Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (15:38):
I am speaking in strong support of the Crimes Amendment (Performance Crime) Bill 2025, and I thank the Attorney-General for her extensive work on this and for bringing it to the chamber.
Keeping people safe is the first duty of a civil society and the first priority of us as legislators.
One of the challenges that faces us in the modern world is that harm has become more complex, leveraging online platforms in a way, and at a scale, not seen before.
So it is that a new kind of harm has crept into our streets and onto our screens: serious offending staged, filmed and shared for clicks.
Crime as content; pain as entertainment; fear as a sinister badge of honour.
We are seeing this far too often now. Cases where people are committing serious crimes and then sharing them online, ‘posting and boasting’.
The performative nature of this is sickening, and it adds a whole new element to the trauma of offending. It glorifies it. It encourages others to emulate it, and it prolongs the exposure of victims to the offence itself.
In some cases, it publicly identifies victims too - another compounding element that has an impact that we may never truly understand.
This is serious behaviour with serious consequences.
Most of us as MPs have at least some experience of the sense of disempowerment and anguish that can occur when we are on the receiving end of some ridicule or other in the online world.
There is a particular awfulness associated with something that gets put online and exists out of your control and strips you of your sense of ownership, of your own identity. It is deeply dehumanising.
As public figures, we weather this kind of thing - but imagine if it was not just online trolling. Imagine it was a home invasion put up online for the anonymous, unforgiving gaze of the internet. That is something no-one should have to endure.
That is why we have brought this performance crime amendment to the house.
This bill says, clearly and calmly, that Victoria will not stand for it. As the Minister for Police put it, “crime is not content, it is not entertainment, and it will not be tolerated.”
The amendment creates a targeted, standalone summary offence for ‘posting and boasting’ about specific serious crimes. Acknowledging what I said before - it gives the courts the ability to recognise the additional harm and the additional culpability of offenders who publicise their crimes.
A person who publishes material that is intended to attract attention to their involvement in a relevant offence - such as robbery, aggravated burglary, home invasion, carjacking, theft of a motor vehicle, affray or violent disorder - can face up to two years imprisonment in addition to the penalty for the underlying crime.
So, for example, if a person is found guilty of a home invasion and also the new performance crime offence, they may be sentenced to a maximum term of 25 years imprisonment in relation to the home invasion and up to two years imprisonment for the performance crime offence.
To be liable, the person must first be found guilty of the underlying serious offence, which is important, because this is not about bystanders or journalists.
The bill defines ‘publish’ broadly to capture the real ways content is shared online - making material available to the public or a section of the public - while excluding one-to-one private communications. It also captures situations where an offender causes someone else to publish on their behalf.
There are, of course, important guardrails. It will not apply retrospectively, and it does not capture journalists, victims, concerned community members or witnesses who report or share material about crimes committed by others.
We know what is driving this abhorrent behaviour: a race for notoriety that normalises offending, invites copycat behaviour, trivialises harm and retraumatises victims.
This targeted offence recognises that additional culpability and signals serious consequences.
It is a clear deterrent message to would-be copycats, and it is a measure of respect to victims whose suffering should never be a backdrop for likes and clicks.
It is important to note that the rise of ‘post-and-boast’ offending is not theoretical.
In the past year gay and bisexual men around Australia have been lured via dating apps, assaulted, robbed and filmed - with footage then posted to social media. Police in multiple states have investigated these patterns; in Victoria the numbers are sobering.
Media interviews with Victoria Police and community health leaders describe dozens of attacks, many perpetrated by teenagers, some involving weapons, with victims traumatised twice - first by the assault, then by the online humiliation.
Equality Australia has also confirmed that attacks on the queer community have escalated in recent years, and harassment, discrimination and violence shockingly remain a lived experience for many.
That goes to the heart of what we are debating – not just crime but the amplification of harm and repetition through publication. Let me be unequivocal: these homophobic attacks are vile, cowardly and unacceptable. To film and publish them is to compound the cruelty.
This bill draws a clear line: if you weaponise the internet to glorify your offending there will be consequences.
I know some have argued that these hateful crimes would not be encapsulated by the new laws, and I dispute that.
I invite those opposite to go back and take a look at the actual charges laid for many of these crimes, including for the 35 individuals that Victoria Police have arrested in recent months for luring men into violent attacks.
They include armed robbery, they include violent disorder, they include affray.
What we are capturing here, what we are targeting, is the kind of dangerous and violent public offending that is of growing community concern and increasing in prevalence, particularly among young offenders.
This bill does not stand alone; it sits within a wider community safety agenda. In the 2025–26 budget the government invested $176 million to address the drivers of crime, including $135 million for rehabilitation and reintegration programs for young people - early intervention, diversion, education, training and employment, because the best outcome is a crime that never happens in the first place.
We have also modernised youth justice law, trialled electronic monitoring for young people on bail, strengthened anti-vilification and social cohesion reforms and progressed improvements to stalking and family violence intervention order laws.
Importantly, we have acted to choke off weapons that turn dangerous ideas into deadly acts, with a ban on machete sales and strict possession frameworks.
The message is consistent: smart prevention, fair accountability and community safety first.
For Northcote this is not abstract. Our high streets buzz late; our artists, hospo workers and shift workers head home on foot, on bikes, on the last tram.
Recently right on our doorstep at Northland in Preston, families and workers witnessed a machete-laden brawl that led to hospitalisation, arrests and a full centre lockdown.
Those scenes - and the footage that followed - magnified fear well beyond the incident itself. Our government has since moved to choke off access to these weapons, including fast-tracking machete controls.
And because community safety is not just policing – I want Northcote to hear this – we are pairing accountability with prevention, backing diversion, mentoring and education. We will keep working with Victoria Police, local schools, youth services and traders so that people feel safer on the street, safer at the shops, safer on the tram and safer online.
Some legal stakeholders have raised concerns. The Law Institute of Victoria cautions that evidence of deterrence is still emerging and notes that courts can already treat posting as an aggravating factor. They stress the importance of diversion. We hear that, and it is precisely why our approach is targeted, proportionate, non-retrospective and paired with investment in prevention.
I do acknowledge the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has voiced broader concerns about overcriminalisation and the risk of disproportionate impacts. We respect this advocacy too, and balance is key here.
This bill is practical, proportionate reform that will help police and courts deal with a very contemporary harm.
The offence is carefully drawn; it applies only where the offender has been found guilty of the other serious offence, it excludes one-to-one communication and it does not capture journalists, bystanders or victims.
Victims of these broadcast crimes, often women, queer Victorians and multicultural communities, deserve the dignity of knowing their suffering will not be used as social media currency.
That is exactly what this bill is doing.
I have to mention that it is very disappointing and frankly deeply hypocritical that the Greens political party have spoken against this bill today. In one breath they have cited the recent attacks on the gay community and in the next they have opposed this bill and the law changes that this very community have explicitly sought from us.
I think it is woeful, and they need to do better.
The test for any law is simple: does it make people safer and is it fair? This bill is both, and I do commend it to the house.
