW, and at the expense of none.

It’s healthy for the economy, society and the environment. It gives people freedom and control.

History shows us the reduction in working hours is both a cause and effect of higher productivity. History tells us now is the time to take this next exciting, liberating step.

— ENDS —