Cemetery fees
Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (14:28): My question is to the Minister for Health. Why didn’t the government require Remembrance Parks Central Victoria to consult with the purchasers of burial plots, funeral directors and stonemasons before proposing increases of up to 300 per cent in the cost of a grave in Bendigo?
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:29): Can I thank the Leader of The Nationals for his question. Sadly, the Leader of The Nationals is ill advised in his comments because no such decision has been made. No such decision has been made by an independent cemeteries trust in that community. What we do know is that cemetery trusts go through a process of consultation and engagement regularly with their communities about their future plans. They work on the basis of feedback. They work on the basis of engagement with their communities, and I look forward to that community engaging with its cemetery trust and arriving at an outcome that is in the interests of that wider community, including the arrangements that that particular cemetery trust will put in place in due course after it engages constructively and responsibly, as you would expect, with its local community.
Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (14:30): Simon Mulqueen from Bendigo Funerals has said that the burial plot fee increase is not only an assault on Bendigo families but a slap in the face for low-income families who will not be able to afford the new cemetery fees. Will the minister rule out major price increases for burial in Bendigo of between 140 and 300 per cent?
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:30): The honourable Leader of the National Party again has this problem in conflating process with outcomes. There is no decision to increase the prices of engagements that the—
Mr Walsh: On a point of order, Speaker, on the issue of relevance, the minister obviously has trouble listening to the question.
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of The Nationals on a point of order.
Mr Walsh: I did not say a decision had been made. I talked about a proposal. If the minister would listen to the question he would not have to attack the opposition in the way that he is.
The SPEAKER: Order! The minister is to come back to answering the question.
Mr FOLEY: Thank you, Speaker. The Leader of the National Party, I think, in his interjection almost got it right in that the cemetery trust is going through a process. I am confident that that process will not result in precisely the scare outcome that the Leader of the National Party wants and is conflating in his question. I have engaged, as I do regularly, with a range of cemetery trusts on those arrangements, and I am confident that the arrangement that the Leader of the National Party seeks to, as those opposite regularly do, scare people with—because they have got no other policy position—will not occur.