Victoria Police has followed in the footsteps of its northern neighbours, announcing new efforts to tackle crimes against farmers.
Police launched the Farm Crime Coordination Unit – aimed at increasing the number of arrests for farm trespassers or thieves, and encouraging more farmers to report crimes - on Monday.
“Over the last few years we’ve seen an increase in farm crime and we’ve also seen some of the illegal activism that we’ve seen, particularly illegal trespassing on farm properties,” Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville told reporters while announcing the new regional unit at the Melbourne Showgrounds.
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Police says there's no official statistics on exactly how much crime occurs on farms, because farm crimes are under-reported.
But anecdotally, livestock farmers like Sam Nelson agree with the police minister that farm crime is on the rise.
“It's more and more apparent, there's no doubt about that," he said.
“There’s more machinery being stolen and unfortunately an increasing number of livestock.
“I think with the livestock it’s an easy commodity to move and a difficult commodity to trace so they can be moved on, especially sheep.”
Retired livestock farmer Gavin Wall said livestock crimes are under-reported because farm crimes are often trickier to solve.
“(Thieves) realise that farmers don't go out and count their sheep every day and they'll slip in and take an opportunity to take stock or perhaps tools or equipment,” he said.
Mr Wall says he had tools stolen from his Shepparton property while he was at the Royal Melbourne Show a few years ago.
The Victorian government announcement will see 70 officers, who were previously called Agricultural Liaison Officers, no dubbed Farm Crime Liaison Officers.
Farm Crime won’t be their sole focus - but they will have expertise in the area and a dedicated inspector - an element the Agricultural Liaison Officers didn’t have.
But Victorian Nationals leader Peter Walsh said the announcement doesn’t deliver what farmers requested.
“Changing job titles is not the same as adding new front line officers and it won’t help tackle worsening rural crime rates," he said.
“The Andrews Labor Government is trying to dress today’s announcement up as 70 new positions, but in reality there won’t be any more boots on the ground in front line roles to protect our farmers and their properties,” Mr Walsh said.
The inspector heading up the new squad, Karl Curran, said it was more than just a re-brand.
“I think that (farm crimes) have been under reported and I think that what we’re doing now is coordinating a response so that we can have proper investigations conducted to address them,” he said.
New South Wales launched its Rural Crime Prevention Team in March 2018.
