Wednesday, 25 November 2020
The PRESIDENT (Hon. N Elasmar) took the chair at 9.34 am and read the prayer.
Announcements
Acknowledgement of country
The PRESIDENT (09:35): On behalf of the Victorian state Parliament I acknowledge the Aboriginal peoples, the traditional custodians of this land which has served as a significant meeting place of the First People of Victoria. I acknowledge and pay respect to the elders of the Aboriginal nations in Victoria past, present and emerging and welcome any elders and members of the Aboriginal communities who may visit or participate in the events or proceedings of the Parliament.
Papers
Papers
Tabled by Clerk:
Auditor-General’s Reports on—
Accessing Emergency Funding to Meet Urgent Claims, November 2020 (Ordered to be published).
the Annual Financial Report of the State of Victoria: 2019–20, November 2020 (Ordered to be published).
Subordinate Legislation Act 1994—Legislative Instrument and related documents under section 16B in respect of an Order in Council of 10 November 2020 revising animal welfare codes of practice under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986.
Victorian Budget Update—2020–21.
Business of the house
Notices of motion
Notices given.
Notices of intention to make statements
Notice given.
Members statements
Schools funding
Ms WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (09:53): Last week I had the pleasure of touring the construction site for the new Fitzroy Gasworks senior campus with my colleagues in the other place James Merlino and Richard Wynne. This campus will accommodate seniors from Fitzroy High School and Collingwood College and is set to open in 2022. This new campus is yet another great example of the school-building boom that is happening right across Victoria, which not only supports a stronger education future but continues to help Victoria’s economy rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.
I was also delighted to join Richard Wynne at Fitzroy Primary School last Wednesday to deliver them some fantastic news—that they are receiving $9.272 million in this budget to upgrade and modernise their school. It was a fantastic first school visit for me, and I would like to thank all those from the school community for welcoming me.
We all know that our system only works best when we make sure that the quality of the buildings matches the quality of the teaching and learning, and that is exactly what this budget will deliver with the single biggest investment ever in our schools. That is why I am also delighted to see at least $36.12 million to build a brand-new school for 525 students in North Melbourne. We need to build back better than before and put people and fairness at the centre of the recovery, and this education investment will make sure that is exactly what happens.
COVID-19
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (09:54): I find the language and behaviour that the government has developed throughout COVID rather disturbing. Rather than educating the community and allowing them to make informed decisions, directives were given. People were told to go and get tested rather than providing explanations and encouraging them to do so, totally different from what is normal medical practice. If someone had voiced any concerns or questioned anything, terms such as ‘anti-vaxxers’ or ‘conspiracy theorists’ started being thrown around, not just on special or mainstream media but by the government and by health officials. Similarly, when a meeting was held in Federation Square on Cup Day, everyone who attended, including David Limbrick, was classed as a protester and herded together like cattle. What about those who just wanted to listen or to hear different points of view or gain more information? We have seen people being roughly handled and handcuffed rather than calmly approached and reasoned with. Who ordered this widespread approach—the Chief Commissioner of Police, the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, the Premier? As we move towards COVID normal I hope we sit back and honestly look at what we have done and we learn from it.
Women’s Business
Ms VAGHELA (Western Metropolitan) (09:56): Recently I participated in a virtual workshop hosted by an organisation called Women’s Business. Established by Indigenous woman Kat Henaway and Indian-Australian woman Kriti Colless, Women’s Business is a collaboration of women aligning their passion to amplify and empower women of colour in Australia. They collaborate with Australian organisations and provide strategies to develop programs that respectfully and authentically engage with women of colour. Their key relationships are with organisations named Women & Leadership Australia and Women for Election Australia. This workshop, ‘On being a woman, an MP and Indigenous or culturally and linguistically diverse’, was part of their ‘Politics in colour: candid conversations’ series. All four panellists were members of Parliament, who shared their amazing journey of life in this country as well as in the Australian political arena.
Western Bulldogs Community Foundation
Ms VAGHELA: On another note, I had the privilege to attend a virtual event organised by the Western Bulldogs Community Foundation. Facilitated in partnership with local councils and community health services across western Victoria, Daughters of the West is their free eight-week online health program. This program has been successfully running for three years, and last year a total of 514 women participated in the program. I was joined by Gaye Hamilton, the chair of the Western Bulldogs Community Foundation, to take part in their ‘Inspirational women’ session, where we both shared our life journeys with the participants. The aim of the session was to tell the real-life journey of inspirational women doing amazing things in public or behind closed doors. It ties into the strategic priority of the foundation, gender equity, in showing women as influential leaders.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:57): On 25 November 1960 three sisters of the Mirabal family were assassinated in the Dominican Republic on the orders of the then Dominican ruler, Rafael Trujillo. In 1981, 25 November was designated as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by the UN General Assembly in their honour. We must continue to rally around this cause, more than ever. In Australia, two in every five women have experienced violence since the age of 15, one in three has experienced physical violence and one in five has experienced sexual violence. Whilst many people think it is a complex problem that seems never-ending and unsolvable, it is not. People—and when I say people, I mean mostly men—should just stop perpetrating violence against women. It is that simple. And men of character need to stand up and continue to let their peers know it will not be tolerated. I ask everyone to join me in this endeavour.
Learn Local Awards
Mr ERDOGAN (Southern Metropolitan) (09:59): I would like to use this opportunity to congratulate two fantastic organisations in my electorate of Southern Metropolitan Region on being announced as finalists in the 2020 Learn Local Awards. The Sandybeach Centre have been announced as a pre-accredited pathway program award finalist for the mentoring program that they have developed with the goal to empower adults with a disability to find employment or volunteering opportunities. The Kew Neighbourhood Learning Centre is a Victorian Learn Local collaboration award finalist for the programs they have created to improve the lives of people with a disability through social interaction, personal development programs and community participation. The Victorian Learn Local Awards are held annually by the Victorian government’s Adult, Community and Further Education Board and celebrate the success of individuals, programs and training providers across Victoria. These organisations do fantastic work for our community. I would like to thank them, their staff and volunteers for all that they do. I wish them well for the awards.
Law reform
Mr BARTON (Eastern Metropolitan) (10:00): Last Friday I was having a moment of reflection, asking myself many questions after many weeks of personal abuse and asking myself: why am I here? Through that process I was wondering why I was not sitting on a Western Australian beach camped with my dog in my caravan with the bride. Why am I here? Late in that day I received a text message and I thought, ‘Why won’t they leave me alone?’. But it was a very important text message. It was from a mother called Janet, mother of Alexia. She sent me a copy of a birth certificate. They were so excited because it was an amended birth certificate, something that we did in this Parliament a while ago. That made an old bloke cry. It made me stop thinking about a beach in Western Australia. I want to reflect: I am glad we do this sort of stuff.
North Shepparton Community and Learning Centre
Mr MELHEM (Western Metropolitan) (10:01): Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Debbie and Chrystal, respectively the manager and the training coordinator of the North Shepparton Community and Learning Centre. Both women have incredible stories of overcoming significant disadvantage to become incredible community educators.
Debbie was a single mum who had just left an abusive relationship, and a friend brought her to the North Shepparton centre to undertake an adult education course. She has not looked back since. After completing a higher level qualification Debbie went on to become a volunteer, then an admin officer and then a trainer teaching students in the same course that she had attended all those years before. She is now the manager of the centre, having worked there for 20 years.
Chrystal was abandoned by her parents at age 10, moving in with her grandmother, who passed away when she was 18. She was introduced to the centre through the Work for the Dole program, which led to her completing a children’s services course and becoming an employee of the centre. Chrystal has worked in various roles at the centre, continuing to upskill by gaining new qualifications in accounting, community services, and training and education. After 20 years and numerous job offers at other organisations, she could not picture working anywhere else.
These stories exemplify the power of education providers to their local community. Education is more than just picking up a skill; it can transform lives by providing pathways to employment for many Victorians from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds. Debbie and Chrystal should be incredibly proud of their achievements. The Andrews Labor government is proud of them.
Energy policy
Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:03): I am very happy to talk about the largest investment in clean energy of any state ever. I know that people in the Southern Metropolitan Region want this, and I will tell you why: because they come to me directly. They talk about wanting downward pressure on power bills, they talk about cutting emissions—they are very concerned about that—and they talk about the most vulnerable in our community. So it is wonderful that we are able to deliver on this. This includes $540 million to create six renewable energy zones to create jobs, support wind and solar and put power at the heart of our economic recovery; $797 million to reduce household bills with energy-efficient appliances and $250 power saving bonuses; $12.6 million for the second renewable energy auction to create enough energy to power 100 per cent of Victorian government power use, from public transport to schools—and let me tell you, we have had a lot of excitement and a lot of feedback about that; $27 million for renewable energy projects, like neighbourhood batteries, microgrids and community energy; $21 million for community groups to go renewable and support resource-smart schools to teach kids about climate change, investing in their future; and $108 million for renewable energy innovation. So it is a wonderful package, and it is supporting all Victorians across the state, not least those in my beloved Southern Metropolitan Region.
Secure work pilot scheme
Mr GEPP (Northern Victoria) (10:05): Yet another Andrews Labor government budget has been delivered and yet another groundbreaking, nation-leading announcement made on a topic known only too well to many in the rural and regional communities of Northern Victoria Region: insecure work. Regrettably, COVID-19 has exposed the insidious nature of insecure work: people having to choose between going to work when sick or a day’s pay. A secure work pilot scheme has been announced, providing up to five days of sick and carers pay at the national minimum wage for casual or insecure workers in priority industries, which will be a game changer for northern Victorian workers in certain sectors with high rates of casualisation amongst cleaners, hospitality staff, security guards, supermarket workers and aged-care staff, just to name a few. As anyone with even a remote understanding of rural and regional employment knows, it is those industries, those sectors, that are the key employers in my electorate of Northern Victoria often because it is the only show in town and people do not have a choice.
This budget will provide $5 million for consultation on the design of the pilot scheme, with consultation involving business, unions and the community. All the time in Northern Victoria, on farms and at trades and labour councils and throughout my travels, the future of work in these communities is always raised. Like so many initiatives of the Andrews government, I can look those people in the eye now and tell them that we have listened and that we are now acting. So to the aged-care nurse from Sea Lake to the security guard in Echuca, the supermarket worker in Kyabram to the school cleaner in Cobram, the Andrews government cares about you, your family and your wellbeing.
Budget 2020–21
Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (10:06): I rise to make a members statement on some very exciting budget initiatives and announcements that are going to make a huge impact for school students in my region who attend our very proud public state school system. I am very proud to announce that Templestowe Heights Primary School will be the beneficiary of $11.73 million to upgrade their facilities for additional enrolments by the 2023 school year. Also, Ruskin Park Primary School in Croydon will benefit by receiving $9.56 million to provide facilities for an additional 200 enrolments at that school. Additionally, the Bulleen Heights special school will receive $9.15 million, as will Heatherwood School, which will receive $10 million to deliver the next stages of these schools’ master plans. I am extraordinarily proud that the Andrews Labor government invests in our youngest and littlest Victorians to ensure they can get the best start in life.
But I am also very proud of the $1.6 billion that will transform support for students with a disability, which will make a huge difference to students in my region. This is a first in Australia to reform the disability funding model. I think there is only one other country in the world that does it this way, and it is about focusing on students’ ability rather than their disability. This will also create 1730 jobs across the state by 2025. This will make a massive difference to students and families in my region, and I am also proud of the Andrews Labor government’s change to out-of-home care, increasing support for students living out of home from the ages of 18 to 21.
Following statement incorporated pursuant to order of Council of 15 September:
Australian Training Awards
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education)
Last Friday was the Australian Training Awards.
I’m constantly impressed by the calibre of talent and achievement in Victoria, and this was very much on display at the national awards.
And for the fifth year in a row, Victoria has taken out the Large Training Provider of the Year award.
This year, the winner is South West TAFE.
South West TAFE does an incredible job, working closely with industry to meet the skills needs of the regions it serves.
As a member for Western Victoria and the Minister for Training and Skills, I have visited South West TAFE many times. Each time I see just how committed the staff are to delivering relevant, high-quality training and support for students.
This award is well deserved and means a lot to everybody in Western Victoria. Congratulations to Mark Fidge and the team.
I also want to acknowledge the winner of the VET Teacher/Trainer of the Year—Kevin Nunn from TAFE Gippsland.
Kevin teaches at the Forestec campus in East Gippsland, and has been involved in timber training for over 25 years.
Kevin also played an important role during the summer bushfires and subsequent recovery activities.
Kevin embodies everything that is outstanding about TAFE teachers.
I also want to acknowledge Builders Academy Australia, who have been recognised as the Small Training Provider of the Year.
Congratulations to all of the finalists and winners of this year’s awards.
Bills
Parks and Crown Land Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
Council’s amendments
The PRESIDENT (10:08): I have a message from the Assembly:
The Legislative Assembly informs the Legislative Council that, in relation to ‘A Bill for an Act to amend the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987, the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978, the Forests Act 1958, the Land Act 1958, the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990, the National Parks Act 1975, the Parks Victoria Act 2018, the Wildlife Act 1975 and the Zoological Parks and Gardens Act 1995 and for other purposes’ the amendments made by the Council have been agreed to.
Motions
COVID-19
Mr RICH-PHILLIPS (South Eastern Metropolitan) (10:09): I move:
That this house:
(1) notes the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, in particular the harsh lockdown, has unevenly impacted certain groups and industries, specifically:
(a) ABS figures show the number of unemployed Victorian women is now the highest on record at 146 500 or 8.8 per cent;
(b) the underemployment rate for Victoria is now 13 per cent, the highest in the country, and combined with the unemployment rate, a total of 20.4 per cent, with one in five Victorians either looking for work or more work;
(c) over the past 12 months Victoria recorded the largest drop in job advertisements of any state, with Geelong and the Surf Coast down 27.9 per cent, Gippsland down 16.9 per cent and Ballarat and Central Highlands down 13.3 per cent and that, together with Melbourne, these regions have recorded four of the five largest reductions in Australia;
(d) ABS payroll jobs and total wages data shows, since the pandemic began, payroll jobs in small businesses that employ under 20 people have fallen by 9.4 per cent and in businesses that employ between 20 and 199 people by 9.3 per cent;
(e) the travel and tourism, hospitality and events, fitness, creative industry and retail sectors have borne the brunt of the burden;
(2) accepts that Victoria has not provided commensurate targeted assistance that recognises the more severe impacts;
(3) notes that many businesses will be lost in the absence of appropriate additional support; and
(4) believes it would be prudent for the government to take further targeted steps to remedy these inequities.
Notice of this motion was given by Mr Davis yesterday. The motion highlights the jobs crisis that Victoria now faces—a jobs crisis and an economic crisis—as a consequence of the policy decisions taken by this government, the Andrews Labor government, over the course of the last six months in particular. But it is worth pointing out that the consequences of this government’s policies were being seen even before the COVID situation, and in many respects the budget situation we have now and the budget we saw yesterday were well on the path we have seen delivered before COVID started. We only need to look at the budget update from the end of last year to see the trajectory that things were on in this state. In many respects COVID has come along at a convenient time for this government to mask the problems it had created.
But as a consequence of this government’s choices and its panicked response to the COVID pandemic we now have a major economic and jobs crisis in Victoria. We saw yesterday the government release a budget in which it forecast economic growth for the financial year just finished—that is, to 30 June 2020—to contract by a quarter of a per cent. But we now know that the official ABS figures, which came out last Friday, which would have been after the budget was finalised, actually show that the economy in Victoria contracted by half a per cent in the 2019–20 financial year. The government forecast that this year the economy will contract by a further 4 per cent. These are unprecedented numbers. We have not seen this level of contraction in economic activity in this state before. We have not seen the commensurate impact on employment that we are now seeing and will continue to see, on the government’s own forecasts, over the coming two years.
As I said, it did not have to be this way. It is not this way in every other state in Australia and it is not this way in many jurisdictions elsewhere around the world who managed to contain the COVID situation without destroying their economies and their workforces in the process. But this government knew better. This Premier knew better. They went down the path of what was effectively a scorched earth approach, and we saw after the initial response a then protracted lockdown, which affected particularly metropolitan Melbourne but also had flow-on effects for the rest of the state. We saw what started out as a strategy to flatten the curve—that was the terminology that was bandied around in this place ad nauseam by the Minister for Health in the first wave of the pandemic—abandoned later on for an unspoken strategy, which seems to have been elimination. We only need to see some of the rhetoric in the last week and the talk of 28 days now without mystery cases to demonstrate that that was in fact a strategy of elimination, which of course is unlikely to be achieved long term and which gives rise to the prospect of when cases do reappear in Victoria—as they will with any cross-border movement, be it international or domestic—further lockdowns and further scorched earth approaches as the government once again panics, as we saw over the last six months.
So we have had a scorched earth approach not dissimilar to a government seeking to eradicate weeds and vermin in a national park and deciding the way to do that is to burn the national park down. That is essentially what we have had over the last six months in this government’s response to the pandemic. What we saw through the middle of this year in particular, when we hit the second wave, was a distinct lack of planning and a distinct lack of strategy. On the question of strategy I go to the issue of what the government was seeking to achieve. In April it was very clear: it was to flatten the curve. It was to reduce the growth in the rate and number of COVID cases to allow the capacity in our health system to be increased to deal with the growth in the number of cases. It was to slow down the rate of growth in cases. It was not to eliminate the virus. There was no belief that we could magically eliminate this virus in Victoria. It was to slow down, by having social distancing, by restricting the movement of Victorians, the growth of the virus to allow the capacity of the health system to be increased.
We had the then Minister for Health in here talking about the number of intensive care beds which would be created, and to this date we do not know whether that was achieved. There are significant question marks over whether the funding that was put into the health system actually delivered the additional beds that the minister claimed would be created. But what we do know is those beds were never needed. We never saw the wild forecast of hospitalisations and intensive care hospitalisations that were floating around in March and April eventuate. Even through the worst of the second wave, which was caused by this government’s incompetence, we never saw the rates of hospitalisation which had been forecast.
We did have a clear aim back in March, and it was to flatten the curve; it was to reduce the rate of growth so the health system could catch up. With the second wave—the panicked response to the second wave—there was no clear strategy. The Minister for Health while she was here—before she resigned in protest at the way she was thrown under the bus by the Premier—and the Premier in his own utterances in that second-wave response never once articulated what the government’s strategy was, what its objective was, what it was seeking to achieve in locking down the state and crippling the economy and destroying employment, what his objective was. As I said, we now hear talk of, ‘Oh, we’ve eliminated the virus; we’ve succeeded’, which of course is not the case. While we may not be reporting cases at the moment, inevitably it is still in Australia. Inevitably we will see new cases announced and the government is going to need to have a strategy to respond to them, and another scorched earth approach is not the answer.
Worryingly for Victorian citizens, we saw the response to the outbreak in South Australia last week where the South Australian government overreacted in shutting down South Australia, and we had the Victorian government react in closing the border with South Australia. It is worth pointing out this is the first time that the Victorian border has been closed, because through Victoria’s own second wave the Victorian border was open to interstate. Other states did not want us, but the Victorian border was open to people from other states. So for the first time we closed because of an outbreak of six, I think it was, in South Australia—we closed the Victoria-South Australia border. If that is going to be the reaction every time we have a single-digit number of cases in other jurisdictions, it is going to completely undermine any economic recovery and any jobs recovery that we see in Victoria, and it is worrying that there is that lack of a clear, articulated strategy, which most likely will lead to that sort of panicked and overstated reaction as we saw with the South Australian border.
And of course that will lead to undermining confidence. You cannot expect businesses to start to recover and you cannot expect businesses to start to employ people again if they have no certainty, if they cannot have any confidence in the environment in which they are operating. It is bad enough that the economic environment has been severely undermined, without the government creating further uncertainty. The prospect that on any day of the week the Premier may come out and announce, ‘We’re locking down a part of Melbourne’ or ‘We’re locking down a state border’ or ‘We’re going to lock down regional Victoria’ because we have half a dozen cases completely undermines confidence.
We saw with the second lockdown, which began on 2 August, that businesses had made decisions, businesses had planned. Hospitality businesses in particular had only just recommenced operations with severe restrictions on the number of patrons they could have in their venues. They had ordered food, they had ordered other stock, only to be told they had to shut again. The damage that has done, the damage that did then and the damage the prospect of that does now to businesses which need to make investment decisions and which need to purchase stock with the threat of an erratic decision from government throwing them completely out of operating—it does enormous damage and completely undermines their confidence and their ability to get back on their feet. While that continues to be the environment in which they are operating, where erratic decisions of government can be made—and, as we saw last week, will be made—on the flimsiest of evidence, the prospect for an economic recovery is severely undermined and severely limited.
Now, I would like to put in context the numbers and the results we have seen, as articulated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in its most recent labour force publications. As members know, the ABS publish a monthly labour force set of data for every state and territory in Australia as well as for the nation. Looking at that monthly ABS data and comparing the way in which the labour force in Victoria changed from February 2020—which was before the onset of the pandemic and, more particularly, before the onset of the government’s policy response to the pandemic—with the most recent data of September 2020, we see that in Victoria there has been a loss of 245 000 jobs. From February to September 245 000 Victorians lost their job. The breakdown of male and female: 102 000 of those were male, 143 000 of those were female. In the split between full-time employment and part-time employment 159 000 of those jobs were full-time jobs, which highlights that, perhaps contrary to expectations, the biggest impact has actually been in the full-time segment of the economy, with 86 000 jobs lost in part-time employment. So this is a very significant impact in a short period of time.
As we saw in the budget papers yesterday, the government expects that to get worse, because the government is forecasting over the course of this year—and I highlight a lot of those losses were in the last financial year—a further drop in employment of 3.25 per cent and a rise in unemployment to 7.75 per cent, which means we will see a further substantial increase in the number of people who are unemployed over the course of the 2020–21 financial year.
It is worth noting where those job losses have been. The ABS, in that same series of data, breaks the data down between greater Melbourne and the rest of Victoria. Not surprisingly 220 000 of those lost jobs are in greater Melbourne, which is a reduction in employment of around 8 per cent from the February peak. For regional Victoria it is around 25 000 jobs lost, which interestingly is about a 3 per cent reduction. The heaviest impact, obviously in terms of the number of jobs because of the density and in terms of the percentage reduction, is on metropolitan Melbourne, which reflects of course the fact that it was Melbourne which bore the brunt of the scorched earth policies of this government. So 245 000 jobs were lost between February and September, with expectation from the government that more jobs will be lost over the course of this financial year.
Now, the question that generates is: what is the government doing about it? What platform does the government have to assist the restoration of these jobs, which it bears responsibility for destroying? I have already outlined that it does not have a strategy. It does not have a clear strategy around COVID which gives businesses confidence that they can invest, gives businesses confidence that they can create employment. But what we did have was a budget yesterday which went down the path of pump priming. We have a budget which takes on $154 billion in debt, which is equivalent roughly to $23 000 for every man, woman and child in Victoria, which is an extraordinary level of debt accompanied by an extraordinary level of deficit funding.
It is interesting that in the budget papers yesterday the Treasurer outlined a forecast, or an estimate, provided by Deloitte Access Economics as to the impact of this budget—this year’s budget and the estimates over the next four years. Deloitte Access Economics have provided advice to the government, with the figure included in the budget papers, that they expect the settings announced yesterday—the spending announced yesterday and the spending over the next four years—will boost gross state product by $43.9 billion. So the uptick, the boost in economic output, is going to be just under $44 billion as a consequence of the spending decisions of this government.
Now, anyone who studied high school economics or university economics is familiar with the concept of pump priming—is familiar with the concept of deficit spending to boost economic activity. Interestingly though, while Deloitte Access Economics forecast an economic boost from this budget of just under $44 billion, the deficit spending in this budget and over the forward estimates is just under $49 billion. So we are incurring $49 billion of deficit spending—that is, $49 billion of pump priming—to generate economic activity, by the government’s own estimate, by the government’s own consultants, of $44 billion. Now, normally with pump priming you look for a multiplier effect. If you spend $10 billion in pump priming you would like to see $10 billion or $20 billion or $30 billion in economic benefit. But here we are committing $49 billion in deficit spending over the next four years to generate $44 billion in economic activity—89 cents in the dollar return on that pump priming, which is an extraordinary outcome and does raise questions as to the effectiveness of some of the spending that we are seeing in this budget.
One of the things we saw in the budget papers yesterday was a so-called jobs plan, and there was a figure, a target—no detail provided as to what base, what time frame—of 400 000 jobs to be created, with 200 000 jobs to be created in the next two years. Now, the headline sounds good until you put it in context, and the context is that we have already lost 245 000 jobs. So the government meeting its own target means that in two years time 45 000 Victorians who had a job at the beginning of this year still will not have a job—except it is going to be worse than that, because the government expects unemployment to continue to rise and employment to continue to fall. So we are going to lose more jobs before the government assists or creates these 200 000 jobs it claims it will create over the next two years. More than 45 000 people who had a job at the start of the year still will not have one in two years time.
Now, earlier this year in response to the pandemic and the economic situation created by the government’s response to the pandemic the Liberal-Nationals coalition and the leader, Michael O’Brien, published our back-to-work platform Back to Work and Back in Business. It was published in May in response to the first wave and the economic circumstances arising from the first wave and refreshed last month in response to the even more devastating second wave. That policy document called on the government to do a number of things on the employment front, one of which was to commit to creating 380 000 jobs by 1 July 2022. Why 380 000? Because that is where the Victorian economy was supposed to be tracking prior to COVID. It was about getting Victoria back where it should have been—not getting Victoria partially back to where it was but getting it to where it should have been, replacing the jobs that have been lost this year and delivering the jobs which the government otherwise said it would have created over the next two years. So the government’s own target of 200 000 falls well short of getting anywhere near where the Victorian economy was or where the Victorian economy was going to be prior to the COVID situation.
The other target in Back to Work was to create 143 000 youth jobs by the beginning of 2022, and that reflects the number of young people that have lost jobs in this state. Young people—that is, under the age of 24—have been heavily impacted by the loss of jobs, by the employment situation which has developed and accelerated over the last six months in this state. It is particularly important that we see and we encourage the creation of jobs for young people, because if young people do not have the opportunity to re-enter the workforce or enter the workforce for the first time, the risk of that having long-term consequences is very significant. We have seen that; we saw that in previous recessions back in the early 1990s when people could not get jobs at a young age. It can have lifelong negative consequences for them and for their families, so it is particularly important that the challenge of youth unemployment is addressed and an environment is created which encourages the creation of jobs for young people. And this is not public sector jobs. This is not about the government hiring more and more public servants. It is actually about creating the economic environment which leads to the creation of businesses and the creation of employment.
And that leads to the third employment-related target in the back-to-work package, and that is the target of meeting 57 000 new apprenticeship starts by March 2022, being the start of the TAFE year in 2022. Why 57 000? That reflects the drop-off in the number of apprenticeships in Victoria over the last five years. Under the life of this government, since the election of the Andrews government in 2014, we have seen apprenticeships in this state decimated. The drop-off in apprenticeship starts, apprenticeship commencements and indeed apprenticeship completions, which is actually worse, has been extreme and will have substantial long-term consequences for this state. Now, one of the reasons for that is the framework we have for apprentices, the incentives—or lack of incentives rather—for employers to take on apprentices. I am not talking in terms of cost or salaries or that type of support, though the federal government has announced support in that area—whether it will be effective or not remains to be seen—but the fundamental issue of having young people who are suitable to take on apprenticeships.
Yesterday we saw an announcement from the Minister for Education that the distinction between VCE and VCAL will be removed over the next couple of years. Now, this is potentially a worrying direction for anyone seeking an apprenticeship or anyone seeking to hire an apprentice, because we saw a similar move back in the early 1990s with the first introduction of the VCE and the shutdown of Victorian technical schools and the development of a so-called single path in VCE, which completely undermined the capacity of young people who wanted to go into apprenticeships to get the core foundation skills they needed to start an apprenticeship.
VCAL was created to nominally address that. It did not. The lack of technical schools ensured we were still not giving the young people the skills they required to start apprenticeships. Yet now we are seeing, with the announcement yesterday, again an apparent merging of VCE, nominally the academic stream, and VCAL, the technical stream, in a single certificate, which, if history serves and the current example of the VCAL stream serves, will mean we will not be providing the type of technical education which is needed to provide a pathway to apprenticeships.
In that regard I would like to refer to an email I received I think it was two weeks ago from an employer in western Victoria who is the proprietor of a small engineering business and who wrote about the plight of apprenticeships. To quote his email:
When these students left the technical school they certainly weren’t a qualified tradesperson, but what they did have was a full education covering all the basics on how to use virtually all the tools and equipment etc that they would be expected to use in their future workplaces, whether that be as a builder, electrician, fitter and turner/engineer, mechanic, plumber, welder, wool classer etc.
For example, in fitting and turning, we were taught how to drill a hole in various types of metals, what speed to turn the drill at for the various drill bit diameters, what lubrication to use on the drill bit for the different materials we were drilling into, and then how to resharpen the drill bit when it became blunt or broken. We were also taught how to set up a basic metal turning engineers’ lathe, how to sharpen their cutting tools and how to use them—making all sorts of different items. We made model aircraft, we made stools to sit on, tables, all sorts of boxes to keep things in and so on.
It goes on to say:
The knowledge we gained over the full 5+ years in the trade subjects above-mentioned was immense, and just simply can’t be given, or even taught or passed on to the same level in a normal commercial workplace (on the job). The knowledge gained was immense over numerous different trades, giving a student exposure to several different potential job roles/careers, and once one was selected, there was a certain amount of cross-over tooling and basic expertise required.
It goes on to say:
It’s got to a point now where automotive garages, experienced plumbers, builders etc—especially smaller businesses are extremely reluctant to take on a school leaver simply because they haven’t had the technical schooling background that they themselves were privileged to have. They and we have all tried time and time again without success to employ school leavers without traditional technical school training. More often than not they only lasted a few months and it’s got to a point now where we simply don’t bother but look for a mature age person with the skills. I know several garages and plumbers that have decided to stay small with just one or two workers and just not bother with apprentices. It’s very sad—most of these tradies are now in their 60’s and have a wealth of experience to give, but the frustration of taking on someone without that technical school education is too great.
I can assure you it’s a sad situation for both the school leavers who don’t get an apprenticeship or start in industry, and the employers. I’ve spoken to numerous potential apprentice employers in all different trades, and they would LOVE the reintroduction of traditional technical schools. Like myself, they too see the VET system as having absolutely no comparison to a traditional technical school education. VET is merely putting a bandaid on the problem of unemployable school leavers.
That highlights one of the challenges we have with the lack of technical education in Victoria. The announcement yesterday of the government, combining the VCAL qualification and VCE, does nothing to alleviate that concern. We continue to have a lack of real technical education of the sort my correspondent highlighted—providing actual, real technical skills to young people to make them employable for apprenticeships. While that continues to be the case we will continue to have a crisis in attracting people, both employers and candidates, for apprenticeships.
We are in a situation now that we should not be in. The scorched earth approach of this government has created a jobs crisis, has created an economic crisis. It was not necessary. It has not happened elsewhere in the world. It has not happened elsewhere in Australia. The government was woefully underprepared to deal with the challenges of different industry sectors, as we saw with the flat-footed, deer-in-headlights approach as the lockdown started and individual industries were unable to get advice from government as to what they needed to do. Individual industries were not supported as they were subject to the government mandate that they shut their doors.
Despite the record spend we saw in yesterday’s budget, there is little confidence that the government has the platform and has the tools to help restore the economy, with 245 000 jobs lost to date and, on the government’s own forecast, more to come. We have a record spend, but what we do not have is the policy and the strategy to ensure that we can get Victoria’s economy and Victoria’s workforce back on track.
Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria) (10:38): Well, what an extravagant performance we have heard from the opposition today. If only they put as much effort and energy into being a collaborative partner in dealing with the worst health crisis that any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes. What we have just heard from Mr Rich-Phillips is a litany of criticism—again pretty characteristic for those opposite—when in fact they had the opportunity, as has occurred in South Australia, to be a part of finding and implementing solutions in the course of the pandemic. Rather, they produced an inane litany of mixed messages across social media, across print media, in interviews and stand-ups and at press conferences which variously said, ‘Shut the state’, ‘Open the state’, ‘Provide different support’, ‘You’re providing too much support’, ‘Let us go out and see our mates’, ‘The Premier is a loser who has no mates’, ‘The Premier has not done enough’, ‘The Premier has done too much’, ‘The government has been too interventionist’, ‘The government has not provided enough support’. Now, these are just some of the conflicting messages that those opposite have given, so it is more than a little ironic that today we are seeing a motion from the opposition which not only chooses to ignore the work that has been put in by this government to address, proactively and with the overwhelming support of a majority of Victorians, the worst public health crisis, the biggest public health bushfire, that this state has seen.
We are not alone. This pandemic is not occurring solely or uniquely in Victoria, but it has occurred in Victoria in rather a unique way when we compare the spread of the pandemic in various jurisdictions across the world. When we see it cutting a swathe through every single state in the United States, where it is now classified as out of control—save for Hawaii, which is marked as a state of high caution; when we see that 49 out of the 50 states of the US are completely besieged by this pandemic; when we see the spread across continental Europe and the UK and the measures that are being implemented by governments to try to control that spread, including curfews, including lockdowns; and when we see the second wave beginning to wash like a violent tsunami across continental Europe, the Americas and further afield, we know that the things that we have done here in Victoria have worked.
We have had to take action which has been incredibly difficult and incredibly painful and has caused an enormous amount of damage to bring this second wave under control. And whilst Mr Rich-Phillips can stand up and talk about scorched earth, while he can stand up and talk about a lack of strategy or planning in the response to the second wave in Victoria, he is ignoring the fact that the pandemic has been an emergency of vast and unpredictable proportions which has required a significant and immediate response.
What we saw in the Premier’s daily press conferences—well over 100 days in a row—was the Premier stand up and provide answers to every single question that was posed. What we saw in the course of the second wave were daily updates on the number of cases; the number of fatalities, tragically; the numbers of community transmission and cases occurring throughout the state; and updates on the work being undertaken by contact tracers, the Department of Health and Human Services, various agencies across the whole of the Victorian government and the work that needed to be done to provide relief and support to those who were doing it tough.
There was a suite of initiatives announced by the Premier and backed in by the crisis committee of cabinet and the cabinet as a whole relating to payments for Victorians who were unable to work and were required to self-isolate—payments between $450 and $1500, immediate assistance. There was assistance provided to small businesses through a range of grant schemes that were intended and directed in a proportionate, measured and responsible way to alleviate the immediate pressures being faced by local, small and medium enterprises. There was a range of assistances provided in our schools, in our communities, to our councils, to services and to facilities across the state, including through our health system and through the improved access to telehealth.
We partnered with the commonwealth government in relation to the rollout of JobKeeper and JobSeeker. We partnered with the federal government to address the outbreaks that occurred in privately regulated aged care—again within the remit of the commonwealth government’s jurisdiction. We have worked assiduously alongside every other jurisdiction around Australia as required to discuss everything from border closures to permit systems to support and access for people doing it tough, and we have done so without fear or favour.
This has been a period of enormous difficulty but one which the Premier and the cabinet and this government have risen to in circumstances of great pain and of great tragedy, and when we read a motion like this on the notice paper it is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. We saw current Leader of the Opposition Michael O’Brien in the other place stand up and talk about the importance of delivering a surplus early on. He ran the economic argument that in fact a surplus was more important than needing to take the action to invest in the economic wellbeing and in the provision of consistent and accessible supports for Victorians, whilst ignoring the cold, hard reality of the impact of this pandemic on economies irrespective of whether economies remain open.
In other countries around the world, including in Sweden, they had lesser restrictions in place and decided to ride out the wave whilst continuing to support people’s rights to go about their business without the need necessarily to physically distance and without the need necessarily to wear masks, and we have seen a dampening impact, a significant impact, on Sweden’s economy. We have seen in fact a dampening of economies around Australia, particularly in New South Wales, where despite the fact that restrictions have been comparatively less onerous than here in Victoria, people were still significantly concerned about the risk of spread and were significantly concerned to the point where spending was reduced. Despite the fact that relatively low case numbers meant that in fact the economy could technically remain open, we saw that downturn.
So what it encourages us to consider is the broader impact on economies and on communities of pandemic response even where case numbers are comparatively low. What we saw in the early days of the second wave, when the lockdowns were being foreshadowed here in Victoria, were vast lines of people in supermarkets looking for toilet paper, predominantly—looking for security, looking for certainty, looking for something that they could control, and that is understandable. As our connections were changed, as our relationships to work, to family and to community participation became something entirely different from what we might ever have envisaged—certainly from what we may have envisaged at the beginning of 2020—when these things took effect, the impacts were devastating. Nobody will walk away from that fact. What we saw was a huge drop-off in the number of people presenting to their GPs, often in relation to chronic and enduring medical conditions, but over time we saw an increase in the uptake of telehealth. Over time we have seen the benefits of investments around remote learning. Over time we have seen communities begin to rebuild and reknit their connections in some of the most difficult and unforeseen circumstances we could imagine.
So when I read this motion that talks about unemployment being the highest on record, at 8.8 per cent, and when I read this motion which refers to underemployment at 13 per cent, what I would like to say and what I think is there to be said in the interests of equalising this debate somewhat and infusing some further facts into the discussion that we are having here in the chamber is that Victoria’s economy, compared to other states, is reliant to a much greater extent on services and program delivery, is reliant to a greater extent on the visitor economy and is reliant to a greater extent on international education. And when we looked at these sectors and industries we saw that the borders internationally were closed, that international education and arrivals were no longer able to occur and that restaurants and cafes and programs and services were not able to be delivered because of the necessary restrictions imposed to curb the second wave. And indeed, much to the chagrin of many of those opposite, who I suspect may have loved to see numbers continue to rise, cases have come down to zero and remained at zero for about 27 days now.
This motion ignores the reality of the profile of Victoria’s sectors and industries that make up the bulk of our jobs and that make Victoria the engine room of jobs creation. And so when I see this motion I note that there is a convenient disregard—it is a wilful blindness, and it is pretty consistent with the motions that the opposition move and the way in which they speak to them—of the way in which we as a government have attended to the unique and specific circumstances in Victoria through yesterday’s budget and through a budget which, unlike the way in which Mr Rich-Phillips might characterise it, contains record investments, including the highest investment, not just in Victoria’s history but in the nation’s history, into social and community housing of $5.3 billion, of which 25 per cent will be spent in regional Victoria, creating tens of thousands of jobs. In two years we will see the work in relation to public and social housing because of this investment peak at around 18 000 new jobs.
What we will also see because of stamp duty concessions, because of tax relief, because of the investment into our health system and into our mental health system and because of the record investment in school capital upgrades, rebuilds and improvements to existing facilities across the state is local jobs and local opportunities. And what we see, unlike the way in which Mr Rich-Phillips has characterised the issue, is a combining of VCAL within the VCE system to get rid of this perceived inequality between those who are academic on the one hand and those who are practical on the other. It is more than mischievous for those opposite to refer to this policy as not achieving anything. This policy in fact goes a long way to continue the work that we have put in over successive budgets to deliver better equity and equality.
On the question of women and the employment of women and the support for women, not just in this budget but across the board, those opposite have no legitimate basis to cry foul in relation to the Andrews government’s investments in women, in gender equality and in support for those who too often undertake unpaid work in circumstances where bargaining power is greatly reduced. Those opposite were all too quick to criticise the government’s commitment to having at least 50 per cent women on government boards. These paid board positions have been incredibly important to send signals to the community at large that equality—at least within the gender lens—is not negotiable, that targets are in fact important. Those opposite are late to the party as it relates to affirmative action, as it relates to quotas and as it relates to the inclusion of women within the policymaking space, within the political space and within the public space of politics.
Now, I am not going to pretend that we as a government do not have further work to do. We need to see more people from multicultural backgrounds, from neurodivergent backgrounds, from disabled communities, from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and from the LGBTIQA+ space representing communities across Victoria. This work goes on. This work goes on in relation to our equality statement, in relation to acquitting all of our election promises. This work goes on in relation to making sure that we are investing across the board in providing better visibility to those who for too long have been ignored.
What we see in cheap motions like this is that those opposite are looking for any opportunity, any chink in the armour, to scratch around at the bottom of the barrel and to ignore the work that is being undertaken. Those opposite said that we could not remove 75 level crossings, and they were wrong. Not only have we smashed the targets but we are continuing to improve them. Those opposite called for a surplus and then walked back on that after the Reserve Bank said in fact you might as well die wondering because borrowing is available at record low levels and in fact economies are well served by investing now in projects that will give a boost to communities that are reeling from the impact of this pandemic.
What I see is a series of claims in this motion around targeted assistance, around support for businesses, and a claim, in section 4 of the motion, that it would be prudent for the state government to take further targeted steps to remedy the inequities listed in that motion, which, to summarise, include the employment of women; include employment full stop; include assistance for small business; and include—and this is dear to my heart—support for the travel and tourism, hospitality and events, fitness, creative industry and retail sectors that have borne the brunt of the burden. And it includes references to additional support. It would appear that those opposite did not have the foresight before bringing this motion on today to make amendments to the motion to acknowledge and accommodate the work delivered in the budget papers issued yesterday.
What we see in the budget that the Treasurer released yesterday is a record investment in travel and tourism, hospitality and events, the creative industry and small business, including fitness and the retail sectors that have borne the brunt of the burden. These are the exact words from subsection (e) of section 1 of this motion. What we see is a record investment in support for economic growth and jobs growth. What we see is that in fact the government has taken targeted steps to a record level, to a record quantum, to set targets and a framework that will enable us as a state—represented in large part by workers and workplaces in services, in program delivery, in travel and tourism, in hospitality and in areas that are involved in the very sectors most harshly affected by the pandemic—to see ongoing investment.
You can slice and dice it however you want from wherever you sit in opposition. The fact is to those opposite it will never be enough, and this is what sets them aside from other oppositions in other jurisdictions. This is what shows the opposition up as not having any vision, as not having any alternative and as coming up with half-baked ideas which hide the branding and the identity not only of the Liberal Party but of The Nationals as well. I had a look at michaelobrien.com.au. It is almost as though there is no party connection there at all; he just wants to be a free agent. And who can blame him, really. I suspect it is a two-way street.
What we see is a bunch of verbiage which does not actually sit in reality around the practical consequences of what needs to be delivered to restore Victoria’s position to where it was at the beginning of 2020. What we see is convenient ignorance. The opposition did not seek to amend this motion today to incorporate what the budget delivered yesterday. They let it stand, so Mr Rich-Phillips was forced into the unenviable position of arguing that the state government needs to take further targeted steps to remedy the above inequities that are listed in the motion. In doing so he indicated to this chamber that he has not read the budget, and I doubt that very much because Mr Rich-Phillips is assiduous in details of fiscal and financial policy, and budget papers more generally. It springs to mind that in fact nobody opposite wants to talk about the budget unless it is to find shortcomings in terms which make small political points, and that, in the broader community, does not carry much weight. It does not carry much weight, for example, in the Latrobe Valley, where this budget awards further record investment in school capital; where this budget awards $60 million for social and community housing; and where this budget continues to invest in the creative precincts, youth hubs, programs and service delivery, including with the ongoing operation of the Latrobe Valley Authority and a guarantee of no job losses. This in practical terms is what this budget is about, and the Latrobe Valley and the area which I have spoken of just now is but one example.
We see not only are there already construction sites all over metropolitan, suburban, peri-urban and regional areas in our state but that this work, thanks to the announcements in black and white yesterday from the Treasurer, will continue; that the work will go on, and it will not just be about construction and about the jobs in those sectors which flow from it; that this work will continue in relation to providing support for students with diverse needs, focusing on their strengths; that this support will extend to additional numbers of teachers, to additional numbers of mental health practitioners and to additional numbers of beds to support those who need clinical assistance with mental illness. This support will extend to making sure that women are front and centre in the recovery efforts as we reopen the sectors that have been most damaged by the pandemic.
This support will see not only cranes in the sky but investments in our visitor and tourist economies. I am so proud of the work that has been done across Gippsland to advocate for tourism attractions to get the investments that they need. I am so delighted that in this budget we will see not only ongoing work associated with bushfire recovery but assistance through voucher schemes, through upgrades to infrastructure and through improvements to our attractions that make all of the difference in encouraging people not to go to other states, despite the fact that borders are rapidly opening, but to stay here in Victoria—to take our empty eskies and to shop local and to assist businesses to recover with a variety of different initiatives that will make the operation of their enterprises easier, more efficient and more beneficial.
On the other side of this, and I am looking forward to making a contribution on another motion on the notice paper, we have needed to make sure that we are minimising risks of transmission as they may arise again. We know—not just from Victoria but also from New South Wales, where we have seen breaches in quarantine process; in South Australia, where we have seen breaches in quarantine process; in the UK, where we have seen breaches in quarantine process; and in so many other jurisdictions which require refinement—that insecure work is the driving force behind the need for people to work in numerous jobs and behind the need for people, including in aged care, to work across multiple locations, including as it relates to going to work and presenting for work and putting other people at risk when they themselves are ill. That is why it has been so important for us to learn from this pandemic and to do something about tackling the issue of insecure work, and five days of sick leave and carers leave for casuals is an important start.
I want to see the commonwealth come to the party in relation to these issues as well. The commonwealth has a responsibility, which extends far beyond building chook sheds and cooking curries in the kitchens of the Lodge for the sake of photographic opportunities, to do more to assist people who are vulnerable, who go to work and who put others at risk because they cannot afford to stay home. In the course of the pandemic a $450 payment was introduced and implemented by the Andrews government. It and the $1500 payment sit alongside this ongoing work to try to remedy some of the inequity associated with insecure employment where workers who are vulnerable place others at risk because of a need to meet their own financial and cost-of-living pressures.
We need to make sure that across the board we continue to support our health workers—the last line of defence; those people in sectors who have needed our help—not just through Hotels for Heroes, not just through PPE, not just through ongoing support in record health funding, not just through infectious diseases infrastructure and investments which will in fact place us in a much better position to tackle future pandemics, but through making sure that their terms and conditions are fair and equitable and recognise the value of the contribution that they have made. We want to see everyone, from our cleaners to our orderlies to our porters to the people who work in hospital administration, get the support that they need. This is what yesterday’s budget delivers. This is what underpins the heart of this budget, which is all about Victorian people and communities. Because without Victorian communities and people being supported to recover and to rebuild from this pandemic, we do not stand a chance of being able to ensure the long-term health and prosperity of our economy.
Around the world other jurisdictions are making the same sorts of difficult decisions that Victoria has had to make. The Victorian jurisdiction is now the subject of hope for many other areas of the world whose numbers of daily cases are comparable to where we sat only a couple of months ago. This budget and these investments do not ignore the reality of what Victoria is facing. They do not ignore the hardship, the grief and the frustration of what has occurred and of what people have had to endure in the course of lockdowns. This budget delivers improvements and benefits that tackle longstanding issues, that tackle the risk of future pandemics and that improve our opportunities, particularly in service delivery and program delivery in visitor economies and in health and allied services, so we are able to get back onto our feet, to bring the unemployment level down and to make sure that over time we have a pipeline of work throughout the entire state to improve our prospects into the future.
We stand by this work no matter how many motions might be brought before this house that seek to create division, to ignore the progress that has been achieved and in fact to try to create a sense of inaction from a government that has delivered far more than those opposite would ever have done if they themselves had been behind the wheel. The government will not be supporting this motion.
Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (11:09): What we have seen in the Western world since this pandemic struck has been a demonstration of the destructive power of the state, probably one of the worst outside of what we have seen in armed conflict. It is probably no surprise that the varying responses to the pandemic throughout different jurisdictions throughout the world have shown the dilemma that is faced by governments—faced by this government in Victoria and governments throughout Australia and throughout the world—and that dilemma is around the balancing of human rights versus control of the pandemic. I remember early in the pandemic many of us were shocked by the way that some authoritarian regimes were dealing with the pandemic. I note about China, when news reports came out of people’s apartment doors being welded shut, that people were shocked at what could happen when authoritarian regimes take action against spreading this disease. In fact China was very successful in stopping this disease spreading, as were many authoritarian regimes throughout the world. I hate to think what they did in North Korea—I imagine it was not very good either—but they were probably also quite successful. So this dilemma that we are presented with—of balancing human rights versus the response to the pandemic—is one that Victoria too has had to tackle.
What we are talking when we institute a lockdown—let us be clear: a lockdown is a calculated suppression of the human rights of people within that state. You are taking away their right to move, you are taking away their right to peaceful assembly and you are taking away their right to work. As a response to the pandemic in Victoria we saw a widespread lockdown, and although there was lots of talk about science, really a lockdown is quite medieval in nature. We know it will work because we have seen it work throughout history. We also saw a return to—temporary, at least for the moment—the idea of central planning, something that we have seen discredited throughout the 20th century. I never thought I would see production quotas and work permits in my lifetime in Victoria, but we had that recently.
One of the problems with this idea of central planning and the lockdowns is that what is really happening is the government is not allowing individuals and businesses to manage risk and it is assuming risk factors itself. It is saying, ‘Here is the risk level that we will accept’, and a lockdown is an extremely low level of risk tolerance. Of course it will work. Of course it has worked. But when we are thinking about the human rights aspect, this is something I am not convinced of. In fact with the emergency powers that the government has used it is quite clear in the legislation that the government must take actions that are proportionate to the risk—that are the least restrictive of human rights. Yet with all this talk of science, still the evidence underlying these public health directions has not been released to the public. This is not science. Science is about public testing and questioning of assumptions, questioning of decisions. Also, we have not seen the human rights charter assessments that have been done in association with these public health directions.
So I am not convinced that the actions they have taken—of course the lockdown worked—were the least restrictive of rights. When we look at the effects on businesses, many businesses were screaming out, saying, ‘We can manage these risks’. The hospitality sector—many sectors—were saying, ‘We have ways and methods of managing this risk; we can come up with systems to manage this risk’. And they were not allowed to manage that risk, because one of the downsides of central planning of course is that it is a very blunt instrument. The bureaucrats at the top cannot see the detail and the information necessary to manage risk at that micro level. Only the individuals and the businesses managing their own systems can see those details that are necessary to manage that risk. So the response from a lot of these businesses was bewilderment, because it did not make sense to them.
I can give you some real examples of this. Of course I am sure many of you were contacted by these businesses, and I am sure they gave you stories as well of bewilderment—but we heard from accountants. Accountants were very busy during this pandemic period because businesses had a lot of financial matters that they needed to fix. And what they wanted to do was help their clients understand all the grants and payments that were available, but they were prohibited from going to their office to access hard copies. Now, an accountant going to an office by himself to access some paperwork would seem to present almost zero risk, but of course they were not allowed to manage that risk and so they were prevented from doing that.
We also saw small business owners who wanted to utilise this downtime—they had some upgrades and repairs scheduled. They thought it might be a good idea if, while they were not able to conduct business, they would go in by themselves and start doing these upgrades and repairs on their business. Again, they would have been by themselves, but they were not allowed to do it. They were prevented from doing that. In fact they were informed that they might attract a fine of $100 000. Landscape gardeners—people who go out by themselves, work by themselves outdoors—you would think are an extremely low risk. Again, they were caught up in this blunt hammer instrument of the centrally planned lockdown and they were not allowed to work. So we saw all of this economic activity suppressed that any sort of reasonable assessment would say did not actually present a major risk of disease transmission. There are numerous examples of these.
Then when these businesspeople dissented—and many of them did dissent because these restrictions did not make sense to them—they were demonised. In fact we saw this only a few weeks ago—it seems like a million years ago now—back on Cup Day at that protest, which I went along to to listen to what people had to say. A lot of the people there were small business owners who were upset. There were people there who had lost their jobs. They were upset with the government, and they wanted to show that they were upset. In fact, one story: there was one woman there—it was Cup Day; she was wearing a fascinator—and I said, ‘I know it’s Cup Day and you can’t go to the cup and you’re wearing a fascinator. This seems like a strange thing to be wearing to a protest’. Her response was that she had met a lady on the street and her business was selling these for Cup Day. No-one was allowed to have parties; no-one was allowed to go out anywhere. This lady was on the street giving away the fascinators to people. She was crying apparently—I did not see this lady myself. She was giving them away because she did not want them to go to waste, and this woman wore one as a sign of support for this woman whose business was destroyed by the lockdown.
Rather than attempt to respect the right to peaceful assembly of these people, who were upset with the government’s response, what did the government do? How did the government respond to these people? They surrounded them with police. They compressed them into a tiny space, making a total mockery of the idea that they were there to prevent the spread of disease. They kept them there for hours outside. Then when they complained that they needed to go to the toilet they were dragged away for being upset, and when they complained that they were thirsty they were given water out of a communal bucket that they borrowed from the pub. This makes a mockery of the entire idea that they were there to police public health.
Then they took 400 of those people. I estimate there were probably about 1500 people there originally, but by this stage, the people that got kettled, there were about 400 of them. They were arrested, and they gave every one of them a fine. I think the reason that it took so long was because their computer systems were not working properly. They took me away to give me a fine, which I still have not received. They said they could not give it to me on the spot because their computer system was not working very well. I think that is probably the reason that they were there for so long and it took such a long time. So we had a sub-performing computer system take away the freedoms of Victorians who were trying to exercise their right to peaceful assembly—for hours. I mean, you could not make this stuff up.
This is typical. Every time any sort of questioning of the government has happened, this false dichotomy has been presented. Even today they are doing it again. If anyone questions the budget, the Premier says, ‘What would you want? Do you want austerity?’. It is like there is no middle ground on anything. When you question the lockdowns, people say, ‘Well, do you just want to let it rip?’. There are these false dichotomies set up all the time to demonise any sort of questioning or dissent. What I hope in the future is that we will learn to deal with these things in a more sophisticated way, in a way that respects human rights better and in a way that reflects our tradition as a liberal democracy.
Now, Ms Shing was talking about how we were more heavily impacted because we have a visitor economy and we are highly dependent on the education sector, especially foreign students. This is absolutely true. But we are in the sort of stage now where people are talking as if it is mission accomplished, but our borders are still closed. On this visitor economy and the foreign students, I fear that in what Ms Shing is saying she is referring to the past. Is that going to be our future? I mean, how can we actually open up in the current state, allow these people back into our state to go to university, to see our beautiful landscape and to see our cities while the borders are closed? If there is no medical treatment that will prevent or cure the illness, I do not see how this is a sustainable state of affairs at all. What happens if we find out that maybe this vaccine that we are talking about is not as effective as they hope or maybe not as safe as they hope or maybe distribution—just the act of producing the vast number of these things—could take years? We do not know how long these are going to take. How long are we going to remain like this?
So what I would like to say is that I hope that in the future people look critically at what the government has done and that we find ways to defend human rights. I have been very upset with the lack of defence of human rights up to this point in the pandemic. I hope that we can find ways to defend human rights in the future and that the pandemic responses will be reflective of our traditions of liberal democracy and the fact that we are a free society and not an authoritarian regime.
Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (11:22): This motion before the house today is so important because Victoria faces a grave jobs crisis right now. It is a jobs crisis that, as Mr Rich-Phillips said at the outset of this debate, had its genesis many months ago—indeed before COVID-19 hit our shores first in January—and yet the government’s response to that pandemic and the strict lockdowns that Victorians were forced to endure for month after month have done so much to exacerbate that crisis. Right now in Victoria a quarter of a million of our fellow citizens are without a job—a huge number. Just earlier today the Treasurer was out and forced to admit that—and this is his figure—200 000 jobs were lost during the second wave, and of course over 99 per cent of cases in our second wave were linked directly to the government’s appalling failures in hotel quarantine. This is a multifaceted motion and it needs to be, given, as the motion says, the uneven impact on certain groups and industries of the harsh lockdown.
Let me start my response by picking up where Mr Rich-Phillips left off regarding youth unemployment. He made a whole series of valid points that there is no need for me to recapitulate. The point I want to make, however, is this: that even before we get to the point of thinking about the need for jobs for our young people we need to ensure that they are provided with a first-rate education. Now, that has not happened in Victoria for many years. Ever since comparative testing commenced in the year 2000, just after the Labor Party came to power in 1999, we have seen results steadily decline. Last year—before COVID—Victorian kids received their worst ever results. That is despite much investment.
We have heard about investment in education today on a number of occasions. We heard about investment from Dr Kieu when he moved a motion earlier today. We heard about investment in education again from Ms Shing. What we never hear about when it comes to education in this place is results; what we never hear about in fact is learning. In Dr Kieu’s motion he talked about the package in yesterday’s budget—a huge package, I concede—a capital works package for schools. He praised that package on the basis that it provides jobs, and we are talking about jobs today. Schools, first and foremost, do not exist to provide jobs for teachers—I say that as a former teacher. Schools do not exist to provide jobs for folks who carry out capital works. Schools first and foremost are there to do one thing: to enhance student learning. The word ‘learning’ did not appear in Dr Kieu’s motion—of course not. The word ‘results’ did not appear in Dr Kieu’s motion. Neither of these concepts were referred to by Ms Shing in the government’s response to Mr Rich-Phillips’s motion either.
Unless we turn around the shocking decline in student results that has been ongoing since the year 2000, overseen by this Labor government, we will never overcome our jobs crisis. Coming to the heart of Mr Rich-Phillips’s motion, our kids were so unevenly hit through this period of lockdown. We had school closures—blanket school closures—across our state, in direct defiance of the World Health Organization’s advice, even in areas in regional and rural Victoria where there was not a single case of COVID-19 and where there has never been a single case of COVID-19.
Now, the government says that its program, called ‘no child left behind’, is going to fix this. The government says, ‘If any children have fallen behind’—that is the language the government uses; they have done this on social media and elsewhere—‘well, don’t worry, we’ve employed some retired teachers and they’re going to come back into the classroom and they’re going to help’. This is an admirable idea; the Liberal Party had it first, and we are very pleased that the government has picked it up and run with it. However, the idea that a program such as this will deal with the shocking impact on Victorian kids, linking directly to the motion before the house today, is fanciful. The director of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Directorate for Education and Skills said that, and I quote:
… learning losses that follow from school closures will throw long shadows over the economic well-being of individuals and nations.
Long shadows, beyond one budget cycle—no matter how much spending it includes and beyond one forward estimates period. To again quote the director:
… these effects are likely to remain permanent … our schools today are our economies tomorrow.
On a brief side point, I am not sure why it is those opposite continue to plagiarise American presidents. First it was the member for Burwood plagiarising a fictitious American president, now it is the Minister for Education plagiarising a living one. No Child Left Behind was the failed education policy of George Bush, Jr. Why didn’t any of the bright sparks in the Deputy Premier’s media team google that before they rolled it out? Just a question. No Child Left Behind—it is staggering that nobody googled it or realised that this was a failed policy of George W. Bush. You would have thought anybody who has been engaged in education for some time might have realised this.
Mr Finn: They thought Bush pinched it from them.
Mr Erdogan: What’s wrong with George Bush?
Dr BACH: Well, maybe they did—no. To take up the interjection of my friend, Mr Erdogan, there are a few things wrong with George W. Bush, but I will chat to you about that on another occasion.
Like Mr Rich-Phillips, I have been deeply concerned about the disproportionate negative impact on Victorian women of both the harsh lockdown and then the government’s plan for reopening. Despite the comments of Ms Shing earlier to the effect that those of us on this side of the house do not have a right to speak on this point, this is a point that has been made by numerous outstanding economists; indeed I have moved a motion referring to some of these economists that still sits on the notice paper. I have spoken also about the dreadful plight of the beauty industry, of dance schools. And again, despite what Ms Shing said about record spending—we know this government can spend like a drunken sailor—in the budget yesterday, there is not a meaningful program to seek to assist those huge numbers of Victorian women who were seriously and disproportionately impacted by both the lockdown and then the government’s plan to reopen.
There is a plan, however, and on this point perhaps I deviate from my friend Mr Rich-Phillips. There is a plan for one sector of the economy. There is a very thorough plan for those workers who gather their wages from the public purse. I note, coming to the budget yesterday, that public sector wages under this government have increased at an extraordinary rate and according to the budget papers that we received yesterday are set to continue to increase at an extraordinary rate. Over the forward estimates the public sector wages bill is set to increase by a quite astonishing 21 per cent. In 2013–14, the last full year of the Napthine government, the public sector wages bill was $20.9 billion. This financial year it is a quite eye-watering $33.6 billion. So I agree with Mr Rich-Phillips: when it comes to the broader jobs crisis and certainly when it comes to the private sector, which is and must be the engine of growth and prosperity for our state, there is no policy. There is no strategy. There most certainly is for the government’s mates in the public sector. I say that as a former public sector employee myself.
In the government’s contribution on this debate we heard, as normal, about the state of play in the United States and Europe—that we should thank our lucky stars, indeed that we should thank the Premier, for ensuring that we are not in that position. We did not hear any comparison to other Australian jurisdictions—of course not New South Wales, governed by a competent and measured and balanced, to come to Mr Limbrick’s contribution, Liberal government. We heard about the Premier standing before press conferences every day for over 100 days, and we also even heard about breaches in quarantine in other states. There were breaches in quarantine in other states; however, no other state had the appalling contact-tracing failures that we have had in Victoria. I have been pleased—although that is probably the wrong word—to sit on a committee that is currently investigating our shocking contact-tracing system. It was easily overwhelmed—that is according to Australia’s chief scientist—in direct contravention of the Premier’s own remarks.
In the interests of allowing other members to speak I will leave my contribution there. Despite the government’s odd response, this is an incredibly serious motion given the jobs crisis that the government itself has manufactured in our state. I commend the motion to the house.
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (11:32): I rise to note the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, in particular the harsh lockdown, which has unevenly impacted certain groups and industries, and the absence of appropriate additional supports and that the government needs to take further targeted steps to remedy these inadequacies. I rise to contribute to this motion today to actually acknowledge the very harsh lockdown and the mental health crisis that we are going to have for many years to come due to this very harsh lockdown.
It goes without saying that we have had the harshest lockdown of anywhere in the world, and we should understand that this is not going to be fixed overnight. I do acknowledge that the government has put a reasonable amount of money into this budget for mental health, but there will be ramifications of this harsh lockdown, especially on our children and especially on babies, who have not been held. Even my son today noted as I was taking him to school that it was lovely to actually see people’s faces for the first time in many months—to see smiling faces—and he wanted to understand why I was still carrying my face mask. I explained to him that currently we are allowed to go outside without our masks but we are still meant to be wearing them indoors.
But in talking about what has been part of this debate today, which is our small businesses and the opening up of businesses, there have been many times within the last couple of months that I have raised the necessity of us actually as a community understanding that we are going to be living with this virus for the next 12 months, if not longer, and that we have to understand that we have to work with this virus, meaning that we will continue to have to physically distance and wash our hands but we can actually work safely with a virus with those measures in place.
What I have still experienced myself, as someone who has a medical exemption for wearing a mask, is that there are many people in the community that do not understand when people do or do not need to wear a mask, and I believe that the government should have a lot more clearer messaging around that. You need the community to come on board, and it is not just a matter of having a direction; they actually need the information so they can make informed decisions. And we have had those masks on for far too long, especially in the outdoors, especially when they are not needed. But I do understand when you need to be putting a mask on and when you do not need to put a mask on, and you need the community to have that understanding so they can make those informed medical choices for themselves.
When it comes to vaccinations—and there have been a lot of government members and me sitting in the contact tracing and tracking inquiry over the last week—the government has used language such as ‘anti-vaxxers’, and there has been a lot of debate and conversation even in the media about anti-vaxxers. I personally do not believe that there is such a thing as anti-vaxxers. There are community members out there that need the information to make those informed decisions, and everyone needs to make those informed decisions when they are making medical choices. So if the government does not have that information out there so they can actually make an informed medical decision about the vaccine, of course you have people who are scared. It is normal to be scared to get a needle; it is not a natural thing to happen to you. But people are willing to get a needle—a vaccine, a blood test—if they have that information in front of them so they can make that informed decision. All I am hearing in the community at the moment are people who want that information. They want to feel that the vaccination that we choose is safe, that it has been tested, and some people want just to sit back and wait and watch and see if there are any side effects or alike. So they are not anti-vaxxers; they are just community members who are scared and who want that information before them before they make those decisions.
And I am obviously concerned that Qantas has made those announcements, that our own airlines are making announcements to say that you will not be able to get onto an aeroplane without a vaccine. Now, please, we can all make those decisions for ourselves, and yes, there will be obviously choices that people will make rather than, you know, getting onto Qantas or alike, because they are being too harsh. But that does not mean that they will not get onto Qantas in a couple of years time. It just means that when a big industry like Qantas makes those announcements you will get pushback rather than the community coming on board and being part of our way forward. Yes, I am not an anti-vaxxer. Yes, I have had vaccines myself, and my children, but they are informed decisions that I make, and I really— (Time expired)
House divided on motion:
| Ayes, 17 | ||
| Atkinson, Mr | Davis, Mr | McArthur, Mrs |
| Bach, Dr | Finn, Mr | O’Donohue, Mr |
| Bath, Ms | Grimley, Mr | Patten, Ms |
| Bourman, Mr | Hayes, Mr | Quilty, Mr |
| Crozier, Ms | Limbrick, Mr | Rich-Phillips, Mr |
| Cumming, Dr | Lovell, Ms | |
| Noes, 19 | ||
| Barton, Mr | Melhem, Mr | Tarlamis, Mr |
| Elasmar, Mr | Pulford, Ms | Taylor, Ms |
| Erdogan, Mr | Ratnam, Dr | Terpstra, Ms |
| Gepp, Mr | Shing, Ms | Tierney, Ms |
| Kieu, Dr | Stitt, Ms | Vaghela, Ms |
| Leane, Mr | Symes, Ms | Watt, Ms |
| Meddick, Mr | ||
Motion negatived.
Bills
Marine Safety Amendment (Better Boating Fund) Bill 2020
Council’s amendments
The PRESIDENT (11:46): I have received a message from the Assembly:
The Legislative Assembly informs the Legislative Council that, in relation to ‘A Bill for an Act to amend the Marine Safety Act 2010 to provide for the establishment of the Better Boating Fund and for other purposes’ the amendments made by the Council have been agreed to.
Motions
Secure work pilot scheme
Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (11:47): I move:
That this house recognises that Victorian small businesses have done it very tough through the COVID-19 pandemic and that now is the wrong time to foist a new tax onto the small business sector already struggling to recover from the lockdown.
To paraphrase Her Majesty the Queen, 2020 has been an annus horribilis for small business in this state. To quote me, it has been a shocker. I doubt if it could have been much worse than it has been. The first wave hit earlier this year, and of course that was particularly hard on many small businesses. But then, when we thought we had it under control—remember back in, I think it was, March or April we had days where we had no new cases at all—we had the situation where this government stuffed up monumentally and allowed the virus back into the community, meaning we had a second wave. As a result of that second wave, the government implemented a lockdown the likes of which we had never seen in this state before, indeed a lockdown the likes of which we had never seen in this country before, and we had a curfew for the first time in the history of this nation—all because the Andrews government stuffed up the hotel quarantine process. And we should remember that. We should remember that at all times. Those people patting Daniel Andrews on the back now should remember who caused the problem in the first place. It was him, it was his government and it was their monumental stuff-up.
That second wave, that horrendous lockdown, that scorched-earth policy, that policy that said, ‘We will kill you to save you’, was something that destroyed many small businesses in this state, and that is a tragedy. If you do not believe me, can I suggest that you walk down the steps of this building and go for a walk down Bourke Street. Just go for a walk down Bourke Street, go for a walk down Collins Street—any of the streets in Melbourne, in the city—or go to a suburban shopping centre, whether that be a strip shopping centre or whether it be a mall-like centre. Go to that shopping centre or go to the City of Melbourne and just count the number of empty shops. Count the number of shops that have ‘For lease’, count the number of shops that have ‘Out of business’, count the number of shops that have ‘Closed’ in their windows. It is horrendous.
I have gone around, and I did it again last night; I went down to the city last night and had a look for myself, knowing that I would be speaking in this debate today, and it was horrendous. It was horrendous, the number of shops that were empty, that were vacated and that I have to say are unlikely to see the light of day again. It was good that the Elephant was open, but that was about the only thing in the part of Melbourne that I was in. There were shops galore that were empty.
The opposition, sorry, the government—I am getting ahead of myself here—likes to talk about jobs. They should realise that an empty shop, a small business that has gone out of business, means the jobs are gone. That is the bottom line: the jobs are gone. That is what we are facing in this state at the moment. Small business is the heart of the economy, and we know what happens to us if our heart is playing up. We know what happens to us if our heart is underperforming. Well, it is the same with the economy. It is exactly the same thing. If small business is underperforming, if small business is not doing what we have expected it to do now for such a long time, then the economy will suffer and people will suffer because the jobs will not be there. They will not be there. As I pointed out to members of the government yesterday in language that they might understand, if there are no employers, there are no employees. And if there are no employees, there are no union members, and that might be the thing that just strikes the chord that makes the government realise how important small business is—because they employ people. They give people jobs and then quite often those people—well, perhaps not quite so often as they used to—now can in fact join the union, and that is something that, as I say, may well appeal. In fact I will be staggered if it does not appeal to the instincts of this government.
It is quite astounding, having seen what has happened this year and knowing that so many small businesses have hit the wall, that so many small businesses are on the brink of hitting the wall and that so many small businesses across this state are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, some of them almost hour by hour waiting for something to happen which will enable them to continue, that in that circumstance we have a government that says, ‘Well, we’re going to slap another tax on you’. If that does not send more small businesses to the wall, if that does not create more empty shops, if that does not create more unemployed, then nothing will—because that is what this government has set out to do. It is quite extraordinary that, in the circumstances that we have right now, Daniel Andrews would stand up and say, ‘Yeah, we know that your backs are against the wall. We know that you’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth. We know that you’re on the verge of bankruptcy. But we are going to give you another tax anyway. We are going to do you over. We are going to screw you over in fact’. That is what is going on here.
It is going to hit small business savagely, but what else it is going to do is destroy the casual workforce. It is going to destroy almost immediately that section of the workforce that is casual. Of course this is a very deliberate ploy by the government—a very deliberate ploy by the government to destroy the casual workforce because you cannot sign casual workers up, or not without great difficulty. You cannot sign them up to the unions, and that is something that the government cannot cope with. This government would prefer to see people out of work, unemployed, on the bones of their bum—they would prefer to see that—than have them not sign up to the union. That is what this government’s priorities are. They would have those people out of work. They would have those people not able to support their families, those people not able to keep their homes. They would rather that happen than have a situation where those people would not be able to join the union—quite an extraordinary set of priorities. I would suggest to you it is a despicable set of priorities for any government to set out to deliberately create unemployment in the way that this government has set out to do over the last couple of days.
It really should not surprise me that it came from the mouth of Daniel Andrews, because what we have seen over the last six years, but particularly over the last 12 months, is absolutely no sympathy, absolutely no empathy for those in the small business community. There is absolutely no sympathy, absolutely no empathy for those people in small business who put their homes on the line, who put everything they have quite often on the line, because they want to run their own business. They want to be their own bosses and they want to employ people. They want to create jobs. That is why they are the centre of prosperity in this country, and perhaps that is why this government wants to kick them in the guts, or perhaps a little bit lower than what they are expecting. I mean, it is just appalling. I heard the Premier say it the other day. I could not actually believe it. I had to wait for the news to come around an hour later so that I could hear it again before I actually believed it. I could not believe that a Premier of any state, much less this great state or this formerly great state of Victoria, would be so callous, would be so uncaring to announce what he had announced knowing—and he knows—the impact that it will have not just on small businesses and small business men and women but on the casual workforce.
There are a lot of people out there who are very happy to work on a casual basis. That is the way they want to work. They are very keen to do that. They accept that they work on a casual basis, and they get an extra loading for that. They are happy for that to work that way. But no, the government says, ‘We can’t have that. If you don’t accept our rules, if you don’t accept unionism, you’re out the door, you’re on the street. Forget it’. That is what this government is on about. It is just appalling, because what this government should be doing is supporting small business. At the very least it should be getting the hell out of the way of small business and allowing small business people to get on with what they do well. Let them run their own businesses. Let them employ people. Let them do what they want to do in their own businesses. That is at the very least what the government should be doing. But this government is going out of its way to smash small business even further. Can you imagine, after what they have done this year, they want to smash small business even further now.
Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.
The PRESIDENT: Members, before we start question time, during a division we leave the doors open. We asked the clerks to close the doors before COVID-19. That is why we leave them open. Even during a division members are not allowed to walk out of the chamber or walk in, unless I have declared the result. So please, members, make sure no-one walks out or walks in during a division.
Questions without notice and ministers statements
La Trobe University language programs
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:00): My question is to the Minister for Higher Education. Minister, La Trobe University runs the only tertiary Modern Greek course in Victoria and is planning to close this Modern Greek course forever. This would be a tragedy for a multicultural state like Victoria, for a state that prides itself on its multiculturalism, and I therefore ask: what steps will you take as Minister for Higher Education to ensure that La Trobe University continues its Greek studies program?
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:00): I thank the member for his question. I am troubled by the cuts at universities in Victoria, whether they be course cuts or to funding to different organisations on campus and indeed of course staff cuts as well. Course cuts reduce the choices available to students and can impact negatively on workforce supply and the state’s social and cultural life, as you quite accurately point out, Mr Davis. Of course losing a job is a terrible blow for any worker and their family, and my heart goes out to those who are affected by the variety of announcements that have been made.
But with that said, once again I need to be clear to the house where the state responsibilities are when it comes to universities. Universities are autonomous, self-governing institutions regulated by the commonwealth. Consequently the state no longer exercises control over university programs. The legislation reflects this fact. Now, they are not my words, Mr Davis; they are actually the words of Mr Rich-Phillips, who in the same speech in this place in 2013 said:
The university acts give the universities autonomy in relation to their internal governance structures and financial management.
I agree with Mr Rich-Phillips. It is not my role to intervene in the operational decisions they make. As we all know, the pandemic has created significant shortfalls in university revenues, particularly due to falling international student numbers, and the sector is facing significant job losses as a result of COVID-19. While the primary policy and funding responsibility of universities lies with the commonwealth, the Andrews government has made unprecedented investment in local universities to protect jobs and to support the state’s economic rebound, and this includes the $350 million higher education investment fund that I have previously outlined to the house. We did make that contribution, but we will not be pulled into cost-shifting exercises with the commonwealth.
Now, in relation to the proposed cancellation of the Greek language courses at La Trobe, I know that a number of Victorians, including some of my parliamentary colleagues, have been upset by this proposal. As they quite rightly highlighted, Greek Australians have made an enormous contribution to Victoria’s vibrant cultural life. For those who do not know already, if you or your constituents are concerned about this proposal— (Time expired)
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:03): There are two aspects of this coming out of the minister’s response. Mr Rich-Phillips reminds me of the government’s commitment of money in this budget, and that is I think an important point in response. Secondly, you did not actually say what you would actually do to help with the Modern Greek studies program, and perhaps you want to take that on notice. Nonetheless, the university also proposes to close Hindi and Indonesian courses, another blow to Victoria’s multicultural foundation. What steps will you take with respect to Hindi and Indonesian studies to ensure that they are not closed?
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:04): Again I thank the member for his question. What I did in my substantive response was outline where the responsibilities lie in relation to the state and the commonwealth. What my question to you and your party is: what are you going to do? Are you going to pick up the phone to Canberra?
Mr Davis: On a point of order, President, it is not the case that ministers are able to ask the opposition questions in question time. It is the case that the opposition and the non-government parties ask the government questions in question time.
The PRESIDENT: Minister, back to answering, please.
Ms Pulford: On the point of order, President, is it not incumbent under our standing orders for members of the opposition to direct their questions to ministers on matters for which the ministers actually have responsibility? Curriculum in universities?
Ms TIERNEY: I pose the rhetorical question: I wonder what those over there are going to do in terms of picking up the phone or sending an email to their colleagues in Canberra, who are responsible for the funding of universities in this country, and actually say, ‘We want a whole range of these courses to continue at La Trobe and other places’. No, of course you hear the silence—silence, silence, silence. But I do remember and remind people in this chamber, particularly those over there, as well as others on the crossbench and members of the government, that the university is currently seeking feedback on proposals, and I encourage you to— (Time expired)
Timber industry
Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12:06): My question is for the Minister for Employment. Last month I asked a straightforward question to the minister about jobs in the timber industry. This government has decided that the Victorian timber industry needs to die, its workers should not have jobs and their families can do without a breadwinner. Because it was a question about employment in the timber industry, I spoke about trees, about softwood and hardwood and about a sawmill. I must have confused the minister, who apparently could not see the wood for the trees. The minister decided that jobs in timber industry areas are not part of her portfolio. This was a question purely about jobs, about the loss of employment in regional Victoria and the economic impacts of the government’s decisions. The minister’s contempt for the question was not aimed at me; it was aimed squarely at those timber workers. As we see repeatedly, this government has only contempt for regional Victoria. So, Minister, can you explain why employment in regional timber industry areas is not part of your portfolio?
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business) (12:07): I thank the member for the first question I have had in a while on the timber industry. There was a time we used to do this every day. It is lovely to be back talking about the timber industry and the importance of the timber industry to regional communities and the great work that is done by the industry, by people in that work. The short answer to your question is that Minister Symes as the Minister for Agriculture has responsibility for the timber industry. That is the short answer.
The slightly longer answer I will give to you in terms of my responsibilities as the Minister for Employment and take the opportunity to reflect on the tripling of support for employment services that was announced in the budget yesterday, as well as $250 million to support wage subsidies to assist people into work. This is but one part of a budget that has a jobs target of 400 000 jobs. We recognise that we have a very big and important task in getting the Victorian economy back onto a rapid growth trajectory as quickly as is humanly possible, and yesterday’s budget was all about that. Now, communities that have timber industry work in them are of course very much part of our whole-of-government approach to rebuilding and strengthening the Victorian economy. In terms of the specific packages and programs and initiatives and considerable funding that has been made available, not in the budget but on earlier occasions, to support the transition of the timber industry, I would refer you to Minister Symes, who is managing that.
Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12:09): Over and over again we see this government has no regard for employment in the regions. It has no regard for the regions. They literally cannot find the regions. I read yesterday in the budget announcements that Frankston is in regional Victoria. Everything this government does is about buying votes in the city, and its goal is to destroy productive industries in the regions and replace them with what? Quaint, quirky, tourism-based service industries for the odd city resident who makes it out that far? So I ask the minister: why do regional jobs not matter to the Minister for Employment?
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business) (12:10): There was an $8 billion investment in supporting regional job creation and regional economic activity in yesterday’s budget. But this is not just a yesterday thing, and it is not just a this budget thing. Our government has made a steadfast effort and continual investment since day one. On tourism, can I just point out to you that one in six people in regional Victoria works in the visitor economy. Aside from food production it is the most significant source of employment. So you can come in here and rubbish our efforts on building the visitor economy, but I tell you what, people in regional communities and in rural communities right across the state care very deeply about having a strong domestic and international tourism economy. You can come in here all you like and say that black is white, but our government is deeply, deeply committed to creating job opportunities for people in regional Victoria. Our record demonstrates it, and the economic fundamentals in the data demonstrate that.
Ministers statements: TAFE funding
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:11): As our state recovers stronger and fairer, the Andrews Labor government is making sure every Victorian has the support they need to get back to work. Thanks to a billion-dollar boost TAFE will be at the heart of our economic recovery, and quality apprenticeships will be central to this task. That is why we are investing $33 million in the Big Build apprenticeships, placing TAFE at the centre of Victoria’s government infrastructure projects. This is a transformative approach to apprenticeships, one where there is a direct pathway with government oversight for apprentices and trainees to pursue careers on some of Victoria’s biggest infrastructure projects.
A forward-facing division in the Department of Education and Training will be established, where Victorians can go and get into apprenticeships and traineeships on key major projects. There will be a significant focus on getting under-represented groups on construction sites, such as women, First Nations people and culturally and linguistically diverse people. The division will make sure that those who are under-represented receive wraparound support and mentoring. A significant number of new apprentices and trainees will commence work and, in doing so, start a great career. This program is about getting local people into local jobs and addressing skills shortages along the way. It will make Victoria the place of choice for investment, because we will be known for having a pipeline of skilled workers needed for construction projects. By building residual skills in Victoria we will be a state where everyone knows they can get the job done. At the end of major government projects we can be so proud and we can say, ‘TAFE built it’.
Box Hill Institute
Mr RICH-PHILLIPS (South Eastern Metropolitan) (12:13): My question is to the Minister for Higher Education. Box Hill Institute, in conjunction with Soar Aviation, has been the subject of numerous complaints over the delivery of aviation diploma courses which have resulted in students incurring up to $100 000 in VET loan debt while not receiving any useful qualification. Last year the minister announced a departmental investigation into this matter. What was the outcome of that investigation?
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:13): I thank the member for his question. Of course the safety of staff and students is of paramount importance to this government. The relevant regulators, as the member would well know—the Australian Skills Quality Authority, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and Recreational Aviation Australia—have primary responsibility for determining the quality of training and the safety of aircraft. The funding agencies—the Victorian and commonwealth departments—do not have the expertise to assess safety issues and continue to take the lead from regulators. Soar remains registered and approved to deliver flight training by both CASA and RAAus. It is, as I understand it, still a legal matter, but I am happy to get an update on that for you, Mr Rich-Phillips. The inquiry was conducted by ASQA; it was not the department. The department referred the matter, as did Box Hill, but I am happy to follow up and take that on notice.
Mr RICH-PHILLIPS (South Eastern Metropolitan) (12:14): I thank the minister for her answer, though the announcement she made last year was that her department was looking into it. But I look forward to receiving further detail. Despite the revelations last year, Box Hill Institute continues to offer this course. A class action has been launched on behalf of 200 students, of which only five are believed to have actually obtained a commercial pilot licence from that course. So why have you allowed this dodgy course to continue given that only five people have actually graduated with a qualification?
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:15): As I said, I did not say the department was investigating. It was looking into it, and there was an investigation underway. There are legal proceedings that are being undertaken at the moment, so I cannot comment on those. But as I said, it is the regulator that determines these matters.
Recidivism rates
Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (12:15): My question is to the minister representing the Attorney-General. It is no secret that recidivist offenders of petty and serious crime often have drug and alcohol dependency. The state government has brought in initiatives such as the Drug Courts, and I note that this will be expanded upon the likely passage of the Drug Courts bill this week, but I may sound like a bit of a broken record when I recite Victoria’s recidivism rates, including 43 per cent of prisoners returning to prison within two years and 50 per cent returning within five years, as reported by the Productivity Commission last year. It is a revolving door. My question is: what other measures is the state government considering to reduce recidivism rates in alcohol and other drug dependent offenders?
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:16): President, I would seek clarification on whether it is the Attorney-General or the Minister for Corrections.
The PRESIDENT: Mr Grimley, I believe your question should be directed to the Minister for Corrections. Minister Tierney represents that minister.
Ms TIERNEY: I will pursue this and request that the minister provide an answer to your substantive within the range of the standing orders.
Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (12:17): Thank you, Minister, and my supplementary question is to the minister representing the Minister for Corrections. In the United States, the UK and other parts of the world controlling recidivism in predominantly alcohol-dependent offenders is led by the swift, certain and fair approach. This is where the reaction to illegal behaviour is swift, the punishment is certain, so it is known by the offender and is guaranteed, and it is fair, where the punishment is not punitive but is relative to the crime. Since 2005 South Dakota has been using a sobriety technique to target alcohol-dependent offenders, and many other states followed suit after seeing excellent results. This is just one example of the success of ‘swift, certain and fair’. The supplementary question is: has the government considered implementing swift, certain and fair techniques in our legal system to reduce recidivism in alcohol and other drug dependent offenders?
The PRESIDENT: Mr Grimley, it is the same situation as yesterday with Mr Limbrick. You started the question to the Attorney-General and we said the Minister for Corrections, but then your supplementary is about the legal issue. It could be the minister for police or the Attorney-General. Minister Tierney, I am happy if you want to make any explanation for this, or are you happy to take it on notice? It is not for the Minister for Corrections. Can you, Mr Grimley, rephrase your supplementary to the Minister for Corrections? You need to rephrase it in a way that the Minister for Corrections is responsible for it.
Mr GRIMLEY: President, can I have a bit of time to rephrase that one and come back to it later?
The PRESIDENT: All right, thanks for that.
Ministers statements: small business digital adaptation program
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business) (12:20): Just over a week ago it was my great pleasure to launch the small business digital adaptation program. The program will help eligible sole traders and micro and small businesses across all sectors to build digital capability and support their day-to-day business operations. Businesses can trial selected digital products, including website, e-commerce, finance and business management products, and will be able to sign up for one of the available products, with a rebate of up to $1200 available for 12 months access. Software applications offered by Mr Yum, Square, Shopify, Squarespace, MYOB and Xero are part of the program.
Local hospitality tech start-up Mr Yum has won a place alongside global software giants Square and Shopify in this program. Mr Yum provides digital menus and QR code ordering for restaurants, cafes and bars, and its services will now be available to fellow Victorian businesses for free as part of this wonderful rebate program. Mr Yum has experienced significant growth as more businesses adapt to online and contactless practices. The company, established in 2018, now has more than 1 million users a month and 1000 participating hospitality venues on its books.
Software providers will give businesses access to product-specific support and training during the trial period and once the product is purchased under the rebate program. Businesses will also be able to participate in free digital workshops offered through Small Business Victoria and in face-to-face workshops once it is safe to do so. I would encourage all members to take the opportunity as it presents to encourage people in our small and micro businesses, and indeed sole traders, to explore what this program might offer for them.
COVID-19
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:22): My question is to the Minister for Small Business. Minister, I refer to the steps taken by the government to make it easier for hospitality businesses to operate, and in particular to the mandating of QR codes, and I ask therefore: is there any financial support or other direct assistance for small hospitality businesses to implement the QR codes?
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business) (12:22): I thank Mr Davis for his question. Just for context, for members who may not have seen this in the recent announcement for restrictions from 23 November, hospitality venues with less than 200 square metres of floor space are subject now to a density quotient of one per 2 square metres, which is a significant change for those, up to a total of 50 patrons. For those businesses that are able to use the one per 2 square metre density, QR codes need to be used. The other part of that change is no group limit. For venues of 200 square metres of floor space or larger, they remain subject to the density quotient of one per 4 square metres. This is recognising that shift to density. There is no requirement for businesses to take advantage of that additional density requirement, but if they wish to, the public health advice, the decision and the announcement indicate that they need to use a QR code.
In terms of support to industry, Mr Davis and all members would be well aware of the significant grant programs and supports that are available, and I would even refer you to the ministers statement I made just a few seconds ago. The Australian Hotels Association, I believe, are providing a subscription service at no cost to their members. Indeed after a question from Dr Bach a number of weeks ago along very similar lines I did go looking at the cost of these subscription services. They are in the order of sort of $10 a month, and I did find one that is offered at $6 a month for members of the catering and restaurants industry organisation. So there are a number of supports that have been made available by industry groups. This is not mandated as such. It is for businesses who choose to take advantage of the one person per 2 square metre change to density. Of course I note that overwhelmingly people have already adopted these kinds of tools in their businesses.
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:25): I thank the minister for her answer, and I note that businesses have taken the lead, as Ms Crozier points out. And it has not been with government assistance; it has been basically despite the government dragging its feet on this. I ask: will those QR codes be linked to a central Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS) arrangement, or do we have to wait a longer period for that to happen?
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business) (12:25): There are a number of products that are available. There are probably half a dozen or so that have really quite high levels of take-up in industry, and as members are aware, the government is developing a government QR app that will link to the DHHS database. It is quite advanced in testing. There are more than 100 businesses that are participating this week and were I think last week as part of a trial. It will be ready soon, and we will let you know when it is ready. But in terms of the answer—
Members interjecting.
Ms PULFORD: People are ridiculous. The answer to your question is that it is our intention that there will be a common API that will enable that to be captured so that that information can be used. At the moment, businesses are required to record. Some are using paper. Many are using QR codes. That is a matter of individual business choice, which the Liberal Party used to be into.
Recidivism rates
The PRESIDENT: Mr Grimley, I ask you again to ask your supplementary question of Ms Tierney.
Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (12:27): My supplementary question to the minister representing the Minister for Corrections is: can the minister outline what specific programs currently operate within the corrections system that address alcohol and other drug dependencies?
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education) (12:27): I thank the member for his supplementary question and his ongoing interest in terms of recidivism as well, and I am sure that the minister will be able to respond and provide an outline of the programs that are available within the system.
Duck hunting
Mr MEDDICK (Western Victoria) (12:27): My question is for the Minister for Agriculture. Minister, recent FOI requests revealed that you met with Field and Game, a pro-shooting lobby, ahead of the 2020 duck-shooting season, yet continuous meeting requests from groups like Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting were denied. Does the minister meet with stakeholders opposed to duck shooting or only those in support?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Resources) (12:28): I thank Mr Meddick for his question. I meet with a range of people on a range of topics, and when it comes to duck hunting I am pretty confident I meet with those that support duck hunting, those that oppose duck hunting and those that are somewhere in the middle. Then there are some that support some forms of hunting and not other forms of hunting. But I can assure you that I meet with several groups, importantly some of the hunting organisations we partner with to deliver programs like the Respect: Hunt Responsibly campaign and of course important pest control measures that we take in conjunction with Parks Victoria. RSPCA is obviously an organisation that I meet with regularly. We have joint initiatives with that organisation as well. The Game Management Authority invite all interested groups to consult with them in their deliberations ahead of giving me information. I know they have met with Animals Australia, for example, and I am advised that the organisation known as Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting have been invited to meet with the GMA and have yet to take up that invitation.
Mr MEDDICK (Western Victoria) (12:29): I thank the minister for her answer, and it somewhat circumvents my supplementary because I was just about to ask: will the minister meet with anti-duck-shooting groups, such as Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting, ahead of a potential 2021 season rather than GMA meeting with them? Will the minister meet with them directly?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Resources) (12:29): Given that I have been very firm in my responses to how the duck seasons each year are formulated and announced—that I accept the advice of the GMA and I implement the advice of the GMA—it would be more appropriate for that organisation, ahead of the advice that I get from the GMA, to meet with them.
Ministers statements: early childhood education
Ms STITT (Western Metropolitan—Minister for Workplace Safety, Minister for Early Childhood) (12:30): I rise to update the house on the Andrews Labor government’s investment in early childhood in the 2020–21 Victorian budget. The budget provides $773.8 million to early childhood, including $302 million to continue the rollout of three-year-old kinder, part of our $5 billion investment over the decade to provide funded kinder each week for three-year-olds across the state, creating more than 6000 early childhood teacher and educator jobs. A further $38.5 million will be invested in the building blocks grants program, and an extra $30 million goes towards the refurbishment and minor works grants program, helping early childhood providers expand, improve and create more inclusive early learning facilities and creating up to 1500 additional kinder places.
The budget also includes $6.2 million for early intervention specialist support for parents and kids struggling as a result of the pandemic. This includes a new $1.5 million family group program to help vulnerable kids transition to school and $3.8 million for outreach and wraparound services to support vulnerable children. As previously outlined to the house, $169.6 million will provide help to cover the cost of kinder for up to 100 000 Victorian families, saving families thousands of dollars each year. This will get more kids into kinder and help more parents, especially women, into the workforce. We know it has been a difficult year for many families balancing learning and working from home, and these significant investments will reduce the burden on parents and better support kids as they move into school, making Victoria the Education State with the early years. We are getting it done.
WorkSafe Victoria
Mr O’DONOHUE (Eastern Victoria) (12:32): My question is to the Minister for Workplace Safety. Minister, noting yesterday’s Auditor-General’s report and the questions it raises about WorkSafe Victoria’s financial viability, I also note WorkSafe in its annual report has reported a deficit of $3.5 billion in relation to its performance from insurance operations. This deficit only reflects WorkSafe’s financial performance prior to Victoria’s second wave and is attributed by WorkSafe to reduced premiums and investment dividends and increased mental injury claims. Minister, some of these challenges have not disappeared as a result of the easing of restrictions. How will you ensure that the WorkCover scheme remains financially viable without raising premiums?
Ms STITT (Western Metropolitan—Minister for Workplace Safety, Minister for Early Childhood) (12:32): I thank Mr O’Donohue for his question, and I can indicate that the financial position of the independent regulator WorkSafe remains very sound, notwithstanding the impacts of COVID-19, which have obviously had an impact on the balance sheet of WorkSafe in this year’s annual report. As with many organisations, Mr O’Donohue, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on revenue at WorkSafe. Part of the reason for that is that the government took the very deliberate decision to provide relief to businesses, and that was the right thing to do in the climate that we found ourselves in.
Despite the shocks, the scheme remains financially sound, with an insurance funding ratio of 123 per cent, and this is within the preferred funding range. It means that for every $100 of liabilities, WorkSafe has $123 in assets. Notwithstanding that, you are right in relation to mental health. Mental workplace injuries are on the rise, and the government is taking a number of steps to address that issue. We are working closely with both the department and WorkSafe in relation to this matter. We will be making no apology for ensuring that workers get the mental health claims support that they need and get back to work, and that will be the focus for the government. We have introduced in Parliament this week provisional payments legislation which will see workers who put—
Ms Pulford interjected.
Ms STITT: Thank you, Ms Pulford. Workers will be able to get the very quick support that they need if they experience a mental injury in the workplace so that they are able to have the funds available to get the medical support straightaway, and it will significantly reduce the time that they will wait for those important supports, giving every chance for workers to make a return to work quickly. WorkSafe are very aware of this, and they are obviously also making sure that their processes look at how claims are managed. The Ombudsman’s report highlighted a number of areas where complex claims could be improved in terms of how they were being managed by agents, and there is a lot of work going into that with the independent review underway. On 5 May 2020 the government announced that businesses would be exempt from payroll tax and WorkCover premiums. (Time expired)
Mr O’DONOHUE (Eastern Victoria) (12:35): I note, Minister, that much of your commentary was related to the COVID response, when the annual report deals with the period prior to the COVID response issue. I also note your commentary about the legislation introduced around provisional payments. At the last election the opposition was pleased when the government followed and copied our policy in relation to that issue. It is disappointing it has taken two years for that to be introduced to the Parliament. I note the Auditor-General in its report says, and I quote:
If trends continue, at the current premium levels, the scheme risks being financially unsustainable. Management need to develop strategies to address these increasing trends.
So, Minister, the question is: how will you ensure the viability of the scheme without increasing premiums to employers?
Ms STITT (Western Metropolitan—Minister for Workplace Safety, Minister for Early Childhood) (12:36): I thank the member for his supplementary question. It is not quite accurate to describe the legislation the government has introduced around provisional payments to be a copy of the opposition’s policies, because, unlike the opposition, our government will be extending provisional payments to all Victorian workers who experience a mental injury in the workplace. I think that is an important point to correct you on, Mr O’Donohue. The government will continue and I as the minister will continue to work closely with WorkSafe to ensure that the scheme is not only viable but doing the best job it possibly can to support injured workers, prevent injury, make our workplaces healthier and safer for all Victorian workers and see those return-to-work figures improve.
Political donations
Dr RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (12:37): My question is to the Minister for Local Government. The revelations so far from the IBAC investigations into Casey council have already demonstrated how property developers can corrupt the planning process. There has been evidence of bags of cash, dodgy dealings and property developers getting what they want at the expense of the community. The government missed an opportunity in the budget yesterday to remove the incentive for this corruption with a rezoning tax. The previous minister announced and then backed away from donations reform for local council elections, and we have just gone through another local government election where there were no limits whatsoever on property developer donations to council candidates. Minister, my question is: when will the government bite the bullet and just ban property developers from donating to councillors or local government candidates?
Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (12:38): I thank Dr Ratnam for her question. I can tell Dr Ratnam that there will be donation reform in the local government sector. I think her commentary about biting the bullet—
Mr Hayes interjected.
Mr LEANE: Well, there has already been a bit of that, Mr Hayes, but you might have missed that. What I would say is that there has been a commitment and there will be a commitment to donation reform in the local government sector. What we have been waiting for is to see if there are any recommendations out of the IBAC inquiry that Dr Ratnam mentioned in her question.
Members interjecting.
Mr LEANE: I know the opposition have been sort of not aware that there has been this global pandemic. They do not actually accept that there has been a global pandemic, but I understand that—
Members interjecting.
Mr LEANE: I am about to get back to you, because that actually held up this inquiry. When this inquiry—
Members interjecting.
Mr LEANE: This is Dr Ratnam’s question, and I am trying to answer it. I think it is a good question, and I am trying to answer it. The opposition are a bit nervy about this, and I understand that.
I have got to say to Dr Ratnam that, on reform, nothing has been ruled out. I know Mr Hayes asked me a question a while ago about other jurisdictions and looking at what they are doing, and I said to Mr Hayes at the time that that will not be ruled out. Any suggestions from any stakeholders will not be ruled out. This is an issue that we will address, as I said, awaiting the IBAC recommendations and the end of this inquiry.
This inquiry could have been done, but it has taken all these weird twists and turns recently. Who would have thought that there would be Jim’s Local Council Candidate Services in this world? You can get your lawn mowed, and then at the same time you can become a candidate for the Yarra Ranges shire. Who woulda thunk it! But let us hope it gets finished soon. We will look at the recommendations from the IBAC inquiry. As I said at the start of my answer, there will be donations reform in the local government sector.
Dr RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (12:41): Thank you, Minister. I really welcome the commitment to reform—it is long overdue—and I hear what you are saying about needing to wait for IBAC’s report. However, I would argue that the reform can begin straightaway. It does not need to wait until the final report is handed down. The case is quite clear. Reform has been talked about for a very long time, and I cannot see why the government has to wait to start that reform until IBAC’s recommendations are made. The work can begin now. But as a supplementary question, another mechanism for shining the light on activities of property developers is to require councillors to regularly and publicly report on their meetings with property developers. Can the minister advise if the government has or will consider such measures?
Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (12:42): I thank Dr Ratnam for her supplementary question. I have to say, as I said in my substantive answer, nothing will be ruled in or ruled out. As I said, we are happy to accept any suggestions from any stakeholders about the best way to go forward in this reform, and I would say to Dr Ratnam that it is not as if the government has not put some thought and effort into this particular reform and what it may look like. We are waiting for the IBAC recommendations out of courtesy for the work they are doing and the nature of that—
Mr Davis interjected.
Mr LEANE: I know. I had a conversation with Mr Tarlamis when he was an excellent adviser to the Special Minister of State. There was work done then, and he was that good, we bought the company. He was that good, we brought him in here. So there has been some work done; we have done it twice. He is twice as good as any of us. The answer is: we will look at that.
Ministers statements: women building surveyors program
Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (12:43): I want to talk today about a gem in the budget yesterday that has not had a lot of notice. There is $6.3 million in the budget towards creating 40 opportunities for women to train as building surveyors in local governments. Local governments have been fantastic employers, major employers, of women. They always have been. They have done a great job during the challenge of COVID, and they will do a great job going forward as well.
Of course every council needs access to a building surveyor, and actually this initiative addresses a skills shortage being experienced across the state, so why not create opportunities for 40 women? I am not too sure how many female building surveyors there are—I do not think there are many—but soon there will be 40 more, and we are so looking forward to it. Applications for this program open next month, and the successful candidates from the councils will begin an advanced diploma of building surveying or, if they like, a bachelor of building surveying.
This is in line with some great commitments to make sure that women were not forgotten in this budget, and every minister in this house has a program towards making sure that women, a cohort that have been hardest hit because of the challenges of COVID, will have access to gainful employment.
Dr Bach: All 40 of them.
Mr LEANE: And talking about 40—thank you very much—up to this date 45 per cent of local council mayors are women. We smashed the recent mark, so happy days. It is a great outcome from the election to see that 45 per cent of mayors in Victoria are women.
Questions on notice
Answers
Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12:45): President, I draw your attention to question on notice 2370, which I placed on the notice paper on 2 June 2020. The question was to the Minister for Health. I wrote to the Minister for Health yesterday, but I have not yet received an answer.
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Resources) (12:46): Mr Quilty, if you have written to the Minister for Health, I am sure that an answer will be forthcoming. I will follow it up today.
Questions without notice and ministers statements
Written responses
The PRESIDENT (12:46): Regarding questions today: Mr Rich-Phillips to Ms Tierney, one day, only the question; and Mr Grimley, again to Minister Tierney, for the corrections minister, the question and the supplementary, two days.
Constituency questions
Northern Victoria Region
Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (12:47): My constituency question is for the Minister for Health, and it concerns the continued lack of funding for the completion of the redevelopment of Goulburn Valley Health. Yet another state budget has been delivered, and the people of Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley have been dudded again by the Andrews Labor government regarding their healthcare needs. Yet again the Minister for Health and the Treasurer have failed to invest in the health needs of the local community and commit funding to complete the redevelopment of GV Health. A review of the 2015 GV Health master plan was due to be finalised in June 2018, but it has been buried within the Department of Health and Human Services. Will the minister release the review of the GV Health master plan and immediately commit funding to complete the full redevelopment of Goulburn Valley Health?
Western Metropolitan Region
Ms VAGHELA (Western Metropolitan) (12:47): My constituency question is directed to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Youth and Minister for Community Sport, the Honourable Ros Spence, MP. The Andrews Labor government has announced $13.5 million for a community cricket program. The applications are open for the 2020–21 round. We have 235 000 registered cricket participants across Victoria. I am sure you all know about our love for cricket. Victoria is also Australia’s home for cricket. The program has already delivered more than $1.4 million in grants to 15 projects. This second round of the program will deliver another $1.4 million for clubs and councils to develop or redevelop local cricket infrastructure. Clubs and communities can cater for even more Victorians, particularly women and girls, keen to be involved in the sport. My question to the minister is: can the minister advise how this program will support cricket clubs in the Western Metropolitan Region?
Western Victoria Region
Mr MEDDICK (Western Victoria) (12:48): My constituency question is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. Recently I met with some concerned constituents at Dog Rocks Road in Batesford, an area once known for its quiet rural lifestyle. That has changed with recent housing developments and the subsequent traffic. The road cuts between two significant landholdings for nature and wildlife, and the rise in traffic means the road’s 100-kilometre limit is no longer fit for purpose, becoming one of the region’s most frequented night-time illegal drag strips. Will the minister assist by changing the limit to 80 kilometres an hour, erecting new and larger signage urging motorists to be aware of wildlife and installing speed bumps to deter dangerous hoon activity?
Western Metropolitan Region
Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (12:49): My constituency question is to the Minister for Education. Minister, because of the economic circumstances of many families in Melbourne’s west and the particular needs of a wide variety of multicultural communities in Melbourne’s west, parent volunteers in local schools are even more important than in most other parts of Victoria. Volunteers provide help and support to teachers and students alike—help and support that would not otherwise be available. These volunteers are a crucially important part of education in the western suburbs, and their presence right now is sorely missed. Minister, we need these committed volunteers back in our local schools. When do you anticipate volunteers will be allowed to return to do their wonderful work in Melbourne’s west’s schools?
Western Metropolitan Region
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (12:50): My constituency question is to the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation in the other place. My constituent from Keilor Downs asks: will you reduce the number of hours that venues can operate pokie machines in our state? She notes that for the first time in nearly three decades pokie machines were switched off across our state, and we collectively saved an estimated $1.8 billion. She states that this is more than just money—that for many this means food on the table and time with their kids, and this was the break that they needed. We have listened to public health experts when it comes to managing COVID-19, and we must do the same for gaming to avoid the explosion of harm that we have witnessed in other states when pokie machines were reopened. Currently pokie machines are able to operate 20 hours a day in Victoria, the longest in the country. Closing pokie machines from midnight to 3.00 pm— (Time expired)
Western Victoria Region
Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (12:51): My constituency question is for the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. The Modewarre volunteer fire brigade provides a crucial emergency response to fire incidents in the local area. At the last election the Liberal-Nationals promised $2 million to construct a new fire station for the brigade. Currently their existing station is so inadequate that a fire truck does not fit inside it, so it is being stored in a private member’s shed. The local member for South Barwon failed to contact the brigade members and announced via Facebook on Friday that the Modewarre CFA will receive $114 000 to build a shed, despite no such funding being detailed in the budget and the brigade clearly needing a new station, not a shed. So I ask the minister: will the government commit to building a new fire station for the Modewarre volunteer CFA so that these volunteers can keep us safe?
South Eastern Metropolitan Region
Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (12:52): My question is for the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events. I was recently contacted by a small business owner, located around the corner from my office, who operates an event hire business. He has been in the industry for over 30 years, working in nightclubs, festivals, concerts, corporate events and weddings, and understands all the different facets of the entertainment game. Even as we crawl out of lockdown, he knows that the industry will lag a long way behind. They cannot do takeaway, as in the hospitality industry, and the entertainment industry will be amongst the most restricted once they can operate. He knows the industry well, he knows they can operate safely, but he wants his voice heard. My question to the minister is: will you ensure that the event hire industry can open and operate in parallel with the hospitality and retail sectors?
Eastern Metropolitan Region
Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (12:53): My question is to the Minister for Local Government. The first action of Banyule’s new Labor mayor, Rick Garotti, has been to cancel the Boulevard Christmas lights in Ivanhoe, a treasured local tradition, because it poses, quote:
… a significant health … risk … to all of Victoria.
What rubbish. It should go ahead with COVID-safe measures in place. Instead local residents have been banned from decorating their own homes and police have been placed on stand-by in order to stop people disobeying the mayor’s edict and, quote, ‘getting out of control’. This is not an Iron Maiden concert; it is an honoured Christmas tradition. My question to the minister is this: will he pick up the phone to his mate in Adem Somyurek’s corrupt right faction and tell the mayor to reinstate Christmas?
Southern Metropolitan Region
Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (12:54): My constituency question is to the Minister for Planning. Last week I visited Black Street, Brighton, with local residents to discuss what they described as the disaster that Black Street is becoming. They advised me that at present they have an extra 85 flats, with potentially up to 200 extra cars, either being built or applied for in a very small street between Male Street and Halifax Street. They said the area is being turned into a slum. There is a great concern about the impact of traffic and parking by construction workers. Many middle-ring suburbs, especially in my electorate, are being hammered by this kind of overdevelopment and endless construction. I ask: will the minister reassess Plan Melbourne and its limitless population projections, which are having a very adverse impact on the quality of life of people living in Melbourne’s middle-ring suburbs?
Southern Metropolitan Region
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:55): I listened closely to the Minister for Small Business’s response to my question on QR codes, and I am actually deeply disturbed. We are now nine or 10 months into this process with the terrible COVID pandemic, and still there is no solution on QR codes. My question to the minister is: will the minister work with me, the Chapel Street traders and the City of Stonnington to run a trial in my electorate to immediately work with every small business to ensure that all of the South Yarra traders that seek a QR code have that? Will she help fund that? Will she work with us to undertake such a trial urgently? Small businesses cannot wait. They need the assistance of government. The minister seems to me to be quite heartless and out of her depth on this. She does not understand the impact on small businesses. Some of these businesses have struggled, and I ask her urgently to work with us. (Time expired)
Southern Metropolitan Region
Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:56): My question is to the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery. Like Mr Davis just referred to, I refer to the struggles of small business, who have done it so tough throughout the COVID crisis, and again this issue relates to the outdoor eating and entertainment package. Small businesses, as I said, who have been struggling through this pandemic, are wanting to get support from the government, and a lot of them have been applying for grants to allow them to be operating in a COVID-safe manner, as the government has indicated. Unfortunately I had to write to the minister in early October about a constituent who had a concern: they are a small business and there was an issue with their ABN number. That was the fault of the ATO, and it has been resolved. I have had more complaints. I spoke to a small business cafe owner only last week, who again is having trouble getting a grant due to their ABN. So the question I ask of the minister is: will he investigate why small business owners are being rejected for these grants without a detailed explanation as to their ABN issues?
Sitting suspended 12.58 pm until 2.05 pm.
Motions
Secure work pilot scheme
Debate resumed.
Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (14:05): Before the extended break I was talking about the government’s contempt for small business in this state, and I was pointing out in fact that if we have a strong small business sector, we have a strong employment sector, because small business means jobs. Small business is the biggest employer in Australia. If you do not have that support for small business, then you are not going to have the jobs growth and the jobs strength that we need for a strong economy and indeed for individual families to have security in their lives, and that is something that is very important.
People talk about economic this and economic that, but what it is really about is ensuring that people are able to live the lives that they want to. That is what it is about—that they are able to work, that they are able to be self-sustainable, that they will be able to do what they want to do to pay off their homes, to go on holidays, to do whatever they may want to do. That is what economic strength is all about. That is what economic strength allows Victorians to do, and unfortunately at the moment there is not a lot of it around. It is a very bleak situation at the moment, and I have a great fear that next year could actually be worse.
What we are seeing is a government that has embarked upon ideological warfare against the small business sector. Despite what the government says, the fact of the matter is that the only long-term, sustainable recovery that we can have is through growth in the private sector and in particular in small business. That is what we should be putting emphasis on, but instead the government is out there spending every cent that you and I have and that our children have, our grandchildren have and probably our great-grandchildren have as well. This spend that they have been trumpeting for the last 24 hours will still be being paid off in probably 80 or 90 years time, such is the debt that we face in Victoria at the moment. That is not going to be good—slugging people.
You have got to remember that the only place that governments can get money from is taxation. Now, whether it is via the federal government or directly to the state government it does not matter. The only place that governments get money from is taxpayers—simple as that. When we talk about this debt that Labor is building up, this $155 billion debt, that is not the government’s debt; that is individual taxpayer debt. I understand every baby now is born in Victoria with somewhere in the vicinity of a $24 000 debt. That is not something that we should be proud of, it is not something that we should be crowing about, but unfortunately the Premier seems to think that that is the makings of a recovery, which I find quite extraordinary. As I said earlier, I find it quite amazing at a time when we need support for small business or at the very least for government to get out of small business’s way.
I recall when I ran my own small business that all I wanted to do, all I wanted to have happen, was for the government to get out of my way and let me get on with what I did. The government should be doing that. If there is some degree of support that can be offered at the moment, that is great, but at the very least they should be getting out of the way of small business. Instead they slug them with a new tax, and that is quite extraordinary. We should be throwing our support behind the private sector. We should be throwing our support very strongly behind small business in particular. We most certainly should not be hitting them with another tax at a time when they are teetering on the precipice. Many small businesses are teetering on the precipice, and this tax that is being proposed by the government will hurt a lot of businesses and will push a lot of businesses into bankruptcy, out of business, and of course their employees will suffer because they will lose their jobs.
I just want to emphasise, and then I will sit down, that strong business means jobs. I cannot put it any simpler than that. If you want people to have jobs, you will support the business community. If you do not, then at some stage the whole thing is going to come crashing down, and that is the simple fact of the matter. You can build up debts of billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars, but at some stage the whole thing, the whole game of cards, is going to come crashing down around your ears. The only way that we can recover from what we have been through, the only way that we can recover from what we are still going through, is through a strong business community who are working hard, employing people and getting the results that they need to ensure that the recovery for Victoria, the recovery for Australia, is there for each and every single one of us to enjoy.
Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (14:11): I rise to make a contribution in opposition to the motion as proposed on the notice paper, motion 434, which stands in Mr Davis’s name. I have listened to Mr Finn’s contribution on this particular motion. It is saddening to me to have this sort of angry rhetoric in regard to this debate where really what we all need to do is recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly highlighted some problems and structural fault lines within our economy. And one of them of course is insecure work, because what we saw in the COVID-19 pandemic was that workers who were just trying to earn a quid were needing to work in one or more, multiple, workplaces in order just to make sure that they would have a reasonable amount of money coming in to put food on the table, keep the roof over their head and put clothes on their backs—basic things that most people in this chamber would not have to second-guess. But if you are working in insecure work, in the precariat, these are things that you need to consider every day. As we know, there is a growing homelessness problem as well.
Being able to access work and having the dignity of work is something that the Andrews Labor government understands only too well, and this is why we have announced a pilot into insecure work. My experience in this area is as a former union official. I have worked for a number of years in the movement, and I have worked with people who have been employed in precarious work and I have worked representing union members who have worked in both small business and large businesses. One thing that is absolutely apparent is the proliferation and the abuse and exploitation of people employed as casuals. If you look at what the original intention around casual employment was, it was essentially to fill gaps in labour. So somebody might have been sick or unable to come to work and you would have a pool of casuals that you might be able to ring and have them come in at short notice. Effectively they were paid a loading that was in lieu of their sick and annual leave.
Of course what we see now is the absolute explosion of this type of employment. As I said earlier, it has really exposed a severe fault line in our economy, in that because people are hopping from one job to another—sometimes working in two or three places just to bring in a wage—that had the impact of actually spreading coronavirus throughout various workforces. I might just comment on this. I wrote about this—I did a blog piece—and I just want to explain to the chamber why this is actually really important. I know Mr Finn in his contribution went on about small business, but I want to talk about workers because, you know, you do not actually have a business if you do not employ workers. Mr Finn actually talked about small business—
Mr Finn: You don’t have workers if you don’t have business.
Ms TERPSTRA: That is right, and we actually agree. If you do not have people working for you, you do not have a business.
So let us just talk about what the precariat look like. The precariat are young. Around 76 per cent of employees aged 15 to 19 years old and 41 per cent of employees aged 20 to 24 years old were casual employees in 2016, which is well above the all-age average of 25 per cent. They also have caring responsibilities; a lot of casual employees are female. But also the male share of employment of casual employees has increased from 36 per cent in 1992 to 47 per cent in 2016. A lot of them are employed in hospitality as well; just under two-thirds of employees in the hospitality industry were casual employees. There are a range of other sectors that are big users of casual employment, and some of those include agriculture, retail and trade, and administrative and support services, to name but a few. A lot of them work in unskilled roles—in food preparation, labouring, sales support work, personal services and farm, forestry and garden work—and most of them are low paid, mostly paid under awards or receiving the minimum.
Now, that just gives you an idea, and so what you start to see is that the idea that you can abuse casual employment or precarious employment as a method of employing people means you create winners and losers in the economy. It means there is a group of people who have traded off the ability to earn an entitlement such as sick leave or annual leave to in fact accrue a higher hourly rate—because that is an acknowledgement that they cannot live on the hourly rate. Now, of course I could start to talk about why our bargaining system has been ruined as well—because workers are no longer able to properly bargain, with the draconian federal workplace laws that we now have in place—and of course wages are stagnant.
If any of you had listened to Paul Keating, one of the designers of our superannuation system, on 7.30 the other night, what did Mr Keating say? He said the federal government has thrown women and young people under the bus. We have not had real wage increases since 2013. So of course what we see is that for the precariat and the low paid these things become really all too real. Of course people will do whatever they can to try and earn a quid, sadly, and I touched on this earlier when I was mentioning where a lot of these workers are actually employed.
I might just talk about some of the great work that the Fair Work ombudsman has done in auditing some of the businesses that employ the precariat, because the Fair Work ombudsman has done a nationwide investigation and audit of 1217 businesses in industries including hospitality, domestic construction, retail, manufacturing and administration services and has in fact recovered $1 326 125 for underpaid employees. The fact is that not only do we have workers who are being exploited by being employed as casual when in fact they should be employed as permanent, ongoing workers but we also have wage theft that is rife and endemic in our community.
It is all very well for those opposite to lecture us about foisting a new tax. This is not a tax. This is not a tax, and as I might say, this is a pilot. This is a pilot that we will be talking to business and unions about, because unions represent workers and we want to make sure that we get this right. I might say, Mr Finn, this would be something that would be lost on you, but certainly in my region I had a lot of small businesses thank the Andrews government for the levels of support that they were given—the financial assistance they were given—during the COVID pandemic for helping them to keep their heads above water. That is something that we recognise—that we support small business. We have supported them through the coronavirus pandemic. Not only did we support them financially but we are also now supporting them to create new jobs.
There has been a lot of talk in the chamber today, and I think from the opposition leader in the other place, saying that this will be a drag or a tax on jobs or a drag on job creation. The Andrews Labor government is going to be creating thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs through our many huge infrastructure projects, like North East Link, for example, and like Suburban Rail Loop. Every press release that has gone out as part of the budget, every program that we will be funding as part of the budget, has job creation opportunities in it. Even the Level Crossing Removal Project, which has been a very successful program in removing multiple level crossings, has resulted in creating 4500 jobs. So again, to simply say that somehow this scheme—and again it is something that is a pilot; it is there for businesses and unions and government to talk about how it might be created and how it might operate—is going to be a big scary thing that everyone should be worried about is just complete nonsense. I have just talked about and only touched on a few—a small number—of the huge job creation opportunities that are going to be there for small businesses. I might even talk about some of our local builds. When you look at funding school infrastructure builds, we fully encourage and support local tradespeople who have their own local building businesses and the like, or local trades, to tender for works as part of those construction projects.
So again, we also look at local job creation and local economy-stimulating opportunities as well. This is not something that is just done at a macro level; this is something that we make sure we do at a micro level as well, because a lot of those tradies are small business people. We want to encourage them to also employ apprentices. If you are a local plumber and you have got your plumbing business going and you are wanting to employ local kids in the area to become an apprentice, that is great. We also support that as well. There have been announcements made about how we will be supporting the creation of apprentice jobs, and how they can be supported as well.
Back to the point about this casual pilot and why this matters in the COVID pandemic, what we have seen, as I said, has been an abuse of casual and precarious employment practices, but what we also see is a mechanism to avoid paying lawful entitlements. I can remember, as a young person representing workers in the union movement, that originally casual workers did not have rights to unfair dismissal claims, but they do now. Even if you work in a small business, if you have been there for 12 months or more you have the right to bring a claim against your employer for unfair dismissal.
Now, many employers operate under the misapprehension that if you have a casual worker, they do not have those rights. Well, indeed they do. I might also just comment on the Federal Court’s decision in WorkPac v. Skene—and the other decision was Rossato—which examined the employment of people who were said to be employed as casuals and paid a 25 per cent loading in lieu of annual and sick leave. The Federal Court found that in those cases those workers were not employed as casuals and were entitled to claim many years of unpaid annual leave. This is not about all employers. There are many employers that do the right thing. There are many employers who are exemplary employers, and I have worked with many of them in representing workers—and resolved many issues—whether it has been at the bargaining table or whether it has been on individual disputes. There are many employers who absolutely do the right thing. But those that do not kind of ruin it for everybody else. Sadly, there are some people who go into business with the notion that you can have a business model that works on not paying people their lawful entitlements; you have a business model where you exploit precarious employment; you have a business model that means that rather than investing in your workforce you create a working poor. There is an underclass of employment. The idea about the casual pilot that we are looking at—the insecure work pilot—will not even address the proliferation of visa class workers who often end up working for cash in hand. We know that that happens, and that is a national disgrace, because what we have is people who are acknowledging that they cannot earn enough.
This happened in South Australia. We had the situation where there was a COVID outbreak. There was a visa class worker who was lawfully in the country; he had declared where he was working. He indicated that he went and got a pizza at a South Australian pizza joint, but in fact he was working there. So this is part of the problem, where you have people who come into this country lawfully but are forced to find ways to support themselves through a variety of income means.
Now, the other problem with that is that people are not paying tax on those wages, which is then not supporting communities. When we talk about taxation, that is something that supports pensions. How do we pay pensions to support the age pensioners if people are not paying tax? How do we fund our hospitals and schools? We all pay taxes, especially when we go to the shops—we pay GST on something we buy in the shops. But pay-as-you-go employment is another way we fund taxation in this country. For every time that somebody does not pay tax, they are actually taking money out of the pockets of pensioners and taking money out of our schools or hospitals, and that is not acceptable.
Sadly, precarious employment has exploded. We just cannot have it. It cannot continue, especially when it has got to the extent where it now puts public health and safety at risk. We saw this in our aged-care system once coronavirus took hold, because of course we have got people who have serious health complications or might be immunocompromised. Those people are not going to be able to withstand the harsh ravages of coronavirus. We saw that when it got into those care homes it just exploded. Of course we knew that there were people there that were precariously employed. They were not receiving their proper entitlements and the like. So something has to be done about this. We just simply cannot ignore this problem any longer. It is of critical importance that we address the insecure work problem.
I might just return to my earlier point: 3.3 million people in this country are precariously employed. That is a not an insignificant problem. Something needs to be done. I will refer to an earlier Age article, I think it was, or an article that appeared in the press, that talked about the problem in regard to people working illegally. Almost 100 000 people in Victoria could fall into that category. That is significant. Now, we have to do something about that problem. We cannot let this continue. People need to have a decent income. They need to have secure work.
I think, as the Premier has commented, it also puts the pressure on families to say, ‘Well, look, I need to have a day off. I’m casually employed. Even though I’m getting 25 per cent extra in my pocket every week because I don’t get my annual and sick leave, my child is sick but I can’t afford to have the day off to stay at home with my child, so I’m going to send my child to school sick’. Of course then that spreads, whether it is the flu or a cold or a virus—whatever it is. I have even seen that myself in regard to nits. Back in the day if your child had nits you would keep them at home. But I am telling you that the explosion of nits not only in primary schools but in secondary schools, which was pretty much unheard of, is because people are sending their kids to school with infestations. Why? Because they cannot afford to take a day off work. Why? Because if they do not go to work and have that continuous, steady income stream in their pockets, they will not be able to pay their rent, they will not be able to put food on the table. They may lose the roof over their head. They may lose their job even, because what we also know is that sometimes if you are a casual and you say to the boss, ‘Look, I can’t turn up today for work because I need to do X, Y or Z’, you may in fact never get another shift. That has happened. I have in fact represented workers who have been dropped off rosters simply because they have said, ‘I can’t come to work today because I have something else to do’. Now, that is not good enough. It is not good enough.
Especially if you are on a roster, I would strongly argue that you are not a casual. Casual work is meant to be intermittent and ad hoc. If you are on a roster, you are not casual. If you have been working regular, systematic hours of employment, you are not a casual. So I would have to ask the question of employers then: why are people being told they are casual? And they might say, ‘Well, they want the extra money in the pocket, the 25 per cent’, but we know that that 25 per cent loading does not cover, it does not compensate people for, the variety of conditions that they may be entitled to under an award. For example, casual workers do not get redundancy pay, nor do they get notice. They do not qualify perhaps for paid family violence leave. They do not qualify for paid training leave. So there is a variety of paid leave and conditions that the 25 per cent loading does not cover. It is a way of avoiding paying for those financial obligations. And as I said earlier, if the business model includes a way of avoiding paying lawful entitlements, getting around it, or perhaps looking at how profits could be made in a way which minimises payment, that is something that is part of the precarious business model.
As I said earlier, there are many employers who are good employers and who do not do this, but as we know and as we have seen with the Fair Work ombudsman’s investigation into wage theft, sadly in the hospitality sector it is quite rife. It is incredibly sad that we have many well-known and wealthy restaurateurs making extreme profits off the backs of working people. And as I said—I think the Premier also mentioned this—do you really want to go to a restaurant and have someone who is unwell serving you food? I know I would not, and I do not think anyone in this chamber would want that either. So why we have to have this level of exploitation amongst people is just beyond me.
As I said, we do not want to create winners and losers in our community or in our society. If people are turning up and working for your business, whether it be a small business or a large business, they are what is making you profits. They are indeed creating wealth for you or your family in your business. They are creating corporate knowledge or intellectual capital for your business that you will ultimately profit off. They are creating goodwill for your business. So it is critically important to make sure that you indeed invest in your workers and make sure that they can in turn be looked after and make sure they can look after their families.
In fact, if people have money in their pockets, it also grows business confidence. It encourages spending in the marketplace; it encourages people to spend. Talk about the pandemic and the downturn—I mean, you want to encourage people to spend. Well, guess what? They cannot spend money if they are not getting paid properly. They cannot spend money in the market if they are getting ripped off. So to me it is a crazy notion simply to say that this is going to be all doom and gloom and it is a tax. It is just complete and utter rubbish to say that this is a tax. It is not a tax. This is about ensuring that workers actually get paid their lawful entitlements. I do not know how you call that a tax. There are awards and agreements that provide for—
Mr Finn interjected.
Ms TERPSTRA: Employers should pay, and there are plenty of small businesses that are covered by awards. I have never heard anybody try and conflate the notions by saying that award entitlements are a tax. That is rubbish.
Mr Finn: So a levy is not a tax?
Ms TERPSTRA: That is ridiculous. And, Mr Finn, we would not have had to do this if there were not people that were exploiting casual employment. I would not try and suggest somehow that this has all been brought about by the bad Andrews Labor government, who created the pandemic just to make it hard for small business. That is effectively what you are saying, which is total and utter rubbish.
I look forward to this pilot getting underway. I look forward to seeing the consultations with business, and many of those businesses have come to the government and thanked us for our support and guidance and leadership during the pandemic and for helping them to keep their heads above water because they know that we have their interests at heart. We supported them through the pandemic and we will support them through the creation of this pilot. And from what I know of what the small business community have said, they acknowledge there is a problem and they are wanting some help to resolve it. So I look forward to that, because this government puts people first. It may be something that those opposite do not understand, but we actually put people first because we want to see everyone be successful. We want to see everyone be successful; that is actually possible. We do not want to create winners and losers, which is what has happened. As I said earlier, the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the fault lines in our industrial relations system.
The other thing we talked about as part of this pandemic was the federal government making it possible for people to access their superannuation early—a terrible idea. It is an absolutely shocking idea because, do you know what? It will mean that when people come to retirement age they will not have adequate savings to retire on. Then guess what—they are going to need more pension, aren’t they? The whole idea around superannuation was to allow people to create their own retirement savings so they would be less reliant on the pension.
Now, I know those opposite and their friends in Canberra absolutely hate superannuation because it is a creation of the union movement and it is managed very well by boards on which unions actually sit and manage them. You hate it. You hate it over there, and you do everything you can to try and dismantle it. Do you know what? Those industry funds are the best performing superannuation funds there are. They have created wealth for many, many, many Victorians and others around the country so that they are able to have retirement savings, savings that they can rely on. I tell you what, it is critically important that we maintain the superannuation system. I can say, even as somebody who has represented workers—I might just talk about one person that I represented having to lodge a matter in a court, not a tribunal. It was somebody who had been underpaid for 10 years—no annual leave. They were not a precarious employee; they were an ongoing employee with 10 years of no annual leave and 10 years of no annual leave loading, no long service leave and no super. We are talking about over $50 000 in underpaid entitlements. Now, let me tell you, this person—
Mr Finn interjected.
Ms TERPSTRA: No, this person was a permanent. But the situation is worse for casual employees, Mr Finn, and it is something that you do not want to talk about because, as I said, there are 3.3 million of them. There are 3.3 million people who are employed in precarious employment. But you know what—some people cannot even get it right when we are talking about permanent employment.
This actually tells you how bad the problem is. This tells you how bad it is not only for precarious workers but for workers who do not have representation by organisations like unions. Unions are critically important to ensuring that workers continue to get paid appropriately. As I mentioned earlier, the bargaining system in our country has been absolutely ruined. We have had wage stagnation in this country since 2013. There has been no real wages growth, so is it any wonder that workers are looking for other ways to get more income into their pockets? Some people might have a full-time job or an ongoing position, but then they might work casually somewhere else. This is because people cannot put wages into their pocket to sustain themselves ordinarily. It is a real problem.
I will get back to the nub of this motion. Although this talks about small businesses doing it very tough during the COVID pandemic, we know that; the Andrews Labor government understands that, because we supported small business through the pandemic with a multitude of opportunities—
Dr Bach interjected.
Ms TERPSTRA: which, no, actually included funding, Dr Bach. So those were things that were very well received, certainly by people in my electorate. There were many pubs, actually, and there was one pub in particular I think in the state seat of Warrandyte who benefited not only from our small business grants but also from partaking in funding to expand their outdoor eatery. I think it is wonderful that we have those businesses that are coming to the Andrews Labor government and recognising that we are there to support them. But then again to say that this is a new tax is simply fake news. It is an alternative fact universe to say that this is a tax. What we are actually trying to do is encourage businesses to pay lawful entitlements, to actually not abuse precarious employment, to employ people on an ongoing basis, which really they should be doing in the first place.
If you have worked for a business for more than 12 months, or more than six months, on a regular and systematic ongoing basis, you have rights to unfair dismissal in this country, right? But I am sorry, if you are on a roster and you turn up for work every day, day in, day out, at the same time and work the same hours, you are not casual and you should ask the question of your boss, ‘Why am I being paid as a casual? Actually I would like to be paid permanently on an ongoing basis and receive all my entitlements’. But do you know what? If those questions are asked, sometimes you find that you do not have a job and you are dropped of the roster.
I could also talk about another weird creation in the minute and a half I have left, which we got rid of quite quickly. It was a thing that came from England. Does anybody remember those zero-hour contracts? Those things—yes, you are on a contract with us.
Ms Shing: You mean like WorkChoices?
Ms TERPSTRA: Yes, under WorkChoices. We could talk about all those old chestnuts. We could talk about zero-hour contracts, because, you know, with a precarious worker you could say, ‘Yes, you work for me, but you got no hours this week’. So you are sitting at home, waiting next to the phone to hear about whether you are getting a shift or not. These are the creations, the crazy creations, of I do not know who—people out there in HR land that somehow thought that it was a good idea.
Ms Shing interjected.
Ms TERPSTRA: Yes, they might think that it is a good idea and think that people want to turn up to work feeling like rubbish. They are not valued as employees. As I said, workers should be valued by their businesses. Many businesses do value them. They help grow businesses. They create wealth for businesses. Ensuring that they are employed properly, not precariously, is something that helps to grow businesses and creates wealth and capital for those businesses. I will conclude my contribution momentarily, but I strongly urge all those in this chamber to vote against this motion. This is not a tax. This is about creating real jobs for people, and as I said, I will leave my contribution there. Thank you.
Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (14:42): Well, before I commence what I intended to say, I would like to say that Ms Terpstra has once again demonstrated her ideological objection to the private sector, to those people that create jobs and employment and those people who ensure that there is tax coming into the system. Without businesses employing people, there would be more unemployed. It happens every time she needs to speak about enterprise and business. She has no idea how it works, and she continually runs it down. Well, these are the people doing it tough frequently. They are often the very, very small businesses, the sole traders, that this government has totally failed to support. There are many of them, and they are the backbone of our community.
In rising to support Mr Davis’s motion, which rightly notes the catastrophic consequences of the COVID lockdown on Victorian small business and the impact the Premier’s new secure work pilot scheme will have on this vital part of the state economy, I find it difficult to believe the Premier could even advance this idea. It is the wrong policy, as I will argue, but most of all it is at the wrong time. Even in a benign economic environment it would do nothing to address the problem it seeks to fix; in the situation we face now it is truly catastrophic.
I will address that situation first with some statistics: 141 000 jobs have been lost since the start of the pandemic, by far the worst performance of any state—and we know how the second wave occurred as well—and nearly three times as bad as the next worst state, in fact; 146 500 women are unemployed, the highest on record; 18.2 per cent of young people are unemployed, the worst figure in 22 years; and 20 per cent, one in five Victorians, are either unemployed or underemployed, the worst in Australia. These are the results of this government’s mishandling of the pandemic. But even before COVID hit the Andrews government had slowed the economy with 29 new taxes, blown more than $1 billion in project overspends and overseen an astonishing increase in the public sector wage bill. Victorian debt figures were worrying before; they are now truly terrifying. The total projection prior to COVID, $70 billion, will now rise to $150 billion. That is more than $34 000 for every working-age Victorian, and from a base figure of just $21 billion when the Andrews government took office in 2014. Yet this is the time this Premier has chosen to launch an attack on enterprise, on the very businesses we need to grow to provide employment, tax revenues and the economic activity which can dig us out of this debt hole.
And the timing is not wrong just because of our spiralling debt. It is also of recent history that government stopped business dead for six months. How can they possibly believe that now is the time to hit business with the threat of a new tax on jobs? And believe me, a pilot will morph into a tax. A levy is a tax. The Premier can talk of a levy all he likes, but there is no doubt employers will see it as a tax, a threat, adding complexity as well as cost and conjuring up yet another disincentive to operation.
Across the Murray River we see the opposite approach, with an open economy, payroll tax cuts, tendering support, small business rebates and incentives to attract business headquarters to that state. Now the borders are open they will be flocking over there. There is no doubt which is the more attractive business environment in this country, and this latest proposal will only exacerbate that difference to the cost of our businesses and our economy. So the timing is clearly wrong, but in my view the policy is too. It is unnecessary and likely to be counterproductive, and not just because of the existing $450 and $1500 payments from state and commonwealth specifically for those forced into COVID isolation but unsupported by paid leave.
In the longer term it attacks the wrong target. Casual employment is not some new huge and growing threat. It is an established and stable part of our employment market, a tried and tested tool which has provided the flexibility which enables growth. Since the time of the Hawke and Keating governments, when casual employment grew from about 18 per cent of employees to 24.4 per cent, the level has remained very steady at around a quarter of the workforce. This is evidenced not just in ABS statistics but in multiple academic studies and parliamentary reports. The simple reason it exists at this level is that it works for all parties. Casual work is not an imposition but a genuine choice for many people. In particular those with caring responsibilities and those studying find it provides flexibility—
Mr Gepp interjected.
Mrs McARTHUR: Well, they could not work full-time, Mr Gepp. It provides workers with a premium in the form of a loading, usually 25 per cent, to compensate for forms of paid leave not otherwise payable. These are people with legitimate, often longstanding jobs and long-term relationships with their employers. They are casual workers, but they have employment contracts, and they understand the 25 per cent loading just as employers understand the trade-off and value the simplicity and certainty it affords.
The Premier spoke of the too-hard basket in reference to this policy, but he is wrong to think that casual contracts are in it. What he should seek to address, if he genuinely wishes to address the problem he identifies, is those who are outside the legitimate workforce—those paid cash and in the black economy. These are the people who genuinely cannot afford not to work, and tackling their employers, not legitimate small businesses, would be the priority of any government that sought social justice, not just headlines.
What then are the consequences of this misguided action? I have huge reservations about a policy which will force employers to double-fund sick and carers leave for casual employees via an expensive and almost certainly bureaucratic complex new mechanism. It is particularly damaging in what should be a recovery phase of our economy, where small and family businesses need the ability to flex up and flex down. Established businesses were new businesses once, and across our economy huge numbers of the permanent full-time jobs which now exist began as tentative expansions enabled by flexible casual contracts. As Charles Cameron, chief executive of the Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association, said:
The impact of doubling sick and carers leave entitlements for casual employees and requiring employers to foot the bill will have a devastating impact on future job creation in Victoria.
It is extraordinary to think that in an economic downturn the Premier proposes breaking one of the best tools we have to fix it: a flexible employment market. He fails to recognise the importance of casual work to individuals who need flexibility, to expanding businesses which need to mitigate risk and to an economy which is far less dependent on the union-dominated, full-time, often male industries that he seems to understand.
Finally, I take issue with the way in which this policy has appeared fully formed without any public discussion or consultation with employers, the very people who will have to both fund and administer it. There are far better solutions than this, and working with business would have been the best way to start. It is deeply unfortunate that doing so seems to be against everything this government stands for. As the Attorney-General noted in commenting on this policy, the better policy approach is to strengthen the ability of workers to choose to move from casual to permanent full- or part-time employment if that is what they want to do. This is what has been under discussion in the industrial relations working group process between government and employee and employer representatives over recent months. This is the appropriate level for these discussions.
The Premier’s misguided attempt to hijack responsibility is the wrong policy at the wrong time from the wrong level of government. What starts as a small government-funded pilot will become, on introduction, a new tax to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. It stymies business, disincentivises recovery and undermines an essential part of our employment mix. It fails to understand why the existing balance the casual premium creates is not just necessary but valued by employees and employers alike. It misses legitimate cases of insecure employment in the black market or self-employed contractors, for instance, and illustrates once again the Labor Party’s deeply unfair, ignorant and damaging belief that employers are inherently exploitative of their staff and must be legislated into morality.
Even for the Premier this policy shows a new level of disconnection from reality. I can only hope for the people of Victoria that it ends up damaging not our economic future but his credibility. This is an appalling tax. It is a tax; a levy is a tax, and that is what it is. I urge the chamber to support Mr Davis’s motion, which asks:
That this house recognises that Victorian small businesses have done it very tough through the COVID-19 pandemic and that now is the wrong time to foist a new tax onto the small business sector already struggling to recover from the lockdown.
I think we need to support business, certainly not tax them. We want to encourage employers to employ more people and employ them legitimately. If they want to be casual workers, then they get paid the 25 per cent loading. Permanent employees get their entitlements, as they should and as they are entitled to. Casual workers get their loading. Some work as students, and sometimes a visa does not allow them to work. So was Ms Terpstra encouraging illegal workers? Is that what she was suggesting in her previous presentation? If part of your visa says that you cannot work then you should not be working. If you are only entitled to work for a certain amount of time, you should only be working for a certain amount of time. We must encourage people to obey the law, and that means employees as well as employers. I urge the chamber to support this motion.
Mr GEPP (Northern Victoria) (14:55): I feel as if I should start this contribution with a hard hat on, because clearly the sky is falling in. The sky is falling in. With all these Chicken Little contributions we have had today, clearly the sky is falling in. And here we are—deja vu, deja vu. We are having a blue with those opposite about industrial relations yet again, and of course they twist and turn the proposition that is before the house into something that it is completely not.
It is not Mr Davis’s motion. Let us give credit where credit is due, Mr Finn; it is Mr Finn’s motion. Not once have we heard about the prospect of some decency, some rights and some entitlements to be returned to the most precarious workers in our economy, those people who can least afford to be exploited in our system. Not once have we heard from those opposite how this pilot project may actually benefit those people. And why? Well, we know why. We know why. Because it is in their DNA. It is in their DNA to keep those at the bottom of the scale down there and hungry. They want to keep them down there; they want to keep them hungry. And if you can deny them their rights and if you can have a single point that determines on a day-to-day basis the working hours, the working conditions and the pay of individuals in these jobs, then you keep them hungry. You keep them where they belong, don’t you, at the bottom of the scale.
Let us have a look at the people who often work in these environments. They are the people who are working in the unskilled workforce. They are the people who are living from day to day, hand to mouth, who are sitting nervously by their telephones each day waiting for a phone call to come through or maybe a text message to say, ‘Guess what, we’re going to give you some work tomorrow. We’re going to give you some work tomorrow—or maybe we’re not’. The system of casualisation in this country has been bastardised.
Let us go back to its origins, when it actually meant something. Let us take the nursing profession. We have all been in the public hospital system with temp or agency nurses who are replacing nurses because of a shortfall, often due to illness, and the system is regulated properly. It is properly regulated, and people are paid a decent wage. All of those things are above board, and it is done the correct way. But of course in many other parts of the economy we see these people working from hand to mouth, day to day. I see Mr Barton is here in the chamber, and Mr Barton would be very familiar with this in terms of the taxi industry, the Uber industry, the courier industry—the drivers network. It is a given and a constant that these people are working from day to day, hand to mouth, and of course they cannot afford not to turn up for work. Because it is not just about getting a sick day’s pay, albeit that is what this pilot is designed to do; these people are worried that if they do not turn up for work then they miss their next shift and the shift after that and the shift after that and are just constantly replaced and constantly churned.
So the proposition before us from the opposition is not about a new tax. This is about a pilot to reinstate rights and dignity for working people who can least afford to be exploited in the industrial relations system. It is abhorrent that any worker in the Victorian economy can be treated vastly differently to the rest of us simply because an employer decides on their category of employment. If you support that proposition, then you ought to vote for Mr Finn’s motion—and if you do, shame on you.
Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (15:00): It is good to rise to also speak to Mr Finn’s motion:
That this house recognises that Victorian small businesses have done it very tough—
well, that is an understatement—
through the COVID-19 pandemic and that now is the wrong time to foist a new tax onto the small business sector already struggling to recover from the lockdown.
Well, my friend Mr Gepp commenced his contribution just now by mocking members on this side of the house on the basis that we are crying that the sky is falling in. The sky has fallen in for so many small business people across our state. Earlier Ms Terpstra spoke about her constituents contacting her to thank her for the wonderful job that the government has done in supporting small businesses and sole trader constituents in this incredibly important sector of our economy. Her constituents are my constituents, and her inbox looks very, very different to mine.
I have been inundated by small business people across a whole range of different industries: garden maintenance, the beauty and aesthetic industry, hospitality, sport and recreation, and dance schools, for instance. On every single occasion that I have been contacted by people—who confess that they have previously voted for the coalition parties, for the Labor Party or for parties represented here on the crossbench—they have bemoaned the parlous position that they are in. I am aware of cases, and I know other members of this place are aware of cases, where small business people in this time of pandemic and then lockdown have been pushed so far that they have taken the ultimate step of taking their own lives. So I think it is distasteful in the extreme for members of the Labor Party to come into this place and to mock us for caring for small business people at such a time. For many of them the sky has fallen in. Many small businesses have been ruined and will not reopen. Many are on their last legs. Every further impost—call it what you will: a tax, a levy, a charge; I could not care less—upon small business makes it even harder for these folks who represent the very backbone of our economy.
The motion before us this afternoon in actual fact does not mention the government’s casual worker scheme. It talks about the mechanism that the government is seeking to put in place to fund this scheme. I would note that if the government believes this is such a worthy thing to do, then there could be other ways of providing support to casual workers. I would also note that if the budget was in a better position—it was in a parlous state even before COVID-19 hit our shores—if this government had engaged in sound budget management and more broadly sound economic policy, well, then it would be in a position to fund programs that it believes are worthy, without putting in place additional fees, taxes, charges, levies, call them what you will. I remember a time when the current Premier stood before the cameras and the press pack and promised no new taxes. Mrs McArthur noted that since that time there have been no fewer than 29 new or increased taxes, many of them impacting small business.
I spoke just earlier this morning about some of the areas within the budget where the government could very easily find savings. I spoke in particular about our soaring public sector wages bill, which is set to increase by a whopping 21 per cent over the period of the forward estimates. This is not money to be spent on frontline workers, on nurses and teachers. Under this government the number of executives and middle managers in our government departments has gone through the roof—again. If this government engaged in sound budgetary policy and sound economic management, well, it would be in a position to fund schemes that it deems are worthy. I was interested to read a little bit more about the government’s proposed scheme, and as I did so I confess I became somewhat suspicious. In the government’s documentation it says this:
Casual and insecure workers in eligible sectors will be invited to pre-register for the scheme, providing their contact details—
my ears pricked up—
and information about their employment so that applications can be fast-tracked if they need to apply for payments. An education campaign will also be rolled out …
Well, okay. So I would ask rhetorically, and I would ask my friends opposite, whether in providing their contact details and information through this scheme those details will be able to be used for any other purpose—say, future Victorian branch of the ALP campaigning purposes.
We have heard at length about the extent to which economic systems in our state are broken—we heard from Ms Terpstra and then Mr Gepp. If that is the case, if the situation is so dire, then again I would ask what on earth members of this government have been doing for the 17 years out of the last 21 that they have in fact been sitting on the Treasury benches.
Ms Shing: In a federally regulated system.
Dr BACH: Quite right. I expected the interjection that I have now received from my friend Ms Shing that—well, to go back to some points that were made by Ms Terpstra—‘It’s WorkChoices’. We heard Ms Shing interject earlier about John Howard—it is John Howard’s fault! The man is nearly dead, but it was John Howard’s fault. It is now Tim Wilson’s fault! He appeared with his very sensible recent remarks about superannuation. That got a run. There are any number of things that the state government can do should it wish to support casualised workers. However, we have this strange approach where the government says, ‘Well, it’s not our problem’—and we hear this in question time every day in here—‘It’s the fault of the federal government’. My friend Mrs McArthur made the point earlier that these specific changes, if the government does think that they have such merit, should be implemented by a federal government, not a state government. But on the other hand members opposite are seeking to take responsibilities in this space. I confess I feel that that is an odd approach—an odd and two-tiered approach.
We should not panic though, because it is just a pilot program! To quote from my favourite economist, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program. So I do not buy it, that we should not be concerned about another tax, charge, fee, levy—call it what you will—on small businesses that have been absolutely smashed, yes, initially at this time of pandemic and then through the period of heavy-handed restrictions as a result of this government’s manifest failings both when it comes to hotel quarantine and then, really importantly too, contact tracing.
Members of the government today have rightly noted that there were quarantine failures in other jurisdictions—in New South Wales, where there is a coalition government, a Liberal-led government. The difference between the responses in those other states and in Victoria has been so stark, and that has been played out at a current inquiry being heard by a committee that I am a member of. We have heard no less a person than Australia’s chief scientist say that during the second wave our process for contact tracing was ‘easily overwhelmed’—a direct quote from Dr Finkel—because of course it relied on pieces of paper and pens and fax machines when the government was offered a best-practice electronic end-to-end contact-tracing solution on 30 March. The government said no.
No fewer than eight senior members of the Department of Health and Human Services trotted along earlier this week to answer my questions and the questions of other members of the committee. I asked each of them: who made that decision to say no to a best-practice end-to-end electronic contact-tracing solution on 30 March, even after Professor Sutton had belled the cat and—to give him his dues—been the first chief health officer in the country to speak up about the great perils of COVID-19? Well, knock me dead with a feather, not one of those eight senior officials could tell me who made that decision. It was a creeping assumption, I presume, that Victoria could carry on with pens and paper and fax machines—that we did not need an electronic solution. Five long months later after our state had gone through the most onerous restrictions anywhere in the world, even considering Wuhan, the government finally signed a contract with the exact organisation that had reached out to the government on 30 March.
These are the reasons why it is necessary today to debate this motion. Mr Gepp is wrong. For many Victorian small businesses the sky has fallen in. To place another tax, another charge, another levy on hardworking small business people at this time is utterly wrong, morally wrong, and for that reason I wholeheartedly support Mr Finn’s motion. I commend it to the house.
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (15:10): I rise to speak on Mr Davis’s motion, which Mr Finn moved:
That this house recognises that Victorian small businesses have done it very tough through the COVID-19 pandemic and that now is the wrong time to foist a new tax onto the small business sector already struggling to recover from the lockdown.
In speaking to this motion and obviously just having the budget placed upon us yesterday and having a budget briefing today around the different taxes that the government is proposing—and there is going to be a new bill in a couple of weeks to discuss all the different tweaks that the Treasurer has decided to place upon the community during these COVID times—it is vitally important that we actually look at small business. Small business struggles at the best of times to try to find money to make ends meet. Some days your cafe is not busy and then other days it is full. During these last couple of months I have watched all my small businesses within Western Metro be locked down, and a lot of them have not reopened. It is heartbreaking. It is absolutely heartbreaking. For me, at the first lockdown over the Easter period I personally remembered just what it was like when I had my own small business, and I thought about what it must be like for those really struggling small businesses that just are virtually surviving on the bare minimum.
They got through that and then after this last lockdown a lot of them just could not reopen—a lot of my pubs, a lot of my gyms, a lot of my cafes and my restaurants and a lot of just the small business retailers in my Western Metro area. They do struggle because they are sometimes sole traders. They do not have the means to actually sit down and fill out the paperwork to get that grant from the government. They also struggle because they are multicultural in my community—a lot of Vietnamese traders, African traders. They do not actually know where to go to get the paperwork to fill out to get the grant.
So I am happy to rise to speak to this motion to say that there needs to be more done for small business from this government during this time to make it easier for them to understand and navigate the process of actually getting those grants and to make sure that they can possibly open up again. But I do thank the government in trying to understand some of those struggles, being that over the summer period it is making it a lot easier to have those cafes open and not requiring them to have those normal permits to be able to have outdoor trading. But also in relation to some of those temporary measures the government really should look at making them permanent. My previous council in Maribyrnong had a pop-up park in Yarraville, just to try it out over the summer period. They did it for a couple of years, and then they realised that that was something that the community really loved, and they made it a permanent park of sorts, with fake grass, astroturf. But that is an expense the council had to pay, and it would be great for the government to actually recognise how those little measures—not on a very temporary basis; they could last for a couple of years out the front of their businesses—really go a long way to making them last and making them be able to pay their council rates, their insurance and all the little things when each dollar really counts to keep that business alive, especially with electricity bills and everything. It is just through the roof, and I know because I have experienced it myself with my own small businesses.
It is important that this government understands the challenges of small business and really does make available to those small businesses, even if it is through their councils, more permanent measures like landscaping, kerb outstands and additional trees—those measures—because even those local councils have struggled. And they do struggle, because if they take it upon themselves to do those measures, that is an additional cost in council rates to the broader community.
Mr Finn: There’s a lot of cost shifting going on.
Dr CUMMING: It is a lot of cost shifting. I will leave my contribution at that, and I do hope this government continues to look for ways that small business can get back on its feet during this period.
Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria) (15:17): Well, unfortunately for those opposite, despite any and all of their best efforts to not provide an opportunity for me to talk about a subject which I have spent nearly two decades in, I am here to talk about industrial relations. I am here to talk about the history associated with the referral of industrial relations powers to the commonwealth under the Kennett government back in 1996. I am also here to talk about the fact that we are trying to deal with not just systemic inequality but also the impact of a pandemic the likes of which we have never seen before in Victoria.
Those opposite have form when it comes to opposing any sort of progressive measures to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. What we see in Victoria, and again in Canberra under the coalition government, is a steadfast refusal of and an allergic reaction to wages growth and an inability to understand the importance of retirement income in superannuation, including and particularly for women. They fail to see gender inequality when it comes to take-home pay when in fact we know the statistics say that across the board women will have to work 56 additional days per year in order to get the equivalent of their male counterparts and in fact that we as women on average, including in the sectors that we work in most predominantly—in social and community services, in retail and in hospitality industries—are paid 87.6 per cent of the amount that men receive. We also know that the definition of ‘poverty’ includes, most specifically, elderly women. We also know that of those at risk of homelessness, almost at the top of the list are women.
What we see from those opposite is a steadfast refusal to back in any meaningful change that will provide more job security that will in fact enable fair work terms and conditions to be developed and implemented. We see those opposite have continuously opposed any sort of reform, including on industrial manslaughter, wage theft, portable long service leave, nurse-to-patient ratios and the equal pay remuneration test case, which was run in the social and community services sectors. What we see from those opposite is a steadfast refusal to actually put workers at the front of their agenda, because, as a number of speakers on the opposite side have said today, this is about ideology. Well, it is not about ideology if you cannot afford to put food on the table and you have to make a choice between either going to work when you are crook, potentially impacting other people with whatever it is that you have, and feeding your kids or staying home.
It is an absolute disgrace that those opposite would seek to politicise a scheme which is intended to provide a measure of certainty to some of the most insecure and vulnerable workers in our economy. Shame on them for actually having the audacity to stand up and say that this will adversely impact small business when in fact they know in their heart of hearts, they would know if they had listened to the Premier, they would know if they had listened to the Treasurer and they would know if they had read any of the materials, that this is a pilot which will not have any adverse impact upon small business. It is about the very consultation which those opposite complain that they have not received. It is about co-designing a pilot which will provide certainty again, so that we do not see workers in insecure sectors and industries who are forced to work in multiple jobs because they have no certainty of hours and to go from one workplace to another to another, spreading any kind of illness or disease as they go. That is what has occurred in Victoria and that is what has occurred in New South Wales. That is what has occurred in South Australia and that is what has occurred in countless other jurisdictions around the world in the most significant health crisis of this generation if not this century.
Shame on those opposite for being unprepared and unwilling to actually accept that money in the pockets of people who work in vulnerable industries also means expenditure in local businesses and local economies. But those opposite cannot bring themselves to accept that any form of meaningful substantive certainty in employment terms and conditions will in fact benefit the very people and the very businesses that they seek to protect. Shame on those opposite for their own ideological opposition to initiatives that will fundamentally make a difference for women, that will fundamentally make a difference for people who are teenagers who have less bargaining power, for older workers and for those who cannot in fact negotiate better terms and conditions because it is a take-it-or-leave-it scenario.
Shame on those opposite who, like their federal counterparts, are unwilling and unable to even countenance the idea of converting casual employees who do in fact work regular and systematic hours to part-time or full-time employment. Those opposite will do everything that they possibly can to try to maximise flexibility for employers whilst not giving a damn about workplace terms and conditions for the workers who serve the interests of that business. Shame on those opposite for perpetuating a culture of business and corporation regulation that enables phoenixing companies and sham contracting to run rife throughout not just the Victorian economy but the Australian economy. Shame on those opposite for saying that fairness in workplace terms and conditions is an ideological position that we as a government are taking simply to be churlish.
Shame on those opposite for refusing to acknowledge that workers across every sector and industry, whether they are haves or have-nots, deserve to have fair workplace terms and conditions that are safe, that are well remunerated and that are recognised for the contribution that they bring, not just to our economy but to our communities at large. There is absolutely no way that we will support this motion.
House divided on motion:
| Ayes, 13 | ||
| Bach, Dr | Finn, Mr | McArthur, Mrs |
| Bath, Ms | Hayes, Mr | O’Donohue, Mr |
| Crozier, Ms | Limbrick, Mr | Ondarchie, Mr |
| Cumming, Dr | Lovell, Ms | Quilty, Mr |
| Davis, Mr | ||
| Noes, 22 | ||
| Barton, Mr | Meddick, Mr | Symes, Ms |
| Bourman, Mr | Melhem, Mr | Tarlamis, Mr |
| Elasmar, Mr | Patten, Ms | Taylor, Ms |
| Erdogan, Mr | Pulford, Ms | Terpstra, Ms |
| Gepp, Mr | Ratnam, Dr | Tierney, Ms |
| Grimley, Mr | Shing, Ms | Vaghela, Ms |
| Kieu, Dr | Stitt, Ms | Watt, Ms |
| Leane, Mr | ||
Motion negatived.
Business of the house
Notices of motion
Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (15:29): I move:
That the consideration of notice of motion, general business, 435, be postponed until later this day.
Motion agreed to.
Motions
Commercial passenger vehicle industry
Mr BARTON (Eastern Metropolitan) (15:30): I move:
That this house:
(1) acknowledges that:
(a) in 1998, the High Court of Australia determined that a taxi licence was a valuable item of property;
(b) since the commencement of the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Industry Act 2017, the revocation of perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences amounted to a compulsory government asset acquisition;
(c) the revocation of perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences for a fraction of their worth constitutes a breach of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006;
(d) arbitrary transition assistance payments in lieu of some, but not all, perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences was grossly inadequate and unfair;
(e) the deregulation of the industry in 2017 has:
(i) created a glut of commercial passenger vehicles on our roads;
(ii) reduced driver income to well below minimum wage;
(iii) threatened the economic viability of the industry;
(iv) caused worsening traffic congestion;
(2) calls on the Andrews government to:
(a) accept a financial proposal to properly compensate the industry for the compulsory asset acquisition of all perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences;
(b) make adjustments to the commercial passenger vehicle industry structure to better balance market components and end driver exploitation; and
(c) support a recovery plan to build back and move the commercial passenger vehicle industry forward through COVID-19.
I have never made it a secret why I am here. I have come to this place to represent the taxi and hire car industry and to work to repair the past and help pave the way for a fair and sustainable future. For experienced players in the game like me, the effects of being trampled on and ignored by successive governments and countless reforms has become too much. Enough now. Someone needed to step into this place to have the conversations no-one is willing to have. We need some luck on our side, and having been around the block a few times I know luck is random. I am not a gambling man; I do not like leaving things to chance. I prefer to create my own luck, which is why I stand before you all today.
For those of you who are not familiar with the plight of the taxi and hire car industry, I thought I would start with a little story about a bloke who was born in this country to ten-pound Poms. They worked hard and instilled in their kids a good sense of right and wrong, a strong work ethic and a desire to contribute to the community and to our society. That kid grew up, dropped out of school at 15 and took on the responsibilities of life. It was not long before he tried his hand driving a cab and stretch limos. He may have had a limited education, but what he lacked there he made up with a level head, the gift of the gab and the ability to find common ground with people of all different backgrounds. This has always served him well. He enjoyed his job and he was good at it.
That was over 30 years ago, and in 1999, with a family to support and the energy and the drive to give things a crack, he went out on a limb and started his own hire car business. Traditional hire car licences never traded as high as taxi licences, but they were expensive nonetheless. The real outlay was in the luxury vehicle attached to it, the cost of maintaining high standards and the efforts to engage private clients and retain them. He was at their beck and call seven days a week for many years, providing an impeccable service to the corporate elite, both native and international.
With the help of the bank, that little hire car business grew and was stable for many, many years. Over time it had become lucrative enough to give that bloke some satisfaction that he had built it and the confidence to look ahead and plan for the future. He and his wife had a dream. They bought a home on a few acres in Stanhope. It was going to be their forever home, and they spent years renovating and tending to the land. They were looking forward to the day when they could shut up shop, leave the business to the kids and go to their home with the ducks, the chickens and the veggie patch and be surrounded by grandchildren. They wanted nothing more, but unfortunately it was never to be.
In 2014 Uber entered the taxi and hire car market illegally. Their cars did not carry a valid licence to operate in the industry, and the fares they were charging were below the cost of delivery. Subsidised by international corporate entities with deep pockets, they came in like poachers and pirates and helped themselves to destroy the existing market and get a commercial advantage. Everyone was enamoured by this shiny new toy and the dirt cheap cost of a ride. No-one seemed to try and stop them with any great effort, much less cared about the cheap ride. The only way this was possible was by exploiting the driver. The industry regulator did not know which way was up. They still do not. The tech wizards from Silicon Valley pulled their pants down and helped Uber evade enforcement. All the while the big players were moving in looking for that free kick.
Overnight that business took a dramatic turn. That bloke was now running on earnings reduced by 40 to 50 per cent. He tried desperately to keep the banks at bay, servicing the loans for his licences, his limousines and his home in Stanhope, with all the costs which were incurred for those renovations. But just like that, and through no fault of his own, everything slipped through his fingers. Suddenly that man was drowning in debt, and instead he lost it all. That man was me, Rod Barton. The home in Stanhope was the first to go. This was our only home. There was no beach house. There were no investment properties. There was no share portfolio. That was it. Approaching 60 years of age, I knew then I would never have a home again.
The business limped along, surviving on my most loyal and long-serving clients while we waited for the government to act. Surely, we thought, when you have done nothing wrong, followed every rule, every regulation, and met every requirement expected of you, someone would step in. We all thought that fairness and justice would prevail and that someone would stand up to acknowledge the carnage, stem the bleeding and heal the wound. It was expected that those who worked within the law would be protected by the regulator from those who were breaking the law. This simply did not happen. No-one came to our aid. We were hung out to dry. Instead, in 2017 the Andrews Labor government responded to the illegal entry of rideshare by deregulating the industry and revoking all taxi and hire car licences. Victoria is the only state or territory in Australia that has done that—I am unaware of any other place on the planet; we are unique—to accommodate this new taxi company called Uber.
At its peak a perpetual taxi licence traded for more than half a million dollars. Just prior to the reforms, taxi permits were available without restriction from the regulator itself for around $23 000. Indirectly this set the price of rental return on the open market for privately held licences. The government was an operator of over 2000 permits—they were in the market—and now has forgone over $180 million over the last four years, all to accommodate that taxi company known as Uber. When they were revoked, these licences attracted an arbitrary repayment of $100 000 for the first taxi licence per entity and $50 000 for the second, third and fourth. If you had worked hard all your life and you had more than four licences, you got nothing. A hire car licence was paid $25 000 through the industry transition assistance scheme for the first licence per entity and half thereof for additional licences up to the fourth, and then nothing whatsoever. At one time a perpetual hire care licence traded for upwards of $80 000.
These payments did not reflect that a licence was property and that each one was valued equally on the open market and netted a comparable investment return. Completely by chance, rather than by design, the way the transition payment scheme was structured favoured these people who had purchased licences under different entities: individually, in their wife’s name, jointly, the super fund, the family trust, the company et cetera—you get the idea. Each entity was paid $100 000 for the first taxi licence even though the beneficiaries may have been the same.
Compare someone who may have owned four taxi licences under four unique entities—they received $400 000. Compare that to someone who only had the four licences in one entity—they got $250 000. It gets worse. I know a family well who have worked together over decades building a business with 18 taxi licences all in the name of a single entity with six beneficiaries feeding five families. They too were paid $250 000—for 18 taxi licences—and I understand that family is carrying a debt closer to $1 million than less after the reforms. I am told of another family who owned 10 taxi licences in 10 separate entities—the wife, the dog, the cat, the super, that sort of thing—who got $1 million. The absurdity beggars belief, but these are the consequences when a government is treating licences as if they were tokens found in a box of cereal. People have structured their financial affairs to seek their own unique personal circumstances and business operations. Not one person planned for this outcome, yet by fluke alone some people received substantially more than others. The inequity is staggering and farcical. The transition assistance payments were grossly inadequate and poorly conceived.
My perpetual hire car licences were the last of my assets—the last of the assets I owned. They were also revoked and I was paid a fraction of their worth, and to this day I can tell you I pay loans for licences that no longer exist but which I had purchased as a legal requirement to operate within the industry. I am not Robinson Crusoe. Even though I lost everything, I consider myself fortunate. There are many who have paid a much greater price with their mental health and some with their lives. The reforms have torn through marriages, families and friendships in a way that only profound financial stress, inequity and uncertainty can.
Deregulation of the industry dismantled historical licensing structures with complete disregard for those stakeholders who had participated over decades. The system was replaced with an annual registration where everyone could enter the industry for a bargain price of 55 bucks. I mean, seriously. This gave a lot of people a free kick. I was not one of them. The reforms suited the newcomers. But for those of us who had invested in the industry, compliant with the laws of the day, we were now wearing cement shoes in a rising tide. The industry had promised a level playing field, but that field was already underwater and only the new players could swim. Anyone who had operated under the pre-existing structure had their carefully laid plans evaporate. They were handicapped by legacy debts and by the hollow left by long-gone assets and income they had rightfully structured their future around. It is not fair.
Not long ago this very chamber was presented with the Marine and Fisheries Legislation Amendment Bill 2019, with which we sought to revoke commercial fishing licences in the Gippsland Lakes. It included a very generous compensation package, where licences were assessed by the valuer-general. Taxi licences were never given that opportunity to be valued by the valuer-general. But these fishing licences got paid out at $371 000 for each and every one. The fishos also received a $60 000 allowance for redundant fishing vessels, which they were able to keep, and further compensation for the loss of income based on three times the annual catch value calculated over a three-year golden harvest period. This bill passed into legislation by a majority vote, as it should have, because it was the right thing to do. In this instance the government recognised that a commercial licence is property, and they paid out accordingly.
Just like commercial fishing licences, a perpetual taxi and hire car licence is not just a right to operate a business, it is an asset. It was ruled by the High Court of Australia in 1998 that a taxi licence is a valuable item of property, because it has economic potential. It allows the holder to conduct a profitable business, and it may be sold or leased for reward to a third party. Taxi licences are described as assets in the Centrelink assets test. The tax office and APRA allow licences to be included in their superannuation. Banks lent at up to 80 per cent of the value and held them as collateral. The Victorian Bracks Labor government established a trading facility for licences on the Bendigo Stock Exchange—well, how well did that go?—and a licence could be leased, allowing people to derive an income. Industry stakeholders thought they were safe in putting their nest eggs into an asset created by government and sanctioned by government and where participating was encouraged by government. They had no reason to believe otherwise. Victorian perpetual taxi and hire car licences were entrenched in the lives of those who owned them and relied upon them in every way that any other income-bearing property would be considered.
The impact of these reforms has become a social justice issue. Good law-abiding people have been stripped of their asset and left in debt with no income and no superannuation. Many self-funded retirees are now reliant on government benefits. What did we do wrong? The other major impact of these reforms has been the introduction of a $55 annual commercial passenger vehicle licence. The result of this has seen a flood of cars and drivers enter the industry, naively thinking they might make a buck—$55 a year sounds a whole lot better than paying $23 000 a year to lease a taxi licence from the Andrews government. No-one seems to contemplate that just prior to the reforms in October 2017 there were around 8000 taxi and hire car vehicles on our roads—and I can tell you, there were too many then. Fast-forward only three years, we now have 86 000 registered commercial passenger vehicles, rising month on month even through the pandemic.
The pie has not grown. You are kidding yourselves. This is not sustainable or viable, even at $55. The flooding of the market with excess vehicles is economically and socially irresponsible and shows the lack of industry understanding from the department and the regulator. Driver exploitation is worse than it has ever been—and it is quite good that we are following on from the previous debate. Driver exploitation is worse than it certainly has ever been. They earn no holiday pay, no sick pay, no superannuation and no parental leave and expect to earn less than 10 bucks an hour. This is a disgrace. It would be no surprise to hear that driver turnover is high, but that does not diminish the severity of the exploitation at play.
There is also the cost to the environment. Pre COVID, the city and surrounds would be swarming with traffic, particularly on the peak nights of Friday and Saturday, with drivers circling like gulls looking for a hot chip at the beach. For all the progress that has been made in workers rights and conditions over the years, we seem to have lost the way. The problem is endemic, and at such a scale it is becoming impossible to ignore. I fear the gig economy and the impact it will have on the most vulnerable working people.
The evidence has been so clearly demonstrated throughout this current pandemic. When you have a sector of people who attend for work regardless of the best health advice or government directives, it sheds new light on the level of desperation that must exist for this to happen. These are our new working poor, chasing their tails on a financial treadmill, unable to stop or they risk falling flat on their faces—and there is no-one to pick them up. There has been no lifeline for our lot in the taxi and hire car industry throughout the COVID pandemic. The majority of stakeholders are not employing sole traders, who receive not a brass razoo in financial support for their businesses. Many are locked into vehicle leasing agreements and hold pre-existing loans for licences they no longer own—often with second- and third-tier lenders who have been less than understanding—and so very many individuals in this industry have no superannuation to tap into, even when the rules now apply. With the airport all but closed and the movement of people highly restricted, much of the taxi and hire car industry has not turned a dollar since March of this year. This has spelt disaster. These reforms were built on a house of cards, and they have come crashing down spectacularly. Change is needed. We can do better; we must do better.
I have asked of the regulator recently: have they a plan in place to support the industry on the road to recovery? Their response has been to grab a rag, clean the doorhandles and record the time of doing so. As helpful as this advice might be, and it may be the bleeding obvious, we have been doing this for the last nine months. There does not seem to be any thought or leadership to guide the industry through the challenges that lie ahead, and they go far deeper than the threat of this virus. This industry is on its knees.
My vision is to support and rebuild the industry, to make it proud once more. The taxi and hire car industry provides an essential service and is the lifeblood of the city and this state. It is integral to this transport network. I am calling on the house to accept my proposal to properly compensate the industry for the poorly constructed reforms of 2017. Taxi and hire car licences are property, just like commercial fishing licences, and their compulsory acquisition through revocation must be compensated accordingly, each and every one.
We need to release people from these financial shackles they carry as a legacy of the compliance with regulations no longer in place. It can be done. Funding for the industry transition payments is being raised through a per-trip dollar levy imposed on the industry, and I can tell you that is leaking like a sieve. We are yet to tap into sectors of the industry who are not registered with the State Revenue Office to remit the levy. As a start, getting that right would increase substantially the available revenue stream to right this wrong.
There are also other options to make this doable, although I will not elaborate just yet. Further, we must aim to create an environment in which those people who choose to take part in the industry can make a living wage. We have a social and economic responsibility to adopt a plan to restructure the industry to support a better balance between market forces so that it can prosper once again.
It may not have been the intention of the reforms to wipe away over $1 billion in privately held assets, to destroy families and businesses and to create an underclass of workers who will never get ahead—they cannot get ahead—but this is precisely what has happened. It is possible to fix this. We as elected representatives have a moral obligation to recognise and repair the damage of past reforms. I have spoken to many of you, and you have understood that what has happened is not right. You can sit here today, shrug your shoulders and say, ‘Oh well, what’s done is done’, but for me and my friends this nightmare will never be over until it is fixed. I stand before you today more determined than ever in my effort to achieve what I have set out to do, but this cannot be done alone. I need your help. I urge all parties from across this chamber today to consider their moral obligation in the hope that this motion receives widespread support. I will leave the fate of families, small business owners and self-funded retirees of the commercial passenger vehicle industry in the hands of the members of this house.
Sitting suspended 3.54 pm until 4.18 pm.
Mr MELHEM (Western Metropolitan) (16:18): I also rise to speak on Mr Barton’s motion. I want to congratulate him on his dedication to the issue. As we know, he has been elected to this Parliament and that is one of the main platforms he ran on, and he has definitely kept the commitment to his constituents in continuously debating and arguing and advancing the argument in relation to taxi licences and the vehicle hire industry, trying to improve their situation. I think he should be commended on that.
In making my contribution I will agree on some of the areas that Mr Barton put to the house and we might have some disagreements on other matters in relation to his motion, but I definitely think it is important to acknowledge the work he has been doing on behalf of his constituents. In listening to his personal story as well—it is not a story; it is a true event, what happened—obviously the passion is there, and the conviction as well.
This issue, I remember, in the last few years has been debated in this place many, many times, and I have spoken on this issue a number of times as well. The whole issue was subject to an inquiry by a committee, which I was on. I think I joined that committee in the last few weeks of its deliberation. I think, from memory, Mr Finn was the chair of that inquiry, and I think that the inquiry did a good job in putting a report together for the house and addressing all of the issues. I think it is an issue where we can continue to debate what is fair and reasonable, where it started—where the origin of it is—and where we go back to. I think Mr Barton did mention something about the Bracks and Brumby governments in relation to, if I get it right, talking about listing the value of licences or something on the stock exchange. And it was a major reform that was carried out during the Baillieu-Napthine governments as well, and he was a very famous person who did that inquiry—I think Mr Fels. Some reform happened then, and I think the value of taxi licences during that review fell to about half or thereabouts; that is when the decline started occurring, between 2010 and 2014.
So when the Andrews Labor government came into office, we had to deal with the situation. It was a very difficult one. Whether we liked it or not, platforms like Uber were operating worldwide, including in Australia and Victoria, and it has taken off like there is no tomorrow. People have voted with their feet. Yes, they were operating illegally, and so it was a problem. It was a major problem. I think then came the question of how the government could deal with an issue like that. Do you then go and sort of debate whether the licence is treated as property—and you always pick up these things and you learn as you go, as was the case in Queensland—or do you deal with it the way our governments have dealt with it, which I think, to be fair, was probably one of the most generous packages put in place to compensate the taxi and hire vehicle industry in the commonwealth. I think the New South Wales compensation was far less than Victoria, as were the other states, so our system has been the most generous one.
Yes, there can be an argument about whether or not there was enough compensation, because there are true hardship cases around. I remember I was part of a group advocating during that period to actually look at additional compensation for people who were faced with some hardship, and that is where the hardship fund was established, and additional compensation payments were paid out of that. Again, it is another argument about whether $100 000 and $50 000 per licence up to a maximum of four was adequate et cetera and whether the definition of ‘hardship’ was the right one. I was involved in a number of cases assisting constituents to sort of work through that as well. Some cases were upheld and they have been paid out, and some were rejected and that was the end of it. So yes, some people sort of moved on and the impact was far less in comparison with others. It definitely was not an easy process.
But I think it is important to note that the scheme that was put in by the government to me was a reasonable one, particularly in comparison with the other states. I think in New South Wales the compensation was about $20 000, whereas in Victoria for the first licence it was $100 000. So we can go on about that, but understand that that issue was inherited by this government, and it is a worldwide phenomenon where I do not think realistically anyone is going to stop it. People were voting with their feet, and we just had to deal with the situation the best we could. I think we have done a reasonable job. Yes, not everyone is happy with that, and my understanding is that the government at this point in time will not be contemplating making any further payments to former taxi or hire licence holders. The government’s budget priorities are to support economic recovery from the economic loss associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and I will come back to that later on.
The point that Mr Barton is talking about in his motion is that a taxi licence was determined by the High Court of Australia in 1998 to be a valuable item of property, and my understanding is that that matter is now before the courts. That is, I think, a reference to a taxi licence issued in Queensland, which was subject to relevant terms and conditions under the Queensland legislation, and it is true that that was treated by the High Court as an item of property. But I think it is important to note that the nature and character of taxi licences differ from state to state so the case might be different in various states. Indeed the nature or character of these licences issued in Victoria at a different point in time are different. At a minimum, there is doubt that Victorian licences are property, given the applicable terms and conditions in the relevant provision of the Transport (Compliance and Miscellaneous) Act 1983.
I did refer to the Economy and Infrastructure Committee 2019 report on the commercial passenger industry reform. They did discuss the issue of property rights because obviously that did come up in various submissions and evidence, and the committee questioned the Victorian government interpretation of the High Court decision. However, while the committee acknowledged the views of stakeholders on the property right issue, it determined that the matter was beyond its scope and considered that it ultimately would require resolution in the courts.
Now, I think that is an important point. There is litigation underway in the Supreme Court of Victoria that is considering this issue. Given this, the Victorian government is not supportive of any parliamentary interference. That is also consistent with the outcome of the parliamentary inquiry. The reason I am making reference to that is that it was the subject of a significant debate in this house in the past and the parliamentary inquiry, as I said earlier, did a terrific job in basically taking submissions and evidence from a lot of people—a lot of experts, a lot of industry players, a lot of taxi owners, politicians, various stakeholders. They formed a view that it is not a matter that a parliamentary committee or the upper house should be making a decision on in relation to that issue of whether it is property or not and interpreting what the 1983 act said. It is a matter for the court to decide. I think the matter is before the court, and therefore I think we should respect that process and that the court should decide that matter.
Now, if the court decides to mirror the Queensland decision, then obviously we will have to consider that and that will need to be looked at.
A member interjected.
Mr MELHEM: Well, I am sure we always pay attention to what the courts say, particularly the Supreme Court of Victoria. It is no different to the High Court of Australia. It is our Supreme Court. Therefore while the matter is still before the court I think the house should not be making any decision in relation to this matter. But at the end of the day, that is the government’s position in relation to that: that we wait to see what the court decides and go from there.
There is debate about the second point that Mr Barton makes: the revocation of perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences as a result of the commercial passenger vehicle industry reforms of 2017, which amounted to a compulsory government asset acquisition. That sort of flows on from the first point about treating them as property. Again, if you accept the first point, then you will have to concede the second point, and the court will obviously have a say on that. If the court decides it is property, then that will become just an extension of that decision, but we do not believe that will be the case. So the position of the state is that a taxi licence is only a permission to operate a vehicle as a taxi for hire and reward.
A taxi licence is not an asset, and the enactment of the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Industry Act 2017 (CPVI Act) changed the regulatory requirements applicable to this industry, including the nature of registration, licences, accreditations and other permissions that are required to operate in the industry. It is well within the right of the Parliament to make or amend such laws. There is no question about that. The Parliament can do that. Obviously both houses of Parliament will need to do that, but the government is obviously not supporting that for the reasons I have outlined.
In all of my contributions in relation to this matter I do sympathise with the intent and the plight of people who worked in the industry and are working in the industry. It is a bit of a difficult one, there is no question about that, and we can always have that debate about whether the extra compensation paid to individual taxi operators or car hire operators was adequate or not. There is always going to be an ongoing debate about the individual circumstances, because Mr Barton was right: some people probably would not have been happy with the outcome in relation to compensation. But some people would have been overly mortgaged on various licences if they had one licence or more than one licence, and they would then have found themselves in a very difficult position, as Mr Barton was explaining earlier. That is why the hardship fund was set up, I think to the tune of $50 million, to basically deal with that, and I hope it has been dealt with fairly.
I will go to part (c) of Mr Barton’s proposed motion, which is that:
the revocation of perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences for a fraction of their worth constitutes a breach of the Charter of Human Rights …
We say that assumption is wrong, because the statement of compatibility under the charter of human rights for the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Industry Amendment (Further Reforms) Bill 2017 was required to comment on whether or not the reforms included in the bill amounted to the deprival of property. The conclusion was reached, as documented in the statement of compatibility for the CPVI Act, that the reforms did not amount to a deprival of property. So that is the reason we cannot support that part of the motion, because the bill did meet the requirements in the charter of human rights.
The other part of Mr Barton’s motion, part (d), talks about how the arbitrary transition assistance payments in lieu of some but not all perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences were grossly inadequate and unfair. As I said earlier in my contribution, we can always have a debate on that. I think I agree with Mr Barton. Personally, in individual circumstances, I think you are right. For any compensation scheme where you are looking at a host of cases and individual circumstances you are not going to be able to get it right in every single case. I was going to say you have winners and losers, but really I would probably not say winners because it is sort of that you are losing something; it is a question of whether you are losing less or you are losing more type argument, if you want to put it that way. I have been close to that issue. I have assisted a number of my constituents during that period, and I managed to get some outcomes. It was not the outcome I think they were seeking or the outcome I was hoping for, but we managed to get some sort of outcome to basically alleviate some of the pressure some of these people were put under.
It is true to say it is like any other industry: it is a risk. The government did not determine what was the value of individual losses. I mean it was traded in the market, it was going up and down. And you are right—I think at one stage it did reach about half a million dollars. It dropped a bit in 2010 during the first reform, but definitely with the Uber onslaught, and as a result of deregulations, obviously the value of the licences pretty much got wiped out. That is where a judgement was made about what is the fair and reasonable compensation. Again I will make the point: whilst we can debate whether it was enough or not, I think it was one of the most generous compensation schemes in the country. If I look at New South Wales—and I know there was an argument about New South Wales—you were still able to operate. But I think the net effect, if we look at it today with hindsight—because those are some of the arguments that were put to me early on—I think the value of licences in New South Wales, and I stand to be corrected as to whether—
Mr Barton: It has gone up.
Mr MELHEM: It has gone up. Well, there we go. To what figure?
Mr Barton: Just shy of a hundred.
Mr MELHEM: There you go—down from half a million to $100 000. So it is always an ongoing debate, but I think the compensation was about 20 grand. So the decision was made to strike a figure—and the government paid that from general revenue—and then to address the issue, which has come out of the parliamentary inquiry and also from the representation of members of this house, including me and various of my colleagues on the Labor side, the government side. As a result of that the hardship fund was established to actually address that.
Now as I said, we can talk about whether we totally blame the fallout, or the wipe-out if you want to use that word, of the taxi value solely as the result of deregulation. We can have that debate, but I think the issue of the new technology—Uber, rideshare and people using that—is basically a worldwide thing. That is basically the prime reason. With the second one, there have been some positives out of deregulation. Now, for drivers, it does not actually cost you much to actually be able to get a licence and to be able to work at any hour you want. Using the various apps, whether it is 13cabs, DiDi, Taxify or various apps in the industry now, people can work all sorts of hours. I think Mr Barton did say the number of people who actually now work in the industry is around 80 000 or thereabouts—some sort of figure like that I think we talked about.
Then we go to point (2)(a) of Mr Barton’s motion, which calls on the Andrews government to:
accept a financial proposal to properly compensate the industry for the compulsory asset acquisition of all perpetual Victorian taxi and hire car licences …
Again I go back to the first point about the matter. We believe that the issue has been dealt with adequately by the government and also still is as a matter before the court about whether it is a property or not. However, the government’s budget priority is to make sure we put in whatever support we can put in place to assist the industry to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. We already have done that and I think provided some support to the industry to basically help the industry to cope, because, let us face it, the industry has been hit hard like the retail industry during the pandemic and lockdown, whether it was the first wave or the second wave, because basically people were not travelling. The industry got hit hard.
That is why the government is already demonstrating its commitment to helping the industry with some of the support measures through COVID-19. It is like many other industries. The government has provided a $22 million boost to this vital industry to move through and beyond the pandemic and support vulnerable Victorians who rely on the service, and the taxi and hire car industry was classified as part of that. There is over $6 million to subsidise the depot fees paid by vehicle owners to booking service providers to ensure wheelchair accessible vehicles are available when they are needed, and $1.7 million will be invested to double the wheelchair lifting fee paid by the government for the next three months, giving providers an incentive to keep wheelchair accessible vehicles operating.
Relief for the industry will come with a refund of the commercial passenger vehicle service levy paid by drivers in the 2020 June quarter, basically putting money back into the pockets of drivers experiencing hardship. The State Revenue Office is administrating these refunds, and details are available for eligible taxpayers on the website. Some relief has already been given to people in the industry. Also, to ensure the safety of all passengers and drivers, the government will deliver up to $3.5 million worth of grants to support increased cleaning and sanitation of vehicles across the state, further reducing the risk of transmission in vehicles, alongside the government’s mandatory mask policy for those in Melbourne and the Mitchell shire, and now we are talking about the whole state. Also, more than $1 million will be invested to establish a Regional Essential Service Fund to support struggling booking service providers in regional communities.
So we are providing some support already to existing operators and drivers in the industry. Some of that, obviously, does not go to the point Mr Barton raised in his motion in relation to the 2017–2019 reform and providing additional compensation. As I said, while I sympathise with the plight of his constituents and his stakeholders, people he represented—that is why is here in this house—endorsing or voting for a motion like this, definitely from the government point of view, we think will then interfere with the court process. I think we should allow the court to deal with that. I understand, Mr Barton, Parliament can do anything it wants, but that is the position of the government. The matter is before the court and the court should deal with it. Look, let us be frank, the position of the government is that we do not believe the argument is right. It is different from Queensland. I do not want it to be construed like that. My understanding of the government’s position is very clear: these licences are not treated as property. Now, we can debate that. We can disagree on that, and people may have a different view.
So for these reasons, the government will not be supporting the resolution, but the government is always willing to sit down and basically work through and assist the industry, as we do with every industry, particularly ones who have suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, to make sure we are looking after the workers in the industry, whether they are drivers or operators, and also making sure that we provide safe ridesharing and taxis for Victorians. I think with the budget that was handed down just yesterday there is a fair bit of investment there to make sure we can look after the people who need our help, and with these comments I will leave my contribution at that.
Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (16:45): Wasn’t that an experience, listening to Mr Melhem there? He had some interesting words did Mr Melhem. I would love to know what his definition of ‘reasonable’ is, when he said that what the government had done to taxi operators was reasonable. ‘What they had offered taxi operators was reasonable.’ He then went on to tell us that there were in fact losers and losers. There were no winners in this. There were losers and losers, and that is the truth. That is the truth. Mr Melhem puts his tail between his legs and heads out the door, and I am not surprised after that performance. He tells us there are losers and losers, and that is the absolute truth. Nobody won here. It was a disgraceful situation, and I recall having some words with people back when we were in government, before 2014, about what was being discussed back then. But I never thought for a moment we would see what this government did to people who had done nothing but work hard, build up a bit of capital and were preparing for their retirement. I never thought I would see the day where a government would just get hold of people, throttle them and leave them for dead, and that is exactly what happened.
It is appalling, and I challenge anyone—anyone in this house or anyone outside this house who listened to Mr Barton today. I challenge them not to be deeply moved by his story. I challenge them, and I challenge anyone in this chamber or indeed outside this chamber, again, not to be outraged by the injustice—yes, that word ‘injustice’—of what happened to Mr Barton and what happened to so many others who lost everything they had at the whim of a government. If it could happen to Mr Barton and if it could happen to taxi owners and operators, why can’t it happen to every single one of us? Because once the precedent is set, it can be followed. Once the government sets itself up as judge, jury and executioner, and once it successfully does that, there is nothing that will stop it doing it again and again and again. That is something that really should stay with all of us. But I want to talk for a moment, and I will not do what Mr Melhem did—I will not go through my full 30 minutes, because I do not think that is necessary. I think Mr Melhem probably could have, to quote Sir Robert Menzies, cut his speech in half and it would not have really mattered which half.
I think that I have seen the pain firsthand. I have seen the agony firsthand of what Mr Barton has spoken about here today. I have spoken to many constituents, and I have many constituents in the west of Melbourne and in the north-west in particular, around the airport, who have lost everything that they owned—many of them, I have to say, who came to this country many years ago from perhaps Greece, perhaps Italy or perhaps even Egypt or somewhere like that. They have come to Australia and they have worked like Trojans ever since they got here. All they have done is they have worked seven days a week. They have not taken holidays. They might have gone back to the old country for a couple of weeks every few years, but apart from that all they have done is worked and prepared to ensure that they would have a retirement that they would be able to enjoy. They looked after their families, paid their taxes—all those things. As Mr Barton says, they did nothing wrong. Now, if they did nothing wrong, how the hell can they be put in this situation now? How can any government—and I do not care whether it is a Liberal government, a Labor government, whatever government; I do not care what government it is—how can anyone, do that to people who have just worked hard for a living and have done the right thing all their lives?
I have seen the faces of bankruptcy. I have seen the faces of ruin. I have seen the faces—well, not the faces directly but certainly the faces surrounding—of those who have committed suicide, and that is how serious this is. People are not alive today—people have taken their own lives—because they were destroyed by the government. How the hell can that happen in a nation like Australia? How could it happen? But it did. It is quite extraordinary.
When I was chairman—as Mr Melhem referred to—of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee and we did an extensive inquiry into the taxi industry, I remember looking into the public gallery of that inquiry. I think it might have been actually when I first met Mr Barton, if I am not wrong. I saw many anguished faces in that public gallery, men and women who had been screwed over monumentally. You just imagine yourself. You have done very, very nicely—well, put it this way: you have done all right for yourself. You have worked hard and you have built up an asset. You are preparing for your retirement and you think that you are going to be relatively okay. You are going to be comfortable—if not over the top, certainly comfortable. All of a sudden you wake up one day and you are penniless. How do you reckon you would feel? How do you think you would feel?
But that is what happened to these people. They were penniless. They had lost their assets. They had lost their homes. They have still got, many of them, hundreds of thousands of dollars owing on loans. They still have to pay their bills, but all of a sudden they wake up one morning and they have nothing. I saw those people in the public hearings, in the public gallery of those hearings that we conducted in this building, and I have to commend those people for their restraint, because I tell you what: if it happened to me, I would not be so restrained. I am not sure what I would do, but I can guarantee I would not be as restrained as those people were. Certainly they were upset, certainly they were emotional. My God, who would not be, having been put through that. But they were restrained and they were dignified. These people are decent, hardworking Australians who do not deserve what has happened to them. They do not deserve that, but it is something that has occurred and it is something that we should rectify. It is not good enough to say, ‘It’s happened in the past, there’s nothing we can do now’. We are members of the Parliament of Victoria. We do not just have the power to do it; we have an obligation. We have a duty to right wrongs, and this is a wrong that must be righted. It must be righted.
Yesterday we saw a budget where the Treasurer got up and threw billions and billions and billions of dollars in every direction—mainly in marginal seats, but in every direction. Why can’t some of that go to compensating these people who have been screwed over by the government? Would that be a fair and a reasonable thing? I use that word again, ‘reasonable’, Mr Melhem. Would that be fair, would that be reasonable? Too right it would. If we are serious about representing people in this Parliament, if we are serious about doing the right thing in this Parliament, then we should support this motion. Not only should we support this motion, we should follow it up and ensure that the government does the right thing by these people. We should, we must. It is something that I have felt very strongly about for a very long time. It is a sense of outrage at this injustice that has occurred.
I am pleased that Mr Barton said toward the end of his contribution this afternoon that he stands here prepared to rebuild and to help rebuild the industry that he loves. I am delighted that he said that, and I give a commitment here today, very publicly—it does not get much more public than this—to Mr Barton that I stand here willing to help him do that in any way that I possibly can. The deal that you and your fellow operators received stinks to high heaven. It should not be swept under the carpet, it should not be forgotten about. It should be rectified. And those people who have suffered should be given the opportunity to get back what they lost. That is so important. If you want to right a wrong, here is the opportunity to do it, and I urge every member of this house to support Mr Barton’s motion.
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (16:58): I rise today to support Mr Barton’s Transport Matters motion. My father, Colin Henry Cumming, was a taxidriver in the 1970s. He had six children. I am the youngest of six children. For many taxidrivers, it is a job that you take up when you do not necessarily have the schooling or the means to pay for university or other things. My father in the 1970s looked after us by doing taxi driving in Footscray. When my father passed when I was 16, there were not many things—I do not really have many photos of my father—but in his drawer next to his bed I was able to get his wallet. One of the other things that was in his bedside drawer was his Transport Regulation Board drivers identification certificate, which has his number, Mr Barton, which is 100677, and it is date stamped June 1976, so I would have been about four years old. I do remember getting in the back of a cab from Footscray station once, being very excited and the smell of leather of the seats. It was only a very short drive to Bunbury Street, but I was very excited the day that he became a taxidriver. It was in my mind a step up from the big blue kombi that my family had.
In speaking to your motion today, Mr Barton, which I commend—and I commend your passionate contribution—compulsory government asset acquisition is one of the reasons I entered into politics, because my family home was acquired by the local government, which was the City of Footscray, in the 1990s. So I am familiar with how much it can devastate a family. The scale of the devastation caused by the changes to the commercial passenger vehicle industry is huge. No other state or territory has revoked taxi and hire car licences to allow entry to the rideshare industry, nor has any other country in the world.
We are talking about revoking licences at a fraction of their worth. If I own four townhouses all in a row and I sell them all at the same time, I get the market value for each house, and I would expect it to be roughly in the same range. Even if those homes are compulsorily acquired, a price is negotiated for each one—and that would be reasonable, and it would be similar. But if I had four taxi licences, I would have got compensation of $100 000 for the first licence, $50 000 for the second, $50 000 for the third and $50 000 for the fourth. If I had more than five licences, I would not get anything for them. Respectfully, one of these licences was worth even more than $500 000. Further, that payment also depended on how those licences were owned. A family with 18 taxi licences in a single family trust was paid $250 000—that is 18 for $250 000. A family with 10 licences in 10 separate entities was paid $1 million. So how does that work? Where is that logic?
Westjustice, formerly known as the Footscray Legal Service, is based in my electorate, and they assisted a number of the licence-holders applying to the Fairness Fund. The application process was complicated, and the forms were provided only in English when the majority of the industry stakeholders were from non-English-speaking backgrounds. This is probably reflected in the fact that less than half of the 1200 people who applied were successful. Westjustice submitted 155 applications directly on behalf of their clients. They also had to turn people away if they thought that their application would not succeed, because Westjustice struggles to get funds and it just struggles to keep its head above water—and I have brought this to this place before, about the need for the government to continue to fund Westjustice.
People have lost everything—or if they are lucky they have retained their homes. Westjustice estimated that 120 out of 155 that they helped were in reasonably serious circumstances and that 50 would have been in desperate financial straits. The people that they helped included a family whose bank had already pressured them to actually sell it—so, gone. At least six of the families had lost their homes, as debts were unmanageable or banks had stepped in and repossessed. Others are paying back loans for assets they no longer have. Others had their superannuation cleared and their plans for the future destroyed. Many previously self-funded retirees are now reliant on government benefits. One of their clients committed suicide two days after seeing them. Leaving aside this financial damage, it would be pretty astonishing if it did not wreak that sort of havoc on ordinary people.
Whether the reforms were justified or not, before making them the government should have thought things through. They should have sat down and worked with the banks, the tax office and Centrelink. The financial distress and the emotional distress that this has caused are astonishing and affect my community in Western Metro directly. They should have had social workers. They should have actually given them some kind of assistance for the emotional trauma that occurred. To put it bluntly, it has to be fixed. I support this motion. And I will leave it to others to contribute also today.
Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (17:06): I am going to cut my speech down. I had quite a bit to say on this, but I just think Mr Melhem’s half-hour dissertation on where Mr Barton could stick this has taken up quite a bit of time. I am pleased to support this motion from my colleague Mr Barton. It gives me the opportunity to observe how disgracefully the Labor government has treated taxi owners. I have in my youth done some time behind the wheel of a taxi, and I have met many taxi owners. Many of them are postwar migrants to Victoria who live in the heartland of Melbourne’s northern suburbs. They have made a life for themselves and their families in Melbourne through thrift and hard work, and I can tell you overwhelmingly they have been Labor voters. I would have thought that it would have been more likely for a conservative government to have done this to the taxi industry, but I might have judged them wrong. They would have justified it like the government has.
The new conservatives, not the old conservatives, have been attracted to a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest type of deregulation, but I am sure a more enlightened point of view is now sweeping through politics on both sides of the spectrum. We need to encourage our local industries and not be chasing minimum conditions and poor wages in a deregulated race to the bottom. This is even more important when the government is on the verge of making the mistake of returning to a high-population agenda producing many more people likely to be unemployed and semi-employed, competing for jobs that are only a few hours a week, and putting downward pressure on wages and conditions.
Like Mr Barton, I too fear for the gig economy, which is widely promoted. Young voters, as well as many older voters, have embraced the gig economy and have been happy to go down the Uber path. Admittedly the Uber taxi company had much to offer in the way of technological advances and price. However, it is the way these very changes were introduced to the industry by the government that is the issue. Supporters of this radical and ruthless implementation do not necessarily understand what it takes to build up a family business.
The Uber taxi company showed up in 2014, but they were not prosecuted. Their whole business was based on a lie, a fraud that was called ‘ridesharing’, but it was not sharing really. It was people driving others around for money. That is direct competition with taxis—that is, they were doing the same things that taxis do. Instead of prosecuting them out of business, the government let them go and grow and decided to legalise them and deregulate the taxi industry. When the government decided to deregulate the taxi industry it rendered taxi licences worthless. They are saying, ‘Were they assets up until then?’. Well, the High Court has said so. The banks thought they were, for the purposes of security of loans. The tax office has the same view. So did the Family Court. Certainly the licence-holders thought they were assets. They put their life savings into them in many cases—that was their superannuation—and now Labor tells us it will not recognise these assets as property.
Until the Great Depression in the 1930s, entry into the taxi industry was highly unregulated. Anyone could do it, but mass unemployment led to many vehicle owners becoming taxidrivers, drivers undercutting each other on fares and eventually no-one being able to make a living out of it. So the drivers union—there used to be one—and the taxi companies successfully lobbied for the introduction of minimum fares and for a restriction on the number of licences. That is the way things should be. But the coronavirus pandemic has shown us comprehensively how we have forgotten the painful lessons learned from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919–20 about population density and housing density. I hope it does not take another depression for us to realise why it was we instituted regulated labour markets. Many of us are not willing to have a free-for-all and a race to the bottom in industries like hire cars and horticulture and other industries. I urge the government to listen and to act on this motion and the proposals put forward by my colleague Mr Barton.
Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (17:10): The Liberal Democrats do not support this motion. We do not support it because this motion represents several of the ideas the Liberal Democrats oppose—special-interest, rent-seeking, government-created monopolies and over-regulation of markets, just for starters. Prior to deregulation the taxi market was a textbook model of a government-created monopoly that in turn had the regulator captured by the industry and occasional lip-service given to things like passenger service and safety. But the regulations existed to prop up the profits of the licence-holders, who extracted an economic rent. The value of this economic rent was reflected in the price of a licence. A right to trade created out of thin air would sell for up to half a million dollars. That capital cost represented the net present value of the rent that could be extracted from consumers.
The government manipulated the market for passenger ride services with a quota on supply, limiting the number of rides available and artificially holding up the price. The public suffered under the system and the public paid for the system. The drivers did not benefit much—they worked long hours for low pay—but generations of licence-holders grew fat on the rents. But alas for the licence-holders, in the long run there is no such thing as a monopoly. In the long run you cannot hold back market forces. It is a socialist mistake to think that you can manage the market. Technology advanced. Technology did not advance in the regulated taxi industry, because they were comfortable with the protected profits. But outside, others looked in at the massive returns being extracted and saw opportunity. Ridesharing came; the taxi industry fell. The industry appealed to their customers for support, but the customers had been sick of the poor service and the high prices for a very long time. They embraced the alternatives. The government buckled under the weight of the inevitable, and the industry was reformed.
I do not hate taxi licence holders. Last year I sat through a committee hearing on the deregulation of the taxi industry, and I heard many very sad stories. A number of taxi licence holders were not sophisticated investors. A not unusual story was the immigrant who came here, worked hard driving taxis and saved up to buy their own place. I have great sympathy for the many people who lost large investments—in some cases their businesses, their homes, their retirement savings and even their lives. It was confronting to listen to. However, this is how our economy works. People make investments they hope will earn them returns. Sometimes they are successful; sometimes they are not. Sometimes they lose everything. It is not the government’s job to compensate all investors for their losses. We do not bail out share market investors when their market drops. We do not, or we should not, privatise the profits and socialise the losses. Investors take the risks and receive the gains and the losses.
Let me introduce the concept of regulatory risk. Small business owners in Victoria have had a masterclass in regulatory risk in the last nine months, when the government literally shut them down. The worse the government, the greater the regulatory risk you take on with any business or investment. You would have to say that Victorian businesses face extremely high levels of regulatory risk under this government, but I digress. No act of any state is permanent. Any law passed by government may be changed by another government. Investors are supposed to assess the risks. The taxi licence market was unsustainable. Everyone with any economic knowledge who looked at it knew that sooner or later it had to go. Milton Friedman wrote about this in the 1980s. By the early 1990s in all Australian taxi markets it was obvious that reform had to happen. Successive governments may have kicked the reform can down the road for 30 years, making the changes even harsher when they came, but they were always coming.
We have already spent $500 million on compensating plant owners. It is clear that part of the compensation process was badly mismanaged—unfair, sure. It was government being run for political purposes—of course it was stuffed up—but more taxpayer money should not go towards this. Rather than extending compensation to licence-holders, the government should now remove their tax on commercial passenger trips and return the price of passenger travel to the free market level. If customers can buy taxi trips at the market rate, they will consume more of them.
Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.
Statements on reports, papers and petitions
Department of Health and Human Services
Report to Parliament on the Extensions of the Declaration of a State of Emergency
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:15): I rise today to speak to the Report to Parliament on the Extensions of the Declaration of a State of Emergency, November 2020. Why are we still in a state of emergency? Why can’t the government remove the state of emergency before Christmas? Why does the community have to wait until April when the government assesses this declaration every two weeks on a month-to-month extension?
Board of Inquiry into the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Program
COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry: Interim Report and Recommendations
Dr CUMMING: I would also like to make a contribution and speak on the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry: Interim Report and Recommendations. In this report there are a number of recommendations, including models for facilities-based and home-based quarantine. There are also recommendations addressing issues such as governance, language and communication and the need for localised services. These issues have also been raised throughout the recent hearings that have been conducted and that I am participating in for contact tracing and testing. If anything, these issues have been occurring right throughout the government’s handling of COVID. The recommendation is for a single agency to be responsible for any quarantine program, with a very clear governance structure. Indeed we have had the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, who had spent $133 million to the end of June; the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), who had spent $51 million; and the Department of Justice and Community Safety, who had spent almost $11 million—$10.9 million. Three different agencies have all been running the quarantine program. No wonder they do not know who organised the security guards.
The next area is that of language and communications and the need to create a supportive environment.
A member interjected.
Dr CUMMING: This is the report. Shake your head. It is also about the quality of the communications, not the quantity. It is about constantly repeating the information and ensuring that people understand it. It should be supportive. It should use words such as ‘resident’ rather than ‘detainee’. It should be clear. It should be accessible. It should be in multiple languages. It should be educational, not threatening. No-one in quarantine was there because they had done something wrong, yet that is the way they were made to feel.
It is interesting to note that the recommended foundation for the facility-based model comes from Alfred Health, not from DHHS. It stresses that the infection control should be both proactive and reactive, that a mix of personnel must be on site, that all the physical and mental needs of the residents should be considered and that nurses, doctors, mental health clinicians, alternative healthcare workers and drug and alcohol specialists should all be employed on site.
A number of residents already had specific needs going into quarantine, including drug and alcohol dependency, grief and self-harm, to name a few pre-existing conditions. A clinical psychologist stated that one in five people going into quarantine would experience considerable difficulty. A lot of these needs were simply not met. They also recommended that a contact-tracing unit be located within the quarantine facility. The reason for placing a contact-tracing unit within the facility is simple: it is more effective, it is fast, it develops a relationship of trust, which in turn provides more accurate information, and it is a patient-focused approach.
Smart meters
Petition
Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (17:20): I rise to speak on the e-petition for the deactivation of radiofrequency communications on smart meters on behalf of a group of Victorian residents who do not have the right to request deactivation of radiofrequency communications on an installed smart meter. Currently the Victorian government has chosen not to allow Victorians the right to deactivate their smart meter, yet people in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia have this right. Since the rollout of smart meters in 2011 there are residents who have reported adverse effects from the constant pulsed radiofrequencies that emit from communicating smart meters. Other states have acknowledged that some people are sensitive to pulsed radiofrequency emissions from smart meters and have, where proof is provided, given residents the right, if they are affected, to switch off these systems. Currently the Victorian government does not allow Victorians to do this.
The refusal of the Victorian government to enable this means that people who report sensitivity to radiofrequency emissions—even with an accompanying medical certificate—are being denied the ability to control their exposure and thus may jeopardise their health in their own homes. The petitioners request that the Legislative Council call on the Honourable Lily D’Ambrosio, Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to put in place such amendments that will allow the citizens of Victoria who are affected to be granted the ability to have radiofrequency communications on an installed smart meter deactivated. In particular, such amendments should apply to all people who are in possession of a medical certificate requesting this accommodation.
Department of the Legislative Council
Report 2019–20
Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (17:22): I would like to make a statement on the Department of the Legislative Council annual report 2019–20 and just say what an honour it was for me to perform your role, President, for a short time and work with the staff of this department, ably led by Andrew Young and Anne Sargent. I want to give them great credit for the assistance that they gave me and this chamber—and give you now, President. I also want to give them a lot of credit because they were very, very bold in holding the first meeting of the First Nations assembly in this chamber. They were very bold to do that.
I also want to give them a lot of credit because when unfortunately COVID first hit earlier this year, there was a lot of concern by all sorts of employers about how they would deal with their staff. The absolute determination and bloody-mindedness of Andrew Young and Anne Sargent was that all the great staff here—and we know they are all great staff—would be ably employed somehow and would not lose a minute of their wages, because they serve us so well. I think this was the department that really led that theme.
On the clerks, I want to acknowledge Richard Willis, who is the second greatest Usher of the Black Rod this place has ever had. In my time, he was the greatest procedural clerk. I have got to say before Sally West took over the position I did not think there could be a better one, but actually I think that in fairness she is—I was going so much better—better. Keir Delaney: great work. I know he is currently not on the committees—I know Richard is now—but great work on committees, and to all the committee staff and all the executives, great work.
My favourite because I think I used to drive her crazy last term is Lilian, because of my imagination and enthusiasm in committee. And of course there are all the attendants, led by Greg: Peter, Chris, Patrick—Patrick’s jokes seem to go, ‘Go away, Collingwood is playing’, and last year they were not that great, I have got to say—and Philip of course as well. Also the papers office—Annemarie Burt and her team—they are seriously the engine of this place, and we all know that whenever we need assistance to help us do the work we have to do here.
I want to say there was an event I think a couple of Christmases ago—it might have been last Christmas; time seems to be 10 years this year—where social enterprises came in and awarded their staff members awards as staff members of the year. I have got to say that was one of the best things that I have been part of since I have been a member of this chamber, and I want to thank Andres Lomp and the comms team that did some great work—and broadcasting as well created a great video.
So President, as I said, it was an absolute privilege to be the President for the short time that I was. I know you are doing a great job, and I congratulate you again on the great job that you are doing. We are lucky to have someone of your calibre—I have got to say, much better than the last bloke. But if there is anything that I am disappointed about in this, there is a disappointment that I think there could have been some money spent on some professional photography. In particular there could have been a whole page of Andrew Young. I would have liked to see him draped over a chaise longue with his robes and a bit of taxidermy behind him—maybe a big eagle or an elk or something behind him—and I would like to see him staring into a gyroscope on a crystal coffee table with that Erskine May book on the coffee table. That is just a suggestion for next year, but I commend this report to the chamber and look forward to next year’s with photos.
Public Accounts and Estimates Committee
Inquiry into the Victorian Government’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:27): That is a bit of a hard act to follow with Mr Leane, but I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of all the parliamentary staff, especially in our chamber, and Mr Willis, who is in the chamber today, but also the parliamentary staff. The committee staff is what I am referring to, as I am about to speak to the inquiry into the Victorian government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic undertaken by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC). I know that all of the committee work done in the Parliament is tremendous work, and I know from the committees that I have been involved in in the past and am involved in at present they are working extremely hard to undertake this very important work.
This interim report does provide some excellent information to the community about the government’s COVID response, and I would like to make a few comments on that. Last sitting week I only had a minute in relation to what I was speaking on, but I will not go over that again. I would just like to acknowledge some of the aspects of the minority report, written by my colleagues Mr Riordan, Mr O’Brien and Ms Vallence, in relation to what they found during the course of that inquiry—it is still ongoing, but from this interim report and the minority report that they spoke of. They quote evidence given by the Premier and the Department of Premier and Cabinet, and I am going to quote this because I think it is important for us to understand just where the government was thinking we were at. Of course we know where we are now, and it is a huge relief to all Victorians and indeed all Australians that we are in this situation where the COVID numbers are zero, the deaths have ceased to occur and our borders are opening—and our businesses—and that our restrictions, the harsh restrictions that were placed on all of us, have been eased, because of the devastation that the second wave caused.
But in relation to the evidence that the Premier gave, in many respects the Premier’s evidence to PAEC was marked by how proud Victoria could be of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By way of illustration, the Premier said it was, and I quote:
… a really unprecedented event, a very challenging event, and it has indeed transpired exactly as we had predicted.
I think that is concerning because of how it has been predicted. I am not sure that that is actually quite accurate, because there was stop and start, there were changes in decision-making processes, there were various aspects that the government were telling the community and then they had to change that course of direction and put on further, harsher restrictions or make different decisions. So I am not sure that it was how they predicted. I would hope it would not be as predicted—819 deaths in total from COVID that we know about. Of course we do not know the suicides that have occurred throughout this pandemic—and I have been speaking about that on a number of occasions, very concerned about those numbers and how that mental health toll has been very significant. So I am not sure the Premier was really thinking that that was how it had been predicted. And he said:
… we have not only flattened the curve but in fact brought stability to these numbers.
Well, I am not sure the Premier was entirely across what was going on, because as we know, the numbers rose very, very significantly through July and August. And of course through the contact-tracing inquiry that is being undertaken at present we asked witnesses from the Department of Health and Human Services—well, I asked, actually, the chief health officer on Monday about this very issue—at what point did the system become overwhelmed, because it was clear from the chief scientist’s evidence to that inquiry that the system was overwhelmed, and as a result that ability to manage this situation was out of hand and of course led to these tragic and devastating consequences for the families of those people that have tragically lost their lives and for all Victorians in terms of the devastation. Now we are paying the price—we are paying a very high price—for the lockdowns. And we have seen the government’s budget. They are saying we are going to recover, but it will be the children in generations to come that will be paying for this extraordinary expenditure in yesterday’s budget.
Adjournment
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Resources) (17:33): I move:
That the house do now adjourn.
COVID-19
Mr O’DONOHUE (Eastern Victoria) (17:33): My adjournment this evening is for the Attorney-General, and the action I seek is that she review the suitability of the Pinskier brothers to be the providers of such a significant proportion of the medical services to the government’s hotel quarantine program. As I have previously mentioned, the Pinskier brothers are Labor Party royalty, and as the initial provider of medical services to the hotel quarantine program they have benefited significantly. In addition to concerns about their Labor connections and how they came to have such a significant medical contract in the first place, it is important that the minister also consider the Pinskiers’ dubious commercial practices as well as their undisclosed conflict of interest with Melbourne Pathology, one of the providers of pathology services to the hotel quarantine program.
The VCAT matter of Meadsview Pty Ltd—a Pinskier company—v. Fenton(Building and Property) and the costs decision of the same name in 2019 laid bare some very sharp commercial practices by the Pinskiers. After bringing an action against the landlord at their leased premises at Carre Street in Elsternwick because of alleged faulty air conditioning, VCAT heard days of evidence about how the Pinskiers and their many associated companies sought to make super profits by artificially suppressing lease costs while subletting without landlord consent—and therefore in breach of any standard lease—at vastly inflated rates to other doctors, allied health professionals and other service providers such as Melbourne Pathology. Payment was made to the contracted doctors on a commission basis, which raises separate ethical issues.
In dismissing the Pinskiers’ claim and making an unusual legal costs award against them at VCAT the senior member, Mr Walker, concluded in the 2019 decision:
It is uncommon that one finds a case that is so obviously untenable or manifestly groundless as to be utterly hopeless, but I am satisfied that this is such a case. The Tenants’—
or the Pinskiers’—
claim was so lacking in any substance that it should not have been brought and consequently, it was vexatious within the meaning of s.92 of the Act.
This raises obvious ethical issues about how the Pinskiers conduct business. It was made even more important given their services were procured for hotel quarantine by Dr Nathan Pinskier nominating an hourly rate which apparently was accepted by the Department of Health and Human Services without dispute and is the basis upon which the Pinskiers may well still be billing the taxpayer.
Another fact revealed by VCAT was the relationship between the Pinskiers and one of their subtenants at Elsternwick and other clinics they operate, Melbourne Pathology. Melbourne Pathology, a well-known and respected provider of pathology services across Melbourne, has a significant commercial relationship with the Pinskiers. So the Pinskiers have a significant relationship with Melbourne Pathology, but in an email dated 13 April, basically seeking Melbourne Pathology to be the monopoly provider of pathology services to the hotel quarantine program, Dr Pinskier failed to reveal this conflict of interest. The action I seek of the minister is to conduct a thorough due diligence of the Pinskiers and their elaborate Australian and international corporate structure, their financial and commercial affairs and conflicts of interest before entering into any written contract with them for medical services as part of the new hotel quarantine program.
Post-traumatic stress injury assistance dogs
Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (17:36): I rise to give my adjournment debate, which is for the attention of the minister representing the Minister for Corrections, regarding the defence dogs program in Victorian prisons. I have met on many occasions with stakeholders on the proposal of having dogs in prisons, such as the Defence Bank Foundation. Their program involves the rescue of dogs that are then trained by selected prisoners to specifically assist veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress injury. Results from the Bathurst trial indicated zero per cent recidivism rates of prisoners involved in the program, and PTSI sufferers reported a huge reduction in medical treatment sought and a vast improvement in their ability to function effectively within the community.
A group of female inmates at the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre have been given the opportunity to work and live with puppies, which has given some much-needed happiness and rehabilitation and future job potential as they serve their sentences. These inmates are undertaking the only certificate III in companion animal services in an Australian prison as part of the Pups in Prison program, run by Assistance Dogs Australia, or ADA. The demand for assistance dogs is very high. These pups range in age from 14 weeks to 15 months and live and work with the inmates 24/7. One prisoner in an ABC News article published this month, Rhiannon, stated:
It’s helped me a lot. I’ve reduced my medications and I’m a lot more happy.
The Pups in Prison program has also trained Australia’s only two fully accredited court facility dogs to provide support for witnesses giving evidence, many of whom are children or victims of sexual assault. ADA hopes to expand the Pups in Prison program so it can open its recipient list again. I have been advocating for this program in Victoria for a long time, since I first began here. Being an ex-police officer, I have spoken to other police members who also have assistance dogs, and they have changed their lives for the better. As I have said in this place, specifically in a previous members statement, police officers are regularly exposed to traumatic events and experiences. It is estimated that around 1 per cent of the general population will experience PTSI, whereas 10 per cent of all emergency services workers and up to 20 per cent of police officers will experience PTSI during their careers. This program’s benefits are threefold: rescue a dog, rehabilitate a prisoner, and change the life of a PTSI sufferer. Therefore the action that I seek is for the Minister for Corrections to implement this extremely important program into an appropriate Victorian prison for the purpose of supporting retired frontline personnel who have PTSI as a result of their service.
Route 86 tram
Mr ONDARCHIE (Northern Metropolitan) (17:38): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Public Transport and it concerns the tram 86 route in Northern Metropolitan Region. Recently I invited South Morang residents to complete my community survey, and I wish to thank all those residents who returned the survey with some really good feedback. There has been significant growth in South Morang and Mill Park. In fact postcode 3752, South Morang, was deemed to be the fastest growing postcode in Australia for a period of time. But the tram 86 route still ends at RMIT in Bundoora. I have spoken about this tramline a number of times in this place in the past regarding extension of the tramline, and also I asked the Minister for Police and Emergency Services to ensure PSOs on tram 86 as well, particularly after the tragic passing of Aiia Maasarwe. Those PSOs are still not on the 86 tram.
There were many responses to my survey that asked when the tramline will be extended along Plenty Road to make it up to Mill Park and to South Morang. I understand the government have undertaken a feasibility study into that tramline extension, so the action I seek from the minister is to release to me the feasibility study so we can have a look at it and I can better inform my constituents about the probability of that tramline being extended all the way to South Morang.
Western Metropolitan Region community sport
Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:40): My adjournment matter is to the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events in the other place, and the action that I seek is for the sports minister to ensure practical support is provided to the community sporting clubs within Western Metropolitan Region, clubs that have previously relied on sponsorship from local businesses and sale of merchandise to pay administration fees and overheads. The year 2020 has been devastating for many, and no less so for sporting clubs and their communities. They were unable to sell jumpers, T-shirts, jerseys, scarves and the like, nor have they been able to have community fundraisers and obviously open their canteens to sell food. These are all the ways that they raise money and funds to look after their sporting community.
I was contacted last week by a local constituent from the Western Region Football League. This organisation oversees football across the western suburbs of Melbourne, including my electorate. The league was formed in 1931, almost 90 years ago, as the Footscray District Football League. The constituent has a long history with the community and especially football from an administration and coaching perspective. In his letter to me he highlighted how important sport is to the social capital of our local communities but also how the clubs in the west will struggle. The Western Region Football League provides administration support for the smooth and effective operation of our clubs. Each club usually pays the league a fee to cover the costs associated with the league’s administration and activities and currently collectively these funds fall short by $400 000 per annum of the league’s total costs. The league have reduced overheads as much as possible and are doing their best to source external partners to fund the shortfall and minimise the impact on local clubs, but they are still falling short. It is right now that the community needs their support, and the government needs to find the money within this budget during this difficult time.
The PRESIDENT: Who did you address it to? Which minister, Dr Cumming?
Dr CUMMING: President, my adjournment matter was to the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events in the other place.
The PRESIDENT: Thank you. I will ask the Leader of the Government to correct this. Which minister should it be directed to?
Ms SYMES: Dr Cumming, it would be more appropriate to address it to Minister Spence, as the Minister for Community Sport, who deals with the grassroots level support for the clubs that you have identified.
The PRESIDENT: Are you happy with that?
Dr CUMMING: President, I am happy to address it to the appropriate minister.
West Gate Tunnel
Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (17:43): I wish to raise a matter on the adjournment this evening for the attention of the Minister for Planning. Can I just say to the minister that the level of disgust, the level of anger with his decision earlier this week to approve the dumping of toxic soil in Ravenhall, and in Bacchus Marsh as well, is through the roof. The anger is white-hot throughout the western suburbs of Melbourne, and I can assure you the people of Sunbury and Bulla are watching very, very closely to see what will happen in the days ahead. They understand, and we are hearing from sources close to the minister’s office, I gather, that Sunbury is going to cop it as well, which is just absolutely staggering. These people have bought homes, and I am talking about people in Caroline Springs, in Deer Park, in areas surrounding Ravenhall, people in Sunbury, in Bulla. Sunbury is about to explode in terms of population, about to double its size, and here we are with the potential of toxic soil being dumped just a few hundred metres from new homes. It is just deplorable, and I cannot understand what the minister was thinking when he approved that. That is what I would like to know tonight, because what I am doing is inviting the minister to join me in the western suburbs at a public meeting to tell the people of Caroline Springs, Deer Park and surrounds, and the people of Sunbury if indeed he goes down that path, directly why he has approved this carcinogenic toxic soil to be dumped in their neighbourhood. They have a right to know.
It is a bit like the debate we had earlier over the taxidrivers. They have done nothing wrong—apart from raise their families, pay their taxes and work hard—and all of a sudden we find here a minister, who probably would not even know where Ravenhall or Bulla or Sunbury are, declaring that those are the areas that will get this very dangerous, poisonous toxic soil. It is deplorable, it is despicable and it is something that I have to say as a representative of the western suburbs just sickens me to my stomach. It is horrendous what the minister has done. This is a shocking decision, an appalling decision. I am asking the minister to accompany me, to look those people in the eye and to tell them why they must carry the weight of this poisonous toxic soil.
Police conduct
Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (17:46): My adjournment debate matter is for the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. This follows from a previous question I asked the minister on the anti-lockdown protest I attended outside Parliament House on Melbourne Cup Day. I asked the minister for the name of the individual who gave the order for the kettling tactics where hundreds of people were closely confined for more than 3 hours and who gave the order to use cups and buckets instead of water bottles. I was not given a name, but I am advised the person was the police commander strategic. The answer provided to me stated that Victoria Police handed out cups to arrested people because previously provided bottled water had been thrown at police and others. This tells us that everyone within the circle was considered arrested, and they were held for hours without explanation.
The second issue brought to my attention is the point stating that protesters were throwing bottles of water at the police and others. In the 4 hours I spent apparently under arrest I did not witness any protesters receiving or throwing water bottles, nor has anyone I have spoken to since. Luckily this point can be easily verified by footage taken on body cams attached to Victoria Police officers. My request to the minister is: (a) make available the video footage from body cams which shows bottles being handed to protesters or protesters throwing bottles at police; and (b) explain why the water from the bottles was not poured into cups and distributed instead of using a communal bucket.
Class actions
Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:48): My adjournment debate matter is for the Attorney-General. In June the Labor government passed the Justice Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2019, which overturned 200 years of Australian legal precedent to permit law firms to charge contingency fees in class action lawsuits. In just four months there has been a 157 per cent increase in the number of class action lawsuits commenced in the Victorian Supreme Court. While Australian businesses are trying to survive a recession, exacerbated by unparalleled public policy failures in this state, the government has opened the floodgates to lawsuits that further debilitate them. Those who voted for this legislation must now ask themselves: is the explosion in class actions a consequence of increased access to justice coupled with more wrongdoing by major Australian corporations over the past four months, all while they have been locked up, or is it the result of big law firms capitalising on enormously profitable fee arrangements driven by this government’s changes that allow them to charge massive commissions? Would it surprise anyone in this place that these beneficiaries are also major donors to the Labor Party?
As I stated in the debate on the legislation, class actions have a noble aim, which I support wholeheartedly. Unfortunately they are no longer a vehicle of justice but instead they are a vehicle for profits, hijacked by predatory practices of law firms and offshore litigation funders. In the Black Saturday bushfire class action Maurice Blackburn charged administrative costs of $1 million every month to victims and withheld the settlement money for over two years. It is a disgrace that this government are more concerned about the profits of their lawyer friends rather than the members of the class, as evidenced by their vote against enshrining victims receiving at least 65 per cent of the damages awarded to them. That is why I call on the minister to urgently produce an annual report on the percentages of damages that went to victims compared to their lawyers in the class actions filed in Victoria. This is the least we should expect: a systematic evaluation of the policy her government has introduced. We need hard facts to show the number of cases launched, the success rate of these cases and the percentage of settlements awarded as fees. I for one will be very interested to see those numbers.
Victoria Police
Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (17:50): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. The law enforcement assistance program crime database, known as LEAP, keeps tabs on anybody who has interactions with Victoria Police. Crime and event reports are entered into the LEAP database, which would be done in the field using mobile devices. This powerful database holds sensitive personal information, and Victorians should be confident that this information is handled with professionalism and discretion. Last September there were media reports that police officers are misusing the database with impunity. IBAC issued a report on the corruption risks posed by officers accessing and disclosing crime data without authorisation. The commission discovered that misuse goes unnoticed until Victoria Police or IBAC has reason to investigate other misconduct. The report concluded:
IBAC’s view is that auditing of LEAP needs to be more robust, targeted, proactive and sustained.
Further north an inquiry found that Queensland officers had accessed the file of the amazing Renee Eaves—a former swimwear model who became an activist after being illegally detained by police—a staggering 1435 times. Renee took on the Queensland police over her illegal detention, self-represented against the might of the Queensland state and won. She then went on to discover that the police had been accessing her files.
I have heard stories of Victorian police misusing the LEAP database, looking up details for their own purposes—second-hand or third-hand stories; let me make that clear. One person I spoke to called it the cop version of Tinder. In recent months the internet has been alive with videos of officers behaving badly and with no concern for the public. Victoria Police need to rebuild their credibility. Minister, the action I seek is for you to assure me and the Victorian public that Victoria Police have implemented or will implement a proper system of auditing how LEAP is accessed and that police officers who access it inappropriately will be found and penalised.
Creative industries sector
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (17:53): My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Creative Industries. The creative industries sector is a very important sector in Victoria—290 000 people were employed on 30 June 2019—and it includes all of the traditional arts but also video games and a whole series of other areas of the creative economy. It is an extremely important part of the Victorian economy. It includes the performing arts as well, and a number of our entertainment venues that have got such a significant role. You only need to look outside the chamber here, over the road, and you will see the theatres and the importance of Harry Potter and all sorts. It is of massive, massive significance to the arts and entertainment sector and to the whole Victorian economy, and it is a driver of tourism and visitation to the state.
Now, we have opened up our borders in the last few days. New South Wales has opened up its borders, and Tassie today. The time has come with zero, zero, zero in Victoria. We can rehearse the problems that occurred under hotel quarantine and the failures of contact tracing and the government’s errors there, but leaving all that aside we are where we are now and we need to be looking to the future. The ratios and the numbers of people allowed to attend events in Victoria are less than those in the other states, and the other states still have larger numbers of COVID cases that are active. We have zero. I pray that is right, but officially we have zero in this state now.
But for the tourism sector, for the arts sector and for the creative industries to thrive, audiences are critical. So what I am asking the minister to do is to convene a meeting to sit down with the sector and to devise a way to open up the capacities of these audiences, because the economics of the sector depend on proper audience sizes. That is the only way, in the end, that we are going to be able to get the numbers to make many of our venues viable. That requires more thinking from the minister and more thinking from the bureaucrats, and it needs to be done quickly. We need to open up prior to Christmas. We need to make sure that the numbers that are able to attend in many of these audiences are increased. That needs to obviously be done in a safe way, but really we need to do harder thinking and we need to work with the sector, which is very prepared to work with the minister, to make sure that we get an outcome. So a very quick step is what we are seeking—fast action to open up further. Look at the numbers in other states, and they can be a guide.
Commercial passenger vehicle industry
Mr BARTON (Eastern Metropolitan) (17:56): Surprisingly the matter I raise tonight is for the Minister for Public Transport. As I have mentioned many a time, this pandemic has had a substantive, substantial and significant impact on the commercial passenger vehicle industry. Right now there is an enormous shortage of drivers to the point that some owner-drivers are working 90 to 100 hours per week. Not only is this unsustainable, it is dangerous. This shortage can only be explained by the existing drivers, on one hand, who have diverted out of necessity to Centrelink payments. These drivers do not plan to recommence until March next year when JobKeeper stops, and who can blame them? Taxi pay is so bad.
As for the new drivers who are desperate to make a buck, well, they end up going elsewhere due to the lengthy and deficient application process run by Commercial Passenger Vehicles Victoria. Currently CPVV takes three months to process a driver accreditation application. In addition, if an applicant has a medical condition such as diabetes, well, then they have to wait even longer for the CPVV medical board to meet once every three months. This means applicants can be waiting up to six months for their driver accreditation to be reviewed. This is simply ridiculous. To put this in perspective, a fishing licence takes seven days and a marine licence takes a day course and then approximately seven days for VicRoads to process. Even a working with children check or a police check takes well under a month. So how is it fair that a driver accreditation for a taxi and commercial passenger vehicle takes at least three months?
Further, I believe it is simply unfair, even verging on discriminatory, that an applicant with a medical condition does not have the right to be officially processed within the same time frame as someone without a medical condition. If this industry is ever going to bounce back, these significant issues need to be resolved. Therefore the action I am asking the minister to take is to step in and ensure that a streamlined application process is implemented by the CPVV to uphold industry standards and expectations, especially in the interests of fairness to those with a medical condition.
Albury Wodonga Health
Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:58): My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it relates to the Albury Wodonga Health service. After all the hype, when will the Victorian government commit to vital infrastructure works at Albury Wodonga Health and reach an agreement on how this unique cross-border health service can continue to operate? This is a Victorian hospital that shares resources with New South Wales and deals with a catchment of close to 250 000 people. About 75 per cent of patients are from Victoria. Its emergency department sees more patients than Ballarat or Bendigo hospitals and twice as many as Shepparton. The Wodonga hospital maternity unit sees almost 1700 babies born each year but is dangerously removed from the critical care services in Albury.
Albury Wodonga Health was formed 11 years ago under the then Minister for Health and now Premier, Daniel Andrews. While Wodonga alone has grown by 20 per cent in that time, the service has failed to receive its fair share of Victorian capital funding to keep pace. In stark contrast, in the past three years the New South Wales government has recognised the incredible demand on staff and facilities and committed $75 million to capital works at the health service—$45 million to improve the intensive care unit and create additional surgical theatres and beds and $30 million to eliminate the real fear of an overworked emergency department costing someone’s life. For three years the health service has delayed the start of the ED project, hoping that this Labor government would match the New South Wales funding and create an emergency department that would truly meet patient demand. Medicos continue to fear for the safety of patients in an emergency department designed for a third of the patients it now sees each year, an emergency department that will be modestly upgraded rather than match demand.
In January I was up in Albury-Wodonga and visited Albury Wodonga Health, along with the Leader of the Opposition, Michael O’Brien, and the member for Benambra, Bill Tilley.
Mr Finn: He’s a good man.
Ms CROZIER: A very good man, Mr Finn, and we wish him well. I watched from close quarters as the then health minister, Minister Mikakos, waltzed into the Albury hospital campus promising $6 million for a short-stay unit to complement the emergency department work. The media covering the event were not impressed by what happened then—and they still are not—with the lack of commitment by the government. They wanted to know why the Victorian government was not matching New South Wales funding. The people of Wodonga and the health service catchment that extends to Rutherglen, Beechworth, Yackandandah, Mount Beauty, Falls Creek, Tallangatta, Mitta Mitta and Corryong want to know why too. They are worried about the future of the service that is being refused investment. The last nine months have seen very little commitment, and they have deflected questions time and time again. I have asked questions in here. I know Mr Tilley has. The action I seek from the minister is that they provide the required funding to Albury Wodonga Health and get these projects underway.
Following matter incorporated pursuant to order of Council of 15 September:
Victims of crime
Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria)
My matter is for the Minister for Victim Support.
It concerns an issue to which my attention has been drawn recently by a close contact of mine whose son is a victim of crime.
This friend has told me that victims of crime must officially declare any amount of money that is received by them through interest on funds held for them in court. In other words, this money is taxable under current law.
The taxation section of the funds in court office of the Supreme Court of Victoria has also confirmed this is the case.
The bottom line here, as far as I am concerned, is that these funds should not be taxed. Not least because this adds quite unnecessary complications and obligations, as well as financial loss, to the lives of people who already have an awful lot of things to process as it is. In the midst of what are often devastating, life-changing events for them, and in addition to everything else with which they are already trying to cope, these people should not suddenly be lumbered with a series of unexpected accounting and taxation considerations, of all things, to have to worry about as well.
Moreover, when you consider that tax exemptions are available for things like education allowances, childcare subsidies and payments for injuries at work, then it is really not clear at all why a different and more exacting standard is being applied to payments made to crime victims.
Taxing this money also seems cruel and inequitable in the sense that victims don’t typically receive a particularly large amount of overall financial compensation for the crimes committed against them and/or someone close to them in the first instance, either.
Indeed, I have previously raised a number of issues in the Legislative Council associated with the need for significantly improved financial assistance and compensation to victims of crime, and plan to continue to do so throughout my time here.
I was particularly delighted last year, for instance, to be able to identify changes that, with the support and agreement of the former corrections minister, Mr Carroll, ultimately allowed victims new access to payments made through the Prisoner Compensation Quarantine Fund.
However, there still remains much, much more to do in this area.
As part of that, and given all of this background, the action I seek this evening is that Minister Hutchins clarify whether it is possible for her, in her capacity as Minister for Victim Support, to directly initiate the changes necessary to make money received by Victorians in their status as victims of crime tax exempt.
Alternatively, if this is the responsibility of another minister or government, I seek her commitment that she will personally advocate for these changes.
Responses
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Resources) (18:01): There were 11 members who raised questions for ministers, and they will be answered in the ordinary way. I have two responses to adjournment matters.
Mr ONDARCHIE (Northern Metropolitan) (18:01:381:): President, I draw your attention to the standing orders relating to the time limits of responses to adjournment matters. I further draw to your attention that I have an adjournment matter, in the worst case here, asked on 4 August 2020 of the Minister for Mental Health, that is now 113 days overdue—adjournment matter 752. Now, with respect to the Government Whip, I have raised this with the minister before. The Government Whip has undertaken gracefully to chase this down, and to her credit she has been doing that but getting no support and no response from the Minister for Mental Health. So I seek an explanation from the minister at the table today, the Minister for Regional Development, and I have asked her before about this matter: where is my response?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Resources) (18:02:172:): I thank Mr Ondarchie for again putting this matter on the record, and we will endeavour to seek a further answer in due course for him.
The PRESIDENT: The house stands adjourned.
House adjourned 6.02 pm.
Written adjournment responses
Responses have been incorporated in the form supplied by the departments on behalf of the appropriate ministers.
Wednesday, 25 November 2020
COVID-19
In reply to Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (23 April 2020)
Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education):
Support for international students sits within the portfolio of the Minister for Trade. I am informed as follows:
International students are an important part of our State’s rich multicultural society and the contribution of international students from around the world is a success story for our state. There are currently around 120,000 international students in Victoria from around 100 different countries. Many of these students have been working in casualised industries that have been impacted by shut downs and are now financially vulnerable.
On 29 April, the Victorian Government announced the $45 million International Student Emergency Relief Fund (ISESRF). The Fund provides payments of up to $1,100 to international students experiencing lost or reduced employment and financial hardship as a result of COVID-19. Applications opened on 19 May and as at 11 November 2020, the Fund had provided support to 32,758 students.
Universities and TAFEs are critical delivery partners, co-contributing and administering the funds to their eligible students. The Government, through the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, is administering funds to eligible students enrolled with private providers.
The Fund has also provided $1 million for food vouchers to 5,000 international students under the City of Melbourne’s ‘Our Shout’ program, as well as $1 million in total to Foodbank, Ozharvest and SecondBite to provide groceries and meals to international students including through a free Foodbank supermarket for international students in the CBD.
The Government has funded several other COVID-19 support programs, which international students are eligible to access:
• The Extreme Hardship Support Program Fund for Temporary Migrants (open to international students who have not received the ISERF)
• the $1500 Pandemic Leave Payment and $450 Test Isolation Payment
• Working for Victoria Program
• Rent relief grants up to $3000 and utility relief grants
• Free health care related to COVID-19 symptoms
• Mental health support for international students including an advice line for international student support staff, supported by Orygen through a $300,000 Victorian Government grant
• Enhanced services and supports through the Study Melbourne Student Centre including free legal advice on employment and accommodation matters, information and referrals, and crisis support such as emergency rent assistance, food vouchers and accommodation.
As set out in the 2020–2021 Budget announced on 24 November 2020, the Government is also investing $33.4 million in 2020–21 to support the short-term economic recovery of the international education sector, and to continue support to international students. This investment will confirm Victoria as a high-quality study destination, and Melbourne as Australia’s number one student city.
Grampians rock climbing
In reply to Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (27 October 2020)
Ms D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park—Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Minister for Solar Homes):
Parks Victoria and Barengi Gadjin Land Council have undertaken assessments of registered rock art sites and surrounding areas in Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park to determine whether rock art and other values have been adversely impacted by visitors, pest animals or natural factors, and to provide recommendations on their management and protection.
These assessments identified that some Aboriginal places are at risk of harm from park visitors. These impacts have not been attributed to any specific user groups and, as many values are not easily identifiable, some of the harm caused by visitors was likely inadvertent.
Recent site inspections at Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park have revealed that the current advisory signage requesting visitors do not access areas of cultural significance are not providing adequate protection for cultural values. Without strengthening the legislative protection of cultural values at Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park, these values remain at risk from park visitors who may enter these areas and inadvertently cause harm.
Consequently, to provide additional protection to cultural values and to avoid the potential for future harm, set aside determinations, enacted under the National Parks Act 1975, will be established at five areas in the park, prohibiting all public access.
Parks Victoria and Barengi Gadjin Land Council will soon be undertaking archaeological surveys at all high visitation areas in Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park. The outcome of these surveys will inform a plan that ensures long-term protection of values and articulates recreational access opportunities, including rock climbing, where appropriate. This will provide certainty for park visitors, including the rock climbing and local communities.