Two sets of Crime Statistics Agency figures came out this year, and they tell slightly different stories. One shows a record. The other shows the first real easing. For anyone who parks a car on a Melbourne driveway, both are worth understanding.
The record: 2025
In March, the ABC reported the agency's figures for the 2025 calendar year. More than 32,000 cars were stolen in Victoria, the most since 2001. Car theft had risen by 96.9 per cent over three years.
Two other details from that release matter for homeowners:
- Key cloning. Victoria Police's Bob Hill said 30 to 40 per cent of car thefts involved technology that clones or bypasses a car's key. The ABC reported that the agency linked the surge in theft to that technology.
- Young offenders. Offenders under 18 accounted for 57.6 per cent of carjackings, 52.6 per cent of home invasions and 47.8 per cent of aggravated burglaries. Hill said organised crime groups were using young people to steal vehicles.
The easing: the year to June 2026
In September, the ABC reported the next set of figures, covering the 12 months to the end of June 2026. Car theft was down 5 per cent. Theft from cars was down 10 per cent. Home invasions fell 27 per cent and carjackings 25 per cent. Burglaries and break-ins fell by almost 20 per cent.
Chief statistician Fiona Dowsley called the burglary fall significant but said the cause was hard to pin down, and that these trends tend to ebb and flow. Deputy Commissioner Bob Hill said the drop was promising and that police work was far from over.
Reading the two together
A 5 per cent fall from a 24-year high is still a very high number. The way most cars are taken has not changed either. The September figures do not suggest key cloning has gone away, and the same year was full of reported cases where thieves came for the keys inside the house. We have written separately about three of those home invasions and a luxury car spree across Canterbury and Cranbourne.
So the practical picture for a homeowner is this. The car on your driveway can be targeted electronically without anyone touching your keys, or physically, by someone who gets the keys from inside. Most of the advice you'll read handles one of those and ignores the other.
What each kind of protection actually covers
It helps to sort the common measures by what they stop.
- Keeping keys away from doors and windows makes a grab-and-go burglary harder and limits signal relay attacks on keyless cars. It does nothing if someone gets inside and finds them.
- Signal-blocking pouches help with relay attacks on keyless entry. They do not help with thefts that use cloned or reprogrammed keys through the car's diagnostic port.
- Steering wheel locks and immobilisers slow a thief down once they are in the car. Determined thieves can defeat some of them, but they add time and noise.
- A garage with a locked door is very effective, if the car actually goes in it. Many Melbourne garages are full of everything except the car.
- A physical barrier at the driveway, such as a gate or a removable bollard, is the only item on this list that still works when the thief has a working key. The car may start, but it cannot be driven out.
Where a driveway bollard fits, and where it doesn't
A removable bollard sits in a steel sleeve set into the driveway, in the path of the car. With it locked in place, the car can't be driven out without first removing the bollard, and that needs its own key. Thieves who have just cloned a fob or taken a key from the kitchen bench are not carrying that key.
It is worth being honest about the limits. A bollard does nothing to stop someone breaking into your home. It doesn't stop a car being damaged, and it won't help with a car parked on the street. It only works if it's locked in place every night, which means it has to be quick and easy to use, or it ends up leaning against the fence.
Placement matters too. The bollard needs to block the car's exit path, not sit to one side where a car can be steered around it. On wide driveways or corner blocks, that can mean two bollards, or one placed close to the car rather than at the boundary.
The short version
Car theft in Victoria is falling slightly from a record high, and the methods have not changed. If your car spends the night on an open driveway, the measures that protect it fall into two groups: those that make the keys harder to get or copy, and those that stop the car moving even when someone has them. The strongest setups use both.