Herald Sun Pic.

The Herald Sun article, 9th of February 12026, highlights the shocking statistics recently released by Victoria Police on this crime trend.

The numbers are important, but what matters most is the real impact on the victims.

Tough new laws introduced by the Government in 2016 have had no positive effect.

It is clear now that the habit of certain politicians making announcements without any intent of the problem being addressed or resolved. It is now turning out to be the mantra of the most recent decade of political leaders, as more and more announcements turn out to be just hollow rhetoric designed to impress the electorate, a veil for inaction.

These politicians who are highly shortsighted will pay a steep price for their recklessness.

It is now evident that hollow political policy announcements are a form of obfuscation. Exposed with regular monotony in the daily news over a wide spectrum of social issues lately. Carjacking is just another subject in a long line of false undertakings.

Politicians must be accountable, and not just at the ballot box.

And while politicians may revel in their effectiveness in deceiving the electorate, the number of victims keeps racking up as rapidly as the effectiveness of the courts decline.

The view that the problem is a Policing one is shallow and ill-informed. Although there are actions the Police can take, the real cause of the upswing in this crime is the Courts’ mismanagement of the perpetrators and the Government’s failure to hold the Courts to account and ensure that perpetrators suffer real consequences sufficient to discourage further offending.

Until the Courts accept, or are directed to accept, accountability for the problems predominantly caused by Juvenile offenders, then and only then will we see improvements in the management of this and other serious Juvenile crime.

The Government has many levers at its disposal and must start to use them.

All the sentencing initiatives are of no use if the judiciary can find ways to circumvent them.

Until the Judiciary starts to put the community and the victims first, we will see no meaningful change, yet the Government has the power to legislate the hierarchy of considerations in sentencing as an adjunct to the sentencing guidelines.

Unfortunately, the guidelines have morphed into instructions that may not reflect the will of the legislators but can be used by Jurists to administer the law in a manner conducive to their social reform agenda.

Putting the welfare of an individual perpetrator ahead of the community at large and the victims is an anathema to good jurisprudence.

The solution is not easy and does not rest solely with the Courts, although their role is pivotal; there is a pressing need to identify mechanisms to engage with the criminal cohort to raise awareness of the risks they face from their behaviour and to promote change.

Although no criminal will commit a crime knowing they will be caught, even with the chances of being caught extremely high, there is no accounting for stupidity, ignorance, or both.

The cost to the community and Government of this crime is horrendous, so spending on communicating and promoting a clear and consistent message that crime doesn’t pay will have a positive impact.

Particularly, if the perpetrators are belittled for their behaviour in the view of their peers by a simple slogan. “Don’t be a bloody idiot”, promoted by the media and the Courts.

Language they would understand and a label they would abhor.