On Saturday 24 November, the people of Victoria will head to the polls to decide who will govern the state for the next four years. The two major parties are aware that the contest will be tight and recent polls do not suggest otherwise.

While the Andrews Labor government is trumpeting its achievements on the infrastructure front, Matthew Guy has made it clear that he will campaign on a ‘law and order’ ticket, in the belief that Victoria has a safety and policing issue.

While Labor leads in the polls, the margin is so small – 51 to 49 per cent of the two-party preferred vote – that it can easily be reversed and elevate Matthew Guy to the top job.

Still, the turmoil that engulfed the federal Liberals this week may have an effect on the state party’s prospects to win the election.

Victorian Liberal MPs had privately said they feared a Dutton prime ministership could have cost the Coalition votes in the November state election, given that he is “toxic” in Victoria.

However with Scott Morrison winning yesterday’s Liberal leadership spill, and now Australia’s new Prime Minister, the state Liberals are sure to gasp a sigh of relief, hoping they will have enough time to win back voters’ trust.

Neos Kosmos caught up with the head of the Opposition in Victoria, days before the “political blood” was spilt in Canberra to discuss why Greek Australians should give him their vote. He announced some policies that will surely be welcomed from some of our community members without, of course, forgetting to get into the signature policies that will be the bedrock of his bid to win power: toughening parole laws, establishing a mandatory sentencing regime for some offences, and other law and order issues.

TAXI LICENSEES AND FUNDING FOR SOCIAL SERVICES FOR THE COMMUNITY

Eugenia Pavlopoulou: About a year ago, and while a number of taxi license holders were protesting – and still do – about the compensation they received from the current government, you told Neos Kosmos that a fair amount for compensation for the first licence should be around the $250,000 mark. Is this prospect real under a Coalition state government?

Matthew Guy: Jeff Kennett will be taxi services commissioner or the equivalent in that position. The reasons we put Jeff in there is that he has been working closely with the taxi families and the industry and I am very, very confident that he will be able to deliver a regime that would provide a fairer compensation that we believe is right. I think a lot of families have been hurt and deceived. Before we go to the election, we will have a clear policy that people will know exactly what they are going to get from us. I believe, I think, and I commit that the compensation to the taxi licensees will be fairer.

EP: The Andrews government committed $420,000 over four years. Funding that will provide the continuation of their settlement services program. Will you endorse this funding arrangement?

MG: Yes, we will and we will go further than that. We will provide $150,000 for a new shuttle bus for Pronia. They indicated that a minibus would assist them transporting the Greek elderly and this funding will give them a 25 seat bus.

“Victoria has an issue with crime and we need to tackle it by mandatory sentencing, by bail reform and parole reform. It does not matter which community is involved in that crime. It does not matter if it is the Greek community, or the Italian community, or the African community. We have to have a justice system that deals with it.”

RACE, CRIME, DRUGS

EP: As an ethnic community, we are not very happy to see another ethnic community – and I mean the African one – being branded as a community infested with crime. I can point out to you a couple of very violent crimes that were committed recently by Greek Australians, but no politician came out to say that Greek Australians are criminals. Why did you choose to victimise a community by using the term ‘African gangs’?

MG: No one in the Liberal party is using the African community. That is rubbish. That has been said by the Labor party, that we are using that. We never said it’s only the African community. What we have said is Victoria has a problem with crime and the Crime Statistics Agency shows that violent crime is at record levels.

EP: When Mr Dutton came out and talked about African gangs or when Mr Turnbull did exactly the same, you were next to him. You did not correct them.

MG: You should raise that with them. What Bill Shorten says is not Daniel Andrews fault. You should raise that with them, not me.

EP: Your take on crime is that it is rising. That is not manifested through the figures of the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, which show that crime decreased last year. Why do you maintain that crime has increased?

MG: The police is saying the whole crime is going down, and they include stealing a bubble gum in that; the real figure is that violent crime has gone up by 20.7 per cent in the last three year period. It has never been as high as it is today. I know Victoria has an issue with crime. I have never branded the African community. I have said that Victoria has an issue with crime and we need to tackle it by mandatory sentencing, by bail reform and parole reform. It does not matter which community is involved in that crime. It does not matter if it is the Greek community, or the Italian community, or the African community. We have to have a justice system that deals with it, but we also said that if you choose to ignore it, it will not go away as an issue. If you make excuses and you say it is a proportion of the population and this and that, you will never solve the problem. Sydney confronted the issue in the 1990s. Sydney now has less per capita crime than Victoria.

EP: Let’s agree that we disagree. We know that the use of the drug ice is a major contributor to violent crime. Parole reform or mandatory sentences do not help drug addicted offenders. Does the Coalition government have a policy to tackle this issue?

MG: Yes, we do. We will fund Australia’s first juvenile mandatory rehab centre with $30 million. We are going to take people off drugs. We will say to a magistrate who has an under 18 in front of them, who committed a crime because of drugs, to send them to this facility. We will get this offender off drugs. Ice is a massive problem, particularly in country Victoria. It will be a rehab centre, not a prison. Getting young people off drugs means we will not see them in the criminal justice system again and again.

EP: On the issue of crime, there was a report in one of the dailies recently that a Coalition government will be looking into abolishing the seal of confession for child abuse cases. Are you willing to act on this matter?

MG: Peter Walsh, who is our senior catholic MP is looking into this. I will take his advice on notice and the advice of other catholic MPs, because I am not a Catholic. So the confession to me is something I am not accustomed with. Having said that, Victoria has a mandatory reporting scheme for child sex offences. Having a national approach to that would be much more helpful, but if we are not going to get a national approach we need to do something about it, and I think that Peter is right in saying we can’t wait forever for a national approach. So we need to do something on child sex offences.

“We will keep the stamp duty concessions or abolishment of it, but this policy is no be-all, end-all. We need supply. That’s why we said we will bring supply in the market by completing all the structure plans.”

A VISION FOR THE FUTURE GENERATION

EP: Moving onto economic issues, house affordability is one of great importance for the wider community, including the Greek Australian. How are you going to make it easier for first home buyers to realise their dream?

MG: We will keep the stamp duty concessions or abolishment of it, but this policy is no be-all, end-all. We need supply. That’s why we said we will bring supply in the market by completing all the structure plans. The problem we have at the moment is that this government has constricted supply, so on the one hand it says we have to help get house prices under control, while on the other hand it says we are going to approve fewer areas of development than ever before.

We have a defined urban growth boundary and no one says to approve outside that boundary, but all the plans within that boundary have not been completed. That means house numbers for sale are being constricted, so as a consequence, house land prices in the outer suburbs have risen by 69 percent in two years. When house prices rise, this government said “we will give you cash back.” Well, the best way you can help with house prices is to flush the market with supply.

EP: Given the drop in house prices recently, don’t you think that increased supply might lead to a crash of the Melbourne property market?

MG: In the outer growth areas, prices are going up. It is the middle ring suburbs, the $1mil to $3mil, that prices are stagnating or starting to fall. This is where you get the figures saying that prices are starting to fall and yes, prices are stabilising in this market and that is why I said that the price hike is obvious in the majority of the outer market.

EP: What is your vision for the state? How will a Coalition government see its future?

MG: I think Victoria needs a short, medium and long term agenda for government. My short-term agenda is to fix the crime problem. In the first hundred days, we will make the changes needed. I believe that the changes we will implement will need to take those repeat offenders off the streets and then, if they have drug issues, we need to rehabilitate them.

Our medium-term agenda is about affordability, which means we will offer more supply to the housing market, more supply of gas to drive down the power prices.

And the long-term plan is to decentralise Victoria. You know, when Greeks came to Victoria decades ago, they went to the regional areas. When my mum came from Ukraine, she went to the country area. They did so because there were jobs. We are growing Victoria in an unsustainable way. We want to focus on decentralising our economy, whether it is through tax incentives, transport growth, hospitals. We need to provide incentives for people to go to country Victoria. It is a real challenge and we need to have a government that thinks for the next generation, not just the next election.