The Minns Labor Government has walked away from protecting regional communities dealing with the youth crime crisis, voting against the Opposition\u2019s strong bail reforms in Parliament today.
Despite the latest Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) data showing improvement in some areas, regional residents are still being held to ransom every single day, including a motel owner in Moree who was allegedly stabbed by a 13-year-old over the weekend.
The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Youth Crime) Bill 2025, introduced by Shadow Attorney General Alister Henskens in March, offered tougher measures than Labor\u2019s changes to the Bail Act, by:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bill was however voted down by Premier Chris Minns and his Government 35-48, in a move Opposition Leader Mark Speakman described as a political stunt.
\u201cWhat we saw today is typical of the Minns Labor Government, blocking sensible solutions that could help deal with this crisis, purely because it wasn\u2019t its idea,\u201d Mr Speakman said.
\u201cIn the past two years the Premier has done little more than fly in and out of Moree for the cameras, while ignoring country towns that urgently need help.\u201d
NSW Nationals Leader Dugald Saunders said he hoped Labor would have taken a more bipartisan approach.
\u201cWe have been constantly voicing the fears of our communities that are in the thick of this and are being held to ransom by serious repeat youth offenders every single day,\u201d Mr Saunders said.
\u201cI really expected the Premier to have been more willing to work with us on a real pathway forward, but instead he chose to play politics with people\u2019s lives and turn his back on every regional resident who doesn\u2019t feel safe on the streets or in their own homes.\u201d
Shadow Attorney General Alister Henskens said the horrific cases in the past few weeks shows the need for immediate legislative change.
\u201cWhen an alleged repeat offender is back on the streets on bail before their victim is even released from hospital, there\u2019s something very wrong with the system, and shows the laws we have in place are clearly not working,\u201d Mr Henskens said.
\u201cThe Coalition\u2019s bill showed the community that we understand the anxiety that is being felt, and we were willing to do something about it, which is also why we emphasised the importance of victims\u2019 voices being heard.
\u201cElectronic monitoring for repeat serious criminal offenders has assisted in deterring crime in other states while offenders are on bail, while mandatory curfews would help keep them off the streets. Making young offenders face their victims and the consequences of their crimes is essential to deterring future crimes. But because of the Labor-Greens-Teal alliance in opposition to our reform, we are now back at square one with no clear solution in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Minns Labor Government has walked away from protecting regional communities dealing with the youth crime crisis, voting against the Opposition\u2019s strong bail reforms in Parliament today. Despite the latest Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) data showing improvement in some areas, regional residents are still being held to ransom every single day, including a … Continue reading “Labor blocks reforms to deal with regional crime crisis”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34993,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34992\/revisions\/34993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}