PARLIAMENT OF VICTORIA

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES

(HANSARD)

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

FIFTY-NINTH PARLIAMENT

FIRST SESSION

TUESDAY, 4 MAY 2021

Internet: www.parliament.vic.gov.au/downloadhansard

By authority of the Victorian Government Printer

The Governor The Honourable LINDA DESSAU, AC The Lieutenant-Governor The Honourable KEN LAY, AO, APM

The ministry

Premier ...... The Hon. DM Andrews, MP Deputy Premier, Minister for Education and Minister for Mental Health The Hon. JA Merlino, MP Attorney-General and Minister for Resources ...... The Hon. J Symes, MLC Minister for Transport Infrastructure and Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop ...... The Hon. JM Allan, MP Minister for Training and Skills, and Minister for Higher Education .... The Hon. GA Tierney, MLC Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Industrial Relations ...... The Hon. TH Pallas, MP Minister for Public Transport and Minister for Roads and Road Safety .. The Hon. BA Carroll, MP Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and Minister for Solar Homes ...... The Hon. L D’Ambrosio, MP Minister for Child Protection and Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers ...... The Hon. LA Donnellan, MP Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services and Minister for Equality ...... The Hon. MP Foley, MP Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, and Minister for Fishing and Boating ...... The Hon. MM Horne, MP Minister for Crime Prevention, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice and Minister for Victim Support ...... The Hon. NM Hutchins, MP Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development and Minister for Veterans ...... The Hon. SL Leane, MLC Minister for Water and Minister for Police and Emergency Services .... The Hon. LM Neville, MP Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, Minister for Trade, Minister for Business Precincts, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events, and Minister for Racing ...... The Hon. MP Pakula, MP Assistant Treasurer, Minister for Regulatory Reform, Minister for Government Services and Minister for Creative Industries ...... The Hon. DJ Pearson, MP Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, and Minister for Small Business ...... The Hon. JL Pulford, MLC Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Community Sport and Minister for Youth ...... The Hon. RL Spence, MP Minister for Workplace Safety and Minister for Early Childhood ...... The Hon. I Stitt, MLC Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Regional Development ...... The Hon. M Thomas, MP Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, Minister for Women and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs ...... The Hon. G Williams, MP Minister for Planning and Minister for Housing ...... The Hon. RW Wynne, MP Cabinet Secretary ...... Ms S Kilkenny, MP

OFFICE-HOLDERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY FIFTY-NINTH PARLIAMENT—FIRST SESSION

Speaker The Hon. CW BROOKS

Deputy Speaker Ms JM EDWARDS

Acting Speakers Ms Blandthorn, Mr J Bull, Mr Carbines, Ms Connolly, Ms Couzens, Ms Crugnale, Mr Dimopoulos, Mr Edbrooke, Ms Halfpenny, Ms Kilkenny, Mr McGuire, Ms Richards, Mr Richardson, Ms Settle, Ms Suleyman, Mr Taylor and Ms Ward

Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party and Premier The Hon. DM ANDREWS

Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party and Deputy Premier The Hon. JA MERLINO

Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition The Hon. MA O’BRIEN Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party The Hon. LG McLEISH

Leader of The Nationals and Deputy Leader of the Opposition The Hon. PL WALSH Deputy Leader of The Nationals Ms SM RYAN

Leader of the House Ms JM ALLAN

Manager of Opposition Business Mr KA WELLS

Heads of parliamentary departments Assembly: Clerk of the Legislative Assembly: Ms B Noonan Council: Clerk of the Parliaments and Clerk of the Legislative Council: Mr A Young Parliamentary Services: Secretary: Mr P Lochert

MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY FIFTY-NINTH PARLIAMENT—FIRST SESSION

Member District Party Member District Party Addison, Ms Juliana Wendouree ALP Maas, Mr Gary Narre Warren South ALP Allan, Ms Jacinta Marie Bendigo East ALP McCurdy, Mr Timothy Logan Ovens Valley Nats Andrews, Mr Daniel Michael Mulgrave ALP McGhie, Mr Stephen John Melton ALP Angus, Mr Neil Andrew Warwick Forest Hill LP McGuire, Mr Frank Broadmeadows ALP Battin, Mr Bradley William Gembrook LP McLeish, Ms Lucinda Gaye Eildon LP Blackwood, Mr Gary John Narracan LP Merlino, Mr James Anthony Monbulk ALP Blandthorn, Ms Elizabeth Anne Pascoe Vale ALP Morris, Mr David Charles Mornington LP Brayne, Mr Chris Nepean ALP Neville, Ms Lisa Mary Bellarine ALP Britnell, Ms Roma South-West Coast LP Newbury, Mr James Brighton LP Brooks, Mr Colin William Bundoora ALP Northe, Mr Russell John Morwell Ind Bull, Mr Joshua Michael Sunbury ALP O’Brien, Mr Daniel David Gippsland South Nats Bull, Mr Timothy Owen Gippsland East Nats O’Brien, Mr Michael Anthony Malvern LP Burgess, Mr Neale Ronald Hastings LP Pakula, Mr Martin Philip Keysborough ALP Carbines, Mr Anthony Richard Ivanhoe ALP Pallas, Mr Timothy Hugh Werribee ALP Carroll, Mr Benjamin Alan Niddrie ALP Pearson, Mr Daniel James Essendon ALP Cheeseman, Mr Darren Leicester South Barwon ALP Read, Dr Tim Brunswick Greens Connolly, Ms Sarah Tarneit ALP Richards, Ms Pauline Cranbourne ALP Couzens, Ms Christine Anne Geelong ALP Richardson, Mr Timothy Noel Mordialloc ALP Crugnale, Ms Jordan Alessandra Bass ALP Riordan, Mr Richard Vincent Polwarth LP Cupper, Ms Ali Mildura Ind Rowswell, Mr Brad Sandringham LP D’Ambrosio, Ms Liliana Mill Park ALP Ryan, Stephanie Maureen Euroa Nats Dimopoulos, Mr Stephen Oakleigh ALP Sandell, Ms Ellen Melbourne Greens Donnellan, Mr Luke Anthony Narre Warren North ALP Scott, Mr Robin David Preston ALP Edbrooke, Mr Paul Andrew Frankston ALP Settle, Ms Michaela Buninyong ALP Edwards, Ms Janice Maree Bendigo West ALP Sheed, Ms Suzanna Shepparton Ind Eren, Mr John Hamdi Lara ALP Smith, Mr Ryan Warrandyte LP Foley, Mr Martin Peter Albert Park ALP Smith, Mr Timothy Colin Kew LP Fowles, Mr Will Burwood ALP Southwick, Mr David James Caulfield LP Fregon, Mr Matt Mount Waverley ALP Spence, Ms Rosalind Louise Yuroke ALP Green, Ms Danielle Louise Yan Yean ALP Staikos, Mr Nicholas Bentleigh ALP Guy, Mr Matthew Jason Bulleen LP Staley, Ms Louise Eileen Ripon LP Halfpenny, Ms Bronwyn Thomastown ALP Suleyman, Ms Natalie St Albans ALP Hall, Ms Katie Footscray ALP Tak, Mr Meng Heang Clarinda ALP Halse, Mr Dustin Ringwood ALP Taylor, Mr Jackson Bayswater ALP Hamer, Mr Paul Box Hill ALP Theophanous, Ms Katerina Northcote ALP Hennessy, Ms Jill Altona ALP Thomas, Ms Mary-Anne Macedon ALP Hibbins, Mr Samuel Peter Prahran Greens Tilley, Mr William John Benambra LP Hodgett, Mr David John Croydon LP Vallence, Ms Bridget Evelyn LP Horne, Ms Melissa Margaret Williamstown ALP Wakeling, Mr Nicholas Ferntree Gully LP Hutchins, Ms Natalie Maree Sykes Sydenham ALP Walsh, Mr Peter Lindsay Murray Plains Nats Kairouz, Ms Marlene Kororoit ALP Ward, Ms Vicki Eltham ALP Kealy, Ms Emma Jayne Lowan Nats Wells, Mr Kimberley Arthur Rowville LP Kennedy, Mr John Ormond Hawthorn ALP Williams, Ms Gabrielle Dandenong ALP Kilkenny, Ms Sonya Carrum ALP Wynne, Mr Richard William Richmond ALP

PARTY ABBREVIATIONS ALP—Labor Party; Greens—The Greens; Ind—Independent; LP—Liberal Party; Nats—The Nationals.

Legislative Assembly committees

Economy and Infrastructure Standing Committee Ms Addison, Mr Blackwood, Ms Couzens, Mr Eren, Ms Ryan, Ms Theophanous and Mr Wakeling.

Environment and Planning Standing Committee Ms Connolly, Mr Fowles, Ms Green, Mr Hamer, Mr McCurdy, Mr Morris and Ms Vallence.

Legal and Social Issues Standing Committee Mr Battin, Ms Couzens, Ms Kealy, Ms Settle, Mr Southwick, Ms Suleyman and Mr Tak.

Privileges Committee Ms Allan, Mr Carroll, Mr Guy, Ms Hennessy, Mr McGuire, Mr Morris, Mr Pakula, Ms Ryan and Mr Wells.

Standing Orders Committee The Speaker, Ms Allan, Mr Cheeseman, Ms Edwards, Mr Fregon, Ms McLeish, Ms Sheed, Ms Staley and Mr Walsh.

Joint committees

Dispute Resolution Committee Assembly: Ms Allan, Ms Hennessy, Mr Merlino, Mr Pakula, Mr R Smith, Mr Walsh and Mr Wells. Council: Mr Bourman, Ms Crozier, Mr Davis, Ms Mikakos, Ms Symes and Ms Wooldridge.

Electoral Matters Committee Assembly: Mr Guy, Ms Hall and Dr Read. Council: Mr Erdogan, Mrs McArthur, Mr Meddick, Mr Melhem, Ms Lovell, Mr Quilty and Mr Tarlamis.

House Committee Assembly: The Speaker (ex officio), Mr T Bull, Ms Crugnale, Ms Edwards, Mr Fregon, Ms Sandell and Ms Staley. Council: The President (ex officio), Mr Bourman, Mr Davis, Mr Leane, Ms Lovell and Ms Stitt.

Integrity and Oversight Committee Assembly: Mr Halse, Ms Hennessy, Mr Rowswell, Mr Taylor and Mr Wells. Council: Mr Grimley and Ms Shing.

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee Assembly: Ms Blandthorn, Mr Hibbins, Mr Maas, Mr Newbury, Mr D O’Brien, Ms Richards, Mr Richardson and Mr Riordan. Council: Mr Limbrick and Ms Taylor.

Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee Assembly: Mr Burgess, Ms Connolly and Mr R Smith. Council: Mr Gepp, Ms Patten and Ms Watt.

CONTENTS

ANNOUNCEMENTS Acknowledgement of country ...... 1259 ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN His Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...... 1259 MEMBERS Shadow ministry ...... 1263 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE AND MINISTERS STATEMENTS Ambulance response times ...... 1263 Ministers statements: emissions reduction targets...... 1264 Ambulance response times ...... 1265 Ministers statements: emissions reduction targets...... 1266 Ambulance response times ...... 1267 Ministers statements: emissions reduction targets...... 1268 Business Support Fund ...... 1269 Ministers statements: emissions reduction targets...... 1270 Business Support Fund ...... 1270 Ministers statements: emissions reduction targets...... 1271 CONSTITUENCY QUESTIONS Ripon electorate ...... 1272 St Albans electorate ...... 1272 Lowan electorate ...... 1272 Tarneit electorate ...... 1273 Rowville electorate ...... 1273 Sunbury electorate ...... 1273 Brunswick electorate ...... 1273 Altona electorate ...... 1274 Forest Hill electorate ...... 1274 Ivanhoe electorate ...... 1274 BILLS Education and Training Reform Amendment (Protection of School Communities) Bill 2021 ...... 1275 Introduction and first reading ...... 1275 Gambling Regulation Amendment (Wagering and Betting Tax) Bill 2021 ...... 1275 Introduction and first reading ...... 1275 Child Wellbeing and Safety (Child Safe Standards Compliance and Enforcement) Amendment Bill 2021 ...... 1276 Introduction and first reading ...... 1276 BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Orders of the day ...... 1276 DOCUMENTS University of Divinity ...... 1276 Annual Report 2020 ...... 1276 COMMITTEES Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee ...... 1276 Alert Digest No. 5 ...... 1276 DOCUMENTS Documents ...... 1277 BILLS Industrial Relations Legislation Amendment Bill 2021 ...... 1279 Planning and Environment Amendment Bill 2021 ...... 1279 Spent Convictions Bill 2020 ...... 1279 Council’s agreement ...... 1279 Education and Training Reform Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020 ...... 1279 Justice Legislation Amendment (System Enhancements and Other Matters) Bill 2021 ...... 1279 Planning and Environment Amendment Bill 2021 ...... 1279 Spent Convictions Bill 2020 ...... 1279 Royal assent ...... 1279 Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021 ...... 1279 Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021 ...... 1279 Appropriation ...... 1279 COMMITTEES Public Accounts and Estimates Committee ...... 1280 Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee ...... 1280

Membership ...... 1280 Parliamentary committees ...... 1280 Membership ...... 1280 MOTIONS General business ...... 1280 BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Program ...... 1280 MEMBERS STATEMENTS State Emergency Service Chelsea Unit ...... 1288 Small business support ...... 1288 Maltese Cultural Association of Victoria ...... 1288 Ramadan iftar dinners ...... 1289 Indian COVID-19 crisis ...... 1289 Ambulance response times ...... 1289 Camping regulation ...... 1289 Frank Costa ...... 1289 Mornington community safe link ...... 1290 Veterans mental health ...... 1290 Montessori Early Education Centre ...... 1290 Emissions reduction targets ...... 1291 Indian COVID-19 crisis ...... 1291 Melton train station ...... 1291 Bridge Road Primary School ...... 1292 John Corboy ...... 1292 COVID-19 ...... 1292 Goulburn Murray Water charges ...... 1293 Cobram District Health ...... 1293 Anzac Day ...... 1293 Tania Curlis ...... 1294 Gayle Corr, OAM ...... 1294 Indian COVID-19 crisis ...... 1294 Anzac Day ...... 1295 Dulap Wilim Hub ...... 1295 Sunbury electorate infrastructure projects ...... 1295 McCormick Foods strike ...... 1295 BILLS Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021 ...... 1296 Second reading ...... 1296 BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Orders of the day ...... 1329 MOTIONS Budget papers 2020–21 ...... 1329 ADJOURNMENT Caulfield electorate crime ...... 1345 Emissions reduction targets ...... 1345 Gippsland East electorate bushfire recovery initiatives ...... 1346 Bayswater electorate kindergartens ...... 1346 Waste and recycling management ...... 1347 Northcote electorate funding ...... 1348 Surgical robot funding...... 1348 Federal education funding ...... 1349 Country Fire Authority Neerim South brigade ...... 1350 Mordialloc College ...... 1350 Responses ...... 1351

ANNOUNCEMENTS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1259

Tuesday, 4 May 2021

The SPEAKER (Hon. Colin Brooks) took the chair at 12.03 pm and read the prayer. Announcements ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The SPEAKER (12:03): We acknowledge the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land on which we are meeting. We pay our respects to them, their culture, their elders past, present and future, and elders from other communities who may be here today. Address to Her Majesty the Queen HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE PHILIP, DUKE OF EDINBURGH Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (12:04): I move, by leave:

That: (1) The following resolution be agreed to by this house: Her Majesty the Queen: We, the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, in Parliament assembled, express our sympathy with Your Majesty and members of the Royal Family, in your sorrow at the death of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh. We acknowledge and pay tribute to his many years of service, and his devoted support of his family. (2) That the following address to the Governor be agreed to by this house: Governor: We, the members of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, in Parliament assembled, respectfully request that you communicate the accompanying resolution to Her Majesty the Queen. On behalf of our government and the people of Victoria I rise to extend our condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and the entire royal family on the passing of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Before I begin I would like to acknowledge that when it comes to the Duke’s official title and stylings, it was a very long list. In the interests of keeping it simple, though, today I will stick to using ‘the Duke’ or ‘Prince Philip’, and I have a feeling he was not a big one for formalities anyway. In recent weeks there has been plenty that has been said and written about Prince Philip and I know that there are others who will do a greater justice to his life and to his legacy, but today I would like to reflect on his contribution and connection to our own state. The Duke visited Victoria many times, first as an 18-year-old with the Navy when he spent a week’s onshore leave at a sheep farm outside of Melbourne. He described it as the best holiday he had ever had. It must have made some kind of impression as he would later go on to arrange for his son Prince Charles to attend school in Geelong. Perhaps his most notable solo visit to Victoria, though, was in 1956 when he officially opened the Melbourne Olympic Games at the MCG. The eyes of the world were on us, but according to the press clippings of the day our eyes were firmly on him. When Melbourne first won the bid to host the games it was only by a one-vote margin. The distance was too far, the weather too hot—a multitude of reasons that made it all too hard. The Duke’s attendance, though, was a coup for this young, ambitious nation, and his interest in us and in our international debut was deep and genuine. He would go on to visit our nation more than 20 times, more than any other member of the royal family. It was perhaps that personal history that saw Australia become the first nation outside of Great Britain to join the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. It was an initiative born out of Prince Philip’s concern for the welfare of young people and the great outdoors and a deep belief in the importance of self-reliance. Since being introduced to Australia all those years ago, over three-quarters of a million young Australians have participated in the award, challenging themselves and contributing to their communities, and with 25 000 young people participating in the award each and every year, it shows

ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN 1260 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 no sign of slowing down in popularity. It also means the Duke’s legacy will continue in Victoria and Australia for many, many years to come. Perhaps his greatest contribution, though, was his dedicated service—service to his family, his country, our commonwealth and his Queen. He did so always in his own trademark fashion with humour, directness and an unwavering sense of duty. It bears reflection that they were married for 73 years, 68 of which the Queen has been the reigning monarch. It is a period of time that has fundamentally transformed our world: the rebuild of postwar Europe, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War— from the rise of television to YouTube and now a global pandemic. Queen Elizabeth has been a constant throughout, and if she was our constant, Philip was hers. He was described by the Queen as her ‘strength and stay’, a guide, a sounding-board, a friend. His contribution was more than just as a husband but as an adviser too, helping the monarchy come to terms with a rapidly changing society. Over their 73-year relationship he would become the longest serving consort in the history of the British monarchy. Because of his very public life it is easy to forget the very personal grief that will be felt by his family. First and foremost he was a beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. And so, on behalf of the government and the people of Victoria, I extend our heartfelt condolences to the Queen and her family. Our thoughts are with you all. Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:09): In speaking on this condolence motion I acknowledge the extraordinary service of His Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich and Knight of the Order of Australia, across his long and distinguished career in public life. The Duke of Edinburgh was born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, but his title did not automatically confer upon him the privilege and the protections ordinarily bestowed upon young princes. Instead he was forced to leave his native Greece for France aged just 18 months, evacuated by the British navy in a fruit box. The Prince’s family split up while he was young. While he ultimately went to the United Kingdom after time in France and Germany, his mother entered an asylum, his older sisters married and lived in Germany while his father settled in Monte Carlo. The young Prince was effectively an immigrant in the unfamiliar land of the United Kingdom. He had few family connections and no official sense of belonging through citizenship at that point. He attended Gordonstoun school in Scotland, a school founded by the Prince’s mentor, Dr Kurt Hahn, who fled Nazi Germany on account of his persecution as a Jew. And that was an experience that helped shape the young Prince’s world view. After leaving school, on the eve of World War II, he began what would be an illustrious career in the Royal Navy. The same spirit of public service was what would define his identity in the view of the British public and across the commonwealth for the next 80 years. While on active duty in the navy during the Second World War, the Prince was posted on several battleships, eventually climbing the ranks from midshipman to first lieutenant. Posted to the Royal Navy battleship Ramillies, he visited Australia in 1940 and even spent a week at a sheep station. His service took him to the Mediterranean theatre of war, and in 1944 he was posted to the Pacific. He was also on the HMS Whelp when it escorted the US flagship Missouri into Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945, where he witnessed the formal Japanese surrender. To think that somebody who has been such a part of our lives throughout the 20th and 21st centuries was there for such an auspicious day is extraordinary. While he was subsequently promoted to lieutenant commander and took command of his own ship, the HMS Magpie, and was subsequently promoted to commander, he always regarded himself as being a navy man. But arguably the Prince’s greatest act of public service started when he asked King George VI for Princess Elizabeth’s hand in marriage. In marrying the young princess, Philip had to abandon his title as Prince of Greece and Denmark, become a British citizen, convert from Greek Orthodoxy to Anglicanism and even adopt a new British surname, Mountbatten. As the king’s health declined in the early 1950s, the princess had to take on more royal duties, forcing the promising naval officer to give up his career in favour of a new lifelong vocation: consort to the woman we know as Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning British and Australian monarch.

ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1261

The royal couple’s tour in 1954 was one of many visits the Duke made to Victoria, and I know that even in this Parliament you can still find photographs today celebrating that auspicious event and copies of the menus from the dinners held here in this place in 1954. Between Essendon Airport and Government House, the 11-mile route had a million Victorians come out to see the new monarch and her husband. The couple was welcomed by the Governor, Sir Dallas Brooks, and then Premier John Cain, Sr. On this tour the Queen dedicated the new forecourt at the Shrine of Remembrance and lit the sacred flame with Prince Philip, who wore the badge of the RSL, of which he was an honorary member. The tour took the couple to all corners of our state, including Hamilton, Kooyong, St Kilda, Sale, Traralgon, Warragul, Heidelberg, Benalla, Shepparton, Tatura, Echuca, Rochester, Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong and Warburton. Such a broad itinerary on a royal tour is a reminder of the importance that the royal family placed on engaging with Victorians right across the length and breadth of this state. The Duke would return, both with the Queen and on his own, many times to Victoria over the ensuing decades—to officially open the 1956 Olympic Games and again in 1963 to open the then new Royal Children’s Hospital. He laid the foundation stone for the western stand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and was made an honorary life member of the Melbourne Cricket Club—which is a good way to avoid the 30-year waiting list. He was an avid lover of sport. It was one of many visits to the MCG, which is a regular pilgrimage that many of us can relate to as well. During a visit to Victoria in 1980 he accepted the position of commodore-in-chief of the Sandringham Yacht Club, a position he retained until his death. The Duke’s final visit to Victoria took place in 2011 for the opening by the Queen of the new Royal Children’s Hospital. I had the pleasure of being in Government House for the reception that afternoon after the official opening, and the room was divided into two groups: Her Majesty the Queen spoke with people on one side of the room, and I was on the other side. I was standing next to Michael Burn, who at the time was the chairman of the Victoria Racing Club, and he had his little Melbourne Cup lapel pin on. And I could see His Royal Highness coming down the line sort of perhaps looking—‘Is there anyone I can speak to here, anyone who looks like they might be a bit of fun?’. And his eyes lit laser like on the badge of Michael Burn, standing right next to me. And he said, ‘What’s that?’. And Michael said, ‘Your Royal Highness, I’m the chairman of the Victoria Racing Club. We host the Melbourne Cup at Flemington’. I will not go into the details because I am sure that would be a breach of protocol, but the Duke indicated he had been to Flemington for the races many, many times and had had a great, great time. He was a big supporter of sport in general, loved his horseracing and was a huge supporter of the Victoria Racing Club. I suspect the member for Gippsland East and the Minister for Racing would both have enjoyed a quiet ale with His Royal Highness. Can I also acknowledge the great contribution the Duke made to public life through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. It is dedicated to helping young people aged 14 to 24 improve themselves, and to qualify one must meet requirements related to physical recreation, skill development, volunteering and adventurous exploration. To date some 775 000 young people in Australia have participated in the award. The Duke was also a great conservationist. He was a co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund. He was president of the Zoological Society of London. He also served as the inspiration for the eventual formation of the Australian Conservation Foundation back in 1964 and served as president of the ACF between 1971 and 1976. The Duke retired from official royal duties aged 96 in 2017, by which time he had completed 22 219 solo engagements since 1952. The breadth and the depth of the man and his commitment to public service is evident across those engagements. He imbued many occasions with joviality, as his duty called him to do. Those who met and spent time with him commented on his good humour. I think the Prince may well have earned honorary Australian citizenship when on being offered a selection of the finest Italian wines by the Italian Prime Minister at a dinner in Rome in 2000 he simply replied, ‘Get me a beer. I don’t care what kind it is. Just get me a beer’.

ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN 1262 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

His interest in and commitment to science, engineering and the pursuit of knowledge was also well known and best summed up by his quote, ‘Everything not invented by God is invented by engineers’. The Duke’s ability to combine his duty to his nation, his love of his family, his good spirits, his keen endeavour and his courage serves as an inspiration. On behalf of the Liberal Party and as Leader of the Opposition I place on record my deep condolences to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to all the members of the royal family, to the Duke’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, to the British people and to the citizens of all commonwealth nations. May the Prince rest in peace after a life well lived, a life of service above self. Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (12:18): I join the condolence motion on the life of Prince Philip as well. Prince Philip lived a long and fulfilling life selflessly devoted to his Queen and to our commonwealth. Born almost immediately into conflict, as has already been spoken about, his father Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark was banished from Greece, forcing the family to flee to Paris when Philip was very, very young. His education started in Paris, then moved to schooling in the UK, later followed by schooling in Germany and Scotland, as has also been already mentioned. Prince Philip joined the navy shortly before the outbreak of World War II and he became a midshipman in 1940 on HMS Ramillies. This brought Philip to Australian shores for the very first time, spending two months on that ship and stopping off in Fremantle, Sydney and Melbourne. Throughout the war Prince Philip served in the Royal Navy, protecting convoys of Australian forces in the Indian Ocean and moving on to being second in command of the HMS Wallace during the invasion of Sicily. Philip would eventually end his naval career in 1951 as a lieutenant commander. Upon returning to the UK in 1946 Philip and the then Princess Elizabeth made preparations to marry. They had been exchanging letters since 1939. Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were married in 1947. An interesting fact of that wedding day was that Prince Philip actually gave up smoking on that day. Apparently King George VI was a chain-smoker and the then Princess Elizabeth despised the habit, so the Prince made the sacrifice to give up smoking as a wedding present to his bride. I think for heavy smokers that is a big challenge, so obviously it was something—he loved the Queen dearly to give up smoking. When King George VI died in 1952, obviously Princess Elizabeth became our Queen Elizabeth II, and the Prince then spent the rest of his life supporting the Queen in her role leading our commonwealth, a role that he was dedicated to on behalf of everyone. One of the most striking details about the Prince’s life was his many philanthropic activities and the organisations he championed, including the World Wildlife Fund, Book Aid International, BirdLife Australia and the British Heart Foundation, just to name a few. In all, Prince Philip was involved in approximately 992 charities, certainly a life of service to philanthropic associations. In addition, the Prince paid particular patronage to the youth development initiatives, perhaps the most widely known being, as the Acting Premier mentioned, his sponsorship of the Duke of Edinburgh award, which recognises youth achievement, and there are many in Australia who have benefited from that particular award. Apart from the thousands of engagements the Prince spent accompanying the Queen, he completed 22 219 solo engagements, made 5493 speeches and did 637 solo overseas trips on behalf of the royal family. There is no question that Prince Philip had a deep affinity for Australia, and Australians for him. He was known by those close to him as down to earth and never afraid to speak his mind, sometimes to his own peril with the British tabloids, but that is something that Australians could relate to, which is why they embraced him so warmly. Even in my electorate—he visited that a number of times—there are people who remember the visit of the Queen and Prince Philip when they went to Echuca, and as the Leader of the Opposition said in that case, thousands of people lined the streets in Echuca. In 1970 the Queen and Prince Philip again returned to northern Victoria and actually visited the Pioneer Settlement there, and there are still photos and memorabilia at the Pioneer Settlement of the visit of the Queen at that particular time and people who remember that time very dearly. The royal family have been very generous with their visits to Australia and to Victoria, and I had the opportunity with the then Premier, Ted Baillieu, to have Prince William visit northern Victoria after the 2011 floods. I

MEMBERS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1263 think the visits by the royal family, particularly in times of crisis, just give those communities such a huge boost, and we thank them for their generosity at all the times they have visited Victoria. Prince Philip was the Queen’s chief advocate, often intervening in and resolving family disputes, which all families do have, and they have had their fair share. But he was there to make sure the family was supportive of the royal lineage, and they made sure they governed both England and the commonwealth with great distinction. On behalf of a grateful nation we celebrate the life of a truly global man, a wonderful husband and a wonderful father, grandfather and great-grandfather who touched so many lives. On behalf The Nationals, on behalf of all Victorians, I extend my condolences to the Queen and the royal family at this time of mourning of the Prince’s passing. God save our gracious Queen, and may she long reign over us. Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (12:23): I join in this condolence motion, and on behalf of the Shepparton electorate I extend my deepest sympathy and condolences to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and to her family on the death of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, on 9 April 2021 at 99 years of age. Prince Philip’s role was one of duty and service. He was patron of more than 50 organisations and visited Australia on 22 occasions during some of our most important milestones. He claimed a deep affinity for this country, Australia. He also visited many other commonwealth nations, fulfilling his role as a loyal servant to the Queen. Like so many spouses, Prince Philip was said to have put his own career and dreams on hold to fulfil his life of duty to the royal family and in particular to the Queen. Again we extend our condolences to Her Majesty in her time of grief and loss. Motion agreed to in silence, members showing unanimous agreement by standing in their places. Members SHADOW MINISTRY Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:26): I am pleased to inform the house of changes to the shadow ministry. The member for Sandringham is now the Shadow Minister for Energy and Renewables, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Shadow Minister for Bay Protection and Shadow Minister for Fishing and Boating. The member for Kew is now the Shadow Minister for Emergency Services, Shadow Minister for Resources, Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations and Workplace Safety, Shadow Minister for Roads (Metropolitan), Road Safety and the TAC as well as Shadow Minister for Manufacturing and Industry. The member for Rowville is now the Shadow Minister for Public Sector Integrity as well as Shadow Minister for Counter Terrorism and Manager of Opposition Business. The member for Mornington is now the Shadow Minister for Local Government, Shadow Minister for Housing and Shadow Minister for Ageing. The member for Caulfield is now the Shadow Minister for Youth Justice, Shadow Minister for Crime Prevention, Shadow Minister for Police and Shadow Minister for Corrections. The member for Evelyn is now the Shadow Minister for Equality, Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change and Shadow Minister for Youth Affairs. In the Legislative Council I can announce that Dr Matt Bach, MP, is Shadow Minister for Early Childhood, Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Training and Skills, Shadow Minister for Child Protection as well as secretary to the shadow cabinet, and the Honourable David Davis, MP, adds planning and heritage and the creative industries portfolios to his responsibilities. Questions without notice and ministers statements AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIMES Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:27): My question is to the Minister for Ambulance Services. Christina Lackmann died waiting for an ambulance. Her devastated brother Broder said:

This is the world we live in now. My sister was 32. She called 000 and was left there for nearly seven hours. No it’s not a third world country, not even an outer suburb. This is Caulfield.

QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE AND MINISTERS STATEMENTS 1264 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

A 32-year-old woman died waiting for an ambulance in Victoria in 2021. Minister, what have you got to say to this woman’s devastated family? Why did Christina die waiting for an ambulance that took 7 hours to turn up? The SPEAKER: I just remind the Leader of the Opposition to direct all questions through the Chair. Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (12:28): Can I thank the honourable member for his question. I join with Ambulance Victoria—and I am sure all health professionals do every day put their shoulders to the wheel in keeping our world-class health system functioning—in expressing deepest sorrow and condolences to the Lackmann family. In regard to the particular public comments the honourable member has referred to, the Victorian government together with Ambulance Victoria is working hard to address the unprecedented levels of demand that our ambulance services are facing, indeed our entire hospital system is facing, on the back of the global pandemic—demands that have seen demands for emergency services right across the country expand to an unprecedented level. With regard to the specifics of the case that the honourable member points to, I have spoken with the leadership of Ambulance Victoria and indeed with the heads of Safer Care Victoria, and I have asked them to go through an urgent process of reviewing what happened in this particular tragic set of circumstances and to ensure that that tragic set of circumstances is never repeated. I would just caution all honourable members that there is a family in grief today that is this day burying a family member. So I would urge all members to respect that family’s right to grieve in private. In due course I look forward to meeting with them and discussing their tragedy. Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:30): I again quote Christina’s brother Broder. We are talking about what the grieving family members are saying, Minister:

I feel like she’s been negligently treated … It makes me feel a deep sense of injustice … How has the minister allowed such an appalling situation as the death of Christina Lackmann, waiting 7 hours for an ambulance, to occur on his watch? Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (12:30): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his supplementary question. In regard to the substance of the honourable member’s question, I would refer to my earlier comments. All Victorians and particularly Ambulance Victoria and the Victorian government express deep sorrow and deep regret in terms of how this tragedy has occurred. That is why in 2021 we have asked that this unacceptable set of circumstances be independently investigated, and the Victorian government undertakes to make sure that this tragic set of circumstances not be allowed to be repeated. We grieve with that family. We know that there is a tragedy playing out right now, and we offer our deep condolences and our commitment to work with all of our ambulance and health professionals to make sure that this tragic set of circumstances is not repeated. MINISTERS STATEMENTS: EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (12:32): I rise today to update the house on Victoria’s climate change strategy and emissions reduction targets and the jobs that they will create. I was joined last Sunday at Rosanna Golf Links Primary School by the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and the member for Ivanhoe to announce the goal of reducing emissions by up to 50 per cent by 2030. This will keep Victoria on track to meet our net zero emissions by 2050, all the while seizing the opportunity of climate action, advancing technology, investing in new industries and creating thousands of Victorian jobs. Our government has long promoted the benefits of taking action on climate change, and we are positioning Victoria as a leader—a leader nationally and on the global stage. We are leading by example, guaranteeing that all government operations, from schools and hospitals to police and fire stations across the state, will be powered with 100 per cent renewable energy electricity by 2025—an

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Australian first. This builds on a strong foundation of more than $2 billion committed by our government in the last year alone to support climate action. Tens of thousands of new jobs—over 24 000 jobs—will be created through our 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030. Four thousand jobs will be supported by our household energy efficiency package. Almost 4000 new jobs will be created through our 10-year plan to reform the waste and recycling sector, and 8000 jobs will be created by our zero-emissions vehicles initiatives by 2030. The science is clear: climate change is happening. The only real choice is how we respond: taking action, or ignoring the science over there. The benefits will not just be a healthy and clearer environment but future generations and tens of thousands of jobs. AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIMES Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:34): My question is to the Minister for Ambulance Services. Acting Ambulance Victoria CEO Mick Stephenson said in response to questions about Christina Lackmann’s death:

We’re frequently in a position where we’re holding ambulance cases because we don’t have anything immediately available to dispatch. Minister, how many other cases has Ambulance Victoria failed to respond to because of this government’s mismanagement? Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (12:34): Can I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition for his question, and as he has cited the acting CEO, can I take this opportunity to thank all of our hardworking paramedics and our healthcare professionals for the extraordinary services that they have put in over the course of the pandemic, and particularly since the pandemic’s second wave lockdown. Indeed the other impacts of the pandemic right across the country have seen unprecedented demand across all aspects of our healthcare system, not just in Victoria but right across Australia. Indeed in response to that unprecedented demand the Victorian government has allocated unprecedented further resources. In regard to the most recent budget, we have now passed over $1 billion worth of increased support to our ambulance services. That means that we have seen more than $14.8 million of targeted— Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the question was specifically: how many other cases has Ambulance Victoria failed to respond to because of the government’s mismanagement? The minister can talk about resources. The question was: how many cases have failed to be responded to? I ask you to bring him back to answering that. The SPEAKER: Order! The minister is being relevant to the question that has been asked. Mr FOLEY: Thank you, honourable Speaker. We have seen some further $14.8 million injected into our ambulance services to respond to a whole range of growth demands that our system has faced, whether that be 16 additional peak period units across particularly our regional and rural facilities, whether it has been a whole range of increases of on-call to 24-hour shifts— Mr Walsh: On a point of order, Speaker, if the minister does not know the answer to the question, we are happy to take it on notice, so he actually reports back to the house on how many cases Ambulance Victoria has failed to respond to. The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of The Nationals knows that is not an appropriate way to make a point of order. Mr FOLEY: Whether it has been the increase from on-call to 24-hour service branches, whether it has been converting, particularly in our regions, single paramedic branches to further double paramedic supports, whether it has been the 12 triage practitioners included in our communications and dispatch area, whether it has included the 77 graduate paramedics into our regional and rural support—that is because we have seen, quarter on quarter, an extra 10 000 call-outs to our paramedic services in terms

QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE AND MINISTERS STATEMENTS 1266 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 of one quarter alone. In addition to that, we have seen some 50 000 extra attendances, including those 10 000—an additional 40 000 into our emergency departments right across the state. Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the acting CEO of Ambulance Victoria has admitted that ambulances are not there when Victorians need them. We are asking the minister to tell us how often this happens. The SPEAKER: Order! I understand the point of order, but the minister is being relevant to the question that has been asked. Mr FOLEY: In terms of the unprecedented levels of demand that we are seeing right across the commonwealth, on the back of Victorians responding in different ways to the challenges that 2020 has brought—whether it be increased levels of acuity, the wider range of demands on services, particularly in mental health, alcohol and other drugs and family violence presentations—we are responding with unprecedented resources to unprecedented demands. Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:38): I repeat the words of Broder Lackmann, who said regarding the death of his 32-year-old sister, Christina:

… No it’s not a third world country, not even an outer suburb. This is Caulfield … Grieving relatives are now comparing Victoria’s ambulance service to a Third World country. Will the minister now apologise for the failures of ambulance services on his watch that have tragically cost lives? Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (12:39): I would actually think that is exactly what I did in the honourable member’s first question. I apologised. I joined with the Ambulance Victoria leadership to a family that is this very day, this very moment, burying a loved one, and I would urge all honourable members to treat that family with the respect that the circumstances deserve. In regard to the Lackmann family, all Victorians—and I know all of our healthcare professionals, particularly our Ambulance Victoria professionals—know that this is a tragically unacceptable set of circumstances, which is why we have engaged Safer Care Victoria to undertake an urgent review as to what are the circumstances at hand and to make sure that what happened in this case is not repeated. I take this opportunity to again express my deepest condolences to the family. MINISTERS STATEMENTS: EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Ms D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park—Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Minister for Solar Homes) (12:40): I am absolutely delighted to update the house on Victoria’s nation-leading interim emissions reduction targets and strategy. The Victorian Labor government has led the country on climate change since day one, and I was pleased to continue this legacy on Sunday, together with the Acting Premier and the member for Ivanhoe, announcing that we will cut emissions by 28 to 33 per cent by 2025 and by 45 to 50 per cent by 2030. These targets will cut emissions more than any other state in Australia and will deliver one of the most rapid rates of decarbonisation in this country. Through our strategy across energy, waste, transport, agriculture, industrial processes, land and the government sectors our targets stand shoulder to shoulder with President Biden’s commitment, are greater than those of Japan, Germany and Canada and of course dwarf the woeful national target, which is a source of great international shame for this country. These targets have been welcomed across the community. University of Melbourne associate professor in climate science Dr Malte Meinshausen said Victoria’s target is a remarkable step forward even on the global scale. Tim Piper, head of the Australian Industry Group, said:

Victoria’s medium-term emissions targets are clearly ambitious, but also show a sober regard for the challenges in further accelerating an already rapid rate of change.

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The renewables sector also welcomed the announcement, with the Smart Energy Council saying Victoria is leading the nation in tackling climate change and embracing renewables. And of course Greg Combet, the chair of our independent expert panel, said our targets will make Victoria an international leader and provide confidence for investors and the community. We know that tackling climate change is vital for our state’s economic future, creating tens of thousands of jobs, driving billions of dollars of investment right across our state. The children at Rosanna Golf Links Primary School know that this is about their future, every single part of it. AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIMES Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:42): My question is again to the Minister for Ambulance Services. Victorians are dying waiting for an ambulance. The Australian Medical Association’s (AMA) Victorian emergency medicine specialist, Sarah Whitelaw, has described the system as being at its worst point in 30 years. Yet the minister has claimed:

Our health system has proven to be well-prepared, adaptable and resilient … Who should Victorians believe—the Australian Medical Association and grieving relatives of Victorians who have died waiting for an ambulance or the minister? Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (12:43): Can I thank the honourable member for his question. In regard to the views of the AMA, we work very closely with the AMA and particularly with the college of emergency medicine around the really complicated issues that we have seen with the unprecedented levels of demand in our healthcare system, particularly in our emergency departments and the interface they have with Ambulance Victoria on the back of the 2020 global pandemic, which is still playing out and seeing unprecedented levels of demand. But in regard to the honourable member’s specific question, the honourable member, as I have already indicated in earlier answers, has seen this government spend over $1 billion in our ambulance services to bring unprecedented levels of further investment into these services—more ambulances, more services, more nurses, more doctors than ever before—and that takes investment from a government committed to public services and public hospitals. It needs money. There are some who want to cut public services and have announced policies that are predicated on cutting public services. My question to those people is: which ambulance services are you closing and which paramedics are you sacking? Which doctors are you sacking? Members interjecting. The SPEAKER: Order! I could not hear the tail end of that answer because of the screaming on both sides of the chamber. I ask members to not shout across the chamber during an answer to a question. Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, it is not the minister’s place to question anyone else. It is his place to answer questions, and I ask you to bring him back to answering the question. The SPEAKER: Order! Mr M O’Brien: The AMA says it is the worst it has been in 30 years— The SPEAKER: Order! I ask the Leader of the Opposition— Mr M O’Brien: Answer that! The SPEAKER: I heard the question. I do ask the minister to come back to answering the question. Mr FOLEY: I thank the honourable member for his question, noting your guidance, Speaker.

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As I was indicating, we work very closely with the AMA, we work very closely with the nurses and we work very closely with our health service professionals. We do not wage war on public servants. We do not wage war on paramedics. We work with them to make sure that we respond to unprecedented levels of demand and unprecedented levels of stress in our healthcare services, and that is why we bring to them unprecedented levels of support and services. We are right across this nation facing these issues as a commonwealth. And that is why I was very pleased to learn, at Friday’s health ministers meeting, of just the same kinds of pressures and strategies which all states and jurisdictions are facing and which all states and jurisdictions are committed to dealing with in these unprecedented challenges and times. That is why this government spends more on hospitals, emergency services, ambulances, nurses, doctors and new facilities to deal with the unprecedented levels of demand. If there is more that needs to be done, we will work cooperatively and in a collegiate manner with all of our healthcare professionals to get over this crisis—and we will not be cutting services, we will not be closing services and we will not be sacking paramedics. The SPEAKER: Order! We had got through a fair bit of this question time without this warning, but I do warn members: if they keep shouting across the chamber, without warning they will be removed from the chamber. Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:47): The Australian Medical Association have said Victoria’s system is at its worst point in 30 years. Ambulance Victoria has admitted it cannot send ambulances to people who need them. Grieving relatives have had to bury loved ones who died unnecessarily, waiting for an ambulance. Will the minister just admit that the government’s ambulance service is in crisis? Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (12:47): Can I thank the honourable member for his question. What I will concede is that we have the best paramedics in the country and the best ambulance service in the country dealing with unprecedented levels of demand that no system has seen in its history. I will concede that there is always more that a Labor government can do to work with its workforce and its public health professionals. I will concede that a Labor government will not cut public health services, I will concede that a Labor government will not sack paramedics and I will concede that we will work with the AMA, with the college of emergency medicine and with all of our healthcare professionals to make sure that we put in place a system that delivers even better quality services to get over the unprecedented levels of demand that our system is currently facing in the same sorts of circumstances that all other jurisdictions around the commonwealth are facing. MINISTERS STATEMENTS: EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Ms THOMAS (Macedon—Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Regional Development) (12:48): I am proud to rise today to update the house on how the Andrews Labor government is supporting farmers to take real action on climate change and showing that it is absolutely possible to include agriculture in emissions reduction targets. Victoria’s agricultural sector is the nation’s largest exporter of food and fibre products and a vital part of the state’s economy. The sector’s future prosperity is closely linked to the success of global efforts to cut emissions. Our government is investing almost $20 million to accelerate agricultural emissions reduction actions and set the foundations to achieve our long-term vision for the sector’s role in a net zero emissions economy. This includes delivering groundbreaking Victorian research into promising methane emissions reduction technologies and a pilot to support up to 250 farmers and growers understand and reduce emissions on their farms, and providing tailored tools and products to support farmers to make up-to-date and data-driven decisions about managing climate risk. This will ensure our farmers continue to be productive and profitable. I am confident in agriculture’s ability to take on this challenge because time and time again I meet with successful and passionate farmers committed to innovation, research, adaptation and being part of a low-carbon future. Farmers are ready to lead

QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE AND MINISTERS STATEMENTS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1269 the way in reducing emissions, and I call on The Nationals opposite and those in Canberra to back them in and to support this work. The Ellinbank SmartFarm in Gippsland is already on track to become the world’s first carbon-neutral dairy farm, setting a demonstration standard for Victoria’s dairy sector. I know we have got farmers like Mark Wootton of Jigsaw Farms near Hamilton, who has already achieved net zero carbon farming. Our new investment is on top of the $75 million we have already delivered. I am proud of this government’s strong action on climate change, and I am proud to be supporting our farmers to be leaders in low-emissions agriculture. BUSINESS SUPPORT FUND Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:51): My question is to the Acting Premier. The Ombudsman found that the government had no effective complaint-handling procedure when dealing with COVID support fund applications, denying critical funding to thousands of small businesses. Of the 12 000 applications that were denied by the government, how many of these businesses have now been forced to close their doors permanently because they did not receive the support your government promised them? Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (12:51): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question on the support that was provided to businesses right across Victoria dealing with the impact of the pandemic—in total around $2.6 billion of support to 134 000 businesses, ensuring that they can stay open and deal with the impact of the pandemic on their business. In regard to the Leader of the Opposition’s question around the Ombudsman’s report, the recommendations have been accepted. The recommendations have been accepted by the relevant department; some 12 000 applications are being assessed, and all those businesses have been contacted. So we understand the initial support and engagement with those businesses— Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, perhaps just to clarify the Acting Premier’s response, the question was: how many of those 12 000 applications that the Ombudsman found were unjustly rejected have permanently closed their doors? Now, the Acting Premier flagged—he said that all 12 000 businesses had been contacted. Is he saying that all 12 000 of those businesses are still open? The SPEAKER: Order! That may be a good supplementary question, but it is not a point of order. Mr MERLINO: The Ombudsman recommended that those 12 000 applications be reassessed, and that is exactly what is happening. Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:53): The Ombudsman revealed that when the Business Support Fund program was initiated the call centre was staffed by five employees. How did the government ever expect that just five people in a call centre would be able to answer the queries of hundreds of thousands of small businesses in crisis as a result of this government’s lockdowns? Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (12:53): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his supplementary question. The issue is what we did in response to the pandemic: $13 billion to help communities and business, $6 billion in direct economic support for businesses and workers, $2.6 billion and 134 000 businesses supported. Now, we do need to do the reassessment of those 12 000, as per the Ombudsman’s report, and that is exactly what we are doing. We have supported businesses right throughout this pandemic and supported communities as well. Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the Acting Premier has not turned his answer at all to the question of how he can set up a call centre with just five people in it for hundreds and thousands of small businesses. He has got 17 seconds. I invite him to come back to actually answering that question. Members interjecting.

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The SPEAKER: Order! The member for South-West Coast can leave the chamber for the period of 1 hour. Member for South-West Coast withdrew from chamber. The SPEAKER: A point of order was raised. I am trying to rule on the point of order. The Acting Premier is being relevant to the question that has been asked. The Acting Premier has concluded his answer. MINISTERS STATEMENTS: EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Mr PEARSON (Essendon—Assistant Treasurer, Minister for Regulatory Reform, Minister for Government Services, Minister for Creative Industries) (12:55): I rise to advise on how the Andrews Labor government is acting to lead the response to climate change from within our own government operations. It should not be news to anyone in this place that our climate is changing, and we must act now. As Minister for Government Services I am delighted at the release of the whole-of-Victorian- government emissions reduction pledge. As my colleagues have outlined, this pledge will see all Victorian government operations powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025. These achievements do not happen overnight; they are built on our commitment to tackling climate change from the moment we were sworn in in 2014. We are adding 400 clean and green zero-emission vehicles to the government fleet by 2023. This will break new ground in both second-hand and new electric vehicle markets, encouraging manufacturers to offer more efficient and environmentally sustainable models for Victorians. Our government is forging the path ahead for emissions reduction, and we continue to environmentally enhance the buildings we own and lease across the state. Greener government buildings has been a successful program since its introduction over 10 years ago by the Brumby Labor government. Over this time and with a $280 million investment, the program has made over $200 million of energy efficiency improvements to over 400 government buildings. It has cut government greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 5.5 per cent and is saving over $25 million every year through reduced energy and maintenance expenditure. An additional $59.9 million investment in the greener government buildings program will further reduce emissions and lead to lower energy costs for taxpayers, and from 2021 every new Victorian government building will have sustainable design fully embedded at a 5-star energy performance rating and ramping up to the highest attainable 6-star rating in 2025. Jobs and growth in Victoria’s green building industry are firmly on the agenda, just the way it should be. BUSINESS SUPPORT FUND Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:57): My question is to the Acting Premier. In her scathing report into the Business Support Fund the Ombudsman identified many applications from businesses that were desperate for support but were denied this due to administrative errors. One restaurant entered its business name as Curry Hut instead of Curry Hut Group, yet while all other details of the business were entered correctly, the application was rejected. The minister for industry support recently brushed off his department’s repeated failures by saying ‘it’s not unreasonable that there be a few errors’. Does the Acting Premier agree that 12 000 unjust rejections of desperate small businesses are just ‘a few errors’? Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (12:57): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question and refer to my previous answer in terms of the Ombudsman’s report—accepting all of the recommendations, reassessing some 12 000. We are also grateful to the Ombudsman for acknowledging the constructive way in which the department engaged with her office and for noting that a large number of complaints were resolved prior to the tabling of the report. And I just go back to the point I made earlier: support for businesses who were desperately in need—$2.6 billion, 134 000 businesses were supported. So yes, there are improvements that can be made, and we have—

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Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the Acting Premier is debating the question. My question was not about the 134 000 businesses that he says were helped; my question was about the 12 000 who were entitled to help and did not get it. I ask you to bring him back to answering that question. The SPEAKER: The Acting Premier is being relevant to the question that has been asked. Mr MERLINO: They are getting it by virtue of the government accepting the recommendations and reassessing those 12 000 applications. We have been engaging with all of those businesses to ensure that those applications are assessed fairly. Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (12:59): Eight hundred Victorians died as a consequence of government failures over hotel quarantine, yet nobody around the cabinet table would take responsibility. Twelve thousand small businesses were denied support because of flawed ministerial oversight of this government program. Given the monumental failure of this program to treat those 12 000 businesses fairly or correctly, why is it that yet again no minister will take responsibility for desperate small businesses denied the help they needed when they needed it? Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (13:00): That is a bizarre supplementary question. The minister and the department have accepted all of the recommendations of the Ombudsman’s report. The 12 000 applications are being reassessed. The question is just bizarre. Mr M O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the Acting Premier is debating the question. The question is: why wasn’t that support there when those businesses needed it? I can read the question again. It was: why wasn’t that support available when they needed it—not when they closed their doors? The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition knows it is not an opportunity to repeat a question. The Acting Premier has been relevant to the question that has been asked. Mr MERLINO: That was not the question. And fair dinkum, he has had six weeks to prepare and a second chance at his leadership and that is the best he can do. Well, my suggestion to the Leader of the Opposition is: ask the minister a question tomorrow. Mr Walsh: On a point of order, Speaker, the minister is debating the question. I would ask you to actually bring him back to answering the question as to why no-one in the Andrews government, why no minister, will actually ever take responsibility for the failures of their administration. That is what the question is about, and I would ask you to bring the Acting Premier back to answering that question. The SPEAKER: Order! The Acting Premier has concluded his answer. MINISTERS STATEMENTS: EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Mr CARROLL (Niddrie—Minister for Public Transport, Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (13:01): I rise to update the house on the action the Andrews Labor government is taking to deliver cleaner transport and jobs for the future. Transport is the second-largest and fastest growing sector for carbon emissions, contributing to about a quarter of our state’s emissions. On Sunday we had the proud pleasure to release our transport sector pledge, which is an ambitious plan to reach zero emissions by 2050. Our package of $100 million in clean transport measures is leading Australia. It will include, for the very first time across Australia, a zero-emissions vehicle subsidy scheme, which has been welcomed today by the Electric Vehicle Council of Victoria. We will also lead by example with our government fleet. We will introduce 400 zero-emission vehicles to our government fleet to lead by example, as governments should. We will also partner with our taxi and commercial passenger vehicle industries to make sure everyday Victorians get the opportunity to see what this clean energy transportation means when they make consumer choices. And just yesterday I was very pleased to join the member for Box Hill at Box Hill station to announce our $20 million investment and expression-of-interest process to begin the process of transitioning our bus fleet to zero emissions by 2025. Every new bus purchased by our government will be a zero-

CONSTITUENCY QUESTIONS 1272 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 emissions vehicle. I am also very pleased to say our record investment in active transport as well is making very important inroads across our Big Build initiative. These measures lead our nation and set Victoria up for a zero-emissions future. They deliver cheaper transport as well as futureproof jobs for the future. We know our manufacturing industry is so important for attracting the country’s best and brightest, and under our zero-emissions transport, our decarbonisation of the transport sector, we are putting Victoria on the path to a clean future and a renewable transport future as well. Ms Vallence: On a point of order, Speaker, in relation to constituency question 5600 to the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery asking the minister for a full breakdown of the $150 million experience economy survival package and the $465 million Victorian tourism recovery package: what is the full breakdown of those two values and how much has been paid to Yarra Valley businesses? I would appreciate a response. It was asked 75 days ago. The SPEAKER: I thank the member for raising that point of order. We will follow that matter up. Constituency questions RIPON ELECTORATE Ms STALEY (Ripon) (13:04): (5821) My constituency question is to the Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers, and it refers to the NDIS worker screening checks. My question is: why is it that the government is unable to properly administer this scheme? The background to this is that under the NDIS, even though that is a federal scheme, the state does the NDIS worker screening checks for staff providing NDIS services. I have had reported to me that the online process for checks is unresponsive, physical applications are taking over a month to process, people are unable to speak directly with the support staff in the Department of Justice and Community Safety worker-screening unit and new staff cannot be hired until applications are complete. As a result, there is a very large backlog. This needs to be addressed. ST ALBANS ELECTORATE Ms SULEYMAN (St Albans) (13:05): (5822) My constituency question is for the Minister for Mental Health. I ask the minister: how will my community in St Albans benefit from the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System? I know too well that in the community in St Albans many are struggling with the effects of mental health issues in their day-to-day lives. We know firsthand the struggles in relation to the shortage of mental health beds, in particular at Sunshine Hospital and throughout the west. The Andrews Labor government has committed to implementing every recommendation from the royal commission into mental health, and also there was recently a welcome $868 million investment from the last budget to provide better access to treatment, care and support. It is so important and critical that my residents in St Albans but also in the western region have access to quality and important mental health services. LOWAN ELECTORATE Ms KEALY (Lowan) (13:06): (5823) My question is to the Minister for Health. Why are Victorian cross-border community members stuck with a border permit system that requires them to reapply every two weeks, when South Australian cross-border residents have safely and successfully used an enduring permit and essential traveller system, which has been extended on multiple occasions? Victorian cross-border community members are absolutely fed up with being locked away from their workplace, their health care, their family and friends, their local shops and even their sporting and community clubs, which all happen to just be over the border. Having to apply for a new border permit every two weeks is an unnecessarily burdensome process for permanent residents in the cross-border regions. These Victorians deserve to know why Victorian cross-border permits are restricted to just two weeks when their neighbours in South Australia have not had to reapply for cross-border permits or an ET for almost a year. I ask the Minister for Health to respond urgently.

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TARNEIT ELECTORATE Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (13:07): (5824) My question is for the Minister for Training and Skills and Minister for Higher Education in the other place. Minister, one of the most important achievements of our government in your portfolio has been the rollout of our free TAFE courses to equip young Victorians with the skills and experience they need to work in priority sectors. These courses are in priority industries, which means that once they finish the course they are almost guaranteed to find work. For so many young people, university does not do it for them. That is why our TAFE programs are so important, and with our government continuing to deliver for our community in the west, the opportunities are endless. So my question for the minister is this: how many TAFE students in Wyndham, which includes my community, have benefited from our government’s investment into these courses? ROWVILLE ELECTORATE Mr WELLS (Rowville) (13:08): (5825) My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, why have you allowed the ambulance services to be so starved of resources that we are now facing alarming delays in ambulance call-outs? Last week my office received a concerning call from a father who told us that after his daughter went to a local doctor in Rowville with chest pains the doctor was so concerned that he called an ambulance, at around 8.30 pm on Friday, 23 April. After waiting for half an hour the doctor called again, as he was becoming increasingly concerned. An ambulance finally arrived at the doctor’s at 10.00 pm, 90 minutes after the first call. This is not good enough. This is one of the many stories coming out of my electorate regarding the constant delays with ambulance services. After the tragic situation that occurred recently, with a woman passing away after waiting 7 hours for an ambulance, something must be done urgently to fix this problem before lives are lost. SUNBURY ELECTORATE Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (13:09): (5826) My question is for the Minister for Public Transport. Minister, what is the latest information on funding available to upgrade bus interchanges, in particular the Sunbury bus interchange? The Sunbury bus interchange at Sunbury station is a very well used and extremely busy service within my local community. Over quite some time I have had the opportunity to speak with local residents and hear about their concerns in relation to the bus interchange, and I certainly support a call for an upgrade. As this government gets on and delivers a massive multideck car park within my community and removes the Sunbury level crossing as well as upgrading station platforms and installing high-capacity signals—thanks to, of course, the massive Melbourne Metro project—the bus interchange is certainly one area we can do more in, and I ask the minister again for the latest information on options for funding for this important local project within my community. BRUNSWICK ELECTORATE Dr READ (Brunswick) (13:10): (5827) My constituency question is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. Moreland Road needs a safe pedestrian crossing between Coonans and Melville roads. This busy road runs between multiple schools, childcare centres and kinders as well as Hall’s Taekwondo and Dunstan Reserve, home to the Brunswick City Soccer Club. Community members living in this area have been calling for a safe crossing on Moreland Road for over 10 years. The nearest crossing is a 300-metre walk up a hill to Melville Road, so instead too many people risk the dash across Moreland Road. Cars are racing to get onto CityLink, and during peak times stop-start traffic makes it difficult to cross. Over the years residents have repeatedly been told this project is now on the department’s desk, so will the government commit to now finally funding and building the pedestrian crossing on Moreland Road between Coonans and Melville roads?

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ALTONA ELECTORATE Ms HENNESSY (Altona) (13:11): (5828) My constituency question is for the attention of the Minister for Transport Infrastructure. The second phase of the level crossing removal works at Aircraft station began earlier this year to construct an underpass beneath the tracks linking the north and the south sides of the rail line, and that is important because it will provide a safe connection to the station’s single island platform, replacing the current pedestrian crossing where passengers have to wait for a train before they can safely pass. While these works are underway I understand there will be a temporary pedestrian overpass and a shuttle bus service provided. Whilst that will inevitably be very inconvenient for some people, it is about trying to ensure that there is safe pedestrian access delivered in the longer term. Can the minister please advise my constituents of clear, targeted communications about the impacts to their planned travel and the advice that will be provided on accessing alternative arrangements, especially in regard to shuttle bus services, which will be an important option for those who will not be able to use the temporary overpass due to mobility issues? FOREST HILL ELECTORATE Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (13:12): (5829) My question is for the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. Minister, my question is: will the government guarantee that the Forest Hill police station will remain open for 24 hours per day? I have had several constituents contact me recently regarding the fact that they attended the Forest Hill police station outside of normal business hours and, to their surprise, found that this intended 24/7 station was closed to the public. The family of one of these constituents has experienced three motor vehicle break-ins at their premises this year, one in February and two in March. Following one of these thefts one of the residents needed to have a statutory declaration signed relating to the theft of a TAFE card from his vehicle. Despite living a very short distance from the Forest Hill police station, he was directed to complete his statutory declaration at either the Box Hill or Ringwood police station. The police stationed at Forest Hill are very hardworking and do a fantastic job under the command of Superintendent Wayne Viney. The fact that due to the incompetence of this government not enough police have been available to fully staff the Forest Hill police station, and indeed many other intended 24-hour police stations, is inexcusable. I understand that the Forest Hill police station has reopened for 24/7 service this week, which will be very welcome news to these constituents and indeed all residents of the Forest Hill district. IVANHOE ELECTORATE Mr CARBINES (Ivanhoe) (13:13): (5830) My constituency question is to the Minister for Housing. What is the latest information on construction time lines for the redevelopment of the Tarakan Street public housing estate, part of the big build project? I have been very pleased to lead the community consultation for the West Heidelberg projects in both the Bell Bardia and Tarakan estates. We have been able to achieve some significant redevelopments across public housing in West Heidelberg—and not only that but the redevelopment of the brand new school at Olympic Village Primary School for $6 million in the local community. I know with those further redevelopments and investments from our government in the West Heidelberg community we are really keen to see further works to provide new and modern housing for families across West Heidelberg. The Tarakan Street estate has a very significant history in our community. There are great opportunities for local families to move into that estate in modern and environmentally friendly homes. We are really looking forward to further work and communication with our community about that development.

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Bills EDUCATION AND TRAINING REFORM AMENDMENT (PROTECTION OF SCHOOL COMMUNITIES) BILL 2021 Introduction and first reading Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (13:14): I move:

That I introduce a bill for an act to amend the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to provide for orders prohibiting or regulating certain conduct on school premises and school-related places and for other purposes. Motion agreed to. Mr WELLS (Rowville) (13:15): I ask the minister for a brief explanation. Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (13:15): The bill seeks to amend the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to establish a new school community safety order scheme that applies to all Victorian schools—so government, Catholic, independent. The proposed scheme empowers appropriate but limited decision-makers—principals and others—to issue community safety orders to protect the school staff, the students and other members of the school community from parents, carers or other adults who engage in violent, abusive, threatening behaviour on school grounds or other places where school activities occur. The scheme allows those decision- makers to make immediate school community safety orders, lasting up to 14 days, or ongoing school community safety orders, lasting up to 12 months. The bill provides for civil penalties for the enforcement of those orders and makes other miscellaneous amendments. Read first time. Ordered to be read second time tomorrow. GAMBLING REGULATION AMENDMENT (WAGERING AND BETTING TAX) BILL 2021 Introduction and first reading Mr PALLAS (Werribee—Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Industrial Relations) (13:16): I move:

That I introduce a bill for an act to amend the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 to increase the rate of wagering and betting tax and for other purposes. Motion agreed to. Mr WELLS (Rowville) (13:16): I ask the Treasurer to give a brief explanation. Mr PALLAS (Werribee—Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Industrial Relations) (13:16): I thank the member for his interest. This bill will give effect to an increase to the rate of wagering and betting tax from 8 per cent to 10 per cent from 1 July 2021 to enable an increase in the share of net wagering revenue provided to the Victorian racing industry, from 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent of net wagering revenue, in order to better support the industry and has been developed in consultation and agreement with the opposition. Read first time. Ordered to be read second time tomorrow.

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CHILD WELLBEING AND SAFETY (CHILD SAFE STANDARDS COMPLIANCE AND ENFORCEMENT) AMENDMENT BILL 2021 Introduction and first reading Mr DONNELLAN (Narre Warren North—Minister for Child Protection, Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers) (13:17): I move:

That I introduce a bill for an act to amend the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 and the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to provide for compliance with the child safe standards and for other purposes. Motion agreed to. Mr WELLS (Rowville) (13:18): I ask the minister for a brief explanation please. Mr DONNELLAN (Narre Warren North—Minister for Child Protection, Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers) (13:18): The purpose of the bill is to make a range of enforcement powers and statutory functions for regulators of child safe standards in the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 and in the Education and Training Reform Act 2006, providing for regulators of those standards to collect, disclose, use and report information in those acts, very much bringing the standards into line with the national standards, as recommended in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Read first time. Ordered to be read second time tomorrow. Business of the house ORDERS OF THE DAY The SPEAKER (13:19): I wish to advise members that general business, orders of the day 2 to 4, will be removed from the notice paper unless members wishing their matter to remain advise the Clerk in writing before 5.00 pm today. Documents UNIVERSITY OF DIVINITY Annual Report 2020 Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop) (13:19): I table, by leave, the University of Divinity report 2020. Committees SCRUTINY OF ACTS AND REGULATIONS COMMITTEE Alert Digest No. 5 Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (13:19): I have the honour to present to the house a report from the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, being Alert Digest No. 5 of 2021, on the following bills and subordinate legislation:

Non-Emergency Patient Transport Amendment Bill 2021 Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Cross-boundary Greenhouse Gas Titles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021 Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021 Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021 Order in Council—Revision of Animal Welfare Codes of Practice together with appendices.

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Ordered to be published. Documents DOCUMENTS Incorporated list as follows: DOCUMENTS TABLED UNDER ACTS OF PARLIAMENT—The Clerk tabled the following documents under Acts of Parliament: Bendigo Kangan Institute—Report 2020 Box Hill Institute—Report 2020 Chisholm Institute—Report 2020 Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978—Order under s 17B granting a licence over University Square Reserve Deakin University—Report 2020 Federation University Australia—Report 2020 GOTEC Ltd (The Gordon)—Report 2020 Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE (GOTAFE)—Report 2020 Holmesglen Institute—Report 2020 Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission: Annual Plan 2020–21 Operation Meroo: An investigation into alleged corrupt conduct by a former CEO of a Victorian regional health service—Ordered to be published La Trobe University—Report 2020 Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1986—Certificate under s 7 Melbourne Polytechnic—Report 2020 Monash University—Report 2020 Ombudsman—Investigation into the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions’ administration of the Business Support Fund—Ordered to be published Planning and Environment Act 1987—Notices of approval of amendments to the following Planning Schemes: Ballarat—C228 Brimbank—C200 Part 2 Casey—C230, C279 Central Goldfields—C36 Glen Eira—C155 Golden Plains—C87 Greater Dandenong—C203 Hepburn—C85 Hume—C248, C254 Latrobe—C124 Melbourne—C305, C378 Melton—C190, C227 Mildura—C108, C109 Moreland—C203, C210 Port Phillip—C161 Part 1, C177, C186, C200 Victoria Planning Provisions—VC185, VC194, VC197 Wellington—C111

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Public Accounts and Estimates Committee—Report on the 2020–21 Budget Estimates together with transcripts of evidence—Report ordered to be published Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008: Report to Parliament on the Extension of the Declaration of a State of Emergency—10th Report (in lieu of report previously tabled on Wednesday 3 February 2021) Report to Parliament on the Extension of the Declaration of a State of Emergency—13th Report Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)—Report 2020 South West Institute of TAFE—Report 2020 Statutory Rules under the following Acts: Children, Youth and Families Act 2005—SR 22 Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005—SR 30 City of Melbourne Act 2001—SR 34 Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987—SR 32 County Court Act 1958—SR 28 COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Act 2020—SR 19 Dangerous Goods Act 1985—SR 27 Disability Service Safeguards Act 2018—SR 40 Education and Training Reform Act 2006—SRs 24, 25 Electronic Transactions (Victoria) Act 2000—SR 38 Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1958—SR 39 First Home Owner Grant Act 2000—SR 31 Local Government Act 2020—SRs 33, 34 Magistrates’ Court Act 1989—SRs 23, 41 Powers of Attorney Act 2014—SR 37 Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008—SR 15 Public Interest Monitor Act 2011—SR 29 Residential Tenancies Act 1997—SRs 20, 21 Road Safety Act 1986—SRs 35, 36 Service Victoria Act 2018—SR 26 Supreme Court Act 1986—SRs 16, 17 Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 1998—SR 18 Subordinate Legislation Act 1994: Documents under s 15 in relation to Statutory Rules 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41 Documents under s 16B in relation to: Financial Management Act 1994—Order to declare a class of entities as specified entities Road Safety Act 1986—Notice under s 96A—Suspension of regulation 13(1)(a) of the Road Safety (Drivers) Regulations 2019 Sunraysia Institute of TAFE (SuniTAFE)—Report 2020 Swinburne University of Technology—Report 2020 TAFE Gippsland—Report 2020 University of Melbourne—Report 2020 Victoria University—Report 2020 William Angliss Institute of TAFE—Report 2020 Wodonga Institute of TAFE—Report 2020.

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DOCUMENTS TABLED UNDER STANDING ORDERS—Under the standing orders the Clerk tabled the following documents: Government response to the Economy and Infrastructure Standing Committee’s Report on the Inquiry into sustainable employment for disadvantaged jobseekers Government response to the Legal and Social Issues Standing Committee’s Report on the Inquiry into early childhood engagement of culturally and linguistically diverse communities Proclamations fixing operative dates: Education and Training Reform Amendment (Regulation of Student Accommodation) Act 2020— Remaining provisions—18 June 2021 (Gazette S152, 30 March 2021) Environment Protection Amendment Act 2018—Remaining provisions—1 July 2021 (Gazette S124, 16 March 2021) Parks and Crown Land Legislation Amendment Act 2020—Remaining provisions of Parts 3, 6 and 7 and Part 10—1 May 2021 (Gazette S189, 27 April 2021) Police and Emergency Legislation Amendment Act 2020—Sections 3 and 4—7 April 2021 (Gazette S152, 30 March 2021) Transport Legislation Amendment Act 2020—Sections 5, 7, 32(1), 32(3), 32(4), 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 49 and 50—1 April 2021 (Gazette S152, 30 March 2021). Bills INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2021 PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT AMENDMENT BILL 2021 SPENT CONVICTIONS BILL 2020 Council’s agreement The DEPUTY SPEAKER (13:22): I have received messages from the Legislative Council agreeing to the following bills without amendment: the Industrial Relations Legislation Amendment Bill 2021, the Planning and Environment Amendment Bill 2021 and the Spent Convictions Bill 2020. EDUCATION AND TRAINING REFORM AMENDMENT (MISCELLANEOUS) BILL 2020 JUSTICE LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (SYSTEM ENHANCEMENTS AND OTHER MATTERS) BILL 2021 PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT AMENDMENT BILL 2021 SPENT CONVICTIONS BILL 2020 Royal assent The DEPUTY SPEAKER (13:22): I inform the house that the Governor has given royal assent to the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020, the Justice Legislation Amendment (System Enhancements and Other Matters) Bill 2021, the Planning and Environment Amendment Bill 2021 and the Spent Convictions Bill 2020. TRANSPORT LEGISLATION MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS BILL 2021 ZERO AND LOW EMISSION VEHICLE DISTANCE-BASED CHARGE BILL 2021 Appropriation The DEPUTY SPEAKER (13:23): I have also received messages from the Governor recommending appropriations for the purposes of the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021 and the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021.

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Committees PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND ESTIMATES COMMITTEE SCRUTINY OF ACTS AND REGULATIONS COMMITTEE Membership The DEPUTY SPEAKER (13:23): I have received the resignation of Ms Vallence from the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee effective from today. I have received the resignation of Mrs McArthur from the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee effective from yesterday. PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES Membership Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop) (13:23): I move, by leave:

That: (1) Mr Newbury be made a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. (2) Mr Rowswell be discharged from the Economy and Infrastructure Standing Committee and Mr Wakeling be a member in his place. (3) Mr Tim Smith, the member for Kew, be discharged from the Environment and Planning Standing Committee and Ms Vallence be a member in his place. Motion agreed to. Motions GENERAL BUSINESS Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (13:24): I desire to move, by leave:

That this house: (1) notes that non-government business is an essential part of ensuring a responsible and representative Parliament in any Westminster system, and currently Victoria’s Legislative Assembly is the only lower house in Australia that does not provide meaningful opportunities for non-government members to move motions or progress bills; (2) resolves to replace matters of public importance and grievance debates with 2 hours of non- government business every sitting Wednesday; (3) refers the required amendments to standing orders to the Standing Orders Committee to report to the house by 31 July 2021; and (4) adopts required changes to the standing orders by 5 August 2021. Leave refused. Business of the house PROGRAM Mr Southwick: I wish to raise a point of order, Deputy Speaker, in relation to the government business program and particularly the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. Back on 26 November I rose to raise an adjournment matter regarding the electric vehicle tax. The member for Bendigo East, the Leader of the House, rose in her place and said that the matter had already been covered in the Appropriation (2020–2021) Bill 2020 and therefore my adjournment matter was not relevant because I voted in favour of that bill. I would therefore ask that the record be fixed because clearly we have not voted on the bill that is before the house today. What the Leader of the Government did, in fact, misled the Parliament because ultimately we had to wait until this bill was

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1281 before the Parliament. I just wanted to clarify the record because it is really important: it was not covered back in November, it has now been brought before the house today. Ms Allan: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, two points: one, you cannot have a point of order on the government business program when that program is yet to be established, and indeed I was about to move the motion to establish the government business program for the week so it was a little bit anticipatory from the member for Caulfield; and secondly, what he was asking for in his point of order does not conform with the rules of the house, and I ask you to rule it out of order. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order. The matter raised by the member for Caulfield was a point of debate, so we will move on now to the government business program. Mr Southwick: Further to the point of order, Deputy Speaker, I ask that Hansard be corrected as to what it initially had. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Caulfield may speak to the Speaker in relation to changing the record, but it cannot be raised by a point of order. Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop) (13:27): I move:

That, under standing order 94(2), the orders of the day, government business, relating to the following bills be considered and completed by 5.00 pm on Thursday, 6 May 2021: Non-Emergency Patient Transport Amendment Bill 2021 Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021 Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-Based Charge Bill 2021. In presenting the government business program to the house for this week it is clear that some members have been looking forward to this moment for quite a few weeks to join the debate on the government business program and then contribute to the debate on bills in the Parliament. I am pleased to see that our government business program excites such energy from those opposite, because I tell you what, the bills on this program for this week excite great energy amongst the government because we have three important bills that are all about ongoing reform and improvement of vital services, policy settings that are important for the state and regulatory reform. I look forward to those three bills being debated over the course of the week. I do note that the Liberal-National coalition has sought that the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021 be considered in detail and that the Greens political party have asked for the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021 to also be considered in detail. Given we have three big bills on the program this week and, I should note, the budget take-note motion is still to be concluded, we will see on Thursday if time is available for the consideration in detail of those two bills. But I can understand why those opposite would want to talk in greater detail about them, because these are important details of reform, as I have indicated. I would also like to note for completeness sake that this is the first sitting week in the best part of 14 months that we have gone back to sitting in the usual way as a chamber, with all members being present in the chamber, all the business being undertaken on the floor of the house and without our very much not enjoyed perspex screens around us. I am really pleased that, through the great efforts of the parliamentary staff in making sure that this building was kept COVID safe and operating to a COVID-safe plan, we are at this point after what has been quite a long period of time. I would also for completeness sake acknowledge the new frontbench line-up from those opposite. We are all getting used to the new shadow portfolios held by those opposite as we work our way through government business. My attention of course is drawn to the naughty corner up the back there where they have all been grouped together—there you are. You are not grumpy old men yet; you are not quite the two grumpy old men from the Muppets yet up there. It is good to see you plotting away up there in the back corner.

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Mr Wells: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, we do not mind a certain amount of good humour, but I am not sure where the Leader of the House is going in regard to the government business program, so I would ask you to bring her back to the government business program. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Leader of the House has strayed somewhat from the government business program. I will call her back to the government business program. Ms ALLAN: That is true. As I said at the outset, there is a lot to be excited about this week: Parliament is back, we are back in our normal sitting arrangements—in our natural habitat, so to say— the Manager of Opposition Business is sitting there ready to oppose the government business program— Mr Wells interjected. Ms ALLAN: I have ESP, mate. It has just come to me. I reckon I can read your mind. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Through the Chair. Ms ALLAN: And the government once again has a really, really strong legislative agenda to put before the Parliament that is implementing policies and commitments that we have made to the Victorian community. On that basis I commend the motion to the house. Mr WELLS (Rowville) (13:31): Can I start off by saying that the Leader of the House is actually correct because we will be opposing the government business program. We will be opposing, so we will be doing a— Ms Allan: See? Mr WELLS: Yes, very good. Can I, before I start on the debate, actually thank the clerks, the chamber staff and the cleaners, who did such a brilliant job during the very difficult time over the last 12 months when we had reduced numbers. We had barriers up here on the main table and we had those breaks during the parliamentary sitting, which I understand will continue during this week. I think there will be a break so the cleaners can come in and do a clean just to make sure that we are doubly safe. But on behalf of the opposition we are extremely grateful for the way it was all managed in very, very difficult circumstances. It is great to be back, and it is also great to be back to a full house, that we can all come in and that we do not have to keep working out that roster and working through the MPs that wish to speak and then making sure they are in on time. It is also great, as I said, with the barriers being removed, that we can actually get back to Parliament as quickly as possible in the way that we would normally want to operate. The bills this week: we have got the take-note motion on the budget papers. It is going to be interesting to see whether the budget papers take-note motion will still continue after the next budget, which is being brought down on 20 May. So either it gets wrapped up this week or we will have to see what actually happens. If the take-note motion for the budget papers is still in the house when the actual 2021–22 budget comes down, it will be interesting to see whether that actually takes place—that we actually have two different budget papers motions being debated. This week we are doing the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021—so another tax being brought in by the Andrews government; the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021; and the Non-Emergency Patient Transport Amendment Bill 2021. The reason we are opposing the government business program is because we have requested that we go into the consideration-in-detail stage for the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021. It is important that we are able to go into the consideration-in-detail stage to be able to ask the relevant minister certain questions about certain clauses, because there are some parts of that bill that we are not satisfied with in the way it is written and we want to be able to go through it in greater detail with the minister so we can be satisfied that this bill is in the interests of all bus owners and bus operators.

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So we will be focusing very much on that aspect of it. With that, as I said at the very start, the opposition will be opposing the government business program. Mr CARBINES (Ivanhoe) (13:34): I am pleased to support the government business program as outlined by the Leader of the House, in particular around the opportunity to debate and consider the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. I know that the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change was in my electorate at Ivanhoe library just last week, a library I opened just recently with Banyule council. The background to that, of course, is around some of the charging stations in my electorate and the infrastructure that we need right across Victoria, which needs to be invested in and needs to be paid for, and also the social equity arguments—that we make sure that those who use our roads contribute to their maintenance and their upkeep. I think also it is a reflection on the fact that multinational companies will always press and push hard to ensure that there are no added charges or added costs to their product. They want to sell as much of their product as they can for as little as they can for the maximum profit for themselves. There is an argument to be made also that some of their arguments perhaps have a very significant base in self-interest. The long- term prospects here about where manufacturing is going show very clearly that those certainly in my community will not be driving electric vehicles in the short term, and we need to also know that as we transition there are socially fair and equitable charges that apply for all those who use our roads and maintain their upkeep as taxpayers. On the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021, I think of Mee’s bus depot in my electorate and the great work that they do, as do so many not only bus drivers but also people who work in depots and across our bus lines in Victoria and certainly in my electorate. I look forward to debate and discussion with regard to those miscellaneous amendments. I give a shout-out to Dysons and to Mee’s in my electorate and those with Transdev who work their way through my electorate, thankfully, due to great initiatives such as the SmartBus initiative, one of the former Brumby government’s initiatives that is seeing great patronage across the Ivanhoe electorate. Maybe not everyone is going from Mordialloc through to Altona, but they are certainly going to many places in between. With the Non-Emergency Patient Transport Amendment Bill 2021, there are very significant further changes that are being made there. The reforms that relate to the support of non-emergency patient transport are really significant, not only in regional Victoria but across our suburbs and communities. I am really looking forward to, again, some very significant pieces of legislation that will benefit Victorians. I did also want to add to the Manager of Opposition Business’s contribution and that of the Leader of the House in relation to the work of our parliamentary officers and the Presiding Officers and their leadership with regard to the support that has been provided to not only keep this place safe but provide for everyone in the Victorian community—through the barriers coming down in this place and the opportunity for everybody’s elected representatives to be in the chamber at the one time—a further vote of confidence and a further demonstration of the discipline and the commitment of all Victorians to keep our constituents safe, to keep other Victorians safe. What is reflected in the Parliament is what is able to happen right across Victoria—that capacity for more and more Victorians to be together, both in their homes and also out in the community. That is a demonstration of the success of everyone’s discipline and hard work—everyone’s commitment to one another and their willingness to support the Parliament and the government and the health officials and experts in what we have all needed to do to keep the community safe. That work will continue, but I think it is fair and reasonable and just that we also acknowledge the significant constraints that have been placed on many people who work in this place and those who seek to engage with us in our workplace—the stakeholders in our community. I note that there has also been opportunity sought by those opposite to discuss several of these bills in detail, and the government does have a track record of providing those opportunities to those opposite to discuss bills in detail. I remember very clearly several of the bills for which we have provided that opportunity to those opposite, and we look forward to their contributions in relation to the legislation.

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I know that many, many members on this side of the house will be advocating and putting their position forward on all of these bills before the house. Of course that may affect what time is available later in the week, and we will see how things roll. I am very pleased not only to be back in the chamber at a time of my choosing during the sitting week but also to be with colleagues. I think it is a very strong demonstration of the policies, the commitment and the work not only of the government and the Parliament but the people of Victoria to keep us safe and be able to demonstrate not only in this place but across the community that more and more Victorians are able to be together. Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (13:39): We do not often speak on the guillotine, but today the Greens will be opposing the government business program. We are opposing it because we have requested that the government go into consideration in detail, or third-reading debate, on the government’s plan to put a tax on electric car drivers, and we have not received any guarantee that the government will do this. I really do not think it is too much to ask for the government to take controversial bills through the full debate process. In fact bills are all supposed to go through this process, where MPs can ask questions and the community can fully understand what the bill will mean if it becomes law. The government promised at the 2014 election to take bills through this process, but since I have been in Parliament—more than six years now—the Labor government has done this less than a handful of times. That is an abuse of the democratic process—to push bills through without any questions in this chamber—and on something as important as putting a new tax on electric cars it really should not be too big an ask to allow MPs to do their job and ask questions about it. This tax on people who drive electric cars is a bad idea. We are one of the only places in the world introducing a tax only on electric cars in this way. At a time when we are facing a climate emergency we should be making it easier and more affordable for people to do the right thing and switch to no- emissions transport on both public and private transport, but instead we are making it more expensive. Now, we know why the Labor government is doing this. It is a way to introduce a tax that will be controlled by the state government, not the federal government, so the states are not as reliant on the feds for revenue. And we get that. It is something that is simply too good for the states to resist. But I will tell you why it is a bad idea. It is a bad idea because transport already accounts— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Can I remind the member for Melbourne that the government business program is not an opportunity to go into the detail of the bill. Ms SANDELL: Thank you. I acknowledge that other speakers have also canvassed issues that are on the government business program. This is the most significant bill that is on the government business program, and many members do use their speech on the government business program to go into why they are opposing the government business program, which is to do with the bill. We have requested consideration in detail on this bill, and I am just explaining why we have requested consideration in detail on this bill. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, you have, but I also remind you not to go into detail on the bill. Ms SANDELL: Sure. The reason we have requested consideration in detail on this bill is because we know that the Victorian community has serious questions about this bill, and it has questions about this bill because we are in a climate emergency and the Victorian community knows that we need to be doing everything possible in our power to get these emissions down—public transport, active transport, diesel and petrol cars. Making them more expensive does send the wrong signal. The Victorian community wants us to ask questions. They want us to ask questions in consideration in detail like: why is it that Australia is so far behind in the world—0.7 per cent of cars sold are electric— when in the rest of the world it is six times that? People in Victoria want us to ask questions in this place about this bill because they want to know why Victoria is so far behind places like the US, where President Biden is moving the entire government fleet—650 000 cars—to electric cars. They want to know why Victoria is not doing what the UK is doing, which is in fact banning petrol and diesel cars

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1285 by 2030, and why we are so far behind the rest of Europe, where there are countries that are offering $10 000 or $15 000 in subsidies. This government is so far behind that we are saying that in 10 years 50 per cent of our cars should still be petrol and diesel—in 10 years. That does not make sense to Victorians. Victorians are telling us that they want the government to incentivise low-emissions transport, and they want their members of Parliament to get up and ask these very important questions. If you are putting a per-kilometre charge on electric vehicles, it has a disproportionate impact on people who do not have access to public transport—people in the suburbs or regional areas who have to drive to school, to work or to the shops. These people are trying to reduce their impact on the climate and their bills, but this tax slaps a greater burden on them. But we will not have a chance to ask those kinds of questions in this place as MPs representing people who want to do the right thing by the climate and representing people who are trying to reduce their bills. We will not have the opportunity to ask those questions, because this bill is not going into consideration in detail. For that reason the Greens will be opposing the guillotine at this time. Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (13:44): It is great to be back—full house. The government is looking again to stretch out the vision, the plan and the strategy to bring back Victoria, and you can see it here, the symbolism. The partitions have been removed; we are coming back. The economy is coming back again, and that is because of the previous budget—and that will be debated in the take- note motion that is part of this government business program. I can inform the Manager of Opposition Business, after consulting with the manager of government business, that this will be the final take- note on last year’s budget—and what a budget, a $49 billion investment record! It sets up our chance for recovery, and we have got to remember that only a matter of months ago we were on a journey without maps. We were trying to find our way. The world was in a trial-and-error experiment about how to contain the coronavirus. There were seminal investments that were made, and one that has been underreported in my view is the value of the $2 billion invested in the Breakthrough Victoria Fund. This is outstanding, and this is an opportunity for us to get medical research, agricultural research and a whole range of different investments that will prove to be of incredible value; create a pipeline of jobs of more than 15 700; drive investments in research and innovation; drive growth in our key industries such as health, life sciences, agrifood, advanced manufacturing, clean energy and the digital economy—and it will have a multiplier effect over time. So this is the big picture that this government invested in. This was the critical need that had to be addressed. It is to build into the long-term future, and it really goes to what we are doing on climate change. We have heard the minister say, ‘Here is the leadership nationally; it’s out of Victoria’. We are being acclaimed from an international perspective on all of that, and we are looking at emissions. The Greens political party raised the issue about where we are with President Biden. Well, President Biden is doing it on a global scale, and we are doing the leadership right here in Victoria for Australia. So they are the settings, that is where we are, that is what we have the chance to do and I would be delighted to make my contribution to the take-note motion when that comes up. A couple of other things were seminal as well, which we should be given the option to actually have a look at. The Victorian government also put on the table an investment of $155 million for an Australian infectious disease institute to be housed at the Doherty Institute—our Nobel prize winner— and this was an opportunity for the Australian government to actually respond as well. Remember, we are going to have two budgets back to back again, so we look forward to hopefully the Liberal members actually speaking to their colleagues federally to say, ‘Here is your opportunity to do this’, because we have world-class medical research right here. It is our way back through the pandemic, it is our way to get the Australian economy off life support and there is a great chance to get an mRNA centre right in Broadmeadows, next to CSL as well. These are the big picture themes that are in this government business program. We have heard the manager of government business speak about the other bills to outline them in detail, but I think it is really important to stay focused on what counts: to get the vision, the plan, the investments right to build the future, get us out of the pandemic and fast-track us as best we can through recession.

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Advanced manufacturing now is a national unity ticket. We know where we can do this. We know what needs to be done. The Victorian government made great seminal investments in that last budget, and I look forward to the debate on this, to wrap it up and to make sure that we do have a proposition from the Greens political party to see the value of this as well. This is really where we are going, so we should bring this together. We should actually see this as the way you build the future. This is what Victoria is about. This is why we matter. I commend the bills and the government business program to the house. Mr Hibbins: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, on relevance not just to the government business program but to what we are actually debating this week, I think he has gone a few steps beyond relevance into a few different stratospheres well past the relevant standards there, so I would ask you to bring the member back to speaking on the government business program and being relevant to the actual motion that we are speaking on. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Broadmeadows’s time has expired. Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (13:49): I am almost tempted to move an extension of time for the member for Broadmeadows because I am not sure that he quite got it all out. But isn’t it great to be back? It is great to be back here in the chamber. It has been five weeks, but it feels like it has been the summer break and we are all back at school. There are people with different haircuts, there are people in different seats, there are people— Mr Wells interjected. Mr D O’BRIEN: Yes, yes, the member for Rowville. There are people who have maybe put on a bit or lost a bit, and it is wonderful. I join with the member for Rowville—and I am not reflecting in any way on the personal attributes of the member for Rowville—in acknowledging that we are all back in our actual seats. And it is nice to actually be back in here for question time and be back sitting here next to the Greens, my good friends. Mr Hibbins interjected. Mr D O’BRIEN: There is a little bit of tongue in cheek in that, for those reading Hansard, but it is good that we are actually back to normal in this chamber. And I join with the member for Rowville in acknowledging the work of the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker, the clerks and all those in the Parliament, including the cleaners, who kept us safe through that period that was not particularly pleasant, I must say, as far as the running of this chamber goes. Mr Battin interjected. Mr D O’BRIEN: Do I have to talk on that? It is good that we have got a government business program. There are actually some controversial bills this week, as the member for Melbourne has just indicated in her contribution. We will be talking about the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance- based Charge Bill 2021, and I have been talking to some of my colleagues. I think they are planning to keep a tally of how many times members of the government refer to the word ‘tax’ when they speak on this bill this week. Mr Pakula: How many times will you say ‘cuts’? Mr D O’BRIEN: I do not think we will need to take our shoes and socks off to keep tally of how many times the government refers to tax. But rest assured, Minister, we will make up for it and make sure that people know. We have got the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021 and the Non-Emergency Patient Transport Amendment Bill 2021 as well. As the member for Rowville has indicated, we would like to go into consideration in detail on the Transport Legislation Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2021, and the Greens would like to do so on the low-emission vehicle tax bill.

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And once again we get the tantalising offer from the Leader of the House, ‘We’ll see’. I have said this here in this place before, but it is a bit like how my 10-year-old son recently asked if he could get a copy of a new game called Phogs!—any people with kids will know about it; it is about a dog with two heads going around—and I said, ‘We’ll see’. Anyway, my little boy was really good and so we ultimately did get it. But my 10-year-old daughter the other week, as the cows next door started having calves, asked if we could get a cow. And we straight out said ‘No’; we did not say, ‘We’ll see’. I just wish that the Leader of the House would sometimes just be honest. Do not bother with this ‘We’ll see’ in the forlorn hope that we might be sucked in and actually agree to the government business program. Just say, ‘Look, we really see Parliament as just a floor show for the government members. We don’t really have any interest in giving the opposition or non-government members of any type the opportunity to say something and to interrogate legislation and ask questions’. Just come out and say no. The ‘We’ll see’ we will take with the grain of salt that we usually do. I think the Leader of the House should be more like my wife and me with the cow and just say no rather than do what we did with the computer game and say, ‘We’ll see’. Mr Wells interjected. Mr D O’BRIEN: No, she is not getting a cow, member for Rowville. She is not getting a pony. She is not getting a cow. I have pointed out to my daughter there are 15 cows in the paddock right next door to our house all having calves; she does not need one of her own, just like we would like to actually— Mr Wells: Just once. Mr D O’BRIEN: just once go into consideration in detail on a bill. It would be nice if we actually— Mr Hibbins interjected. Mr D O’BRIEN: Oh, righto. Well, there is a connection. The member for Prahran has just helpfully pointed out I am right on topic. I look forward to the debate this week. It is unfortunate the government will not let us go into consideration in detail on these important bills, and that is why we will oppose this government business program. House divided on motion:

Ayes, 51 Addison, Ms Foley, Mr Pakula, Mr Allan, Ms Fowles, Mr Pallas, Mr Brayne, Mr Fregon, Mr Pearson, Mr Bull, Mr J Green, Ms Richards, Ms Carbines, Mr Halfpenny, Ms Richardson, Mr Carroll, Mr Hall, Ms Scott, Mr Cheeseman, Mr Halse, Mr Settle, Ms Connolly, Ms Hamer, Mr Spence, Ms Couzens, Ms Hennessy, Ms Staikos, Mr Crugnale, Ms Horne, Ms Suleyman, Ms Cupper, Ms Hutchins, Ms Tak, Mr D’Ambrosio, Ms Kairouz, Ms Taylor, Mr Dimopoulos, Mr Kennedy, Mr Theophanous, Ms Donnellan, Mr Kilkenny, Ms Thomas, Ms Edbrooke, Mr Maas, Mr Ward, Ms Edwards, Ms McGhie, Mr Williams, Ms Eren, Mr McGuire, Mr Wynne, Mr Noes, 29 Angus, Mr Morris, Mr Smith, Mr R Battin, Mr Newbury, Mr Smith, Mr T Blackwood, Mr O’Brien, Mr D Southwick, Mr Britnell, Ms O’Brien, Mr M Staley, Ms

MEMBERS STATEMENTS 1288 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

Bull, Mr T Read, Dr Tilley, Mr Hibbins, Mr Riordan, Mr Vallence, Ms Hodgett, Mr Rowswell, Mr Wakeling, Mr Kealy, Ms Ryan, Ms Walsh, Mr McCurdy, Mr Sandell, Ms Wells, Mr McLeish, Ms Sheed, Ms Motion agreed to. Members statements STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE CHELSEA UNIT Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (14:00): For nearly 70 years Chelsea SES volunteers have answered the call in our local community in times of need. Whether it is in times of flood, storm or accident or supporting our police, paramedics, firefighters and lifesavers, they epitomise the motto ‘We work as one’. I am incredibly proud of the commitment and support over a number of years of unit controller Ron Fitch and the volunteer family there, and it was an absolute delight to join the Parliamentary Secretary for Police and Emergency Services and the member for Carrum to acknowledge the facilities that will be in Chelsea Heights and to unveil the brand new plan. This has been years in the making. The $7 million facility will support the volunteers with state-of- the-art turnout facilities and the headquarters that they need to keep supporting our community into the future. It goes hand in glove with the investment that we are making in supporting our emergency services across the region, whether it is the upgrade of the Edithvale CFA fire station—a brand new fire station, $4.5 million that was committed—rebuilding Edithvale Life Saving Club, which we opened just recently, or the upgrades that will come to Aspendale Life Saving Club and Mentone Life Saving Club. We will support our emergency services, who in times of need do so much for our local community. We give them a big shout-out, and as we lead into Wear Orange Wednesday in the middle of May we thank our SES volunteers for all that they do. SMALL BUSINESS SUPPORT Mr WELLS (Rowville) (14:02): This statement commends the Liberal-Nationals for the well- thought-out local business action plan. As we all know, the Andrews Labor government does not support small businesses. They made this very clear throughout the last year, with so many heartbreaking stories of small businesses suffering and shut down. Small businesses in Victoria pay too much tax, and the more people they employ the more they pay. An elected O’Brien Liberal- Nationals government will increase the threshold at which a business is liable to pay payroll tax from $650 000 to $1.6 million. This will take approximately 15 000 businesses out of the payroll tax system entirely. This plan is so crucial as the current payroll tax threshold in Victoria is the worst of any Australian state or territory. This action plan means savings of up to $43 650 each year on payroll tax. Small businesses are so important, and while Labor focus on unions and the big end of town the Liberal-Nationals will continue to fight for small businesses and the millions of jobs this sector creates. While Victoria emerges from the health crisis caused by COVID-19 we cannot forget about the economic crisis and the importance of getting Victorians back to work. Small business will play a huge role in helping to kickstart the Victorian economy. MALTESE CULTURAL ASSOCIATION OF VICTORIA Ms SULEYMAN (St Albans) (14:03): I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate a local resident, Mark Bonello, and the Maltese Cultural Association of Victoria in Albion for holding their Mother’s Day market stall this weekend. It was truly a success. The event promoted all things Maltese, and it was an amazing effort by everybody involved. I know that locals are looking forward to the next event in the future.

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RAMADAN IFTAR DINNERS Ms SULEYMAN: We have passed the halfway mark for Ramadan, and it is my honour, just like many of my colleagues, to have been taking part in iftar dinners together with the Muslim community. It is a time when we share reflection and give thanks, and I am looking forward to celebrating the end of Ramadan, which is coming up shortly. INDIAN COVID-19 CRISIS Ms SULEYMAN: I have been extremely saddened by the recent events in India, and that is why I took the opportunity to join the members of the Mata Chintapurni Hindu temple in St Albans. We gave prayer and reflection, and of course my thoughts are with the people of India and the Indian- Australian community as they face this distressing and challenging period. Please stay strong—and, most importantly for my Indian community in St Albans, I am with you in this time of great sadness and my office is here to support in any way that I can. AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIMES Ms RYAN (Euroa) (14:05): Victorians were horrified this week by the death of Christina Lackmann, a 32-year-old who died while waiting for an ambulance that took 6 hours to arrive. The crisis in ambulance response times is not limited to city areas. Despite the Minister for Health today saying in question time that we have the best ambulance system in the country, regional communities, including those that I represent, continue to face terrible delays for ambulances. Seventy-nine per cent of code 1 responses around Victoria are under 15 minutes unless you live in Mitchell, Campaspe, Benalla or Strathbogie shires. Strathbogie shire residents wait longer than 15 minutes for urgent medical care 55 per cent of the time. An ambulance is more likely to fail to meet code 1 response times than to meet them. Last week, Val Stafford from Benalla suffered chest pain and was taken to Benalla Health by her husband. The doctor that attended arranged for her to go to Wangaratta. Mrs Stafford had to wait 45 minutes for an ambulance. Thankfully she is okay, but the Staffords are incredibly concerned that other people may not be so lucky. CAMPING REGULATION Ms RYAN: The Andrews government needs to dump its plans to allow camping on waterfrontage grazing licences. It is now clear that even some cabinet ministers do not agree with the plan. Farmers and landholders across the state are outraged by the lack of consideration this government has given, and I urge the government to dump that plan. FRANK COSTA Mr EREN (Lara) (14:06): It was an extremely sad day in Geelong last Sunday, with the news that Frank Costa had passed away. Frank was a legend and was much-loved in Geelong. Frank had grown his family fruit shop in Geelong into the biggest fruit and vegetable wholesaler in the country. His legacies are many in the business and sporting arenas. His love of the Geelong Football Club is no secret. He joined the board in 1996 and was made president just two years later. I believe if it had not been for his efforts in the 1990s, through the tough times, the Geelong Football Club would not exist today. I know firsthand as a local MP and as a former minister for sport how committed and passionate he was about the Cats. Frank will also be remembered for his unending passion for Geelong and for our whole community. He was a generous contributor to and fierce advocate for the Geelong community. His generosity and leadership within the wider Geelong community have been admired for a long time and will never be forgotten. Despite his many professional and charitable accolades and his legacy at the Geelong Football Club, his true pride was always his family. He was a great family man. He had true family values and was very proud of his family. I am honoured and privileged to have known Frank over many years. He will be missed by many. My deepest condolences and sympathies go to his wife, Shirley, and their eight daughters and extended families and loved ones. Vale, Frank Costa. May you rest in peace.

MEMBERS STATEMENTS 1290 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

MORNINGTON COMMUNITY SAFE LINK Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (14:08): The Mornington safe link project is a plan to construct a shared footway for cycling and walking along the old railway reserve between Mount Eliza and Mornington. The existing Peninsula Link trail terminates at Moorooduc station, Mount Eliza. The Mornington tourist rail runs along the rail reserve from Moorooduc, and a shared pathway along the route has been discussed for more than a decade. The Mornington Peninsula shire considers this to be a near shovel-ready project and have described it as priority one for the bay trail. The council has shown its commitment to the project by committing $300 000 as part of the coming financial year’s budget. Of course $300 000 is a lot of money, but it is only the first step in the project. The remaining cost, as I understand it, is $6 million, and that is beyond the budgetary scope of any individual council. But in any case this is a project that will have considerable appeal to bike riders and walkers from right across Melbourne and indeed right across Victoria. It is not a project that should be left to the ratepayers of the Mornington shire. I have raised this issue in the Parliament on a number of occasions. In November 2014 the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change responded to an adjournment request, noting that any future funding for the project would be the subject of normal budgetary processes. As we are now close to being back to normal budgetary processes, and we are very close to the 2021–22 budget, I again call on the minister to fund this important project. VETERANS MENTAL HEALTH Ms SETTLE (Buninyong) (14:09): Four recent Australian Defence Force veterans living in Ballarat will learn about beekeeping thanks to a $34 000 grant from the Anzac Day Proceeds Fund. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Minister for Veterans in the other place for his strong support of our veterans and in particular his support for the Ballarat Veterans Assistance Centre and this idea around beekeeping. HiveMind Community Apiary, a social enterprise in Ballarat that sees beekeeping as a therapeutic activity for people at risk of, living with or recovering from a mental health condition, will work with the veterans. The grant will pay for a season of training, beehives, bees and bee care supplies, giving these veterans the ability to run their own hives and become beekeepers. Recent veterans can face significant challenges in returning to civilian life, and this program will give them the skills to help them move on and make a new life for themselves. I particularly want to thank Daniel Hooper, who has worked tirelessly to set up this innovative program to help other veterans. As he said to me, he found beekeeping two years ago and it changed his life. It gave him a sense of purpose, and now he has got the time and energy to help others. Veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will benefit from this grant, and I feel this is the start of something big. Daniel wants to set up a social enterprise to train more veterans. There is a bright future for Daniel and there is a real buzz around this idea. MONTESSORI EARLY EDUCATION CENTRE Mr R SMITH (Warrandyte) (14:11): Today I rise on behalf of the not-for-profit Montessori Early Education Centre located in Donvale. The centre has reached out to me expressing its concerns about the government’s 2020–21 free kinder program. It has been reported that one in 10 kinders will be worse off if they join the government’s scheme. The free kinder program means additional funds paid by parents must be voluntary, with any other levies or compulsory fees to be refunded to families. Montessori would expect to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in income if they were to participate in the policy, but would be, like many not-for-profit kinders, financially worse off if they opted out, and that money lost would have primarily gone towards teacher salaries. The centre decided to opt out of the program, which has caused a significant decline in enrolments. The centre is down 25 places compared to the same time in 2020, now only having 116 enrolments out of a capacity of 150. Whilst I hope that this program was designed with the intention to help struggling families, it has now created more stress and anguish for hundreds of children, teachers and employees in the sector. The Andrews government needs to rethink this program, ensuring that those who do opt out of the program

MEMBERS STATEMENTS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1291 are not being penalised. I would ask that the minister meet with the not-for-profit kindergarten sector to hear their concerns firsthand and make a program that is fair for everyone. EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (14:12): I rise to note a truly historic moment: the release of Victoria’s Climate Change Strategy, a strategy that firmly establishes Victoria as a global leader on climate action. It is, as Greg Combet noted yesterday, ‘a comprehensive and outstanding piece of work’. Key to the strategy are our strong interim emissions reduction targets, the milestones we will reach on our way to net zero emissions by 2050. Our target to halve emissions by 2030 is ambitious. It puts us on the same playing field as the US under Biden and places our state well ahead of Canada, Japan, Germany, France and New Zealand. We are truly part of the global transition, and the work to achieve our targets has already begun. Last year Labor committed $1.6 billion to climate action, the largest investment of its kind by any state. We will make homes energy efficient, decarbonise our transport sector, drive energy innovation, boost renewables, reduce industry and agricultural emissions and plant millions of trees. We are moving forward with powerful policies to shape the clean energy future our kids and grandkids deserve. But the truth is this is not just Victoria’s challenge, it is the challenge of every community and every level of government. We need strong leadership from the commonwealth and a coherent national approach to climate change. We cannot afford to wait for the Morrison government to pull its head out of the sand. Australia must commit to net zero emissions by 2050. Climate action is something my community of Northcote are proud to champion. Together we have pushed for ambitious targets and strong climate policies. INDIAN COVID-19 CRISIS Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (14:13): I am very proud to represent an electorate that has many people of Indian background, whether they were born in India, have parents from India or still have family back in India. It is very sad and a struggle for many families in my community at the moment when they hear of the devastation across India, with more than 300 000 cases of COVID on a daily basis for 13 days straight and over 3000 people dying. I have spoken to some of the communities, and whether they be Sikh, Gujarati or Hindu—it does not matter their religion or their faith—they are all Indian and standing together. I want to remind them that as a community we will always be with them. We will always make sure we do what we can to help them out, whether that is assisting them, being with them for prayers at their local chapels or temples or being there to have a discussion with them about some of the issues that they face with families back over in India or some of their family here. Tragically I have spoken to a few members of the community who have lost loved ones over in India. The impact on them of not being able to return to their homeland to see off loved ones that they have cared about obviously for a long period of time or have been working to get over to Australia is heartbreaking and a tragic consequence of what is happening with COVID throughout the world. I wanted to send a message to the people in India and also the people in my community who have family still in India that as a local representative I will always stand with you. MELTON TRAIN STATION Mr McGHIE (Melton) (14:15): Recently I was joined by the Minister for Public Transport at the historic Melton train station to announce the contract had been awarded for much-needed improvements to the Melton station. Since then MCT Constructions have been part of delivering the $900 000 of works to improve the station with the construction of a second entrance to platform 1; a new footpath connecting the new entrance to the Exford Road level crossing, which will provide safer access; four new accessible parking spaces; extra platform seats and shelters; new CCTV cameras; and two new passenger information displays. Construction has already kicked off, with crews starting on works in the car park and footpath before completing the on-platform works during the next period

MEMBERS STATEMENTS 1292 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 of planned rail replacements to minimise the disturbance to passengers. These much-needed improvements will be of great benefit to the commuters of Melton. BRIDGE ROAD PRIMARY SCHOOL Mr McGHIE: The Melton community are also celebrating recently with the slab pour commencing the construction of the new Bridge Road school. Three weeks ago I returned to that site, and much of the steel framework was erected. I want to thank the construction workers for their efforts in building this new school. Their hard work will mean that this new school will be on time for the 2022 school year. The new school will cater to the new communities and relieve pressure on existing schools and traffic congestion in the area. The investment of new infrastructure in the Melton electorate by this Andrews Labor government is being well received. The fast-growing communities in Melton South and the new housing estates around Cobblebank are looking forward to the brand new school being delivered. JOHN CORBOY Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (14:16): I would like to take a moment to remember the life of one of Shepparton district’s most dedicated community advocates, John Corboy, who died on 24 April 2021. John led Foodbowl Unlimited, an organisation that secured billions of dollars of investment in modernisation for the Goulburn Murray irrigation district’s infrastructure from the Victorian Brumby Labor government. It was a brave move to call for modernisation such as this, and John made no apologies to the people who rallied against his scheme. The region had an out-of-date irrigation system that needed modernising and we were facing one of the worst droughts in history. His tough calls had started years earlier. He became the chairman of SPC in 1990, and when the company was facing multimillion-dollar losses, he managed to negotiate wage cuts with employees and some changed work practices and turned the company around for the benefit of everyone. He prevented the importation of New Zealand apples into Australia when he foresaw that fire blight had the potential to destroy our country’s horticulture industry. As if he was not busy enough saving our agricultural and local businesses, he helped take care of our community by setting up the Bridge youth network and Ladders to Success as well as establishing the community fund. On top of these community achievements, John was a dedicated family man, married to Kerry for 51 years, and a much-loved father to Michael, Dan and Peter. The Shepparton community remembers and honours him. COVID-19 Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (14:18): Australia turns to Broadmeadows in times of existential threats, and now it is an epicentre to combat the pandemic and launch our recovery from recession. I have proposed establishing a global centre to manufacture the life-saving mRNA vaccine to further this course. The Australian government has declared this initiative a national imperative, and the Victorian government has committed a $50 million investment to secure it locally. Broadmeadows is the ideal location. Breakthrough technology for mRNA means this vaccine does not need to be frozen. This delivers outstanding potential to save lives in Australia and, as an export industry, save lives internationally. CSL is already manufacturing 50 million vaccines in Broadmeadows. Across the road is the Maygar barracks, a 12-hectare site the commonwealth government owns and whose future is under review, and this could be the preferred site for the mRNA manufacturing facility. Melbourne’s international curfew-free airport is only minutes away. The combination of such critical assets means Australia can extend its leadership with a world first in this manufacturing and medical research. We have unity tickets between the Australian and Victorian governments and bipartisan resolve to deliver such results. This opportunity is one we should not miss. It gives us the chance, because the pandemic can only be eradicated when everyone has access to vaccines. This is another Broadmeadows moment to help secure independent supply chains and national sovereignty and to save lives.

MEMBERS STATEMENTS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1293

GOULBURN MURRAY WATER CHARGES Mr McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (14:19): I continue to represent the Upper Ovens catchment in their dispute with Goulburn-Murray Water for licence renewal costs. Last Thursday my colleague in the upper house Melina Bath also met with concerned residents in Bright regarding these costs. Annual fees have doubled and renewal fees have been introduced from zero cost to many hundreds of dollars. Goulburn-Murray Water must manage the resource and not just be a revenue-collecting entity for the government of Melbourne. These people should not have to pay a massive price for what is a basic human right: that of running water. COBRAM DISTRICT HEALTH Mr McCURDY: As the 2021 Victorian budget is just around the corner, I again request that the Victorian government invest in Cobram District Health. The health system within this thriving community has been left behind and a significant investment of $25 million is needed to ensure the health needs are met. I also urge the Minister for Health to visit Cobram, meet with the community and give them the confidence that investment is coming soon. Basic health needs must be met at a local level. Cobram District Health needs investment now. With the Legislative Council regional sitting in Bright last week it will now be very clear to all members what a dynamic and thriving community Bright and Myrtleford has become. The Bright hospital has been neglected by the Victorian government, and the upcoming 2021 budget is the ideal opportunity to show regional Victoria that investment in regional health is a high priority. I also urge the Minister for Health to visit Bright and talk about their master plan, reach out to this community and help manage a way forward to a sustainable health system in this glorious community. ANZAC DAY Ms WARD (Eltham) (14:21): I congratulate and thank Montmorency Eltham RSL for a beautiful Anzac Day dawn service, march and commemoration. Thanks to the support of Eltham Rotary and the Eltham Men’s Shed, the morning’s events went off perfectly. Thank you to everyone who helped make this morning special: MCs Ken Paynter and Ken Hodgson; from Montmorency Eltham RSL, president Glen Ferrarotto and vice-president Andrew Hall, past president Duncan Duke and committee members; and the Defence Force School of Signals at Simpson Barracks for the catafalque party. Andrew delivered a great speech at the dawn service, and I thank Lieutenant Colonel Claire Baker, deputy commander, headquarters, Australian Army Cadets, for her address at Montmorency. Thank you to Reverend Keren Terpstra and Fr Terry Kean for their prayers at each service; Janine Maunder, Elisha O’Dowd and Ceyda Demir for their beautiful voices raised in song, and accompanist Rebecca Mason. Eltham High’s Campbell McKinnon did a terrific job as bugler, particularly given the cold. David Cretney is to be commended for his playing of the bagpipes to start our service. Thank you also to Catholic Ladies College’s Talia Muscara for talking about the significance of the dawn service and Evangeline Hurrel, Kirra Johnston and Laura Galati for the Anzac Requiem; Eltham College and Annaliese Driscoll for reading the veterans’ covenant oath; Macleod Gook, Ryjahn Del Re, Ari Danaher- Flavel, Finlay Tod, Lachie Robertson, Melissa Lee, Emily Barker, Charlotte Cottrell, Thomas Grabau, Craig Rinderer, Molly Rowe, and Ayden Taranto for their beautiful singing; Eltham High School and Tanner Carozzi; Montmorency Secondary College and Louise van Putten for the Anzac Requiem; St Helena Secondary College and Zoe Ryan for her excellent address on the meaning of Anzac Day; Eltham East Primary School for the Eltham cenotaph roll call; and Montmorency and Lower Plenty Scouts, including Emma Thomson and Lincoln Novak, for their reading of In Flanders Fields.

MEMBERS STATEMENTS 1294 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

TANIA CURLIS Mr KENNEDY (Hawthorn) (14:22): Today I would like to acknowledge the outstanding achievement of a Hawthorn constituent, Tania Curlis, who was recognised for her commitment to providing care and support of Victorians with mental health issues at the Tandem Awards. The Tandem Awards celebrate exceptional services to families and friends in mental health, recognising individuals, programs or services that practise compassion and family-inclusive practice. Tania received the Jackie Crowe Memorial Award for her time and energy spent on helping families to access NDIS support. Celebrating its fourth year, the awards are a reminder of the vital role of the 60 000 mental health carers and the life-changing work they do every day. As we implement every recommendation from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, the Victorian government is committed to ensuring families, carers and supporters will be involved in designing our services and systems like never before. I congratulate Tania on receiving the Jackie Crowe Memorial Award in recognition of the dedication and hard work that it takes to help others and the importance of having these voices help shape our new mental health system. GAYLE CORR, OAM Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (14:24): Nillumbik shire recently lost a community icon on 9 April 2021. Gayle Corr, OAM, was born on 1 November 1945. As described in the tribute recently held in Hurstbridge, she led a fulsome life. She was the definition of a quiet achiever for Arthurs Creek and Cottles Bridge communities and beyond. Gayle was a committed community activist. She coedited Arthurs Creek News. She was involved in Landcare and the CFA and as well oversaw the restoration of the Arthurs Creek Mechanics Institute, serving as president. Gayle was impossible not to like. I admired her community work and was delighted to find out we had a shared love of skiing. Importantly, what stood out about Gayle was her compassion for those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods on and after Black Saturday. I will especially never forget her tireless work in the Arthurs Creek fire station on the day after and in the many days after that terrible day. Her compassion, love, support, warmth and wisdom meant so much during that dark time. I was so proud to be present for her OAM investiture at Government House in 2009. I send my thoughts and love to her husband, Pat; sons, Chris and Nick; their partners, Karen and Izzy; grandsons, Aidan and Jeremy; and her many, many friends. Vale, Gayle Corr. INDIAN COVID-19 CRISIS Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (14:25): I take this opportunity to acknowledge and stand in solidarity with the Indian community here in Victoria as their families back home in India battle against COVID- 19. In these 90 seconds it takes for me to deliver this members statement, between three and four Indians will have passed away. Yesterday 3417 families in India lost someone they loved dearly, and 368 147 more people face a deeply uncertain future. The healthcare system in India is at the point of collapse. People who could have survived are dying because of a lack of oxygen tanks. Ambulance drivers and medical workers are exhausted beyond comprehension and are succumbing to the virus. There are too few hospital beds for the sick, regardless of whether people have COVID or whether they need help merely because they have had a heart attack or a stroke, for example. There are not enough beds and there are not enough people to care for the sick and dying. Make no mistake, comparing the state of affairs to anything but a war zone would be a disservice to those suffering. My community of Tarneit is home to a very vibrant and diverse Subcontinent community, many of whom are deeply distressed at the impact of COVID on their friends and family overseas. For those in Tarneit who are listening to this, I want you to know that I am here for you. Whilst I cannot possibly understand what you and your family are going through at this time, my thoughts and my prayers are with you all, your family members, your friends and your loved ones back home.

MEMBERS STATEMENTS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1295

ANZAC DAY Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (14:27): Today I rise to recognise the incredibly moving Anzac Day weekend recently in Sunbury. On the Saturday night before Anzac Day I was honoured to attend the inaugural Save Our Services event at Boardman oval, with special guest Brendan Fevola and the Sunbury Kangaroos versus Rupertswood, organised by local veteran Jeb, who fought bravely to defend our country in both Timor-Leste and Afghanistan. The event was hosted Julie-Ann Finney, who spoke passionately and bravely about losing her son and about her campaign to see change and reform to support those who defend our country within the armed forces. On Sunday I attended both the dawn service and the 10.30 service in Sunbury, and I would like to say a big thankyou to all those who worked so hard to make it happen—and a special mention to those community volunteers who took part in the community vigil. It was also wonderful to see so many from our community, including Crs Bell and Medcraft; Rob Mitchell, MP; local schools; sporting clubs; community groups and family and friends—a proud community coming together for such an important day. We will remember them. DULAP WILIM HUB Mr J BULL: Also earlier in April I joined local students and teachers from Sunbury Downs and Sunbury Heights at the opening of the brand new community facility—over $7 million, thanks to the Andrews Labor government—a terrific hub in my community that is able to deliver a range of programs and workshops and a terrific facility that has only been made possible thanks to this incredibly important investment. SUNBURY ELECTORATE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS Mr J BULL: I would also like to recognise the appointment of architects to Diggers Rest Primary for the $3.2 million upgrade as well as the $500 000 that has been invested to Mount Holden walking trails. MCCORMICK FOODS STRIKE Mr MAAS (Narre Warren South) (14:28): I rise to update the house on the strike that was held at McCormick Foods in Clayton South. This is a strike where the workers were out for six weeks, and they ended up winning their dispute with their employer and getting the 3 per cent wage increases that they sought. Not only that, they got that over three years. They maintained all of their conditions in their enterprise agreement as well as receiving a $5000 sign-on bonus too. To have your workforce out for six weeks speaks to lunacy, and I say that quite strongly. This is a company who used federal government laws that indeed were never dead, buried or cremated. They spent more money than they would have if they had reached an agreement early with their workers, and that is including the vast amounts of overtime that those workers are now doing just to catch up with production schedules. And, finally, it has created an ongoing situation of mistrust and disrespect in the workforce, and that is what use of these laws gets for you. But ultimately this is about the workers and their union, the United Workers Union, and the tremendous result that they achieved. It was really hard work. They stood out there for six weeks, against their employer. They are very brave, and I congratulate them wholeheartedly.

BILLS 1296 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

Bills ZERO AND LOW EMISSION VEHICLE DISTANCE-BASED CHARGE BILL 2021 Second reading Debate resumed on motion of Mr PALLAS: That this bill be now read a second time. Ms STALEY (Ripon) (14:30): I rise to speak on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance- based Charge Bill 2021. In an advertisement in the Age on 22 April, this tax is described as the ‘Worst electric vehicle policy in the world’, and in an open letter we are told:

Dear Victorian Members of Parliament The Andrews Government’s proposed tax on electric vehicles is the only stand-alone electric vehicle tax in the world. It goes on:

This new tax means the world’s manufacturers are far less likely to send Victorians their best, most affordable, zero emissions vehicles. That makes things much harder for Victorian families who want to buy and drive electric. Every other state and territory in Australia has ruled out or delayed plans for a premature new tax on electric vehicles. Going it alone will mean Victoria has the worst electric vehicle policy in the world. … Members of Parliament, please vote against this— electric vehicle—

… tax and vote for cleaner Victorian roads and stronger climate action. Victoria, don’t pull the handbrake on electric vehicles. This ad was signed by Hyundai, Volkswagen, Uber, Tritium, Jet Charge, Chargefox, the Electric Vehicle Council, Transport Alliance Australia, the ABB, Custom Denning, SEA Electric, Environment Victoria, the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance, GetUp!, Healthy Futures, Doctors for the Environment Australia, the Coalition for Conservation, Solar Citizens, the Smart Energy Council, the Clean Energy Council, WWF Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australia Institute. Mr T Bull: Wow, what a list. Ms STALEY: What a list indeed, member for Gippsland East. Now, this bill before us does a pretty simple thing: it imposes a tax on zero- and low-emissions vehicles, commencing on 1 July 2021. The tax is subject to indexation, and its starting point is 2.5 cents per kilometre for electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles and 2 cents for plug-in hybrid vehicles. To achieve this the government will require what are called ZLEV—zero- and low-emission vehicle—operators to lodge their odometer reading on 1 July 2021 and then within 14 days of the vehicle’s registration payment each year. The secretary of the department—that would be the Department of Transport—will then issue an invoice for the ZLEV charge. There is penalty interest payable on unpaid invoices, and there are provisions that have been created to cancel or suspend registration for failure to pay an invoice or failure to provide the odometer readings. There are also extensive record-keeping and other administrative provisions plus many other clauses which actually repeat other parts of other acts already in existence that do the administration of this charge. But in its essence this is a very, very simple bill. It is a very simple bill that brings in a tax, and this tax is the 30th new or expanded tax that this government has brought in since the Premier came to power— 30th. This government never misses an opportunity to tax Victorians, and they are certainly not missing it with this new tax here. We believe that this bill has several flaws. Clearly the first is that it is imposing a tax—yet another tax. This is the default position of this government at every side: ‘Let’s tax Victorians

BILLS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1297 more’. And in this case they are going to tax those Victorians who have set out to make an environmentally sound choice by buying either an electric vehicle or a very low-emissions vehicle. The way they have then introduced this is incredibly burdensome. It requires a motorist—there are some definitional things around whether it is the owner and that sort of thing, but let us say the motorist—to take a photo of their odometer, send that to VicRoads and then at the end of the period they send it again and VicRoads will calculate how much tax the motorist has to pay on how many kilometres they have driven. Now, all of the vehicles that are affected by this tax have onboard GPS; they can all transmit their odometer at any point. A much lighter touch regulatory regime would allow vehicle owners to authorise VicRoads to read the ZLEV’s odometer remotely. But, no, this government, in its haste to bring in this tax, is setting up this cumbersome procedure where people will be taking photos of their odometer, lodging them with VicRoads, getting invoices back, paying those invoices—talk about heavy-touch regulation. How many times does each motorist have to touch VicRoads to just get this tax paid? There are also faults in the way that this government has thought about the rate of this tax. What the government—the Treasurer inferred this in his second-reading speech—have done is use the average age of the existing passenger motor vehicle fleet, the ABS stat, which is 10.8 years, to calculate the average fuel consumption of internal combustion vehicles and therefore how much fuel excise those vehicles pay. But they are only putting the zero- and low-emissions vehicle tax on cars purchased after this tax comes in—so they are new cars. If you compared the fuel consumption of new cars to the tax that has been proposed, you would find—and in fact the Electric Vehicle Council has helpfully done the calculation—that zero- and low-emissions vehicles will pay double in tax what an average new- car owner would pay. There is also the issue that plug-in hybrids are taxed twice. Of course these vehicles pay fuel excise on their petrol use, and they will pay a distance-based road-user ZLEV tax. Now, vehicles in that category that predominantly travel on petrol—and that is what country drivers would be doing—will therefore be slugged twice. They will pay the fuel excise on their petrol as they drive around, but then they will also be charged for those kilometres at the 2-cents-a-litre road-user charge ZLEV tax rate. That is going to be insufficient—the fact that there is a discount between a zero- and a low-emissions vehicle tax rate—to offset the fact that for many drivers, and particularly country drivers, they are being taxed twice. And that brings me to the general view that a flat tax, as this one is, disproportionately affects country drivers. But I recognise that this is also true of fuel excise. So for all of these reasons the Liberal-Nationals oppose this bill. We will vote against this bill in the Assembly and we will vote against this bill in the Council. We oppose this new tax. In coming to our view we have undertaken extensive consultation. I think it is worthwhile putting into Hansard some of the comments we received back and also noting that compared to every other bill I have ever led the debate on, with the possible exception of the engineers bill, which did have a lot of stakeholder feedback, people have been very keen to engage with this. All the stakeholders I contacted wanted to put their view—almost universally. Uber is opposed to this bill. Uber would like to see the starting date on the rate moved out to 2030 and either an exemption for commercial passenger vehicles or incentives which outweigh the impost of the tax on commercial passenger vehicle drivers. That is Uber’s view, and in fact their Australia and Pacific head, Pradeep Parameswaran, was quoted in the media as saying that this tax is quite concerning and that governments should be incentivising not taxing EVs. Mitsubishi Motors said that:

As it stands, the Government’s proposal to implement a Victorian Road User Charge … presents concerns for Mitsubishi Motors Australia and all PHEV drivers, which we believe should be addressed prior to— the passage of this bill. Mitsubishi says that:

… there remains time and opportunity to strengthen the proposed legislation and reduce unforeseen consequences that would compromise the growth of the market, the speed at which we transition to ZLEV technologies, and the success of the program in the long-term.

BILLS 1298 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

The Electric Vehicle Council, who were also, with Uber and Mitsubishi, a cosignatory of the advertisement in the Age opposing this bill, remain opposed, and in fact they sent to me a straight-out email:

Our recommendation is that: The Opposition vote against this Bill Well, we will be voting against this bill. The Electric Vehicle Council sent through a comprehensive document of the errors that they believe are contained within this bill that the government has failed to address in its creation of this new tax. So the Electric Vehicle Council says:

Numerous errors have been found with the government’s electric vehicle tax proposal. The government has provided no research-based evidence for this proposal … Firstly, the Electric Vehicle Council notes that:

The government has repeatedly stated that this tax will not discourage electric vehicle uptake. Yet the Electric Vehicle Council notes that:

The government has provided no evidence in support of this claim. Experts, including transport academics, economists, industry groups and the government’s own advice from Treasury argue that the opposite is true. Another criticism:

The government has repeatedly claimed that this tax will be at half the rate of that paid by petrol cars. As I have previously indicated, that is not true for comparing like-for-like new cars. That is just not true. The EV council says:

The government has claimed that this is a matter of fairness … Yet:

Under this … structure— because of the flat-rate structure of it—

the driver of a $110 000 Lexus RX450h will pay LESS in fuel excise than the driver of a Nissan Leaf. How is that fair? The EV council also notes that:

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle drivers will be double taxed for fuel excise and the new EV tax Then the final point that the EV council makes is that at the time they introduced this tax the government had not done the work on the zero-emission vehicle plan or its transport sector emissions reduction targets, both of which are now overdue. I would note that while the government has announced the overall targets for emissions to 2030 and then going towards net zero in 2050, the sectoral targets within that have not been announced. So we are still in a situation where we do not have those sectoral targets here despite that now being over 12 months overdue. Now moving on to other stakeholders, the Coalition for Conservation said they believe:

… zero emissions vehicles play a vital role in the future of the transport sector as we move towards a zero emissions future— but because of the structure of this tax and the way it is being introduced—

… the Coalition for Conservation opposes the Bill. Institute for Sensible Transport director Dr Elliot Fishman had an op-ed in the Herald Sun. He notes that:

… one of the most powerful criticisms of the distance-based tax on EVs is the unintended consequence it may have on EV take-up.

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He went on to say:

… it would appear the introduction of a special EV tax would jeopardise the goal of greening the transport system. The Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce have come back to me because the opposition— the Liberal-Nationals—have done the stakeholder consultation that clearly the government did not do. Clearly they did not do that or they would know that overwhelmingly organisation after organisation that are actually involved in this do not like this. They say it is wrong. They say it is flawed. The VACC have said they request you do not—you being the Liberal-Nationals—support the bill in its current form. A member: Does anyone like it? Ms STALEY: Not too many. When you have got the Australia Institute and GetUp! not liking it, there are not that many left. The VACC has some amendments that they would like, but the government has not looked at those. They have not thought about car dealers and what barriers this might have in both record keeping and paying the tax for something they are saying they want to encourage. They say they want to encourage it, but the people that sell the cars say that this actually will be very difficult for them. They ask for an amendment, but the government has not come that way. They have not done anything. So that then brings me to the Australian Automobile Association. That is the peak body for the RACVs of the world. The RACV has separately written to me saying that they endorse what the Australian Automobile Association has said to me. The AAA has said they believe:

… four key amendments are warranted to ensure the transition to road user charging is fair and uptake of ultra-low fuel consumption vehicles is not disincentivised … Three of these four I particularly want to talk about, because one of them goes to the heart of the fact that this is a retrospective tax. People have bought these cars. They have bought zero- and low- emission vehicle cars without this tax on them, without thinking about it. So now it is a retrospective tax being put on. Now, on this side of the chamber we do not like retrospective taxes. We do not like taxes a lot, but we particularly do not like retrospective taxes. Once again the government had choices here. It absolutely had choices about who it applied this tax to, and it is going to be on current owners. Then separately, and this has come from a number of people, the government has created the charge with two different rates for whether they are zero- or low-emission vehicles, and they have done this because they recognise that low-emission vehicles are paying fuel excise—but really it should be a single charge. By setting out different charges right at the beginning for different technologies, we are setting up a flawed system, and again this government has jumped the gun and set up a flawed system. That now brings me to a particular claim that was made by the Treasurer in his second-reading speech. In this second-reading speech the Treasurer said:

The Victorian and South Australian Governments join international jurisdictions, including California, Utah, Oregon and Washington states in the United States, in implementing or trialling road-user charging systems that incorporate ZLEVs. Well, I went and had a look at those other jurisdictions. Let us start with South Australia because of course South Australia is not implementing this. South Australia has pulled its proposal. South Australia is not implementing a tax in this way. South Australia suggested it would and has come back and said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that. We’re not doing it’. So that is that one out. But let us look at the US ones. California puts a $100 annual registration fee on 2020-model ZLEVs and an extra fee of between $25 and $135 based on the car’s value. It has nothing to do with being a road-user charge. Mr T Bull: That’s very different. Ms STALEY: It is not a road-user charge; it is nothing like it. It gets better, member for Gippsland East. Oregon does have a road-user charge—it is voluntary. As of 1 March 2021 there were 50 000

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ZLEVs registered in Oregon. Oregon is very green. They have got 50 000 cars registered in Oregon, and do you want to have a guess how many out of 50 000 are choosing to pay this voluntary tax? It would be 1400 paying that tax. So that is a voluntary one. Then we move onto Utah. Utah’s is also voluntary. It is voluntary. Mr T Bull: What adviser wrote that? Ms STALEY: Yes, I agree, member for Gippsland East: whoever wrote the Treasurer’s second- reading speech did not really tell the truth. Then we get to Washington state. Now, Washington state has in fact introduced a per-mile charge on ZLEVs, and they introduced this bill into the state legislature in January 2020. But it went to the Senate and it stalled there, never to be seen again. It has not been introduced. It has not been passed. Washington state does not have a tax like this on zero- and low-emission vehicles. Now, of course one of the things that I suspect those opposite will talk a lot about will not be this bill at all. There is one thing that I do just want to quickly cover off on, and that is the panicked announcement last Saturday, four days before we were going to debate this bill that has been on the notice paper now for at least six weeks. In the Age on the 30th—we will go back to 30 April—Miki Perkins had a leak that was an email that suggested that the Treasurer was considering some incentive payments to get people to offset the hatred that the community and the industry has for this tax, that he would announce some incentive payments. As at 30 April the email going around was for a sweetener of $5000 for 10 500 people, but lo and behold the next day that had changed to a $3000 subsidy for 4000 people. Now, they might suggest there might be a few more subsidised in the future, but as at now it is a $3000 subsidy for 4000 cars. Really? Now, when this was first announced it was regarded as a thought-bubble response, as a panic. It was a panic about the fact that ‘Oh, there’s some politics around that suggests that most people and most of the industry think this tax is poorly thought through and not the right way to go if you want to incentivise people to take up these cars, if you do actually want people to drive electric and low- emission vehicles’. The economics of tax is pretty simple: when you tax something, you do it so people do less of it. That just is— Mr T Bull: It puts a barrier up. Ms STALEY: It is a barrier. That is pretty much economics 101, and yet the government thinks that you go out and you tax. You tax everything. And yet they seem to think that an electric vehicle tax will not disincentivise. How can it not disincentivise? Of course it disincentivises people. Mr Pearson interjected. Ms STALEY: The Assistant Treasurer at the table is attempting to put in some sort of drivel, but really, I mean, honestly. If the minister at the table actually wants to argue that a new tax is not a disincentive against all evidence in all places, he can knock himself out. The minister’s view is that if we put taxes on cigarettes or if we put taxes on cars—sin taxes—they do not reduce consumption. But, oh no— Mr Pearson interjected. Ms STALEY: He is now trying to backtrack against the disincentive argument because he has just put himself into such a hole. The minister will have an opportunity to debate when his turn comes. It is not now. But this thought-bubble tax with its panicked response of some subsidies out the back is an entirely flawed tax, which we will oppose. Now, I just want to finish with an email I received from a person I met at a local event in my electorate, in St Arnaud, and his name is Daniel Emerson. He lives in Ballarat— Mr Pearson interjected.

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Ms STALEY: Of course those opposite are not very interested in hearing actual life stories from people in the country. He lives in Ballarat and he drives to Geelong every day for work. He drives a car that is an electric vehicle, and he has calculated that it is going to cost him $1218 every year, not the couple of hundred that the government claims. It is going to cost him $1218 in tax for a car that he bought because he wanted to be green, he wanted to cut emissions—he wanted to do all the things that we all want to encourage. There were no taxes on this car. But now it is going to cost him an additional $1218 a year to pay, and that is not fair. This tax is not fair, it is not right and it is not clever. It is not clever at all to disincentivise Victorians from taking up zero- and low-emissions vehicles. That is the direction we all want Victorians to go in. We all support this transition. What we do not support is this: at its first opportunity, the government’s response to this is to tax. Now, I suspect those opposite will not mention the tax word very often in their contributions. They might not even mention the ‘charge’. They might try to say, ‘A charge is not a tax’. Good luck with that. But even past those semantics I suspect they will not be talking about that much at all. They will want to talk about the announcements on 1 May and 2 May, not the Treasurer’s announcement and this actual bill, because this bill is a simple bill: it is a tax, and we oppose it. Mr STAIKOS (Bentleigh) (15:00): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021, and I do so as a proud member of this government, which has done more than any government in the past when it comes to sustainability, when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and when it comes to tackling climate change. It is a real pleasure to follow the Shadow Treasurer, the member for Ripon, because of course what we have seen over the last 30 minutes, in the member for Ripon’s contribution, is that the Liberal Party—and the National Party, for that matter—are on a unity ticket with the Greens when it comes to this bill and when it comes to supporting people who can afford the exorbitant costs of an electric vehicle over people who cannot. They have run into a significant equity issue when it comes to their deliberations on this bill. I might also say that the Liberal Party have had a bit of a road to Damascus moment when it comes to supporting an electric vehicle industry, because it was only two short years ago that the then Shorten Labor opposition promised to set a target that 50 per cent of all vehicles sold in Australia by 2030 would be electric vehicles, and that was met by the most absurd fear campaign by the Morrison government but most particularly by Michaelia Cash, who said, and I quote:

We are going to stand by our tradies and we are going to save their utes. So it is fair to say that the opposition, and the Liberal Party in particular, have not always been strong supporters of low- to no-emissions vehicles. And despite what we heard over the last 30 minutes from the Shadow Treasurer, I would hazard a guess that they are still not really supporters of low- to zero- emission vehicles. This is more to do with ideology than anything else. You can call this a new tax—and I must admit, a year ago if I had heard about this, at first blush I might have thought, ‘Well, why would we do that when we want more electric vehicles on the road?’. But when you give this issue careful consideration, you actually realise that we need to set the scene, we need to set the environment, for an estimated substantial take-up of electric vehicles in this state. That has to be the future, and we need to be ready for it. Every cent that this charge is going to raise— indeed much more than what this charge is going to raise—is going to be put back into the infrastructure to support electric vehicles in this state. The member for Ripon, the Shadow Treasurer, quoted from an open letter that was published I think last week and mentioned everybody who signed that open letter. But she did not mention who did not sign that open letter, and those who did not sign that open letter include Audi, BMW, MG, Mini, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Tesla, Toyota and Volvo. Now, I reckon Tesla want to sell a lot of electric vehicles in the second-most populous state of Australia. It sounds to me like they do not quite agree with the Shadow Treasurer that we are going to stunt the development of an electric vehicle industry in this state, that we are going to strangle this industry in this state.

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Anybody who forks out that amount of money to purchase a car is not going to be deterred by a few hundred dollars. An entry-level Tesla, standard range plus, costs $62 900, the long range is $78 000 and the performance model is $93 600, and they go up from there. Anybody who forks out 100 grand on a car is not going to be deterred by a few hundred dollars a year contribution back to the road network. Believe it or not—news to those opposite—ordinary Victorians do not mind giving something back to support vital infrastructure in this state, particularly when, if you were to pay fuel excise on a traditional vehicle, you would be paying around double. So they are claiming to be greenies now all of a sudden, but of course most people will absolutely see right through that. Initially this distance-based charge will be set at 2.5 cents per kilometre for electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles and 2 cents per kilometre for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The lower rate for plug-in hybrid vehicles recognises that owners of these vehicles currently pay some fuel excise. As I said earlier, if the rate were to be set at a level equivalent to the fuel excise, it would be around 5 cents per kilometre. An electric vehicle will pay half that rate. This remains less than the total taxes and charges paid by conventional car owners. On average a vehicle owner that travels 13 100 kilometres a year will pay $890 for a standard internal combustion engine petrol or diesel vehicle, $618 for a conventional hybrid or fuel-efficient internal combustion engine vehicle, $581 for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and $530 for an electric vehicle. And just like with fuel excise, the less you drive, the less you pay. This ensures that motorists’ contribution to our roads is proportionate to how much indeed they use our roads, and we think that that is only fair. This government I think has done a lot to support an electric vehicle industry and to support bringing down our carbon emissions and tackling climate change. You only have to look at what this government has done just in the last few days. I will run through three important announcements in particular, and one of those was our plan to cut emissions and create jobs by releasing our climate change strategy and the interim targets. We already had a target— Mr Walsh: There are no targets. Mr STAIKOS: We absolutely have targets, Leader of the Nationals. We already had a target of net zero emissions by 2050, and our interim ambitious targets are to reduce emissions by 28 to 33 per cent by 2025 and 45 to 50 per cent by 2030. This strategy is also underpinned by strong investment from this Labor government, and that includes investing more than $100 million to transform our transport sector, offering up to $3000 for Victorians who buy zero-emission vehicles and a target that 50 per cent of all new car sales in Victoria will be zero-emission vehicles by 2030. That is subsidies for more than 20 000 vehicles, and when you consider that only something like 6000 electric vehicles have actually been sold in Victoria, that is a substantial boost for the electric vehicle industry here in our state. And we are investing almost $20 million to reduce emissions in the agriculture sector as well and $3.9 million to fund world-leading research and trials of new feed to reduce emissions from livestock. In addition to that we have also announced that government operations, schools, hospitals, police stations and Metro trains will be powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025, which is an Australian first. We are also investing significantly in the infrastructure we need to support more electric vehicles on our roads. We are investing $19 million to roll out more charging infrastructure on major highways and at key tourist attractions and locations across Melbourne and regional Victoria. This will more than triple government-supported fast-charging sites across the state, adding at least 50 charging points to the existing network of 24 sites. We are also supporting more electric buses in the government-contracted fleet by 2025—in fact a zero-emission bus network by 2025, with all new bus purchases for the state network to be zero emissions. So we are backing this up with strong action. This is a bill and a charging scheme that is going to set this state up for what we expect will be a significant take-up of electric vehicles. And I just say this again—and this is where equity really does come into it and where the opposition really do need to consider their position—that a family on a modest income who can only afford a $10 000 vehicle should not be paying more tax on that vehicle than someone who can afford a $100 000 Tesla. And I

BILLS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1303 say to the member for Ripon, who put up some absurd arguments about this charge somehow stunting this industry, that anybody who can afford to fork out that amount of money on an electric vehicle is not going to be deterred by a 2.5-cent-per-kilometre charge, which equates to a few hundred dollars a year. I support this bill, and I commend the bill to the house. Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (15:10): I join to make a contribution on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. I am amazed at the contribution the member for Bentleigh just made and the fact that he somehow believes that you can subsidise cars to get people to take them up but then you will tax them to use them and it does not matter because a few hundred dollars— people will just pay that. It is totally illogical. The member for Ripon pointed out an example of an individual, Daniel Emmerson, who actually owns an electric car and drives it every day, who says the tax he is going to pay under this proposal is $1200 a year. It is not just a couple of hundred dollars a year. It does not matter whether you can afford a $50 000 car, an $80 000 car or a $100 000 car; $1200 a year is a lot of money to anyone. And for the member for Bentleigh to say it does not really matter I just find totally, totally illogical. There is only one way to describe this particular piece of legislation, and that is the fact that it is a great big, fat tax on someone driving an electric car or a low-emissions car. It is a great big, fat tax on someone that buys one of these cars. If the Andrews government is actually serious about sending the market signals to get people to move to electric cars, why would you put a big tax on their use? And in particular why would you put a distance-based tax on these cars if you want country people to actually buy one of these particular cars? It just does not make sense to send that disincentive as a message to actually get people to move to electric cars, to low-emission cars. Very clearly, as the member for Ripon pointed out, the government has now panicked and realised that they have sent this perverse message to the market about electric cars and is introducing a subsidy to try and soften the blow and take media attention away from the fact that they are actually going to tax the use of these cars into the future. And as the member for Ripon pointed out in her lead speaker’s contribution, the facts that are used around what other states are going to be doing and what other countries are doing around taxing electric cars, again, are actually wrong. And I would urge the Treasurer to actually go back and correct the record on his second-reading speech to make sure those facts are right around this particular legislation. The government has history when it comes to electric cars. If you look at the SEA Electric proposal to build a car plant in Morwell, which was announced before the last election, which was going to create, I think from memory, 500 jobs in the Latrobe Valley, with grants from the government to set up this business to build electric cars—no show, Your Honour. That business has not been built. That business has not got off the ground. As I understand it, there are still some employees of that business being paid or subsidised to travel to Dandenong to actually work, but there are no jobs in the Latrobe Valley out of that particular announcement. Whoever coined the phrase that the Andrews government is ‘all headline and no deadline’ actually got it right, because with that particular issue, with the building of electric cars, great fanfare, all headline, but when it comes to actually having that factory and having those 500 jobs in the Latrobe Valley to build electric cars—no show, Your Honour. That is not happening at all. This legislation puts in place a distance-based tax on the use of cars. From a country driver’s point of view, that sends all the wrong messages, and this government is underinvesting in country roads already. If you drive around anywhere in regional Victoria now, and I have got some classic examples in my electorate, the way the Andrews government is actually fixing roads is putting speed limits on them. So 100-kilometre roads become 80 kilometres or become 60 kilometres, because there are large potholes there that have not been fixed for one or two years. The way this government is spending its money on fixing roads is putting up speed restriction signs, not actually fixing those roads, so to say they are going to have a tax to raise money to fix roads—that money is not being spent on regional Victorian roads. There are some classic examples where those speed restriction signs have now been

BILLS 1304 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 in place for 18 months or two years, and that is the way this government fixes roads. There is a very good saying that ‘If you fix country roads you save country lives’. What is really frightening country people at the moment is the proposal that is being floated, no doubt by someone in the Andrews government, that will permanently reduce the speed restrictions right across regional Victoria. It would be a horrendous decision if we made roads in the future 70-kilometre or 80-kilometre roads forever. If you actually want to have a civil war in Victoria—and the last public uprising in Victoria I think was about the gold tax in Ballarat 170 years ago—if you want to have civil uprising in Victoria, let the Andrews government go around and actually put 70- and 80-kilometre speed limits on all the country roads that are not major highways. That would be something that would absolutely tip the balance against this particular government. So can I send a very clear message to anyone on the other side of the house: if it is talked about— actually lowering speed limits in regional Victoria—and if you value your seat and you value your position in this place, make sure you stand up in the party room and argue against that particular proposal, because it would be horrendous to lower the speed limit right around Victoria. The speed limits on some roads are too low now. One of the great things we can be thankful for is that Jeff Kennett when he was Premier actually made the highway between Wycheproof and Mildura 110 kilometres per hour, because if you have to sit on 100 kilometres on that road it just takes far too long to get there. The Liberals and Nationals will be strongly opposing this particular piece of legislation. I think those that did their research would have seen that South Australia actually talked about potentially doing this, and they realised that they got it wrong and they are now not introducing a distance-based tax on electric cars. New South Wales, contrary to what the member for Bentleigh has said, has announced it will not be moving in the near term on a distance tax on electric cars. So the member for Bentleigh got quite a lot wrong in his contribution. I would urge him to actually go back and do his research and put the facts on the record rather than just reading from the cheat sheet that has been given out to him by the government advisers. We will oppose this legislation in both this house and the upper house, and I would hope particularly when this goes to the other place that there will be enough people who realise that this tax sends all the wrong messages about electric vehicles and low-emission vehicles and that it will be defeated in the upper house. I think that would be a good outcome for Victoria into the future. Obviously we will not defeat it here, because the government has the numbers, but I look forward, in the upper house, to common sense prevailing and this legislation being defeated. Ms KILKENNY (Carrum) (15:18): I am absolutely delighted to rise today to speak on this very important bill, the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. I have listened to the lead speaker for those opposite and I have listened to the member just now speak in opposition to this bill. I think we need a bit of fact-checking going on here, and I also think we need to really interrogate, perhaps, the logic that they are putting forward in opposition to this bill. I can only ask the rhetorical question: can those opposite seriously be suggesting that Victorians who have already purchased a zero-emission vehicle did so in order to avoid paying a fuel excise? Quite clearly the answer is no. Those Victorians who have purchased a zero-emission vehicle have done so because it is a zero- emission vehicle. That is the reason they have purchased that vehicle. For those opposite to suggest anything other than that means they are even more disconnected from their communities and they are even more disconnected from current debate on the need to reduce emissions and on the need to tackle climate change not just here in Victoria and not just here in Australia but across the world as well. I listened to the member for Ripon, who when she was speaking in opposition to the bill also quoted the Australian Automobile Association. I would also like to quote Michael Bradley, the managing director of the Australian Automobile Association, who had this to say on Sunday, 2 May:

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The incentive package announced by the Victorian government, coupled with a new distance-based road-user charge for electric vehicles, is an important step as governments look to make reforms that ensure all drivers pay their fair share of road funding without deterring the uptake of zero-emissions vehicles. It makes sense that as vehicle technologies change, so too does government policy. Adrian Dwyer from Infrastructure Partnerships Australia is quoted as saying:

Victoria’s holistic EV policy now has the support of manufacturers, motorists and infrastructure providers for one simple reason—it’s a good policy. Combining this comprehensive proposal with a modest road user charge strikes the right balance between encouraging EVs and making sure we can fund our roads. … In light of today’s announcement, it is critical the Victorian Parliament does not block or delay passage of the Zero and Low Emissions Vehicle Road User Charging legislation. This is about the Andrews Labor government positioning Victoria to be a leader in zero-emission vehicles, and this means establishing a supportive environment for the transition to zero-emission vehicles as well. Of course when we talk about the environment, we are talking about and we are debating this bill in the context of a much broader policy setting and a set of announcements that were made just this weekend. The announcement made by the Andrews Labor government on Sunday sets an ambitious climate change strategy and interim targets. As I said, we are positioning Victoria to be an absolute global leader in tackling climate change. In doing this we are creating the jobs of the future, we are supporting industry, we are supporting the development of new technology, we are investing in research and innovation and we are literally driving the creation of thousands of jobs. As the Andrews Labor government is steering Victoria on our transition to renewables, we have set those ambitious targets and we are looking to establish a cleaner economy that is going to be powered by 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030. This is a historic occasion. I would have thought that those opposite, rather than opposing this bill and opposing the overall strategy of this government, would be supporting this, because this is what leadership is about. It is certainly not something we are seeing on the national front. With the absolute failure of any national leadership on this issue, Victoria is taking the initiative and showing that leadership. I really would like to acknowledge the Premier, the Acting Premier, the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, the Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Regional Development, the Minister for Public Transport and Minister for Roads and Road Safety, the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery and many others. This has been a tremendous effort by so many. We have absolutely committed to reform. As the member for Bentleigh identified, the centre of our strategy that was announced on the weekend was to set a target to reduce emissions by 28 per cent to 33 per cent by 2025 and 45 per cent to 50 per cent by 2030. Again, this announcement, this target, sets Victoria at the very forefront of Australia’s climate change action. As we all know, Victoria was certainly a leader in Australia and one of the first jurisdictions in the world to legislate net zero emissions by 2050. Through this important action we have already seen a massive reduction in our emissions by 24.8 per cent on 2005 levels, and we have achieved our 2020 emissions reduction target two years early. We are certainly well on track to meet our target in 2025. In an absolute Australian first—I think this is another extraordinary announcement and target and policy—we have committed to make sure our government sector, so our schools, our hospitals our police stations and our metro trains will all be powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025. We know that zero- and low-emission vehicles are going to be a really important part of this reform. That is because obviously the transport sector actually makes up more than one-fifth of this state’s greenhouse gas emissions, so the increased uptake of zero-emission vehicles will unquestionably play a pretty key role in Victoria’s transition to a low-emissions economy. Part of the announcement on the weekend was a really warmly received announcement, and that was to offer up to $3000 to Victorians who purchase a zero-emissions vehicle. That is because we know that one of the biggest barriers to Victorians purchasing zero-emission vehicles is the up-front cost. They are expensive vehicles, but of

BILLS 1306 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 course once purchased the owners of those vehicles then enjoy hundreds and hundreds of dollars in savings on maintenance costs and fuel costs over the life of that car. This package to support and incentivise the uptake of zero-emission vehicles will actually see the Andrews Labor government invest more than $100 million to help us reach a really important target of 50 per cent of new car sales in Victoria by 2030 actually being zero-emission vehicles. I am just so proud to be a part of this government, which is continuing its action on tackling climate change and bringing in this significant reform. This bill is part of that reform and part of that strategy. I understand that when this bill and this charge were first flagged there was criticism. I received correspondence from members of my community. I want to acknowledge those members and acknowledge them for taking the time to write to me to raise their concerns. A lot of those people were actually young people, even people who are not driving yet. They raised their concerns thinking it was somehow going to be a disincentive, and to be fair, that criticism was understandable. But I think that is why it is so important that we get the facts and the accurate information out there. This modest charge—it is a very modest charge—is about fairness and equity. It is about ensuring that motorists who use the roads—all motorists who use the roads—contribute their fair share to the cost of funding those roads, the cost of maintaining them and road-related infrastructure. I commend this bill. I think this is a tremendous part of the package, the reform, that is being introduced by the very progressive Andrews Labor government that is doing so much work in the absence of any national strategy. We are doing so much work to address climate change, to tackle these issues head- on, and I absolutely commend the bill to this house. Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (15:28): I rise to oppose the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021, effectively the electric vehicle tax, yet another tax this government is implementing. What a shocking tax this one is. What an absolutely shocking tax this one is. This is a government that virtue signals at every single point. They go out, this government, and they claim that they are going to do all wonderful things for the environment, but the proof is in the pudding. This government is imposing a tax. We should be trying to transition to electric vehicles, but instead we are taxing the very industry that we want to encourage to create more uptake of electric vehicles. It was a privilege for me to actually meet with a number of people in the industry, back when this tax was earmarked when the budget was announced in November, and to talk to them. I must say that this government themselves knew that they were on a bit of a hiding to nothing with this particular tax. I raised this in an adjournment in November, questioning the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and asking, ‘Why would you tax the very industry that is trying to get itself going to transition to clean emissions in the state? Why would you do that?’. We are one of the worst performing in the country, one of the worst in the world, when it comes to uptake of electric vehicles, and this government wants to tax them. Well, when I raised that issue, the Leader of the House, the member for Bendigo East, said, ‘No, this is already being covered’—that this particular tax was being covered within the Appropriation (2020–2021) Bill 2020, so therefore we were not going to have the separate bill that we are debating today. Why are we now having this bill today? It is because they knew that the opposition were not going to support it. There are not many times when the Greens and the Liberals and Nationals agree, but on this one we do. So the government are certainly struggling for numbers, because this is a bad tax. This could have very much threatened the appropriations bill or the budget, because what the government were initially looking at doing was slipping this in along with everything else. They have carved it off, because they were concerned when they were found out. They were found out in that this is a tax that they were going to hide, that they were going to slip in, but the industry stood up and said, ‘We don’t want a regressive tax. We don’t want a bad tax’. We have seen the letter that was written by the industry themselves, that said this is the worst tax in the world—the worst tax in the world. I am very proud to be a Victorian and to stand up and say so when we lead the way. Well, guess what? The Andrews Labor government has led the way in being the only jurisdiction in the world to have a standalone electric vehicle tax.

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And so what does this government say? ‘That’s okay, that’s okay. We’ll just give some subsidies for people to buy a new car but then tax them when they get the new car’. Well, that is like—as our Leader of the Opposition, the member for Malvern, says—running your air conditioning and your heating in your house at the same time. I mean, that is ridiculous. You are going to give them subsidies, get people to take it up and then hit them for a tax along the way. Now, the member for Bentleigh says, ‘Well, this is a luxury tax. Those people that own electric vehicles, they’re the wealthy people. Don’t worry about those. They should pay their way’. Well, let me say there are plenty of people that I know in my electorate that do not consider themselves wealthy who want to do their bit for the environment. They are neighbouring the member for Bentleigh’s electorate, and I know many of those people would not see a $50 000 Nissan Leaf as a luxury vehicle. As I pointed out in my adjournment back in November, there is a group called the Girl Geek Academy that purchased in their small business running IT solutions a Nissan Leaf for $50 000. Now, this tax that we are talking about is a retrospective tax. That vehicle was purchased 12 months ago or thereabouts. They will have to pay an additional $4500 on top of the vehicle—$4500 that they did not even know about. They were trying to do the right thing for the environment, and they are being taxed as a result of their good work. And there are plenty of people that are doing that. I know the member for Bentleigh mentioned that Tesla was not one of the 25 signatories on that letter. Well, I met with Sam McLean, the head of government relations at Tesla, and Sam told me that Tesla are very, very much against this tax, along with Tim Washington, the founder and CEO of Jet Charge, a charging station company in Victoria that are rolling out charging stations in Victoria—innovation locally. Now, the government want to create additional charging stations. That is fantastic. But it is no use having them if there are no cars on the road to use them, and this government wants to tax these very cars, to slow the uptake and ultimately prevent the innovation that we need to be able to transition from fuel cars to electric vehicles. That is all we need, that is all we want and that is what we would expect the government to be doing. They are virtue signalling at every point to say they are the government that are high and mighty when it comes to the environment, but actions are very slow when it comes to actually delivering on the ground. Now, I went out to Dandenong, and I met with Peter Jones, the managing director of Nissan Casting Australia, in Dandenong—300 jobs, a great business. Now, that business provides a number of parts and components for the Nissan Leaf. Those 300 jobs are attributed to the block that goes in the Nissan Leaf and a lot of the other parts that go in the Nissan Leaf—not only for Victoria, but they export those parts internationally. It is a great innovation story. We have seen a lot of companies close down when it comes to car manufacturing. Well, in Dandenong, the Nissan Leaf has actually grown. Now, I asked Peter Jones—and it is on my Facebook page; there is a video—‘What do you think about this tax? Is it going to help you?’. And he replied, ‘Absolutely not. It’s a tax that nobody needs. We’re trying to encourage more vehicles. We want to keep this business going’. All it is going to do is hinder the very work that they are trying to do: job creation. This government talks a lot about job creation. Well, this is not helping any local jobs in Dandenong. This is not helping any local jobs through the charging stations that they are creating. Any other affiliated industries are not being supported to actually transition. It is no use turning around and saying, ‘We’re doing a wonderful job. We’re reducing emissions. We’ve got all these targets’, if you are not actually doing something about it. Targets do not mean a damn thing unless you are actually going to do something that shows them within the policies that you implement in this Parliament. Now, a 2.5-cent-per-kilometre charge—which could be $4000 or $5000 on the vehicle, like I said with the Nissan Leaf—is an impost. It is a disincentive for those people to take up a vehicle. We should be doing everything we can to encourage more electric vehicles on the road. We should be putting our money where our mouth is, and that is what I would expect this government to do. It is no use creating charging stations, it is no use creating infrastructure, if we do not get uptake of electric vehicles. That is what we need. That is what we expect.

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And do not call it a wealth tax—do not call it ‘for the wealthy’—because that is offensive. It is offensive to every single individual that aspires to do the right thing for the environment, that aspires to actually get themselves out of a fossil-fuel car and into an electric vehicle. That is what we should be encouraging. Zero emissions is absolutely what we should be encouraging when it comes to these things. We talk a lot about electricity and doing our bit on electricity. Let us do our bit on the roads. Let us do it for transport, for buses, for cars, for everything. We will not get more electric vehicle uptake and a reduction in the cost of electric vehicles unless we get more people into those electric vehicles, and this tax will not do it. It is a bad tax; it is a regressive tax. It taxes those people who have already got electric vehicles along with those that would like to buy one. And the government has not put its money where its mouth is when it comes to this—not at all. The Electric Vehicle Council rates us dead last. We are the only state in Australia that is doing this. It is bad, as we have said. And we have heard the head of the Electric Vehicle Council, Behyad Jafari, say:

Victoria is already massively behind comparable jurisdictions in the US, the UK, and across Europe in terms of electric car uptake. This tax will … make it worse.

Far from being on track to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, emissions from transport are rising in Victoria. This is the wrong time to tax zero emissions vehicles … It is the wrong time, it is a bad tax and I urge members to vote against this regressive tax. Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (15:38): It is my great pleasure to rise and speak on this bill so that we can spend a bit of time talking about some of the fundamentals that underpin car ownership and electric car ownership. Transport decisions are made simply on two criteria: convenience and affordability. Convenience and affordability are the things, consciously or subconsciously, that drive all of our transport decisions, and the convenience and affordability, be it of trains or buses or walking or driving motor vehicles or other vehicles, are the things that drive those decisions, particularly when it comes to the daily commute and particularly when it comes to the use of a vehicle every day in a year—and it is pretty easy to gross up the cost over a year of a particular transport choice. Within affordability, of course, there are a number of moving parts. The opposition are seeking to massively oversimplify this debate, but in the total cost of ownership of a vehicle actually the biggest cost is not registration or even petrol or insurance or servicing or tyres or road tolls—no, the single biggest cost of motor vehicle ownership, for the overwhelming majority of motor vehicles, is depreciation. So our job is to get the headline price of electric vehicles down. That is what will ultimately drive up uptake. Electric cars are just as convenient as hydrocarbon-fuelled vehicles because the ranges are now comparable. There is no diminution on convenience, and in fact arguably, because servicing is so quick and easy, they might even be more convenient. On affordability, we still have an issue that the price of the battery is considerable in the overall price of a car. The motor is way simpler. Electric motors are way simpler—simpler to service and cheaper. That is a great part of the solution. It is the battery cost that drives something of an imbalance between the headline price of an ICE—an internal combustion engine—vehicle and an electric vehicle, so our job is to get down the headline price. Now, the member for Caulfield used an analogy—it was kind of cute—of turning on the heating and the air conditioning at the same time, but the nuance of this debate is being lost on those opposite because they are failing to understand that we are talking about a state-based tax replacing a federal tax. This is the bit that they have conveniently chosen to disregard in the process of the debate, and it matters. Here is why it matters: the commonwealth has a constitutional head under which it is the only government in Australia that can apply an excise. The word ‘excise’ has a whole bunch of constitutional law around it, and it is in fact a word that has very specific meanings. There are High Court cases on this. The commonwealth are the only ones who can charge a fuel excise, in the same

BILLS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1309 way that they are the only ones who can charge a tobacco excise. So the commonwealth has this power to charge a fuel excise, and charge they do. We think about a third of the commonwealth fuel excise that is gathered here in the state of Victoria is actually spent on Victorian roads—a third. What an inefficient tax! Can I quote the member for Caulfield and say, ‘That’s a bad tax’. That is a really bad tax, because it is inefficient and it is being collected by the level of government that is not doing the spending. If we have a standing gripe in this place, it is the fact that there is a massive disconnect between those who raise the revenue in this nation and those who do the bloody work—that is, those who build the schools and build the hospitals and run the schools and run the hospitals and build the roads and run the road system. Because what you have is an inefficient tax levied by the commonwealth that shovels all this money out of Victoria to be spent on marginal seats in Queensland in service of the LNP’s ambitions to stay in government federally. That is really genuinely a bad tax—a very, very bad tax indeed—because it does not deliver for Victorians and it is just woefully, woefully inefficient. So we say that you need to replace that very, very bad tax, that genuinely regressive tax, and put in its place a tax that will reflect not just the circumstances today but the circumstances in 10 and 20 years time. We are on a journey, a transition from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles, and it is a very good transition. I spent a lot of time with Evan Thornley, formerly of the other place, now working in a business called Better Place, talking about this transition—talking about the importance of moving away from hydrocarbon-powered vehicles to electricity, particularly renewable electricity. Think about it. The effect of running an electric car on wind power or solar power—it is effectively a yacht. You are using the power of the wind to power your vehicle. That is a fantastic thing. It can only happen with battery technologies, and the battery technology is a significant chunk of the price of the car. We know that, so our job is to get the headline number down. Now, the member for Caulfield might be right to point out that on the face of it it seems counterintuitive to take with one hand and give with the other, and if you boil the argument down to one of complete simplicity, one might well be persuaded. But I hope, for those following along at home, that attention is paid to the commonwealth and state relations piece of this puzzle, because it is very, very important to recognise that the fuel excise is an inequitable tax, a tax that allows Treasurer Frydenberg to redistribute money away from Victoria to other places and to do so pretty dramatically. It is not a hypothecated tax, let us be clear. Only a third of the fuel excise collected in Victoria comes back onto Victorian roads. But this tax is hypothecated. In fact I would argue it is kind of triple hypothecated, because three times the revenue we are proposing to collect will be spent on the electric car network and the take-up of electric cars. Well, isn’t that good news? It comes back to convenience and affordability, and what better for convenience than building out the electric-charging network, what better for affordability than hitting the thing where it matters, on the headline price that will ultimately feed into depreciation, which is the single biggest cost of ownership of a motor vehicle—the single biggest cost. And our job as a Parliament is to ensure that we do have the highest possible take-up of these vehicles and not to plan for the taxation arrangements as they might be today, tomorrow or next year but to look well beyond the near-term horizon, to look 10 and 20 years into the future, when you will have telemetrics in every vehicle. A user-based charge allows for a hyperefficient application of the resources it generates. It will be hypothecated to Victorian roads. So there is a win by a factor of three to one straight up—that just by spending 100 per cent of the revenue on Victorian roads we are three times better off than we are under the commonwealth’s lazy, inefficient and silly fuel excise arrangements. So the opportunity here is to set the balance between the state and the commonwealth onto a much, much better footing. That, frankly, is the elephant in the room on this debate. Yes, on the face of it it looks a bit odd to be taking some money from zero- and low-emission vehicle drivers and giving them a bunch of money back, but let us be really clear: we are putting our foot on the jurisdictional space that is a road user charge, and that ought to have the support of those opposite because it is an efficient way of taxing motor vehicle users to support the growth, the development and the operation of the

BILLS 1310 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 road network. That is a very, very good way of going about many streams of taxation, and taxation ought to for the most part be related to a particular benefit or it should be to disincentivise poor behaviour—like, for example, we should have a price on carbon, but I will not go there today. So this bill takes us a step towards better balancing the relationship between the state and commonwealth, because right now we know the commonwealth taxes, has policy ideas and writes cheques, but it is the state, without an income taxation power, who is left to provide the schools and the hospitals and the roads and the ambulances and a whole range of services right across the gamut of our economy without being able to leverage an income tax and therefore is dependent on handouts from the commonwealth. And can I say that the member for Ripon in her contribution failed to address the fact that her amazing three-point plan for bringing the budget back to surplus includes, quote, ‘aggressively’ lobbying the commonwealth for an increase in the GST. Well, I suspect her colleagues in New South Wales might have a view about that sort of pre-emptive strike on behalf of the Shadow Treasurer in relation to GST revenue, but I think it can only point to one thing, because her plan is a magic pudding of a plan. It is about this aggressive lobbying of the commonwealth. She says that she will trim the public service but not cut any services—a bit more magic pudding. She says surpluses will be funded through economic growth. Well, there can only be one real thing sitting behind that plan. Clearly there is a secret plan on behalf of the member for Ripon to raise the GST in this nation, and she should come clean and tell us all about it. I support this bill and I commend it to the house. Mr HIBBINS (Prahran) (15:48): I rise to speak on behalf the Greens to the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021, a bill that will put a standalone tax on electric vehicles, a bill that is coming at a time when we are facing a climate crisis; when transport is our biggest growing source of emissions in Victoria, our biggest source of emissions outside our coal-fired power stations, coming in at around 20 to 25 per cent of our emissions and growing; and when Victoria and Australia are lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to the uptake of electric vehicles. This policy should not have survived the laugh test. Now, I am sure the Treasurer probably did have a big laugh in his office when he thought of this, when this idea was furnished around or first proposed, but it should not have gone beyond that. This policy should not have survived the laugh test, yet somehow it did. The Treasurer took it up to the Board of Treasurers, his interstate counterparts, and Victoria led the charge on the application of a standalone tax on electric vehicles. Well, they led the charge and they have been left out on a rock, because no other state now is proceeding with a standalone tax on electric vehicles. In the only state where they introduced these laws their Parliament would not support them, so they have now deferred them and put them off I think until after the next election. In fact it was the Greens, crossbenchers and South Australian Labor who stopped the bill in South Australia. The South Australian Labor leader was very critical of their bill, calling it bad for the environment, bad for jobs and bad for South Australians. That is not the only Labor leader to oppose a standalone tax on electric vehicles. The leader of the federal opposition, Anthony Albanese, said it was absurd that states would be going it alone on a tax on electric vehicles, and most other states are not even considering it. But this did not deter the Treasurer. He took it to cabinet. You would think surely an environment minister—any environment minister worth their salt—would have objected to this. That is what happened in New South Wales when the New South Wales environment minister opposed the EV tax floated by their Treasurer, but not here in Victoria. Our Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change supports the EV tax, so it got through cabinet and presumably it got through the party room—if these things do actually go to the Labor Party party room—so now we have in this Parliament a bill, a proposal that was quite rightly described as ‘the worst electric vehicle policy in the world’. That is 25 industry and environment groups coming together, from the Electric Vehicle Council to Environment Victoria, Solar Citizens and GetUp! all describing this as the worst electric vehicle policy in the world, and the community outrage and the community opposition to this bill, this EV tax, has been significant. We

BILLS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1311 put out our own call to get people to tell us what they thought of the electric vehicle tax, and I will just read out some of the comments that came through:

Taxing EV drivers for not burning petrol is like taxing non-smokers for not smoking. Putting a tax on them stinks like the pollution and diesel from petrol. This tax would be an utterly irresponsible decision at a time when climate action is so crucial. Get on board for our environment. Have the guts to step up and make a better future for our children. We need to do everything we can to reduce emissions and pollution and this EV tax does exactly the opposite. These are comments from the Victorian public about Labor’s electric vehicle tax. Why is this the worst electric vehicle policy in the world? Well, transport, as I said, is our fastest growing source of emissions. The majority is coming from polluting cars, and the vast majority of people want their next car to be an electric vehicle and the biggest barrier is price. While governments around the world are offering incentives of $10 000 to $15 000, bringing electric vehicles down to price parity with their petrol counterparts, this government, faced with a backlash, had to scramble and come up with a political fix, which was their announcement on Saturday. They have now got a very confusing stance of offering incentives with one hand and making them more expensive with the other. What they are doing is they are undermining whatever incentives they are offering, short-term incentives that will not go nearly any of the way to achieving the target that they announced. It was designed to take the heat out of the debate, and it certainly would not have been done had it not been for the community outrage about the EV tax. Our message to the government is clear: ditch the EV tax. And if that is not going to happen: Parliament, you need to stop the EV tax and keep and increase the incentives. Let us get electric vehicle numbers up before this is even considered. I mean, it is just no wonder we are lagging behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to EV uptake. The government cannot even get their story straight when it comes to why they are actually introducing this tax. First the Treasurer manufactures an argument about fairness and about paying for road use, yet fuel excise is a federal tax and it is not linked to road funding. Fuel excise does not go to road maintenance. It has not done so for decades. It comes out of general revenue, and any reduction in fuel excise that has occurred has not actually come from EVs, it has come from fuel-efficient vehicles. Would you put a tax on fuel-efficient vehicles because they are not paying as much as older cars? No, you would not. It is ridiculous, just as this tax is ridiculous. So to say it is about maintenance of roads is deliberately misleading. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead the Victorian public and try and get support for this bad idea, and it is another misjudgement because, as I said, most people want their next car to be an EV. In fact we all benefit when people buy an EV instead of a polluting car—cleaner air, less emissions, less pollution. Now, there are claims about all this revenue—the member for Burwood was saying that it is hypothecated. It is not hypothecated. It is not even in the bill. They did not even put in the bill that any of the revenue raised from this tax would actually be guaranteed to be spent on road funding or on charges. We have had bills and amendments before this Parliament that have hypothecated revenue from other sources, fines and what have you, but not in this bill. So it is not a hypothecated bill. It is going into general revenue. Apparently this charge, which over the next four years is going to raise around $40 million, is going to pay for new roads, road maintenance, EV charging stations and the EV package. I mean, it is completely misleading, completely inconsistent and it really just demonstrates, quite frankly, a shambolic development of this tax. I have got to say: when has this government actually given two hoots about fuel excise? I have never heard the government actually mention it in here. Have they ever acted to create transparency around fuel excise? Have they ever passed a law to say petrol stations need to actually disclose how much they are charging in fuel excise? No, they have not. Have they ever raised this with the federal government before, to actually replace fuel excise with another road-user charge? No.

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But the real reason this government is introducing a tax on EV drivers is that they have got dollar signs in their eyes and I reckon they have got privatisation on their minds. They want the money, and we know they are addicted to privatisation. We know that anything that Jeff Kennett did not privatise in the 1990s is getting sold off now—the port of Melbourne, the land titles office and now we have got VicRoads. In fact at this very moment they are looking to privatise the licence and registration functions of VicRoads—as we speak—the very same function that is going to be administering the EV tax. Money from the EV tax will be going into private profits. No doubt the Treasurer and the Premier in their quest to be innovative when it comes to revenue raising—well, we now know what this means. What does it mean for this future source of revenue for the government? We know that, just like what was done with the land titles office, there is potential for this to be privatised. We know Transurban want to get their hands on road-user charging. They want to be the ‘natural custodian’ of the nation’s motorways in the likely event of motorists being charged to drive on them. The original champions of the EV tax were a pro-privatisation think tank. Just imagine that: not a road-user charge working for the public good, where it could be used to manage congestion and limit the amount of cars on the road, but one that is about guaranteeing profit to a private company. That is one of the main reasons why we should be opposing this bill. The shadow of privatisation hangs over this bill. Tellingly, all the government’s statements about the EV tax have been about revenue. I know some have rightly pointed out that ultimately we will get down to the stage where we need a road-user charge, but this government is not doing it to manage demand or reduce congestion or improve travel times. This is a standalone tax on electric vehicles that will just be another barrier to the uptake of EVs. The burden of this tax will also have negative impacts for those who live in regional or suburban areas that have little to no access to public transport and who have to drive further. I note the government in fact ruled out a congestion levy on the CBD when that was proposed by Infrastructure Victoria as one of their main priorities. In fact the Premier said:

We’ve had a very consistent policy about not tolling existing roads. He said:

That remains our policy and that won’t be changing. Well, it changed when they wanted to put a tax on electric vehicles. I note the government is not introducing a road charge on heavy vehicles, the ones that actually do the most damage to our roads. Is it fair that heavy vehicles are not the ones that are having a road user charge like they have in New Zealand and other jurisdictions? They are not putting a charge on all vehicles or having a pilot scheme that would cover a range of vehicles. This government are not serious about managing congestion; they are serious about raising revenue however they can. Australia is lagging behind and Victoria is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to electric vehicles. They are around 10 to 40 per cent of new car sales in European countries and just 0.6 per cent of new car sales in Australia, and that is because we have got the least incentives. Just look at the comparison: even with the $3000 now offered by the state government for just a fraction, around 20 000, of the vehicles needed to reach its own target, we are still behind the rest of the world, which offers around $5000 to $15 000, again bringing it in line with price parity. These are the sorts of targets and incentives you actually need. Price parity will come, but it is not going to be this year or next year. It is going to be some time yet, and that is why we need these significant incentives in place now, not the small, limited incentives which the government has put forward. When it comes to the government fleet, a fleet of around 10 000, we have got five electric vehicles and 29 plug-in hybrid vehicles. The government have announced as part of their plan over the weekend they are going to buy an extra 400. We can look in comparison at what President Biden announced. They have 650 000 in their fleet, and he wants to replace all of them with electric vehicles. Tasmania have made a commitment to go to 100 per cent of their fleet, and so that is what we need to be doing here in Victoria.

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When it comes to electric buses, Victoria has one. New South Wales is transitioning its entire fleet. Other countries are racing ahead with hundreds if not thousands. Now, the government has said—I am going to be very interested, because the government has been quite misleading in its promotion of this particular policy—that by 2025, 100 per cent of buses are going to be EVs. Well, it is 100 per cent of new buses, so every bus you buy after 2025 is going to be an EV. How long is that going to take to transition the entire fleet? Really you could be saying that now. It is quite misleading. You can build buses in Australia now, and in fact I notice in New South Wales they are looking at sites to actually place the bus plants. That is exactly what we could be doing here in Victoria if we actually made a firm commitment not just to buy buses in 2025 but to place the orders now. You could actually be setting up the plants here in Victoria, here in Melbourne. To cut transport emissions, the fastest growing source of emissions here in Victoria, we put forward an alternative plan for EVs. We need to both transition our current petrol cars to electric vehicles but also shift people to sustainable forms of transport, public transport and active transport, and we need significant initiatives to do that. That is how we are going to reduce transport emissions. We are in a critical decade. This is the critical decade now to tackle climate change. This is when the heavy lifting needs to be done, in the next 10 years. We do not have the luxury of half-measures or political fixes; we need significant investment to reduce emissions from transport. What we put forward, our position on EVs, has been more than just opposing the electric vehicle tax. We want to see significant incentives—around the $10 000 mark plus more—to bring electric vehicles into price parity for the next five years at least. We want to make sure that everyone has access to charging in their own homes. This Parliament needs to be passing right-to-charge laws that will give renters the right to install charging stations in their residential parking spaces so that they are not unduly blocked by landlords and passing electric vehicle readiness laws requiring all new parking spaces and new developments to be electric vehicle ready. As I said, we need to transition our government fleet of 10 000 to electric vehicles. That will not just have great benefits for the emissions from those vehicles but also help the second-hand market and put more cars onto the second-hand market. We need to be ordering thousands of electric buses, creating jobs and getting more buses on the road with more higher frequency services. We need to support our local governments. I have seen a number of local governments that have been looking to transition their own fleets to electric vehicles, and of course there is also a market for specialty vehicles. I think out in Hobsons Bay they have got an electric garbage truck, and that is something that this government can be doing: assisting in getting all those specialty electric vehicles out there and out to their councils. And we need to continue on with some investment in public transport and to significantly increase investment in active transport by building hundreds of kilometres of separated bike lanes and really taking advantage of the changed travel patterns that people have now during COVID. Improving public transport is not just about infrastructure—it is very important—it is also about creating a more people-friendly service so all people can access public transport, whether it is by improving disability access or access to trams for people in wheelchairs, people with mobility issues or parents pushing prams or by making sure that there are staff on every station to help sell you a ticket or to help you on your journey or to make sure that people are not waiting 15 to 20 minutes for a train, a tram or a bus, sometimes late at night. These are the things that we can do to make sure that we are helping cut transport emissions. But this bill—this tax—needs to be opposed by this Parliament. It was a rush job by a Treasurer who basically thought he could get away with it. It has backfired. He has had to scramble and put in place a package to take the heat out of the issue. Interestingly, he created an expert advisory committee after this bill had been put through. Perhaps he might want to wait and delay this bill until he has actually consulted with his expert advisory committee.

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I note the biggest champions of this bill have actually been Sky News. Craig Kelly supports this bill. Michael Kroger, Peta Credlin and Sky News—they all support this bill. This is not a progressive tax; this is a regressive tax. This is a tax on clean air, and this Parliament needs to vote down this bill. I am presuming it will go through this house, given the weight of the government’s numbers, but there comes a time when Parliament and the upper house need to stand up. The community expects them to stand up and oppose this bill. Any Parliament worth its salt would block this bill, just as they have done in other states, and so I call on this Parliament to defeat and block and stop this tax on electric vehicles. Ms HALL (Footscray) (16:08): I am very pleased to make a contribution to this bill, particularly following the contribution from the Greens. I was reminded, as I often am when they are on their feet, about their glory days when we had the opportunity to introduce an emissions trading scheme in this country and when they had an opportunity to make transformative change to tackle climate change and to make Australia a global leader. But of course the Greens squibbed it. Every opportunity the Greens have to make some consequential change in this country, they let people down, so let us not forget about the Greens’ legacy in terms of climate change in this country. Now, as a result of that inaction, we are dealing with a commonwealth government beset with inaction, and we have an internationally embarrassing position on climate change. Members interjecting. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Could members please stop yelling across the chamber. Ms HALL: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, you can trace back to that Greens’ decision to deny us an emissions trading scheme the fact that we now have a commonwealth government that is an international embarrassment when it comes to climate change. The Greens helped contribute to that. We had an emissions trading scheme ready to go, but the Greens let us down. Climate and environmental issues are our number one global challenge in the short, medium and long term. I am very proud to be a member of a government that has announced its climate change strategy over the weekend and that we will be right up there with the world leaders as a jurisdiction. We will be doing the heavy lifting here in Victoria. Of course there is no single solution to tackling climate change, and supporting and incentivising electric vehicles is one important part of that. We announced a very comprehensive package over the weekend: a suite of reform incentives that will put clean transport front and centre. But this bill is also about fairness and about equity for road users. This is an issue that has been raised in my electorate of Footscray, and I would like to acknowledge the people who have contacted my office about this issue and to discuss this issue with me. Footscray is a diverse electorate. We have an industrial legacy that people are working hard to tackle and to respond to. Part of that is that people who can afford to have electric vehicles are gradually taking them up, and that is a good thing to see. However, I do not think that someone who perhaps is in an insecure job and driving an old car should have to subsidise the infrastructure required for electric vehicles to be on the road. The member for Burwood provided us with a taxation masterclass before, and I think this issue really is about fairness and equity in taxation. This is a government that is committed to a long-term target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. I know many people in my electorate were very pleased to see over the weekend the incentives that we will be introducing for electric vehicles to improve their affordability. That includes $46 million for the zero-emissions vehicle subsidy program. This will be an Australian first and will provide subsidies to people and businesses wanting to buy these vehicles. There will be $20 million for a zero-emission bus trial, which will support the transition of buses by 2025, which is a huge deal in my community. People have been advocating for zero-emission buses, and I am very pleased that this is part of the package. There is $10 million to add 400 zero-emission vehicles to the—

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Ms Britnell: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, on relevance, this is a very narrow bill about a tax that is being introduced. It is not about emissions. Can we ask that the member be brought back to the very narrow tax bill, please? The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has strayed a little bit from the bill. There is relevance in relation to what she is referring to, but I do ask her to speak to the bill. Ms HALL: The reason I believe that this is absolutely relevant is that we are talking about the things that we are going to do to incentivise uptake of these vehicles. We are also dealing with fairness and equity within the road network and how we pay for some of the infrastructure we need to support the transition into electric vehicles and electric-charging stations, and as we do that the distance-based charges that we are introducing will help cover those costs. But this bill is complemented by a whole range of initiatives that we announced over the weekend as part of our comprehensive strategy to support electric vehicles. So on the distance charges, these costs will vary by vehicle at a price of 2.5 cents per kilometre for electric and zero-emission light vehicles and 2 cents for low-emission light vehicles like hybrids. The first point is that these costs are still less than the total taxes paid by conventional car owners, and that is really important. We do not want to disincentivise anyone from buying zero- or low-emission vehicles, but it does come down to an issue of fairness. As I said previously, I do not think it is fair that someone on a low income in my electorate is, I suppose, covering the road maintenance costs for someone in a $100 000 Tesla. That is not fair. And abandoning your social responsibility to pay for shared facilities is not a green thing to do. That is straight from the Liberal Party playbook. So the revenue raised through these charges will enable us to fund critical electric vehicle infrastructure in Victoria and therefore incentivise the transition to zero-emission vehicles. The per-kilometre rates were set to ensure that these vehicles make a fair contribution to the road network whilst also taking into account the health and environmental benefits. Victoria is not the only jurisdiction implementing these charges. We have been working with other states and territories through the Board of Treasurers to ensure that these policies are nationally consistent. South Australia announced in its budget that it would introduce a comparable, modest road-user charge for zero- and low-emission vehicles. The Treasurer of New South Wales has indicated that he wants to consider a similar proposal in the next 12 months, and New Zealand is commencing a road-user charge for electric vehicles in January 2022. At least 28 states in the United States of America have already introduced special charges on electric vehicles and others are in the process of adopting them. These proposed charges are not unique to Victoria. It is the best time now, prior to an increased uptake of electric vehicles, to ensure that all road users are making a fair contribution to the network. While take-up of these vehicles is currently low, it is expected to increase over the next three to five years thanks to new models and hopefully increasing affordability of the cars. New electric vehicles are likely to reach price parity with traditional cars— (Time expired) Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (16:19): I rise to make my contribution on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021, a bill that introduces a strange new tax on electric vehicles. This is the only government in the whole world that wants to apply a big, new tax on people and an industry that are trying to do their bit to tackle climate change and reduce emissions, and I will be strongly opposing this big new tax. It is important to reduce Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions and be serious about tackling climate change, but the Andrews Labor government has no strategy and makes no sense with introducing this destructive bill to tax low- and zero-emissions vehicles. How serious can the Labor government be about tackling climate change if one of their first moves is to introduce laws that whack a big new fat tax on people who buy zero-emissions vehicles, a tax on people who want to play their part in reducing our emissions with a zero- or low-emissions vehicle? This bill is narrow. It has one objective, and that is to tax the owners of electric vehicles. As the member for Bentleigh referred to in his contribution, it is really about taxing those rich people that can afford

BILLS 1316 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 their $100 000 Teslas. How dare they? How dare they try to reduce their own carbon footprint? They must pay a big new tax. That is what Labor is all about here. It is not about incentivising people to get into low-emissions vehicles. It is about taxing the rich people that can afford them. What a twisted message; what an absolutely twisted message this Labor government is sending about dealing with emissions. I wonder if members opposite in the Labor government recall the eve of the 2014 election when the now Premier made a promise to millions and millions of Victorians that he would not introduce any new taxes. His exact words were, and I quote, ‘I make that promise’. Yet here we are today debating yet another new tax in this narrowcast bill, the 30th new or increased tax in fact that has been introduced by this Andrews Labor government—another broken election promise by the Premier and the Labor government and yet another tax on Victorians. But this tax has to be one of the strangest and most bizarre to come out of this Labor government, and I think it demonstrates beyond all doubt that they have completely lost the plot. This Labor government now wants to penalise Victorians for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Can you believe it? Because I certainly cannot. You could not script this stuff. Now, under this Labor government Victorians will be forced to pay a tax if they choose to buy a car that reduces their greenhouse gas emissions, that contributes to our overall goal of reducing our carbon footprint here in Victoria. This new tax proves that the government has its priorities completely backwards and would rather penalise Victorians for caring about the environment than reward them and that this Labor government is more concerned about taxing Victorians than protecting the environment. I guess it should come as no real surprise that Labor wants to impose yet another new tax on Victorians, because under this government we have seen that Victoria’s deficits will be piling up, with Victoria projected to be in debt to the tune of $155 billion by 2024. Victoria has lost its AAA credit rating under this government, and meeting the cost of debt will be higher and interest on debt will continue to increase. The Andrews Labor government is now trying to impose any new tax it can and rip more out of the pockets of Victorians. If you read the second-reading speech from the Treasurer, you would be forgiven for thinking that you were reading a glossy media release on the various government programs, and it seems to talk about absolutely anything but the very thing that this bill is doing—and that is creating a new tax. It is like they were so embarrassed to introduce this regressive and penalising tax that they could hardly muster the courage to actually mention it in the second reading, and it is very challenging for the members opposite in the Labor government in their contributions today to refer to it for what it really is. You would be forgiven, again, for thinking after reading the second-reading speech that this tax is simply a measure to make up for lost revenue. It is an utter hoax. The fuel excise levy we have heard a bit about today is a commonwealth tax which has been in place for decades. That is a commonwealth tax, so this Labor government yet again is trying to confuse Victorians with it. The state of Victoria has never taxed people for filling up their cars with petrol or taxed them for every kilometre they have travelled. Fuel excise has been declining for years as a result of increased fuel efficiencies in the vehicles manufactured today—and having worked at a vehicle manufacturer I know that is a fact— and more hybrids being on our roads. So to suddenly say that people who choose to buy cars that emit low or zero emissions must pay their fair share is simply ridiculous. Governments around the world have mandated that car manufacturers make cars that reduce their emissions by using less fuel, and in turn consumers are encouraged down that path. And given the transport sector constitutes such a large chunk of our overall emissions here in Victoria, that makes sense. But now this Labor government is seeking to penalise Victorians for its own policies. Under this new tax the Labor government is going to force Victorians to take photos of their odometers and send the photos to VicRoads—so someone sitting behind a desk can calculate how much tax these Victorians are meant to pay. Do you think they could come up with a more clunky, antiquated system for revenue raising? No wonder they got contact tracing with the global health pandemic so wrong. How is this actually going to be policed? How is VicRoads supposed to ensure the photo is actually a photo of the correct odometer in question?

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It is not only an unfair tax, but it places additional burdens on consumers in order to give this Labor government just some more of their hard-earned money, and how much is the administration of this new tax actually going to cost? When I asked the Treasury officials during the bill briefing, they said that this would be explained in the budget papers. So I went and looked in the budget papers and specifically at page 150 of budget paper 3. It states in black and white that this new tax results in a deficit—I repeat, a deficit—of $1.9 million in this financial year. So this is just an embarrassment. This tax will not raise revenue. It will actually cost Victorians more, and in the next financial year, in 2021– 22, the budget papers project that this will raise only $9 million. Now, can you believe that—only $9 million? All of the additional burden on Victorians, and it is only expected to raise $9 million more. The way this Labor government burns through money on its disaster-plagued Big Build projects—the West Gate Tunnel Project being a case in point—we would be lucky to get some line markings on the road with the amount of revenue that will be raised by this new tax. In the second-reading speech the Treasurer said:

The reforms introduced in this Bill ensure all motorists contribute their fair share to the cost of funding Victorian roads … When you hear Labor treasurers telling Victorians that they need to pay their fair share, we all know that that is really code for, ‘I’m taking more money, more of your hard-earned money’. There is nothing fair about this new tax. Now, owners of low-emission vehicles will still be required to pay car rego, their contribution to TAC and stamp duty when buying the car. And when we asked in the bill briefing with the Treasurer whether revenue raised will be secured in a dedicated fund to fix roads, they said no. So really it is such a bizarre new tax. Over the weekend the Labor government announced it would spend $100 million providing $3000 grants for people who want to buy electric cars. So to get this straight, the Labor government will pay people money to buy these cars and then tax them if they dare to drive them. This has to be one of the craziest policy announcements ever. The tax generated will not even come close to covering the $100 million the government will spend on this program. So not only will car owners be taxed more to reduce their emissions, Victorians will suffer an increased debt as a result of this program. It seems to me clearly that this is a case of the left hand of the Labor party having no idea what the far-left hand is actually doing. What kind of government hands out money to reduce emissions and then taxes it straight back? Just this Andrews Labor government is the one that does that. They have completely lost the plot. Victorians need certainty. Telling Victorians that they will be taxed more if they drive cars that reduce emissions sends the completely wrong message and means that our environment will suffer. This tax serves no useful purpose. The government is more concerned about taxing Victorians than our environment, which it is putting last. I urge members of this house to vote down this environment- destroying tax. Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (16:29): I rise with great pleasure to speak on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021, and I am smiling because, as the member for Footscray said, ultimately this bill, this framework, is about equality. It is about fairness. I know that my colleagues and I absolutely love coming to this place to talk about equality and fairness. We have had so many bills go through this house and the other place, bills that go to the heart of equality and fairness for all Victorians. Now, I would love to talk about the equality and fairness in this bill, but what I am really afraid of is if I start talking about equality and fairness, that side of the chamber will empty pretty quickly. Because for the last 2½ years when we put bills through this house about fairness and equality, those opposite quite often cannot even be bothered to turn up to debate a bill about equality and fairness. So what I am going to talk about is the framework that this bill is actually creating. It is creating a greener future for our transport industry by raising revenue for electric vehicle infrastructure. It integrates zero- and low-emission vehicles or electric vehicles into our road maintenance system and it makes it possible

BILLS 1318 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 for everyone to contribute to the infrastructure that Victorians need to create a greener future for our roads. Electric vehicles are a growing market in this country, without a doubt, and that is a really good thing. We know it is critical to a low-carbon future. In fact we announced on the weekend just gone our renewable energy target of 50 per cent renewables by 2030. I want to reassure people who may be listening today that our government is committed to making sure that electric vehicles are more affordable. That is why we invested over $45 million last year in electric vehicle infrastructure. It is also why we are rolling out a fast-charge network on our major highways and at major tourist destinations. It is why we are looking into electrifying our buses and introducing EV infrastructure. Just last weekend we announced a subsidy of $3000 for electric vehicles, and we have a plan to have 50 per cent electric vehicle usage in 2030. Victorians can be assured or excited—I think they should be excited—that this is just the beginning. There is so much more that we will see in this space. Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is our government’s plan, and believe me, electric vehicles will play a role in that transition. This is something that Labor knows must happen, and this is why it is also pleasing to see that the federal Labor Party has announced it will cut tariffs and fringe benefits tax from electric vehicles, both of which would shave thousands of dollars off the cost of buying an electric vehicle. That is in stark contrast to the federal Liberal government, who do not seem to have a clear plan for the future of electric vehicles in this country. Then again, I seem to remember, if I cast my mind back, that these kinds of policies were something that those opposite and their mates in Canberra compared to a war on the weekend. That was indeed quite bizarre. I think it is also bizarre that those opposite who oppose this bill are worried that the charge will undermine jobs and industry. They would not, by any chance, be talking about the car industry that their federal counterparts practically chased out of this country, a decision that was so reckless that Victorians are still paying for it. The fact is the commonwealth is not acting in this space. The whole nation knows the commonwealth is not acting in this space. And if they do not, what Victorians can be sure of is that our government, the Andrews Labor government, will. Now, over the past couple of weeks I have received a number of emails—not a lot; just a couple— from constituents who have raised their concerns about this bill with me. I am really pleased to see that there are a couple of people in my community, both young and old, who are so passionate about the future of electric vehicles in this country, because I can wholeheartedly say, as someone who spends quite a bit of time on the roads in and around my electorate, that I do not see a lot of electric vehicles around the district of Tarneit. A member interjected. Ms CONNOLLY: There ain’t no Teslas, or not many, in the outer west. People in my community have asked me why it is that we are introducing this charge and they have told me they are worried this is going to hurt the uptake of electric vehicles. Now, I want to be clear. This is not a tax on buying an electric vehicle, for God’s sake. It is a distance-based charge on the use of the roads by electric vehicles. This is not too dissimilar to internal combustion vehicles, owners of which pay a similar charge through the commonwealth fuel excise. We know that year by year the revenue brought in from the fuel excise goes down, and it continues to go down. At the same time we have an ambitious road infrastructure program whereby we have just seen the likes of $1.8 billion of roads right across the Tarneit electorate completed, and what we know in Tarneit, more than most, is that road infrastructure programs are ambitious and they cost a hell of a lot of money. What we have been told by experts is that if we do not implement a change like this, then the increased uptake of electric vehicles will work against the development of our transport network and our cities—livable cities, like Wyndham.

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In fact what is worrying is, according to Professor David Hensher from the University of Sydney, that the lower operating costs of electric vehicles run the very real risk of increasing congestion significantly if governments continue to reject road pricing reform. With low costs to run and no price signal to minimise unnecessary travel, the roads of the future will be clogged. They will be run down faster than ever before. Now, when I think about my community in Tarneit, well, we rely extensively on our government investing in our roads, and the need for this charge becomes even clearer. Whilst we have effectively a fuel tax which allows petrol users to pay for our roads, we do not have anything similar for electric vehicles, so it does not stack up. And when the member for Footscray talks about fairness and equality, she is talking about how it does not stack up that introducing a charge on electric vehicles using the roads would hurt their uptake when they have a lower tax burden and still cost more than a regular combustion engine vehicle. Ms Vallence: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I just think the member is perhaps misleading the house, and the reason I say that is because it was quite clear in the bill briefing provided by the department that this revenue raised would not go to a road infrastructure fund. They expressly said, ‘No, it will go to consolidated revenue’. So I think the member is misleading the house. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Evelyn, that is not a point of order. Ms CONNOLLY: I have so much to say and so little time. What you ultimately have, in essence, is a system where wealthier Victorians who can afford the cost of an electric car then pay less than other road users in costs. We know the charge of charging an electric car can be far cheaper than refuelling a car with petrol, with some full charge costs being as high as $22. Compare that to filling a petrol tank at $1.50 per litre. As the member for Tarneit, a municipality where seven out of 10 people get in their cars for work and travel hours each day to get to their jobs, $1.50 per litre ends up costing a lot of money per week. On top of this, vehicles which use the standard internal combustion engine can cost up to $890 a year in charges and tax—not even considering the TAC charges that we pay in our registration fees. The need for a distance-based charge for EVs has been supported by a number of automobile bodies, including Roads Australia, who called it a sensible measure and said it was an important step in ensuring fairness in the road contribution system. In finishing up in the 30-odd seconds I have got I will say that what this bill is about is ensuring that everyone fairly contributes to our roads, and if those opposite do not believe in fairness and equality and fairness in contribution towards our roads, then I am absolutely appalled. Our government stays committed to the rollout of electric vehicles in Victoria, and I look forward to seeing future announcements on ZLEV infrastructure investment. Not everyone is going to like this bill, but it is a step in the right direction, and I commend it to the house. Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (16:39): I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this bill, and I must say while I have only been in the chamber for a couple of minutes I have heard most of it via the internal system and it has gone in exactly the way I expected it to. The bill indicates that the purpose of the act is:

… to require registered operators of zero and low emission vehicles to pay a charge for use of the vehicles on certain roads … The ‘certain roads’ are every road, not certain roads. They are every road. That is not a charge; it is a tax. The purpose of the bill highlights right from the start the hypocrisy of the government. To talk about charges, to talk about certain roads—it is a tax on driving every kilometre one of these vehicles travels. It is quite fascinating to me—again, the hypocrisy, the pretence about caring for our environment. We have had just in the last couple of days the smokescreen of the targets. Right through question time today I think it was every ministers statement talking about the targets and the wonderful things that are going to flow from that. Miraculously we saw these targets announced on Sunday after the government had been taking a bucketing for weeks on this bill. Let us just remember, as I am sure you do, that the Climate Change Act 2017 required an interim emissions reduction target for the periods that the government announced on Sunday, a legislated date to be announced—31 March

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2020— thirteen months late, and just miraculously when the government is under the pump because of this proposal. A member interjected. Mr MORRIS: The member says, ‘the pandemic’. They were due on 31 March. Do not tell me that they could not get it done because we had two weeks of pandemic before they should have been announced. The pandemic has been the excuse for every shortcoming of every government minister for the last 12 months. I mean, let us get real. It did not stop you bringing forward a bill to bring in a new tax, did it? You could manage to do that all right. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mornington, through the Chair. Mr MORRIS: I apologise, Deputy Speaker. I will address my remarks through you. The reaction to the bill was exactly what the government deserved: ‘United call for Pallas to pull plug on electric car fees’, ‘State’s electric vehicle scheme “world’s worst”’, ‘Vic electric car charge “absurd”’, ‘Electric car rebate plan fails to persuade industry’—that was probably the kindest one of the lot. We know there were claims made in the second-reading speech about the various jurisdictions around the world that had gone down this path, starting with South Australia, which of course has had a look at it and decided not to go down that path, and then the Oregon example that was given, which is a voluntary tax et cetera, as the Shadow Treasurer identified for the house a couple of hours ago—just a complete crock. In fact it is interesting to look at the draft infrastructure strategy prepared by the government’s own hand-picked organisation—the one that they keep claiming is independent but just happens to have a board of departmental secretaries, which is hardly independent. But even that organisation talks about draft recommendation number 1—number 1, presumably the most important recommendation—to incentivise zero emissions for vehicles:

Reaching net zero emissions by 2050 will require widespread adoption of zero emissions vehicles … If all vehicles were zero emissions, this would remove around 27 million tonnes of potential greenhouse gas emissions … … the Victorian Government should incentivise zero emissions … What has the government done? Slapped a tax on it. There are also, I think, some interesting words in the second-reading speech that I would like to address. On the second page the minister in his second- reading speech indicates:

The Government is also investing at record levels to maintain and improve Victoria’s road network … Wrong, plain wrong. The Auditor-General’s report on maintaining state-controlled roadways states:

Total real funding to VicRoads has been decreasing … including a reduction in maintenance funding of about 60 per cent. Sixty per cent—and the Treasurer claims that the network is being improved. The report goes on to talk about roads being in a very poor condition and long-term deterioration of pavement surfaces and notes that:

… maintenance practices … are not adequate to sustain the functional condition of VicRoads’ road network … That is the first point. On the second point, again—this is further down on this issue—the minister talks about ensuring:

… we can continue to invest in our transport networks into the future. The fact is you are not investing in your roads now, so do not pretend that this tax—and the point was made a minute ago—which goes to consolidated revenue, is about improving roads, because it is not.

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The second point—and I will just make it very briefly—the Treasurer talks about is a 2-cent-per- kilometre charge applying to plug-in hybrid electric light vehicles. This is a double tax of course. People are already paying GST on their power bills and then you charge them again, so people are being charged two taxes to drive their vehicles on the road. The next point I would make is that in the next paragraph the Treasurer says:

… a per-kilometre charge ensures vehicle owners who use the roads pay less in distance-based charges … That is interesting, talking about how the charge makes sure that use on the roads is fair. Well, let me give you an example of many people in my electorate who, in a normal year, would take off to Queensland. They are retired; they have worked hard. They get in their cars, many of them towing their caravans, like many ordinary Australians, and they head off to Queensland. They are probably not going to be towing a caravan with an electric vehicle, I grant you that, but things will move on. If they drive from Tocumwal to Cairns, as many do, and then drive back later in the year from Cairns to Tocumwal, that will cost them. Under this bill, we will be slugging them $125 for not using Victorian roads. It is hardly equitable, and certainly it potentially runs into jurisdictional issues on that basis. The next point that the speech talks about is, and I quote:

Existing incentives to promote the take-up of ZLEVs will continue … That is generous—seriously? You are maintaining the existing incentives, but the government is providing a massive, massive disincentive for people to get into the market in the first place. If the average life of a vehicle is 12 years—and given that the average age of the fleet is 10-point-something, it is probably longer than 12 years, a lot longer, but if we say 12 years—then under these provisions you are adding an additional minimum cost to a vehicle of $4000. This is a massive disincentive for people to get into the market. It is hard enough anyway—these are not cheap vehicles—and you are adding, as a government, a significant disincentive for people to get into the market. Back to the second-reading speech:

On balance, the Government anticipates the introduction of the distance-based charge will have a negligible impact on electric vehicle uptake… It ‘anticipates’ it will have a negligible impact on uptake. Well, let us just remember that the same government anticipated that to service the requirements of the Business Support Fund, five people in a call centre would be required—five people. 550 were required—not five times, not 10 times but more than 100 times. The government anticipated five. Who can have faith in this anticipation that it will have zero impact on the take-up? I think that is plainly wrong. This again is an example of Labor’s hypocrisy. Clearly they are not serious about climate change. If they were, they would not bring in this bill. Mr MAAS (Narre Warren South) (16:49): It gives me great pleasure to rise and to speak to the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. It was really fantastic to hear the words of the member for Tarneit as well, whose electorate sits on the outer suburban fringe. Being the good member that she is, she advocates very strongly for them. It is something that I can relate to, her strong advocacy for her community, as many of the same sorts of issues my community are also facing, being on the outer suburban fringe of the south-east. I know that my community, like her community, are looking for leadership when it comes to transitioning to a carbon-neutral world. What it is looking for is incentive to be provided, but incentive being provided where there is actually some form of equity, some form of access and some form of fairness as well. It has got to be affordable, but it has also got to be convenient, and it is these sorts of things that the government seeks to provide through the provision of this bill. The bill itself creates a new act of Parliament to introduce a modest distance-based charge on zero- and low-emission vehicles not predominantly powered by fuel sources subject to commonwealth government fuel excise on 1 July 2021. I note that the commonwealth government has been reasonably silent in this area, having not provided the sort of leadership that it needs to given that this sector of

BILLS 1322 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 the vehicle market is growing significantly strongly. We actually do have jurisdictions elsewhere in the country that are looking at the sort of leadership that Victoria is providing with this bill. There have been a few misnomers around the house. South Australia in fact deferred for 12 months its proposed bill; it did not ditch it, which has been said by some. New South Wales’s is to start within 12 months. Speaking of ditches, across the ditch over in New Zealand their bill will be enacted in some six months time. It is this state which is providing access and equity and the ability for all users to take up these zero- and low-emission vehicles and to be able to do so in a safe and fair way. The way that Australians pay for roads reflects old technology and is becoming increasingly unfair. Once upon a time, cars on the road which used roads the same amount and paid the same amount for fuel would pay the same amount of tax in excise on that fuel. Now, states cannot collect excise on fuel. That was determined many, many years ago. Only the commonwealth can do that. But in the absence of leadership from the commonwealth this vehicle distance-based charge is being made and being made at a time when we have a very low amount of these types of vehicles in the state. I understand that in terms of the zero- and low-emission vehicles there are some 20 000 vehicles in the state at the moment that are registered and there are some 30 000 hybrid vehicles. So only 50 000 of these vehicles are currently registered in the state, and that is against a population of 6.6 million or so in Victoria. I join the sentiment of the member for Tarneit in saying that not many of those vehicles would actually fall in my electorate at the moment. I do not see Teslas driving around in Narre South, and as much as it offends some, it is only the wealthy that can afford those highly efficient electric vehicles, which can use the roads far more while still paying much less for that privilege. That is leaving everyone else, including the taxpayer, to pick up the bill. We are on the cusp of a hopeful technological revolution from which cars will be much less expensive to operate and eventually much more affordable to purchase. As the Australian Automobile Association has said in recent days, it makes sense that as vehicle technologies change so too does government policy. On 3 May, just yesterday, the Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce (VACC) quoted CEO Geoff Gwilym as saying:

This move by the Andrews Government goes further than anything offered at a Federal level and shows good leadership. VACC went on to say:

The Chamber contends that it is the fairest way to improve and maintain the state’s road network. ‘If a motorist uses the roads, they should help pay for the build and upkeep’ … That is from the CEO of the VACC. In terms of the Electric Vehicle Council, the body which oversees electric vehicles in this state, they said a few days ago that:

This is exactly the kind of momentum we need in Australia if we want to join the rest of the world in embracing the transition to electric vehicles … Right now there is no better state in Australia to buy an electric car than Victoria. And of course as a member of the government I would completely agree with that sentiment, because this bill is also partnered with a $3000 subsidy to assist people to get into these types of vehicles. I know from experience that when subsidies are introduced for a new technology the uptake is a lot faster. When it comes to solar panels, for instance, in my electorate the uptake has been super quick because those subsidies have been put in place. What we are actually doing is lowering up-front costs with the subsidy, and then you are able to get access to that vehicle. Once you have that vehicle there are significant savings in the operation of that vehicle. Maintenance is low, so there is a big saving there. There is no fuel to put into the vehicle so there are savings there. So the ongoing cost is significantly lower, yet there is no money returning for the upkeep and the maintenance of our roads. With the ongoing costs being so low, to have some small portion going back to our roads, something that is equitable and fair for everyone, is not such a big ask. I know that in my electorate my constituents are very happy about all the roadworks which are going on, including some 36 kilometres of road on the expansion of the Monash Freeway taking in the seat of Mount Waverley, where I understand there

BILLS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1323 will be a big stitch pour bridge over Forster Road to create wider lanes so that members of my constituency can actually get home faster. This is a very good bill. It is a fair bill. It works in tandem with a comprehensive environmental package that this government has also introduced. And as I said, it is a modest charge, a very small charge which is being made for users going forward. It is the appropriate time to introduce this bill while the number of vehicles is so low and other packages are providing incentives for access into the market. I would like to thank the Treasurer and the relevant minister for the enormous amount of work that has gone into this bill. It will help to ensure the seamless integration of electric vehicles, zero- and low-emission vehicles, into our road network. With that, I support the bill and I wish it a speedy passage through this house. Dr READ (Brunswick) (16:59): I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. The context in which we are speaking about this bill is the context of the climate crisis, at a time when glaciers are melting around the world and rainforests that have never burnt before are burning, at a time when we are experiencing or approaching climate tipping points which will accelerate climate change if we do not do everything we can to stop it. Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions have been stable or gradually falling in many sectors, but not in transport. Transport emissions are increasing, and most transport emissions come from private cars. Here in Australia the transition to electric vehicles, driven by business and consumers, has only just begun. We are still at way below 1 per cent of vehicles, and multiple speakers have said that they do not see a Tesla in their electorate. But the small amount of electric vehicle sales occurring in Victoria are occurring with essentially no support at all. Contrast that with Norway, which leads the world in electric vehicle sales. This has been brought about, oddly enough, by a campaign by the musical group A-ha, which kept crashing— A member: We love A-ha. Dr READ: We love A-ha. They kept crashing their little electric Fiat through toll barriers repeatedly, and then the government confiscated it and auctioned it. But no-one wanted to buy it, so A-ha bought it back for a song and kept crashing into toll barriers, arguing they should not have to pay a toll because they had a non-polluting vehicle. What we really need is for Victoria to have its own A- ha moment and to understand that we need incentives for these vehicles here rather than deterrents. Uniquely in the world, Victoria proposes a tax on the only cars that have zero emissions—both on hydrogen and battery-powered electric vehicles and on low-emission plug-in hybrids. Analysts predict that here in Australia the rapid fall in electric vehicle prices will lead to combustion-engine cars and electric cars being about the same price in as little as three to four years. Until recently you could not get an electric car for much under $100 000, but right now you can go and buy an MG ZS, I believe, for just a whisker over $40 000. At around $50 000 or just under you can get the Hyundai Ioniq or the Nissan Leaf. These cars are getting cheaper rapidly. We are not quite at the stage of mobile phones, but they will be like mobile phones. Putting a tax on these is a bit like putting a tax on some other clean technology very early in its evolution. I am thinking about solar panels. Imagine putting a tax on solar panels when just a few hippies had them and they were rare. That is kind of where we stand with electric vehicles right now. The other key thing is we are just talking about new vehicle prices, but most of us buy second-hand cars, and second-hand cars start to build up in the market three or four years after new vehicles. That is why I applaud the decision of the ACT government to make its entire government fleet electric, which I think it has virtually completed now, because those vehicles turn over rapidly and introduce second-hand vehicles into the market. I commend the Victorian government for doing the same thing, at a much slower scale of course, but still they have started, and that is not a bad thing.

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The really key point I want to make here is that taxing the cleanest vehicles in the state does not make a lot of sense when you think about how much air pollution costs us. We know, and these are Australian figures, that in one year air pollution causes somewhere between 900 and 2000 premature deaths—air pollution from vehicles, that is. Air pollution from vehicles contributes to somewhere between 900 and 4500 cases of cardiovascular and respiratory disease, which costs Australia somewhere from $1.5 billion to $4 billion. That is what vehicle air pollution costs us, and yet we are proposing taxing the only zero air pollution vehicles that we have. So it is really true to say it is a little bit like taxing people who have stopped smoking. Vehicle air pollution produces, in particular, oxides of nitrogen, and diesel cars especially produce small particle pollution. You might have seen this referred to as PM2.5. This is the dangerous stuff that people were worried about when Melbourne was shrouded in bushfire smoke a bit over a year ago. This is why people were wearing masks in that smoke. These small soot particles about the size of a bacterium are absorbed into the bloodstream, making coagulation more likely and contributing to an increased incidence of stroke and heart attack. This is why we want to be encouraging, not discouraging, a rapid switch to the electrification of private and public transport. Look, if the climate crisis was not so urgent, you could argue that, sure, this is the thin end of the political wedge for introducing a road-user charge—and maybe that is not such a bad thing. Sure, but we need to apply it to all vehicles, not just the clean ones, and given that the climate crisis is so urgent, we need to do every single thing we can to reduce emissions from transport. So that means things as diverse as promoting alternatives to flying, because air travel contributes an enormous amount of emissions. We need to be encouraging a whole-scale shift from private to public transport and active transport—walking and cycling. We need to electrify public transport urgently—not start buying electric buses in four years but start buying electric buses tomorrow—and we need to decarbonise the grid so these electric vehicles are charging on renewable energy. You know, I think we should make the grand prix an electric vehicle event. I reckon that would be a winner, the first electric vehicle grand prix in Australia—in the world. It would be the quiet grand prix. And, hey, we would even encourage you to tax those vehicles. Otherwise I really think that doing anything to discourage the shift to electric vehicles now is a backward step in the context of a climate crisis. That is why I urge members of this house and the other place to have another think on this bill. Mr FREGON (Mount Waverley) (17:07): I rise gladly to speak on the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021, and I would just like to start by referring to something my colleague the member for Burwood was pointing out. He made a fantastic argument about the commonwealth versus state revenue collection. As we know, we have basically a usage charge via the petrol levy—or tax or whatever you want to call it—that comes from the commonwealth at the moment. As the member rightly said, we get 30 cents in the dollar back. So, as he pointed out, we are paying via our fuel levy for roads in other states. Good on them—well done. We get less GST. We are a bigger economy. We are one nation. I am okay with that. We support those states that maybe earn less, and we get more from WA from mining. That is fine. But one thing I think we are doing with this charge is that we are bringing more of a user-pays decision for our road use going forward. When it comes to EVs, I do not drive one yet, but I am pretty sure that when my current lease expires next year I will have the option of getting at least a hybrid and hopefully an EV. Ms Britnell: Well, that’s up to your whole government. Put it on the list. Mr FREGON: It is on the list. I am looking forward to it. The member has made a contribution that it has got to be on the list. Well, I am reliably informed by the people down at Waverley Toyota, in my patch at Mount Waverley, that the hybrid Kluger will be available and that the Kluger will be a hybrid. So I am looking forward to that, and a big shout-out to the guys down at Waverley Toyota. My current Kluger is great; it will be even better when it is a hybrid.

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We are talking today about this charge. Now, again the member for Burwood talked also about the opposition’s plans to somehow change the budget, to find revenue out of nothing, and a secret plan. I do not think I have heard a better secret plan since Josh Lyman on The West Wing decided that he had a secret plan about inflation, and now the opposition Shadow Treasurer has a secret plan about cutting services or something. I do not know. We will find out more, I guess, when the time comes. This charge is about equity. It is about the fact of users on the road, like all of us, paying our way as we use the road. I am very surprised that the opposition is against this basic idea of, ‘The more you use something, the more you pay’, because I would have thought that is capitalism, in a sense. I would have thought that if we buy a pack of chips, we pay for a pack of chips, or if I pay for my energy bills, it is because I have used more energy. Now, I am all for—obviously, with this government— supporting those who are vulnerable, those who need help. That is the beauty of having general revenue and collected revenue; it lets us help those who need a bit more of a hand. But at the same time, I generally do not have a problem with the fact that if I am driving more on the roads, I pay my way, and we do that right now with the fuel levy. I think when you look at manufacturers and technology companies alike, they are rapidly moving our automotive industry towards an electric future. The horse has bolted. I mean, the UK have already said that by 2030 they are not going to sell any petrol cars. Our car manufacturers worldwide have basically stopped R and D on combustion engines. This, in my opinion, is a done deal. Now, members on the side talked about disincentive, and I spoke to a gentleman from my electorate only yesterday when I was doorknocking—Kev—and Kevin had the same question. He said he was concerned about the disincentive, and I get that, because with any increase in charge, it is a logical argument to come back. But that is why we have put in $100 million worth of incentives for the much smaller amount of revenue that we are receiving. This is a structural change. This is a change that Victorians in general, yes, will pay for, but will also get the benefit of. At the moment we pay and we do not get the benefit— not fully. We must decide as a country also what role we want to play with electric vehicles on our roads. It is not just up to state governments, of which there are a number who are in the transition to the very thing we are talking about today—and New Zealand was mentioned as doing the same thing—we also need our federal government to work on incentives just like we are with our rebates. Maybe they could match our rebates; that would be a good thing. Now, we are committed to a long-term target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as we talked about on the weekend—the fantastic announcement that was from the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change—and reaching this target requires a transition of our vehicle fleet to zero-emission vehicles. So we are already committed. We are committed to incentivising this transition. I think it was the member for Prahran who stood up and talked about wanting us to transition but then seemed to have a problem that we were starting to change over to EVs. I would have thought that is exactly what transition is, so we might need to check the dictionary on that one. The $100 million package that I mentioned also includes a $46 million subsidy program to encourage motorists and businesses to make their next vehicle zero emission, with low- or medium-priced vehicles to be a target of the program. Twenty thousand subsidies are more than triple the size of the current zero-emission vehicle fleet in Victoria, with 6000 or thereabouts sold at the moment. Now, these subsidies will increase the supply and range of vehicles available—it makes sense; at the moment one of the problems with the zero-emissions cars is that they are quite pricey, at least a lot of them are. But as more people change over, more people are looking at getting their subsidies of in the vicinity of $3000-odd and the money that you save by moving to a zero-emissions vehicle on top of that. We are talking about the levy today, the federal fuel levy. The fuel levy makes up a small part of the amount when you put petrol into your car at the pump. When you are paying $1.50, there is a lot of petrol in that price and there is a lot of mark-up for the petrol station, whereas if you are lucky enough to have solar panels at home—and I have not got them

BILLS 1326 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 yet, but I am hoping to do that soon—you can charge your zero-emission vehicle at home so you are getting renewable energy. As we move even closer and closer to the targets that we are going to have by 2030, we will have renewable energy charging the cars on the roads for a much lower output from each person with a car. The subsidy program, as I said, will provide for 20 000 eligible vehicles, the first stage being 4000 allotments of $3000. Now, you cannot tell me that that is not an incentive. I mean, we do this in other areas. We do this in the housing market with first home buyers, and we know that has an incentive quality. We know that that affects the housing market. We know that that means for new home owners it is just a little bit easier to get in. That is what we are doing: we are making it a little bit easier. Yes, there are some structural changes, and yes, there is a charge, but responsible government is about looking to the future as well. It is about looking at how we pay for our roads, our hospitals and our infrastructure. Of the money that we bring in at the moment, as we have said, tenfold is going out to encourage zero- emission vehicles. This is a responsible bill, this is a good bill and I commend it to the house. Mr HAMER (Box Hill) (17:16): It is my pleasure to rise this evening to talk about the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based Charge Bill 2021. I do so with I guess quite a background in this area in the sense of having done a bit of research on congestion pricing and congestion charging and what actually drives people to make those transport decisions. It has been very interesting to listen to the observations of some other members in this place as part of this debate, who have come forward with positions that frankly I probably never thought I would hear coming from those particular groups. I particularly want to focus on the cost or the barriers to entry to the electric vehicle market. I think the member for Burwood touched on it. Fundamentally the capital cost, the up-front cost of the actual purchase of the motor vehicle, is a much larger barrier to your choice of vehicle. If you are faced with a $10 000 impost for a like-for-like vehicle, whether it is an electrical vehicle or it is a conventional vehicle, that is a much greater impost than the fuel levy, which for a like-for-like vehicle will still be cheaper under this charge than for a conventional normal vehicle. Once you have actually made the decision to purchase that vehicle, that has been your major cost. The decision then as to the extent to which you utilise that vehicle is always obviously a cost decision, but there are many more other costs that are associated with that decision. Not only is there a fuel excise that you are paying for if you are driving a conventional vehicle, but it also fluctuates with the fuel price. You will also need to consider issues such as congestion. Do you want to be driving when traffic is at its greatest? All of these considerations come into play in terms of whether you are choosing to use a vehicle or not. But the most important one, the number one choice, is whether you are actually purchasing that car in the first place, because that is the greatest expense and the greatest barrier prior to making the decision to drive. Once you take the decision and you have purchased the vehicle, whether it is an electric vehicle or a conventional vehicle, one of the points that has been missed to an extent in this debate is that some of the greatest costs, the externality costs that are placed on our system by the use of a motor vehicle, are the cost of road crashes and the cost of congestion. I do not have very up-to-date figures, but the most up-to-date figures that I could find were from the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, which estimated that the cost of road crashes in Australia was $18 billion in 2006 and the cost of congestion in 2010 was $12 billion. And compared to the environmental costs of the use of vehicles—and this is conventional and electric vehicles—those road crash costs and those congestion costs have far greater impacts on the externality costs of using a vehicle. Whether it is a conventional vehicle or whether it is an electric vehicle, a car is a car is a car. It still takes up that same space on that same roadway, heading for the same location on the same morning, and the risk of being involved in a road crash does not change. Maybe one day we will all be driving around in electric automated vehicles, and the safety systems will be such that we can all avoid road crashes. But at the moment the electric vehicles that we are talking about have the same modern safety features that a conventional vehicle has, so the risk of a crash is exactly the same, the impact on congestion is exactly the same. For that reason I think there is a very strong argument that all road users need to be making a contribution to the projects, to the delivery of the road infrastructure. I do not think we need to get into

BILLS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1327 the details of whether it is hypothecated or not hypothecated; we all know that the fuel excise is not hypothecated and has not been hypothecated for many years. But the road infrastructure budget funding, and indeed other elements of the federal government’s budget that address some of the issues that are caused by general car use, provides very important infrastructure investment, and it is exactly the same that will happen in relation to this charge. The ability to continue to invest in our road infrastructure projects and in our health system—so in our road infrastructure projects, not just the large infrastructure projects to help with the congestion but also down to the local projects improving local safety and pedestrian safety, all of those elements—is going to help in terms of dealing with some of the issues, just general issues that derive from the convenience of the use of a motor vehicle. As has been mentioned previously, the importance of this bill has to be seen in the context of the package that it has been introduced with. This is a really significant package: $100 million to incentivise and increase the take-up of the electric vehicle market. I know there has been some commentary that we should not take with one hand and give with the other, but I think this is the fundamental nature of charges of this sort, when you introduce a charge where the purpose of the charge is, as I said, in relation to managing some of the externalities and making sure that those externalities are contributed by all members of society who are using that infrastructure but then identify what the benefits of the electric vehicle market are from an environmental perspective and provide those incentives, provide that $3000 grant for new purchases, and invest heavily in new charging infrastructure so drivers have the confidence that they can go anywhere in the state and be able to charge quickly and easily and have full access to everything the state has to offer. Thankfully Victoria is a pretty compact state. Having that charging infrastructure at selected locations will really enable users to literally have the freedom of the road. The electric vehicle market is here to stay. It is a growing market. In 20, 30 years that will be where we are, and I commend the bill to the house. Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (17:26): I rise to speak to the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance- based Charge Bill 2021. The Andrews Labor government is all about fairness. We govern for all Victorians, and we implement change based on best-practice evidence. We are also a government that plans for the future and cares about our environment, and we have openly pledged to cut our state’s greenhouse emissions, the first actually in Australia and one of the first in the world to legislate net zero emissions by 2050. We know that the transport sector currently accounts for more than one-fifth of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and we need to decarbonise the transport sector to meet our 2050 target. We also know that the transport sector is the backbone of our mobility as a society: moving around as individuals; freight to build our cities, suburbs and regional infrastructure projects; freight to feed us; public transport to get us to our destination. Knowing this, we cannot deny the cost involved in maintaining our road network. Roads are expensive—expensive to build and expensive to maintain. They are potential killers, obviously, when they are left unrepaired. When I was campaigning for the seat of Bass and asking electors what mattered to them, roads were one of the top priorities. The state of the roads came up time after time: fix the roads, build the roads, upgrade, widen and duplicate, the constituents of Bass were saying. Country roads, city roads, highways, freeways—they were all there in the mix. And caring about our environment and providing safe roads do not exist in isolation; they actually intersect. At that point there is a question: how do we pay for the roads other than by fuel excise? Currently the fuel excise is an important revenue source for road maintenance, but this is not sustainable in the long term. Fuel-efficient vehicles and electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles contribute less revenue. We cannot toll every road in the state, and we would not suggest that as a solution. We do need to ask: how do we find a system that ensures all motorists contribute their fair share to the cost of our roads? Our government is committed to zero- and low-emission vehicles. We announced more than $45 million to support them in the 2020–21 budget. This included a fast-charging network across the

BILLS 1328 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 state, investigating a zero-emission bus fleet and provisions in all new buildings to include an uptake of electric vehicles. The 2019–20 budget included a motor vehicle stamp duty concession for low- emission passenger vehicles. Still the question remains: how do we fund road infrastructure in a fair and equitable way? And the answer to that question lies at the heart of this legislation. While we congratulate and encourage electric vehicle owners, they pay little or no fuel excise and they still use the roads. It makes sense to plan for the future now and to establish rules now while we still have a relatively low number of low-emission vehicles on our roads. It is also honest that our government lets consumers factor the future into their purchase. At 2.5 cents per kilometre for electric and zero- emissions vehicles and 2 cents per kilometre for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, this remains well below the current excise charge of approximately 4.4 cents per litre, and it is predicted that the owners will pay an additional $250 to $300 all up per year, still less than fuel excise costs. The formula is there for all to see and to calculate if they paid attention in their mathematics class at school, and I must admit I got lost after the ‘R equals PR multiplied by whatever’. We are an honest government, and we commit to review the kilometre rates periodically to ensure that more environmentally friendly vehicles continue to pay less than fuel-based vehicles. We also expect honesty from our car owners. Owners will register their distances via VicRoads and pay quarterly, twice yearly or yearly in line with their registration, and before I hear the howls of derision from the opposition bench and suggestions that drivers will need to carry little books to fill in daily trips to the supermarket, let us be quite clear: record the odometer reading and register the data online at VicRoads once, twice or four times a year while paying your registration—and while on the topic of registration, electric vehicles will continue to receive a $100 annual registration concession. Victoria is not the first state to introduce distance-based charges. Last year the Liberal government in South Australia actually proclaimed to be the first in the world, announced it as part of their November budget and have recently delayed it to monitor development in other states such as Victoria to ensure national consistency. The legislation will be based on a similar ‘distance travelled’ scheme as Victoria, and five days ago the New South Wales Treasurer flagged a distance-based charge as well. Our government has prioritised roads like never before, and my electors know it. Planning is underway for the much-needed duplication of the Healesville-Koo Wee Rup Road, an extra lane in each direction between the Monash Freeway and Manks Road, still on track for completion by 2025. Communities in Bass will benefit from the ongoing stage 2 works on the Monash Freeway when they are completed. Stage 1 added 30 kilometres of extra traffic lanes, and stage 2 will add another 36 kilometres of extra lanes. So many roads in my electorate are seeing more vehicles every day as Melbourne grows to the east. The pressure only increases around what were small towns like Pakenham and Clyde. We have got the Berwick-Cranbourne Road, the Clyde-Five Ways Road, Bald Hill Road, the Princes Highway and Thompson Road, just to name a few that come up constantly in conversation with my constituents. My electorate office in Wonthaggi receives constant requests for road upgrades, and it is not unusual for my rural constituents to travel hundreds of kilometres as a matter of course. From Phillip Island or from Inverloch to Pakenham is 80 kilometres each way, and we have to be honest about funding roadworks. We have to be fair. The words ‘new tax’ may give the opposition oxygen to condemn us, but they know we are right. They know that we need to find a way to match environmental concerns and funding roads. They also know it takes courage to change and plan rather than forever playing catch-up. This government acknowledges that this may be an unpopular move, but it is a fair one. And we want safe roads. Many of us in this Assembly still remember the horror road tolls of the past. Fifty years ago now we had the ‘Declare War on 1034’ safety campaign, which will never let us forget what the road toll was back then. There are undoubtedly people who opposed the subsequent compulsory introduction of seatbelts. Safe roads and fairness mean paying for them. Even yesterday I was explaining the inconsistency in user contributions to a constituent. ‘Well, that’s fair’, was her comment when the

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1329 facts were laid down—fair that if you use the road you should pay to have it maintained. I repeat: we are about fairness but also committed to providing a better environment for the future. We aim for 50 per cent of all new car sales by 2030 to be zero emission. That is less than 10 years to dramatically reshape the state’s vehicle industry. We are backing this, doing so much more than has ever been done before: 20 000 subsidies for new electric cars starting from now, so not from some distant date in the future but from now, and up to $3000 per vehicle costing under $69 000. The first 4000 subsidies are already available. We want drivers to make the switch, and we are here to help them. The electric vehicles contribution to road network maintenance is more than offset by our contribution to support them. The estimated revenue is far less than the $45 million in incentives being offered to zero- and low-emission vehicles, including $10 million to expand our own government electric vehicle fleet by 400 cars over the next two years—investing in the future: a better future and a cleaner future. I want to thank the Treasurer for having the integrity and honesty to acknowledge that we need to change. Thank you also to the Minister for Roads and Road Safety for his ongoing contribution, to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change as well for the amazing climate change package announced just over the weekend and to everyone that has contributed to this debate this far. It has been quite a lively one at times. I think I will just commend this bill to the house—with 25 seconds left. Ms HUTCHINS (Sydenham—Minister for Crime Prevention, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice, Minister for Victim Support) (17:36): I move:

That the debate now be adjourned. Motion agreed to and debate adjourned. Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day. Business of the house ORDERS OF THE DAY Ms HUTCHINS (Sydenham—Minister for Crime Prevention, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice, Minister for Victim Support) (17:37): I move:

That consideration of orders of the day, government business, 2 to 4, be postponed until later this day. Motion agreed to. Motions BUDGET PAPERS 2020–21 Debate resumed on motion of Mr PEARSON: That this house takes note of the 2020–21 budget papers. Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (17:37): It is an absolute joy to stand here tonight, a fortnight out from our next budget, to reflect on the amazing 2020–21 Victorian budget that was handed down in November. The 2020–21 budget certainly does deliver for Wendouree, and the Andrews Labor government is continuing in its commitment to invest in Ballarat and my community. I really wish to thank the Premier and the Treasurer and ministers, and particularly all their staff members who worked so hard to put together this incredible budget under some of the most difficult circumstances. The Victorian government’s top priority last year was to get the virus under control and then to support the Victorian economy to recover, and that is exactly what we have done in the areas of housing, transport, the arts, education, health and sport. We are a government that is committed to every Victorian meeting their needs, achieving their potential and being optimistic about

MOTIONS 1330 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 the future. This is a principle that has guided the decision-making of this budget. A budget for all Victorians is what we have really done. We have got to reflect back to November 2020. The budget had been deferred by six months due to the global pandemic. It gave the government an opportunity to prioritise what was most important for Victorians to create a fairer and more inclusive state. So this is a budget for its time, and one that is firmly focused on our state’s economic repair. The focus of the 2020–21 budget was to stimulate the economy, to help it recover post COVID by investing in infrastructure, services and sectors that Victoria needs, and all the while creating jobs. This budget included significant announcements for Ballarat, both large and small. It included $80 million for Ballarat Health Services, $80 million for social housing within the City of Ballarat local government area, $10 million for the Ballarat Specialist School and $6.7 million for a new National Centre for Photography to be based in Ballarat, as well as smaller announcements: providing support for households with power bills and $200 vouchers to support children to play sport by helping local families cover the costs of sports equipment, uniforms and memberships, as well as encouraging households to embrace solar energy. We are also supporting local businesses with small business tax concessions, deferral of payments, relief from taxes and fees, and cash grants in the hardest hit sectors, and that was certainly most welcomed by local businesses in Ballarat. We are a government that invests in regional Victoria to build communities and create jobs, and this budget delivers in spades for regional Victoria when it comes to infrastructure and service provision. Most importantly when it comes to regional Victoria we have great funds like the Regional Health Infrastructure Fund. This budget allocated an additional $120 million, with funding announcements to come in June this year, as well as $156 million for the Regional Jobs and Infrastructure Fund—really important money—and more than $276 million to stimulate regional economies. In the area of agriculture this budget delivered $65 million for a new Victorian agricultural industry strategy and, importantly, $50 million to upgrade facilities and learning spaces at Victoria’s agricultural colleges. This is a budget that bolsters and supports regional tourism. Never has there been a better time to visit and holiday in Victoria, and that is why the Andrews Labor government is investing $465 million for Victoria’s tourism recovery package. The list is extensive: $272 million to upgrade the Great Ocean Road and inland routes; $44 million to upgrade facilities and infrastructure along the Great Ocean Road; $23 million to build a new visitor centre and biodiversity sanctuary at Wilsons Promontory; $18 million for Gippsland’s tourism recovery package; $10.3 million to upgrade tracks and infrastructure along the Murray River Adventure Trail; and one of my favourites, $4.9 million to upgrade the Mallee Silo Art Trail. Regional Victoria has so much to offer, and I really hope that the more than 5 million Melburnians come and visit the regions, because you are most welcome. This is a budget that is also about creating jobs and setting us up for the future, with massive investments in infrastructure and community services as well as addressing the cost of living for Victorians. That is why the 2020–21 Victorian budget has $5.3 billion for the biggest social housing package in the state’s history and, as I already mentioned, $80 million for Ballarat. When we talk about rail in this budget—$2.2 billion for the Suburban Rail Loop, which in the future Ballarat line passengers will be able to access at Sunshine. Mental health—$868 million to additionally boost mental health services across the state. When it comes to disability there is $1.6 billion to support students with disability, and there is $235 million for jobs in mental health, family violence, child protection and disabilities. This budget just keeps giving to jobs and infrastructure. For parks and zoos in Victoria, there is $470 million to protect Victoria’s environment and to protect parks and zoos, and I am particularly excited about the $84 million to transform Werribee zoo into Australia’s leading open range zoo. I cannot wait to take my children on the 1.6-kilometre treetop sky safari gondola. It is going to be an absolutely huge tourist attraction for Victoria.

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Ms Crugnale interjected. Ms ADDISON: You can come, Jordan—of course. When it comes to health we are a government that cares about the health and wellbeing of Victorian citizens, and after the pandemic we made the announcement that we would invest $155 million to set up a new national centre for infectious diseases. There is $120 million so patients can recover from illness or surgery at home and $7.3 million for the Danny Frawley Centre for Health and Wellbeing. This news was most welcomed by many members of Danny’s family and friends who live in and around Ballarat. It will be a fantastic way to honour Danny’s legacy, so thank you very much to the Victorian budget and the Victorian government for doing that for Danny Frawley and his family. We know that during the pandemic many families really suffered dreadfully economically with the loss of jobs. So what did we do? We made the announcement that kinder would be free for 2021. At a cost of $169.6 million every family in Victoria has access to free kinder, taking the pressure off those families. This is a real saving, and people have stopped me in the street in Ballarat and said what a difference it is making to them and their hip pocket. There is great news for sporting facilities in this budget as well, whether you barrack for the Cats, the Bulldogs, the Tigers or the Kangaroos—$40 million for the Cats for stage 5 of the Kardinia Park redevelopment in Geelong, $36 million to upgrade Whitten Oval in Footscray, $15.5 million to upgrade the facilities at Punt Road for the Richmond Football Club and $7.3 million for Arden Street upgrades and new change rooms for North Melbourne. But it is not just about elite football and the AFL; this is a budget that is also very focused on community sports. That is why in this budget we invested $21 million for sports vouchers to get kids active, which is just so important. If kids can fall in love with sport when they are young, they will have a love of sport for the rest of their lives. We are also protecting our environment and addressing climate change, and I was particularly pleased to see that we have made an announcement of $20 million for a zero-emission bus fleet business case. We have been debating the importance of that, and we are really putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to that. Ballarat Health Services plays such an important role in our community and more broadly in our region, and the Andrews Labor government is boosting investment in the redevelopment of Ballarat Base Hospital to ensure that local families and dedicated hospital staff get the world-class facilities they deserve so that they can treat thousands more patients every year. What is very important and much needed in our budget is the $178.2 million for the guaranteeing energy supply initiative, which ensures hospitals have capacity and reliable backup energy supply if there is a power failure in the electricity grid. As a part of this initiative the Ballarat Base Hospital will receive $80 million to build a new central energy plant, bringing the Labor government’s total investment into Ballarat Health Services to $541.6 million. Ballarat Base Hospital is already experiencing significant and increasing demand for its services, and this will only grow, with the health services catchment area expected to expand by around 20 per cent over the next decade. This redevelopment is about meeting increased demand and making sure that members of my community have access to the healthcare services they need closer to home. Once completed, our new Ballarat Base Hospital will have the capacity to treat at least 18 000 more emergency patients and an extra 14 500 inpatients each year. We are also boosting employment in the region, with more than 1400 construction jobs created and an additional 1000 positions at the hospital once redevelopment is complete. Early works will kick off next year, and construction of the central energy plant will get underway in 2022. The redevelopment is expected to be completed in 2027— just what our growing community needs. One of my favourite announcements in the budget is the Ballarat Specialist School announcement. The 2020–21 Victorian budget provides $10 million for the Ballarat Specialist School to upgrade and modernise the school buildings. This investment means that we can fast-track the plans to deliver even

MOTIONS 1332 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 better facilities for specialist school students, teachers and families. I could not be prouder of this announcement, and we were all pretty emotional when the news was announced. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the principal, Karen, the leadership team, the teachers and the support staff for all they do to make the Ballarat Specialist School such an important place for education, applied learning and vocational training as well as an inclusive and welcoming space for everyone. We all know that early childhood investment is vital for making sure that our children are ready for school and able to grow and thrive. That is why with this budget the Andrews Labor government is building and upgrading kindergartens across Victoria, including in Ballarat, creating thousands of new kinder spaces and hundreds of jobs as Victoria rolls out our funded, universal three-year-old kinder program. One announcement that is very special for our community is for the Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative. They are going to receive $900 000 to build a brand new early childhood service called Yirram Burron, meaning ‘morning children’. Yirram Burron will be a culturally welcoming, rich and safe early childhood education service that will deliver three- and four-year-old kindergarten programs within the heart of the Ballarat Aboriginal community, embracing and embedding Aboriginal perspectives into the service delivery, structural environment and education curriculum. Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative’s new learning service will create a space Aboriginal families will want their children to go to and where their children will not only learn traditional Aboriginal stories and cultural practices, they will also be given the best education that they can. I look forward to the opening of BADAC’s 38-place early learning service, including the kindergarten and long day care, as it will inspire children and engage families into early childhood education from the vital early years. It will narrow the gap and will enhance educational outcomes for Aboriginal children. Within this budget we have also provided money for an internal and external upgrade for Goodstart Early Learning in Alfredton, just around the corner from where I grew up, so I am very pleased that Goodstart Early Learning Alfredton will be receiving more than $230 000. Excitingly as well—this is such a diverse and important budget—Ballarat is now going to be home to the National Centre for Photography. The 2020–21 Victorian budget includes $121 million in tourism and major events funding to provide for a range of regional tourism infrastructure projects to support jobs and local communities, and this is great news for Ballarat. I was absolutely delighted when $6.7 million was announced for the National Centre for Photography, which will become Australia’s leading photographic destination. We are establishing the National Centre for Photography at the Union Bank building in historic Lydiard Street South, Ballarat, which will attract visitors, support jobs and strengthen the city’s standing as a leading cultural hub. With the Ballarat International Foto Biennale festival anchored in this historic new venue in central Ballarat, the centre will attract local, domestic and international artists to the region, which is very exciting. I am also very pleased that we are extending the mental health focused hospital outreach post-suicidal engagement program, also known as HOPE. For my community, we have already piloted this program so we are going to see additional places for clinical capacity being created in Ballarat. We are giving so much money to community sports because we know community sports are the social fabric that we all rely on. I recommend the budget to the house. Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop) (17:52): I am very pleased to follow my friend the member for Wendouree and talk about the good, positive outcomes for the community of Bendigo East, central Victoria and regional Victoria more broadly in the 2020 state budget. Given the challenging year that last year was, we all had to make many changes. As we know, the 2020 budget was handed down in November, so only a few months ago. There is still so much to talk about in terms of last year’s budget, the impact it is making in supporting communities to recover and rebuild from the really difficult year and the way that the pandemic hit so many different communities in so many different ways. Then also in only a few more weeks time we will be welcoming another state budget from our Treasurer.

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As I am sure many other speakers have contributed on this point previously, the budget frame for 2020 was very much about how we could support our community to rebuild. We had a very keen sense and appreciation that there was a big and important role for the state government to play in making sure that we were helping families, we were helping households and we were helping those who had lost their job or who needed business support to get through this period of time. We made a very conscious decision that there was a role there for the state government to invest in some key areas, whether they were in supporting families, providing cost of living relief or investing in schools and also our health system, to help families through this really challenging time. That is why the budget, alongside support for households and families, also had a very, very strong focus on jobs and indeed set a really strong jobs frame, understanding that we needed to protect as many jobs as we could and that we needed to obviously create new ones and also support people through this period of transition. It is quite remarkable to be here in May of this year, only a few months after the budget and a full calendar year after the start of the pandemic, and to see how the economy has recovered in a stronger way than was anticipated. But there is still so much more that we need to do, and that is where at a state government level we play such an important role in supporting the services that people rely on to get a fair go, to be able to get a good education, to access health services and also for those important job creation areas. Specifically focusing on the support that was provided for the Bendigo and central Victorian community, I want to start in the education area. There were a number of schools in my community that received terrific support. There were funds for Bendigo Senior Secondary College. That is a great VCE provider which over a number of years has had support from Labor government, and this $10 million in last year’s budget was additional support. Going to one of our smaller schools in the Bendigo East community, there was $1.2 million for Elmore Primary School, a school servicing a small rural community to the north of Bendigo. The teachers and staff do a great job there in a very small red-brick school building, and these funds will provide the support for new facilities for students at those schools. Also too there is support for families in providing free kinder for 2021. It complements beautifully our rollout of three-year-old kinder, which is of course the 2018 election commitment that is progressively being rolled out. But kinder is such an important foundation year in helping our youngest of learners get a really good start in their education journey. Making sure that families who are confronted with some really difficult cost-of-living issues and some household budget issues have the confidence that they can send their little ones off to kindergarten for this year with the support of free kinder was a really important contribution both for their education outcome but also in supporting our great kinder community. The support for tutors again recognises that young people at all different levels of their schooling did face some challenges. I saw that in my own two kids, who were incredibly well supported by their school with their learning from home, but I think we are seeing as the kids all transition back into school they need that extra support, as do the wonderful teachers, who have to work through not just some of the educational challenges in the classroom but all the emotional and wellbeing challenges that come with being a teacher. That is why it was important to provide the support for 4100 tutors across our schools. Turning briefly to jobs, in our central Victorian community there are a couple of key initiatives that I did want to touch on. There is the Big Housing Build, and every corner of the state is seeing support from our $5 billion investment in the Big Housing Build. There has been an important dedicated allocation of funding to our regional communities, and for the Greater Bendigo area that is an $85 million commitment to investment in housing outcomes for our community. Given we are seeing a lot of pressure on the housing market in central Victoria at the moment—there is a lot of pressure on house prices, pressure on the availability of rental properties and pressure on low-income families in being able to secure a stable home—this is a really big investment in housing in our local community that is going to make a big difference for those individuals and families who need housing support.

MOTIONS 1334 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021

Our local builders and our local tradie industry are going to see a lot of jobs created through that. I should mention at this point also the continuing support with first home grants, which support first home buyers to get their first homes. Another project that I am particularly excited about in our central and northern Victorian regions is the KerangLink project. Now, this is one that the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change knows very well, but it is a bit of an unsung project. The budget—and I should acknowledge that it is a partnership project with the commonwealth government—provided funding support for the development of the KerangLink. This will create new transmission infrastructure to be able to get the renewable energy that is being invested in in northern Victoria, particularly in solar, into our network. It is going to span between Victoria and New South Wales and is going to be a really important catalyst. We have already got a number of important solar projects underway in northern Victoria; this is going to be a catalyst for even more. Of course being able to put it back into the grid is going to provide that ongoing source—another source of renewable energy—as we continue as a government to have an ambitious approach to renewable energy but one that is centred on understanding the role that we have to play in climate change and reducing emissions. It is also about creating jobs. The KerangLink project will support 870 jobs during construction and a further 200 ongoing jobs. These are in small rural communities in northern Victoria where those jobs are going to make a big difference. I would really like to congratulate the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, who has driven the development of this project. The Minister for Agriculture is sitting here at the table. There was a lot of support in last year’s budget for our farmers as well. There was support for improvements to digital connectivity, which continues to be an important part of the infrastructure base for regional communities. As we are seeing more and more people wanting to continue, where they can, working from home or working in the region’s capacity, making sure that we are continuing to support their digital connectivity is an important part of supporting our regional communities to continue to grow. I also mentioned in my introductory comments how the budget supported families. I mentioned free kinder as one of those really practical ways. There were a number of other ways that the budget provided really important practical support for families as we worked through the impacts of the COVID pandemic. There was support for energy efficiency improvements for households to help reduce the cost of power bills. There was also the one-off $250 payment to help cover the cost of electricity bills for Victorian concession card holders. There were the Get Active kids voucher program and regional travel vouchers. There was also tax relief on stamp duty for residential property transactions up to $1 million and also more support for the Victorian Solar Homes program, again very practical initiatives that were contained in last year’s budget that had a really keen focus on how we could support households, manage their bottom line and support them through the state budget. Just in the time left available, I did want to touch on some important budget initiatives in my portfolio of transport infrastructure. I will start with the Suburban Rail Loop. The budget last year provided an important and major investment in the Suburban Rail Loop. There was $2.2 billion allocated to get the initial and early works underway on the Suburban Rail Loop, and when you consider how this project is going to transform the way we move around our city in terms of connecting every major train line to an orbital rail loop, it is also going to help support the livability of Melbourne. It is going to provide housing and job opportunities closer to public transport, and will mean that people can access them more easily. So the Suburban Rail Loop will provide those important transport connections and support many, many thousands of construction jobs during its construction. There was also the support for the Geelong fast rail project, again in partnership with the commonwealth government. I am pleased to see the member for Geelong, who has been a very important part of our planning and delivery of the Geelong fast rail project with the leadership she has shown in her local community. Other regional rail projects that received an upgrade include the Shepparton and Warrnambool lines, and again that Shepparton project is so important to give the Shepparton community the rail services it deserves, with nine return daily services.

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The support in this year’s budget for our ongoing infrastructure program is underpinned by supporting jobs. There are the important construction jobs that we often talk about, but it is important to remember that for every 100 jobs that are created in the construction sector, more than 200 are created across the supply chain, and that supply chain can also be found in all corners of the state and in a whole range of different industries. There is the manufacturing sector, where there are precast concrete manufacturing facilities—I visited one recently with the member for Melton that employs up to 60 people making precast segments for our projects. But there is also a whole range of other areas that our program touches. There are architects, there are designers, there are electricians, there are engineering cadets, there are ICT professionals, there are lawyers, there are accountants, there are truck drivers, there are traffic control managers, just to name a few, and we are determined in the rollout of our program to make sure that we maximise employment opportunities by having apprenticeship targets built in as a requirement for all of our projects and to go further with the requirement of the employment of Indigenous people and make sure that the projects are supporting social enterprises in local communities. It means local people working for local businesses can work on their local road or rail project and reap the benefits of not just a great transport outcome but also an important economic outcome for their local area. As we look to the 2021 budget there is still so much to talk about in terms of the 2020 budget that has been rolling out in the last five or six months but will continue to roll out for many more months and years to come. A number of these initiatives and projects will be delivered over a longer period of time, bringing those important job benefits to local communities, but most importantly the legacy is about better service delivery and equity of outcomes for Victorians no matter where they live. So I commend the 2020 budget to the house and look forward to the Treasurer’s delivery in a few weeks of the 2021 budget. Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (18:06): I am delighted to rise today to contribute on this take-note motion for the 2020–21 budget, and I have got to say that there is a lot of fluoro in Cranbourne. Look left, look right, catch the train, like I did the other day—and there is fluoro everywhere. So I am delighted to be able to update the house on some of the extraordinary projects that are taking place and the budget contribution that has made these possible. I am incredibly proud to be a Labor member of Parliament when there is a budget that delivers so much—that delivers so much that restores equity and focuses on education. The last 18 months has been incredibly difficult for many in the community, and we have a budget that in the shadow of a global pandemic puts people first and makes sure that there is progress on the challenges that are faced in a way that has the absolute priority of young people, our senior citizens and our diaspora communities at the centre. I would like to thank the Treasurer for the work that he has put into making sure that this budget has a focus on putting people first and fairness, and of course the Premier, all other members of the executive and all members on this side for putting forward a budget that has education at its centre as well. Creating jobs and investing in schools, TAFEs, training, health, science and technology, and cleaner energy, public transport and housing—these are the absolute priorities for this government, and, as the member for Ringwood has highlighted, that is why this is a Labor government. There are tens of thousands of people going into work. Millions more are going to be able to access infrastructure and health care. We are going to rebuild this state from what has been a devastating global pandemic, and it is not just about the privileged few. With more than 68 000 electors in Cranbourne and many more non-citizens as well, the need for roads, schools, hospitals and infrastructure is very much at the centre of this government and the focus it has on Cranbourne. Young families are choosing Cranbourne to start their new life. I often say that I wake to the sound of children in the street—there is the sweet sound of children playing, and the optimism that comes from that. Now, I talk way too often about what happens when I go and have conversations with people on the doors in Cranbourne, and I can say that I can often go weeks and weeks, speaking to people on Friday afternoons, where the only thing they talk about is education. I have reflected a lot on what that is, and I do think it is the

MOTIONS 1336 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 optimism that is absolutely at the centre of people’s decision to make Cranbourne home, to make Victoria home, and I do think it is a credit to the diaspora communities that there is such a strong focus on their children’s future and the future of their children’s education. I spent six years on a kinder committee, so I can say that the Building Blocks program and grants to local government to help them expand and upgrade early childhood infrastructure is going to be vitally important in an area of Melbourne where there are so many young families. We have made grants for refurbishment and minor works to maximise early learning environments as a priority. And the real priority of this government of course is equity, and that comes through so strongly when you have an investment in our most precious first—youngest children. I have only once had the privilege of reducing a school principal to tears. That was exactly what happened when I called the principal at Marnebek School in Cranbourne the day of— Mr Edbrooke interjected. Ms RICHARDS: It is terrific to see the member for Frankston respond in this way to what happened when I rang the principal of Marnebek School. Jenny Hamilton, who I know is also known well by the member for Bentleigh— Mr Edbrooke: A wonderful woman. Ms RICHARDS: Yes, a wonderful woman. When I told her that we were rebuilding Marnebek School, when I said to her that we were going to make the students that she teaches, that she educates, a priority, she was beside herself. When I gave her a little bit more of the detail of what that meant, that is when we had an extraordinary outburst of tears—$38 million to rebuild Marnebek School. It is important for us to think about the children at that school and whether we see them as a priority. I had been able to visit Marnebek a couple of times before the pandemic, and I visited the school much more recently in fact and was very honoured to give out the leadership badges at Marnebek School; to see the families—the parents, the people who care for and love those children; to see the teachers, the educators and the support staff; to see the response of that school; and to reflect on how this is going to make a difference. $38 million for a school for children who have endured a particularly difficult year—that is what Labor does, and it makes me extraordinarily proud and obviously makes us not just Australia’s Education State but actually one of the world leaders, to think that we are going to make sure that we prioritise children who we care for, children who are well loved and children who deserve top-notch facilities. Alkira Secondary College is another important large state school in Cranbourne. The students of Alkira were delighted to hear that they were going to get a $1 million contribution for a sports facility so that they could absolutely have all that they want and all that they need. These projects that are shovel ready will make sure that there are more people in jobs in Victoria. I noticed the Minister for Employment from the other place was here before. That is the priority we have got. We are building schools, we are making sure our special schools have top-notch facilities and we are making sure the students of our large state schools are well catered for. But actually these major projects mean 6400 people are going to have employment. Let us just think about that. So we have got a plan to build 100 new schools. We have just acquired land in Cranbourne, so the people in the Quarters estate will be delighted to learn that the government has acquired a site at the corner of Central Parkway and Morningside Boulevard for a new school. But I want to keep returning to those 6400 jobs. Those jobs mean that people are able to keep a roof over their heads. It means that people are able to feed their families, make plans for the future, and that money will be a benefit right across the community. It means that they will have the sort of money they need so that they can be less stressed, they can use the local supermarket and the local bakery and they can make sure their children have what they need to have the best start in life. For so many people

MOTIONS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1337 in Cranbourne I know that that is an optimistic view—that is the optimism of having a future orientation of putting people first. $155 million will support Victorians particularly affected by the pandemic, including women, young people and retrenched workers, to access government-funded training that will build on that world- class education that Victorians can access. There is money—$631 million—to help Victorians re-skill, upskill and find work, 80 000 free TAFE and subsidised training places and 60 000 places in areas we need for our recovery, including health, community and disability services. The benefits to the economy of having Victorians in classrooms and at work are well understood. We know we need higher productivity and more spending in local small businesses so that we can keep employment high and we can keep the benefits spreading right through the community. We have an effective and comprehensive jobs program. It is going to be really important that women are supported. We know that women are more likely to be employed in part-time and casual work, and that does put women at greater risk. Women have been on the front line of the pandemic, and this gives me an opportunity to thank our last line of defence: our healthcare workers, as well as those in retail, the ones who have served us in supermarkets when people have been quite frantic and of course our aged-care workers. I spent some time last Saturday talking to some aged-care workers who have worked tirelessly through the pandemic to keep some of our most vulnerable Victorians safe. We need to make sure we redress these embedded inequalities that have become such a fixture of the economy. That is why we are strengthening economic security. We are making sure that we respond to what we know to be inequalities that are so embedded and have become such a way of life, but we need to look again. The member for Ringwood has used that language of ‘shining a mirror’—that this pandemic shone a mirror on the insecurity of so many people who are experiencing insecure work. So we have $170 million to support women’s workforce participation, and that is also going to provide free kindergarten for eligible services. There is $82 million for the availability of outside-school-hours care, and that gives parents more flexibility, because we know when it comes to work, study and care that the care of our children is actually the priority. There is $30 million for a range of gender equality initiatives that include implementation of the Gender Equality Act 2020, and I have heard the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and Minister for Women speak with great passion about what it means to have an act that does set targets and hold us to account, because we need to do that. Labor continues in its determination to achieve a more equal and inclusive future, and in Cranbourne I am going to take the opportunity to thank the newly formed Casey Rainbow Community for their hard work and pay credit to them. I know they welcomed the $1 million funding for LGBTIQ+ community grants programs that have strengthened the sustainability and leadership capability of the sector. I know that the Casey Rainbow Community, who I was delighted to be with at a recent picnic just a couple of weeks ago that did celebrate the best of our rainbow communities in Cranbourne, are delighted that $2 million will go to LGBTIQ+ organisations that have been impacted during the pandemic. We are empowering people with disabilities by making sure that there is investment in inclusive education, and we are standing up for First Nations people, because this always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I am delighted that we have allocated money to secure land for the new Cranbourne community hospital. The Cranbourne community hospital is so desperately needed. With the growth that we are experiencing in our community, people need to be able to get access to the care they need close to home. That means access to quality public dental care; that means paediatrics, being able to see a doctor, being able to get the care that you need and dialysis units. All of the features of our health system that we are so proud of in this state need to have the sort of investment that keeps people safe and secure and keeps people in employment—our hardworking healthcare professionals, our nurses,

MOTIONS 1338 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 those people who make sure that when we are triaged in hospitals we go to the right places and that our records are kept accurately. People need to have that sort of economic security, and having a community hospital in Cranbourne will mean that not only are the community able to get the care they need but also our healthcare workers—the people who are employed and who live in our community—have somewhere that they can go where they can have the sort of secure work that the Victorian government is known for providing in our healthcare settings. This is a Labor government. People I meet do not care for the language of Keynesian economic theories or whether we need to be tightening our belts and cutting our cloth to suit; what they care about is that the government is focused on their needs and that the government is focused on the needs of the communities who need government in their lives, who want a healthcare system, an education system and a housing system that work. I commend this last budget, and I take note that it has been exceptional. Ms HENNESSY (Altona) (18:21): I am really delighted to make a brief contribution to the take- note motion on the budget. I am really delighted to follow the member for Cranbourne and her fantastic contribution, and I would perhaps like to pick up on the themes upon which the member for Cranbourne concluded. The member for Cranbourne very eloquently made the point that the context in which this budget was delivered was the context of a pandemic and a global economic downturn that have caused so much harm not just here in our country but right across the world. So whilst governments right across the country and right across the world have rightfully been focused on responding to corona—responding to the risks of transmission and focusing on vaccine availability and rollout—the corollary obligation of government has been about ensuring that government services are available and that we are stimulating the economy. As the member for Cranbourne made the point so very passionately, this was a budget that was delivered in a time when we required stimulation and investment, and it was certainly not a time for austerity. I would make the argument that that is in fact still the case, because of course even before the global pandemic we were confronting economic conditions where we had stagnant wage growth, where we had rising economic inequality and where we were focused on certain industries that have been transitioning. We have to continue to find ways to stimulate economic activity and provide decent middle-class wages for people, good education and safe and solid universal health care. This was a budget that was very cognisant of those issues, and I want to congratulate and acknowledge the Treasurer because of his commitment and his delivery of those initiatives. It is incredibly important in this environment that we acknowledge the fault lines that COVID—I do not say exposed; I think we always knew they were there. What COVID has done is it has made it an inescapable conclusion that governments and activists must confront the inequality of people that are working in certain industries that are unregulated, that are low paid and that have been traditionally undervalued. Those have been the services that we desperately needed in the context of COVID, and I want to acknowledge those workforces and thank them for their contribution, for the risks that they have taken each and every single day to deliver services and for the risks that they continue to take to make sure that people in healthcare settings are getting access to care and to make sure that there are groceries in our supermarkets and that transportation and freight and logistics are all delivered as well. This budget acknowledges some of the inequalities that those workforces have been subjected to just by simple things—things like trying to ensure, through the investment to develop a new secure work pilot scheme, that there be a two-year pilot that will provide up to five days of sick and carers pay at the national minimum wage rate for casual or insecure workers in priority industries. I think that that is a really long overdue initiative. When one looks at why and where we were in the context of COVID, those sorts of initiatives are really important. I have got great hope and confidence that a Labor government here in Victoria will continue to look at what we can do as a state to intervene and regulate to bring wages and conditions up to levels that are above the poverty line and that ensure that people

MOTIONS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1339 have a stake in our community and our economy, such that people are not forced to be subjected to insecure and undignified work and an inability to try and keep a roof over their head and a meal on their table and to care for their friends and family. It is those kinds of initiatives that are totemic in the way in which they are responding to some of the inescapable economic lessons of COVID. I also wanted to acknowledge some of the really important investments that this budget has made in the context of mental health. We have had the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System but, as I said, there is an $870 million investment that was made in this budget in respect to mental health services. We know that that is only a down payment, and it will require ongoing investment at much higher levels than that, but that is a really significant injection of funds and a testament to the authentic commitment that our government has to improving and reforming the mental health system and to starting to recognise that the provision of universal mental health services is a basic human right. It is one—a little bit like dental services—that has always been treated like the poor cousin in the context of universal health care, but the Labor government here in Victoria has said access to adequate mental health provisioning and access to dental health provisioning are absolutely essential and critical parts of genuine universal healthcare systems, acknowledging that we have got a long way to go in order to make that commitment real and meaningful. So I want to really pay tribute to both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Mental Health for securing that investment. We are very excited about what the forthcoming budget will deliver when it comes to the provision of mental health services. It is about money and it is about reform, and those are two things that a Labor government is deeply committed to, so I want to acknowledge those things in the context of the budget. There is also a significant investment in the budget around the provision of the Better at Home initiative. There is $121 million—a really critical and important initiative. Hospital in the Home was I think an initiative that the now Premier, then health minister, initiated—perhaps it was Minister Pike, and I am sure Acting Speaker Carbines would have a greater and a deeper recollection of these matters—but actually putting funding into the provision of healthcare services in a home setting is a challenging model to actually deliver. You can see how compelling it is and how sensible it is. Again corona taught us and forced us to not ignore the problems of trying to change things like the funding and workforce models to deliver healthcare services in the home but, as a Labor government, to put real funding behind it. I think this is a fantastic initiative in this budget, so I really, really welcome that funding as well. There was an ambitious jobs target that was contained in the budget: 400 000 new jobs by 2025. That is a pretty ambitious target, one that has never been set at such an ambitious rate, and the delivery of employment and jobs opportunities, particularly as we deal with how we emerge from COVID, is again incredibly important. I think it speaks to the very comfortable position that Labor governments take about what the role of the state is. We feel no ideological queasiness whatsoever about saying the role of the state is to invest, it is to stimulate, it is to regulate. I was very delighted to see recent comments by President Biden making it very clear that the era of trickle-down economics in the United States is over and that new economic models need to be adopted. Well, here in Australia and particularly in Victoria, even with the limitations of our regulatory reach as a state government, even with the limitations of what state governments can raise by way of revenue, our focus, our purpose and our values have been about getting people the opportunity to get a job— and to get a job that pays decently, to get a job where there are decent terms and conditions, to get a job where you are safe and to get a job in a way that actually takes the value of what is being done in local communities and makes it something that has an indelible sense of progress. These types of commitments are not just targets in a budget paper, they are the things that change people’s lives, and I commend that very, very ambitious target that was contained in the budget. I also want to acknowledge the commitment and the funding contained in the budget that will have the effect of making kinder free by 2021. Many years ago there were those that were very interested

MOTIONS 1340 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 in and committed to making sure that we had early education more accessible. The concept that people did not go to three-year-old kinder because they could not afford it is something that we should have all felt deeply ashamed about. But feeling ashamed about something does not change it, so many in Labor governments have been advocating for a long period of time through the national partnership routes but also through the state investment route to say that the delivery of universal early education services is the best down payment that we could make on our future not just from a health perspective but from an economic perspective. To deliver that requires infrastructure, it requires workforce investment and it requires collaboration with the wonderful maternal and child health sector. But to think that we will have, like many of those countries that have the best educational outcomes in the OECD—places like Singapore and Finland—the same early education access that those countries have by 2021. And it is not a mistake that brought us here. It was not just pie-in-the-sky thinking. It was the very important policy work and the funding, and this down payment I think is going to be an incredible opportunity that will change the outcomes of children’s lives. This is another investment in the budget that should not be underestimated in terms of the impact of that investment, and I would like to congratulate all of those that have had the commitment and the foresight to continue to make the case about early education reform and opportunities. I would just like to quickly touch on a couple of local investments in my district of Altona that I am very, very grateful for. I am particularly grateful for the $3.56 million allocated to Altona College. Altona College was a P–9 that we have transformed into a P–12. I was delighted to be there last week. It is a school that is changing its story. It is populated by families, students, teachers and administrative workers that are deeply committed to providing a diversity of education options for people in the local community. I have met some extraordinary students, and they have lifted their enrolment from a couple of hundred a couple of years ago to over 500 now. It is a school whose leadership I am particularly proud of, and I am very proud that we have been able to support them with the sorts of infrastructure investment that will bring these new year 11s and year 12s the opportunities that they deserve. I am also very grateful for the funding to buy land for the Point Cook community hospital and again being able to provide more health services in Melbourne’s very fast growing west. We have got 25 per cent of Victoria’s population living in Melbourne’s western suburbs, so any investment in the provision of health care is so incredibly important. Like Cranbourne community hospital, which the member for Cranbourne spoke about, any investment in the sorts of services that take pressures off our very busy tertiary and acute-level hospitals not only will improve the health outcomes for people in these local communities, it will also improve the ability for those very busy hospitals to be able to focus on those more serious, more acute cases as well. So I really do welcome that investment as well. There is $4.4 million for the revitalisation of the Altona foreshore reserve. The Altona beach and the Altona dog beach are beautiful places to come to. We do not like to tell too many people about them because you actually have to drive there. You do not actually drive through Altona on the way to somewhere else. But to have that investment in the revitalisation of that foreshore is, again, very welcome, and I want to thank the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change for her leadership and understanding of the beauty and the power and possibilities of the Altona foreshore. There is very important funding for a very challenging intersection on the corner of Point Cook Road and Sneydes Road. It is an intersection that is very well known to locals. There are a lack of signalisation and a significant bottleneck there. The Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Minister Carroll, is a member of Melbourne’s western suburbs community as well. That he brought his wherewithal to secure that funding is something for which we are all very grateful. In fact I think he is coming to visit this august but challenging intersection in the not-too-distant future. Again, these sorts of investments are fixing local roads issues, schools and foreshores, delivering jobs, investing in health care, bringing dignity to those that are in insecure work, investing in things like early education and putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to our local Indigenous populations. Investing in these sorts of initiatives will not only produce better outcomes for local

MOTIONS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1341 communities, it will help our economy in its recovery in the most challenging and difficult of times. I commend the bill to the house. Mr HALSE (Ringwood) (18:36): It is a pleasure to rise tonight to speak on the most recent state budget and to follow the fine contributions from the member for Cranbourne, who always roots her speeches in a sense of community, which is a lovely thing about the member for Cranbourne, and a deep understanding of her local community—the type of advocate that you want for your local community—and the member for Altona, who provided some great insights and great depth as to why we are part of the Labor movement, what it means to be part of the Labor movement and how the budget pivoted to that. It is often said that budgets are about priorities. Try as we might in politics, we cannot deliver everything that everyone wants all the time. But this, our most recent budget, demonstrates the real values of this Andrews Labor government. It shows that on this side of the house we have at the very front of our mind the long-term future of the state of Victoria and its people, particularly the most vulnerable of Victorians. People elect Labor governments to do things—to get on with the job. Victorians elected us in 2014 on the back of an ambitious agenda for our health system, to grow the economy, to bring jobs to Victoria, to make us the Education State and to deliver the transport infrastructure we need for our future. In 2018 those priorities were re-endorsed emphatically. They are the priorities that the Victorian people have demonstrated that they agree with, and they are the reason I am standing here today in this chamber 2½ years later as the member for Ringwood. It is all about jobs. It is about health. It is about education. It is about transport. It is about action on climate change. It is about action that supports all within our community, not just a select few. This budget not only responds to the greatest social, economic and health crisis we have experienced in many decades, a global pandemic, but also shows a vision for our state. It sets out a plan for Victoria’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and it looks beyond the recovery to the kind of state we want to build in the years and decades to come. It tells a story of a government committed to creating decent, secure jobs for all Victorians, one that includes funding for infrastructure projects that will create tens of thousands of jobs—the North East Link, the Melbourne Metro Tunnel, the Suburban Rail Loop, and the list goes on. Creating jobs is one thing, but in Victoria we have also shown our commitment to protecting the dignity of that work with the $5 million pledged for our secure work pilot scheme, which the member for Altona referenced, an Australian first that will extend entitlements to many casual workers. It is a budget that also tells the story of a Labor government committed to taking care of Victoria’s families: taking care of our kids through major investments in schools, taking care of the elderly through investment in training nurses and personal care workers—and the member for Cranbourne touched upon the amazing work of our aged-care workforce over the last 18 months and continuing and ongoing—and of taking care of young families by taking major steps to make housing more affordable. It is a budget that tells the story of a government committed to building strong, connected communities through the Suburban Rail Loop, major improvements in regional rail, fast rail to Geelong and building 1800 new trams right here in Victoria. It tells the story of a government committed to Victoria’s recovery but also to a fair, equal, prosperous and productive Victoria. We have been a government that has demonstrated a willingness to make the reforms to our energy grid to modernise it, and we have seen some significant announcements over the last few days, to make it more sustainable and also to create jobs. That is why I am particularly proud that this budget included nearly $800 million to help Victorians lower their power bills and to make homes more energy efficient. I just want to run through a couple of things that have been achieved: replacing old wood, electric or gas-fired heaters in 250 000 homes with new, energy-efficient systems that are safer, cheaper and produce lower emissions; sealing windows and doors and upgrading heating, cooling and hot water in 35 000 social housing properties; expanding our Solar Homes program so even more Victorians can get the benefits of solar and offering solar rebates to small businesses for the first time; introducing minimum efficiency standards for rental properties to target homes with poor insulation

MOTIONS 1342 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 and old heaters; giving direct bill relief to households who are struggling to pay the bills, those vulnerable Victorians; and giving rebates to Victorians to access more smart energy-efficient appliances, a huge investment in energy efficiency and the environment. This government has shown the courage to reform our state’s broken mental health system, from holding a historic Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, leading the public debate and amplifying the voices of people it affects through to accepting and pledging to implement every single recommendation. Well, here it is in this budget—an investment of nearly $870 million into mental health across the state, putting the mental health of Victorians first. It shows a government that is listening and willing to reform a sector that will save and improve so many lives over the coming decades. Just with the remaining time that I have got left, I would like to focus on two measures outlined in the budget that I am particularly passionate about and the impacts that they are having in my electorate of Ringwood. First I want to speak to the $1.9 billion this budget committed to the school building blitz. That $1.9 billion will bring our total investment in improving and building new schools to more than $9.2 billion over the past five years. In addition to building new schools and buying land for 11 more, this budget commits money to a further 123 schools across Victoria, which will receive funding for upgrades, new classrooms, gyms and learning spaces for local kids. Two of those schools that will benefit from the Andrews Labor government’s building blitz are in my electorate of Ringwood. The budget commits $14.3 million to Ringwood Secondary College to build a state-of-the-art science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics facility as well as new basketball courts. I want to congratulate the principal of Ringwood Secondary College, Michael Phillips, for his consistent advocacy for his school community. It was also a real pleasure to announce through this budget that Norwood Secondary College will be receiving $7.38 million to upgrade and modernise the facilities they have, on top of an earlier commitment in 2020 of $820 000. These are much more than lines on the Treasurer’s spreadsheet. These investments represent tangible improvements to the learning environment of the students in my electorate of Ringwood and real improvements to the working environment of our teachers. These builds will also create jobs for our local tradies and other workers from my community during the construction process. This brings me to the second budget measure I would like to speak to today, the unprecedented, record- breaking $5.3 billion our government committed to the social housing initiative, which will see 12 000 new social and affordable homes built across the state of Victoria. In my first speech in this place I spoke about my firm belief that this government should build more homes, and I have written and spoken about it in many places since then, so it is with a tremendous amount of pride that I am able to speak to the benefits of this Big Housing Build and what it will bring to the state of Victoria. First, the nearly 10 000 new social housing dwellings will help tackle homelessness and housing insecurity in our communities. Housing, as we know, is a human right, and this investment is a major step towards guaranteeing that every Victorian, including the most vulnerable, has a roof over their head, somewhere to come home to at the end of the night, somewhere that they and their family can call home. Second, building nearly 3000 new affordable and low-cost homes in locations that are close to jobs and transport represents a major investment in making housing more affordable for young Victorians who are looking to set themselves up. Home ownership should not only be for the very wealthy, it should be accessible to the great mass of Victorians, and this budget reflects the Andrews Labor government’s commitment to making this vision a reality. Finally, we estimate that this Big Housing Build will create 10 000 jobs in the construction sector and in the supply chain, putting Victorians back to work after many lost hours and much lost income during the global COVID-19 recession, which we are still feeling the lingering effects of. The first time I spoke in this chamber I quoted the great Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who said that there was no point being in the Labor movement without radical tendencies. This budget reflects the quiet radicalism of the Andrews Labor government, a government that is committed not only to

MOTIONS Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1343

Victoria’s social and economic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but to building a fairer, more equal, more prosperous and more productive Victoria. This is a budget that delivers on jobs, on education, on health, on the environment and commits to what Victorians need to recover from the shock of a global pandemic. I am proud of the work that the Treasurer and the ministry have done during the course of preparing this most recent budget and what it will mean for people in my community and people right across the state of Victoria, and with that I commend it to the house. Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (18:50): Australia’s greatest gift is the opportunity for a better life. This precious gift must be nurtured, not squandered. The pandemic, like climate change, has exposed how we are all connected and vulnerable. The self-interest and tribalism of the past will not save us. An enlightened future is defined by our common interests and collaboration. We must be optimistic and outward focused and drive economic recovery and social cohesion relentlessly and compassionately. The record $49 billion investment in the last Andrews Labor government’s budget was defining and seminal. It sets us up to be able to move beyond the pandemic, and I want to try to add value to this big picture by proposing a location to locally manufacture mRNA vaccines, a new deal for the Cancer Moonshot with the President of the United States of America and a unifying model that adds value to the record investments the Victorian and Australian governments delivered in their budgets only months ago. This is important now because we are on the eve of new back-to-back budgets, and to succeed we have to be like Janus and look both ways. I do not think it was fully appreciated, the value of the seminal investment of $2 billion in the Breakthrough Victoria Fund. This is a wonderful investment in our future. I think that this gives us the opportunity to set up new investments in medical research for new breakthroughs in agriculture and technology on a whole range of different propositions that we have been growing over a long period of time in this state. It is where we are genuinely world leaders. Australia turns to Broadmeadows in times of existential threats and then too often turns its back once the catastrophe has passed, leaving this vulnerable community to confront social disadvantage like an orphan. But Broadmeadows is now the epicentre for our comeback from pandemic and recession. I am advocating for new vaccines and a potentially huge export industry to be established across the road from CSL’s plant, now making more than 50 million AstraZeneca vaccines in Broadmeadows and within minutes of the international curfew-free Melbourne Airport. Future use of the 12-hectare Maygar Barracks site is under review. The history is valiant but largely forgotten. Australian troops have trained here since World War I. It features a logistics hub to fight natural disasters, including Australia’s worst—Black Saturday and the 2020 bushfires. Because this is commonwealth land, an mRNA facility can be fast-tracked to establish independent supply chains and to protect national sovereignty. The Australian government has declared making mRNA vaccines a national imperative, and the Victorian government has offered a $50 million investment to make them locally. I have written to the Prime Minister and the Acting Premier that Maygar Barracks is an ideal site and to try to expedite due diligence so we can have a decision and look at the potential this has to be able to export into countries that are struggling, like what we are seeing in India and you can imagine in other countries that do not have the cold supply chain to be able to freeze the current vaccines. So this is of huge significance and an opportunity that must not be squandered. On the Cancer Moonshot, it is time for a new deal. Australia has a defining opportunity to extend our relationship with the United States of America to change lives, save lives and deliver a brain gain. President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress explained his ambition to be a transformative leader. He said, ‘our greatest strength is the power of our example, not just the example of our power’. President Biden’s blue-sky rhetoric is hardwired to technology and know-how. The Cancer Moonshot is the unity ticket we can advance together. Victoria’s founding partnership internationalised this quest, exchanged vital research and reimagined Australia’s relationship with

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America to save lives. It attracted Joe Biden to Melbourne in 2016 for the opening of the billion-dollar jewel in Australia’s medical research crown, the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC). The mission to crack the code of one of the world’s biggest killers is as personal to Joe Biden as family. His visit as Vice President came shortly after the wrenching loss of his son Beau, aged 46, from brain cancer. As President, the Cancer Moonshot is emblematic of Biden’s vision for American progress and a unifying cause. He said, ‘I know of nothing that is more bipartisan. So, let’s end cancer as we know it’, a declaration he made little more than 100 days after mob insurrection and killings in Congress aimed at preventing him being sworn in as President. Biden offered hope on cancer breakthroughs to members wearing masks and social distancing after the COVID winter in America. ‘It’s within our power to do it’, he declared. The President’s strategy is embedded in his American jobs plan. It features the biggest increase in non-defence research and development on record. The method is to adapt artificial intelligence and other technologies to supercharge breakthroughs. They are predicted to outstrip half a century’s advances in the next decade. Strategically President Biden wants to translate the model designed for national security that led to discoveries including the internet and GPS under a defence department agency to focus on health. This could be a wonderful social dividend. This would target breakthroughs to prevent, detect and treat diseases including Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer under the National Institutes of Health. Big dreams require big data being distilled into understanding, knowledge and then remedies. Biden praised the significance of the agreement between Victoria and the United States to share patient histories with full privacy protections during his tour of the VCCC. ‘You are making cancer research a team sport’, he noted. He also highlighted the international significance of the collaboration of 10 leading cancer organisations, locating patient care, clinical trials, research and education on one super-site in Melbourne. Australia is close to the top of the survival list for most cancers. Victoria is ideally placed to extend our internationally acclaimed leadership and research and advances in care through our established partnership with the White House, institutional clout and the new $2 billion Breakthrough Victoria Fund providing extra investment opportunities. This landmark initiative can be leveraged with the Australian government’s Medical Research Future Fund rising to $20 billion to maximise results. Amid the Cold War fear of 1962 US President John F Kennedy declared the moon landing and other choices were made:

… not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills … So does the Cancer Moonshot. And the other big initiative that the Victorian government has announced for medical research in the budget was $155 million, and this was the opportunity to establish an Australian infectious diseases institute and to anchor it on the Doherty Institute, named after our Nobel laureate Peter Doherty. And we also have Professor Sharon Lewin there as the director, who is also an eminent scientist and will probably go close to being nominated at some stage for a Nobel Prize. Here is the epicentre and where we can do it. You can have the Burnet Institute as a partner. You have got the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute nearby, the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. This is our brains trust, and this is where it is a wonderful opportunity for the collaboration that I am describing, with the Australian government to come in and partner now. The other connection is the great southern hub, with Monash University and CSIRO separated only by Innovation Walk. And then the connection is down to Geelong, where we have the only centre in the Southern Hemisphere that traces how viruses go from animals into humans—which of course happened with COVID-19, and SARS and MERS before it, and is likely with our future threats. Business interrupted under sessional orders.

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Adjournment The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is:

That the house now adjourns.

CAULFIELD ELECTORATE CRIME Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (19:00): (5831) My adjournment today is to the acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services, and the matter that I wish to raise is the concerning rise in violence in my area in Caulfield South. We have seen crime escalate in recent weeks and months. This issue started back in 2016, with a number of rooming houses that have been established by people that are making a dollar, quite frankly, by putting up to 10 people in these rooming houses and taking advantage of these individuals. These individuals unfortunately have been attracted to drugs and other activities and are going out and causing huge issues for many residents locally. Last week, on Sunday, we had two 70-year-old gentlemen going down Hawthorn Road that were cowardly punched—king hit—to the ground. That matter is being investigated. This individual then went to 7-Eleven, which has a weekly occurrence of bad behaviour and criminal activity, and he spat on an individual on his way out. There have been sexual advances; there have been a whole range of assaults and intimidation. Just down the road, at Caulfield Primary School, we had an incident, again just during the holiday period, where the after-school program had to be locked up. They took the kids and locked them in. The kids were hiding under the desks because there was a gentleman from one of these rooming houses—if I could call him a gentleman—that left the rooming house, got into the basketball courts, started screaming, went to one of the women that was managing the program and said, ‘After you leave here, you’ll be dead!’. And that is the type of behaviour that is happening time and time again. Police are telling me they do not have the resources. We have one divisional van in the City of Glen Eira for 140 000 residents. It is simply not good enough. This has been going on since 2016. I have raised rooming house issues before, including Almond Street, Albion Street, Poplar Street and Hawthorn Road. Four of these rooming houses I have raised time and time again without a response. I ask the minister for police to investigate and for more resourcing in the area and for a proper response when it comes to these rooming houses. Unfortunately those individuals are running amok in the community. Many are experiencing mental health issues. As the police tell me, they drop them off in the hospital because it is too complex and these individuals are back out on the street before the police officer gets back to the station. It is simply not good enough. Our local residents are scared. This is continuing to escalate. Enough is enough. Residents have had enough. It has got to be investigated. We desperately need more police resources and we need some action to make sure we can have men, women, children and families able to go about their daily lives without being intimidated and threatened by violence. EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGETS Mr BRAYNE (Nepean) (19:03): (5832) The action I seek is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change to provide an update to my community about the government’s new emission reduction targets and how they will impact the Mornington Peninsula. My community lives in the best part of the world on the Mornington Peninsula and we are very environmentally focused and driven and extremely passionate about protecting our pristine environment. The government’s ambitious targets, announced a few days ago, come just weeks after the Labor Minister for Planning ruled the proposed AGL Crib Point gas import terminal would not proceed. There have been a lot of politicians claiming credit for the AGL decision, but only one actually bothered to attend the celebratory events on the weekend. It was so good seeing such pride in my community and so many people willing and wanting to fight for our environment’s future. A huge congratulations to Save Westernport and to the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council for charting the long road to this

ADJOURNMENT 1346 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 decision. I look forward to updating my community on the minister’s response and on how our emission reduction targets are something every peninsula resident can be very proud of. GIPPSLAND EAST ELECTORATE BUSHFIRE RECOVERY INITIATIVES Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (19:04): (5833) My adjournment is to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action that I am seeking is some urgent action to reopen areas that have been damaged by bushfire—tourism-related infrastructure that after 16 months has not been repaired and in many cases has not gone out to tender, and we do not have any completion dates. Now, as I said, these are areas that are important tourism infrastructure. I know there is a bit to be done, but there was nothing stopping this government providing a Treasurer’s advance to Parks Victoria to get this work done. Every time we ask a question we get told ‘Well, we’ve done this boardwalk’ or ‘We’ve opened that track’. We want time frames on the areas that have not been reopened and have not been rebuilt. This is off the Parks Victoria website: the Thurra River bridge that blocks off access to the Thurra River campground and Point Hicks, not rebuilt, no time frame; the Mueller River campground, not reopened; the Cape Conran boardwalk, not reopened, and we were told that would be done by Christmas—it had not even started. The Cape Conran cabins that were damaged by the fires, I know the minister announced they were going to be rebuilt but they have not been started—16 months later. The Wingan Inlet boardwalk has not been started; I was told that that would be done over the summer months. The Wingan Inlet rapids walk, closed; Fairy Dell picnic area, still closed. There is police tape up on all these areas—you cannot get in. The access to Clinton Rocks, a very popular area on Ninety Mile Beach, you cannot get down there; the Genoa River day visitor area and jetty, closed; Gravelly Point day area and jetty, closed; Wilderness Coast Walk between Cape Howe and Bemm River, closed; Double Creek walk and day visitor area, closed; Genoa Falls visitor area, closed; Mount Everard walk, closed; Cann River Bushland Reserve, closed; Maramingo Creek reserve, closed—all from the fires; Little Cabbage Tree Creek Falls, a beautiful area, closed. Sixteen months, and we do not have completion dates on the vast majority of these jobs. When we have the Premier come down and the minister come down and say, ‘We’re going to help you with your economic recovery. We’re going to walk with you’—get some stuff done! Our communities want time frames for these jobs. This is not a comprehensive list. This is only some of the stuff that has not been rebuilt 16 months on. So I encourage the minister to get busy and get what needs to be done done to get these job started, but in the next fortnight to provide my communities with a time frame of when these works are going to be completed. BAYSWATER ELECTORATE KINDERGARTENS Mr TAYLOR (Bayswater) (19:07): (5834) I rise to raise a matter with the Minister for Early Childhood in the other place, Ingrid Stitt. The action that I seek is that the minister join me to say g’day to one of our amazing local kinders. I am very proud to be part of this Andrews Labor government. There are many things to be proud of, but one in particular is our game-changing Australian-first reforms to early childhood education in Victoria. We know that to get the very best start in life our young people need the very best education. Making Victoria the Education State starts with the early years, and that is why this government is delivering funded three-year-old kinder. We made an important promise in 2018 to get this done and to have funded three-year-old kinder available for every Victorian child by 2022. I am pleased to report that next year, across my local communities in Knox and Maroondah and right across the state, families will be able to access up to 5 hours of subsidised three-year-old kinder. What is more, we will continue to roll out universal funded three-year-old kinder, with up to 15 hours access for every Victorian family by 2029, creating 6000 more early childhood jobs in the process. Of course we are investing nearly $5 billion to deliver this Australian- first reform which will transform education.

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As part of this program the government is upgrading infrastructure through a $1.86 billion investment to build and expand kindergarten facilities across the state. We have seen a number of exciting projects locally, including my personal favourite, the new Bayswater Children’s and Family Learning Hub, where we committed $1.6 million to get it done. I even visited with the Premier, and we were both super impressed, as the new building is an example of architectural brilliance, with a 100-year life span and solar panels to keep it powered as well. In more good news for locals this year, we made four-year-old kinder free, saving around $2000 per year per child, helping put money back into the pockets of local families while we do continue to recover. Not only will free kinder make sure more kids are getting the great early childhood education they deserve, it will make it easier for parents, particularly women, to return to the workforce as we recover from this pandemic. It is all about investing in our future learners, saving locals money and making it that little bit easier for parents to get back to work, as well as transforming education for generations to come. I of course want to recognise the hard work put in by every single member of the early years family right across our wonderful community out in the east. Thank you for all the work that you do each and every single day. I thank the minister for her consideration of my request, and I am looking forward to welcoming her to my local patch. WASTE AND RECYCLING MANAGEMENT Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (19:09): (5835) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action I seek is additional support for the not- for-profits who are accepting e-waste. I recently visited WDEA Works in Warrnambool, where the director of social enterprises, Jack Melican, raised with me an issue the organisation is facing following the government’s changes to how e-waste is disposed of in Victoria. The issue faced by organisations like WDEA is that they are left covering the cost of disposing of the waste that cannot be recycled without any support from the state government, which of course increases costs. When e-waste is delivered WDEA uses its all-abilities workforce to take it apart and separate the components that can be re-used and recycled, but despite this they are left with large amounts of waste that has nowhere to go other than landfill. The cost of disposing of that comes back to WDEA, taking away from the other programs they can run for their all-abilities team. Jack said often people who are dropping off e-waste think it is a free service and do not understand that it cannot be recycled and it ends up in landfill and that is a cost that WDEA incurs. The Andrews government changed the way e-waste is disposed of, and it should be assisting organisations like WDEA to get rid of what they cannot re-use, not the exact opposite. Jack also raised with me his concerns about the government’s plans to increase the waste levy. There is no plan to protect not-for-profits from the extra cost burden, and this will amount to around $200 000 per year. Jack says Victorian charities generate $130 million in revenue from charity op shop sales for essential social welfare programs for Victoria’s most disadvantaged communities, providing avoided cost for government in the delivery of food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, crisis support, counselling for those in mental health distress and a wide range of other illnesses and disability services right through to the care of even pets and animals. These charities also divert over 158 000 tonnes from Victorian landfill and contribute to the circular economy by giving 68 million products a second life every year through charity op shops. They make a huge positive impact on the environment. But Jack believes Labor’s Recycling Victoria policy will penalise these charities by imposing waste levy increases on them from 1 July 2021 and prevent them from operating at full capacity. He also says Victoria is the only state that is planning to hurt charities this way. Minister, not-for-profits and charities like WDEA are doing incredible work and help your government achieve its recycling goals. But you want them to be penalised, do not support them in their e-waste collection and are now increasing landfill levies. I ask you on behalf of the groups to address these concerns and take action to ensure they are not left with a financial burden that takes

ADJOURNMENT 1348 Legislative Assembly Tuesday, 4 May 2021 away from the important work they do for the community and that the all-abilities community contributes to our part of the world. NORTHCOTE ELECTORATE FUNDING Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (19:12): (5836) My adjournment is to the Treasurer of Victoria, and I ask that he fund critical projects within the Northcote electorate as part of the state budget. The inner north is a special part of the world, and we pride ourselves on the diverse, creative and progressive way of life we have nurtured, but our suburbs are growing and changing, and with this come new challenges. Population pressures mean our schools are some of the most dense while sitting on the smallest footprints. Northcote High is an incredible school but faces a crisis of facilities and needs investment now to meet the needs of growing student numbers. Ageing infrastructure at Westgarth Primary continues to cause immense disruption to student learning, and I have been working closely with them to put the case forward for upgraded learning spaces. Severe cuts to our health services during the Kennett era means that affordable and accessible public health services are limited, with most residents needing to travel north or down to Parkville to access care. Indeed in 1996 we saw the closure of the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital by the Kennett government, and 1999 saw the Preston and Northcote Community Hospital close. We sure could have used both of these over the past 18 months. The gap in public health and mental health services is pronounced, made even more so by the pressures of the pandemic. I have long been advocating for expanded perinatal and family health services. Research into access to these services for parents and children across the electorate shows services are not able to meet current demand levels. A distinct lack of a public early parenting centre is a big gap for parents needing to access specialised perinatal care. Expanding local health and mental health services in the inner north remains a priority for me, and I urge the Treasurer to consider the needs of the inner north, particularly for families and children as well as our young people. Equally important is supporting jobs growth in the inner north. I have spoken before about the opportunities we have to create pathways to employment in Victoria’s growth industries. Our suburbs are growing rapidly, and we must play to our strengths in the digital economy, food production, tech and innovation as well as health and education. The Melbourne Innovation Centre in Alphington is doing amazing things and launching many local startups. Our local urban farming models are expanding into exciting areas. There are also local businesses on the cutting edge of energy innovation, something our government is making enormous and groundbreaking investments in as we move towards net zero emissions. We have exciting local projects underway with the removal of four level crossings in Preston, our school upgrades, the rollout of subsidised three-year-old kinder and our big social housing build. These are opportunities to create jobs and build inner-urban precincts that are truly responsive to the needs of our community. Though I know the Treasurer must balance the needs of the entire state, I want it on record that I will not stop fighting for Northcote—for our schools, our businesses, our environment, better health services, better transport networks and opportunities for our young people. SURGICAL ROBOT FUNDING Dr READ (Brunswick) (19:15): (5837) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the government to provide two surgical robots for cancer surgery in the public hospital system. There is a clear need for one of these at the Olivia Newton-John centre at the Austin Hospital, which is part of the North Eastern Melbourne Integrated Cancer Service, and there is likely to be a need for another one in the Southern Melbourne Integrated Cancer Service. These robots enable surgeons to perform computer-assisted laparoscopic cancer surgery. This is precise keyhole surgery in confined and hard-to-reach spaces, giving better results with faster healing and shorter hospital stays. It reduces the time spent in hospital from five nights to one and reduces time off work for the patient from at least a month to perhaps just a week. Victoria’s public hospitals

ADJOURNMENT Tuesday, 4 May 2021 Legislative Assembly 1349 only have three of these, compared to 16 in the private system, despite this type of surgery being considered standard care. Because this equipment at Peter MacCallum and at the Royal Melbourne Hospital is usually booked out, patients are regularly referred from the Olivia Newton-John centre at the Austin to Geelong for robot surgery on their cancers. Cancers suitable for this type of surgery could be cancers of the uterus, in women; cancers of the prostate, in men; and kidney cancers in both. But not all can be treated in Geelong, and many others have much more invasive surgery through a large incision which requires more time to heal and often gives poorer results. Robotic surgery has been around for about 20 years, about as long as mobile phones, and is now standard treatment in the private health system and in the few public centres which have the equipment. I do understand that new types of intervention require extensive trials to establish their role in health care and their cost-effectiveness. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this treatment is now well established, and the striking difference between the public and private health systems in its availability is creating gross health inequalities. Surgical robots cost from $2 million to $4 million each and their use requires experience and credentialing, so they should be restricted just to tertiary centres with experienced staff. For this reason, just two more robots might be sufficient for the public system. I anticipate that the reduction in bed days required by these patients would rapidly offset the purchase cost and free up hospital beds for other patients. I have met patients who have had the old-fashioned big incision type of surgery and faced four to six weeks of healing, and it is hard to explain to them why they have to put up with that when people in the private system can have something that is a whole lot easier to bear. FEDERAL EDUCATION FUNDING Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (19:18): (5838) My adjournment matter this evening is directed to the Minister for Higher Education in the other place. The action I seek is for the minister to write to the federal education minister, Alan Tudge, requesting an outline of what support, if any, the federal government has given to both tertiary students and tertiary institutions over the course of the pandemic. Last year students and universities alike were abandoned by the federal government. Their refusal to provide universities with JobKeeper resulted in cuts to staff, student services and courses right across Victoria and indeed across the nation. They relied on a flimsy jurisdictional argument that said that because universities are established by state statutes they are part of the state government. Well, what a load of bunkum. Universities are overwhelmingly a commonwealth responsibility. They administer the loan schemes that provide fee support for both undergraduate and graduate students, they provide the bulk of the research and teaching grants and they regulate through the national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. As a result of this shameless responsibility shirking, at Deakin University, in my electorate of Burwood, thousands of casual staff lost their jobs and 300 permanent staff were made redundant, all completely avoidable if the Morrison government had risen to the occasion and just done their job. Instead, in the middle of a global pandemic, they decided to punish the tertiary education sector and rammed through massive fee increases. They decided that if you did not do the course they wanted, then you should suffer for no reason other than ideology. It proves yet again that the Liberals are not the party of education. The Liberals think that if you study the arts or society and culture, or law and economics, or creative arts and communications, you should pay much more for your education. It is time for the Liberals to stop wrecking Australia’s future. They should give young people opportunity rather than the misery currently being dished out by the Morrison government. Every young Victorian deserves a quality tertiary education—every single one. The Andrews Labor government has been a national leader in establishing free, high-quality TAFE that is available to every Victorian, because Labor understands that when tertiary education is accessible, when tertiary education is funded and when tertiary education is a priority for government we all benefit.

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COUNTRY FIRE AUTHORITY NEERIM SOUTH BRIGADE Mr BLACKWOOD (Narracan) (19:20): (5839) I raise a matter for the acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services, and the action I seek is clarification around the time lines for delivery of a new type 3 medium pumper for Neerim South CFA that has been prioritised for delivery by district 9 chief fire officers and commanders. Neerim South fire brigade are on district 9’s vehicle typology list as a priority for a new pumper. That in itself is great, but I understand that the pumper-building program has been placed on hold. The Neerim South brigade members would like to know what is the realistic time frame for delivery of this much-needed resource. Over the last few years the brigade have had a sharp rise in large structure fire activity requiring pumper response, with a number of large residences totally destroyed, one tragically resulting in a fatality. It is critical to get on top of these fires early. The Neerim South township is 20 kilometres away from the closest stations with pumpers, meaning that for the first half-hour or more the brigade have only their tanker and smaller vehicles to deploy. During a recent call-out to the Neerim South hospital, resulting in a full evacuation, the two closest pumpers, at Drouin and Warragul, were tied up at a structure fire in Drouin. It was not an issue on this occasion, but the brigade is seriously concerned that an incident like this in the future could be devastating for their community. The Neerim South brigade is one of only two class 3 brigades in district 9 that does not have a pumper. The other is Longwarry. They have structural risk but have the support of brigades on either side of them fairly close if required. Neerim South’s fire district has a number of large structural risks that are only getting older and, like many towns in district 9, new house builds are unprecedented. Neerim South township has a hospital, a nursing home, a secondary college, a primary school, a preschool, factories, hazardous areas like the pumping station at the Tarago dam and a number of public halls, stadiums and school camps, the largest one being Forest Edge, accommodating over 200 students. The brigade are very grateful for the support of district 9’s acting chief fire officer and commanders for putting a new pumper up as a high priority. However, they are really worried that even their support will not see this need addressed. Neerim South CFA is a very active, well-trained and dedicated brigade led by a leadership group with many years of experience. This is a genuine call for the better resources urgently required to keep their community safe. We really need the acting minister for emergency services to provide some answers for the Neerim South brigade so that at least they have some time frames around when they can expect delivery of this urgently needed and required pumper. MORDIALLOC COLLEGE Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (19:23): (5840) My adjournment this evening is to the Minister for Education, and the action I seek is for the minister to update my community on the progress of building works at Mordialloc College as part of their stage 2 redevelopment works to increase their learning spaces, provide a year 12 learning centre and upgrade their year 8 learning spaces. It seems like just yesterday that we committed to stage 2 building works, an $8.5 million investment to deliver the next package of works for Mordialloc College. It goes with recent commitments to Parkdale Secondary College and the works that we have done at Chelsea Heights Primary, Edithvale Primary School and Yarrabah School, our specialist school in the region that we have completely rebuilt from ground up. We have made that a first-class education setting for our kids, because in our community, in the Kingston community, all students, regardless of where they come from or their needs, deserve the very best education. And to think there is also our investment in Parktone Primary School for their stage 2 works in the last budget, and at Mentone Park Primary we are getting underway and making sure that we are making unprecedented levels of investment in our local community. And when we think about the journey that Mordialloc has been on—some 570 students just a few years ago, now over a thousand and doing really well in our local community and region, some outstanding results. They have also had some wonderful achievements, with their teachers and their principal, Michelle Roberts, being recognised as the best teachers in the region. The Brownlow Medal—the

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Lindsay Thompson medal—we took back to back at Mordialloc College. It was absolutely outstanding excellence in education from a secondary school perspective and from a principal perspective. Across our local community we are seeing our region strive for excellence in education and equity in everything that they do, and I am really excited that the Bayside Peninsula region will be one of the first areas that will see the rollout of the disability inclusion package. Of course this is making sure that every student in our setting and those kids that might need that additional support but do not quite get it at the moment, that needs to be found in our school settings, get that support, and I am really excited to see that roll out over the next few years. That is one of the biggest revolutions and biggest changes in education that we will ever see, and to see that roll out over the coming years will be transformational. It will put so many students and their needs up in lights and make sure that we differentiate and provide the very best education outcomes for them. Mordialloc College is a part of that journey in our community, and the education outcomes are absolutely outstanding. I cannot wait to get an update from the education minister on their building works and their expected completion in the next little while. RESPONSES Ms HORNE (Williamstown—Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister for Fishing and Boating) (19:26): The member for Caulfield raised a matter for the acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services; the members for Nepean, Gippsland East and also South-West Coast raised matters for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change; the member for Bayswater raised a matter for the Minister for Early Childhood; the member for Northcote raised a matter for the Treasurer; the member for Brunswick raised a matter for the Minister for Health; the member for Burwood raised a matter for the Minister for Higher Education; the member for Narracan raised a matter for the acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services; and the member for Mordialloc raised a matter for the Minister for Education. I will refer them accordingly. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The house now stands adjourned until tomorrow. House adjourned 7.26 pm.