Opposition leader Matthew Guy last week announced that a coalition government would allocate 20 new specialist investigating roles dedicated to rural crime such as livestock theft.

But the State Government says the funding will only return a squad which had previously been cut last time the Coalition was in government.

Agriculture minister Jaala Pulford said there had been a lot of opposition announcements in recent months which lacked detail and substance.

“The unit that the Liberals and nationals are promising is a replica of a unit that they dismantled previously in government,” she said.

“They have been running around the place a bit saying they will do a certain set of things, but they don’t have a lot of credibility because it runs very counter to what happens whenever they are in government.”

Premier Daniel Andrews, who spoke at the Victorian Farmers Federation conference on Friday, said he would rely on expert views such as that of the Chief Commissioner before any consideration was given to match the pledge.

“The opposition is not relevant to our plans for Victoria,” he said.

“We already have significant resources allocated by Victoria police with a number of agricultural liaison officers and an actual unit within Victorian police that specialises in farm crime.

“If the Chief Commissioner says to me he would like to boost that unit, then of course he will receive those additional funds.”

Mr Guy said there had been 232 instances of burglary, break and enter and theft where livestock were stolen between April 2017 and March this year with only a 4.3 per cent arrest rate. But Mr Andrews said money would be better spent in prevention rather than enforcement. 

“There are a range of things you can do,” he said. “There’s electronic identification in, for instance, sheep and we are providing millions of dollars to roll that out right across the state. We listen to the VFF and others and we make the investments we need to make not just in one area, but in several which provide the best benefit.”