Thursday, 28 October 2021

 Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (10:13): I take great pleasure, as you did yesterday, Acting Speaker Carbines, in speaking on—resuming my contribution on—the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. As I was closing yesterday I was making a comment about some of the more hysterical commentary that has been around this bill before the house, but I wanted to refer to a more measured contribution that occurred, and I am pleased to see the Leader of the Opposition is in the house. I quote from the Age of 9 October:

He says the government—not public servants—should take responsibility for managing the pandemic.

“Those who make these decisions—politicians—should be ultimately accountable for them,” Mr Guy said this week.

“As a general principle, I think [public health orders] should be ticked off by a minister or the Premier.

“When it’s a minister or a politician, we are responsible and we are accountable to the people, and I think during a pandemic, making legislation that is so wide-reaching, they should be accountable, and those decisions should be accountable to the people.”

I would hope that the opposition leader would stay true to his remarks of 9 October. I was disturbed by the shrill histrionics from the member for Ripon and Shadow Treasurer yesterday in relation to particular categories of people that could be declared under this legislation and her feeling that it is in breach of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010.

For example—and I think the member for Ripon is old enough to remember too—I remember girls a few years ahead of me at school who had polio. Polio has almost been eradicated in the world, but it is still around in places like Pakistan, where we have got the Taliban anti-vaxxers; it is still endemic there. Is the member for Ripon seriously trying to say that we would not empower our legislators and the executive to declare a pandemic to protect our children? Also, what this means is we are able to declare particular classes of workforce—aged-care workers, the medical workforce, the teaching service. Of course, given that it has only just been agreed and ticked off in the US that the vaccine is safe for under-12s, whether it is this pandemic, a future pandemic or a variation of the current pandemic, it is just completely sensible to be able to declare a class like the teaching service and say that they ought be vaccinated in order to protect our children and to protect the families and others of the teaching service. So the histrionics are really uncalled for.

I note that the lead speaker on this, the member for Kew, in his plodding, slow contribution went for only half of his allotted 30 minutes. He had been, on the previous day in an interview with Virginia Trioli, saying that we ought to go with the New South Wales model. Well, I can say to him that this bill before the house offers more transparency and has a greater range of transparency and accountability measures than any other jurisdiction in Australia, including New South Wales. The range of transparency and accountability measures will act as a strong check and balance on government’s use of pandemic powers. Public health orders will be made by the Minister for Health, who is accountable to Parliament. Public health advice on the pandemic orders will be tabled in Parliament—something that the opposition has called for. It will be part of these measures. A new independent advisory committee will review the public health orders and report to Parliament. The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee of the Parliament has the ability to review public health orders. The minister will be required to publish an explanation of any charter rights that are or may be limited by a pandemic order. I reiterate that there is no other Australian state or territory equivalent legislation that requires this level of transparency and accountability. This framework will replace the current system, where the state-of-emergency powers must be renewed every four weeks up to a maximum of only six to nine months.

We indicated that we would do this back in March. There has been consultation, and it has been informed by the Burnet Institute, which we have trusted all the way through—their modelling. I am really disappointed in the opposition’s histrionics around this. Neither of the opposition leaders has sought briefings around these matters. The chief health officer last briefed non-government MPs on the state-of-emergency declaration and report on 21 July. Despite an interest that they should have, neither the Shadow Minister for Health nor the Leader of the Opposition have ever requested a briefing on state-of-emergency or public health orders. They have requested briefings on outbreaks and the vaccination program, and these have always been provided. I did note from interjections from the member for South-West Coast yesterday that she had requested briefings, and I commend her. I would say to the Leader of the Opposition that he ought to give the member for South-West Coast a better go on his frontbench, because when she was the health spokesperson in the chamber in the absence of the member for Lowan, they actually made a better fist of it, and she actually does understand the health system. They probably should take better advice and give the member for South-West Coast a better go.

But I see that the Leader of the Opposition is in the house. I would encourage him to stick with his comments from the Age of early October.

Members interjecting.

Ms GREEN: This should be a measured debate. The fact that the bullyboys in this house are trying to speak over me, the histrionics and the aggressive language that has occurred from the member for Kew and those opposite just show that they are still not fit to govern. They will do anything to politicise this pandemic rather than support the community. I commend the bill to the house.

 Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (10:20): I rise to speak on the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. I rise with some concern and trepidation for all Victorians at the extent of the legislation that the government is proposing to this Parliament, to all of us, and the gravity of this legislation and what it will empower the government alone to be able to do. In short, this bill enables an Australian government in a state, one of our six states, to rule by decree with no oversight. Except one or two individuals appointed by themselves, it allows them to rule by decree. It would not be, I think, something that any Australian 50 years ago would ever have imagined—that an elected government in this country would propose to a legislature somewhere around our nation the extent of the powers which this government is seeking to obtain from this bill.

Do not ever look at what this government says, look at what they do—seven-day lockdowns become 80-day lockdowns, lies about hotel quarantine, constant deception in this chamber about health advice being issued. Never look at this government’s words, look at their actions. Their words, as we see from the cheat sheets of all Labor MPs, are the words of sheep. They are the words of people who have been given a cheat sheet and told to come into this Parliament and repeat it, and out of fear they all repeat it—fear of and intimidation by their boss. They come in here and repeat it. You will never find any Labor MP repeating the words of the president of the Victorian Bar Council—not a politician but the president of the Victorian Bar Council:

This is a bill that fundamentally interferes with the rights of citizens in some very basic ways. It abrogates the privilege against self-incrimination and you’ve got detention at the whim of the minister. It’s just appalling stuff.

We have Labor members who scuttle into this chamber and say, ‘You’re speaking hysteria’. They say, ‘Oh, you’re speaking hysteria’. Is the president of the Bar Council speaking hysteria? What about the president of Liberty Victoria? Is she speaking hysteria?

… we are concerned about the intro’n of an aggravated offence with imprisonment as a penalty. The focus of responding to public health risks should always be health not police-based.

Is the head of Liberty Victoria hysterical?

… the bill rejects a … parliamentary safeguard that is used in NSW and NZ—

says William Partlett, an associate professor at Melbourne Law School. Another lie from the state government: ‘Oh, this is the same as New Zealand’. ‘It is the same as New South Wales’, they say. It is fundamentally different, and fundamentally different in the worst and most stringent way—oversight. What is astounding is that the cretins opposite somehow swallow their own lines as reasoned fact. How could they have, in their own bill, which I guarantee most of them have not read because they cannot count past 20 without taking their shoes off, provision:

to detain a person in a pandemic management area in accordance with a pandemic order …

dependent only on the minister to approve. That is in new section 165B(1)(b). That is what it says in their bill. This is indefinite detention on the basis of a pandemic management plan, not by the police, not by a court, not by any part of our legal system, but by a minister. What the hell? My family left the Soviet Union, right? Many people in Eastern Europe look at this kind of stuff and say, ‘That can’t be right. That is over the top’, and sure enough, here it is in print. Not a legal body but a minister having this kind of power. Fair’s fair. If the government want to streamline our pandemic response, go and do it. If you want to go and streamline pandemic response—

Mr Pakula interjected.

Mr GUY: The minister interjects and says he has got it now. Minister, not with an appeals officer as the—

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Carbines): Order! I am happy to take points of order from members, but members need to wait until they are called. At the moment there does not seem to be a point of order, and the Leader of the Opposition will continue his contribution.

Mr GUY: Thank you, Acting Speaker. What a shame for the state that a reasonable minister like the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events only finds his voice when it is to criticise the opposition and not against his Premier. What a shame that he does not have the same strength of presence to take on his out-of-control Premier and that he has to come in here and make political points. Here it is in law. I am not making it up, I am not inventing it; I am reading his own bill that he is sitting in this chamber to represent. It is not a court of law that is the appeal body against this over-the-top rubbish but an appeals officer from a department—an appeals officer from a department. That is what the Labor government has said it is going to be. Again it is in their bill, and do not take my word for it, take the head of the bar council, who pointed it out.

A member: A bureaucrat.

Mr GUY: A bureaucrat is going to be responsible for oversight of someone being in prison, not an appeal through a court. Where the hell have we got to in Victoria when this presents itself as a health response? This is not a health response, this is giving the government a licence to run the state for three-month blocks at a time on their own whim. It is ridiculous. It is cracking a nut with not just a sledgehammer but with a huge digger, to crush it six times and then run over the remains. We are talking about the rights and liberties of 6.5 million Victorians. This is not some joke, this is not some passing bill, this is not some political debate; this is going to be law if it passes the Parliament. To give any government this kind of power—not this one, not the next one or the one after, it is this government into the future.

Here she comes in here. She has managed to count past 20, the Leader of the House. She can take her shoes off to do so—to come in here and lecture us all again. Well, let me say: it is a shame again I say that the Labor Party, our opponents, actually come in here and never find their voice against their Premier. They only find it against Victorians, like the head of the bar council, like the head of Liberty Victoria, like Melbourne Uni law associate professors. They never find it against their Premier, who comes in here to pass the most draconian laws. I say to every Victorian who will see this: never listen to what the government says, look at their actions. Look at what they do, not what they say. Do not listen to their assurances on this bill, because there are none. There can be no assurances for the complete denial of someone’s liberty, their rights and their freedom at the whim of one minister. Forget it if it was a court or a judicial body of some description. This is a minister who is going to have these powers.

Mr Pakula: It’s what you called for.

Mr GUY: This is completely and totally unprecedented. The Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events says we called for this. No, we did not. Let me say with as much strength as I can muster: to say that the Liberal and Nationals parties called for the law of a minister to imprison people on their whim is a lie. It is a complete and total lie to say that we ever called for the power of a minister to be allowed to imprison anyone. It is a lie of the first order, and that is why I say: do not ever listen to this government. You have to watch what they do, and what they do is extort Victorians’ goodwill, is treat Victorians as mugs.

But what I will say in conclusion is that I give an absolute guarantee: when we come back to government in this state, we will repeal this law because it is fundamentally right to do so. This is a democracy. People fought and died for this democracy. The separation of the judiciary and this Parliament is so important. This bill transcends all of those and trashes all those provisions that we fought for in this country. We fought and died, people in this country, not to have it trashed by the megalomaniacs who sit opposite, by the people opposite who treat all our Parliament—our institutions, the separation between the judiciary and the state—as something to be played with because the bloke in charge thinks he is above it all. He is not above it all, he is not above the law and we are going to repeal it.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Carbines): The Minister for Racing.

 Mr PAKULA (Keysborough—Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, Minister for Trade, Minister for Business Precincts, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events, Minister for Racing) (10:30): That is probably not the most appropriate of my titles for this purpose, but thank you, Acting Speaker.

A member interjected.

Mr PAKULA: I know. If those opposite do not want to be accused of histrionics and hysteria, do not demonstrate it. What we saw then from the Leader of the Opposition—by the way, I do not know what happened to the positivity and the quietness—was a bunch of rhetoric with almost no substance behind it. It is laugh inducing to hear those opposite all of a sudden quoting the president of the Victorian Bar Council as if the president of the bar council is infallible when they have spent the last four years in opposition trashing the legal community, describing them as men and women in ivory towers, as they went on their rampage about law and order and African gangs and bail laws, and all of a sudden now we are told, ‘Oh well, a QC said it. It must be right’. It seems to me—

Mr Walsh: Are you saying he’s wrong?

Mr PAKULA: I say his criticism of the bill is absolutely wrong. Absolutely I am saying that. It seems to me that the opposition’s view of the world on this is the same as on everything else—that is, whatever position the government adopts, the opposition must do the opposite, even if that contradicts the opposition’s owned previously stated position on whatever the subject matter is.

We saw it as recently as this morning on the issue of vaccine mandates for international arrivals. Two days ago the Leader of the Opposition, talking about international tennis players, said, ‘No double standards, no double standards for international tennis players. They must be treated the same as everybody else’. Then the Prime Minister came out and said, ‘Oh, but we need a bit of flexibility. You know, if we want to have major events, we need a bit of flexibility. We should give exemptions’. Then the Premier stated the position which was, as far as I could tell, almost identical to that of the Leader of the Opposition, which is no exemptions. We are going to treat everyone the same. And then the Deputy Leader of the Opposition comes out and says, ‘Well, in that case our position is now different because we think there should be a national approach and some flexibility, and we agree with the Prime Minister’.

Mr Walsh: I didn’t say that.

Mr PAKULA: No, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party.

Mr Walsh: You said ‘opposition’.

Mr PAKULA: I apologise. I apologise to the Leader of The Nationals for usurping him with the member for Caulfield. But the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party came out and said, ‘Well, we should actually follow the PM’s position’.

The same goes for this bill. I know that the Leader of the Opposition just stood up here and said, ‘It’s a lie to say that we supported this position’, but he was very clear a couple of weeks ago. He was very clear about the fact that he thought it should be politicians, elected officials—ministers and the Premier—who should be ticking off public health orders. That is not something he can wriggle out from under; it is something that he said very clearly on the record. He said:

… a minister or a politician, we are responsible … we are accountable to the people …

and that it ought to be ministers and politicians, not public servants, who are signing off on public health orders. And all of the rhetoric that we are hearing from the opposition really all goes back to that fundamental point, because the powers themselves that are in this bill are not substantially different to the powers that exist right now. The change is that they are being signed off by the Premier and the minister rather than a public servant. All of this hyperbole, all of this hysteria, is not because the powers themselves are so fundamentally different; it is because the people signing off on those powers are the very people that the Leader of the Opposition said ought to be the people signing off on those powers and on those directions.

I ask the Leader of The Nationals, who is in this chamber: if this bill came to this Parliament and had those same powers being signed off by the chief health officer, what would they be saying then? I will give you a tip. What they would be saying is, ‘How can these powers reside in an unelected bureaucrat? How can these powers reside in someone who is not responsible to the people?’. We all know that is what they would be saying, and do you know how we know? Because it is what they were saying before this legislation was introduced. They were coming in here and saying, ‘We should be more like New South Wales. We should be more like a jurisdiction where those powers reside with a minister, because if they resided with a minister, you’d be more able as a cabinet to weigh up the public health advice against other considerations and make a decision’.

Mr Walsh: You forgot one little thing. You forgot the Parliament in there.

Mr PAKULA: I will take up the interjection from the Leader of The Nationals. The Leader of The Nationals said, ‘You forgot the Parliament’, but what the Leader of the Opposition said was these powers should reside with the Premier and the minister. Is the Leader of The Nationals actually suggesting that every time a public health order is required—if there is an outbreak in his electorate, and all of a sudden it is running rampant, and you need to put some public health orders in place—you should convene the Parliament every single time? Is that what the Leader of The Nationals is suggesting? So let us just go to the actual—

Mr Walsh: You need to go back to the Parliament.

Mr PAKULA: I do think you’re speaking next, Pete. I think you’ll have a go. So let us go to these actual powers and interrogate for a moment whether the Leader of The Nationals, the Leader of the Opposition or those opposite genuinely believe that these things should not exist in this legislation. Do they, for instance, seriously suggest that you should not have an ability in a pandemic to have public health directions which limit movement? Do they seriously suggest that we should not be able to ensure that for people who are COVID positive or positive with any other pandemic illness that might occur in the future we have an ability to have an order that says that they need to stay home? Because that is one of the things that apparently is now being described as draconian, undemocratic, Russian. I mean, as I said, if you do not want to be accused of hysteria, stop demonstrating it.

Do they seriously suggest that you should not have, as we have in this bill, the opportunity to impose serious penalties for people who deliberately, intentionally and recklessly breach a pandemic order or direction? If someone is COVID positive and they are ordered to remain at home, for example, for 14 days and they recklessly and deliberately go into a crowded nightclub or recklessly and deliberately travel across borders or recklessly and deliberately go to any number of locations where they might infect other people, is the Leader of The Nationals or the Leader of the Opposition seriously suggesting that those sorts of powers should not be contained in the bill? Because I can tell you that the things that they are carrying on about—these so-called draconian, Stasi-like provisions—are designed to deal with those circumstances, exactly as they are now.

The difference is that those orders would be signed off by elected representatives, the people responsible to this Parliament and the people who have to face elections—the minister and the Premier—rather than a public servant. Now, that is not in any way to denigrate the role and the actions of the chief health officer or any other public health bureaucrat, but I say, and I would have thought those opposite would say as well, that it is entirely appropriate that ultimately when these decisions need to be made, provided they are on the advice of the public health experts, provided there is appropriate oversight and scrutiny—and there is more of that in this bill than exists now, and there is more of that in this bill than exists in other state and territories—and provided that oversight and that advice is part of the process for putting these orders in place, then it is entirely appropriate that it be the minister that signs that. It is entirely appropriate—in fact I would have thought inarguable—that the person with the ultimate responsibility for declaring that we are in a pandemic and the person with the ultimate responsibility for triggering these provisions ought not be a public servant and ought not be an unelected person. It ought to be the most senior politician in the state, the person most responsible and the person most answerable for that decision, and that is the Premier of this state, whoever that might be from time to time. But it does not suit the opposition’s rhetoric, which wants to portray the Premier in the way it wants to portray him. It is entirely appropriate that those powers, the power to make that declaration, rest with the Premier of the day.

 Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (10:40): Victorians should be afraid. They should be very, very afraid.

Members interjecting.

Mr WALSH: I get the scoffs from the other side of the table, but Victorians should be afraid. They should be very, very afraid about what this legislation does, how this legislation puts in place the ability of the Premier and the Minister for Health to do all the things that we have seen over the last 18 months—to lock people down, to stop them seeing their families, to stop them going to funerals and to have weddings cancelled. That is why they should be so very, very afraid about what this legislation does, because what the minister at the table, the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, misses in his contribution is the word ‘Parliament’. They talk about the minister, they talk about the Premier, but they do not actually talk about the Parliament. The executive government has to be responsible to the Parliament of Victoria. That is the system of democracy that we live under. That is the thing that the Labor Party has lost sight of. They have been in government so long that they believe it is their personal toy to play with and that Parliament has no right to actually hold the executive government accountable.

This legislation puts no safeguards in there for the Parliament. What the opposition has very, very clearly said—for the benefit of the minister at the table—is yes, there do need to be powers in a pandemic and a health emergency, but after a period of time they should come back to the Parliament. They should actually explain to the Parliament why those powers may need to continue in the future. Yes, there are emergencies that need to be responded to, but come back to the Parliament after a number of days. Thirty days would be the absolute maximum, in our view. I personally believe two weeks—14 days—is more than enough for the Parliament to be reconvened if there is a need to extend draconian powers that have such an impact on people’s lives here in Victoria.

Everyone is traumatised by the last 18 months, because they just feel helpless. They feel there is nothing they can do about it because the Parliament is being usurped by the current government. They treat the Parliament as a nuisance. They change the sitting hours. They change the sitting weeks. They change the rules of how it operates because they actually do not want Parliament to function as it has been designed to do over hundreds of years of history—something that we should be very proud of, something that our forefathers and foremothers fought for and died for so that we actually have a democracy here in Victoria.

Members interjecting.

Mr WALSH: And I get the scoffs from the other side of the table again. That was so important to our forebears that they went to war to make sure we have the freedoms we enjoy in this country. As the Leader of the Opposition said, some of his family came from the former Soviet Union. They came here for a better life, and you talk to families of immigrants now. I have got Italian communities in my electorate, very proud Italian communities, who say their parents left Italy to get away from fascism and they have now got it here in Victoria. They came here to have a better life, and we find the Premier and the government ramming through legislation that is enforcing or putting in place legislative powers that those families left countries over to come to a better place here in Victoria.

We have seen through this whole pandemic the government hiding behind the term ‘health advice’. No-one has ever actually seen that written health advice. We have had battle after battle in the upper house to get that advice actually released. It is all very well for a Premier to do a press conference for an hour and a half every day, berate people, blame people, tell them it is their fault that something has happened rather than actually getting up and saying, ‘This is the advice we have actually received. This is why we are going to do it. This is why you cannot go to your loved one’s funeral. This is why your wedding has been cancelled’. But no, the health advice is all-powerful. There is nothing in this legislation that actually gives anyone any comfort that we will actually have any more information come out than we have had over the last 18 months.

As someone who represents a cross-border community, no-one ever thought that the Murray River was anything other than something you drove across, and we had differently coloured numberplates. We reverted to pre-1901 through this pandemic. I am surprised Victoria did not raise an army again because of the threat of invasion from New South Wales. It is absolutely crazy what happened to our cross-border communities through this particular time. And might I say, most of those communities basically had no COVID through the whole pandemic, but they were segregated. They could not send their kids to school, they could not cross the border to go to work, they could not play sport—all the things that people—

Mr Pakula interjected.

Mr WALSH: You’ve already had your go, mate. You didn’t do a very good job of it, either, at that time because you do not believe that Parliament is important to the democratic process here in Victoria. I think the minister at the table, the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, needs a lesson in the separation of powers in Victoria—that ultimately executive government should be responsible to the Parliament. It is not a plaything of the Premier and his ministers to run this state by decree, which is what this legislation does.

For those people that may be watching this, this gives the Premier and the Minister for Health the power, in three-month blocks, to do what they have done for the last 18 months on steroids. It is on steroids. If you look at the penalties that are built into it, why should someone go to jail for not wearing a mask? It is absolutely absurd that that could happen. The penalties that are in this legislation, with no right of appeal, no proper legal process and the authorised officers that will be going around enforcing this—and I know the minister at the table is very scathing about the bar council president, but the bar council president, Christopher Blanden, said of the powers in this legislation that the Stasi police of East Germany would actually have been proud to have them. That is a statement that I think has to be taken into account by anyone—that the bar council would start citing the Stasi police of East Germany. He said:

Stasi police would have been more than happy with the range of powers if they were given it …

I urge people to go and look up what the Stasi was and what the Stasi did. Their tactics included questioning, repeated stop and searches, strange noises on telephone lines and conspicuous visits to workplaces so that bosses and colleagues were aware of police interest. That is what is happening at the moment with the powers around double vaccination. Business owners are frightened that they will be somehow fined $10 000 or $100 000, depending on their legal status, if they employ someone who does not have the right vaccination status. They are worried about the patrons that come into their business as to what fines they may get. This legislation enshrines that and, as I said, actually puts it on steroids.

For the benefit of the minister of the table, who seems to have a range of views on what the opposition says, let me be very, very clear: there do need to be powers. They need to be limited, they need to be accountable and most importantly they need, in a very short period of time, to come back to the Parliament to get the endorsement if they need to be extended in the future. Then the Parliament will actually have the powers to demand the health advice—to withhold the powers for that extension unless there is health advice put forward that everyone can see—so that all Victorians can understand the logic. Victorians are intelligent. They are interested in their lives. They deserve to be taken into the confidence of the government about why something needs to be extended, rather than the government just standing up and saying, ‘It is the health advice’, as to what we are doing it on.

I would urge government members on the other side to actually stand up to their Premier, show some backbone and vote against this legislation unless those safeguards are inserted into it. Let us make sure that it is not a simple majority in Parliament that can make sure these powers are extended. Let us make it three-fifths of the Parliament so it actually has to have support across the chamber, so you can get real democracy back into this state rather than an Andrews dictatorship.

 Ms KILKENNY (Carrum) (10:50): Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this really important debate on the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. I will pick up a comment that the member opposite just made, and that is that Victorians are intelligent. Yes, they are intelligent, and they deserve the truth through this debate. What they do not deserve are comments that are so offensive that they offend those people who may have endured or who are indeed enduring still life under dictatorships or totalitarian regimes. To bring into this place comments like those and the ridiculous comments of the president of the Victorian Bar Council, comparing this piece of legislation to Stasi legislation, is quite extraordinary. It is inflammatory, it is mischievous and it is dangerous to this debate on a very, very serious and important issue, and that is Victoria’s public health.

If we look at what this bill is, it is a bill to establish a contemporary fit-for-purpose regulatory framework to enable the effective management of pandemics, including the current COVID-19 pandemic. That is what this bill is about. We are bringing in this bill because we promised we would bring in this bill. We know that our current arrangements for managing the COVID-19 pandemic have been based on the current Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008. They have been based on a declaration of a state of emergency, which the Minister for Health makes, and they are then based on the orders and directions that are issued by Victoria’s chief health officer pursuant to that act. We have seen them work, but we also know, and the Leader of the Opposition has highlighted this and has agreed as well, that those orders and directions are not made by an elected official in this state; they are made by the chief health officer. The chief health officer is not answerable to the people of Victoria, so this bill changes that, and it is a good change.

Whilst Victoria and Victorians have responded with such compassion and care and selflessness, we know that the current framework was not designed to address and manage the type of pandemic that we have experienced over the last two years. I think no-one would have envisaged the COVID-19 pandemic or the havoc that it has wreaked upon Victoria and across the world. The current framework, as we know, allows for a short-term response to emergencies. COVID-19 is pretty different to that. We have seen millions die across the world. We have seen even more become infected, and we still do not know yet what the long-term impacts of long COVID might be on people in Victoria and of course nationally. We know also that new and emerging strains are now appearing, and these are posing significant risks for countries across the world.

Of course, we are so fortunate here in Victoria that our vaccination rates are so high. In fact, we are going to be one of the most vaccinated places in the world, and this is a credit to the care and compassion of every Victorian who has come forward to get vaccinated in record numbers and in record time. And despite the lockdowns and the restrictions Victorians continue to comply with those rules, and we are doing it still to keep each other safe. Under Australia’s national plan—something Victoria actually drove and something Victoria is completely committed to—once we reach our 80 per cent fully vaccinated threshold, or phase D under the plan, there will be minimum restrictions going forward. If any lockdowns are ever required again, these will be highly targeted and very localised, and that is because every single Victorian has done what has been asked of them. They have come forward and they have got vaccinated.

This bill will not change that. We are opening up on Friday. This bill will not introduce lockdowns. We are not going into lockdown following the passage of this bill. But what we will do is rely on the learnings of the last two years. We will put in place a better and fairer, more fit-for-purpose framework to help us navigate any future outbreaks or any future pandemics. We know that emergency powers are necessary in pandemics, particularly crises that deal with public health, because time is critical; every minute can make a difference. There is no place for politics or ideology. Safeguarding our public health has to be the number one priority. We need to trust our public health experts, and we need the best people advising us.

We know also that COVID-19 has had impacts on democracies all over the world. It has had impacts on fundamental freedoms; there have been restrictions on movement, restrictions on the freedom of expression and obviously the right to health. Obviously this provides challenges to democracies, including ours here in Victoria. There is always that question of how you best balance mitigating the outbreak with respecting democratic principles such as accountability and transparency and respect for civil and political rights. These are really important considerations, and this is another reason why this bill before us today is so important—that what it does is pick up on that. It identifies the need to embed in this legislation, this pandemic-specific legislation, better accountability and heightened transparency. It does this in the ways that the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery mentioned earlier. It makes the Premier the person who makes the decision about whether to make a declaration.

This is important. It is a trigger event. Unlike New South Wales, which does not have any trigger event at all—the Minister for Health up there simply relies on standing public health orders or public health legislation—this is a trigger event, and it must be based on advice from the Minister for Health and the chief health officer. The next step is that the Minister for Health then makes the orders and the directions, again based on the health advice of the chief health officer. Again, though, what is important here is that those are two elected officials—the Premier, being the most senior elected official in Victoria, and the Minister for Health—both answerable to Victorians and both answerable to the Parliament. That is the change in this bill.

The other thing to mention too, of course, is that we have seen how this pandemic has revealed really persistent and deep inequalities in our society. It has opened up cracks. We have seen that in regard to vulnerable populations, CALD communities, Aboriginal Victorians, refugees and asylum seekers and aged-care residents. We have seen impacts for people in casual and insecure work. We have seen how COVID-19 has impacted women in employment, in undertaking further home duties and caring roles, for which they are not paid, and of course in the increased numbers of domestic and family violence as well. It is crucial therefore that in our future response to pandemics we are able to take into account these differing impacts and vulnerabilities. The bill before us does that as well. It equips us to do that. So we are putting in place the right tools and responses, the right protections and the right accountability and transparency to enable Victoria to respond specifically to pandemics in the future.

As I said, the framework embeds transparency and accountability. The minister will be required to publish a statement of reasons for making any orders and health directions, and importantly the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, a committee I was a member of for six years, will be able to review the minister’s orders and report back to Parliament on orders it considers are lacking in legal authority or are otherwise incompatible with human rights under Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. And the bill establishes an Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee. This is not happening anywhere else in Australia. This committee will be made up of experts, will be able to undertake its own investigations and, for transparency, will table in Parliament any findings and recommendations.

This is a really robust framework. It gives the minister the power also to take into account other factors in making orders, such as the social and mental health and wellbeing of Victorians and the economic impact as well. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this bill, a bill designed to specifically deal with pandemics in the future. I commend the bill as a good one for all Victorians into the future.

 Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (11:00): Well, Victoria has just gone through the longest lockdown in the world and the toughest laws in the world, and just when you think we can come up for air and get a bit of hope, the Premier introduces this legislation before the Parliament. I cannot believe this. The Premier on one hand says we are going to open up and things are going to be great again, yet we have got legislation that gives the Premier more powers than we have had before, more powers than those that locked more people down than we have seen anywhere else in the world, that gave us curfews, that gave us restrictions that include captain’s calls on locking down playgrounds, locking down businesses, locking down schools, determining when you could go out to shop and who could go out to shop, locking down the ability to actually have a funeral, locking down the ability to have a wedding and locking us down full stop.

This Premier has absolutely failed in the last 18 months. We saw the housing commission estates that were given literally minutes’ notice, where those vulnerable people were locked in the housing commission flats only to find out on the news that they could not come out to actually get their essentials. This Premier has made some of the worst decisions that we have seen in the history of this state. The biggest failure we have seen is hotel quarantine—800 lives lost with hotel quarantine. And we had the former Minister for the Coordination of Jobs, Precincts and Regions: COVID-19 get up here and say how wonderful things are. The minister for jobs did a promotional video to say how good hotel quarantine was—the hotel quarantine that killed people. That is what he did. He should be absolutely disgraced; it is shameful that the minister should stand up here and say how wonderfully this government has done. What a disgrace, when people die and the minister comes up and says ‘We’re great’.

The events industry that the minister talks about—two grand finals were cancelled, over to WA and Brisbane. I mean seriously, we were the most livable state; we have now become the most locked down and leavable state. And this Premier wants to give himself more powers, which allow people to be fined $90 000 for not wearing a mask and not only to be locked down but to be locked up for up to two years with no discretion. You break the rules and, according to the Premier, you do not go and see the judge and jury. The Premier is the judge and jury; in you go for two years. Seriously? Is this what our great state of Victoria has come to?

I cannot believe that this Premier would resort to the level of low that he has by trying to rush through 112 pages of legislative change that we have never seen in this Parliament before, introduced yesterday, and trying to ram it through, to censor debate today, to not even allow elected representatives in this chamber to speak on behalf of their constituents—who have had enough, who want the government out of their lives once and for all. We do not want the Premier to act like a dictator as he has been doing not only in the last 18 months—but on steroids.

This Premier could not lie straight in bed. He tells us we are going to open up, and then what happens now? He gives us powers to lock us down. What is it? If we were going to go on with things, then why do we have these laws only a few days before the next lot of restrictions are meant to be eased? Make no mistake, this Premier has an agenda to control, to have fear and to not allow Victorians to finally get some freedoms back and get on with their lives.

Do not trust the opposition, what we have got to say with this. I say to all of those out in voter land, listen to what the experts have to say—the Victorian Bar, Christopher Blanden, QC:

Stasi police would have been more than happy with the range of powers if they were given it. It’s extraordinary.

He then went on to say:

This is a bill that fundamentally interferes with the rights of citizens in some very basic ways. It abrogates the privilege against self-incrimination and you’ve got detention at the whim of a minister. It’s just appalling stuff.

A QC and head of the Victorian Bar—not the opposition, but a QC. We then see William Partlett, associate professor at Melbourne Law School, saying:

… the bill rejects a key parliamentary safeguard that is used in NSW and NZ.

The use of an appointed committee to oversee these powers is a problematic departure from the usual role of parliamentary committees in the scrutiny of executive governance.

We on this side believe that there should be appropriate powers in place. Nobody is saying that we do not have any safeguards. There will be more disasters. There will be more pandemics. There will be more need to actually have some powers in place, but that is what the Parliament is set up for—to scrutinise, not to give one person complete command and control.

Again, what we are suggesting is that the Parliament comes back every 30 days to evaluate that to ensure we do not have the same situation that we have had for the last 18 months. I absolutely say and I implore everybody: talk to your local member of Parliament, whether it is Labor, whether it is an Independent. Get out there, public. Get out there, Victorians. Do not allow the Premier to ride roughshod over you again. Contact your local member of Parliament. I know there are some members of the Labor Party that are very, very, very concerned with this, firstly, and they should be, for the overextension of powers, but secondly for their future being in this chamber in terms of their re-election come next year. The best way to ensure we do not get this kind of overexertion of powers is to tell your Labor-elected MPs in those seats that you have had enough and that they should vote this down. For the next few weeks, make no mistake: we will not lie idle. We will be out there in Labor seats—in your seats, in your seats and in your seats—and we will ensure that your constituents know that what the government is planning are laws we have never, ever seen in this state before.

One of my constituents—I have had several, coming from a community that has a large Jewish community; one of the largest in Australia—is Stephen Tusak. He said:

I am horrified at the proposed draconian legislation being asked for by Daniel Andrews and his cohorts.

My parents lived through Nazi Germany 1938 to 1945, it started the same way.

…

My parents came to freedom in Australia in 1948 specifically to escape this vile arrogance which led to the genocide we all know of.

I have got to raise this because in this bill it talks about characteristics and attributes. It specifically talks about race, religion, sexual preference and political views. It specifically singles people out. Now, we cannot go down this path. We should never go down this path. We should never let history repeat itself, and for the government to turn around and say, ‘No, that’s not what we’re planning to do’—well, I ask you, I beg you, to remove it. Be explicit about what you are saying. Even if the Premier does not plan to use them, do not leave those powers in place for a future government to effectively lock somebody down because they have a particular religious view, they come from a particular ethnic background or they just disagree with the government. Do not allow that. We cannot stoop this low. This is really dangerous. We cannot allow history to repeat itself, and I am sure and I hope there are many people on that side that do not believe that this is what it is intended for. You have got a chance, government, to fix this. You have got a chance to amend this and be explicit about what you intend, because these powers should never be used in these ways. This is a horrible bill. This is a bill that we should all be concerned about, Victorians. We have had enough. We have had enough of government interfering with our lives.

It is time for the government to listen to Victorians, do the right thing, ensure there is parliamentary oversight in everything that it does, retain democracy, retain freedoms and retain people’s ability to get on with their lives. Yes, we need to be safe through a pandemic, but we also need to be safe from a government that is power hungry, and that is the problem with this legislation. That is why I will be voting it down, I will be seeking to repeal it, and we will repeal it if we are elected to government next year. I ask each and every one of you to vote against this horrible bill.

 Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (11:10): What an entertaining soliloquy from the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party. I think the only thing I can agree on there is, and I quote from the member for Caulfield: ‘Do not trust the opposition’. That has been the running theme coming through my office when we have received emails from constituents who are really concerned about issues they have heard about, usually on social media and spread by far-right organisations. It is fair to say there are some coalition members who have connections with those organisations and indeed go to protests and engage in social media banter with these people. We spend a lot of our time ensuring that our constituents in Frankston—I am sure everyone on this side of the house would agree—know what exactly this bill is.

I mean, we have heard just a bunch of babble from the opposition this morning talking about characteristics, talking about what this bill delivers. This is from the people, might I remind the house, that backed a leader who said, ‘We might have to live with COVID-19’. That is not working out very well for a lot of states around the globe at the moment. We are talking about a bunch of people speaking in this house that were worried about the fact that we might have to get rid of the bats in Kew because they might spread this disease. None of this is based on science.

The Shadow Attorney-General was on Virginia Trioli’s ABC segment the other day. I have never heard someone schooled so appropriately and so hard by someone on radio. This member actually said we need the New South Wales model. I will not quote him, but that is essentially what the member said. Well, here it is; this is essentially the New South Wales model. We have looked at New Zealand and other best practice models. The model in this bill has more accountability and more transparency than that model, but members opposite apparently need to politicise this now.

The Leader of the Opposition was heard to say that government, not public servants, should take responsibility for managing the pandemic. Well, here it is. I quote:

‘Those who make these decisions—politicians—should be ultimately accountable for them …

That is what this bill delivers. I quote:

‘As a general principle, I think [public health orders] should be ticked off by a minister or the Premier.

‘When it’s a minister or a politician, we are responsible and we are accountable to the people, and I think during a pandemic, making legislation that is so wide-reaching, they should be accountable, and those decisions should be accountable to the people.’

Mr J Bull: Who said that?

Mr EDBROOKE: I am pretty sure that was the Leader of the Opposition, word for word—the Leader of the Opposition who stood here in the house not so long go and sought to politicise this. And where the Deputy Leader of the Opposition goes horribly wrong is in purporting to threaten the seats of those on this side of the house. There is not one person on this side of the house that is more concerned about being elected than about their community and getting through COVID at this stage. And if there are people on that side of the chamber who are thinking more about their election and their job than the jobs of the people in their communities, they should be ashamed of themselves. That is a disgusting threat, but it shows where some of those on the opposition side of politics are coming from.

We have even heard the language. I was disgusted to hear the member for Forest Hill—a privileged white middle-aged man in Parliament—talking about apartheid the other day. I had a friend who grew up in South Africa ring me and say, ‘Who’s this twit? Seriously, is he South African? Did he grow up where I grew up? This is amazing. Do these people really think this resembles apartheid? I want to keep my family safe. I’ve come from South Africa. I moved to Australia to escape that’. We have got privileged people who have no idea using language like that, and that is how we have come to this debate today, where the opposition are seeking to radicalise parts of this bill. That is why the first question I ask anyone who asks me about this bill and who seeks to purport that they know something about it or that they are concerned about the powers is, ‘Do you know the name of the bill?’. Ninety-nine per cent of the time the answer is no. Have you read the bill? ‘No’. Where have you heard about the bill? ‘On social media’.

Well, I do not know about you, Acting Speaker, but from what I have read, and going through opposition Facebook pages, the majority of the mistruths and alternative facts coming out about bills like this are coming from the opposition. The opposition need to, I guess, respect other people in this house and know that the words that they put out in social media actually cause people to hurt, people to be confused and people to do really, really strange and odd things. I cite a member of the public in Mount Eliza, not far from where I live, that was so strung out about these mistruths that he caused $1 million worth of damage, creating a fire in a Telstra exchange, and also dug a hole in his backyard ready to have a member of Parliament in there to re-educate essentially. The police investigated this, and what came out of it was essentially that this person unfortunately believed a lot of what they read. Members of the opposition—and I would not say all members of the opposition but members of the opposition especially in the upper house—have got to take some responsibility and decide what side of history they want to be on.

Reasonable people who have read this bill or had it explained to them—because this bill is written by lawyers; it is of course something that needs to be sometimes explained and the language and the context explained—who understand this and have had it explained to them, 99 per cent of those people I speak to say, ‘Oh, well, that’s pretty much what we’ve got, isn’t it?’. Yes, it is. It is. There is transparency, there is accountability. In fact in addition to the range of transparency and accountability measures being introduced, there will be strong checks and balances from the government on our use of pandemic powers. Public health orders will be made by the Minister for Health, who is accountable to Parliament, but a pandemic can be outlined by the Premier. The public health advice on the pandemic orders will be tabled in Parliament. A new independent advisory committee that will review public health orders and report to Parliament is to be established. The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee will have the ability to review the public health orders, which is really important, and the minister will be required to publish any explanation of any charter right that may be limited by a pandemic order. That is really important. But I will just say again that under the new framework the health minister can issue pandemic orders after the Premier declares a pandemic and after seeking advice from the chief health officer. So saying straightaway that this hands the keys of the state to the Premier, which is what someone might read from opposition social media, is just plain wrong, and there must be some responsibility taken for that by the opposition when people think they are taking appropriate actions that might hurt others. This bill actually does cater for that as well.

Again, I would say to those opposite that maybe one or two of them might have read this bill. Maybe you are believing other things that are being put out—other alternative facts that are being put out—by your friends and your colleagues. But this is a fit-for-purpose regulatory scheme. It has been through consultation. The right to life of course is the most fundamental of the rights protected by the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, and we have had some of the most trusted leaders in public health administrative law, human rights and policymaking involved in the creation of this bill. Of course, does that mean that everyone will understand it? No. Does that mean that people are ripe to be led down a path of misunderstanding about this bill and politicisation? Yes, it does, absolutely. As I have said, 99 per cent of the people that I explain this to when I have the bill in front of me or, regardless, on a Zoom or Teams meeting say, ‘This is actually not that different to what we’ve got, and I want to be able to protect my family’.

I guess, to sum up, the real issue I have here is the amount of toxic behaviour that has been sometimes passionately encouraged by the opposition with this. I have heard the opposition speakers on this bill, and I question whether they have actually read it, I question their logic and I question where they stand on this pandemic, because it is not over. We have still got milestones we need to meet, and we still need to keep our community safe. Human life, the primacy of human life, is a government’s ultimate responsibility, and that is why we have bills like this. To politicise this instead of seeing this as a health measure is disgusting, and the way some of the opposition have been speaking about this bill and the mistruths that have come out are also disgusting. I commend the bill to the house.

 Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (11:20): This is a very important piece of legislation. Let me show it to you. This is the principal act, the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008. It is about 285 pages. These are the amendments. This is the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. It is about 110 pages. Let me tell you the chronology of this. On Monday night I was telephoned to say that this bill was going to be introduced into Parliament this week and that I could have a briefing that night, together with the other Independents. I was told that the bill would be introduced the following morning and first read, and what we have seen happen is that. Then it was second read on Wednesday morning, and here we are on Thursday morning debating very important legislation. It is important because we are still in a pandemic. It is important because Victorians throughout the last 20 months have obeyed the rules and they have gone and gotten vaccinated. They understand a lot about what is happening. More than anything else they want to be safe, and they want their families to be safe. But they also trust in us to do the work that we need to do. When I consider that chronology of providing this legislation to the Parliament and bringing it on in this way, it really concerns me.

The work we do in this place is really important work. The work we produce here in this house should be the result of very careful and thoughtful consideration. It should be followed by intelligent debate. Everything we do in this chamber is premised on the notion that we know what we are doing. When we come to vote on this bill, we should ask ourselves: do we know what we are voting on? I do not understand this bill. I have not had time to come to understand or to know this bill. I have just outlined the chronology of access I have had to this bill. I doubt anyone in this house has had the time to read this bill, given that it only became publicly available yesterday. Everyone in this house needs the opportunity to have time to come to understand such an important piece of legislation as this, and we have not. There may be those who have been involved in consultations and discussions while this bill has been drafted. We know that this has been a process going on since March this year.

When I stood in this place—the only person on this side of the house—and supported this government’s COVID legislation, I supported it because we needed it, because there was not a vaccine being rolled out in great quantities then. We were in a very fearful state about our futures, so we needed legislation. We all know we need a framework to deal with a pandemic such as this—something that has not happened in our country for over 100 years. So if I do not understand this legislation, I dare say very few other members in this place do.

I reflect back on the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017 in the previous Parliament, where that legislation was released early to the public. It was released to all of us. We all had the opportunity to consider it in great detail, and we spent day and night without a break in this place debating an important piece of legislation, which really went very much to the importance of life-and-death issues, not for a huge number of people but for quite a number of people—hundreds of people every year for whom that legislation now enables some relief. Here we have a piece of legislation that also affects people’s health. It can be a matter of life and death. It is for that reason important that we know and understand what is going on.

I would have liked the opportunity to take this back to my electorate, as I am sure many other members would. The proper operation of this Parliament is important. Every Tuesday morning when this house is sitting I stand up and I read out a motion seeking to bring back to this house a non-government business program to give members on this side of the house the opportunity to raise matters of importance to their electorates, to bring on a private members bill, to maybe look at the regulations and disallow some or at least debate these things. We do not have that opportunity in this house—the only legislative assembly in Australia that does not provide members on this side of the house the opportunity to do those things.

In a pandemic I think it goes without saying that the government must rely on the trust of the people in the government, and if you do not have that, you develop a highly charged and dangerous situation. Consultation is so important. It has been said here that there has been wide consultation. I am not satisfied that that has happened. People who allegedly were consulted are now saying that they were not sufficiently consulted. We need more time to consider this legislation. There are oversight provisions in this legislation, and it quite significantly changes the method of dealing with a pandemic that is contained in the existing legislation. These things are really important. What will the Parliament be able to call for? What will it be able to examine? What will it be able to look at? I have not had time to find all that out yet, but I am very interested. I am very interested in knowing how this bill will impact on Parliament’s ability to scrutinise legislation, and I am not yet satisfied that it does that.

What I am saying is not written in the standing orders or in the constitution, because it is so obvious that it ought to go unsaid, and yet here we are having this debate. I call on the government to adjourn this debate for two weeks, to consult much more broadly, to brief the people who should be briefed and to let us help our communities understand what this is about. They will not be reading the legislation, but they rely on me to represent them and to at least make an informed decision.

 Ms D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park—Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Minister for Solar Homes) (11:28): I am really pleased to rise to contribute to what has been a much-anticipated debate on this bill. It does represent some very significant steps for Victorians. What I want to say is that the pandemic that confronted the world and Victoria exercised a lot of emotion, exercised a lot of very confronting realities that we all had to deal with, and as we have worked our way through that, having understood the existing legislative frameworks that have governed many emergency types of situations, it was the case that we needed to understand and meet a new reality that needed to be reflected in modern legislation.

We have all had experiences beyond what we would previously have considered normal, and Victorians have sacrificed a hell of a lot—and that is always going to be an understatement, because I do not think you can ever properly and adequately describe what the globe is going through and of course in particular we here in Victoria. We know Victorians have done this out of selflessness in terms of the way that they have responded in order to keep not just themselves and their loved ones safe but all of us safe. It is about protecting lives, and we should never, never politicise an argument or a set of responses or actions that go to that very point—the preservation of life. Victorians understand that we are living in unprecedented times and that unprecedented measures have needed to be taken.

Of course we have heard a lot from those opposite. Their views have changed and flip-flopped, because they are forever in search of something to be outraged about. They are the perpetual outrage machine in this state, and not only do they do themselves a disservice, but they do the public discourse a disservice and they do every Victorian a disservice when what we should be doing is being on a unity ticket to work our way through what has been an unprecedented burden on the lives of many, many Victorians—in fact all Victorians. Those sacrifices have been made to protect human lives, and they have had to do so bravely, they have had to stand proudly beside other healthcare workers and frontline workers—all of those people who have done a wonderful job and continue to this day—while those who want to be outraged present their views and forget about not just the value of human life that actions of governments are guided by but also those who serve selflessly, putting their own lives at risk and their own families.

After 21 months of giving so much in order to protect each other, in order to protect our communities and our state, we are now very much on the home stretch. That is not to say it is over—absolutely it is not over—but thanks to the decisions made by this government based on public health orders we are now on the home stretch. Well over 90 per cent of eligible Victorians have now received their first dose of the vaccine, and in just a few days we will have reached 80 per cent double dose for those 16 years and over. And we are already starting to have those really critical conversations about booster vaccinations and what happens for those Victorians who are under the age of 12 in terms of availability of safe vaccinations, ones that have received appropriate approvals, because this is not over. While we are on the home stretch, this is not over.

These outstanding vaccination rates have been achieved through strong, decisive pandemic leadership, they have been achieved through Victorians rallying together and stepping up to get the jab and they have been achieved in spite of a lack of leadership from the commonwealth government. History will show in stark reality the failure of the commonwealth government to lead the national response to the pandemic that has confronted Australia. But now, thanks to the pandemic leadership that we have shown here in Victoria, based on public health orders our state is now starting to reopen. Over the past weekend many people were able to visit their friends and family members’ homes for the first time in months, and I was absolutely blessed to have received my kids, our kids, with open arms when they came through the door. It was like we had not seen each other in years; it could have been that we were living on the other side of the world. The relief that was felt by my family and I am sure replicated manyfold across the whole state probably would have surprised most of us, because I thought that I would be relieved, but the extent of that was actually quite moving for me personally.

In the coming weekend many more will be out at their local shops supporting small businesses or heading to the cinema. Our goal now is about getting jabs in arms and limiting the spread of that virus. But as we start to reopen and meet our road map targets, allowing us to deliver the national plan, it is important that we do so safely, recognising all those critical workers who are still on the front lines of this pandemic. It is important that we recognise that this pandemic, as I said, is not over. In order to allow us to safely reopen we require ongoing pandemic management, and we require ongoing powers to deliver that management. Through this pandemic the state-of-emergency powers have been essential to keeping Victorians safe, and let us not ever forget this is about emergencies. These powers have allowed us to lead a world-class response to the pandemic through vaccine requirements, testing and isolation requirements and quarantine requirements, and we extended the state of emergency through this Parliament back in March of this year. We committed to reviewing our state-of-emergency powers to see how best we could support an ongoing long-term management response to COVID-19 and other pandemics, and we committed to bringing in new legislation. That is exactly what this bill does—no more, no less.

One thing about this virus of course is that it does not discriminate on the basis of where you live. It is a global pandemic. We have seen actions taken by many governments across the world. We have had the opportunity to learn from other governments around Australia and the world about best practice pandemic management. We have looked to our neighbours in New Zealand. We have led a very successful ongoing response to COVID and considered what lessons we could learn from their arrangements when it comes to long-term management. Our response has been based on public health advice, and this will continue. The public health advice will always be central to the government’s pandemic orders. But—news flash—governments are there and elected to make decisions. They make decisions, and this legislation squarely fits in with that democratic Westminster principle of accountability of those who are elected by people—by the people of Victoria. There is nothing here that ought to be met with the faux outrage and disrespect that have been exercised in volumes by those sitting opposite, who as I said earlier are always in search of the next outrage, the next issue to be outraged about. Well, we have got the angry man back today. We saw him in full flight today. He is back. It did not take long, did it? He is absolutely back—because he cannot help himself—with the faux outrage, the faux sense of moral indignity. And we know what he is capable of. We know he is capable of going down a bridge too far, and he is doing it again here.

In this legislation we are introducing a number of transparency and accountability measures to act as a strong check and balance on government’s use of powers. Any public health order will be made by the Minister for Health, who is accountable to Parliament and who stands up in question time every sitting day to answer questions about how the public health orders are made based on health advice and in the best interests of Victorians. The Leader of the Opposition himself has stated that as a general principle he thinks public health orders—I quote—‘should be ticked off by a minister or the Premier’. Well, again—what a surprise—faux outrage when we are absolutely delivering on what the Leader of the Opposition demanded we should do. So again, they are always looking for the next fabrication of issues to be outraged and angry about.

Under this new legislation the Minister for Health will also be required to publish an explanation of any charter rights that are or may be limited by a pandemic order. The public health advice and pandemic orders will also be tabled in Parliament, and a new independent advisory committee will be established to review the public health orders and report to Parliament. The committee will be made up of experts and community representatives to advise on the government’s pandemic response and management powers.

Our government is very, very proud to introduce this legislation, which includes this level of transparency and accountability, noting that no other Australian state or jurisdiction has equivalent legislation that includes such rigorous provisions—including, we would note to those opposite, the New South Wales legislation. So pardon me when the faux outrage by the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite is met by me with incredulity and really a sense of deja vu—that they have learnt nothing. Faux outrage will not get you very far. This bill I commend to the house.

 Ms RYAN (Euroa) (11:38): I feel sick that we are having this debate. I do not think there has ever been a piece of legislation come before this chamber that I have been more vehemently opposed to. I feel sick that Labor MPs are not brave enough to stand up and speak the truth about this legislation. I do not care if you think that the Premier’s handling of this pandemic has been infallible. I do not care if you stand with Dan. I do not care if you think he is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The truth is that this legislation is about handing the Premier and the Minister for Health the ability to rule by decree. Is that power that you want to hand to every future Premier and health minister? It does not matter what you think about the Premier. This is not even about the current government. This is about the management of pandemics but also the ability to trigger these powers forever into the future. It is about the regime that it has the potential to set up here in this state. That is what is at stake here. Is that what we want as Victorians?

This bill allows the government to declare a pandemic in Victoria and make orders that lock down the state even when there is no presence of disease here. Yes, the chief health officer needs to publish his or her advice within 14 days of those orders being made, but that advice, even if it contradicts the order made by the Premier or the health minister, does not invalidate those orders if it does not support them.

The bill gives the government the right to make orders on the ability of attributes—things like race, gender, sexuality. How on earth can people support that? How on earth can members opposite support that? It is extraordinary. It offers no rights of appeal to courts for people who are incarcerated. It sets up a penalty regime of fines that would see an individual face more than $90 000. That would send most ordinary Victorians to jail. Who can afford a $90 000 fine? The government says, ‘Don’t worry. That’s just about the worst breaches’. Well, that is not what the legislation says. It is extraordinary. I cannot believe that those opposite are not brave enough to stand up and speak out about it. I imagine that the member for Altona is going to speak on this legislation. She has been the Attorney-General; she has been a lawyer. She cannot possibly agree with this; she cannot. Where are your values?

There is no parliamentary oversight of these powers. The bill sets up a consultative committee of people appointed by the Premier and the health minister, and they do not even need to take the advice of that—it is just a consultative committee. Central to a liberal democracy is a belief in shared power, and central to a liberal democracy is a suspicion of concentrated power. Central to a liberal democracy is the accountability of the executive to the Parliament. Central to a liberal democracy is the preservation of the following rights: freedom to criticise the government, freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of worship, the right to a fair trial, the right of assembly, freedom of movement. This bill hands the government the power to throw out every one of those rights by decree, and there is no oversight of these powers. We are supposed to think critically in this place. We are supposed to come here, representing our constituents, thinking critically. That is why people elected us. Stop being sheep.

I find it inconceivable that a future Premier, for example, might determine that people with red hair cannot hold a job. I find that completely out of the realm of possibility. But do you know what? Two years ago I never contemplated that we would live in a world where someone who is not vaccinated cannot hold a job, cannot go into a shop, cannot go to an event. I never believed that we would come to a place as a state where we would see that—but here we are. These things do not happen overnight; they happen by degrees. Do I trust the Andrews government and all future governments to exercise these powers responsibly? No, I do not, and I think anyone who does is an absolute fool.

Labor MPs protest that this is what we asked for, that we called for elected politicians to be accountable for these decisions. What we called for was proper parliamentary oversight, and that is why we have proposed that the power to make orders should require the approval of a constitutional majority of both houses of the Parliament. When the president of the Victorian Bar Council comes out and says that the Stasi would be happy with the powers that this bill confers, people need to sit up and take note. This is how he summarised it yesterday:

The Bill confers on the health minister in a practical sense an effectively unlimited power to rule the state by decree, for effectively an indefinite period, and without … judicial or parliamentary oversight …

That doesn’t add up to good democracy …

People might argue that ultimate accountability sits with the people at an election. If you do not like what a Premier has done, well, vote them out. But yesterday when we had the bill briefing, the department could not say whether this bill gives the power to the Premier to suspend elections. They did not know the answer to that, and they said they would have to come back and give us advice, which we still have not received. That remains unanswered. The department does not know whether the Premier could use this bill to suspend an election. Do you realise how extraordinary that is?

The Irish philosopher Edmund Burke said, ‘The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion’. Those opposite tell us that unprecedented powers are required for unprecedented times. Governments always present compelling reasons to concentrate power. My grandmother came to this country fleeing Mussolini, and I am glad that she is not alive today to see what is happening. I genuinely am. I think she would be absolutely horrified. I honestly never believed that the people elected to this chamber would think that it is appropriate to hand the Premier and the health minister the kind of power to lock people up, to lock people down and to cancel protests without the checks and balances of Parliament—to strip people of their most basic rights without the oversight and the checks and balances of Parliament. The erosion of people’s liberties does not happen overnight; it happens by degrees. Streamline pandemic laws, by all means. We do not argue with that. We know that the government needs a certain degree of flexibility to control dangerous outbreaks of disease. We are not arguing about that. We are arguing for proper accountability and oversight. This bill does not deliver those measures.

Let me conclude with the proverb that we all know because it is inscribed into the foyer of this building:

Where no Counsel is the People Fall; but in the Multitude of Counsellors there is Safety.

That is the principle of this Parliament, and it is the principle that I urge members of the Labor Party to adhere to. Do not give this unchecked power to not just this government but future governments. It is wrong.

 Ms HENNESSY (Altona) (11:47): I am grateful for the opportunity to get up and to make a contribution on this bill. And boy, we have heard some florid speeches in the chamber today. I would ordinarily enjoy such generosity, in some cases verbosity, if any of it was correct, if any of it had any factual basis in what the bill actually says and what the bill actually does. Fundamentally what this bill does is it takes an imperfect public health model and it improves the accountability and the transparency. Despite all of the very florid speeches that we have heard from the other side—and boy, it is a little bit of a shock to hear the Liberal Party refinding their liberal roots in many of those contributions, a welcome change, I would say—none of those criticisms are actually factually based in what the bill actually does.

Yes, I heard the Leader of the Opposition come in and try and micromove his way out of accountability for the fact that he did call for the changes that are in this bill. Now that that has become politically inconvenient, he has had to crab-walk away from that. In fact many of the calls that the opposition and many others have made in the course of this pandemic have been advanced through this bill, but what they have done is they have said that the political opportunity to try and make sure that they go and confuse people about what is in this bill is a far more attractive proposition to them than actually factually reflecting on this bill and arguing if they have a different point of view. But many of the contributions have been factually incorrect, many of them have been wrong and many of them have been based on them putting the primacy on political convenience and short-shrift political opportunity over genuine policy debate.

That I think is a reflection upon the opposition when there are incredibly important issues. And there are. I make no quibble with the fact that many of these issues might and should be the subjects of debate, that people might have a different point of view as to what the appropriate tools are to get to the outcome of protecting communities during a pandemic or other public health outbreaks. I do not have a problem with that. But let it be based on fact, and that is not a feature of what we have seen in the contest and the debate thus far.

Let me put a couple of home truths back on the table about what this bill does. But in order to do that I need to factually reflect what the current regulatory regime is when it comes to public health orders. The current regulatory regime of course is not fit for purpose to deal with what we have all learned have been some of the needs and the requirements of dealing with a global pandemic, one that no-one could have estimated the length, the duration or the ferocity of, and, as the member for Mill Park rightfully made the point, one that is not over yet. But those tools were developed with a certain public health emergency in mind, and there were extraordinary powers.

Extraordinary powers were given to the chief health officer under the existing regime for a number of reasons. Because it is about an emergency. It is about urgency. You need to have a breadth in some of those powers because you do not know what you can contemplate. The fact that we are here having to reimagine what those tools might be and how we can improve their accountability and transparency just proves the fact that in pandemics the use and the need for emergency powers requires proper parliamentary oversight and proper judicial oversight. I argue that that is what this bill does. That is the fact of the matter: the bill does do that. That is in fact an advancement of the current system, which we know has had significant shortcomings.

Let us not have a beat-up and the use of unnecessarily inflammatory language. Let us not have a disproportionate description of what those powers might be. Let us not have the powers in this bill abstracted and then used to reflect and doff the hat to certain horrific historical incidents and argue that that is what this bill will cause, because of course these powers are established in a framework. They are established in a framework where there is parliamentary oversight. That parliamentary oversight includes the fact that the executive government is in fact accountable to the Parliament. We see that in question time, we see that through the scrutiny of various parliamentary committees, and we see that through the fact that if people do not like what a government has done, they can democratically throw us out every four years if that is what they choose to do.

To argue that there is no oversight by the Parliament is factually wrong. You might want to quibble about what the quality is of that oversight, and I could make a whole range of cheap shots about the shortcomings of the opposition when it comes to parliamentary oversight, but we are debating structure, and what this bill does is it enhances that very structure. It puts in place powers and roles and responsibilities that are given to an independent assessment committee that has some expert advice. It puts in place and empowers the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee in order to be able to provide commentary and advice to the Parliament should there be any rights that have been the subject of an unnecessary incursion.

What it does not do is take away any rights of judicial review, and we have heard a lot of misconceived descriptions of what the separation of powers looks like. This bill in fact reminds us that we do have in the state of Victoria a charter of human rights that all forms of executive government action are subject to, and indeed actions have been the subject of appeals to the courts in the current pandemic. That right remains. In fact any derogation or any deviation from any human right (a) is required to be the subject of advice and transparency from the requisite minister, (b) can be the subject of advice and response from the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, and (c) a person can scrutinise and challenge the actions of government by taking action with the independence of the courts, who can review and in fact strike down the use of any such power. It has been a little galling to hear the wheels of the human rights bandwagon creaking and screeching as so many newly found friends jump on board.

I feel very strongly about the preservation and enhancement of human rights in this country. I have deep respect for the many stories that people have shared—even people I have disagreed with—about their families and their communities, but what I will not countenance is the misuse and the transformation of those stories of pain and historical egregious acts of abuse towards certain communities. I will not have them used as factually inaccurate swords in the course of this debate without challenge. That is the low road that is being taken. Come in here and debate that you think that there is a better tool, that your concept of scrutiny is a more superior one than in this, but do not come in here and start to question the commitment and the legitimacy of the contribution of people on this side of the house, who also come from families that have been subjected to those sorts of issues. It is offensive and insulting, and it shows that you have taken the low road.

Another example of something that was factually incorrect: we have just seen a member from the other side stand up here and try and say that the bill potentially gives the right to the Premier to suspend elections. It does not. It does not, and that advice has been provided. So yet again, every opportunity has been sought and taken by those opposite to try and go the politics rather than the policy on these issues. A lot has also been made of the comments of various representative groups and sectors. Now, that is always the case. I know of many bills, particularly when those from the other side were in government, where it might have been the Victorian Bar Council or it might have been the Law Institute of Victoria who were very critical of their bills. In fact many of the sentencing regimes, for example, were I would argue an incursion on the separation of powers, taking away judicial discretion and judicial oversight. Many of those changes to things like the Equal Opportunity Act 2010, all of those things I disagreed with, but I did not come into this Parliament and start accusing people of trying to reflect some of the worst of humanity that we have seen in our history and the history of those that came before us. So let us have a debate, but let us make it factual and let us make it one that is imbued with decency and not historical inaccuracy.

 Mr HODGETT (Croydon) (11:57): I rise to make a contribution on the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. We are legislators. We are representatives in this place for the Parliament of Victoria. It is a role that I take very seriously, and I respect the powers and processes of the Parliament. And the way this bill has been brought in is nothing short of a disgrace. I will confine my comments to the process of the way this bill was introduced and is being debated, because that is where I am aggrieved. There have been many contributions from both sides of the house on the contents of the bill, but because I am aggrieved with the process of this and because of my respect for the processes and procedures of Parliament, I want to confine my comments to that.

This bill is about trust and confidence, and I think the government has lost the trust and confidence of Victorians. Brené Brown said trust is not built in big, sweeping moments, it is built in tiny moments every day. Now, how can people trust the government here? The way that this bill has been introduced raises enormous concerns. It is suspicious, it is sneaky, it is sly, it is underhanded and it is wrong. We have heard from Labor MPs in the contributions to the debate on this bill that they first discussed this back in March of this year. So you have got to ask: why was this bill introduced on Tuesday? Why was it just second read on Wednesday and then hours later debate commenced on it—and I might add it was only for an hour. It was brought on at 6.00 pm last night, only allowing debate for 1 hour, and it is only being debated today for—who knows?—a couple of hours. The government at any point in time can come and adjourn this debate and stifle debate on it from members of this place. They can cut it off at any time.

Now, I notice on our speaking list alone we have got over 22 speakers wanting to speak and make a contribution on this bill. That is nearly 4 hours of debate from our side alone, let alone it being matched person-for-person by the government and indeed some of the Independent MPs. We will be lucky to get through half of that or a quarter of that in time, so there will be a lot of people that will not even be able to make a contribution to the debate on this bill, and it is a very important piece of legislation that people want to talk about. You have got to ask why. Is it the incompetence of the government? If they were talking and thinking about this and discussing this back in March, why do we now have to introduce this bill on the Tuesday, second read it on the Wednesday, then go straight into debate and try and ram it through the house this week without proper scrutiny and debate?

I should add that the normal process for the introduction of a bill, by way of comparison, is it would be introduced to the house normally on a Tuesday, then it would be second read on a Wednesday and then we would be given two weeks before that bill would be brought back in for debate in this house. That two weeks provides time for us to go and engage with stakeholders, seek their views and concerns, discuss the bill and have a bill briefing. It is a process that we really value, having that interaction with the community and back in our electorate with our constituents. It is often quite a challenging process because a bill is introduced and you have got to move very quickly to go out and seek the views of others, form a view on it and then come back and debate it. That is a process that builds trust and confidence—it is a tight process and a challenging process, but we value that process—versus this one, as I continue to say, where the bill just comes in, it is second read, debate is brought on and it will be rammed through this house. You have to ask why that is the case. When I look at a number of people, it is not just Liberal, Labor or Independent MPs discussing this. You can look at what was said yesterday by Liberty Victoria. Liberty Victoria yesterday said, and I quote:

There should be sufficient opportunity to consider the Bill carefully, & therefore we do not support it being rushed through Parliament.

This bill, if passed, will deliver extraordinary powers to the Premier and the government—unprecedented powers—so it needs scrutiny, it needs consultation, it needs consideration and it needs discussion and debate. I listened very carefully to the Independent member for Shepparton. Her contribution made some very good points in these areas.

All of us in this place have had hundreds and hundreds of emails sent to us about this bill, the majority just expressing concerns. If we had time, we could discuss the bill with these people—constituents and concerned Victorians—go through it with them and try to address their concerns. Surely, you ask. You have to ask. This is important. It needs time. The government should be building trust and confidence by bringing Victorians along on the journey here, not just putting the legislation into the house and ramming it through.

How can people trust the government when we have seen some of the things that have gone on with their management of this pandemic? Credit where credit is due, the government has done a number of things to try and manage this pandemic, but I do not agree with all of their decisions. People lose trust and confidence when playgrounds are closed when there are a handful of cases and then opened up when there are hundreds of cases. Our borders were closed, with people being locked out of their own homes. I thought that was the worst policy decision by this government, to lock out its own citizens when the borders were closed. There were ways to bring those people back and let them home quarantine. There are numerous examples here. Even my friend the Deputy Premier made the comment last week that there would be no more lockdowns and ‘They’re gone’, and then we have this legislation coming in this week which gives these powers. The Premier keeps moving the finish line, and that continues to frustrate the hell out of people.

We have learned today with this legislation that a person can be detained indefinitely without charge and without right of appeal to a court. Can you not see that that scares the heck out of people, when someone can be detained indefinitely without charge and without right of appeal to a court? That is why we have the president of the Victorian Bar Council saying that:

This is a bill that fundamentally interferes with the rights of citizens in some very basic ways. It abrogates the privilege against self-incrimination and you’ve got detention at the whim of the minister. It’s just appalling …

The president of the Victorian Bar went on to say yesterday:

The bill confers powers that can be appropriately described as draconian in authorising virtually unlimited interference with the liberties of Victorian citizens …

Then I hear what an associate professor at the Melbourne Law School said yesterday. William Partlett said:

… the bill rejects a key parliamentary safeguard that is used in NSW and NZ.

The use of an appointed committee to oversee these powers is a problematic departure from the usual role of parliamentary committees in the scrutiny of executive governance.

The associate professor at the Melbourne Law School went on to say:

… there appears to be little justification. The bill should therefore be amended to include cross-parliamentary oversight alongside independent oversight.

It is the process that I am aggrieved about. The bill, as we have heard people say, is 113 pages long. It is important legislation, but it is a disgrace that it is being rammed through this Parliament with little scrutiny, little debate, little consideration and absolutely no time to go and engage with our constituents or important stakeholder groups. We value their opinion and want them to have a say on this bill. The issues here are very important, but I believe the government has lost the trust and confidence of the Victorian people, and that is why I am opposing this bill.

I will leave it to others to make contributions on the content of the bill, but the way that this has been introduced—with little scrutiny and little time for anything else—is an absolute disgrace. The government should be ashamed of it. It is such an important piece of legislation that we all should have time to consider, discuss and debate properly. To just drop this bill in on a Tuesday, to second read it on a Wednesday and to then be debating it hours later and with only limited time today to debate and discuss this bill is a disgrace. That is why I oppose this bill.

 Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (12:07): I am very pleased and honoured to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. Like most of us here, I would never have expected that there would be legislation of this type. A couple of years ago, not long after I was elected, this was never something that was considered as part of the government’s agenda. Like all of us here, I remember that sense of perhaps disbelief and not really understanding what was going on as word of a global pandemic started to spread and as we started to understand that in a global context we have never been more connected.

This bill is something that we would not have anticipated, nor would anyone have anticipated, being needed, but it is a bill that is the bill for our time. It is a very important piece of legislation, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to talk about what I think are those really extraordinary characteristics of this state, of Victoria—how the state of Victoria is different and how this bill is a representation of the best of us and what makes us different to so many other places around the world and indeed so many other parts of this country. Victoria is in and of itself a state that I am incredibly proud of, a state that is full of altruism, cohesion and optimism but also a state that puts first the decency and human dignity of life and the importance of people being able to be safe, regardless of their health status and regardless of whether they are strong and fit or they are people who have all of the attributes that make them able to have a life that is easier. It does not matter whether people are experiencing more difficult and complex lives. We put the health of our state first, and that is what I see in this incredibly important piece of legislation.

Now, I was pleased to follow on from the member for Altona and of course the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and their representations of the Leader of the Opposition. One metaphor might have been a crab walk back from his earlier position. I think the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change spoke about it as a flip-flop; I was thinking of the flip-flopping of a circus performer. But when I captured what the Leader of the Opposition said earlier this month, I thought of it as a sort of road to Damascus conversion. The member for Bulleen said that:

… government—not public servants—should take responsibility for managing the pandemic.

And he said, as others have quoted before me:

Those who make these decisions—politicians—should be ultimately accountable for them …

As a general principle … [public … orders] should be ticked off by a minister or the Premier.

So in that road to Damascus conversion, suddenly that position does not suit anymore and that is no longer the position that is palatable to his colleagues, so he has had to find another way of dividing.

I will put on the record that maybe another difference is our appreciation for the extraordinary public servants, the people in service to the public—and I note the member for Bayswater here: the police officers in service to the public; the nurses; the paramedics, including in my family; the educators; and the scientists, the pride of our state. How hard they have worked during this pandemic to keep our state safe. There have been a few jokes from Sammy J about the wearing of berets, the use of hook turns and maybe the creative arts scene and the coffee snobbery, but there are some elements of this state that are different. Some might be too young to remember when some people tried to import shock jocks from New South Wales into Victoria and it did not work. We are different to other states. We look after each other. We use that cohesive multicultural history of ours to bring out the best in this state. I did note the contribution of the Leader of the National Party, in which he said he was no longer proud to be Victorian. Well, I can say that after the 20 months that we have had I have never been prouder of this state. I have never been prouder of the way that people respond to the trauma of a global pandemic because we have seen the best.

I do want to record some facts about this legislation, because I think that there has been perhaps on the other side a decision to disregard facts. The Premier is responsible for making a pandemic declaration and, as I said earlier, that is something that the Leader of the Opposition just days ago also thought was a good idea but no longer does. The Minister for Health may make pandemic orders setting out public health measures and restrictions to protect public health. I know in social media we have heard people compare this to seatbelts, and that is a relevant and worthy comparison. But I also think of perhaps smoking in outdoor dining—these sorts of restrictions that maybe 20, 30 years ago we would have thought were completely unpalatable. The idea that we would ban smoking in outdoor dining is now so much a part of our culture in Victoria that nobody talks about it, because it is just something that is accepted. So this idea that the minister would not make public health measures is anathema to this state.

Another important piece of this legislation of course is the transparency, because this bill does require the minister to publish a statement of reasons for making these orders. Now, I do want to also perhaps respond to the member for Euroa, who talked about there being attributes—I think that the example the member for Euroa used was people with red hair—that would be targeted. I am aware that some of these attributes we are talking about are broadly accepted. That people who work in aged care have a flu vaccination—that type of requirement is something that is absolutely accepted.

Again, it is this idea that we want to incite people. I do want to acknowledge that slightly Trumpian echo that I heard when we talked about people fighting and dying for this, and we all saw what happened when the protesters went to the war memorial here in Victoria and the genuine hurt that that created as those types of inciting phrases were used, and when Mr O’Donohue in the other place compared Kabul to Victoria, the genuine hurt that that caused to our Afghan-Australian community.

I would now like to move to recognising in my own community and Victorian community what the real response is and what does make us different. It is an opportunity for me to recognise some extraordinary people: the Afghan community, the Hazara Shamama Association, Gulghotai Bezhan—somebody known very well to the member for Narre Warren North—the United Cultural Support Inc. group, and people like Rabia Safa. These people are the best of our state, and they are what makes us different. I have a group of women who have made over a thousand calls in the last two weeks to make sure that people were okay, welfare calls. I would like to acknowledge Margaret Glasson; I would like to thank Liz Barton and Hannah Spanswick, both retired nurses; Sandra Roach, Anne Thompson, Felicity James and Helen Joliffe. I would like to say that that is what makes our state great: women who take the time to make sure that everyone has what they need and that they know where to get vaccinated.

I would like to thank the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Victoria; and Anthony Tassone, a local pharmacist in my area, who has spoken so eloquently and so clearly about the importance of being vaccinated. I would like to thank our South Sudanese-Australian Academic Society, Reverend Tut from the All Nations Church, Kenyatta Dei Wal, and of course Nyadol Nyuon and Dr Bol Juolthor, because these are the people who took food, who supported people through vaccination, who made sure that people had what they needed; they looked after each other. I think that the best of Victoria is on display. It is in the hardest times that we see the best of people. I commend this bill to the house.

 Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern) (12:17): As somebody who spent many years in the practice of law before being elected to Parliament, for me the test of a bill and the powers it contains is whether it has the potential to be abused and whether there are sufficient checks and balances to prevent that abuse from happening. Because this is the point: sometimes bad people get elected to parliaments. Sometimes weak people get elected to parliaments. Sometimes circumstances turn people with power who are otherwise good—good people with power—into people who make bad and wrong decisions. And whether you think that the current Andrews Labor government is made up of good people or bad people or strong people or weak people, the point of this bill is that the extraordinary powers it gives will be available to every future government.

Now, why is this bill being rushed through? It was introduced on Tuesday; we did not see it. It was second read on Wednesday; we saw it for the first time. And now the government is going to guillotine it through, ram it through the Legislative Assembly on Thursday. These are some of the most far-reaching powers that any Premier and Minister for Health will have had in this state’s history, and yet the government is doing everything it can to avoid proper scrutiny.

We saw the head of Liberty Victoria calling this out. The Liberty Victoria president, Julia Kretzenbacher, said she did not support the bill being rushed through Parliament and insisted that the new laws must be carefully scrutinised by MPs and the public. When you lose Liberty Victoria—when a Labor government loses Liberty Victoria—you are losing the room.

So this government is rushing this through. No doubt there will be a closure motion put at some stage, and the many Liberal and Nationals MPs and other MPs who want to speak on this will not be given the chance. What has the government got to hide? If you think this bill stacks up, if you think this bill is right, if you think the balance is there, why aren’t you going to allow it to be properly debated? Normally a bill of this magnitude would be given at least two weeks of discussion and debate in the community before we debate it in this place. The government has refused to do this. Now, it is not as though you did not know this bill was coming. The current state of emergency was extended about eight months ago. You always knew it was going to end on 15 December. So why wasn’t this bill out there for weeks for discussion and debate? Now, we know that the government has not consulted properly, because the government admitted it itself. When the Minister for Health’s leaked bill summary came out on Monday night it said:

… consultation has not been as extensive as it normally would be.

So the government admits it has not consulted extensively on this far-reaching and extraordinary bill. Why is that? We know who has not been consulted: the opposition were not consulted. The crossbench in the other place were not consulted—with the exception of the three reliable pro-Labor votes, who were the only ones allowed inside the tent: the Greens party, the Reason Party and the Animal Justice Party. Everyone else has been kept in the dark and treated like mushrooms—oppositions, Independents and Victorians, more importantly.

The government claimed it had consulted with the Victorian Bar Council. Did it really? Here is what Victorian Bar president Christopher Blanden, QC, said: it is a ‘gross misrepresentation’. He said:

We’ve never seen a bill, we’ve never been asked to comment or anything.

This is consultation? Now, why this matters is that this is a bill that contains massive power with little to no oversight and little to no checks or balances. Powers to detain you—that is usually what courts do. Courts usually sentence people to detention. Now public servants can do it under this bill. And if you are detained and you want to appeal that, do you get to go to court? No, you do not. Section 165BI provides that you get to make an application to the secretary of the department for a review by a detention review officer. That is a very Orwellian term, isn’t it—a ‘detention review officer’. It is something you would find in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It should not be in the legislation statute book of a state like Victoria. The ancient legal principle of habeas corpus seems to have been axed as well. Why are people not being brought before courts to have their detention reviewed instead of by more bureaucrats, more public servants? The privilege against self-incrimination, an ancient privilege, has been removed by this bill.

We know there are massive powers—massive powers to detain you, to stop you from opening your business, to stop you from leaving your home, to stop you from going to your church or your mosque or your synagogue or your temple. Where is the accountability? Where are the checks and balances on this massive power? Well, section 165CE provides for the establishment of an Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee. Well, the first clue to it being a toothless tiger is in the name. It is an advisory committee—advisory. If you had any further doubt, look at section 165CF. It makes clear the functions of the committee include:

to prepare and provide reports to the Minister including, but not limited to, reports that make non-binding recommendations.

We are supposed to believe that our liberties, our rights, will be safeguarded by a committee appointed by the government that can only make non-binding recommendations. I tell you what, a non-binding recommendation and 4 bucks—that will buy you a coffee, and that is about all a non-binding recommendation is good for. Of course you could look at the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee. The government says, ‘Oh, we’ve given provision to SARC to be able to look at these pandemic management orders and see if they’re appropriate or not’. I will tell you what this government thinks of SARC: this bill before us today did not even go through SARC. It was bypassed entirely. That is how powerful SARC is. That is how much respect this Labor government has for the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee. It was inconvenient to put this bill before SARC, so it just ignored it—absolutely ignored it. And we are supposed to have faith and confidence that our rights and liberties will be safeguarded through this process.

It has not just been the usual suspects that have expressed real concerns about this bill. Associate Professor William Partlett from Melbourne Law School pointed out some of the flaws in this bill, and I will quote him. He said:

In one critical way, however, the bill rejects a key parliamentary safeguard that is used in NSW and NZ. Instead of creating a dedicated cross-party parliamentary committee to oversee the exercise of these broad public health powers, it creates an executive-appointed oversight committee for this purpose.

The use of an appointed committee to oversee these powers is a problematic departure from the usual role of parliamentary committees in the scrutiny of executive governance. To ensure a fuller set of safeguards, dedicated parliamentary oversight should be created alongside that of an appointed committee.

That is the legal academic view of things. You could go to the less legal academic view of things and go to the president of the Victorian Bar Council, who is quoted in the Age saying:

“Stasi police would have been more than happy with the range of powers if they were given it,” Mr Blanden told The Age. “It’s extraordinary.”

When you see that the government has the power to make laws depending on people’s attributes, you have to go back to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to see what those attributes are. They can include things like marital status, lawful sexual activity, sexual orientation, industrial activity. If the government does not intend to use those attributes as a means of discriminating against people, why have it in the bill? It would have been the simplest thing to say, ‘These are the only attributes we want to be able to discriminate against’—maybe your vaccination status, for example. But the government has not done that. It has given itself the power to discriminate against people for effectively any reason it feels like it, and it is not good enough.

At the end of the day, it comes down to trust. This government is asking the people of Victoria to trust them with the most extraordinary set of powers and next to no oversight and no accountability for using them. Trust. ‘Trust’ from a Premier who could not recall 23 times on one day before the Coate inquiry; ‘trust’ from a government that caused the second wave, the 801 deaths that eventuated, through its own mismanagement of hotel quarantine; ‘trust’ from a government that has not been straight with Victorians for this entire pandemic. The trust credit is gone. Victorians do not trust the government. We should not be passing legislation which gives an untrustworthy government even more power, and I oppose this bill.

 Ms WARD (Eltham) (12:27): It is interesting that the previous speaker addressed the comments made by the president of the Victorian Bar Council, because on 774 this morning in an interview with Virginia Trioli he admitted that in the language he had used he had resorted to hyperbole in saying that the Stasi would have been happy with this legislation. He admitted the use of hyperbole. I think that is a really good description of those opposite and how they have managed their response to and their engagement with this pandemic over the last 21 months. It has been absolutely full of hyperbole because those opposite do not actually want to engage with the facts, they do not want to engage with what is necessary, what is good law. They want to engage with the politics at every opportunity. And a pandemic requires more than political posturing; it actually requires good policy. It needs leadership and it needs people to be able to work together, because when you work together in the middle of a crisis, that is where you get the strongest response possible. Instead what we have seen is an opposition that has been unable to resist their desire to undermine the public health messaging and advice at every opportunity over the last 21 months. That is what they have done, and this is again what they are doing now. They cannot help themselves. They will look everywhere for a political advantage when they need to be looking for the health advantage: how can we keep Victorians as healthy as possible? How can we keep Victorians safe?

Instead what we see is that relentless tactic that they cannot break away from. It is like an addiction. They are addicted to fear and they are addicted to fearmongering, and they will grasp every opportunity to squeeze elements of fear out of almost everything. The other thing that they are addicted to is division. They want to divide communities at every opportunity. They do not want to build communities, they do not want to unite communities. They want to divide them because that is where they see their electoral advantage is. That is really sad—it is really, really sad. It is a terrible way to try and show that you are ready to govern, that you are an alternative government, that you can step up and show that leadership, because that is not what we are seeing. We did not see it with the previous speaker and we are not seeing the current Leader of the Opposition, who three weeks ago was calling for legislation just like this, who three weeks ago wanted to see greater transparency in our Parliament on public health advice during a pandemic, who wanted to see more information, who wanted more accountability in this place.

And then when the legislation is presented that has a shopping list of accountability in it, he then goes for fear, he then goes for anger and he then goes for aggression. And we have seen this today, where the Leader of the Opposition 2.0, who has tried to give this image of being calm and considered with his very low voice, went back to type, went back to form and screamed the house down.

Mr Fregon interjected.

Ms WARD: Correct, member for Mount Waverley—the shouty man. What they have also done, though, in undermining the government and in undermining the health advice, is show so much disrespect for our first responders and our health workers. I thank these people so much for what they have done and what they will continue to do, because we know this pandemic is not over. It is still going. This virus is still circulating and we still need to respond to it. We still need to work, and I thank these people for everything that they have done—all of the work that they have done.

We have looked to New Zealand and we have looked to New South Wales. We have looked at multiple jurisdictions as to how we can in future work with pandemics better, how in future we can put more things in place and how we can have more discussion within this place around the response and the public health advice.

Those opposite have said, ‘There’s no transparency; it’s terrible’. I agree absolutely with the member for Altona—who spoke so well on this bill—who spoke about the absolute shame of those who want to compare this legislation to terrible things that have happened in the history of the world and the terrible things that people have done. The fact that we are debating this legislation here now shows that there is transparency, for one thing. It shows that those terrible historical incidents in the past are not being seen here, and again it goes back to that use of hyperbole by those opposite to try and create fear and division. This legislation means that public health orders will be made by the Minister for Health, who remains accountable to the Parliament. Question time does not end. Debate in this place does not end. Coverage of what is discussed in this place does not end. The public health advice and the pandemic orders will be tabled in Parliament. Everyone can read them. They are easily accessible. That does not end. The new independent advisory committee will review the public health orders and report to Parliament—yet more oversight in this place.

Now, the member for Malvern might want to denigrate the idea of an advisory committee. They report back to this place. What they report back will be debated and will be discussed in this place. It does not end. Advice is important, and I think it quite disrespectful for the member for Malvern to undermine that sense of an advisory committee and to mock that term. Scrutiny at SARC continues, and it is also disappointing that he mocks the strength of SARC—of the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee—that he thinks that it is nothing, there is no purpose to that committee. Again, hyperbole.

The minister will be required to publish an explanation of any charter right that may be limited by the pandemic order—more scrutiny, more discussion, more debate and more viewing. The member for Altona was spot on when she said executive government remains under scrutiny through the parliamentary process. We also still have elections. We are still accountable. There is oversight by the Parliament. Roles and responsibilities are defined. There is independent oversight. Under this framework elected officials will be the accountable decision-makers, but the chief health officer remains central to all key decisions with their independent and impartial advice as a chief health officer. I doff my hat to our chief health officer, Brett Sutton, who has been phenomenal; how this person can keep standing and talking and working 21 months into a pandemic is nothing short of astounding. The energy reserves of this man are phenomenal, and I am very grateful to him for the advice he has given our state and continues to give our state.

What we are doing will help our state further understand the process and further understand what is needed in the response to a pandemic. Our charter of human rights remains in place. That also does not go away. Our statements of compatibility continue—and there is a statement of compatibility for this bill. It is still there. That oversight is still there. What is also important in this bill, though, is that while we are opening up even more transparency in this place we are ensuring that people’s privacy is protected—that when they are using QR codes, when they are going through contact tracing, for non-public health purposes those protections go further than any other Australian jurisdiction. Victorians are protected. Their individual privacy will be protected.

I absolutely agreed with the member for Altona as well when she was talking about all of the mistruths that have been generated throughout the course of this debate, and I have my own commentary around the mistruths that have been generated by those opposite in the last 21 months and how distressing that is. There is no delaying of elections with this legislation. This is crazy talk. But this is what we have seen from those opposite. They want to fire people up. They want to upset people. They want to hurt people, because they think it gives them political advantage—and it does not. It does not. It just seeds division. Just do not do it. Talk about the merits of the bill; do not polarise it with your ridiculous posturing.

 Dr READ (Brunswick) (12:37): There has been a lot of misinformation about this Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. So what does it really do? It gives the government similar powers as the currently operating state of emergency powers but without requiring monthly parliamentary approval. This will allow things like quarantine to continue next year, and the legislation could also be activated in the future for some other pandemic threat. The powers come with added oversight: an independent expert committee will publicly criticise unnecessary or excessive health orders. There is more transparency: the chief health officer’s advice will now also be public, and this makes it harder for any government to be heavy-handed or to depart from expert health advice without a compelling reason. There are protections for disadvantaged groups: there are lower fines for people on income support or with healthcare cards, and as far as I know this is the first time Victoria has acknowledged that rich and poor should not have to pay the same-sized fine. There are stronger protections not just for the QR code data but for contact-tracing interview data: neither of these can be used by police for a prosecution, and they are only available if someone’s life or safety is at imminent risk.

The bill is not perfect. It does have flaws, and we Greens have concerns about how the government may use these powers. But the bill is better than the current state of emergency laws, and with 750 COVID patients in our hospitals right now and 25 deaths overnight we still need a strong public health response to this pandemic. It has got more robust checks and balances than any other state’s public health legislation, and that is why we support this legislation.

I will now go into some context and detail. The state-of-emergency powers in the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 have proven to be something of a blunt instrument. There have been episodes of heavy-handed enforcement—particularly experienced by Sudanese and Aboriginal communities. We witnessed in particular the public housing tower lockdown last year, and we have noticed that fines have been levied a lot more heavily in certain postcodes. These fines are very high, and currently the fines are the same no matter how much you earn. Most of these fines—I believe around 30 000—remain unpaid, and for someone on Newstart, for example, to be hit with a fine of $1600 or more for failure to comply with a health order, it may as well be $16 000. They are very unlikely to be able to pay a fine like that, which is why the measures in the new legislation are appropriate.

We also feel that some of the border closures have been excessively prolonged. In particular the closure of the New South Wales-Victoria border this winter could have been shortened by probably a couple of months by bringing vaccinated people back across the border with a negative test. There has also been a lack of clarity about who has been really making decisions about lockdowns and other public health decisions. We know that the chief health officer and the Minister for Health and the Premier are in the front seat driving the car, but it is hard to see exactly whose hands are on the wheel at any given time.

Following all of this we have seen the rise of misinformation attacking various aspects of the state of emergency, in particular the public health orders. Some of this misinformation has been literally incredible. For example, there has been a lot of doubt cast on the veracity of polymerase chain reaction—PCR—testing, which is the mainstay of modern microbiology. We are all familiar with the anti-vaccine rhetoric. There have been lots of attacks on sensible, albeit difficult, measures to prevent the mixing and movement of people, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic; attacks on wearing masks; and promotion of ridiculously inappropriate anti-parasitic drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. A lot of this has been funded by the billionaire Clive Palmer and taken up by various groups like Reignite Democracy Australia and so on, some of which are associated with the anti-vaccine members of the upper house. It has been alarming to see all of this evolve and to see social media funnel people into this misinformation. Speaking to people who have been so misinformed, it is as if they have swallowed some kind of draught that makes them unable to comprehend logic.

In the wake of all of this, when the state-of-emergency legislation needed to be renewed in September last year many of the upper house crossbenchers went to water. They abandoned scientific evidence and they demonstrated no ability whatsoever to balance human rights appropriately with the need for strong disease control measures in a public health emergency. This would have left us defenceless against the current delta wave of the virus. Back in September last year Dr Ratnam had to come in from maternity leave to vote to get the legislation through, and the process was repeated again in March this year. In each case had the legislation not been extended there would have been no power to introduce public health interventions to protect us from escalating cases and consequent hospitalisations, so it is critical that we have these sorts of powers available for the current pandemic and for future pandemics if we want to keep the number of hospitalisations below 1000.

In the wake of all of that new legislation was planned, and that is what we are debating now. As someone who has participated in those negotiations discussing the content of the legislation, I am pleased that we have been able to achieve some improvements. We have not achieved everything that we wanted to get in the legislation, but that is to be expected when you are in a multiparty negotiation. Nevertheless we have had quite a lot of success with achieving stronger measures to protect data that has been uncovered as a result of contact-tracing interviews and QR code check-in data, which are now not available to be used in prosecutions except for breaches of the act and can only be made available to police if there is an imminent threat to someone’s life or safety. We have pushed for other protections against heavy-handed policing, but we were unsuccessful in achieving an expanded role for IBAC, for example, in investigating complaints against police or in gaining measures to prevent racial profiling. We have pushed for these things before the pandemic, and we will continue to push for them afterwards.

We are also very pleased to see the protections for vulnerable people who are fined, with provisions for people on income support and with healthcare cards to pay a lower rate of fines. The precise amount is still to be set in regulations, but I understand it will be well below half. We think that this should be extended beyond this legislation, but this is a great example to see legislated, as far as I know for the first time in Victoria. It does not make sense that Clive Palmer pays the same fine as someone on Newstart for failing to wear a mask, for example. The difference between, say, a prison sentence and a fine is that we all spend the same number of weeks in prison, but our ability to pay a fine is vastly different and the pain inflicted by a fine is vastly different. I would like to see this legislation become a template for the way we treat penalty fines in the future.

I note, by the way, that it is 100 years this year since Finland introduced what they call ‘day fines’, where you pay a certain number of days pay for certain offences. I forget the exact amount, but it is something like four days pay for speeding and six days pay for using your mobile phone while driving and so on. Apparently it is an administrative nightmare, but the principle is very important.

I want to talk now about some of the other protections in the bill, particularly around accountability. Having the pandemic orders, which are essentially the same as the current health orders, issued by the health minister rather than the chief health officer means that these orders are issued by an elected person—rather than an appointed person—who is acting on the advice of the chief health officer. The chief health officer’s advice is tabled in Parliament. This means that we have someone who we can express our approval or disapproval of at the ballot box making these far-reaching and very, very powerful decisions. Someone has described this as draconian, and quite reasonably. These powers are extraordinary. They are the only powers, though, that are capable of getting populations to stop moving outside Melbourne, if we were to think about the ring of steel, for example. These sorts of powers are essential to stop viruses from being transmitted. People come and go. We have had a change of health ministers already in this Parliament, and we have had several chief health officers over the years. In fact a health minister fired a chief health officer about 15 years ago; I think Dr Robert Hall was dismissed by health minister Bronwyn Pike. So it is important that the person issuing these orders is someone who can be hired or fired by the people.

This legislation also improves transparency inasmuch as I have already mentioned the chief health officer’s advice is to be tabled in Parliament. Now we can see whose hands are on the steering wheel. The health minister issues the orders, and we can see the advice given by the chief health officer. But not only that, the expert advisory committee, the Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee, will publish their reports. This committee is really important, and I wanted this committee in the legislation because I wanted independent public health and human rights advice giving public commentary. Their advice is tabled in Parliament. So you will have the committee’s advice in Parliament, you will have the chief health officer’s advice in Parliament, and it will be very difficult for a government to depart from that advice for any length of time without a very persuasive reason. These measures therefore improve both accountability and transparency, and we have the additional oversight of an expert committee which is able to balance human rights and public health demands in a way that Victoria’s upper house has repeatedly failed to achieve, it saddens me to say.

We have also got the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee reporting on the pandemic orders. The pandemic orders, I remind you, replace the public health directions. SARC can recommend disallowance by Parliament. In fact the Centre for Public Integrity has referred to this as a significant improvement. It also suggests, however, that SARC should be able to choose exactly what it reports on rather than just being restricted to the pandemic orders. The Centre for Public Integrity comments also that SARC’s powers should not have to rely on the government complying with certain procedures. These are two improvements suggested to the bill by the Centre for Public Integrity. I do recommend that everybody looks at their briefing paper on their website, and I commend their suggestions to the government. There has unfortunately been some lack of consultation with legal and human rights groups. The legislation is being rushed through. I observe we do have a two-week break before the legislation gets to the upper house, but I completely sympathise and agree with the member for Shepparton’s comments that that does not help her. It would have been better if the legislation had been out for a week before we were debating it today.

However, many of the arguments raised against the bill verge on the theoretical or indeed extremely hypothetical, so it is important to look at more realistic scenarios, such as the language around choosing an attribute or class of person. It is possible that a particular group of people may need to be mandated to have vaccinations next year, such as aged-care staff—they may well be required to have booster vaccinations—or healthcare workers. That is a realistic suggestion as to how some of these powers may be used. Given that we are rapidly approaching 90 per cent of adults vaccinated, it is extremely unlikely that we will be facing a lockdown for the delta variant, but it is possible that there is some other vaccine-evading variant that could well get off an aeroplane in the not-too-distant future. So we need to I think ground our hypotheses in something that is biologically plausible rather than invent things. Staying true to that, I think that the idea that we might need vaccine passports for the rest of next year deserves scrutiny.

These powers are a little bit like giving the government a car, but we cannot tell the government exactly how it is going to drive it. I am concerned, for example, that the Premier has weaponised vaccine mandates a little bit by saying that they are going to be required until 2023. We need to think about the proportionality of vaccine mandates. Vaccine mandates should be a last resort. I have supported the vaccine mandates thus far, including in this Parliament; however, you should try everything possible to achieve high levels of vaccination before issuing a vaccine mandate, and the vaccine mandate should only last for the shortest time necessary, it should only last for the duration of the emergency. If we get to 90 or 95 per cent coverage, there is no need to continue a mandate beyond that time. So I feel that we need to leave the question of vaccine mandates very much in the hands of the chief health officer, and frankly I think this legislation cannot pass soon enough, and then we can see what the chief health officer and the Independent Pandemic Management Advisory Committee have to say about things like vaccine mandates or other restrictions or quarantine or the other things that we think this legislation may well be used for.

I note also comments from the member for Malvern that this government over this legislation has lost the support of Liberty Victoria. However, I feel that Liberty Victoria may have been somewhat misrepresented there, because I then went on their Twitter feed, and I quote Liberty Victoria announcing that they:

… are pleased that there will be protection of people’s personal and private data collected for public health reasons.

They went on to say:

It is good to see … additional scrutiny of Govt decisions by an … Advisory Committee & the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee …

They said that:

Giving decision-making powers to the Premier and Health Minister will increase accountability, because ultimately Victorians will be able to express their approval or disapproval of those decisions at the ballot box.

And they support measures to alleviate the burden of fines on vulnerable people. But they are concerned about the creation of an aggravated offence. Rather than being tendentious by going through just the bits of Liberty Victoria that I agree with, I have just quoted as much as I can of their Twitter feed. It seems to me on balance that Liberty Victoria feels that this legislation is an improvement on existing legislation. That actually is a comment made also by the Human Rights Law Centre, which says that this legislation shows more transparency and better parliamentary scrutiny. It applauds the expert advisory committee to review and report on health orders and the privacy safeguards for QR code information. In another tweet the HRLC comments:

There’s also a framework for ensuring fine amounts are more appropriate for people on low incomes, something which should be adopted across the board.

I could not agree more. They are, again—me not wanting to be tendentious here—concerned about the lack of an outer limit on pandemic declarations, but overall they say that:

This bill is a significant improvement on the current laws in many ways.

So there is a lot that could be improved in this legislation, but compared to renewing the state of emergency every month or two or compared to having no public health powers at all, it is significantly better. We will have more to say on this when the bill reaches the upper house in two or three weeks. In the meantime I look forward to working with legal bodies, particularly the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, to address any excesses in the bill because any excesses or overreach in the bill will be felt particularly by Aboriginal Victorians. They will be felt by vulnerable people rather than people like us who have jobs and are well off. The Greens also look forward to working with interested MPs and with the government to ensure that regulations and guidelines are developed that minimise any heavy-handed enforcement and ensure that Victorians’ lives are disrupted as little as possible by necessary public health interventions. The Greens want laws that strike the right balance between protecting human rights and our health and our health system. This bill is not perfect, but it is a lot closer than any alternatives.

 Mr KENNEDY (Hawthorn) (12:57): I am delighted to be speaking on this bill but exhausted from some of the hysteria and the hyperbole that we have been treated to today—

Ms McLeish interjected.

Mr KENNEDY: Come in, spinner. Perhaps I will give you some examples:

Let me tell you something. If the Premier wants to know how much Victorians love this legislation, let him go down Bourke Street and stand in the mall. I tell you he will get a free character assessment down there, and he will have no doubt what people actually think of this legislation. I oppose this bill with the very core of my being.

That is the sort of handiwork. From the person leading the debate, the Shadow Attorney-General, ‘with a heavy heart’—in fact there have been so many heavy hearts I think we should get a coronary unit into Parliament to look after the incredible amount of heavy hearts and the overuse of words like ‘draconian’ and what have you. I am looking forward, if it is allowed, after lunch to going through some of the data, some of the detail. That is the most important thing.

It is good to see that the president of the Victorian Bar Council is a favourite, but I would like to talk about Tania Wolff, who is the Law Institute of Victoria president. The Age reported that she:

… said the bill was a major improvement on the existing framework.

“The good thing is we have moved away from all the power being vested in an unelected individual to a minister who is ultimately answerable in the electorate and has accountability to the Parliament—that’s the good fundamental improvement,” Ms Wolff said.

“The independent committee in itself is good as it has experts on it, and there are measures in the bill which creates greater transparency of compatibility with the human rights charter.”

There you have it: a legal opinion weighed up with another legal opinion. The good Blanden—yes, he is in Hawthorn; he is a Hawthorn constituent—I have had lots of involvement with him, mainly on heritage listing as a matter of fact. You can see then that we can just bring out anybody that we want to speak on something like this, but I am looking forward to some hard facts—things that escaped the other side—hopefully after lunch.

Sitting suspended 1.00 pm until 2.01 pm.

Business interrupted under resolution of house of 26 October.