The Labor Party government in Australia’s second-largest state Victoria, headed by Premier Jacinta Allan, announced on November 12 that it will introduce laws allowing children as young as 14 to be tried in adult courts and sentenced to life imprisonment. The so-called “Adult Time for Violent Crime” legislation, to be introduced by the end of this year, marks an escalation in the assault on democratic rights being carried out by Labor and Coalition governments across Australia.

The laws target children from 14 to 17 charged with offences including home invasion, carjacking and causing injury. Under the current Children’s Court system, the maximum sentence for any offence is three years. Under the new regime, children will be dragged before the County Court, where the same offences will carry the threat of adult penalties up to life imprisonment.

The basic legal principle that detention should be a “last resort” for children—enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—will be effectively abolished. Judges will instead be directed to prioritise “community safety,” a deliberately vague formulation that subordinates children’s futures to the political requirements of a government seeking to posture as “tough on crime.”

Allan stated bluntly: “We want courts to treat these violent children like adults, so jail is more likely and sentences are longer.” Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny was equally explicit: “When child offenders are sentenced in an adult court, most go to jail.”

The entire framework rests on a lie. In reality, youth crime in Victoria has fallen by 18 percent since 2010. The recent increase in recorded offences is driven not by more children offending but by repeat offenders. Police Minister Anthony Carbines himself admitted, “There were 149 less child offenders in the reporting period, indicating that repeat offenders are driving the arrest numbers.” 

A cohort of approximately 300 young people accounts for the bulk of serious youth offences, with just 20 responsible for a quarter of the total. The government’s own figures demolish its claim of a “youth crime wave.”

The measures will worsen the very problems they purport to address. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data show 51 percent of young offenders who serve their first sentence in detention return to offending before turning 18, compared to 41 percent when community-based sentences are used. Dr Susan Baidawi of the Monash Criminal Justice Consortium warned the legislation “will at best have no impact on their future risk of crime, at worst, it will inflate” it.

Victoria Legal Aid chief executive Toby Hemming noted that many children before the courts “have committed violent crimes, and many have been victims of crime themselves. These children are in urgent need of support to help them build stable, positive lives and avoid reoffending, which the adult justice system is not designed to do.”

Exposed by researchers but ignored by the government is the phenomenon of “child criminal exploitation”—organised adult criminals grooming impoverished and disadvantaged youth to commit offences on their behalf. Rather than targeting these criminal networks and the social conditions that make such exploitation possible, the Labor government seeks to imprison the exploited children.

The Allan Labor government knows its laws will not reduce offending. Their real purpose is to construct new mechanisms and infrastructure of state repression under conditions of a deepening social and economic crisis, and to channel legitimate popular anger over deteriorating living standards into support for authoritarian measures directed at the most vulnerable layers of the working class, above all youth.

The social conditions producing desperation among working-class youth are a matter of public record. The 2023 Australian Youth Barometer report found 90 percent of young Australians experienced financial difficulties in the preceding 12 months, 72 percent believe they will never own a home, and 21 percent experienced food insecurity.

Young workers are grossly over-represented among the unemployed, comprising 15.7 percent of the workforce but 25.2 percent of the long-term jobless. Only 22 percent work full-time, while 67 percent require financial support from family. The psychological toll is immense: 97 percent reported feelings of worry, anxiety or pessimism.

These are the conditions over which successive state and federal governments, Labor and Coalition alike, have presided. The Allan Labor government has deepened them. Its response is not to address the housing crisis, restore secure, well-paid employment or reverse decades of social spending cuts. It is to imprison children.

The laws are also nakedly racist in their operation and intent. Data from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service show Allan’s bail “reforms” introduced in March 2025 have already produced a 233 percent increase in Aboriginal youth being refused bail, compared to 6 percent for non-Indigenous youth. “Law and order” is used as code for intensified repression directed above all against Aboriginal youth and other oppressed layers of the working class.

Nerita Waight, the Legal Service’s chief executive, condemned the announcement: “Victoria is a cruel and unforgiving state where children cannot make a mistake. Punishing trauma is not the answer.”

Victoria’s escalation is part of a coordinated national offensive. The New South Wales Labor government initiated its new youth crime laws in March 2024. Victoria followed with severe bail reforms in August 2024. The Northern Territory Country Liberals introduced five “tough on crime” bills in October 2024.

In Queensland, the Liberal government implemented “adult crime, adult time” laws in December 2024, expanding them last May to cover 33 offences. The state’s Human Rights Act was suspended twice to ram through the laws, at a time when youth crime stood at a 14-year low. The Allan government is now adopting the Queensland model wholesale.

No faction of the official political establishment opposes these measures. Liberal opposition leader Brad Battin criticised Allan only for lacking credibility to deliver on her promises. The bipartisan consensus extends to the federal level. Asked about Victoria’s laws, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mouthed the platitude that “Australians want to be safe” and insisted that the states can determine their own policy, signalling the full support of the federal Labor government for this reactionary “law-and-order” campaign.

The Allan government’s crime laws are only its latest assault on the democratic and social rights of workers and youth. It has viciously denounced school students striking against the Gaza genocide, joining the official campaign to suppress opposition to Australian imperialism’s complicity in Israeli war crimes. It has participated in escalating attacks on the right to protest, including a ban on face coverings at demonstrations and leaving intact the repressive apparatus used against climate, anti-war and pro-Palestine protesters. Meanwhile, it is overseeing the demolition of public housing estates amid the worst housing crisis in decades.

The bipartisan adoption of authoritarian methods by Australian state and federal governments is part of an international shift towards dictatorial rule, epitomised by the fascistic Trump administration. Confronted with a growing social and economic crisis, capitalist governments worldwide are turning to the most repressive measures.

Defending the democratic rights of children and workers in general can only be achieved through a struggle against all the major parties of capitalist rule in Australia and globally. That requires the independent mobilisation of the working class against the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends. The laws targeting children today will be extended to workers, students and all those who oppose Labor’s agenda of war and social devastation. The urgent task is to build a socialist leadership in the working class to wage this political struggle.