Labor MPs Split Over Victorian Premier's 'Tough Love' Youth Detention Plan Ahead of Election

Until December last year, Meena Singh was Victoria's commissioner for Aboriginal children and young people, a post she had held since 2022. In all those years, she says, no one in the Victorian government came to her with anything resembling the proposal Premier Ben Carroll announced last week: a $204m "tough love" plan to send children who commit low- and mid-level offences to secure facilities, among them the former Malmsbury youth justice centre. The children would get schooling, drug and alcohol treatment and instruction in life skills.

Carroll put it bluntly to reporters last Sunday. A young person on the path toward carrying a knife or stealing cars, he said, can expect to be detained in the new mandatory detention at Malmsbury. He argued that breaking the cycle can turn young lives around.

Singh, now a professor at Monash law school, says she is "quite horrified." She told Guardian Australia it is very misleading to paint the imprisonment of children as therapeutic. Children in trouble with the law, she said, have reasons behind it, and detaining them is effectively imprisoning them for traumas they have experienced rather than for the behaviours they show.

She is not alone. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service called the announcement "mandatory sentencing dressed up as political leadership," and the Justice Reform Initiative described it as a "dramatically disproportionate response." Both groups were among those that criticised earlier Labor changes this term aimed at lowering the crime rate, including "adult time for violent crime" and tougher bail laws.

The criticism has also come from the union movement. Trades Hall secretary Luke Hilakari wrote on his personal social media account that he had honestly thought the policy of locking up children for a year for shoplifting or vandalism came from the Liberal party, noting that groceries are among the most commonly stolen items. He urged the government to fix disadvantage rather than deepen it, and to leave issues in the Liberal party's frame to the Liberals. He closed by sharing a DemosAU poll, released Monday, that put Labor's primary vote at 18%, the lowest in its history. That same day, Carroll was in South Melbourne promoting a $70m plan to hire police reservists to reopen police stations Labor closed during the term, plus $300m to build and renovate stations.

Half a dozen Labor MPs from across factional lines, none authorised to speak publicly, also raised concerns with Guardian Australia. Some said the party was handing the Liberals a free kick by campaigning on crime after presiding over rising crime rates and station closures. Others said they had gritted their teeth and backed the earlier measures in the hope of stemming the losses, but a RedBridge poll released Wednesday had Labor on a 23% primary vote and 18 points behind the Coalition on crime. "How are we here?" one MP asked. A Labor strategist, also anonymous, called the announcement a metaphor for the party's lack of clarity about its identity and message. The strategist was troubled that Davydd Griffiths, Labor's candidate in Melbourne, a seat held by Greens leader Ellen Sandell, stood behind the premier at the press conference, and said the week's focus on crime had scrapped any chance of taking the seat from the Greens.

The party's right sees it as too little, too late. Those MPs say crime hits working-class communities hardest, particularly in the outer-suburban seats Labor must hold, and that colleagues would have known sooner had they been in touch with constituents. Since the campaign began three weeks ago, one said, MPs have been copping it on crime while door knocking and at street stalls and shopping centres. The left, meanwhile, sees further proof that Labor has abandoned its values.

Carroll has pitched himself as a centrist and an "economically conservative, socially progressive premier," while distancing himself from a government he has been part of for more than a decade. The slogan on his campaign bus reads "New Premier, New Direction." Some worry that disowning the government's record also disowns the achievements of the past 12 years. One MP said a growing group of colleagues were "furious" that the new leadership had focused the campaign almost exclusively on the Big Build royal commission and law and order, two issues costing Labor votes.

There is evidence of leakage: Monday's DemosAU poll had the Greens at a record 17%, before Labor decided to run an open ticket in Prahran, which angered progressives. On Friday the Greens confirmed their own version of an open ticket, urging voters to put the Greens first and One Nation last. That will hurt Labor in several seats, capping another difficult week on the trail.