A week after the Victorian Premier's big housing push, Jacinta Allan has been forced onto the back foot over Labor’s record on child protection with grim figures showing dozens of kids have died in government care in four years. Victoria's government has also been forced to defend the slow-roll out of its tobacco licensing scheme.
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00:00It's the weekly inferno that rages on.
00:05Victoria's tobacco turf wars show no signs of being extinguished.
00:09Someone is going to die because of this war on tobacco.
00:12Tired of waiting for government action, the opposition moved its own bill to set up a
00:17tobacco licensing scheme with million dollar fines for those caught selling illegal smokes.
00:23Victoria is the only state in Australia that doesn't have a licence to sell tobacco and
00:27Victoria is the only state that we've seen over 100 fire bombings.
00:31The bill failed.
00:33This kind of petty stunt is not getting us to where we need to go.
00:38That's despite a government commission report in 2022 recommending Victoria introduce a
00:43licensing scheme.
00:45We're dealing with large organised crime but we need to design a system from the start
00:50and that is incredibly complicated.
00:53Laws will be introduced next month with enforcement set to fall to authorised officers.
00:58Victoria Police aren't about running around chasing down every retailer selling individual
01:03cigarettes to underage people.
01:06Their focus is organised crime.
01:08After a successful week, the Premier was keen to keep the focus on housing, introducing
01:12new laws to scrap stamp duty on off the plan purchases but instead Labor was forced to
01:17defend its record with the dire state of Victoria's child protection services exposed.
01:23Department figures show that since 2020, 66 children known to family services have died,
01:29including six since July.
01:30This includes accidents and natural causes.
01:33The figures also show there were more than 5,350 reports of abuse of children in care.
01:39Why are more Victorian young kids dying?
01:44This is not a set of statistics, these are kids.
01:48These are vulnerable little kids that should not have their lives played with politics
01:56but they should be supported.
01:58Order.
01:59Order.
02:00The government says it is investing in child protection but the issue may require more
02:05than just money.