The Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, has condemned the Victorian justice system for dismissing a police-supported victim-of-crime compensation claim.
Mr Walsh says the tenants in the rental property of a Swan Hill constituent of his were “attacked by two knife-wielding thugs” in an aggravated home invasion.
He says they kicked in the front door and further damaged it with their knives during the attack.
“Police tracked down the offenders, hauled them before the courts and they were rightly convicted,” Mr Walsh explains.
“And the tenants, who must have been, and probably still are, terrified by the assault, also rightly received compensation through the victims of crime process,” he says.
“But my constituent, who is now seriously out of pocket, had her claim – supported by police as fair – rejected by the Office of Public Prosecutions, which says it will not seek victim redress for things covered by insurance.
“That’s ridiculous and Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes must intervene in this case immediately and then take steps to ensure this discriminatory oversight does not penalise any other victims of crime on this scale.”
Mr Walsh says his constituent was told by the OPP to pursue compensation from the convicted offenders.
Which he says would be a joke if it wasn’t so serious and bordered on being an insult to this family.
“Does the court expect my constituent to approach people who will launch vicious armed assaults like this and demand they repay the damage they caused?”
“I don’t think so – I’d like to see the Attorney-General’s face if she was the one in the court seeking compensation for her property and that was the only option she was given,” Mr Walsh says.
“And within a week of the offenders being convicted, a rock was thrown through the front window of the same house, costing my constituent another excess fee for a glass claim.
“Crime isn’t just about statistics – crime has a face, and it has victims, and my constituent is one of those,” he says.
“In the end my constituent has had to go through insurance – pay a $500 excess and get the damage repaired. And now their insurance premium will go up. And it is pathetic the OPP simply handballs these compensation claims onto the insurance system because then the whole community helps foot the bill for its failures through soaring premiums.
“No crime is victimless, and there is no justice in this justice system, anyone can see that. Except of course this blinkered government, which keeps insisting we have enough police in regional Victoria to protect the community – and that’s just another lie, and another failure, from the Allan Labor government.”