Wednesday, 12 November 2025

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (12:34): I move:

That, under standing order 94(2), the orders of the day, government business, relating to the following bills be considered and completed by 5 pm on 14 November 2025:

Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2025

Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025

Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025

Restricting Non-disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Bill 2025

Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025

Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025.

Obviously, it is a very big program of work to be considered in the house this week, and I want to thank the house for their cooperation in working with the government in order to ensure that the two bills that have just been introduced and second read will be debated in cognate with the bill that was introduced last week. This is really important because these three bills work very closely together in order to deliver on commitments that our government has made to accept and act on all of the 22 recommendations of the rapid child safety review, which, of course, was completed for our government by Jay Weatherill AO and Ms Pam White PSM. That all happened in August, so as you can understand, the work to bring these bills to the house has been at speed. But I want to assure everyone that absolute due consideration has been given to getting this right. And indeed one of the bills that is before the house today is establishing national law as we work with other states and territories and the Commonwealth government to do everything within our collective powers to ensure that children are kept safe. This is an absolute key responsibility of governments everywhere, and we will be working to do that.

Will Fowles: On a point of order, Speaker, the Leader of the House is anticipating debate on the bills.

The SPEAKER: I remind the Leader of the House that it is a government business program and not to go into the detail of bills.

Mary-Anne THOMAS: I was just wanting to make the point, in thanking the house for their cooperation, how important and significant these bills are. I think it was important that I reflect that one of these bills is about establishing national law and that that is something that the house should be cognisant of ahead of the debate.

We will also be debating the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025. Of course, our government has an absolute focus on ensuring that we are building the houses that Victorians need and want in the areas that are close to transport and close to jobs. This is a bill that is consistent with our housing statement, which is seeing us with a very ambitious target: 800,000 homes to be delivered over 10 years. I am proud, of course, that it is here in Victoria that we are delivering more houses than any other state or territory. Once again, it is another metric on which we are leading the nation. Housing targets have been established for every local government area as part of Plan for Victoria, and this bill helps us deliver on that commitment.

We are also debating a really important Restricting Non-disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Bill 2025. In October the Premier and the Treasurer announced that our government will restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in workplace sexual harassment cases because they are used to silence victims. Of course as a Labor government we are absolutely committed to doing all we can to support victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. We listen to workers and we work to address these very real concerns. The bill delivers on our commitment by providing victim-survivors of workplace sexual harassment with greater agency and choice by restricting the use of non-disclosure agreements in workplace sexual harassment matters.

Another bill to be debated is the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2025. This is a bill that responds to the work that the Victorian government did when we commissioned the Wilson review as part of a range of actions responding to allegations of criminal and other unlawful conduct in the construction industry – behaviour for which we have zero tolerance. The bill will implement the Victorian government’s response to recommendations 3 to 6 of the Wilson review to strengthen Victoria’s labour hire licencing laws. It is important that we consider the bill this week to allow the government to enable us to get on with meeting the public commitments that we have made. So it is a very big government business program with very significant legislation to be debated in this house this week, and I commend the program to the house.

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (12:40): The coalition will not be supporting the government business program. What is clear is the government has lost control of managing the chamber. There is no doubt that the government has lost control of managing the chamber. You see big bills being introduced, and certainly we are not speaking to the substance of those in terms of being opposed to them. In fact we are very, very supportive and have been calling for action in these matters. We saw a press conference from the Premier today with a poster but no bill. There is no question that most Victorians are looking on and saying, ‘What’s going on?’ There is no oversight, there is no proper thinking and there is no proper scrutiny in relation to what the government is doing, and you can see that with the government business program.

The government is trying to push bills that it does not want debated through very quickly this week and to have six bills, some of them very, very meritorious and important bills that will bring about important changes – so much so that we have been calling for the government to meet its own deadlines, which it has broken; we have been calling on the government to actually do these things quicker – but also hiding other bills on the government business program that it does not want to debate. The government does not want to debate the planning laws – it wants to hide those changes – and I am going to be interested to hear the debate from members about how much they want their communities to have their rights taken away from them. I am sure not many neighbours want to have no more say about what is built in their communities, and I am looking forward to seeing how many Labor members put out tiles on that little reform. I suspect it will be none. No members will. This makes the point, on the government business program, that when you mismanage a Parliament, when you do not properly understand how to manage the time of the Parliament, you have to try and add days, because you have run out of time. My view is we should always sit more than less.

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: I will pick up the interjection. As an animal of this place I love every single sitting day, and I would love it even more –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

James NEWBURY: All I hear from the Leader of the House is ‘We love you’. That is all I heard her say. I do not know exactly what she said, but that is what I think she said.

This government business program shows a mismanagement of this place, because there are very substantive issues that deserve time. They deserve time in terms of debate, but they also deserve time in terms of broader scrutiny from not just the non-government members but the community more broadly. When you are introducing bills with under 24 hours notice, you are not giving experts outside this place – and I am sure lots of people, probably far too many people, in this chamber think they are experts, but they are not. The broader community and the experts genuinely in the subject matter have not got the opportunity to look at any of these reforms in detail. We have just seen a 500-page bill and a 150-page bill introduced – really, really important. But frankly we should have had it quicker, and there should have been a process built into that drafting that allowed experts to buy into it to allow sunlight and scrutiny.

That is the point that I would make in relation to the government business program. When you mismanage a Parliament, when you do not fully think through what you are going to do, when you do not manage the processes of taking an idea through cabinet, through your caucus, into the party room properly, you get rushed and you get mistakes. We have seen, week after week after week, amendments come into this place that fix things like spelling errors or mismanaged clauses in bills purely because of rushed drafting. It is not in any way the drafters’ issue; it is that the government have not fully worked out what they are doing.

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: I do take the interjection on the Premier. The Premier had a poster today on a bill that has not even been drafted yet. There is another one we are going to see at some point when it finally gets drafted. But we have got the poster. We have got the big poster out there. We have got the tiles. We just have not got the bill. We have not got the laws. I make the point that the government business program is another example of mismanagement of this place. We certainly will not be supporting it, but that should not reflect on some of our views in relation to bills therein.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (12:45): Shock, horror – the opposition is opposed to the government business program again. Only those opposite could come in a few months ago saying this government has no legislative agenda and we have not got any sort of bills up. We passed treaty. We passed voluntary assisted dying last week. We saw the intellectual display of members of Parliament like we do not normally see across the Parliament. So I counter the suggestion that this Parliament is anything but functional given the depth that we have seen this chamber and the upper house going through. It has been an important hallmark of what is a functioning government business program and a functioning Parliament. And this is another big week. Those opposite have been saying we do not sit enough, even though with those opposite, particularly the Liberals, you do not get them on the second reading of bills; you do not see them. You see the Nats on the second reading of bills; they carry the load. And who knows what is going to happen with the coalition upstairs in Canberra. We do not know what is going on today, do we. We have got net zero sense of where it is up to at the moment –

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Mordialloc will come back to the government business program.

Tim RICHARDSON: We are very interested in how many will actually speak on the second reading of these bills. They are really important – the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2025 is important. It builds on the back of significant reforms that are being taken through by this government. I am really keen on the Restricting Non-disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Bill 2025. This is really important policy that needs to be debated in this Parliament. It is really important policy that this government has led, along with Trades Hall. So I am really interested to see the second-reading contributions from members of Parliament reflecting on what that looks like in our Parliament and making sure that victim-survivors of harassment are supported. They are looking at that bill and they are looking for leadership on that bill.

And of course there is the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025. This is a substantial piece of legislation. The member for Kew made reflections around the work not being done. Seriously, does anyone see how big that bill book is? It is extraordinary when populism and ranting at the clouds overtake the reality of where we find ourselves. It is one of the most substantial reforms. We love them in Canberra, but goodness me, if we had to wait for that period of time, we would still be waiting. We have had to lean in as a state, and those reforms have come through and Victoria has once again led the way. Those opposite complain that they have got a thousand pages to read. Welcome to government, member for Brighton, where you have to read and you have to go through. You cannot just argue into the clouds in party rooms, you have got to get things done. That is exactly what that bill does and why it is so important to put it on the agenda. It is substantive. I know the member for Brighton is an absolute lover of Parliament. He loves it. He would sit in Parliament for 50 weeks of the year if he could; he would be in here every single week. But the notion that his concern is a few commas and full stops on the substantive nature of the bill –

James Newbury interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: I know he has become a learned friend recently as he is now a practising lawyer. But really, substance over form – that would have been in the law degree, the mantra there. It is the substantive nature. I do not think we are concerning ourselves with the inflection of a word or maybe a comma or a full stop in a particular clause. We are wanting to keep kids safe. We are wanting to make sure that this bill hits the Parliament and sees its debate through. I am sure the Legislative Council will have things that they put forward in amendments and the like when it gets to their grand chamber, but the substance of this bill is really substantial.

We are looking to see how many front up on the second reading. I carry the stats on the government business program. At the moment we are seeing that on a per capita basis we need a bit more work done. We need a little bit more work done on the second readings by those opposite. I do not want to start naming names, but I am doing the Hansard search on how many are contributing to the government business program in these second readings –

Members interjecting.

Tim RICHARDSON: I am just putting them on notice. The Nationals are carrying the load. There are nine of them over there, 19 on that side. We have put them on notice. We are taking receipts now of those that are not speaking on behalf of their community on the second reading of bills. You have got four chances, anyone over there; I am just putting it out there. There is the labour hire bill, the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025, the restricting non-disclosure bill and the early childhood bill. It is a call to those Liberals opposite. I will even share my bill notes with you if you are up for it. I will look after those opposite and make sure that they have got a few dot points they can use. Just front up and do something on behalf of your community rather than coming in here and doing nothing, because that is what some are doing on second readings on that side, and they are doing a disservice to their constituents.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (12:50): Honestly, how could we support this government business program? If we are going to talk about a functional chamber, this is certainly not an illustration of one. We are going to have an extra sitting week. Wouldn’t a bit of foresight –

A member interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Yes, I know. It gets laughs from this side. Instead of having a huge, big break and overseas holidays in the middle of the year, we could have squeezed in an extra week and got some of these acts through that have been recommended. The Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 and the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025 were recommended by the Ombudsman three years ago. Then there was the rapid review, of course, in October. There has been plenty of time. If you look at this thing, to be introduced immediately, we are going to have to reinstate the timber industry down in Gippsland and fire up machine 4 at Opal. Look at this – and not even a day to read it. It is clearly not a sign of a functional chamber. It is clear that the government has lost control. So how on earth could we be expected to support it?

I will tell you what I do support, though, and that is my colleagues in the Nationals, always putting their hands up – like I give them a choice – to speak on the second reading of bills. There is a lot to get through and some really important stuff, as the member for Brighton pointed out before, particularly with the protection of children. This has been waiting for a long, long time. If the government were to be so polite as to listen to experts outside of their own echo chamber, this could have been done and children could have been kept safe long before this, with only a day to ram this extraordinarily large bill through the Parliament.

Then we get to planning. Honestly, I never thought I would be so passionate about planning schemes, but here we are. This is in no way going to help the regions, I can assure you, because we have a Victorian planning scheme that has been written in Melbourne for Melbourne. No-one is actually coming to the table to make provisions for the regions. It is just for the city, by the city, with no foresight – there is that word again; I might ask the members on the other side to spell it – into how it is going to affect the regions. We have such issues already with the Victorian planning scheme and the inability to develop outside of the town borders, to develop rural lifestyle properties or to develop anywhere that is not part of a Legoland-style type of subdivision, which is a massive problem.

The Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025 is one that I am sure we are all going to contribute to, as well as the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2025. We know this is some sort of attempt to address the issues within the CFMEU, but it also has unintended consequences for those using labour hire providers or in fact the Labour Hire Authority in any way, shape or form out in the regions, again. And the Nationals know this only too well. We are of course the only party that stands up for regional Victoria, and that is our dedicated job. Our dedicated job as a party is to go in to bat for regional Victorians, and the unintended consequences of these bills, the labour hire authority bill and the planning bill –

The early childhood bill – again, there have been three years for the government to illustrate that they want to do anything with regulation and child safety. For it to be introduced today at the size that it is and debated immediately is a travesty and goes against all sorts of conventions of the Westminster system of Parliament. It is outrageous, to use a favourite term of the member for Brighton – absolutely outrageous. I know my colleagues from the Nationals are very concerned about it. When it was presented they noted how many bills are within this extraordinarily large document. For example, the Disability Service Safeguards Act 2018 – that sort of reform has been on the table for a long, long time and for it to be rolled into this bill at very short notice is absolutely outrageous. How on earth could we support a government business program like that? I know the member for Mordialloc enjoys talking with all sorts of contradiction to the community. We will see how this one goes on social media perhaps.

 Ella GEORGE (Lara) (12:55): It is a pleasure to rise and make a contribution on the government business program this week. I am very proud to support the government business program, even if those opposite do not. It is also great to rise in this place following some rather ostentatious contributions from those opposite, and maybe we will see if we can take down the tone of this debate a little bit.

This is a rather unusual sitting week, starting on a Wednesday and concluding on a Friday, and I am sure we will be feeling all kinds of out of sorts by the end of the week. But we have work to do. On this side of the house we know that there is always more to do, and we are not afraid of an additional sitting week. We are not afraid of a big legislative agenda. We are not afraid of a big bill book. We are not afraid to read through the clauses. As the manager of government business has pointed out, while these are extensive bills and extensive pieces of legislation that have been put to the house this week, a huge amount of work has gone on to ensure that they are correct and that they do address the concerns that have been raised.

With your indulgence, I would like to quickly acknowledge that yesterday was Remembrance Day, an important day in all of our communities when we gather and we pause at 11 am to remember the service and sacrifice of Australian service men and women who have bravely served their country and remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Even being in this place today, we owe our veterans a debt of gratitude that we can never repay. They sacrificed their lives for our freedoms and our democracies that we enjoy. Even in this very debate that we are having right now, things could have looked very differently had our veterans not made the sacrifices they made. As we commence another sitting week, I think it is very important that everyone in this place remembers that. I would like to commend the incredible Lara RSL and vice-president Roy Cook for a very moving Remembrance Day service yesterday that I had the honour of attending.

We have another busy week here in this place coming off a couple of other busy weeks when we passed treaty legislation to establish treaty in Victoria and we also debated voluntary assisted dying, incredibly important issues in our communities across Victoria. This week we will continue to debate legislation that will have deep, deep impacts in our communities.

This week, as others have mentioned, we will be debating three bills concurrently: the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority Bill 2025, the Social Services Regulation Amendment (Child Safety, Complaints and Worker Regulation) Bill 2025 and the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment (Child Safety) Bill 2025. Can I acknowledge the minister, who has led an incredible amount of work on this and put so much time and effort into this, and all the people who have worked on this incredibly important legislation. They are lengthy bill books, and I know a huge amount of work has gone into them. I do want to commend everyone who has worked on this legislation.

All members in this place know why we are debating this legislation this week. When horrific allegations came to light earlier this year, the state government acted swiftly to protect children. A number of reforms to the childcare sector were immediately introduced, and the legislation that we will be debating this week is the next stage of these important reforms. The bills that are before the house will acquit a number of the 22 recommendations made by the rapid review into child safety and early childhood education and care settings and the working with children check in Victoria as it relates to the early childhood education and care sector, and together these bills will make a number of reforms to strengthen early childhood education. As the manager of government business noted earlier, these three bills work closely together, and that is why it is important that they are debated together this week.

These bills will make a number of important reforms, including consolidating key child safeguarding functions: the working with children check, an incredibly important way that we protect children in Victoria; the reportable conduct scheme; and the child safe standards. Strengthening the working with children check is incredibly important work that this Parliament should do, and I am so proud that we are doing exactly that this week in this place. These reforms will result in a strengthened independent Social Services Regulator to regulate the safety of children and people accessing social services – incredibly, incredibly important work – and I think we can all agree that this is much-needed reform in Victoria, and I know a number of my colleagues will be making a contribution in this debate throughout the week.

Also this week there is another incredibly important piece of legislation, the Restricting Non-disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Bill 2025. I know so many women who have been sexually harassed at work, and this piece of legislation is so important to give victim-survivors of sexual harassment the freedom to speak up and speak out.

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (13:00): I am pleased to rise today on the government business program – and yes, we oppose it. We oppose it for the very simple reason that when we started the day there were four bills and now there are six with no notice given again. This is a problem with this government: they bring out a 470-something page document and then expect us to read it, talk to stakeholders, talk to community and then debate that in the chamber within 24 hours. That is not realistic; it is not realistic on any level. The simple fact of the matter is three years ago the Ombudsman’s report came out and the government did nothing until the disgraceful acts this year. Then it said, ‘We’re going to have a rapid review,’ then started a rapid review. This bill was meant to be introduced in October, and now we are here in the middle of November debating this bill. It is not fair to the opposition, or the crossbench for that matter. The fact that the member for Ringwood brought up that he did not get that bill until 6:30 or 7:30 last night is pretty disgraceful. The member for Ringwood is a member of Parliament and does deserve the respect to get this bill in due course in the time allotted to actually read it and consult with people. He is on the crossbench but he is a member of this chamber, and that is the problem.

The member for Mordialloc actually said more needs to be done, and I agree. I could not agree more with him on that. We have had a government that has been asleep at the wheel for 2½ years, and now it is starting to jam bills through this Parliament with no notice. Next year we only have 36 sitting days, down from 51, so the member for Mordialloc is completely right: we should be sitting more next year. We are not going to sit for 11 weeks in the lead-up to the election. Is it going to be the standard of practice by this government next year on 36 sitting days that we get no notice to debate bills – that they will just put bills in on the day, use the standing orders, and then we have to sit back and decipher something in a 24-hour period? Is that what the government is going to do next year? To be honest, I think the community expects us to sit more than 36 days in a year. What happens in October next year when we are not sitting? Dump day on reports, leaving out all the government scrutiny. Let us not sit, because we had dump day this year and it did not look too good for the government. So next year what are they going to do? They are going to get rid of it altogether so they will not get scrutinised, and it will not happen in a parliamentary sitting week. This is where this government fails – it fails all the time.

I am looking forward to the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2025. This bill coming through is on the back end of the Wilson review. But will it address the concerns of the construction industry and the corrupt behaviour of the CFMEU? Will it go far enough? That is what the community is expecting from this bill. I will not pre-empt debate – we will state our position on that bill later and the debate will happen later – but it would want to be within community expectation that this bill will bring the CFMEU under control and start to get rid of the corruption in our state. Just in New South Wales it was announced today that the New South Wales division of the CFMEU and John Holland have reached an agreement today that they will exclude certain labour hire companies from their sites because of their corrupt behaviour. Does this government have the guts to do the same? Do this government have the guts to bring their little mates into line and get rid of the corruption within the CFMEU? They get about 5 mill a year off the CFMEU, so are they going to risk that to actually stamp out corruption within the CFMEU on Victorian government building sites?

James Newbury interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: It is part of their DNA, member for Brighton, you are exactly right, and this is the problem. I do not think the government is strong enough to do that, I really do not.

Another bill we have coming in is the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025, a bill that will strip away all rights of community and all rights of neighbouring properties. This government are ramming this through because they are behind on their housing target, a target they have not met since they announced it two years ago. They are 50,000-odd homes behind already. Yes, we oppose the business program; it is rubbish.

Assembly divided on motion: