Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Statute Law Revision Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Mary-Anne Thomas:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Brad BATTIN (Berwick – Leader of the Opposition) (10:44): I rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. This bill contains many things, with amendments across a whole range of acts, and while Labor is happy to tidy up the commas and the full stops through this, there is so much more work that needs to be done here in Victoria. Given that Labor is making amendments in these acts this would have been a prime opportunity for them to address the issues, particularly around the youth justice system, youth crime and the crime crisis here in our state. They could have fixed it up in relation to emergency services response times or support for victims or within our courts. Today I am going to be focusing on a few of those and areas that can be done.

In Victoria at the moment, youth justice and youth crime is simply out of control.

We have seen crimes here in Victoria increase by 18 per cent from offenders under the age of 18, up 42 per cent over the last 10 years of the Allan–Andrews Labor government. On top of this, we have actually seen a massive increase when it comes to crimes against the person committed by people under 18. That has gone up 74 per cent here in our state in the last 10 years. A crime is committed in Victoria every 50.3 seconds. Under every minute a crime is committed somewhere in our state.

To make it harder – and this is why those crimes are happening – we have over 1100 vacancies on the rosters of the Victoria Police force. That means we are seeing stations being closed and hours reduced. It is not just in metro Melbourne, it is through regional Melbourne and it is in the outer growth areas. Even worse, we have got stations that do not have Victoria Police in them at all – stations that remain shut while the crime crisis continues here in our state. There are 22,000 shifts from those hardworking men and women of the Victoria Police force that have to be spent in Melbourne with the protests that have been happening in this city because the government fails to act when it comes to addressing the crisis we have got with the violent protests that continually happen on the streets of Melbourne.

The government are trying to answer these massive crisis issues, particularly around knife crime, with the machete ban that they have put on Victorian streets, and their answer to that was to put machete bins outside police stations at a cost of $325,000 for each and every bin that is put across the state. The question will be: how many machetes will be dropped off? How many machetes will be put inside these bins to be taken off the street? What is worse is the government never consulted even with the Les Twentyman Foundation on this to find out ways that we can get knives off the street and reduce crime.

A violent youth offender in Victoria at the moment is facing 400 charges – one person. He has been bailed 50 times here in Victoria. If they are going to go through and change the commas on the Youth Justice Act 2024 to ensure that it complies with today’s standards, then we say that they should also introduce into that the Liberals and Nationals ‘break bail, face jail’ because a comma is not going to keep the streets safe. A comma is not going to make a difference to what is happening here in the state, and the Liberals and Nationals know that we can make a difference. ‘Break bail, face jail’ is the primary spur to make sure violent offenders do not continuously get out on bail every single time they commit violent crimes here in Victoria. We will restore the police numbers. We will make sure we fill the vacancies here so we can reopen the police stations and get proactive policing back on the street. We will deliver sentences in line with community expectations, because at the moment the court system, under the laws from this government, is simply failing. Offenders for violence are not afraid of the court system here in Victoria. They are not afraid of going to jail, because they do not get there. The system at the moment lets them go in and out, and it recycles them through as fast as that, leading to these offenders committing so many different crimes across the state.

We also look at the Serious Offenders Act 2018 and the statute law amendments in relation to this. Just to get some figures for you, murder is up 37 per cent here in Victoria. Family violence related serious assaults are up 19 per cent; there is one offence every 58 minutes when it comes to family violence here in Victoria. Rape is up 8 per cent. Aggravated robbery is up 21 per cent; there is one every 2.6 hours in Victoria. Residential aggravated burglary is up 30 per cent; there is one every 1.1 hours in this state. These are real people, these are real stories and they are real victims.

Every single hour when we have an aggravated burglary here in our state there is a new victim, and those victims we can go through. Many we have met with and spoken to in the past. There was the murder of Dr Ash Gordon. A gifted 33-year-old GP, Dr Ash Gordon was fatally stabbed 11 times defending his own home in a burglary in Doncaster. The teenage attacker, just 17 years old, has now been found guilty of murder, and his friends reported he boasted, ‘Shit, just killed a guy.’ This chilling case shows the lengths that violent offenders are going to and how they simply do not care what is going to happen to them when they go through the court system, and that means more Victorians are at risk.

Then there was the machete attack on Saurabh Anand. Saurabh is a 33-year-old man who nearly lost his hand in a machete attack at a shopping centre. He spent weeks in hospital and now faces potential permanent disability from the severity of that attack. Two of the alleged offenders, after this offence of nearly cutting someone’s hand off, got bail under the bail laws of this government. That is not acceptable. When you go and speak to Saurabh he genuinely fears he may never be able to use his hand again, while two of those offenders are back out on the streets with the potential of putting more people at risk. Why? Because they do not care; they are not scared. They are not worried about the system, while the community is worried that the system is not protecting them, it is simply protecting the offenders. It is time, instead of making technical adjustments to these bills, that we actually have serious offences and make substantial changes to ensure Victoria is kept safe.

On top of this, we know that post-sentence supervision is failing here in Victoria. Dangerous offenders, including rapists and murderers, are being downgraded or released without any oversight. This is a huge issue here in our state. You cannot have serious offenders going out without the supervision that they need to ensure that we can protect Victoria. The Labor government, as we have said, is content with changing and formatting some of the definitions in the Serious Offenders Act, but it will not confront the reality that post-sentence supervision is failing, high-risk offenders are slipping through the gaps and the community remains unsafe under a system designed and implemented by the Allan Labor government. We must prioritise community safety as the absolute priority here in our state.

If Labor are willing to open this act, why won’t they strengthen eligibility for post-sentence detention? Instead of just fixing the commas, fixing the full stops and changing the spelling mistakes, they could strengthen the system to protect Victorians. Why won’t they ensure the serious offender definition includes emerging patterns of repeat violence, a simple change they could have added during this, so when you have patterns of repeat violence it is automatically picked up. Why won’t they decide to change these acts to put victims and safety first, ahead of ideology to suit their own backbench? This has got to be about protecting Victoria.

We have already introduced legislation on this side that the government have knocked back to then introduce their own. I say on this side of the house that we were proud to put forward the Corrections Amendment (Parole Reform) Bill 2023, in consultation with the families at the time, to prevent Paul Denyer ever getting out of the prison system. That came from this side, and we were told it was a stunt from the other side. That legislation then came in from the other side to say that they were strong on crime, and they could stand up and say that this man was not getting out of jail. It was time, at that stage, that they should have had a no-return period after any parole refusal. These were all things that we were good at, exactly as the member for Bulleen said. They were strong on press releases but not on changes to make sure these people never get out of jail. The unfortunate thing was Labor voted down that bill at first, putting more pressure on that family, who had to live through it yet again and again as the government failed to act, until such time as it was nearly too late. They should have just acted and put politics aside and let that legislation go through.

The Corrections Act 1986 – in the past decade the number of persons in custody has fallen 19 per cent; in the same period crime offences have increased by 36 per cent. If you are going to be having a reduction in those people that have been locked up in our community, you could do that on the expectation that crimes were going down and Victorians felt safer, but they do not. In the same decade the number of persons in full-time custody fell 4 per cent as the crime rate rose 36 per cent. Victoria is the only state in Australia to reduce its prison population over both one-year and 10-year periods, at the same time as having the highest increase of crime-related incidents across the state. What are their failures with this? When we are talking about corrections the failures are so broad: $1.1 billion spent on a prison that sat idle for over 18 months, costing $35 million a year to operate, with no prisoners.

Nearly 300 staff were hired on an $8000 sign-on bonus, and there is still a critical shortage. There will be fewer prison beds despite the record spending. Port Phillip Prison, which has 1117 beds, is closing. They are closing this down based on ideology rather than outcomes, and we know that this is going to result in a net loss of between 300 and 600 beds in the prison system. At the same time, the government are out there saying, ‘We’re not introducing new bail laws, and they won’t come into effect next year, because we don’t effectively have the beds to put them in the prisons.’ Well, you are closing a prison at the moment. The government is currently closing one prison in our state. They have already closed the youth detention centre.

A member: Dhurringile.

Brad BATTIN: Dhurringile was closed as well – another prison. The government is bragging about closing prisons, yet where are these offenders managing to find themselves? They are finding themselves in people’s lounge rooms with knives, committing more crimes, because there is nowhere to house them. $727 million was budgeted, and there are still no operational beds at Barwon and the Metropolitan Remand Centre. Do you know why? Because the build was that bad – this government oversaw one of the worst builds – and it is absolutely covered in toxic mould. A government that spent $727 million to have no additional beds in the prison system is still out there saying, ‘We’re doing well when it comes to crime.’ It is time to get your head out of the sand.

Even worse than this is the loss of mental health and hospital infrastructure within the prison system. Victoria’s only prison hospital and forensic mental health unit is going to be closed, in Port Phillip Prison. These are people who have the highest level of needs when it comes to mental health. Some of them are not sentenced. They are basically held at high risk. The system that Port Phillip has put in place allows them, somewhat, to have a life where they are protected, but a life where the community is protected. There is no replacement for it. I am going to go on record with this. Let me assure you, when they close this unit and they move these inmates across to the standard prison system, they will either have to lock them up for 23 hours a day for safety, or if they do not, only one of two things will happen: one of them will be killed or they will kill someone. That is the problem in this system. The government is failing to identify the safety risk, not just for those that are not sentenced but for those who are sentenced and the staff inside the prison system – the other inmates inside the prison system. It has worked, it continues to work, and this government is closing it based on ideology because it wants to go back to a state system rather than the efficient, effectively run private sector prison that has been there for the last 15, 20 years.

We know we have a staffing crisis across the whole state when it comes to the prison system, with 94 per cent of corrections officers having voted no confidence in their leadership because they cannot trust them to deliver the leadership to keep them safe while they are at work. The Dame Phyllis Frost Centre was locked down for 129 days between October and April. I do not expect people to have sympathy for people who are in prison, but I do expect that if a government is going to be locking people up, it gives them the human rights that every person should be entitled to. You cannot lock people down for 129 days in just six months because you cannot control the system and you cannot get the staff on board because of the failures of what you have done as a government.

The government needs to take responsibility, because the outcome of this is that there were 442 assaults recorded in one year, including sexual assaults, and six hospitalisations. The system continues to fail to protect the staff. Why would you apply for a job when all you are hearing is that the government are failing to protect those who are working within the prison system and effectively are saying to them, ‘You’re on your own.’ Now we see the outcome of that, because the staff are being assaulted and people do not want to join. Those that are taking the bonuses are coming into the prison system and saying, ‘The eight grand’s not worth it. No-one here is going to protect me. It’s an unsafe environment and no-one cares.’ That leads to more crisis and more chaos within the justice system and within our prison system in Victoria.

There is no clear plan for the transition either – for those patients who have mental health issues or for inmates in hospital beds. With the closure of the 40-bed Port Phillip Prison hospital, which has been projected by this government – and let me assure you, post election there is nothing surer than that they will want to get rid of this as well – where do those patients go?

If you are in the prison system and a patient at the moment, you would go to Port Phillip Prison, which has a hospital that was expanded just five years ago. The government are delaying this decision. There is nothing surer than that after the election those prisoners will end up in the public health system with security guards and prison officers with them at a massive cost to every single Victorian. But it does mean anyone in here or anyone in those communities where those hospitals are has someone in hospital should not be surprised if they see two prison officers standing at the bed guarding someone who has to come in for treatment instead of being safe when they go into the hospital system in Victoria.

I want to go on to family violence and some of the key stats that have been happening here in Victoria. Again, these are the victims across Victoria. There has been a 12 per cent increase in family violence incidents since 2019. These are all directly from the Crime Statistics Agency; this is not us saying it. There is a $32.5 million cut to primary prevention programs – I will repeat that one, a $32.5 million cut to primary prevention programs – and at the same time a 12 per cent increase in family violence incidents. How can any government honestly think it is okay, because they cannot control the budget, to cut funding for family violence prevention programs at the same time family violence is increasing.

There is a $169.4 million cut to housing assistance, limiting safe exits for victims survivors. I reckon nearly every person in this Parliament has had someone come into their office who is a victim of domestic violence and has said to them, ‘I can’t find a place to go,’ because the emergency accommodation waitlist is over 19 months. That is the impact when you cut services for those that most desperately need it and at the time that they most desperately need it. The message they are sending them, when the government makes this cut, is they have to make a choice: do they go and live in their car with their kids, do they live under a bridge in the local area, or do they go back to a place where there are domestic violence risks for them? Unfortunately, some choose to go back. Imagine being in a position where you choose to go back to an environment of domestic violence because the external risk is far greater. The only reason that is happening is the $169.4 million cut to housing assistance here in this state. Refuge development projects have been delayed six months; Aboriginal family violence refuge, delayed, 15 months; a $24 million cut to family violence service delivery in the 2025–26 budget – another cut from this government; and $8 million slashed from primary prevention programs. 120 households per night are being housed in motels and not proper shelters. That is the state we are in here in Victoria, because the Allan Labor government have lost control of the budget. They are trying to find ways to save money and at any cost. The cost of that is to those women who are trying to escape domestic violence with their children, and that is a tragic outcome. That is not something that we can stand by and see here in this state.

Labor’s amendments to this bill, whilst cosmetic, fail to address the absolute crisis we have. The Liberals and Nationals know that we can make change. We can make change when it comes to domestic violence and make it better. The first and biggest priority for us would be to introduce our ‘right to ask, right to know’ policy, and why would we do that – because it empowers the individuals to find out their key partner has a history of violence and it gives police and services better tools to intervene early, because we know that prevention is the best model, if we can stop it, if we can give people the ability at the start to say, ‘I understand there’s too much risk here; I’m not going to go down that path of moving in with this person.’ The police can make people more aware.

I know my colleague Cindy McLeish, the member for Eildon, has said previously that over 1100 women in South Australia have used a similar scheme, showing clear demand there. Victoria Police and others have acknowledged the importance of balancing this with careful risk assessments to ensure that the Liberal–Nationals ‘right to ask, right to know’ policy would deliver and would protect Victorians.

The member for Malvern has spoken a lot about the courts, and there are massive concerns through our courts – a $30 million cut from court services in the latest budget. Court delays are increasing the number of offenders granted bail under Labor’s weak bail laws. The member for Malvern knows ‘break bail, face jail’ is the only way that we can put the pressure back onto the court system to say it is not okay to keep releasing violent offenders onto the street. This is the problem with our courts. Victoria finished only 947 commercial cases in the last 10 years. By comparison the Federal Court finished 3607 and New South Wales finished 3019. That is because this government continues to cut the budget for our courts. If that is happening on the commercial side, imagine what is happening on the crime side. The Supreme Court of Victoria now has the slowest average judgement time in the country, taking 40.4 days. Victorian courts have been ordered to find $106 million in savings over the next four years. Not only have they already cut enough and not only are we seeing delays in justice, we are now seeing the government – because of their failures when it comes to controlling the economy, their failures with the amount of debt, their $20 million each and every day in the interest bill – going back to the court system, which is already struggling, and saying, ‘You’ve got to save another $106 million.’ How is that going to deliver justice for victims here in our state? Why are victims continuously left behind under this government? Why do victims have to pay the price for an incompetent government that has failed to protect them on the street and is now failing to stand up for their rights in court?

The government has also tweaked the Health Complaints Act 2016, and this will not fix the real and urgent problem here in Victoria. 42,478 patients waited longer than clinically recommended. These are people that are waiting for surgery in pain, often cannot work and cannot socialise and end up with social isolation issues and mental health issues, and this government continues to cut the budget when it comes to health in our state. Only 75 per cent of them had been treated by March 2023, and as of May 2025, 583 remain waiting more than three years for the surgery that they desperately need. The negligence in this system is an absolute failure of the government. It is a 13 per cent spike in hospital-related cases for complaints alone. Each one of these complaints, again, is a person who needs to get the treatment that they desperately need.

Finally, I am going to go on to the Triple Zero Victoria Act 2023. Only 65.3 per cent of Victorian code 1 emergencies met the 15-minute response mark between April and June 2025, well below the 85 per cent benchmark that is required. The reason for this is because Victorians are waiting continuously for ambulances and ambulances are stuck, ramped outside of hospitals all the way across the state. Each and every day, ambulances are ramped and waiting. I recently did a tour of the Casey Hospital, and I went and met with the staff. I spoke to one person waiting in the hallway for 27 hours to go in for treatment. That is far too long – not on a bed, not on a seat, sitting on the ground in the corridor because the waiting room was absolutely full. We went through to the emergency department, and we had a chat to the staff in there. Whilst we were there a person on a trolley came in from the ambulance. Who was working on them? The paramedics. They could not hand over the patient, because there was no room. The emergency department was full.

This was not a Friday night or a Saturday night or one of the busy periods. This was a Tuesday morning, and they were waiting in the corridor. We had paramedics working on the patients. When we spoke to the staff there, we asked, ‘What is the biggest issue? What’s creating the biggest problem with delays?’ and they said, ‘It’s because government have effectively closed or removed access to so many of the mental health patient beds in our state that when they come into the emergency department we have them here for an extended period of time.’ At the time I was there, there were five patients who deserved treatment for their mental health. They deserve that treatment, but not in the middle of an emergency department where the noise is up, the tension is up and it creates higher risk for them.

Yet they were there for five days. They took up five beds of the Casey Hospital for five days. The average bed gets turned over in Casey in the emergency department once every 8 hours – that is about average. When you have five days with five patients sitting in there, that is a huge concern, because so many people end up waiting. And you know what, they end up stuck in a corridor where they are crook, injured and waiting for these services that they so desperately need.

In Victoria alone a 60-year-old man, Phil Burns, died at home after waiting 4 hours for an ambulance. He passed away alone, pleading for help. A 70-year-old man suffered a head injury and waited 5 hours for assistance while ambulance crews were ramped at a local emergency department nearby. A Victorian woman with a brain bleed waited 3 hours for an ambulance and then endured a 7-hour journey to reach surgical care. Christina Lackmann, a 32-year-old woman, died of a caffeine overdose waiting 7 hours for an ambulance. A coroner has deemed the delay unacceptable.

Ambulance transfer times are well and truly below the target. Transfers continue to miss the benchmark of within 40 minutes.

Roma Britnell: People are dying.

Brad BATTIN: Exactly, member for South-West Coast. This is the example. People are dying waiting. I remember when Labor was in opposition and we were told how many times from their side, ‘Every second counts.’ That was the message we got. Well, to the Allan Labor government: you have been in power for 11 years, and more than every second counts now. Unfortunately, we are now talking every hour counts. People are waiting hours, not minutes, for ambulances in Victoria. People are literally dying. And despite having fewer patients, delays are worsening across the state. The Allan Labor government have only got themselves to blame.

Then they have gone into other areas – they have looked at the emergency services tax – to try and get more money in. With this emergency services tax they are using the volunteers’ name to say, ‘This is the way we’re going to collect money to pay for emergency services,’ when we know it is just to fix the big black hole that they have created and the money is effectively going straight into trying to pay off the debt that they have created here in our state. They are cutting the funding for services for the CFA, they are cutting the funding for services for the SES and they are cutting the funding for services for FRV. FRV is another organisation that goes out to support the ambulances with code 1 and code zero calls, and they are cutting their funding. They cut funding continuously across Victoria, and we have seen it too often.

Whilst we understand this bill before the Parliament today has to go through – there have got to be certain parts of it – the government is missing a massive opportunity. They could fix the parole system. They could restore consequences for youth crime, which we would do if were in government. They could protect women and children. They could support our emergency services, they could clear the courts and they could reduce the ambulance delays. The Allan Labor government, by choice, has not done that. They are choosing to cut the funding in these areas. They are choosing to ignore the fact that people are dying waiting for ambulances. They are choosing to ignore the victims of home invasions all the way across our state. They are choosing to increase the debt here in Victoria, which means we are going to have to pay more in interest, cutting more money from services here in Victoria. They have clear choices, and each person who gets up from the Labor side should outline those choices and explain to the community why their loved one is not getting the treatment they deserve, why they are not getting the police arriving on time and why people are dying in Victoria – because of the cuts of the Allan Labor government.

Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (11:14): I rise to contribute on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. As we know, bills like these come before the Parliament from time to time – dots-and-dashes bills, as they are sometimes known – and are passed as a part of the Parliament’s regular housekeeping just to ensure that legislation across the statute book is accurate, clear, maintained in an orderly manner and accessible to the public.

As this portion of the house decides to exit, it would be remiss of me to say that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I have got to say it was quite a performance, really, by the Leader of the Opposition to use a dots-and-dashes bill to perform in front of this portion of the chamber – to stand up and perform. They have all gone. Look at them – they have all gone. They have all gone now.

Members interjecting.

Gary MAAS: No, it is true. They have all gone. They have exited the chamber. They front up to work, just for a little bit, just to impress the opposition leader. But I come back to those who do not know history being condemned –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Order! I am struggling to hear the member on his feet.

Gary MAAS: Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I seem to recall the member for Hawthorn standing up about four weeks before he was chopped doing exactly the same thing, standing up, bringing his own team in –

Nicole Werner: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, surely a bill debate is not an opportunity to attack the opposition.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): There is no point of order. It has been a wideranging debate.

Gary MAAS: Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. The same mistake that the member for Hawthorn made was the same mistake that the member for Bulleen made was the same mistake that the member for Malvern made. You come to this place and you do not turn up to work normally. Look, you are not here.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Through the Chair, please.

Gary MAAS: They are not here normally. They do not come to work. They come here for a performance, and what we saw was a performance. What we saw was a performance and history condemned to repeat itself.

Cindy McLeish: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the Statute Law Revision Bill is in fact quite broad, but I understand that the member on his feet is not referring to any of the 70 bills that are in here. Instead he is looking to slag off at the government, and I ask you to bring him back to the bill.

Ros Spence: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, as the member opposite just referred to slagging off of the government, we just listened to half an hour of slagging off of the government. That was the broadest, most wideranging contribution that I have heard for a very long time, and I think the member should continue.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): I will rule on the point of order. It has been an incredibly wideranging debate. The bill does cover many, many, many acts. I will draw the member back to one of those and to the bill at hand.

Gary MAAS: All I will conclude on that part of my contribution is ‘The truth hurts, hey?’ The truth really does hurt.

The bill makes amendments correcting typographical errors, grammatical errors, numbering and section reference errors in many of the bills that are detailed. By way of example, the bill updates references to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975. As we know, in the Commonwealth our Administrative Appeals Tribunal has been replaced by the Administrative Review Tribunal, so it makes amendments to those words in corresponding acts. It amends a number of acts to correct references to names of departments that are out of date, because the orders were made under the Administrative Arrangements Act 1983, and these include, for example, changing the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, and the Department of Justice and Regulation to the Department of Justice and Community Safety.

These are the types of amendments that are made, and it is not a waste of time at all. It is appropriate that bills such as these are passed periodically through the Parliament to ensure that our statute books are clear and in good order. As I said, it is not a time-wasting exercise. I wish to point out the incredibly important role this and other acts of legislative scrutiny play in the legislative process, from which we all ultimately benefit. Commas, full stops, punctuation errors all add to what the meaning of words are, and words can have different meanings when we do not have those correct grammatical phrases in place or those punctuation parts in place as well.

I would also like at this point to speak to the role that our Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, or SARC, play when it comes to bills that come before this place. I have the great pleasure of being chair of that committee, and SARC examines all the bills that are introduced into Parliament, including all private members bills. Its role is to clearly explain the nature of those various bills, including this one that is before us today. It provides legal oversight to ensure that legislation passed works to the best of its ability, and it is important work in the functioning of government and our lawmaking process here. SARC can bring attention to amendments. It makes laws clearer and much more accessible to all of those who read the bills that come before both houses. The committee follows the best traditions of nonpartisan legislative scrutiny through the joint committee of members from both the other place and our chamber. To that end I acknowledge the member for Hawthorn, the member for Mulgrave and the member for Broadmeadows, as well as Mrs Broad, Ms Payne, Ms Terpstra and Ms Watt from the other place. It would also be remiss of me not to mention the extraordinary work that the secretariat does for our committee. We have a fabulous secretariat at SARC, and I would like to say a huge thankyou to Helen Mason, Alex Kershaw, Simon Dinsbergs, Sonia Caruana and Professor Jeremy Gans.

The comparative nature of scrutiny of legislation bodies is integral to the proper running of our democracy, ensuring that we have that proper oversight. It allows for differing perspectives based on the unique experiences, skills, frameworks and communities that we have within our respective jurisdictions. Similarly, as members of our own committees, we all bring different thoughts, opinions, experiences and skills to inform our work. These differences ensure that this very small cog in a very big wheel is doing its job in the machine that is the legislative process and indeed democracy in this great state of Victoria. Crucially, we are all united by the same goal of ensuring that bills and legislation go through all the appropriate checks and balances to keep government and the lawmaking process in check. I also want to acknowledge the Australia–New Zealand Scrutiny of Legislation Conference, which our secretariat did a fabulous job of putting together and which the Victorian Parliament was able to host late last year. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet those who work across various jurisdictions and undertake a role in their respective scrutiny of legislation committees. It included an array of MPs, academics and lawyers from this place, across the country and different jurisdictions, who each brought a wealth of knowledge from their work and communities.

In closing on this bill, I will just say that the legislation amended will otherwise be unaffected by this bill, and the bill does not create any new policy. Nevertheless, this place has an obligation to ensure that laws are as clear as they can be and as accurate as they can be, as everyone in this place, even the opposition, can appreciate, and on that basis I commend the bill to the house.

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (11:24): I rise to make my contribution on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. I want to spend most of my time talking about schedule 2, which is changes to the administrative arrangements and the department structures. I was going to start off with the first one being the shifting of the Department of Environment and Primary Industries to the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. I suppose the Allan Labor government have finally got their ideological wish with this that they have taken away any reference to primary production or any reference to farmers in the department structures. They have spent a long time doing this. They have this ideological dislike of country Victoria, this ideological dislike of farmers, and I will come back to that. But they finally erased it from the department structures. There was a time when there was a department of primary industries, a standalone department in this state, because agriculture, food production and particularly food security for all of us are vitally important. Now the department of ag, Agriculture Victoria, or whatever it is going to be called, is an office right down the back of a great big other department – no longer a standalone department, just an office down the back. We have just seen announcements again about cuts to AgVic staff and cuts to pest plant and animal officers – the annual cuts to the department of ag in Victoria. This government has been in place for 11 years now, and nearly every year there have been cuts to department of agriculture staffing over that time, not only to service delivery but to key scientists as well. So the government are getting their wish. They are slowly getting rid of it. In my home town of Echuca the rumour mill is absolutely rife that the department of agriculture office in Echuca is going to close. The ABC is hunting around on that. Where there is smoke there is usually fire, so I would ask the minister at some stage to give some assurances that the department of ag office in Echuca actually will not close.

I suppose what I have just outlined is probably why a recent survey from the Victorian Farmers Federation found that nine out of 10 farmers that were surveyed do not believe that the Allan government has a positive plan for agriculture and to grow agriculture here in Victoria – a $20 billion industry and one of the major regional employers in this state and an urban employer as well if you look at value-adding to food production here in Victoria. It is major export driver: one of the biggest users of the container port in Melbourne is the primary production of this state. And nine out of 10 farmers do not believe that the government has a positive plan for how to grow that industry or how to support that industry.

But also, more importantly – and I think this is a real concern for faith in governments, plural, but particularly in the Allan government – those same farmers do not trust the Allan government to understand their issues. They do not believe they are actually telling the truth when they talk about things. A classic example of that would be a recent story in the Weekly Times about the renewable energy zones that the government was saying will only take up 7.9 per cent of the agricultural land here in Victoria. Farmers are saying that is a deceptive calculation and that, based on the department of agriculture’s, or AgVic’s, estimate of the number of hectares that is used for farming in Victoria, the REZs will actually take up something more like 17 per cent. How can you build trust if you do not use the correct figures when you are talking about things that are actually going to impact farmers? Grain grower Gerald Feeny, who I know very well, said the government is ‘using deceptive and misleading language’ on the impact of the renewable rollout on productive agriculture in rural communities – again that issue about deception, about misleading language.

If you want to go through and look at what the government are planning now as part of that story they are trying to spin about how renewables are going to be good for the communities they are going to be put into, they have just advertised for 13 positions for regional communication and engagement officers. Each of those people is going to be on a salary that most people in regional Victoria can only dream about. You are going to have these regional communication and engagement officers – spin doctors – go out and try and actually snow farmers that somehow this is good for them. They are going to be on a salary of between $188,000 and $256,000 a year to go round and actually try and convince farmers of something they know is fundamentally wrong. It is more spin doctors, and who is going to pay for those? It is power users that are going to pay for that. It will go onto everyone’s power bill. For all those on the other side that think, well, this does not really matter, your constituents’ power bills will actually go up to pay for these officers.

The director of portfolio strategy and development, who is going to sit above these people that are on up to $250,000 a year, is going have a salary of up to $419,000 a year. The person that is going to control these spin doctors and set the agenda for these spin doctors is going to be on a salary of $419,000 a year. Go to a country hall. Go to the fire shed at Gooroc where Gerald Feeney lives and stand up and say, ‘I’m here to convince you this is all great. I’m earning $250,000. My boss is earning more than $400,000. Suck it up so I can get my pay and just let the government come onto your farm and screw you over.’ It is absolutely crazy that this could be happening. No wonder nine out of 10 farmers in the Victorian Farmers Federation survey do not trust the Allan government. It is just obscene what they are doing to country people.

Then you come to the Department of Economic Development, Jobs and Transport and Resources, which has gone into the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. The Department of State Development, Business and Innovation has gone into DEECA. Once, they had status in the government and meant something. If you go back to when we were in government and you had the $1 billion Regional Growth Fund, there were things actually happening in country Victoria. Regional Development Victoria was a brand that had respect, had people that were dealing with communities and had people that were dealing with industry to create jobs in regional Victoria. That has all gone. There are effectively no funds for Regional Development Victoria to administer other than some small community grants.

The last one I want to finish off on – and there is a lot more I would love to talk on – is how this this bill amends the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. If you think about the circular economy – how the government has talked up what the circular economy is going to do – I think everyone should be very, very concerned about the recent Auditor-General’s report that was tabled in April that reveals that five years into the 10-year plan for the circular economy the government is falling short. The report found that waste diversion has stagnated at around 69 per cent, well below the interim target of 72 per cent by 2025. What has been in the media in recent times is that our tips statewide are filling up faster than everyone planned, and we are actually going to run out of tip space. The classic example would be in the eastern suburbs. When the Hallam Road tip is full, all that waste is going to go across the West Gate Bridge to Ravenhall – a million tonnes a year across the West Gate Bridge on top of everything else is going to go over there as waste because that tip in the east will be full.

What is the government’s solution to this? ‘We’ll tax people more. We’ll solve the issue of not enough waste being recycled and the circular economy not working. We’ll put the waste charge up from $129 a tonne to effectively $170 a tonne.’ That went up on 1 July this year. For all those on the other side that think, ‘We’re solving all these problems’ – the way the Allan government solves problems is to find a way to tax that issue so they can get some more money to supposedly solve it. So everyone’s red-bin charge is going to go up to reflect that. Councils cannot afford to absorb it. The government is getting around their own rate cap because the bins are outside the rate cap. So we will tax, with the waste levy, more and the price of red bins will go up, but the council does not get the money – that is the catch here. That money goes straight into the coffers of the Allan Labor government and sits there in the waste levy fund, which supposedly is being spent to actually keep more waste out of the system, but as we know, it is siphoned off for departmental costs.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (11:34): That was some wild speculation from the member for Murray Plains. I would like to acknowledge the hardworking Minister for Agriculture at the table. I know how tirelessly she works for our rural and regional communities. I am very pleased to make a contribution on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025, and I am going to dedicate my contribution to my great affection for the Oxford comma.

These bills obviously do not make the front page of the newspaper, but they are comparable to legislative parliamentary housekeeping – Spring Street cleaning, if you will. This housekeeping ensures that legislation across the statute book is accurate, clear and maintained in an orderly manner that is accessible to the public. Other speakers today have – well, one has – spoken on the specific changes made by this bill, and they are comprehensive whilst being diverse in their function and purpose. Changes to the names of departments, boards, committees or other groups named in legislation have to be updated of course to ensure that the legislation remains contemporary, and ensuring that statutes are not only current but can be understood is quite important to our democracy. Open access legislation ensures that anyone can read, understand or interpret the law wherever or whenever they may need to do so. The efficacy of open access to legislation requires it to be readable not just to lawyers or to experts but to anyone who may wish to do so, and ensuring our laws are understandable and accessible helps to ensure we are not all indentured to lawyers and lawmakers to understand our democracy – not that there is anything wrong with lawyers or lawmakers. Indeed there are reasons that supersede even democratic values as to why statute repeal bills are required, and what can be more important than democracy? That is grammar, in my opinion, and poor grammar in legislation can have real legal consequences.

I am going to tell you a little bit of a story about a place called the Oakhurst Dairy in the state of Maine in the United States of America. The state of Maine has an overtime statute which is aimed at ensuring workers are properly paid for their overtime work, which is what we would refer to as penalty rates. The statute has some exemptions. One exemption is for workers who deal with perishable food. The underlying idea is that such workers should not have an incentive, such as overtime pay, to take longer than necessary to complete their work. At the time of the dispute that engulfed the Oakhurst Dairy, perishable food exemption F covered the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storage, packing for shipment or distribution of perishable foods. The dispute was over five words at the end of the list of activities: ‘packing for shipment or distribution’. Oakhurst Dairy’s position was that those five words denoted two separate activities, ‘packing for shipment’ and ‘distribution’, so no penalty rates were owed for the packing of the dairy products or for distributing them. The Oakhurst Dairy truck drivers disagreed. Their view was that ‘packing for shipment or distribution’ was a single activity, not two activities. In effect they read the five words to mean ‘packing, whether for shipping or distribution’. This would mean that the drivers, who do no packing but plenty of distribution, would be eligible for penalty rates. The company disagreed with this interpretation, so the drivers brought an action in the US District Court for the District of Maine to recover their unpaid overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act 1938 and the Maine overtime law.

The drivers’ case rested almost solely on the Oxford comma. The absence of the Oxford comma in front of ‘or distribution’, they argued, meant that the distribution was not a separate activity.

It was not the last item in the list of activities. The last item, indicated by a preceding comma, was ‘packing for shipment or distribution’. If distribution by itself was the last item, the legislature would have put a comma in front of ‘or distribution’. This case was argued through various courts for some time. Both parties’ arguments ultimately centred around the interpretation of legislative intent as well as references to legislative drafting manuals to infer meaning by the presence, or lack thereof, of an Oxford comma. An appeals court decided that the case should remain open and that the ambiguity should be resolved in favour of the workers the legislation was designed to protect. Ultimately the case settled, with Oakhurst Dairy paying the drivers US$5 million in a settlement. The Maine state legislature also then had to amend the statute to provide greater clarity and to remove ambiguity. What this case tells us is that proactive efforts to introduce certainty in legislation are necessary to avoid protracted court battles that waste the time and resources of the judiciary as well as promote uncertainty for employers, workers, unions and other associated groups.

Statute revisions, such as the one before us today, serve an important purpose. Grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, a syntax faux pas or any other drafting calamity that occurs can in fact have real-life consequences. I think we would all feel that it would be a travesty if a worker had their penalty rates compromised because of something as simple as an Oxford comma. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword, which is why when the pen is used to govern our lives, it must be done with great care. This bill reflects the hard work of the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, in consultation with departments, to ensure that our legislation is kept in good working order. I cannot imagine that filing through pieces of legislation looking for minor errors is a particularly glamorous job, so I thank all of those who undertake this work for the betterment of our democracy as well as for the sanity of English teachers and grammar fanatics everywhere. Statute revision bills are commonplace across all jurisdictions, whether they use a parliamentary system or otherwise. Legislative housekeeping is just another part of what goes on in the busy work of running our complex societies. It is not going to make the front page of the paper or do the rounds on social media, nor is it particularly glamorous work.

The work continues. We are getting on with the job of governing, including building schools, hospitals and infrastructure, and even statute revision. The bill makes, of course, minor and technical amendments to various acts, including updating references and correcting typographical errors, and it serves the broader purpose of ensuring these acts remain relevant and accessible to the Victorian community. I commend both the Oxford comma and the bill to the house.

Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (11:43): I rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. This bill contains mechanical amendments across a range of acts, as the previous speaker spoke to. While Labor is happy to tidy up legislation on paper, it remains unwilling to tackle the real reforms Victorians need in practice. The bill amends a number of acts. I speak, firstly, to the Youth Justice Act 2024. There are 7 million people in Victoria that we are here in this house to represent – 7 million people that the Allan Labor government is absolutely failing. While the government sees fit to spend time all day today debating things that fix up Oxford commas and grammar and punctuation through the Statute Law Revision Bill, a crime is now committed every 50 seconds in Victoria. An aggravated burglary happens in someone’s home in this state every single hour. A thug breaks into someone’s home whilst they are sleeping – I am speaking to the Youth Justice Act 2024 –

Nina Taylor: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I just think that the member for Warrandyte might need to be reminded of the purpose of statute law revision. I feel that she is rapidly transcending away from the purpose of this legislation today.

Tim Bull: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, the member referred to the element of the bill that she was making comment on. Although it has been relatively short, it has been a rather wideranging debate, and I would hope that you would allow her the flexibility that has been afforded to previous speakers.

Nicole WERNER: Further to the point of order, Acting Speaker, you did actually rule earlier that it was a wideranging debate, as the lead speaker spoke to a number of items, which then allows for the debate to be wideranging.

Ros Spence: Further to the point of order, Acting Speaker, whilst it has been ruled a wideranging debate, you did bring one of our previous speakers back to the bill because they had drifted a bit, and I would say in this case there has been a very large drift.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): I will rule on the point of order and the further point of order and the further, further point of order. It has been a very wideranging debate. However, I will draw the member back to the bill and to the acts that are covered within this bill.

Nicole WERNER: Again I rise to speak to the Statute Law Revision Bill – if only those opposite would allow me to speak. But here we are. Why don’t we just minor on the majors here while we are trying to represent the people of Victoria here in this state? But no, Labor wants to play politics. They want to talk about Oxford grammar, commas or whatever they want to talk about. They want to talk about everything but. The youth criminals are running rampant on our streets because of your weak bail laws.

Ros Spence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, again I would ask you to bring the member back to the bill. She has even said that she does not want to speak to aspects of the bill and wants to speak about something very different, so I would ask that she be brought back.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): I will draw the member back to the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025.

Nicole WERNER: We are here speaking to the Youth Justice Act 2024 and we are speaking to the Statute Law Revision Bill, and that includes elements of this act as well as a list of other acts that I would like to speak to: the Corrections Act 1986, the Serious Offenders Act 2018, the Triple Zero Victoria Act 2023, the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 and the Health Complaints Act 2016. There are a number of different acts in this, and whilst I appreciate that members on that side would prefer to speak to Oxford commas and other things, we on this side of the house would like to speak to other matters that are also in the bill. It is not just constrained to commas. The member for Murray Plains spoke to Agriculture Victoria.

Katie Hall: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is defying your ruling. She is actually stating in her contribution that she does not wish to speak to the bill. I request that either she sit down and stop contributing or you bring her back to the bill.

Tim Bull: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, I ask for the clock to be stopped, for a start, so this does not impinge on the speaker’s rights. I will be very brief. The member on her feet, in her commentary before the point of order, said she was about to speak to other elements of the bill apart from the grammatical matters, and I would encourage you to give her the freedom to do so.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): I will rule on the point of order. It has been an incredibly wideranging debate thus far. The member has been referring to other points raised within the chamber over the course of this debate. I will draw the member back to the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025, and I consider that my ruling.

Nicole WERNER: Well, I rise again to speak to the Statute Law Revision Bill. It is I think the fifth time I have actually been point of ordered in the chamber simply for standing up for Victorians, because Labor absolutely hate the truth and they hate letting us on this side stand up for Victorians. I rise again to speak to the Statute Law Revision Bill while the members on that side of the house try and compel me to speak to things that they would like for us to speak about, like Oxford commas. Well, we are here on this side, standing up for Victorians. We here on this side, like the member for Murray Plains, want to speak to the matters at hand within the legislation that Labor has failed to act upon, that Labor has failed to legislate upon. That is why we are here, and I will continue speaking, even though they would like to silence me on that side of the house.

Again, the Statute Law Revision Bill –

A member interjected.

Nicole WERNER: Sure, I will continue taking interjections, if that is what they would like to do. I will continue taking interjections because I would like to speak to the Statute Law Revision Bill. Again, the Youth Justice Act 2024 – let us come back to that one –

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Order! There is too much audible noise. I cannot hear the member.

Nicole WERNER: In the 2 minutes I have left: Labor obviously have no desire to allow us to stand up for Victorians on this side of the house. All they want to do is interrupt. All they want to do is interject. All they want to do is attack the opposition while we are trying to stand up for the 7 million Victorians that we represent in this place. In case you forgot that, this is what we are here for. In case they forgot –

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Order! I am not going to rule for order again. I cannot hear the member on her feet. Please, order!

Nicole WERNER: Returning to the Youth Justice Act: youth offences are up 18 per cent in 12 months. They are up 42 per cent in 10 years –

Ros Spence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, this is getting ridiculous. The member is completely ignoring your ruling. It may have been a wideranging debate, but it still needs to be within the bill that the member is speaking about. The references to the Youth Justice Act are really quite specific. Can you please ask the member to speak to the aspects of the bill related to the Youth Justice Act. If that is what she wants to talk about, fine, but there are half a dozen provisions in the bill in regard to the Youth Justice Act, none of which the member is speaking about. You cannot pick another part of the act to talk about in relation to this bill.

Jess Wilson: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, to your ruling previously, this has been an incredibly wideranging debate. The lead speaker from the opposition spoke about a variety of different factors that will then lead the debate from here on out. I ask you to take back your previous ruling.

Nicole WERNER: Further to the point of order, Acting Speaker, I would like to note in this chamber today that I have been silenced time and time again –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): That is not a point of order, and the time is up.

Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (11:53): I just want to take a moment to bring some calm to the place here. I do wish to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025 and actually speak on the bill, whether it be on Oxford commas or dots and dashes and whatnot. There has been a lot of excitement about this bill on the other side. Who would have thought the Statute Law Revision Bill would bring such excitement? But at the risk of that, I might just bring the tone down a little bit. It is that time of year where we do look to previously passed legislation and ensure –

Nicole Werner: I would just like to call quorum.

Quorum formed.

Eden FOSTER: As I mentioned, it is that time of year when we look to previously passed legislation and ensure that any errors are corrected and that language used is clear and consistent. While it is not the cutest bill – although some might try to make it quite cute and exciting – in the chamber, the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025 represents this government’s commitment to transparency and accountability. While I could spend my time in the chamber going through the typographical errors that are corrected in this legislation – I could go one by one if I wanted to; I could spend the next 10 minutes listing periods and commas and spelling mistakes and other changes – I am sure that would put everyone who is present to sleep, and we cannot have that, although we are a bit hyped at the moment, just based on the previous speaker. So instead I would like to use the opportunity to speak about some of the legislation that is amended in this bill and the relevance it has to my electorate of Mulgrave.

The first piece of legislation included in the Statute Law Revision Bill that I would like to speak on is the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012. This act is a more than 230-page document that includes law on several matters relating to the regulation of fair trading practices and the protection of consumers. One of the areas covered by this legislation is the functions of VCAT and what matters it has the authority to rule on. In my electorate office consumer disputes, particularly relating to renters, are a common issue that constituents seek assistance or advice on, and I am sure this is the case for many of my colleagues across the Parliament. The Mulgrave electorate ranks 29th in percentage of renters, with almost 30 per cent of residents in my district being renters. I am incredibly proud to be part of a government that supports maintaining a fair rental market. Recently this Parliament passed numerous protections to support renters, including banning no-fault evictions, banning rental bidding, increasing the required notice period for rental increases or notices to vacate from 60 to 90 days, making annual smoke alarm safety checks mandatory and granting the director of Consumer Affairs Victoria and VCAT additional powers when considering rent increase reviews. Imagine how if we had the terminology, the wording incorrect that would really impact on such legislation. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that we are dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s. In this housing crisis renters face unique challenges, and many do the right thing, saving up frugally for a future down payment. But something as small as an unjustifiably high rent increase or a no-fault eviction can set them back for years, incidents that will not happen under Labor’s rental reforms, passed in this Parliament, which I am proud to support.

Another piece of legislation that is amended in this bill is the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022. As somebody with a mental health background, I am very proud to be part of an Allan Labor government that is treating mental health resources as a priority. This act commenced on 1 September 2023 and is the key piece of legislation covering mental health and wellbeing support. It was designed to improve our mental health system in line with recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. The royal commission recommended that this new act represent a complete reset of the legislation providing the foundation of our mental health system. It put lived experience at its centre and created the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. The commission is the independent statutory authority that holds the government to account for our mental health and wellbeing system. Its reforms include the creation of the commission, which improves the quality of our mental health resources long term under governments of any political persuasion or party.

The act also prioritises voluntary treatment over compulsory treatment wherever it is feasible. As somebody with experience in this field, I can confidently say that you simply will not get better outcomes without supporting autonomy of individuals needing treatment. Getting mental health support is not about locking people up in an asylum until they are magically fixed or imposing a treatment on somebody without their input; it is about empowering people in need to make the best decisions in their own interest. A reform of this scale is a complex undertaking, and it is entirely normal in this sort of bill for minor technical issues to be identified post enactment. This bill does not in any way alter the core principles, vision or policy intent of that groundbreaking act. We are not changing the law as it was debated and passed by this Parliament. We are instead providing the necessary technical corrections and fine-tuning that are essential to its effective and efficient operation.

Consider some of the examples that this bill addresses. It corrects minor inconsistencies in the definitions of key terms to ensure there is no legal ambiguity. It ensures that a cross-reference to a specific section within an act, such as the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022, is precise, preventing confusion for clinicians, for authorised psychiatrists and for the families who rely on the services provided under the act. It clarifies procedural points that were not fully resolved in the original drafting, thereby eliminating potential legal friction. These may be technical changes – they may be boring changes – but their impact is anything but. By ensuring the legal foundations are solid, we empower the new entities and roles established by the 2022 act to work as intended, we ensure that the principles of supported decision-making, the rights of individuals and the role of families and carers are upheld with absolute legal clarity, and we are solidifying the foundations upon which our new compassionate mental health system is being built. This is why this bill is important, that we look at dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s and the dashes and dots and commas – and I have been informed not to forget the Oxford comma – which are key to ensuring that our legislation is enacted effectively and legally.

I could go on. I could talk a little bit about, I do not know, different fonts maybe. We all have our favourite font. Mine is Arial, just to put that on the record. I do like a 16 font. I know that is quite big, but it is great on the eyes, it is easy on the eyes. I do not have to strain; I do not have to go to Specsavers or one of the optometrists for that. But this is an important bill. It is a type of bill that we regularly do to ensure that our legislation is on-key and binding. I could say more, but I might leave it there. I commend this bill to the house.

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (12:03): I rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. On its face this bill is technical in nature. It corrects typographical errors, updates cross-references, ensures that Victorian statutes reflect current Commonwealth law, updates things like Oxford commas and aligns departmental names with recent machinery-of-government changes. It introduces no new policy, no new obligations and no new costs. The act will repeal itself once its job is done, ensuring the statute book remains uncluttered. Specifically it amends over 35 acts to correct spelling, punctuation, formatting and cross-references as well as replacing references to repealed Commonwealth tribunal legislation with the Administrative Review Tribunal Act 2024. We also have another 30-plus acts amended to align departmental names with current structures. The opposition will not oppose this bill, as legislative housekeeping is of course necessary. Clear, consistent statutes help courts, public servants, businesses and ordinary Victorians understand the law and navigate sophisticated government systems. It is good governance of course for Parliament to maintain a tidy statute book.

I do want to make the point very clearly, though, that the sheer scope of this bill, amending more than 70 acts across government, does epitomise the degree of chaos and inconsistency we see under the Allan Labor government: constant rebranding of departments, constant reshuffling of administrative arrangements and a litany of errors to correct. Victorians do not want endless revisions and technical clean-ups; they want competent government and real policies that deliver real results. They want this Parliament talking about more important issues. While this bill does deal with things like typographical errors, let us take this opportunity to consider the much larger errors that Labor has made in governing our state, as covered by each of these 35-plus pieces of legislation, which of course the member for Mulgrave just before on the Labor side recognised by talking broadly across these pieces of legislation about things like the housing crisis, the need for assistance for renters given rent increases, mental health support and much more, because Victorians do not need corrections to legislation as much as they need corrections to policy, corrections to priorities and corrections to leadership.

Let us start on one of these acts, the New Tax System Price Exploitation Code (Victoria) Act 1999. Victorians indeed are being exploited on taxes, with 62 new and increased taxes under this Labor government. Why is this happening? It is because of that most glaring failure, Victoria’s spiralling debt. Under Labor our state is heading towards a projected net debt of $194 billion by 2028. That is the highest debt in Victoria’s history. To put it in perspective, Victorians will be paying over $7.6 billion in interest in 2025–26 alone. By 2028 that interest bill will rise to $10.6 billion every year. That is $29 million just on interest being paid for by taxpayers that could be used, for example, on a school redevelopment or much more every single day. Every dollar spent servicing Labor’s debt is a dollar not spent on hospitals, schools, police or infrastructure that actually serves Victorians. Victoria has become the most indebted state per capita, and we carry the lowest credit rating of any state in the nation. Standard and Poor’s has already issued warnings. If fiscal discipline is not restored, things will get even worse. This is not just an accounting problem; it is a problem for every Victorian family, every small business and every community project that misses out because this government cannot manage money. The coalition, in contrast, has a clear and credible plan to tackle this debt crisis and restore economic responsibility so we do not have to continue increasing taxes and introducing new taxes like this Labor government has been doing. As referenced with respect to the New Tax System Price Exploitation Code, Victorians are indeed being exploited.

We have to look further at one of these other acts mentioned here today, the Corporations (Victoria) Act 1990. We have a government bringing in their annual statute bill, but the plight of small and medium businesses is all too real. In 2024 alone 2863 Victorian businesses entered insolvency, a 33 per cent increase year on year. Across the economy more than 129,000 businesses closed their doors. The construction, accommodation and food services sectors have been hit the hardest. Victoria recorded in fact the slowest business growth among mainland states at just 2.4 per cent in 2023–24. Over 152,000 businesses closed in that period, and Victoria recorded the highest unemployment rate at 4.6 per cent. Everywhere I go I hear the same story from small business owners. They are drowning under cost pressures, red tape and taxes. Surveys confirm that many are considering closing altogether, if indeed they have not already closed. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the biggest employers in our state, yet under this Labor government they are more stressed than ever. Recently in the Mornington electorate we have had the closure of several small businesses, many of which have been around for decades – for example, John Pugsley’s Mornington Village newsagent, Mickey Blue, Peter Young Shoes, Wok on Bay, Le Feu SingToHo, Page 8, Bottega 188 – and many of these businesses report that the cost of doing business under this Labor government is a major factor contributing towards their closure. These businesses are drowning in red tape, planning fees and high state taxes. Indeed Victoria is officially the worst place in Australia to start, operate and grow a business due to high property taxes, a thicket of red tape and more.

Meanwhile this government is spending this whole day correcting spelling and minor typos.

Further acts are mentioned in this Statute Law Revision Bill, such as the Corrections Act 1986, the Court Services Victoria Act 2014, the Crimes Act 1958 and other justice, corrections and crime related pieces of legislation. While this government is focusing on a legislative housekeeping bill, amending many failures, Victorians’ homes are being broken into, families are having machetes waved in their faces and their cars stolen, violent crimes and assaults are being committed and young hoodlums are running amok.

Members interjecting.

Chris CREWTHER: One of my team members in the last week – if you would not interject – had their car stolen. Their wheelchair was stolen, and the hand controls were ripped out of their car in the last week after four young people broke into their house. They cannot even get to where they need to go. It is not just getting a replacement car; they need hand controls installed in there. So a person who cannot walk –

Members interjecting.

Chris CREWTHER: You do not care about a person who cannot walk? It is not a joke.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Order! Member for Eureka and member for Brighton!

Paul Mercurio: On a point of order, Acting Speaker – relevance to the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): I have been listening very carefully. The member has been germane to the bill and the acts he has been talking about within it. There is no point of order.

Chris CREWTHER: This has been a wideranging debate. The member for Mulgrave and many others have spoken on wideranging issues, as referenced in the pieces of legislation here today. As I mentioned before, I am talking with respect to acts relating to crime and going to that particular issue that I mentioned with one of my team members, who cannot get to their work helping other people with a disability because they had four young people come into their home. They are still on the run. Many of these people, as we know, have been getting away with things because of the weak bail laws in this state. They are committing crimes while on bail. We have many people getting away with things over and over and over again. Where there are little or no consequences, people go and commit more and more crimes, as we know.

We also have of course a 1100-plus police shortage across Victoria. We have a reduction in reception hours, for example, for Mornington police. Police on the front line are struggling. We know that they are putting themselves in harm’s way every single day, as we have seen with what has happened this week. We have the example of what happened in Porepunkah, and my condolences go out to the family, friends and others of the two police officers who have lost their lives, as well as the other police officer who was injured. Of course the perpetrator is still on the loose, and I know that police officers are putting themselves at risk even just going out to try and find that person, because that person is reportedly heavily armed and more. This is an example of why we need more resources and funding towards police and more resources and funding towards tackling crime, because our police do such an important job. They really put themselves on the line every single day in our state.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (12:13): I am very pleased to rise to speak to the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. Just a couple of notes I want to make ahead of speaking to the deeper elements of the bill: I think the exception that has been taken on this side with regard to some of the commentary by the member for Warrandyte and then followed by the member for Mornington was to the premise that by seeking to adhere to the ambit of the Statute Law Revision Bill somehow we do not care about Victorian citizens and we are not representing the people of Victoria. That very negative, unwarranted and unfair inference is what actually was offensive. I have to say, because I have listened to a fair bit of the discussion today, I think that there has been a significant amount of generosity shown in terms of the wideranging elements of the debate. Just to be really clear, I think it is important to adhere to the central tenets of the bill at hand, because otherwise we are just making up rules as we go, and we are not necessarily adhering to the parliamentary code, so to speak. There is order in debate for a purpose: to make sure that we do properly scrutinise the bill at hand and that bills are given due attention as they are transacted in the chamber.

Another key element raised by the member for Footscray that I think is also important is that whilst we may make jest of grammar, full stops and otherwise, the significant ramifications of not duly revising bills to make sure that they are clear, that they are accurate and that they are accessible to the public – and what I mean by that is that of course language changes over time and therefore inferences can change over time too – is we could have dramatic negative ramifications were we not to conduct these processes. So I do wonder whether the opposition are suggesting – and I am not suggesting all of those opposite have suggested this – that we should not revise bills, that we should just be laissez faire, let it run, not worry about contemporary language and not worry about accuracy. So there is another bow that we could draw when rebuttals from those opposite are suggesting that there is no purpose to revising bills and conducting the process that we have at hand.

The other thing is making sure that there is sufficient rigour in debate. I am not here to test the rigour of every single parliamentarian here. I would like to think that everyone is seeking to transact as best as they can with what is important or a priority to them or their respective party or if they are an individual. I think what was most offensive was implying that somehow adhering to the rules of the debate that are conventional when you are speaking to a statute law revision bill should not at the same time be inferred to mean that we do not care about Victorians and the people in the seats that we represent. So I would hope if that point was well understood by those opposite then they would find there would be a better tolerance. Although I would argue there has been significant tolerance of a wideranging debate by the government today, as I have listened to a lot of it.

That was the particular element that I found to be unhelpful, but it also implies that in particular the member for Warrandyte does not see value in drafting or the discipline of accurate drafting, that somehow that is not meaningful or purposeful or needed when you are looking at the governance and the manner in which bills are compiled. I would hate to think that that member would in any way infer that the way bills are drafted does not matter and we can just let any word rip simply for the purposes of social media or otherwise. So I hope that that is understood by those opposite, that showing some respect to the purposes or to revision of bills and otherwise, and other parliamentary processes is understood. Then I think we can progress in a more productive way in the chamber.

Now that I have transacted that element, which I felt was important in order to fully explain where my particular concern was coming from, what is paramount when we are looking at legislation that is reviewed through a statute law revision bill, however laborious it may be and may seem, is to ensure – and I am going to reiterate this point – that the statute book is accurate, clear, maintained in an orderly manner and accessible to the public. And I proffer that whilst it may not be the most riveting element of parliamentary debate, at the same time this does not and should not undermine the significance or importance of debate on these matters.

For instance, I could speak to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. I note that elements within the Statute Law Revision Bill are pertaining to grammatical syntax and otherwise – dots and commas and making sure that such bills are accurate. But I note, for instance, that if you were going to speak to the central premise of the circular economy, noting the importance of major reform in this space in our state, with the container deposit scheme we have reached 2 billion containers returned by fellow Victorians. Now, does me speaking to that suggest also that I do not care about fellow Victorians? No, I am actually very proud of them and the achievements that they have made in our state in terms of being able to show good recycling practice and thereby reducing landfill in the long run and also in the immediate term as well, because when we repurpose parts of the various containers or otherwise that we use, this is certainly going to have an immediate but also a long-term effect that is to the betterment of all Victorians.

Another thing that is very important – ‘thing’ is probably not the best word that I could use, thinking about grammar and syntax and the calibre of language that I am using when we are speaking on this matter – is the four-bin system that is being rolled out around this state. I was on a waste inquiry a few years back when I was in the upper house, and I note that part of the imperative for changes in this space, on the one hand, was that when you have cardboard intersected by shards of glass, you actually render both unable to be repurposed. So the incentive to properly separate out things such as cardboard and glass and to have the four-bin system – on the one hand, we want to really target landfill, because we have a target of reducing landfill by 80 per cent by 2030, but also make sure that glass, which is certainly a wonderful resource, can be appropriately repurposed as well as cardboard. Whilst change can be a little intimidating and might be uncomfortable, in the long run all Victorians will be better off when we are able to repurpose as much as possible. Of course the real driver, I should say, when we are looking at reducing waste in our state is to not create it in the first place, but at least we have put in appropriate systems such as the container deposit scheme and the four-bin waste system, which are already having a very beneficial effect.

I know that Victorians are increasingly using the food organics and garden organics system, and it is really terrific when they can, instead of compounding landfill, which we know ultimately is an extraordinarily expensive waste stream to manage in the long run; it is toxic, it costs a bomb and it lasts way too long. Thereby they redirect their organic waste to a much better purpose, and that is that it can go through a proper sophisticated composting process. I have actually been to a factory out in Dandenong, and I actually saw the process by which that composted waste can be repurposed for agriculture. So ultimately we are all better off, and the more that we can do of that and do it accurately – and I am coming back to a theme of the Statute Law Revision Bill, accuracy. We certainly value that on this side of the house, and it is certainly an underpinning premise of making sure that legislation is duly reviewed for the purposes of not only accuracy but making sure that it is in line with the changing language. Language evolves over time; it is never static, and therefore terms that might have been used once upon a time – you only have to look at Shakespeare and other another plays et cetera – although still very much loved, are not necessarily used today. Just to be absolutely clear, this is why bills such as these have importance in our state.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (12:23): To be or not to be – that may be the question that we need to ask today. I rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025. As we have heard from a lot of members that have stood up in this place today, this is an omnibus statute law revision bill which is going to correct grammatical and typographical errors that are through a plethora of different laws that we do have here in different acts across the journey. I will focus my attention on a few of the bills that are related to crime, because I think at the moment that is affecting my community down in the Latrobe Valley the most. But there are other areas too that if I do get time to touch on I will.

In making these changes, the government says we need to do this to make sure that the house is in order and there is no wriggle room that people, when reading the legislation, can use to their advantage, and we need to make sure that that is done properly.

I have had a little bit of a read of what we are trying to do here. It is like back in the day when I used to get my homework returned to me from my teacher and they used to pick up my grammatical errors, my commas and full stops and so forth. We need to make sure that we are getting that right, and it is why this needs to be done.

One of the ones that I would like to pick up on, and I am not sure if the government has picked up on it – I was just thinking about it as I was sitting here, as we are looking at typographical errors. The other day we did get a release of the machete law bins, and I think there might be a decimal in the wrong place with the machete law bins, because it has come through that they are costing $325,000, each bin, and I think it might be $3250. Maybe we need to go back and just have a look. If you have not seen the machete bins, go and stand beside them and have a look. For them to be worth $325,000, I do think there is an issue there somewhere.

Talking about the crime that we have at the moment in the Latrobe Valley, I want to make sure that when crime is committed and people face court the rules and regulations and the law of the land is perfect so there is no wriggle room for anybody. I want to talk about a 91-year-old man down in Morwell. His name was Harry Wright. Harry was 91, and he was within a few days of heading away with his family on the trip of a lifetime, and unfortunately, during an aggravated burglary in his house, Harry was killed, so he never got to go on that trip. The family, obviously, are devastated. Harry was a man that was often seen down the Morwell bowling club engaging with the community, even though he was 91 years of age. We need to make sure that the perpetrators that carry out these acts are held to account. We need to make sure that if we are reading laws and revising laws to make sure that everything is all right, they are tough laws that can show Harry and his family that we do care. I think everyone in this Parliament does care and wants to make sure that we are doing the right thing.

Another person that has been impacted, and his life was lost, was Dr Ash Gordon, and I have spoken about him a lot. The opposition leader spoke about how Dr Ash, in saving his personal assets, was stabbed 11 times in the street. As harsh as it is to actually utter those words, we need to make sure when the time comes that the next person’s life does not end in that way. I know the family of Dr Ash Gordon is pushing hard constantly for changes in laws that we make here, and we need to make sure that we are doing the right thing.

In the 5 minutes I have been on my feet there would have been five criminal acts committed throughout Victoria. An average of every 50-odd seconds there is a crime being perpetrated, whether someone is breaking into someone’s house or whether someone is stealing a car. We have shop owners obviously everywhere throughout metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria that are having people walking into their premises and shoplifting items. Every 50 seconds on average these acts are taking place. No wonder the cost of living is exploding here in Victoria, because it is we at the end of the day that are covering the costs of what is going on with people that are doing the wrong thing in our community. They are stealing items, and those items need to be replaced. Whether it is our insurance going up or it is the cost of actually restocking facilities, that is just the way it is. So we need to make sure that we are hard on people that are committing these crimes.

I know as the opposition we have committed to: if you break bail, you will face jail. These are cut-and-dried situations where there need to be consequences for your actions. I know in here we all want to try and do the right thing, but I am sure every single sitting MP that walks into this chamber every single day has constituents from their area that are consumed by crime, whether it is someone stealing a car or whether it is someone – from my former field – stealing a tradie’s ute with his tools. The roll-on effects of that are sometimes greatly diminished in the media, where it can be people’s livelihoods. That is what we need to make sure of: that if we have got people walking around on our streets wanting to commit these crimes, they need to face tough ramifications, because it is getting worse, it is not getting better. We hear the government say we are having more people go through court and being remanded, but there are a lot more that are being let out and are still on our streets, making us unsafe, whether it be down in the Latrobe Valley or whether it be in other parts of regional Victoria.

We do have issues also on our bus services and our train services. It is a conversation I often have with the Minister for Police – he has just walked in and sat at the table – having PSOs on our railway network, especially in regional Victoria, so they can help and stop the violence that does sometimes occur because of that visible presence of officers that are uniformed and people can see. We have only just had the court case of – I will call her this – the mushroom lady go through the streets of Morwell when it was held there, and having police officers on the street visibly seen by everybody cleaned up all the issues that we were seeing through Morwell.

I do not want to bang on and make everybody feel that Morwell and the Latrobe Valley are the most unsafe places to come to; I can guarantee safety and invite everyone to come on down, because we have a wonderful police presence there that is keeping us safe. But these are issues that we need to fix. We need to give our police some more powers and make sure that they are doing their job and staying safe themselves while also helping us stay safe.

As I draw into my last 30 seconds, once again, I gave an update that at the 5-minute mark five criminal acts would have been committed; well, I have gone just about 10 minutes now, so at the moment there would have been 10 criminal acts on our citizens, as I said, whether it be stealing from the shops that they own, stealing a car or someone breaking into their house. So we know these revision laws need to be done, and – (Time expired)

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (12:33): I also rise to make a contribution on this bill. We did hear at the top of the debate the member for Berwick take advantage of the longstanding conventions around statute law revision bills to speak for over 10 minutes on the Youth Justice Act 2024, and indeed the member for Morwell, who has just left the chamber, did the same. So I would like to take a similar approach, though with respect to the Therapeutic Goods (Victoria) Act 2010 and specifically to the Gene Technology Act 2001. I would like to do that of course in the first instance because gene technology is a very important area, but I would also like to build on some discussions that took place at a recent event held here in the Parliament by Dr Andrew Kornberg and co-hosted by the member for Caulfield and me. Dr Kornberg was raising funds for a new genetic medicine centre at the Royal Children’s Hospital. I am very grateful for those MPs who attended that event, and perhaps I will apologise in advance for repeating some of that discussion, but I do think it was an important discussion that was had.

As members might know from my inaugural speech, our daughter has a degenerative genetic condition, so I suppose we have more reason than most to be interested in genetic medicines and their advancement. We are fortunate that there is an existing anti-sense oligonucleotide therapy and a CRISPR-based therapy, the first of which is in human trials, so there is a reason for hope.

But I think the experience of families in the US in a similar position is that the existing regulatory framework for drugs is largely built for drugs that affect very large numbers of people in very similar ways – things like amoxicillin or Prozac or metformin, so-called blockbuster drugs that apply to very large amounts of the population. The framework is not built for drugs that affect a small number of people who have a specific, genetically based condition in ways that are very different to the rest of the population. So I do just want to flag for this chamber that I think there is work coming both for our federal colleagues and for us to adjust our regulatory framework to allow for the very significant pipeline of genetic medicines that is now coming through. I think at the moment in this state we only have a handful that are actually being administered to patients. There are very promising therapies for spinal muscular atrophy and for, I think, one of the forms of muscular dystrophy. But there are thousands of these drugs in development and, as I said, work to do to get the regulatory framework right and work to do, as Dr Kornberg is doing, to get those very practical things, which I know you, Acting Speaker Walters, will appreciate. You need the right manufacturing facilities. You need pharmacies. You need cold storage. You need, of course, the wonderful staff who know how to administer these therapies. And we appreciate the work of Dr Kornberg and many others in making sure we are ready for these therapies on that front as well. It is work that will help thousands of Victorian families and thousands of Victorians with very difficult conditions, but I also think it is work we should pay attention to because of its very significant long-term potential.

We did have the opportunity in that same sitting week – I think we had a Parliamentary Friends of Transplant Australia event hosted by the member for Pascoe Vale and the member for Euroa. We had a World Hepatitis Day event hosted by the fantastic member for Melton. I do not want to take anything away from those important events, but it is notable that when you look at what is happening in genetic medicine, it is really on another level, even compared to other very important life-changing medical developments. At that particular event to which I referred, I made this remark that there is a crude way of thinking about the future of the world – that either it will be taken over by superintelligent robots built by AI or superintelligent humans that come to us via genetic modification and selection. That sounds silly. It is silly. That is a crude way of putting it, but there is a grain of truth in it.

As someone who studied computer science and has been involved in it for over 30 years, the developments in the last three years in AI are truly remarkable. For the last 75 years, effectively, software development has been a business of precision engineering. We all carry around smartphones in our pockets. The fact that they can do something like look up an address and give you the directions to it is the product of hundreds of millions of lines of very precise code put together very carefully – a bit like today’s bill – by very, very intelligent programmers, and we are very grateful to them for that work. But when you load up ChatGPT on your phone, it is radically different to Instagram or Google Maps or any of your other apps. It does not do what it does because someone very carefully programmed it to do so. It does what it does because someone took a massive training dataset – of text, generally – fed all these tokens through a huge model and adjusted all the weights in that model, effectively to try and accurately generate sentences, and repeated that process for months and months. What ChatGPT does is entirely emergent from that process. People did not realise that if you did that for long enough, it would effectively give the impression that it is able to reason.

We heard on the weekend the federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers, the great federal Treasurer, talking about some of the concerns about AI and jobs, which are very real concerns. But those who caught the show might have seen a friend of mine, James Massola, a journalist, wearing a Skynet T-shirt. Those of us of a certain age will remember the Terminator movies in which Skynet was the fictional AI that took over the world, and he was wearing it as a bit of a joke. But if I think back, if you had asked me 10 years ago – as I say, someone with some knowledge of the area – ‘What is the chance that there will be a Skynet taking over the world?’ I would have laughed and said, ‘One in a billion; it’s just not possible.’ You would now not unreasonably say the odds are one in 100 or something. I still do not think it is likely to happen, but if you look at what large language models can do in an emergent way that we did not decide that they would do but simply observed coming out of the way in which we build them, it is something that is worthy of concern.

I do feel personally that if I get to the end of my life and AI has not taken over the world, I will actually feel a little bit of gratitude on behalf of my children. I say that because really the only other area that matches AI in terms of its significance I think technologically is genetic medicine. Of course we already have medicines that change RNA in millions of cells and alter the protein production pathway, but increasingly we have medicines that can actually change people’s DNA in millions of cells. If you look at companies like Genomic Prediction, Orchid Health, Nucleus Genomics and Herasight, these companies are now doing polygenic embryo screening in the US. It is a real thing. Our third daughter was born with the help of technologies that allowed her to not have the condition that I mentioned at the start of my contribution. These are now very real technologies. As I said at Dr Kornberg’s event, anyone in our circumstances would be very conscious of the fact that genetic mutations, which are the cornerstone of evolution, are something we have as humans been slaves to, effectively, for as long as humans have existed. Genes have randomly varied; generally it has worked out badly. Occasionally it has conferred an evolutionary advantage, those different gene patterns have fought it out and that has, in a way, shaped the way we live and love and raise our families for literally millions and millions of years. We are now at the point where potentially we are no longer enslaved by those things but have the ability to consciously make our own modifications to them, and that really will be quite extraordinary.

You will appreciate this, Acting Speaker Walters, as in fact you joined me when we studied in the United Kingdom a few years ago now. I remember speaking then to someone very heavily involved in this area, and she said to me that the first person to live a thousand years has not been born yet but people who know them have. This is not something that is 500 years away; this is something that is just a couple of generations away. I flag all that because I think that the amendments made today to the Gene Technology Act 2001 will certainly not be the last that we are making to that act. I think there is – not now and perhaps not for a few years but certainly within the parliamentary careers of those of us around the chamber today – some very significant work to do on that topic, so I am very grateful to have had the opportunity just to make that contribution on the Gene Technology Act. It is the first time I have spoken on one of these statute law revision bills, which I believe have been in the Parliament since 1916. I am grateful also for what I think is – and we have had some debate today – a good convention, that speakers may speak at some greater length about any of the acts that are set out within the bill, as others have done.

I do see the Minister for Finance is here, and I would just note that in a previous version of one of these bills he gave a most remarkable contribution that is worth checking out. Orwell, I think, was in there. Steve Jobs was in there. His opinions on Arial Narrow – some typography – were in there. I did afterwards look up the Minister for Finance’s contributions to some other of these statute law revision bills that have come through, and I can only commend them to the house. I was not there for the 2014 or 2017 versions, but I am told they were apparently done entirely without notes as well. That is a different way to approach these bills.

As I say, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak at some length about gene technology and grateful for those who have contributed – as the Minister for Finance has done previously and may do again today – and I commend the bill in front of us to the house.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (12:43): I too rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025 before us today – a page turner, as it always is. In a previous life, much like the Minister for Finance, I have had the carriage of this bill for the opposition and had to find 30 minutes, so I am delighted today I will only have 10 minutes to speak on the Oxford comma and the importance of capitalisation in a number of sections of the acts that are being amended through this bill before us today.

Can I start by highlighting what the Leader of the Opposition spoke to this morning around the priorities of the Allan Labor government. Today we have before us a bill that seeks to make technical and minor amendments to various acts, dozens of acts, within the statute books here in Victoria. The government is dedicating hours of debate to this bill today, yet if we just cast back to yesterday when we were debating in this place an incredibly important piece of legislation around reforming Victoria’s working with children check system, it would seem that those opposite are more focused on the debate we have on commas, capitalisation and where corrections need to be made in statute books than on making sure that when we are drafting laws to improve the safety of children in this state those laws are drafted so that there are not loopholes, so that there are not mistakes – so that those laws are drafted in a way that ensures children’s safety comes first.

Let me return to the bill before us today, because, as I said, there are dozens of acts that this bill seeks to amend. I will turn first to the Country Fire Authority Act 1958. This is an issue that we have spoken a lot about recently in this place, because of course this is a government that taxes Victorians at any opportunity to plug their big black hole when it comes to the $194 billion of looming debt in this state, when Victorians will be paying more than $1.2 million an hour in interest repayments just to manage that debt. The Allan Labor government are making amendments to the CFA act today, but it is ironic that they are doing so after they have refused to listen to the thousands of CFA volunteers who in recent months have travelled to Melbourne to rally outside this place and send a very, very clear message to the government. It might not be a message that the government wants to hear – that is very, very clear, because we do not see in the bill before us today any changes that would actually make the lives of CFA volunteers any better. No, the government ignores the CFA volunteers on the Parliament steps outside, ignores the CFA volunteers who left their homes, who gave up their time to keep their communities safe and came down to Melbourne to send this government a message. Their message, for those opposite who may be unclear on what their message was when they came to the steps of Parliament on a number of occasions now, was that they do not want to be taxed by this government. They do not want a big new tax that would see $3 billion raised simply because the Allan Labor government cannot manage money.

The fire services property levy is the big new tax grab by the Labor government, and it is going to hit every single household and every single business in this state. We know that people are receiving their rates notices in the mail at the moment. They are seeing an incredible rise in that levy, particularly those primary producers, our farmers and our CFA volunteers. This is a government who, at a time when farmers were doing it incredibly tough in one of the worst droughts on record, decided to put a great big new tax on them. How does this government get its priorities so wrong?

If we look at households and commercial properties, now they are copping a 100 per cent tax increase on top of their usual rates bill. We are seeing them arriving in letterboxes right across the state. Industrial properties are now being slugged 64 per cent extra. Farmers have got a one-year reprieve – just one year: ‘We’ll give you a reprieve, because it’s a bit too much pressure’ – before they get a 150 per cent rise.

Juliana Addison interjected.

Jess WILSON: 150 per cent, member for Wendouree.

Juliana Addison interjected.

Jess WILSON: 150 per cent. This is a government that is taxing Victorian farmers, taxing CFA volunteers, taxing every Victorian household, taxing every Victorian business, because it has mismanaged the books for a decade. For a decade this government has mismanaged the budget to the extent that now farmers are paying the price, CFA volunteers are paying the price, every single household in Victoria is paying the price and every single small business is paying the price. This is a government that has its priorities so wrong.

While I am on the topic of tax increases, another amendment this bill makes is to the Transfer of Land Act 1958. We know that stamp duty is one of the biggest up-front costs faced by homebuyers in Victoria, and we know how hard it makes it, particularly for young people trying to buy their first home, to get into the property market. It also distorts the property market by discouraging people from moving, particularly downsizing, when their housing needs change. We know that Victoria’s reliance on stamp duty is costing the economy up to $5 billion a year, while the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that 340,000 property transactions are forgone annually because of the stamp duty burden in this state.

I have commissioned research by the Parliamentary Budget Office that shows that Victoria’s reliance on property tax is the highest in the nation. Victorians are paying the highest property taxes in the nation. What does that do – it makes it harder to get into the property market, it makes it harder to buy your first home and it drives up rents. It is making housing less affordable in this state, and it is putting home ownership further and further out of reach. So the government has missed an opportunity today, when it is amending the Transfer of Land Act, to actually deal with the issue of stamp duty in this state – to deal with the fact that it has, time and time again, put up property taxes in this state. Is it any wonder that there is a housing crisis in Victoria? Is it any wonder that this government is failing to meet its own target of 80,000 new homes each and every year, because at every opportunity it is putting more taxes on property, making it harder for people not only to own their own home but to even get into the rental market.

Finally, with the time I have left, this bill today amends the Serious Offenders Act 2018 and the Youth Justice Act 2024, and it would be remiss of me not to speak to the horrific home invasion that occurred in my electorate a couple of weekends ago. At 4 am five alleged offenders broke into a home in Kew East and separated a father, a mother and grandparents who were in the house at the time and then proceeded to stab the father in the face, in the arms and in the eyes. It was an absolutely horrific incident that has scarred not only that family but every single member of my community, who are scared to be home at night in their own homes. Too often we hear, night after night, that there are attempted home invasions, that there are home invasions. We see it in the statistics, in the incredible rise in these violent crimes, not only in my electorate but right across this state. Once again, in the bill before us today, the government has failed to prioritise what needs to happen in this state – to actually take the crime crisis seriously, to fix the government’s own weakened bail laws, to make sure we have got police on the beat. This is a government that has its priorities all wrong, and the bill before us today just demonstrates that.

Danny PEARSON (Essendon – Minister for Economic Growth and Jobs, Minister for Finance) (12:53): I am delighted to join the debate. At the outset I do want to place on the record my heartfelt condolences to the families of the officers who were slain yesterday as well as the broader Victoria Police family. I was the acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services during the pandemic, and I got to know Victoria Police well in that time. I can only imagine the grief that they are feeling today.

These bills are often derided as being dots-and-dashes bills. I have always taken the view, though, that language is really important. In a previous contribution I outlined to the house my loathing of Times New Roman as the font of colonisers, but I have actually done some further research, and I am wrong. Obviously, Gutenberg established the black letter font back in 1440, but I think it is important to note that we often fail to recognise the contribution that the Song dynasty made to humanity as we know it. The Song dynasty created the compass. They discovered the clock. They established public hospitals, nursing homes and public pharmacies. The Song dynasty was 400 years before the Gutenberg Bible, and Bi Sheng, in 1040, invented the first printing press. It is probably fair to say that Nicolas Jenson created the first roman typeface in 1470, and he was closer to developing a font that colonised nations.

But if you look at it from the point of view of the United Kingdom, actually copperplate was actually used as a font in the UK’s administrative documents. What I found fascinating is that from the mid-15th century to 1836 the chancery hand was the primary form of font used for official documentation.

Now, I have spoken previously about how Steve Jobs dropped out of university and studied calligraphy, and it was that experience that led to the multitude of fonts being used in Apple computers. But while he did that, when I was at university in the 1990s, I studied the chancery hand, and the chancery hand is an incredibly difficult font to read; it is quite tight and prescriptive. I remember trying to transcribe the writings of Sir Julius Caesar. Sir Julius Caesar was one of the senior public servants at the time. He was a member of the House of Commons from 1589 to 1622, and he wrote – and I remember this line, which has stayed with me over the decades – ‘to dent the enemy and plant the country with good people’. He talked about that in relation to the colonisation of Northern Ireland. And so you could say in the 21st century it is a form of ethnic cleansing. You could say that so many of the troubles that beset Northern Ireland, where the Scots were transplanted into Northern Ireland, came from that proposition to dent the enemy and plant the country with good people.

I am also reminded of Gaëtan Dugas. Gaëtan Dugas was a Canadian flight attendant, and he contracted HIV/AIDS, and when they started doing contact tracing in the early 1980s, they named him patient zero. They thought he was the primary source of HIV transmission in the early 1980s, but they were wrong. It was not zero, it was ‘O’ – as in the letter O – to mean that he was from outside California. So it is interesting. And the reality is that – I remember talking to Sharon Lewin about this – HIV/AIDS really was a function of the jet age. Previously if you had contracted HIV/AIDS in Africa, you could not travel, and Sharon Lewin thinks that the period from contraction to death was about 10 years. It was only with the jet age that you started to see HIV/AIDS come about. But Gaëtan Dugas was named as patient zero when really he was just from outside California.

On my loathing of Times New Roman – I loathe it; it is the most boring, bland font that could ever have been imagined. It was actually created in 1931, so it is not the progeny of colonisers, it is the progeny of the Great Depression. But what a boring font. And I have got great aspirations for the statute books of this state. We should have flexibility. We are a plural, diverse, tolerant community. Why should we subject ourselves to having statutes that are purely bound by the Times New Roman typeface? Surely we can do better. I would have thought Helvetica would be a more worthy font. Helvetica, otherwise known as Die Neue Haas Grotesk, was founded in 1957 by Max Miedinger, who was Swiss. Now, I would have thought that we could hope for some diversity in our types of font, because I feel that Times New Roman does not meet our needs; it does not meet our aspirations as a community. I feel that really, when you come down to it, Times New Roman limits our vision and our perspicacity with its shallowness. In my first term all my speeches were written in Comic Sans, and I like the purple font; every single speech I delivered in my first term was written with Comic Sans and a purple font.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): In accordance with standing orders, the time has come for me to interrupt that exposition on typography, and the house will resume at the ringing of the bells.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.