Tuesday, 17 March 2026

 Bridget VALLENCE (Evelyn) (14:43): I am delivering my Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026 speech in three parts today – once interrupted by an evacuation for a fire alarm and then interrupted by question time. But now hopefully I have an opportunity to conclude my remarks in relation to this so-called regulatory reform bill – because, as I said earlier, there is absolutely nothing relating to regulatory reform in this bill.

If the Labor government was serious about regulatory reform and about dealing with some of the most immediate issues and challenges that we are facing, such as – as the government has said and Premier Allan has said many times – pulling out corruption by its roots on rotten Big Build government worksites, why wouldn’t they have reforms in this bill to do what the Victorian Liberals and Nationals have proposed, which is to give IBAC follow-the-money powers to establish a construction enforcement watchdog and to establish a royal commission to immediately investigate the corrupt practices that have been allowed to flourish and take root on the Labor government’s Big Build construction worksites? Yet these measures are not in the regulatory reform bill.

This government has voted against these measures time and time again, demonstrating it absolutely has no interest in or commitment to bettering the lives of Victorians. It does not care that the $15 billion of taxpayers money that has gone to corruption and criminal bikie gangs could have been spent on rebuilding hospitals, schools, potholed roads or on more nurses or more police. They have got no interest in finding that money. As has been demonstrated time and time again, the Labor government will put self-interest and the power of office ahead of bettering the lives of Victorians.

Where in this bill are the reforms that will increase economic productivity, which the minister touted in his second-reading speech? They are sorely needed now that Victoria is on the road to financial ruin after 12 years of Labor rule. Victoria has the highest per capita debt and the lowest credit rating of all the states in the country. In November last year the Victorian Auditor-General warned that debt, deficits and Big Build infrastructure cost blowouts pose long-term dangers to the state’s financial viability. As was revealed as recently as a few weeks ago in the midyear financial report, net debt has increased to $160.9 billion. That is an increase of $10.1 billion in just six months. Net debt as a share of the state economy has risen again and is now nearly a quarter of Victoria’s economy. Compared to this time last year the latest financial data shows the Labor government borrowed $12.7 billion more to fund cost overruns on the rotten, corrupt Big Build infrastructure projects that are embroiled in the $15 billion corruption scandal. In just the last six months $3.8 billion was spent on interest repayments alone – an increase of $522 million when compared to the same period last year. Interest repayments on Victorian Labor government debt are now on track to reach $1 million per hour. Just think of the dangerous roads, the potholed roads, we could fix and the more police and nurses we could employ with that money. Instead it is just going to pay down debt. That is a devastating number to Victorians, who now see police stations being shut, roads crumbling – all of the challenges that we are experiencing – the asbestos still in the schools in my local community.

What we have also seen in the last six months is that Victorians are being taxed more than ever. Tax revenue increased by $2.1 billion compared to the same period last year. Where is the tax reform in this bill? For Labor, tax reform means hiking taxes and making Victorians pay more. Labor’s horrendous new emergency services volunteer tax has brought in a total revenue of $1.4 billion in the last six months. That is an increase of $494 million in comparison to the last year. After stamp duty, the emergency services volunteer tax is now the second-highest stream of tax revenue to have been brought in by the government. It is not being used to help CFA or SES volunteers with modern equipment or to put fuel in their trucks to go out and attend emergencies – car accidents – or fight fires; it is being used to prop up departmental budgets after recent budget cuts by this Labor government to emergency services budgets and also financial mismanagement. This tax is not bettering the lives of Victorians, as the minister will try to have you believe. Rather, it is taking more money away from Victorians, which is making their lives harder when both petrol prices and electricity prices are soaring out of control.

Despite the increase in tax revenue shown in the latest financial report, it did not keep pace with the rate of Labor’s reckless spending. In the last six months the government recorded an operating deficit of $694 million. There is no reform in this bill to deal with that issue. It does not matter how much this government taxes Victorians, it always manages to spend more. What is the point of this government’s so-called fiscal strategy if it results in the government spending more, debt continually increasing and the government spending $1 million an hour just to pay off the interest?

The government’s economic record is a complete failure. Spending on the salaries of government bureaucrats has reached $23 billion in the last six months, which is already 52 per cent – more than half – of the annual full-year budget. This continues the long-running pattern of where wages growth has remained structurally higher than government forecasts.

It is clear that Victoria is fast becoming a financial basket case. There is nothing in this so-called regulatory reform bill that deals with business investment and helps provide the reforms needed to stimulate business investment. Business investment in Victoria is now in serious decline. According to the most recent data, Victoria currently has a business investment growth rate of negative 0.1 per cent. Let me say that again: Victoria currently has a business investment growth rate of negative 0.1 ‍per cent. Business investment in Victoria is not growing. It does not matter how much this Labor government tries to spin the alternative, it is not growing – it is plummeting through the floor.

Instead of businesses investing in Victoria, jobs will dry up and young Victorians will be forced to leave Victoria to find the jobs they need to get ahead. We already know that teachers, police and other workers are going to Queensland, they are going to New South Wales, they are going to South Australia. Youth unemployment in Victoria continues to be a massive issue. Youth unemployment in Victoria is currently sitting at 10.3 per cent, which is 6 per cent higher than the current adult unemployment rate in Victoria. What is even worse is that in Melbourne’s west the youth unemployment rate is currently a staggering 14.2 per cent under the watch of this Allan Labor government.

We have seen in recent times the flow of private capital, which is essential for funding major commercial and industrial projects, being directed to other states – Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia – which have had more stable and competitive tax environments. According to the Property Council of Australia, Victoria has experienced a 53 per cent reduction in global institutional investment since 2022. This data backs up the Business Council of Australia’s findings that Victoria is the worst jurisdiction in the country to do business.

Growth in Victoria has almost come to a complete standstill under this government. The gross state product is only growing by 1.1 per cent, which is next to nothing. However, when growth is measured on a per capita basis, Victoria has a negative per capita growth rate. At the moment, according to the data provided by the Parliamentary Budget Office, Victoria’s per capita growth rate is currently negative 0.8 per cent. The Victorian economy is not growing under this Labor government; it is shrinking. Yet there is nothing in this regulatory reform bill that deals with the problem created by this Labor government.

This bill is not proper regulatory reform. This bill will do nothing to fix the decade of waste and reckless spending under Labor. Victoria has the highest debt, the highest taxes and the poorest business conditions of any state in the nation. At the same time essential health, housing and community safety services are all suffering. With interest repayments on Labor’s record debt soon to hit $1 million every single hour, is it any wonder that we cannot fix the potholes properly, fund our schools properly, properly fund our hospitals or keep police stations open? Only a Liberals and Nationals government will end Labor’s era of reckless spending and waste, ease cost-of-living pressures and guarantee the essential services that Victorians need and deserve.

Whilst we will not oppose this bill, we will move the two amendments that I have referred to in the Legislative Council. We believe in more transparency, not less, when it comes to informing communities about these matters.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (14:53): I am pleased to have the opportunity on this Tuesday to make a contribution to the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026 and take the opportunity, if I may, to point out many of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies that were in the previous speaker’s very fine 30 minutes. The Minister for Small Business and Employment is at the table, and she was certainly listening to some of those statistics that were rattled off. I am flabbergasted in so many ways to hear this great state talked down and to hear, time and time again, those opposite coming to this chamber and rattling off a whole series of selective facts, a whole series of points, that put down our small businesses. They are not listening to those in the community that are working incredibly hard to do such amazing things within local communities and within their businesses themselves.

The budget – and indeed budgets before it – has pointed to the sustained economic growth that Victoria is experiencing year upon year and has forecast those investments in health, in transport, in education and in so many of the portfolios that go to making our state such an incredible place. Indeed in the period from 2018–19 up until 2024–25 there was a 14 per cent increase in the Victorian economy – more jobs, better jobs, better skills and training and the investment in TAFE, which we are going to discuss at length throughout the journey of tomorrow and beyond. Making sure that this government is investing in all of those industries is something that we remain focused on, and making sure we have got the opportunity to clarify some of those points I think is really important.

But what is more important is to be able to provide the confidence and the support to what is a growing state. We know – members on this side of the house know – that we have sustained population growth. We have got a diversified and changing jobs market. We have got so many people, not just from across the country but from around the world, that want to come to Victoria to learn, to find new skills and to find new opportunities. What we hear from the other side – and I have heard this now for the best part of a decade – is this state being talked down. It is of course confidence not being supported. We on this side of the house know and understand that that is a really dangerous thing to do.

Natalie Suleyman interjected.

Josh BULL: It is indeed the best city in the world and it is the best state in the nation, and we know that the investments that we are making make for a real difference. I am going to deal with a number of the important reforms that are in this bill, and if you take us back just to last year and you look at the opening of the Metro Tunnel project – five new stations, the direct connection between the Sunbury line and the Cranbourne–Pakenham line and the ability to move hundreds of thousands of people around our city and state every single day – that is a game-changing project for communities. If you look at the opening of the West Gate Tunnel, the new Footscray Hospital, the soon-to-be Melton hospital and community hospitals around the state, the growing economies, the new skills and the investments in TAFE and indeed world-class health care, they are so important.

I do want to get into some of the meatier details of the legislation before us, because this is important regulatory reform. I will also make the point that the previous speaker seemed to just gloss over some of these really important regulatory reforms that are in this bill. That concerns me, because there are amendments to more than 13 acts that are contained within this piece of legislation that go to some of the provisions around efficiency and getting a more effective and streamlined process for the way that we deal with processes within this state. It really concerns me that some – and hopefully not all – of those opposite do not see any of the importance of that, because the work of departments, the work of agencies, the work of government and most importantly the people who do that work should be supported and should constantly be reviewed to be improved, because that is really what efficiency is. We heard some of the comments previously not just about the state and the economy but most importantly some of the work that is in this legislation, some of the really important changes that go to some of those acts. We know and understand that acts like the Local Government Act 2020 are really important pieces of work. The Spent Convictions Act 2021 is a really important act. The Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013, the Accident Compensation Act 1985, the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 – I could go on – are important pieces of legislation that go to the core business of the state, and making those provisions is indeed something that is really important. So I just want to point some of those things out. I was not going to do that, but I felt obliged to do so.

The bill itself before us goes to, as I mentioned, improving efficiency in our regulatory system, and it is why we have introduced four regulatory omnibus bills over the course of this term – because it goes to, as I mentioned, modernising those acts and indeed making for a better framework across the board. The amendments are many and varied, and I have mentioned the number of acts that are being amended. And I think it is important to note that when it comes to local government, making sure that we have got the most effective system of local government in place and to be able to make for those provisions within the Local Government Act is really important. When we look at the Spent Convictions Act, making amendments to the act of 2021 – that being those important changes and those important provisions which go to those changes – is incredibly important as well.

The bill before us is really difficult to summarise in the 3 minutes that I have got remaining, but broadly recognising that good regulation is good for both business and community, making for a more structured, more streamlined and better approach to some of this regulation, is really important. We know and understand that by reducing some of those burdens we can get better outcomes. Not just this side of the house but all members of the house should be keen to see those regulatory burdens streamlined and see a better approach in place. What we are focused on on this side of the house is getting that balance right, because of course it is important that the framework and the regulations are in place, and why might that be?

Paul Edbrooke interjected.

Josh BULL: Because we need to be, member for Frankston – and I knew you would be tuning in ‍– making sure that we are getting that balance right to make for a safer, better system. Regulation is really important, because so often it is the guardrail that enables the system to operate. Without those guardrails we know that issues can occur. Making for provisions that go to having those guardrails operate as best as they can and indeed making for less regulatory burden is something that is really important. We certainly reserve the position to continue to make improvements. We certainly reserve the position to continue to enhance the system.

But I will finish where I started, and that is to say that the concerns I have raised over the past 10 ‍minutes go to understanding just the importance of how the system works. Making sure we are getting that right in the very best way and making sure we are able to streamline that approach and come along and make amendments to acts when we see fit, listening to the advice of departments, listening to what the experience is on the ground and getting that balance right, getting that balance done in the appropriate way, are things that are very important. That is a very different approach to what we have seen from those opposite. We remain focused on communities, we remain focused on constituents and we remain focused on getting the best possible regulatory reform in place to make for better operations right across the state.

 Tim McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (15:03): I am delighted to rise and make a contribution on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026, and the first thing I come to on page 2 is talking about waste reduction. Now, waste reduction – I am surprised that the government would put this in a bill, because we are witnessing the biggest wasters Victoria has ever seen. We only have to look at the Commonwealth Games. They were supposed to start today, and $600 million is just getting poured down the toilet, and this is just another day in Victoria. They have gone to Scotland, and our regional centres have missed out on the infrastructure they were supposed to get – that they were promised. They do not have the tourists in places like Shepparton, Morwell and many others. The tourists are not there and the visitors are not there because the Commonwealth Games is no longer there.

I wonder what $600 million would have done to fix our failing roads. I mentioned earlier today in this place that I was on the Black Dog Ride at Wangaratta, and the Kiewa Valley Highway is one of the highways. A bloke came off on that road, and it was a shocking bit of road. I got there just after he had fallen off, and it is amazing more did not. But even on the Great Alpine Road and other roads, I just look at what $600 million could do to fix that. It would build another 40 schools in this region. Anyway, that is just another $600 million that is gone. It just gets wiped, and it seems like the government does not care – just turn a page and move on.

The bill also talks about the Grain Handling and Storage Act 1995. We cannot talk about grain and grain handling without talking about the current fuel prices. There will not be a grain season this year if we are not very careful about how we manage the process going forward with the fuel prices. We do not need to go into rationing just yet – I am not suggesting that for a moment – but we do have to prioritise. We have to be very careful about how those who need fuel to get from A to B to run their business. We know trucks run this state. Trucks bring the food, they bring the raw materials and they take the food to the supermarkets. Without trucks on the road, Victorians will pay a very heavy price. The cost per litre is hitting all those businesses hard. We know that if the trucks stop or even slow down, Victoria stops. It is just important that the government takes a closer look at what this fuel situation is. We do know 55 per cent of our fuel comes out of Singapore. Of the fuel that comes into Singapore, a lot is from over in the Middle East, but some comes from other regions as well. I do not think there are concerns about that so much.

But the price of fuel is going to affect our communities, particularly when we are in a cost-of-living crisis like we are. It does not matter what your business is, whether you are a mechanic, a truss centre or a farmer. If you are a mechanic, you rely on ‘just in time’ to get the parts delivered to you. If you get a car in for a service, you need those parts this afternoon. If you are a truss centre, you cannot have thousands of tonnes of timber stacked up, you need to have that coming in and going. All this is trucks, all this is transport, to make sure our ‘just in time’ approach continues. Farmers rely on taking their grain to market in Melbourne and backloading with fertiliser. As we get closer to the autumn break, that is going to come more into play. Instead of talking about the regulatory legislation amendment bill and talking about sledge motions, we should be talking about a genuine debate about fuel and how we can prioritise to the regions. As I will say again, this is not about rationing fuel, this is about prioritising the regions. New South Wales have already confirmed they are going to support getting fuel to emergency services and certainly to essential services, and farming falls into that, as do trucking and other livelihoods. But that is just to keep the wheels turning, to keep the economy ticking over, because we know how important that is.

I heard the member for Werribee talking about fuel and how it will impact his electorate. Yes, it will impact his electorate, but when I looked on the internet I could see the public transport that he has available to him – electric trains into Melbourne, buses all over the place. Places like Wangaratta and Cobram get four services a day. That is it. Not 15, not 20, not 30 – we get four services a day. It is very difficult to get from, for example, a place like Cobram or Yarrawonga to Wangaratta. They come up from Melbourne. We get that. But at the end of the day we do not have the public transport to get our kids to school, get to work or even get to the supermarket. We cannot just jump on a 96 tram or a 601 ‍bus, get to the supermarket and get our groceries, because we cannot afford the fuel or it is not reasonable to use the fuel, because it is not economical. I know the member for Werribee understands his electorate, but that is tenfold when you go to the regions, because it is not just getting around town, going to the supermarket or going to school; it is about making the wheels turn for farming, for agriculture and for the other transport businesses that do daily deliveries into Melbourne and from Melbourne to bring services back to our region.

As I was saying, for the roof truss guy or the mechanic who needs things out of Melbourne on a daily basis, we need to keep those wheels turning or we shut down very quickly. We cannot just jump on an electric train or a tram to do that. With the cost-of-living crisis, it is really tough out there, and people are hurting. I know the Premier was talking about it in question time, nearly making a joke about it. We were alarmist about Robinvale because they were out of fuel on the weekend. Robinvale needs pickers to get to work. They need almond harvesters to keep going. My understanding is that that Ampol in Robinvale that was out of fuel on the weekend is back out of fuel again now. It is really important to understand this is ongoing. This is going to hurt those communities at a critical time when harvest is on. We all know if we have got a veggie patch in our backyard, if we do not harvest our tomatoes soon, the birds or somebody else will get it. Nothing is different in agriculture in regional Victoria. You must harvest when it is ready to go, and that is a very small window. You need to have that fuel on board and ready to go, and that is hurting some of our communities now and will into the future. I urge the Premier to make sure that she takes the lead from New South Wales and says, ‘How can we prioritise regional areas, essential services and emergency services?’ to make sure those wheels keep turning.

Clauses 22 to 26 in this bill deal with exceptions to liability for littering offences by owners of certain vehicles. I understand that. People littering out of trains, trams, ferries, planes – I do not know how you litter out of a plane, but anyway. Making sure that that does not happen – I support that particular part of the legislation. It does not matter whether you are on public transport or in a private vehicle, I certainly do not support anybody littering at any time. That is a part of the bill that is worth going into.

Clause 32 is about serious misconduct in local government. It is quite amazing that this government, who is up to their armpits in corruption – we have seen that with the CFMEU; we have seen that with the Big Build – now want to clamp down on local government about serious misconduct. The local government is not responsible for the $15 billion that was stolen. The CFMEU, the strippers, the Ford Raptors, the ghost shifts, the dodgy deals – local governments were not responsible for that. The government needs to be prepared to look in their own backyard before they get too concerned about serious misconduct in local government. They need to check out their own logbook first, because things are not really going to plan.

This legislation is not going to change the world for anybody. I know the member for Evelyn said this is not going to change anyone’s lives. We should be debating the rorts, the stolen money, the corruption or the fuel, as I mentioned before. But this government continues to avoid that debate and refuses to talk about the billions of dollars that have been wasted. Sadly, those dollars have been wasted, but if they do not want to go looking for them, if they do not want to go searching for them, that is the frightening thing – a government that just wants to turn its back and say, ‘Nothing to see here. Let’s move on.’ We could also be talking about following the money and keeping the trucks moving, like I spoke to before.

Coming back to fuel again, you cannot fill up jerry cans at most service stations, and that just makes life difficult. It does not matter whether you are trying to mow your lawns or fill up a motorbike or something else back at home, it really is quite inconvenient. In the city it is inconvenient, but in the regions it is essential that we have that fuel to keep those wheels turning. Having said that, I think I have covered off all the areas I would like to talk about. As I said, the fuel and the grain handling act parts of this are the most important parts of this bill at this point in time, because we are in a fuel crisis at the moment.

 Jackson TAYLOR (Bayswater) (15:13): This is one of what will be only a few remaining occasions left, by this point in the cycle, for me to make a contribution on a bill in this place. Of course it is a great pleasure to rise on what is a very important piece of legislation, which, as a number of members have detailed, has quite a number of facets to it. It is a bill that is targeted at making it easier for businesses to do that exactly – business – and that aims to make regulation easier and more concise.

There will be lots of opinions, as there always are in this place, on the impacts and effects of those outcomes that we see from the legislation, which I wish a speedy passage through both houses. I am very proud to be part of the Allan Labor government, which continues to reform and continues to improve and look at ways we can make life easier for Victorians and for local business owners across the swathe of portfolios that are impacted here. I would like to thank in particular the Minister for Finance. I know that this bill also touches on local government, environment, the Attorney-General, WorkSafe, the TAC, energy and resources, and the Treasurer as well as industrial relations, so it is really a wideranging omnibus regulation reform.

We heard some speakers previously. We heard from the member for Sunbury, talking about how important it is to talk up this state, to talk up Victoria, and to talk about the great successes we are having, not forgetting to acknowledge, of course, there are always challenges and there are things we can always do better. That is what governments should strive to do: celebrate the wins and celebrate the successes but also acknowledge those areas for improvement, whether that be in the form of legislation or whether that be out there talking to stakeholders, talking to businesses and making sure we continue this work of improvement, this legislative program to do just exactly that. We have also heard from members opposite, some of it relevant and some of it not so relevant to the legislation, but again, this is just the place for it, so fair play.

Members opposite have spoken a little bit about cost of living. We know that the ongoing conflict at the moment is having significant and profound consequences for the price of fuel, and we have seen that the RBA have put up interest rates another 25 basis points. Make no mistake, that is going to hurt families, that is going to hurt working people, it is going to hurt businesses and it is of course going to hurt the end consumer, because the prices are always going to be passed on. It is important that we continue to look at cost of living, and it is an important part of any debate at the moment when we look at not just the Victorian context but also the Australian and global contexts.

Also on that note, when it comes to cost of living it is important to acknowledge that each level of government does have a role to play. I know the Minister for Consumer Affairs was detailing earlier in his ministers statement some of the work that he is doing with the servo fuel app – a fantastic idea. It was great to see the New South Wales Liberals are asking the wonderful Premier up there Chris Minns to look at adopting that fine work. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. There are also some fantastic reforms we are doing in the real estate space, whether it be with the property reports or whether it be with the reserve price at auctions, making it easier for people to get into homes, levelling the playing field, whether it be this government’s work around free TAFE, around free kinder or work from home. It seems every time I post about work from home a bunch of people from Queensland and regional New South Wales jump onto my post. I say keep going; it only smashes the algorithm – every single time I have mentioned work from home, I kid you not. I had a reel that was Indiana Jones; it was a 6-second thing and it had 80,000 views in 24 hours. There was another one that had Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar, and that was 100,000. So I say bring it on, although, sadly, I think there are probably only three or four people watching this, so I am not going to get quite the engagement that I am hoping for. To those three or four people, I am sorry. I apologise. This is not the most exciting contribution. I was not sure which camera it is. Maybe it is that one, actually – g’day.

I am very proud of this government’s record when it comes to cost of living. Victorian energy upgrades got a shout-out today in question time, a fantastic program that the Minister for Energy and Resources has been rolling out that has been accessed by tens of thousands of Victorians. This is absolutely a government that is live to and aware of the fact that cost of living is a real issue for every Victorian. I am not sure there would be anyone who is not touched by the cost-of-living crisis that we have at the moment. I am grateful to hear the debate in this place today. It is important to acknowledge the challenges but also to acknowledge that this government has cost of living front and centre when it comes to our policies, and of course this legislation will in part address that through important reform when it comes to regulation.

This bill will make simple and uncontroversial amendments to various acts to support efficient and effective regulation. It will promote consistency with other legislation and existing policies, reduce the administrative burden of regulation, address technical errors and make minor updates. Some of the details of the proposal, which members have gone through – and I am sure other members in the time they have will also detail in great length depending on which one they find more interesting to their own benefit and cause – include the Local Government Act 2020, reintroducing the two-year restriction against former councillors becoming chief executive officer of the council after leaving office. There is some detail about giving arbiters the discretion to refer serious misconduct by councillors to the chief municipal inspector and some detail around the circular economy. There are some changes in terms of the Environment Protection Act 2017 and a whole raft of other changes that this bill seeks to address.

As I detailed before, I am very proud to be part of this government because it is a government that is committed to continuously improving the regulatory system and framework in which we each operate and in which our businesses operate. That is of course why we have, not just with this legislation, introduced four regulatory omnibus bills over the course of this term, because we absolutely believe in the importance of modernising our regulatory system to meet the needs of business and the broader community. The amendments in this bill, as detailed just previously, promote the integrity of local government by ensuring that detail around former councillors not being appointed as CEOs within two years of finishing their term in office. The Minister for Consumer Affairs knows full well, being a former councillor, the importance of this change and the positive impact it will have.

It is at this point in time I would like to give a shout-out to the local government sector, which the minister has a great deal of interactions with. I recently met the mayor, councillors, CEOs and relevant directors and managers at Knox City Council with a number of other colleagues, including the member for Monbulk and members in the other place, to discuss a range of advocacy matters that Knox City Council have, whether they be in the road space, public transport, food security, police and emergency services. In particular, coming back to that theme of cost of living, it is very easy to have a whack at local government, to have a whack at a local council, and we are probably all guilty of that at times. And sometimes they deserve it. We cop a whack; sometimes we deserve it. Others might agree we deserve a whack more often than not, but that is not for me to decide. But my point is that local government do a lot of things right, and it is great to see in this bill legislation strengthening the local government sector.

John Pesutto interjected.

Jackson TAYLOR: It is good to see the member for Hawthorn joining in for my contribution, watching with interest. I will await the request from Hansard. I will get the notification. The member for Hawthorn is looking for tips. He is down there; he is asking for the video. We will get the cut-ups on the reels. I am looking forward to it.

But our local government sector do great work. It is more than just the roads and rates and rubbish. I want to thank the councillors and the mayors for their work, and I want to thank the Minister for Local Government for his passion in the sector. Minister, it has been wonderful – through you, Acting Speaker – to see your passion for the sector. They actually say you are doing a great job. They like you, which is positive. It is more than can be said for any politician at any particular time. And of course we know there are productivity benefits to the reforms in this bill, ensuring the Victorian laws reflect the latest Intergovernmental Agreement on National Competition Policy, which aims to lift economic performance and improve our living standards. These amendments recognise that regulations touch every aspect of our community, from business to local governments to individuals, and our role as legislators is to ensure we are striving for no –

Daniela De Martino interjected.

Jackson TAYLOR: Excuse me, I am having a go here, member for Monbulk. She is interjecting while not in her chair, Acting Speaker – outrageous. I think I will leave my remarks there for the most part, after being rudely interrupted by the member for Monbulk. This is going to go down in history as a contribution I have –

Daniela De Martino interjected.

Jackson TAYLOR: It is on Hansard; it is true. I commend the bill to the house and I thank everyone for their time.

 John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (15:23): I rise to speak on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026, and I acknowledge the comments of the opposition’s lead speaker on this bill. She traversed its details quite eloquently, so I echo those. Of course we will not be opposing the bill, although we will have some amendments that the shadow minister foreshadowed for the upper house.

Like a lot of bills that come through this chamber, and certainly in the last 12 to 24 months, it is not so much what is in the bill but what it misses. Regulatory reform and the business environment that exists in Victoria is one of the most urgent policy priorities our state faces, so it is not what is in this bill that is so concerning, it is what it fails to enact. What we have been calling for and what we wanted to see in a regulatory bill that spruiks a commitment to reform – there is nothing by way of reform in here apart from, it must be said, a few matters, such as the spent convictions changes that are in the bill and which we of course support.

It is interesting because for the last two years one of Australia’s premier employer bodies has delivered its report Regulation Rumble. Its most recent report, in 2025 – it is usually published at the end of the year – confirmed that Victoria is the worst jurisdiction to invest in when it comes to regulation, licensing and the requirements of starting and operating a business. Victoria comes in last when it comes to payroll tax and second last when it comes to other taxes.

We have got a report from the Business Council of Australia which is buttressed by other reports. The CommSec report and the NAB survey for the last few years have both highlighted the deficiencies in Victoria’s business environment and pointed out, as many of us have, that we have a government in Victoria that is not friendly to investment and jobs. Ultimately that is what we are trying to do: we are competing domestically and internationally for jobs and investment. Even the government’s Economic Growth Statement, which it rushed out in the second half of 2024, makes a commitment, among a number of very ambitious commitments, that by 2030 the government would halve the number of business regulators. We are nowhere near that; in fact we are going the other way. Nary a week goes by when we are not seeing new bureaucracy and new public sector offices being established, so rather than simplifying the system and rationalising the number of business regulators, which the government promised to do in its Economic Growth Statement, the government is failing its own test to make Victoria a more attractive place to invest. Its Silver review is something that the government is struggling with. It has almost got a split identity. It knows, having commissioned the report, that there was a reason for it, and yet it does not want to follow through on what Helen Silver has recommended, because it is not really committed to making Victoria the most attractive place for new jobs and business investment that will benefit all of us.

That brings me to a key point about the government’s disingenuous approach to regulation. As I said, we have been calling for years now for a simplified set of regulations, reductions in red tape and an open door and welcome mat for businesses around the country and around the world. The government has failed to respond to that. I have already spoken about that today, but there is a disturbing trend that I do want to talk about because it is relevant to the backdrop of this bill.

The government wants to take regulation in areas that it is most interested in and push it behind closed doors, so regulation in some pressing policy areas is now being exercised and all of the powers and the decision-making that surround regulation in a number of key areas are no longer transparent, no longer visible. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean. At this point in time, on the estimates I have been able to garner, around about 8000 dwellings have been approved by the Minister for Planning under the development facilitation program. The development facilitation program accelerates development proposals but in a manner which shields the decisions that the minister and her colleagues might make on those planning decisions from public scrutiny, transparency and oversight. We do not know what negotiations are held between the minister and a project proponent when those discussions are behind closed doors.

It is clear why the government is doing that: it wants to bump its approvals up and it does not want to expose its decisions to fair and proper scrutiny, so it runs them through. I raise that to ask: is that benchmark regulation? Is that decision-making which makes Victoria an attractive place to invest? When it comes to energy transmission and generation, the government – the same minister – is making decisions that ride roughshod over local communities. It is not to say whether a particular project should or should not proceed; that is not the point I am trying to make. Every project should be considered on its merits. But why is the government using this mechanism to make important decisions, which, unlike other decisions that are made in the regulatory space, are subject to review?

I say this because I am very concerned about the Minister for Government Services, who has been out in the media quite regularly talking about data centres. Now, I am not opposed to data centres. I think data centres are an important part of our future. But we had the NEXTDC proposal, a billion-dollar proposal, which was approved within 75 days for Port Melbourne. Again, it may or may not be a good project; that is not my point. My point is that these decisions are being made in respect of billion-dollar projects, and they are being made behind closed doors. So when it comes to data centres and you have a minister who is talking with all the excitement of a young child in a candy store, who does not seem to be talking about all of the other considerations that you must weigh in the balance when you are approving these things – demands on water, demands on energy, demands on space, land use planning and all of these important decisions – if you are making these decisions behind closed doors, that is not telling the world and that is not telling the country that we have a regulatory regime that you can trust, that you can see and that you can appreciate for its consistency and for its ability to attract all of those investments that we all want. We know that Victoria’s jobless rate is the highest in the country. We are under pressure. We have businesses that can so easily redeploy their staff and their capital to other jurisdictions nationally or even internationally. We are living in such a competitive environment, so a government that understands that regulation must be as simple as possible, must be consistent and must be transparent is the true pathway to regulatory reform.

This bill is not controversial. For the most part, we do not have too many issues with it, as the lead speaker Mr McCurdy pointed out. But it is what the bill is missing. It is interesting, because the government seems to have a mixed appetite for regulation. On some things it wants to overregulate – as I said, the government has repeatedly brought into this place legislation that establishes new public sector offices and new layers of bureaucracy. But when it comes to construction, it should not be forgotten, particularly as we approach November, that one of this government’s first acts was to abolish the building and construction code and the implementation guidelines in 2015, which provided very sound pathways for, for example, the reporting of illegal and intimidatory conduct on taxpayer-funded worksites. The government did not want to do that. When it comes to tobacco licensing, why did it take so long for the government to bring in not only a licensing regime but, belatedly, the enforcement powers that need to accompany such a regime? This government does not really have any genuine commitment to regulatory reform, and it certainly has an aversion, a disturbing aversion, to transparency and oversight of how important decisions in planning, energy and construction are taking place.

 Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (15:33): It gives me great pleasure to rise this afternoon to make a contribution on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. It is always a great pleasure to follow the learned member for Hawthorn, who carried on the great Liberal tradition, at least in this term, of talking down Victoria; he spoke at length about what Victoria is last on. I think he may have mentioned payroll tax et cetera. But do you know what Victoria is not last on? It is not last on private business investment. In fact in the last calendar year up to December 2025, Victoria was second in the country only to South Australia for private business capital coming into the state. It grew by 12.9 per cent last year – 12.9 per cent – and that private capital is what is fuelling our incredibly strong economic growth. I think our economy grew by 2.6 per cent in the last year, which is not huge in historical terms, but in terms of how Australia’s economy is growing at the moment, that puts us as one of the fastest growing economies in the nation.

The member for Hawthorn’s contribution followed the member for Evelyn’s contribution, and she did the same thing: talk down Victoria to the rest of the world. Honestly, if business leaders outside of Victoria were just to watch and listen to this place, and listen to the Victorian Liberal Party and how they talk about Victoria, they would never invest here ever. They talk this state down so much it bewilders me that they want to govern it, to be frank. As I said, private investment into Victoria is one of the strongest of any state in the nation, and that is because we are a state that is open for business. We always have been and we always will be under an Allan Labor government.

This is a bill that covers several different key areas, a couple of which I will go into as part of this contribution. The first that I want to touch on was the spent convictions element of this bill. Everybody in this place, and indeed everybody around Victoria, now knows that this government has had to pull a couple of different levers in a legislative respect to keep this community safe – to keep Victorians safe. That includes legislating so the judiciary can hand down punishments to young offenders that fit the crime that they have committed. But what we also have to be conscious of is young people that may perhaps have made a mistake in their life, and this spent convictions element of this bill – somebody that has made a mistake in their life that is not a violent or a serious or a major crime has a conviction hanging over their head. For a 20-something-year-old that may have committed a minor offence in their teen years who has a conviction hanging over their head, that can be detrimental to that person’s ability to gain employment in many areas of the Victorian economy and to do many other things as well. I note that the opposition supports this change as well, because I think it fundamentally is a positive change when we are talking about people rehabilitating, getting on with their lives and becoming fruitful members of our state. I just wanted to touch on that component of this bill at the outset.

We have spoken at length about the changes to local government, which I will not go into, but another incredibly important component of this bill is the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. We as a Victorian government, since we came to power in 2014, decided that we were going to be one of the most ambitious anywhere in the country when it came to protecting our environment and when it came to the generation of renewable energy as well. This regulatory reform bill goes right to that with these circular economy changes.

I am obviously the member for Tarneit, and residents in Tarneit take impacts to Victoria’s environment incredibly seriously. They do so because it is a very large South Asian and Pacific Islander community, and they come from places – from countries – that feel the effects of climate change in a disproportionate way. So when this government talks about environmental change and environmental policy, the people in Tarneit and Hoppers Crossing absolutely love it, and they do not just talk the talk, they walk the walk. When we go to Victoria’s solar rebate program, Tarneit residents are some of the largest uptakers anywhere in Victoria. Over 13,000 families have taken advantage of that rebate and put solar panels on their homes. That is not just good for the environment, it is also good for the hip pocket. It means that during peak times, during the day when the sun is out, the energy generation that they are getting off their solar panels is going to drive down their power bills, but it is also going to drive down Victoria’s emissions, which is incredibly important.

A further 70,000 rebates for the VEU have been taken advantage of in Tarneit as well. For those that are not aware of this rebate through the VEU, for instance, if you have got an old gas hot water service that has come to the end of its life, you can take advantage as long as you qualify. As long as you meet the means test, you can take advantage of Victoria’s VEU program – Victorian energy upgrade program – and you can swap out that old gas hot water service for a new electric heat pump for about the same price as it would cost just to replace the gas hot water service or even a little bit lower. What that will do is make your home more energy efficient. It will drive down emissions, but it will also drive down your power costs each month, because we know that gas at the moment is the most expensive form of power. That is because we have diminishing gas reserves in both the Gippsland Basin and the Otway Basin, although there has been a good discovery in the Otway Basin in recent times. That is an incredibly important component of this bill, to make sure that we are driving our way towards that ambitious renewable energy target of 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035. Obviously offshore wind and other really large projects are going to be the major drivers of that, but we all need to do our bit, and the Tarneit community is absolutely doing that.

I contest the notion that Victoria has a complicated regulatory framework. I contest the notion that that is stopping businesses from investing in this state. As I said at the outset of this contribution, the numbers do not lie. I am not sure where the member for Evelyn got her numbers from, but the most recent ABS data is absolutely clear: an increase of 12.9 per cent in private business investment into Victoria in the last calendar year. That is driving economic growth, which is some of the fastest anywhere in Australia, right here in this state. And this bill, whilst it does not go to economic reform, makes the regulatory framework amongst a whole bunch of settings in our economy – whether that be local government, whether that be the circular economy or whether that be in the justice system – a lot easier, because those parts of the Victorian economy need a simpler regulatory framework. As I said at the outset of this contribution, I have never been a day in this place this term when those opposite have not talked down Victoria. Those on this side of the house will continue to support Victorians, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (15:43): I also rise to speak on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. Going through the detail, there is not a great deal of reform. We have heard it is very much a tidy-up bill. It contains technical adjustments, but it seems to be avoiding some of those big issues – the 13th amendment to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021, as an example, in the last four years. If only we could get it right the first time, we would not be spending quite so much time.

There are a few areas of the legislation that I want to talk about, because as the member for Tarneit was speaking and making these allegations that we are factually incorrect on our side, I thought it prudent to direct him to some of the voices of Victorians. Earlier the member for Bayswater was really excited about his social media engagement – good on him. But there are a few videos that have been put up in the last couple of days on the fuel situation in regional Victoria and the inability to fill jerry cans or fill tanks or get some fuel to our farms that have had hundreds of thousands of views. The comments on those posts are really interesting, and I urge everyone that has got up to speak today to read some of those comments, because they are not glowing of the situation in Victoria – because their lives are being impacted by the consequence of shocking policy by this government.

I am first going to quickly speak about the Grain Handling and Storage Act 1995, which goes directly to the crisis that we have unfolding right now in regional Victoria. Earlier today the Premier was talking about convening a meeting to discuss the fuel crisis in regional Victoria. Last weekend – not the one that just passed, the one before – the CFA issued communications to all of our brigades saying ‘Fill up your tanks.’ So the notice was there – the understanding that we are facing a fuel crisis – over a week ago, and yet it has taken this amount of time for this government to step in and actually do something about it. Today my community is faced with power outages. I cannot tell you how many messages I have received and emails and calls there have been to our office saying, ‘We have no power, and we have no fuel to fuel our generators to give us power.’ And these are not people wanting to turn on the heater or the aircon, these are people needing to run their homes, their livelihoods and their businesses to fuel regional Victoria. They cannot access their power.

I have been speaking over the last few days to Dave and Kirrily of Petrostar. They are an independent fuel retailer in our region. Independents, as we heard earlier today in question time, have been criticised for working the spot market. They need to, because the major fuel distributors no longer deliver to farms. I worry that the reality check for this government – the warning signals are there right now – will come when the prices on our shelves in the supermarkets spike and are exploding, when we see the cost of our meat and our vegetables, grown in Victoria, spike because it is not affordable to get our produce to market. We cannot get our produce to market. I had a text message today from CJ Ogston, who runs a machinery business. He cannot run his business. Ange Doyle is running our Gooram recovery committee in a fire-affected community. All of those communities that are trying to recover from the Longwood bushfire cannot even put fuel in their chainsaws right now. So it is not just people wanting to get around and drive their cars to and from school or do drop-offs or go to the supermarket. While that is all very critical, this is about fuelling the state. Please stop ignoring it. It is a crisis. These allegations that we are scaremongering are absolutely outrageous.

During question time I received a message from Warren about price gouging. We have evidence of people promoting a cost of diesel in cents per litre that is not reflective of the current prices in our community. I put up a video yesterday, and the prices have gone up nearly 60 cents in 24 hours. This is astronomical and requires a government that is willing to listen to Victorians and not gaslight them and say, ‘There is no issue here. Move on.’ I guarantee you, if the government’s response is to provide free public transport, there is going to be outrage in regional Victoria. We do not have public transport that connects our communities. I can hear the minister at the table, the Minister for Consumer Affairs, trying to criticise and belittle this contribution, and I want to say that if you expect our communities –

Mathew Hilakari: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member on her feet is misleading the house, and I would bring her back to relevance.

Bridget Vallence: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, I heard exactly what the minister was saying. He was denigrating the speaker in relation to what she was talking about – the concerns in her community about the lack of fuel and all that goes with it.

Nick Staikos: On this ridiculous point of order, Acting Speaker, I was having a conversation with my colleague here at the table about what the Victorian Farmers Federation said today. That was it. I think she should continue with her fantastic contribution.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Meng Heang Tak): I did not hear the minister at the table, but please speak through the Acting Speaker.

Annabelle CLEELAND: It looks like I have struck a nerve. I think it is about time the government does understand the fuel crisis that is unfolding. Let us have a reality check. Let us listen to Victorians. Let us understand and let us not ignore or gaslight. Let us actually say, ‘What is wrong and how can we help?’ Imagine a government that says, ‘How can we help and improve your lives?’ and does not constantly put pressure and taxes on individuals and households during the cost-of-living crisis.

I just wanted to quickly talk about the Environment Protection Act 2017 too. This is the first time in a decade that we have had a crisis, a natural disaster, in our communities where the government has not instated a universal clean-up. Right now there are individuals who are insured that cannot lean on the government clean-up program because they are purely supporting those that are uninsured. This is causing a two-tiered haves and have-nots when it comes to recovering from our bushfire. We are being short-changed; this is penny pinching. At the same time, we are seeing more than $15 billion wasted on Big Build sites by this government turning a blind eye to extraordinary corruption. The impact that has on people’s lives is things like not having a universal clean-up program, not allowing our communities to get back on their feet after such a significant disaster.

I will also quickly speak about the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987. I understand the bill removes the requirement to display a notice on land subject to a land management cooperative agreement. At first glance that may not be a high-risk amendment. However, with what we have seen recently with the VicGrid bill, allowing these authorities to charge onto private properties without consent and the division that is causing in regional Victoria, we have enormous concerns about this division. We need transparency. It is a right for our community to understand what is going on. If we have learned anything from this government, it is that they lack transparency and that secrecy is something they enable. We want to make sure that there is transparency in land use, because it is fundamental in regional communities. When land is used for conservation offsets or agreements tied to developments, people expect to know what is going on.

There is a lot of clean-up in this legislation, but we do have concerns that once again this is chip, chip, chipping away at regional communities’ rights and on the transparency of communicating what this government is doing behind their backs. Regional Victorians want transparency, and we cannot make that clear enough. We have a right to understand what is going on in our neighbour’s property and as a community. But one thing we all see on this side is that this bill actually avoids the true challenges that we are facing in regional Victoria. We need to really address the economic and governance challenges facing Victorians. We need a government that is for once finally transparent and cares about regional Victorians and does not gaslight them every single day.

 Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (15:53): I also rise to make a contribution to the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. It is a bill that includes quite a number of changes, a few of which I want to concentrate on, being particularly the changes to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 and also the Local Government Act 2020. Before I do so I do want to I guess reflect on a number of the regulatory changes that this government has made. I was lucky to be in the Treasurer’s office as the Parliamentary Secretary for Economic Growth when the Economic Growth Statement was put together. It did put a big emphasis on reducing regulatory burden, and I know there was a previous speaker who was complaining that this had not happened quickly enough, to his liking.

I do see that we have passed a number of bills and we have made a number of changes to agencies and to regulations that will streamline this process. Sometimes members of those organisations are not necessarily happy with the decisions of the government, but we see that it is important in the broader structure of the economy to be looking at where we can improve this productivity and improve this efficiency.

There are a number of changes, as I said, in relation to the circular economy act which will boost the tools available to the regulator to make better decisions and to help regulated entities understand and comply with their obligations. Thinking about the changes to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act made me think of this morning. Before I came to Parliament I had the opportunity to unearth a time capsule in Blackburn that had been buried at a Centenary of Federation event 25 ‍years ago – a pretty short time capsule – and fortunately enough we had someone who was actually present at the initial burial, who was the youth representative on the day, who came down to Blackburn again this morning to help with the unearthing. When it was revealed, it included a whole lot of posters that had been done by the local primary school, the kids at Blackburn Primary School, so a big shout-out to all those kids at Blackie primary. I am not sure if that had been intended or that was the message that had been requested by the teacher at the time, but many of them took an environmental slant. Many of them were using a slogan that we know very well, which is to reduce, recycle and reuse. When we think about it, the fact that this was 25 years ago and we were pushing this slogan and this was embedded in the kids’ minds at primary school 25 years ago, it is still just as relevant today as it was 25 years ago. It is pleasing to see that we have come further in our journey. We are now using more technology to try and deal with similar problems and the same problems. Obviously since those 25 years have passed the amount of waste that we create, with the amount of people that we have, has increased and therefore our solutions have to be smarter. I heard a news article on the radio today about some breakthrough at a university in Scotland where they were able to transform plastic waste into a drug that treats Parkinson’s. I am sure that is still at a very early level of testing, but it just is representative of what we need to do when we think about reusing, recycling and reducing our waste.

There are some other important amendments in relation to the Local Government Act which I want to reflect on. One is in relation to the definition of ‘serious misconduct’ and particularly a clause which inserts new section 5A(1)(h), which concerns the intentional or reckless disclosure by a councillor of information that the councillor knows or should reasonably know is confidential information. This one struck me in particular because I do recall an example in the not-too-distant past where a councillor had actually provided me with information that should have been confidential, which had been provided to them by a government agency in confidence, and that councillor was just freely discussing that matter in a public setting.

I was actually really surprised that the councillor would go there and go to that position given that the information had been clearly passed on in a confidential matter. Now, you can see where this problem could escalate – if there were a clear discussion of confidential information outside the bounds of the council chambers. Councillors obviously have the opportunity to discuss matters in camera and have briefings in camera where the confidential information is passed on, and as with all elected officials there is the expectation that if you receive confidential information that information does remain confidential and it is not passed on, whether that be to members of the public or even other elected officials, because that is betraying the confidence in which the information has been received. So I think this just places it neatly on record in terms of how that use of confidential information is considered.

There are also some changes in relation to the local government act in relation to the election of councillors if they have served as council staff and vice versa – if they have been councillors and they go on to serve as council staff and there needing to be a break between those periods of time. I think this is really important, because I was actually having this discussion the other day with some members of the community about the distinct role of the councillors versus the role of council officers, including the CEO. The CEO of a council and many of the senior officers there – many of them have been there for many years; they have gone through many cycles, different election cycles. Sometimes they will change council, but that is their profession. That is their job. But the councillor has a very different role, and councillors are the ones that ultimately are accountable to the people every four years at the council elections. And the reason that we were having this discussion was in the context of some people in the community feeling that councillors were delegating too many of their decisions to council officers and to, say, council CEOs and directors, for decisions that were seen as critical to the council and to the community. They would want to see that the councillors, as the elected officials, be ultimately accountable to the people in this respect. I think that that really goes to the nub of why we need this separation between a councillor and an appointment as CEO or an appointment as staff, because they are two very distinct roles in terms of their responsibilities, and they should not be seen as being mixed. So I think there are some good reforms in this bill, and I commend it to the house.

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (16:03): I also rise to address the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. In contributing to this bill I would like to wish those who celebrate and those who do not a very happy St Patrick’s Day. I am sure in relation to bill relevance there is somewhere within the 13 acts across nine different portfolio areas where that might be relevant. I would challenge any member in the chamber today to raise a point of order and wish the clerks all the very best in assisting you in ruling upon it.

This is an opportunity, I believe, to draw attention to a number of issues. Firstly, I thank the member for Evelyn, the shadow minister responsible for this bill, whose contribution on behalf of the opposition was an outstanding one and a detailed one, for her work to really pull together such a comprehensive bill report on behalf of the coalition – which, as I said, seeks to amend some 13 ‍different acts across nine various portfolio areas – and the member for Evelyn’s determined and purposeful engagement with some of her shadow ministerial colleagues in that vein.

I do note that some of the acts that this bill seeks to amend include the Competition Policy Reform (Victoria) Act 1995; the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987; the Environment Protection Act ‍2017; the Gas Industry Act 2001; the Grain Handling and Storage Act 1995; the Local Government Act 2020; the Spent Convictions Act 2021; the Victorian Conservation Trust Act 1972; the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013; the Accident Compensation Act ‍1985; the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Act 2025; and the Restricting Non-disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Act 2025.

I would like to focus, if I may, on just one or two of those particular acts that this bill seeks to amend, specifically the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Act 2025. As you may be aware, in Victoria at the moment there is a circumstance where corruption seems to be the topic du jour. It seems to be a business-as-usual approach in this state and under this government, something which we on this side of the house, the members of the opposition, the coalition, both Liberals and Nationals, vehemently oppose. And we do not just oppose it; we are seeking to do something about it. What I cannot understand for the life of me is why the government would not do the same and take the circumstance of corruption and disrespect for Victorian taxpayers money in the same serious way that members of the opposition, the alternative government, are taking it.

You may recall that during the last sitting week, during question time I asked the Premier a question. The question was in relation to the activities of M1 Security Services and in relation to their labour hire licence. I did note in my question to the Premier that a gentleman named Stephen Kyriacou was in fact the nominated officer for M1 Security Services. I further noted in my question to the Premier that in 2022 Mr Kyriacou was banned from managing a licensed premises after a woman was found dead in the basement of Dreams Gentlemen’s Club. Her cause of death was multiple drug toxicity. I asked the Premier at the time: why did the Premier consider Mr Kyriacou to be a fit and proper person to hold a labour hire licence? I did that because it is quite clear that Mr Kyriacou has not been determined to be a fit and proper person to hold the licence to operate a venue, and yet under the government’s labour hire legislation, which is referenced and being amended in this Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026 today, for some reason, under the fit and proper person test that was established with that bill and then amended in 2025, when the government, through media reporting and further pressure, determined to refresh that fit and proper person test, through that lens Mr Kyriacou has apparently been deemed to be a fit and proper person to be the nominated officer for M1 Security Services labour hire firm. The question that I ask is: is Mr Kyriacou in fact a fit and proper person to hold such a position as a nominated officer for M1 Security Services, given his history and given another state agency has determined that he is in fact not a fit and proper person to hold a licence of a venue – in this case Dreams Gentlemen’s Club – following the death of a woman on the premises? Why, in that case, does the Labour Hire Authority consider Mr Kyriacou to be a fit and proper person to be the nominated officer for M1 Security Services?

Could it be that the person who has a link to M1 Security Services is a gentleman by the name of Mick Gatto? Could that be the case? Could that be the reason why in this circumstance Mr Kyriacou, under the arrangements relating to the Labour Hire Authority, and whether he is a fit and proper person has not been called into question? I think it is a legitimate question. It is something which I have not just asked the Premier about in this place. Needless to say, the Premier’s response was less than adequate. In my view – perhaps not in the view of the standing orders, but certainly in my view – the Premier did not directly respond to the question which I asked, so much so that on 5 March this year, at the end of the last sitting week, I wrote to the commissioner of the Labour Hire Authority Mr Steve Dargavel specifically in relation to this matter.

I asked Mr Dargavel a series of questions. When did the Labour Hire Authority, for example, first become aware of concerns regarding M1 Traffic & Labour? What complaints, intelligence or referrals has the Labour Hire Authority received in relation to that entity? What investigative or compliance steps were undertaken by the Labour Hire Authority prior to questions posed by the Queensland commission of inquiry and the Victorian opposition in Parliament? On what basis does the Labour Hire Authority consider Mr Kyriacou, the nominated officer for M1 Security Services, to be a fit and proper person given that in 2022 he was banned from managing a licensed premises after a woman was found dead in the basement of Dreams Gentlemen’s Club?

I asked why the Labour Hire Authority had determined 4 March to be an appropriate day to announce that it had issued a notice to M1 Traffic & Labour advising it that it intended to cancel its licence and why enforcement action was not taken earlier if the Labour Hire Authority had been aware of these matters. They are all, in my view, very worthy, relevant questions given that we on this side actually give a stuff about how Victorian taxpayers money is treated. We want to stamp out corruption in this state. From the inaction of the government, Acting Speaker, I put it to you that those sitting on the government benches give less of a stuff about doing just that.

I am sad to report to the house that to date Mr Dargavel has not responded to the series of questions which I posed to him. I further note that Mr Dargavel is a former union boss and a former Labor member of the federal Parliament. If you want to know what sort of person Mr Dargavel is, just ask former New South Wales senator and union boss Doug Cameron for a character assessment on Mr Dargavel, which calls into question, I believe, Mr Dargavel’s suitability for fulfilling his what should be an independent role –

Natalie Hutchins: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I fail to see the relevance to the bill in regard to the opposition’s arguments.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Lauren Kathage): The member’s time has expired.

 Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (16:13): I am delighted to rise today to make a contribution to the debate on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. I do so because this is another important bill, one that will make simple but uncontroversial amendments to a host of acts to support efficient and effective regulations, to promote consistency with other regulations and existing policy, to reduce the administrative burden of regulation and to address technical errors and make minor updates. As mentioned, there are a number of acts being amended by this bill, the first of those being the Local Government Act 2020.

Before I go to that, I note the Minister for Local Government is at the table. I welcomed the minister to my electorate to visit the Clarinda Library. It is on the opposite side – the divider of the electorate is Centre Road – of where the minister had very fond memories from a younger age. We could also visit Westall Secondary.

Nick Staikos interjected.

Meng Heang TAK: We could have a great time over there. We know that the minister knows it very well in terms of the area, the locality and the demographic of the electorate. So thank you, Minister, once again for making that trip.

To come back to the bill, it will see change in the Local Government Act 2020 to support effective and efficient regulations by reintroducing a two-year restriction against former councillors becoming council chief executive officers, CEOs, after leaving office, as well as giving arbiters the discretion to refer serious misconduct by councils to the chief municipal inspector.

The Clarinda district covers part of two local government areas. One is the City of Kingston – and I will come back to the City of Kingston just a little bit later – and the City of Greater Dandenong, two fantastic local government areas. I have a really productive relationship with councillors and officers of both. At the City of Greater Dandenong it is great to see Cr Sophie Tan as the city mayor once again, a really fantastic achievement – the first Cambodian Australian woman to be elected as mayor. Congratulations once again; it is really well deserved and she is doing a great job in that role. We hosted a mobile office together in Springvale South a couple of weeks back, together with the local ward councillor Cr Loi Truong, another fantastic, hardworking councillor there. It was great to catch up and chat with local residents about things that matter to them across all different levels of government, and I look forward to doing so once again.

In terms of the City of Kingston, we have a really strong working relationship and we have been working through several tough issues together recently. The former Kingswood golf course redevelopment is one such issue that is really important to many of our shared community, particularly in Dingley Village. Dingley is really a special place. I can call Dingley home, an amazing community and a passionate community, and one that I am really lucky to represent. The golf course redevelopment goes back many years, indeed almost 10 years, and it is something that I have had much engagement with the Kingston council on, trying to ensure that there is a net community benefit for our community around the development. That has been a long and challenging process that I am sure has been strongly felt by many in the community. We have had a lot of community engagement recently around roads, supporting infrastructure, green space, environmental outcomes and neighbourhood character. We continue to advocate strongly for infrastructure and other commitments. Whilst there are some road improvements which have been included for Centre Dandenong Road and some outcomes on landscaping and tree retention, we really want to see more to make sure that this represents a net benefit for the community in Dingley. I will continue with the engagement with Kingston and to advocate strongly with the Minister for Planning leading to the planning permit stage, which represents another opportunity for improvements.

But it is great to have a relationship with both our local councils. We can see some changes here to the Local Government Act 2020, which sees change to support effective and efficient regulations by reintroducing two-year restrictions against former councillors becoming council chief executive officers after leaving office, as well as giving arbiters the discretion to refer serious misconduct by councillors to the chief municipal inspector. And it was great once again to welcome the minister at the table, the Minister for Consumer Affairs, on a visit to the Clarinda Library the other day – it was fantastic – accompanied by the mayor and councillors from the neighbouring council, which is the City of Monash. Thank you once again, Minister. These are important changes and ones that will help to ensure and maintain effective and efficient regulations.

There are also changes here to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021, which is to enable the Environment Protection Authority Victoria to stop the clock when it is not reasonably practicable to determine an application for exemption from any provisions or a service standard within a 28-day period. For example, this will enable the Environment Protection Authority to request further information on an application, rather than needing to restart the process or make decisions without adequate information. This will expressly allow the EPA to incorporate documents in certain regulatory instruments. This will ensure the EPA can apply and adopt or incorporate other documents, codes and standards when preparing the following regulatory instruments, for example, including exemptions, services standards, circular economy risks, consequence and contingency plans and guidelines issued in relation to risk, consequence and planning.

We also have further changes to the Environment Protection Act 2017. This is to ensure a registered owner can nominate another person for littering from a vehicle, so the registered owner of a vehicle is not unduly held accountable for an offence which they did not commit; and to provide for more specific requirements for a written statement when nominating another person responsible for a littering offence, instead of demonstrating reasonable belief. These are all important changes to our community. Littering and dumping are also a problem in our local community. I was very happy to also have the opportunity with the Minister for Environment last year to make an announcement on a crackdown on illegal dumping across Victoria, cleaning up our parks and reserves and holding illegal dumpers accountable for the mess they leave behind. That was a $21.5 million boost to the Illegal Dumping Taskforce, delivering extra financial support for councils and for public land managers to clean up illegally dumped waste. We heard from Kingston and Dandenong land managers, who are facing an increase in dumping. That is why we are delivering that $8.5 million to help ease the burden of clean-up costs for illegally dumped and toxic waste in our public spaces.

These are very important changes. As my time runs out, I am sure that my colleagues will also be touching on many other changes, as well as the amendments of the technical errors and minor updates across several other acts. Once again, I am happy to support this bill and its many amendments. It is another important one and one that will make simple, uncontroversial amendments to a host of acts that will help to support efficient and effective regulation in Victoria. I commend the bill to the house.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (16:23): I rise to make a contribution to the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. The bill that we are debating today seeks to make over 40 different amendments across 13 different acts of Parliament and nine ministerial portfolios. The bill seeks to make a number of inconsequential amendments to various pieces of legislation to update outdated references. On this side of the house we support genuine reform. We support reducing red tape, improving efficiency and ensuring that regulation is fit for purpose in a modern economy. But reform must be meaningful. It must deliver real outcomes, not just administrative reshuffling dressed up as progress, because right now Victoria is not in a position where we can afford hollow reform. We are a state facing significant economic challenges. We are carrying record levels of debt, and we are seeing cost-of-living pressures biting hard into families, businesses and regional communities more than ever before. Yet the minister stands in this place and claims that this bill will deliver economic benefit but cannot clearly articulate what that benefit is. Victorians deserve more than vague assurances. They deserve clarity, transparency and confidence that legislation brought before this Parliament will actually make a difference. The government says this bill is about reform, about streamlining regulatory frameworks and improving efficiency, but where is the detail? Where is the measurable economic benefit? Where is the bill addressing the state’s record debt? The state, as I have said, is drowning in debt.

Where is the clear explanation of how this will reduce costs for businesses or ease pressures on households? Right now businesses are not crying out for flimsy reform, they are crying out for relief and support. If this is a reform bill aimed at delivering economic benefit, then it should be laser focused on reducing the cost of doing business. It should be about cutting unnecessary regulation, not shifting it. It should be about simplifying compliance, not complicating it. And it should be about giving businesses certainty, not adding to uncertainty. If this bill is truly about reform, then it must do more than shift administrative arrangements. Businesses are dealing with rising energy costs, rising insurance costs, rising wage pressures and, critically, rising taxes and charges. Right now regional communities are carrying a heavy load. They are dealing with rising fuel costs and in some cases no fuel at all, they are dealing with workforce challenges and they are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis that is hitting harder than ever. They are dealing with increasing crime, housing shortages and escalating rental costs. As you can imagine, the current fuel uncertainty is hitting our farmers hard, and they are crying out for assistance. When farming slows down, the whole economy slows down. Fuel uncertainty has a ripple effect on transport, machinery operators, small businesses and the increased cost of fuel, impacting on cost of living at a time when households are already on their knees.

We hear that people should be taking public transport and saving on fuel. It is times like this that the lack of public transport services is highlighted in my region. We have been crying out for more bus services, as has the council and as has the community. The Labor government continually turn their back on regional communities, who cannot get to where they need to go. They cannot depend on public transport services under a Labor government. Do you know we have some towns with no or very limited bus services – no public transport services? There is no choice to reduce car travel if you do not have a car. The government does not understand regional communities.

Today we would have had the start of the Commonwealth Games in Shepparton. Shepparton was where the regional Commonwealth Games was born. I was on the taskforce in the early days, and you can imagine the excitement when it was announced that we would be having regional Commonwealth Games – something that, as I said, we played a very big role in. I was mayor at the time and I was in Ballarat at the announcement. I was not allowed down on the oval, which was interesting, where the announcement was happening, but that is another story. It was something that we were incredibly proud of. It had been years in the making. When we talk about the $600 million that has been lost, that does not consider what the local governments had actually invested in the regional Commonwealth Games prior to all of this. The cancellation of the games has been a heavy blow for my region and all of the regional communities that were to host the games. The games were not just a sporting event; they were a once-in-a-generation opportunity for regional communities to have a significant economic boost that injected hope into our local businesses and excitement into our region. Local businesses in the Shepparton district were preparing for an influx of visitors, with expectations of increased trade for our hospitality, retail and accommodation sectors. Hotels, cafes, restaurants and local transport providers had made significant investments anticipating the economic boost the games would bring. Cancelling the event has meant lost revenue, lost jobs and lost opportunities, and the loss of $600 million is just astounding on top of the recent $15 billion lost in rorts on Big Build sites.

Out on the ground, people are angry, and they are being continually hit with more or increased taxes. They are angry that their hard-earned taxes are going up in smoke on criminal activity. They are angry that the roads are crumbling and full of potholes. They do not feel safe in their homes. Police stations are closed or on reduced hours, and people are struggling to put food on the table or roofs over their heads. Small and medium enterprises are the backbone of Victoria’s economy. They create jobs, foster innovation and support regional communities. When they leave, we all feel the impact: fewer jobs, weaker regional economies and less investment in our state. Already we see businesses citing Victoria’s high costs and regulatory complexity as reasons to relocate to New South Wales, Queensland or South Australia. This trend cannot continue. It is this government that is responsible for making it so expensive and hard to do business in this state.

One part of the bill that I am very interested in also speaking to is around local government. The bill seeks to clarify that VCAT is to hear disputes regarding an election result in its original jurisdiction, preventing disputes and ensuring that the integrity of local government in Victoria is maintained.

It is hoped that this amendment will reduce delays to substantive consideration of the matter and reduce the uncertainty experienced by communities about their council representatives. The bill does call for a consistency in the enforcement of restrictions on the conduct of councillors. As you are aware, and as I have mentioned, I was in local government prior to being in this place. During that time I had four years as mayor. I will say it can be really challenging managing fellow councillors, and the councillor code of conduct often does not go far enough. We are seeing to this day that there are still councils having issues. When councillors engage in misconduct the consequences can be significant. Misconduct can take many forms, such as bullying, harassment, misuse of council resources, failing to declare conflicts of interest, breaching confidentiality or behaving in ways that bring the council into disrepute. The impact of this behaviour extends far beyond the individual councillor; it damages the reputation of the entire council and erodes public trust in local government institutions. Community confidence can take years to rebuild once it is lost.

Back in March 2023 Moira shire councillors were all sacked. There is no doubt that there were very serious issues that had to be dealt with and severe consequences, which I am not disputing. My concern is the length of time that the community were left without councillor representatives and that they will not have an election until 2028. This has had an enormous impact on the community, having no councillors on the ground to represent them. Whilst I acknowledge that Matt, the CEO, and the administrators are doing their best, having no councillors is a huge gap, and I know firsthand the important role that the mayor and councillors play in their communities. Local government is the level of government closest to the community. There is a reason why we have elected representatives voted in by the people, and I feel that that democratic right has been taken away from the people of Moira shire for too long. It will be almost six years without councillors by the time the next election comes around, which is far too long in my mind and for many of the constituents who are constantly reaching out to me with local government matters. We have to work out where things can be done better to avoid this from happening in any other electorate.

Currently the Local Government Act 2020 enables a councillor conduct panel to hear an application that alleges serious misconduct by a councillor. The definition of ‘serious misconduct’ includes disclosure of confidential information by a councillor. There is also an offence provision under the same act for disclosure of confidential information by councillors. These two enforcement mechanisms frame the prohibition of disclosure of confidential information differently, which leads to uncertainty and delays when allegations are made and thereby heard by the conduct panel.

Another objective is to make several minor updates and corrections to existing legislation. As such, the bill corrects the reference to incorrect substitutes of the Local Government Act under the definition of ‘election material’. Currently the definition itself refers to a subsection in which it describes the meaning of ‘election’ instead of ‘electoral matter’. Another one is around correcting the omission of provisions from the previous Local Government Act 1989 in the current act today due to an oversight.

As we know, whilst a current councillor cannot be a member of council staff and a person who was a councillor in the previous two years cannot be employed by the CEO as a member of council staff, a person who was a councillor in the previous two years is not currently prevented from being appointed by council to the CEO. I think it is really important that this information is made clear. I know in my time in local government some of the council staff were interested in looking at career opportunities which also encouraged councillors. But it has to be very clear what position they are entitled to, and I think it is very important that this is clear in this bill. In my final few seconds, I do think there needs to be a lot more work done when it comes to reforms.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (16:33): As a former English teacher I am very used to having to try and find the interesting, pertinent things in what can usually be very wordy, very heavy texts, and this is no exception. I would like to first thank the minister’s office for all the information that they have provided to me and my colleagues to help navigate what is a really important part of government, but a part of government that is not usually at the forefront of the news, and that is regulation. I know that our regulatory environment is quite important when it comes to our business community. I have met on many occasions with the Committee for Wyndham and their members, and the second thing they talked to me about, after traffic, was the issue of red tape and regulation in our government bureaucracies around trying to get things done. While those opposite always talk down Victoria, I want to talk up the City of Wyndham when it comes to business and business growth and generation.

In Wyndham there are 34,407 small businesses registered through the ATO; 97 per cent of all businesses in Wyndham are small businesses. The majority of those are in transport and warehousing ‍– 32 per cent of that figure – in the construction industry are 21 per cent of the small businesses and professional industries are around 8 per cent of that 34,000 figure. When I meet with these businesses one of the things they always say is that they want assistance to make sure that they can navigate these systems, to make sure it is easy to navigate and to make sure that what the government wants them to do makes sense and is something they can comply with.

In this bill we deal with a few things that go to the business environment but also more to the operation of government. Regulation is an important tool that we use to enact legislation, operationalise it and make it work on the ground, so it is particularly important. This is part of a series of omnibus bills over the years to help improve the regulatory environment through things like Better Regulation Victoria and work done in the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF) to try and identify particular areas that we can improve when it comes to our regulation.

In this particular bill we are looking at changes to improve integrity of local government, which I know many people have spoken about on this side as well; looking at protections for property owners around land management and land management cooperative agreements; and looking at the court application processes for spent convictions. This is something that is particularly important that has been raised with me recently in the context of youth offending and how we assist people who have done their time to access jobs and become good parts of the community. Part of that comes through that spent convictions scheme. Another very important thing, particularly for this side, is our workers compensation scheme. Looking at the payment methods, I could not believe that in some of these cases cheques are still involved. I would not even know where to get a cheque, and I am probably one of the few members of this house that has never had a chequebook. Sorry to make the house feel so old. I also would like to note that we are looking at modernising our regulatory environment to make sure that we remove gender pronouns, because we have moved on, it is 2026 and we do not need to refer to ‘he’ or ‘his’ in our regulation as well as our legislation, and we are slowly picking up on a lot of that as we go along.

This bill is part of the broader regulatory reform program that we have. Again, the champions of the free market opposite often talk about trying to remove red tape. We are getting on with that through things like Better Regulation Victoria and the work that we are doing through these bills but also through the Business Acceleration Fund, with $40 million in funding. This incentivises state and local government regulators – so not just our agencies but also councils – to reform those different processes, get rid of red tape and make it as easy as possible for businesses and Victorians to engage with government. Quite often we hear those opposite decry regulation and legislation, but then on the other hand they say, ‘But we need this to happen.’ Well, regulation is where this happens. We need to have a balance between making sure that people are held to account and that community expectations are reinforced through regulation and making it as easy as possible to navigate that.

When I speak to those businesses, like with the Committee for Wyndham, quite often I find myself in the position of translator. They will say, ‘Why do I have to do this?’ for example, when it comes to business licensing rules around food, which I know we will be dealing with in another matter this week as well. When it comes to the idea of the business requirements around food, why do they have to do this? It is so that we can trace and track if something goes wrong; it is so that we can make sure that people are preparing food that is safe to consume. We have seen in the past that not having a regulatory environment in this space has led to horrific public health problems. Now 150,000 businesses and 200,000 workers will save over 500,000 days collectively in applying and waiting for relevant permissions with the reforms we have been doing through the Business Acceleration Fund.

But like I said, it is not just about what we do for small business and economics; it is also about how people engage with government. I think of particular importance to that are the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 and Accident Compensation Act 1985 changes that are proposed in this bill.

It removes a legislative requirement to pay by cheque. I find it absurd that we are still even contemplating paying for things by cheque. There is some poor person in DTF that has to go down and draw cheques all the time, I am sure, just to meet really, really old pieces of legislation and regulatory requirements. We are part of a federal government push to transition away from cheques. The deadline is mid-2028, and with this we are on our way to making sure that there will be no need in the way the government does its business for cheques. At the moment it is very difficult to cash a cheque, and I can only imagine how difficult it is when you are in a position of needing workplace injury and rehabilitation assistance to have to work out a way to bank a cheque when it comes to a payment that you have received. We have got EFT instead of cheques, but we have got to make sure that the legislation and the regulatory environment around it reinforces what WorkSafe is doing.

There is a little bit of an interesting fact here, which I did not know: Finland was one of the first to eliminate cheques, in 1993, which coincidentally was when I was born. Since then – in my lifetime – Finland has not had cheques. This is an important part of making sure that government continues to be modern and contemporary rather than remain stuck in the past.

Steve McGhie interjected.

John LISTER: I am sorry, member for Melton; I have got to be careful what I say here. There is one particular part of this bill that I want to touch on, which goes to some of the frustrations that I hear when it comes to the justice system – the system with police and our broader justice ecosystem – and the need to serve things in person. There are very, very necessary times when serving some kind of order or document in person is absolutely necessary, but there are times when it is not. We want to make sure that our public servants, including our police, those in the Magistrates’ Court and those people who work in our justice system, do not necessarily need to physically drop off copies of important documents, when it comes to spent convictions, to the people that need to know about them. We also want to make sure that court orders are transmitted not only to the Chief Commissioner of Police but also to the Attorney-General, to make sure that there is that overview by the Attorney-General of what spent convictions are being granted through that process in the Magistrates’ Court. It is particularly important in this environment, as we talk about trying to help people reform their lives, to make sure that we make it as easy as possible to have that information shared to the relevant people and make sure it can be operationalised. This is just another way that this government is modernising our system, making sure that it is fit for 2026 – and not for 1993 – and making sure that we have a regulatory environment that is good for business and the community. I commend the bill to the house.

 Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (16:43): I also rise today to talk on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026, as others have done in the chamber. Obviously as we work through this bill we pick out different aspects of what is in the bill, but overall the bill seeks to amend 13 ‍different acts across nine different portfolios. One is the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. I think it is paramount in every electorate from where we were 10 years ago with rules and regulations about recycling to make sure that we keep up with the demand. There are bits and pieces throughout this bill, this regulatory legislation, that we need to talk about to make sure that we do get it right to make our jobs easier.

As the member for Werribee just alluded to before, small businesses are the backbone of a lot of electorates right around the state. For us to bring in reform to make that easier, make the red tape go away so they can just concentrate on their businesses and get ahead and make sure that they are doing the right thing, not only for themselves, but for the community, we need to make adjustments as this bill has come through.

I notice that one of the amendments that has come through is the disclosure of information to the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. Obviously being a resident of the Latrobe Valley, the energy and environment component that we do get to talk about is at the forefront of the major business down in the Latrobe Valley with our coal-fired power station, and also on the flip side, with the environment and climate action, with the rehabilitation. Especially at the moment with Hazelwood underway, making sure that is rehabilitated, because over the lifetime of the Latrobe Valley we have got some rather large coalmines down there that do need to be filled. Our first one in Hazelwood is going through that process now of making sure that it is being rehabilitated properly. We need to make sure that we have all the checks and balances in place as we do rehabilitate it, because it is going to be the people of the Latrobe Valley that are going to be left with this infrastructure, as in the hole in the ground. So how are we going to make that look good and how are we going to be able to use that moving forward?

We have the Labor government bringing back the home of the SEC and, I must say, there is a shiny new building in Morwell, the home of the SEC, with some workers that are now in there. The minister, every time she gets up – it has gone from 59,000 new jobs and, forgive me if I do get the number wrong, I think she is now saying that there are 67,000 jobs going to be involved with the SEC. I speak to a lot of people on the ground around the Latrobe Valley, where there is a workforce down there of around 3000 people that actually work in the industry, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but around 3000 people. They are the ones that have their jobs on the line – 3000 jobs to go, with Yallourn closing in a couple of years time, and then followed in 2035 with Loy Yang going. So every opportunity I do get to stand in the chamber here and talk about those individuals – not only the 3000 ‍jobs that are in there, but also for each person that works in the industry, there are probably another three jobs around them, businesses that rely on that particular person, whether it be someone needing to have their overalls and so forth cleaned or their cars maintained, or the food from the local shop that these people will go on to eat. So in losing those 3000 jobs it does not take long and you can extrapolate it out to be 9000 people that will be affected in their region. So we need to make sure that we do get it right. And I do harp and I do ask the Minister for the State Electricity Commission, ‘What is coming forward?’ We see some renewables coming online with solar farms and batteries and so forth. But where is the crux of these 67,000 new jobs coming into the Latrobe Valley? As I said, the clock is ticking and we are getting closer and closer to especially Yallourn shutting down, but we do not see those renewables coming online. We hear about transmission lines that need to be built so these renewables can come in and be connected, but we are not seeing that flow of work coming through so people can have the confidence that these jobs are going to be there. So I just wanted to touch on that one.

Another one, and it does involve the Minister for Energy and Resources, there are some little bits and pieces in here on gas. So from my time, when I have walked in with a background in the plumbing industry and dealing with gas all the time – the government went down the track at the start of ‘Gas was evil, gas was no good at all.’ But now it is in their mix moving forward for generating power for the people of Victoria, because we need to have that baseload power coming through, and we need to be able to ramp up and ramp down as we do need to. So it is a massive backflip.

Tim Bull interjected.

Martin CAMERON: And it may even be, member for Gippsland East. The Commonwealth Games were meant to be starting today, so I think we are probably seeing more backflips in the energy sector from this government than we will see from the Australian gymnastics team overseas when they come online as they do that.

But it was interesting the other day: there was a post from the minister about a small business, a new pizza shop opening up in her electorate, I think it was, and there was a big, big fanfare. What we did find was that the pizza oven behind them looked like it was wholly and solely run off gas. The minister was saying how wonderful it was that a small business, a new shop, was opening up, and a local guy who is a plumber from Traralgon – and it was not me that put the post up but a genuine person, Nippa from Traralgon – actually called out the minister. He runs his own business, Nippa, and he was saying that they are opening up businesses and promoting them, which is great, and saying they are supporting local business, but on the flip side they are creating issues for plumbers, because plumbers now, if they are installing gas appliances, can actually be fined and charged; it can become a criminal activity. So we need to know: what is it? Are we jumping into bed so we can use gas? Are we criminalising plumbers that come in and change a hot water service over or change a gas appliance such as a hotplate, which there are a lot of throughout country and regional Victoria and also in the city? Are we making that a criminal activity for the poor plumber and gasfitter, making them say to a person, ‘Well, I can’t actually fix it or change it, even though they’re still selling them in the plumbing supply stores, because it’s going to be illegal and I may be charged.’

So Nippa actually called the minister out. It was interesting to see, because Nippa came and saw me, and that post he put up was hidden. There was nothing untoward; it was not saying anything disingenuous towards the minister. It was just the home truth of, on one hand, you are standing up there promoting a small business, promoting how you are backing small business, but on the flip side you are actually blurring the lines of where we are, because right behind you is a gas-fired pizza oven. Most pizza ovens are gas-fired around the state, unless they are burning firewood, but that is getting harder and harder to get as well. We need to make sure that when we are doing these regulatory legislation amendments we are actually looking a little bit closer at what other legislation we have brought in, because it is a little bit of ‘Are we in or are we out?’ The bad things which were terrible, and gas is evil, we now backflip on it, and gas is going to be the saviour, maybe, as we head through for renewables. We need to know what is going on in energy in our state.

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (16:53): I also rise to make a contribution on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Morwell. I did not quite connect the pizza oven issue with the clauses, but I look forward to reading the bill more closely to make that connection. I recognise it has been a wideranging debate. I will pick up on some comments by some other opposition speakers, and particularly their lead speaker the member for Evelyn. She stood up and said, ‘There is nothing in this bill that will change anyone’s lives in any way.’ I do want to debate that, as other government speakers have, and particularly from the perspective of communities in Preston and Reservoir.

I want to talk about the changes to the way the EPA operates. The EPA is a very important organisation, and it certainly affects people’s lives in Preston and Reservoir, and I intend to set out a number of local examples of where that has been the case and where the further reforms in this bill are very welcome. As you might be aware, part 4 of the Environment Protection Act 2017 sets out a system of tiered permissions for organisations that are engaging in activities that are a risk to our environment. We, as I say, are very grateful for that in our part of the world because we do live in a part of the world where we have manufacturing very close to housing and very close to waterways and other water infrastructure, so it is very important that those manufacturing facilities are careful in the way that they address environmental risk. I will come to some very specific examples, but I have spoken generally about that point before. I do just want to begin by acknowledging the work of Minister D’Ambrosio, who significantly reformed that part of the act, and also the further work of the current minister, Minister Dimopoulos, for bringing the reforms that we have in front of us here in the bill today.

One of those local issues relates to Clements Reserve, which I have spoken about previously. Asbestos was discovered at Clements Reserve just next to the children’s playground back in mid-2020 by Serena O’Meley, who is a local activist. The investigations into that asbestos found that there was lead there as a result of that site being a rifle club, the Northcote rifle club, at the start of the 20th century. Obviously it is not good to have lead and asbestos near a children’s playground. The area has been fenced off, but now in 2026 we are finally seeing some action taken that will hopefully remediate that site. The issue was complicated by the fact that council were at the time of that discovery purchasing that land from the Department of Transport and Planning. I believe it was actually an old reservation for the F6 freeway. Council were trying to purchase it, so there was some debate about who would pay for the remediation.

But coming to the key element of the work of the EPA in our part of the world, they issued the notices that effectively forced the parties to conduct a detailed site investigation and then they issued further notices requiring the parties to come up with a remediation plan. I understand that will go to Darebin council next week, and we are very hopeful that we will see the implementation of that plan this year, and that will mean that concerns about the playground and concerns about that lead and asbestos potentially leaking into Darebin Creek will be addressed. Just to stress, the EPA clearly are working in a way that is affecting lives in Preston and Reservoir.

On a more positive note with respect to local water infrastructure and environmental protection, I would like to thank Melbourne Water and Darebin council for releasing just yesterday their draft plan for a trail and some plantings along the Regent linear reserve. This reserve sits above two water mains. It runs diagonally from the Preston reservoirs down to the south-west over Spring Street, past the Rona Street playground, past the JS Grey Reserve, past the Dunstan Street reserve, across Elizabeth Street and ultimately through to Merri Creek. Local residents have been long frustrated that this particular reserve does not have a path on it. It does not have any plantings on it, aside from a few river red gums near George Street. It is mostly just unmown introduced grasses. Not only does it not have a path or any significant plantings on it but it is fenced and gated off at various places, which makes it difficult for local residents to get around their suburb. I know, having spoken to people in the Benambra Street area, that there are some for whom those gates mean that if they have a pram or if they are in a wheelchair, it is adding 500 metres to their trip to Newlands Primary School or the Coburg Hill shops.

It is very pleasing that we have finally seen a feasibility study that will look at opening up that reserve, putting a path on it and, as I said, putting some plantings on it as well. There are some issues to work through that the team have identified. There are certainly some potential vehicle restrictions on Butters Street, Powell Street, Frankston Street and Sheffield Street that may restrict vehicle access to homes. There would need to be some new signalised crossings at Spring Street, Gilbert Road and Murray Road and some raised crossings at Regent Street and Elizabeth Street. I am not sure if those latter two would also need to be signalised, but this is the kind of work that the consultation process will work through. Then some new plantings – this is the very exciting bit for us – would take place between Cameron Street and Jacka Street along the reserve. I am not quite sure at this point why those plantings of trees and shrubs and ground cover cannot occur across the entire length of the reserve, but that is something that no doubt will also come out through the consultation process.

Before I return to some other local Melbourne Water and EPA matters, I just want to encourage any residents who live near that linear reserve to make submissions to that consultation process. I also want to thank the Minister for Water in the other place for her support of that particular project. She is a great minister. She was previously a Reservoir local, I understand, so she certainly knows that reserve very well. We look forward to working with her team as well as Dr Nerina Di Lorenzo, Vix Penko and Dan Green from Melbourne Water and also mayor Emily Dimitriadis and everyone from Darebin council on that particular project.

Coming back to a somewhat less positive example of where part 4 of the EPA act was important in our part of the world, we have a large paper recycling plant, a busy plant, up on Radford Road. Of course it is very important to recycle paper. We support the plant being there and the jobs that it provides, and it has been there for decades. For about the last five years or so there were some very noxious odours that came from that plant and that were affecting nearby residents. I remember doorknocking all of the houses within about 500 metres or so of the plant, and it was clear that even at 500 metres from the plant there were people who were being affected. The issue arose from bacteria in their recycled water system. Again, recycling water is fine and good, but there was certainly a sense in the community that Visy were underinvesting in exhaust systems, in sealing and in other processes that get rid of those sulphides and volatile fatty acids that were causing the smell. Fortunately, because Minister D’Ambrosio made those amendments to part 4, we now have a licence system, and Visy have a licence to operate, which they are required to have under the act. In fact there are conditions; you can enforce conditions through that licence, which made sure that they fixed up some of those issues relating to strong smells. I am not sure it is perfectly fixed. It is certainly a lot better than it used to be, but we will be taking the opportunity this year to go back and do some more doorknocking there and see if that issue has been fully resolved or not.

Finally, I might just touch briefly on an issue that we had, again which emphasises the importance of the EPA in our part of the world, with a company called Odessa Oils. They store cooking oils, decant them and redistribute them. They were responsible – it is a public fact – for the leaking of those cooking oils into a drain that then ran into Edwardes Lake, and that caused a huge problem back in August 2024. Then we had some residual oil coming right through until about the same time in 2025. Again, I just thank the EPA for the work they did there to issue notices to that company and to get them to fix up what had happened and ultimately make sure that we no longer have that oil leaking in.

In the time I have had I have just taken the chance to run through a few examples of local issues where the EPA and the way it operates have been really important. I could, if I had more time, speak to some other ways in which we could further reform the way that the EPA acted on those local issues. I just make those points in order to emphasise that today’s bill – unlike what the opposition have been saying, that this bill does not affect anyone’s lives – and actually making an organisation like the EPA work better affects many people’s lives in Preston and Reservoir. As we know – it is subject to a debate in the other place – the Silver review has recommended that Recycling Victoria now become part of the EPA. Parts of the bill in front of us touch upon that. If that change does take place, pending those debates happening in the other place, then that organisation will be all the more important to us locally, where recycling and the circular economy is very important. I commend this bill to the house.

 Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (17:03): I rise to contribute on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. In starting off, listening to some of the debate today – I worry that I was listening to it some of the time, but I will have a good look in the mirror and wonder why – the member for Tarneit made some comments contesting the fact that Victoria has a complicated regulatory environment. I would say that nearly every small business in my electorate, without exception, would disagree with the member for Tarneit: we actually have a lot stronger regulatory environment than we need in this state. I am just contesting the member for Tarneit’s statement where he contested that there was a complicated regulatory environment in Victoria. There is most definitely a complicated regulatory environment in Victoria. As I said, every small business owner in my electorate would agree with that – I constantly hear about that issue. The member for Werribee said this legislation is about getting rid of red tape – I am not aware of any red tape that has been got rid of in this particular piece of legislation – and that it is about making it easier to engage with government. Again, I cannot see anything in this bill that makes it easier to engage with government. If anything, over time, engaging with government has got more complicated in this state.

I use the example of the power saver bonus. Yes, it is simple: just go online and apply. In my office, if not weekly at least every fortnight we get another person coming in saying, ‘I can’t do this; I haven’t got a computer. I go to the library, I try to do it but I still can’t make it happen.’ I see a few people on the other side of the house nodding. If it is easy to engage with government, why is it so hard to fill in the power saving bonus form? It is not easy at all. For those that do not sit in an office and use a computer all the time, it is not easy.

I got an email the other day to say my shooters licence was due for renewal. It said, ‘You’ve qualified to do the fast-track online renewal of your shooting licence.’ It is not fast-track; it is very, very slow. I went through all the process where you have got to scan documents and upload them, which is fine if you have got a parliamentarian’s office with a good photocopier that can scan and do all that. If you are at home, you cannot necessarily scan documents and put them into an email all that easily unless you have got the right technology. But then as I got through the whole process, after I had done all this work, it said, ‘If you’ve changed your address, you can’t actually do this online; you’ve got to do a paper copy.’ Why couldn’t it have told you that at the start? Whoever was the bright spark that designed the fast-track shooting licence renewal? If up-front they said, ‘If you’ve changed your address since the last bit of paper, you can’t do this’ – but no, you fill it all in, get there, and all of a sudden it does not happen over that particular time. There is nothing easy about interacting with government at all.

Members interjecting.

Peter WALSH: Everyone on the other side can laugh; that is fine. If it is easy, why can’t people do it? And the fact that people are agreeing is interesting.

The Minister for Economic Growth and Jobs in his second-reading speech said that this bill would contribute to increased economic productivity, make it easier to do business in Victoria and protect consumers. What a load of codswallop. That is just absolutely ridiculous when you look at this particular piece of legislation. When the government officials were actually asked in the bill briefing about these statements and whether the government could actually identify any savings with these measures and what effect they would have on the budget, the answer was ‘Savings have not been quantified’ and ‘No benefit analysis has been undertaken in relation to economic productivity.’ So why would the minister say it? Why would the cheat sheets for the member for Werribee and the member for Tarneit actually say these things are going to happen when they actually have not been quantified at all into the bill? At one point one of the departmental officials said that the bill had not gone through the DTF rigour. Again, false claims: the Department of Treasury and Finance have not actually identified what savings are made in this particular piece of legislation. The bill does nothing to contribute to increased economic productivity or represent regulatory reform in reality. It is just a tidy-up of a whole heap of pieces of legislation.

In the few clauses that interested me as I read through the bill there was this issue around councillor conduct and the arbiter and the chief municipal inspector. I do not see why the arbiter should have a right to choose whether he sends this further on. If there has been serious misconduct, it should be dealt with. It should not be covered up at the arbiter level.

There are some comments in here about the grain handling authority. Grain handling in Victoria is so important. We see it at the moment with fuel prices, the shortage of fuel and the issue about our freight and logistics sector. We actually need to have an efficient grain handling train system here in Victoria. We do not, and there are a couple of things that are important about that.

The most recent proposal, about which I have had letters from a number of councils, is actually taking out the switchover points at the Sunshine station as part of the upgrade to the suburban rail and a potential rail to the airport. I say ‘potential’ because it is a bit like a mirage; it is further and further away all the time. But if those switch points are taken away, rail freight trains to the Port of Melbourne will be even more inefficient. They will have to go around via Werribee and could have an hour and a half, 2 hours, 3 hours extra travel time. That will put a huge cost on the system. If we are talking about efficiency of our rail system, this government is actually going to make it harder rather than better. That will mean more trucks on the road, more issues – before we have the whole issue around fuel and the shortage of fuel – more damage to our roads and more cost to fix our roads up rather than having it on rail.

If you talk about the whole issue of competition on rail and the government’s mismanagement of major projects here in Victoria, one of the first projects the then minister, the now Premier, had was Murray Basin rail. We have not talked about Murray Basin rail in this house for quite a while, but I would like to give it a run in the couple of minutes I have got left. The minister for that particular project, the now Premier, had $400 million to upgrade and standardise the north-west freight lines. That money was spent – and another $200 million from the then federal minister Michael McCormack ‍– to do a very poor job of upgrading the Mildura to Maryborough line and none of the other lines. So we have now got a system where the Mildura line is standardised to Maryborough, the trains go across to Ararat and they wander around the Western District to get to the port. It is a slower trip for the trains from Mildura after we have spent $600 million than it was before we spent $600 million in this state. So yes, the current Premier has got a lot to answer for with the corruption in the Big Build projects in Melbourne, the $15 billion that has gone missing out of those particular projects, which could have done so much for all of Victoria but particularly for regional Victoria. If we could have just had the crumbs off the table, our roads would be a lot better and issues with our schools could have been solved. But that particular Murray Basin rail project was the first major disaster that the minister oversaw at that particular time, a very poor outcome for a substantial amount of money at the time.

And what was the minister’s, the now Premier’s, excuse at the end of that particular project? It was, ‘I’ve done my bit; this is an issue for a future government to resolve’ – that one day a future government would have to resolve the fact that the rail freight system of north-west Victoria is as bad or worse than when she first started with that particular project, because we have now got mixed gauges and we have got issues around rolling stock. Victoria is the only state that has much broad-gauge rail now in Australia, so there is an issue around having dedicated rolling stock for that particular project and the costs of that, which comes back to the whole issue around more trucks on roads. So as the rail system is more inefficient, more costly to run, there are more trucks on the road, and we see the issues around that.

I will just finish off. If you really want serious economic reform in Victoria, give IBAC the chase-the-money powers so you can actually root out corruption in this state and end it once and for all. I notice everyone on the other side, those few that are here, have gone very quiet. Once we talk about corruption in this state –

Gary Maas interjected.

Peter WALSH: If you are going to speak up, how about doing something about it? $15 billion – all those zeros – of corruption in this state is a huge amount of money, and it is not a laughing matter.

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (17:13): It is great to rise and speak on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026. There have been some great contributions from members on our side. This bill is an important example of the ongoing work of government to ensure that our regulatory system remains, obviously, modern, effective and responsive to the needs of Victorians, notwithstanding some of the comments from the opposition. Of course reform does not often grab headlines, but it is essential to the everyday functioning of our economy and our democracy and for the functioning of our communities. The purpose of the bill is clear – it seeks to support efficient and effective regulation, streamline some of the processes and reduce administrative burdens. It also promotes clarity and consistency in legislation and makes a range of technical updates that ensure our laws keep pace with modern expectations.

The bill is about making sure the systems work better for businesses, for workers, for local government and for the broader community. When we talk about regulation, it should not be framed as a choice between regulation and no regulation. It is a serious conversation about how government works in an effective democracy, and the real question is always about good regulation. Good regulation protects our consumers, it protects the environment and it supports our fair markets and fair competition. Good regulation ensures that the rules of our society work for the community as a whole, not just those with the loudest voices and the ones with the most resources. The bill reflects that philosophy.

One of the important but could be easily overlooked aspects of legislation reform is ensuring that the language of our laws reflects our modern standards. This bill makes sensible updates to gendered language in our legislation to ensure our laws reflect the inclusive language used across our community today. I suspect there will be some who will be tempted to turn even this modest and sensible reform into some kind of culture war – and we have seen that before – but the reality is far less dramatic. We have already had a perfect example in this very chamber in regard to gendered language. For many years, members in this place were accustomed to saying ‘Mr Speaker’. When the current Speaker took on the role, some members began using ‘Madam Speaker’. But full credit is due to the current Speaker. She made it clear that the title simply only needs to be Speaker. That is short, clear and to the point – no gendered title, just Speaker. Do you know what happened? Civilisation did not collapse because the Speaker decided on that, and of course the earth is still spinning and Parliament keeps functioning. It turns out it is not that difficult to adjust language in a way that makes our institutions more inclusive and equitable. The reforms in this bill reflect that same principle. It modernises the language so that our legislation reflects the society it governs.

The bill also supports productivity and economic growth by ensuring that Victoria's regulatory framework remains clear, consistent and efficient. The amendments simply bring our legislation into line with the latest national competition policy arrangements and help ensure that our regulatory system continues to support a strong economy and a better living standard for Victorians. Currently the Victorian unemployment rate sits at around 4.2 per cent. When those in opposition were last in government, the unemployment rate was 6.7 per cent. I shared that comparison online recently, and I must admit it seemed to strike a bit of a nerve in some quarters. The member for Ovens Valley seemed interested. I am honoured that he follows so closely the great progress being delivered in Melton. I am very honoured that he actually made a comment on my Facebook post. It is really great to see that he is taking an interest in Melton and my Facebook page, so I commend him for that.

Time and time again it is Labor governments that invest in our people, support jobs and strengthen the economy, as we are doing at the moment. Part of that success comes from getting the balance right, supporting business growth while ensuring that the regulatory framework protects workers, consumers and communities. Melton has had the highest growth of business in the last five years of anywhere in the country. Wyndham comes in second. The west is leading the way, because the west is the best of course. I am pleased that the member for Morwell said that small business is the backbone of electorates. I have to agree with him, which is a first; I do agree with him on that statement. As I say, and I will repeat it, Melton has had the highest growth in business in the last five years of anywhere else in the country. Wyndham are coming a close second. I will repeat: the west is the best and leading the way. It is great to see that small business is coming into Melton, and the diversity of small business is amazing. I commend those business owners for having a go and delivering that. It is great to see that diversity and that growth in Melton. Going forward, with the growth in population and people coming and buying into Melton and living in Melton, we will just see that grow even further.

This bill is about reducing red tape. It is not about abandoning standards or weakening protections, it is about making processes simpler, faster and more efficient so the system works the way it should. For our builders and for Victorians trying to enter into the housing market, particularly first home buyers, these kinds of improvements can make a real difference. When approvals are unnecessarily slow and processes become overly complicated the costs do not disappear, and they are passed on to the people trying to build or buy a home. That is why we have made many reforms like the matters in this bill. It helps remove those unnecessary delays and allows builders to get on with the job of delivering more homes for Victorian families. We have been very clear about the need to increase housing supply. It is so important right across Victoria in different ways, increasing that housing supply, whether that be in the outer areas like my electorate or inner-city areas or even that middle ring of suburbs, and the differences that we want to deliver in regard to housing are so important. The more housing that we can build, the more competitive it can be and the better the prices will be. The whip is looking at me, and I am not sure whether I have got to finish my contribution. This bill is a really important bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing, Minister for Creative Industries) (17:21): I move:

That debate be adjourned.

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (17:22): I rise to address the motion put by the minister at the table, the former Speaker, to adjourn debate. Another sitting week, another act of trickery by this Labor government, who simply want to do everything to distract from the issues that are actually important to Victorians. They have brought a bill to this place.

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: They have brought the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill ‍2026, which the manager of government business, although she is being disorderly, points out that I have spoken on, and I have. I thought my contribution was a very good contribution, calling out the inadequacies of Labor’s Labour Hire Authority and the inadequacy of leadership and speaking about the different matters relating to that. This is a bill that the government themselves have brought to the Parliament for consideration. They have taken this bill through the cabinet process. They have taken this bill through the caucus process. They have brought it here because obviously they think that it has some relevance to Victorians – and we do not disagree. It must have some relevance to Victorians. They have got one other bill that they want to discuss this week in this chamber, which again, has gone through all their internal processes – cabinet and other such processes – and they want to bring it here. And then – crickets.

We are not short in this state of issues that are facing Victorians. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. We have got towns in regional communities which are running out of fuel. We have got a CFMEU and a construction industry which think they have got the green light from this government to do, frankly, whatever they like, funnelling money here and funnelling money there. Corruption is rife in this state, all at the hands of this government. None of these issues are being addressed by this government. None of these issues are being addressed in the bills that this government is bringing forward, and yet this government now seeks to adjourn the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026 to bring on a sledge motion. Again, this is the third week running that the government has –

James Newbury interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: Fourth. Third or fourth – I will go to the third umpire – but it is at least the third week that this government has done this, disrespecting what I believe is the opportunity of this house to do good for the Victorian people, who desperately need their political leaders to do better at this time and who desperately need their political leaders to stand up and to take leadership on issues that are impacting Victorians right now.

We need to give teachers certainty. The government has obviously put forward – well, at least in the union’s eyes – a measly pay offer which they rejected quite swiftly out of hand. The government clearly does not recognise or value the importance of the teaching profession, does not value and respect the contribution that teachers make, so much so that as soon as the offer was received it was rejected. This is an issue facing Victorians that should be considered in this place. Matters of integrity, matters of the proper and correct use of taxpayers funds in a way that considers the integrity and respect and other matters should be considered, but they are not being considered. Instead this government want to adjourn debate on a bill that they have brought forward, which they think is so important that they themselves have brought it forward, in order to – for at least the third, possibly fourth week in a row – introduce a sledge motion. We say no. We say that this is an improper use, in our view, of the Parliament’s time. We do not think that the Parliament should be used as a plaything by a desperate Labor government that is simply ignoring the issues that are facing Victorians that are being discussed around the kitchen table amongst Victorian families that are impacting the lives of Victorians at the minute.

This government has no plan to address the increasing cost-of-living crisis impacting Victorians, legitimate concerns around security and safety in our community, legitimate concerns around the ineffective health system – not the health workers; we love them. We think they are doing an incredible job, but it is the structure of the health system that is left wanting that is the responsibility of this government. There are so many things we could be talking about, but no, all this government wants to do is sledge.

 Paul EDBROOKE (Frankston) (17:27): The opposition is broken. Get a new one. Where do you get a new opposition? You can imagine the whip, the member for Mornington, having to wake people up right now saying, ‘You might have to come into the chamber.’ ‘And speak on what?’ There is no-one on that side of the chamber of calibre that can speak on this. They are broken or they have gone home. There is no shame in quitting. There is no shame in admitting you are not up to it. I respect that. I have seen people that are more powerful, tougher people than those opposite, give up. There is no shame in that, but just admit it: it is time to move and it is pragmatic to move to notice of motion 2 on the notice paper and –

James Newbury interjected.

Paul EDBROOKE: If you do not know what it is, that is going to be hard to talk about, isn’t it? You have said it is a sledge motion. I do not think talking about TAFE is a sledge motion at all; it is talking about opportunity. I will allow other people to speak on this. I know there are plenty of other people that want to speak on this motion –

James Newbury interjected.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): Manager of Opposition Business!

Paul EDBROOKE: Thank you for your protection, Acting Speaker. I very much appreciate it. Of course I support this motion.

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (17:28): That was the shortest contribution – less than a minute of the 5-minute time. What a false start. What a short contribution on what could have been an opportunity for the member for Frankston to set out his concerns and reasoning to adjourn debate.

What we talked about this morning on the government business program debate was the fact that for four weeks in a row the government has misused this Parliament’s time. It has misused this Parliament’s time by moving to sledge motions instead of debating matters of legislation. For example, I suspect that the Council tomorrow will be considering a private members bill to strengthen IBAC laws, and I would hope that when that bill comes back to this chamber the government will afford it a significant amount of time to talk about that legislation. I will be surprised if it does, but let us live in hope. That is the type of thing this Parliament should be doing. Now, I am in no way saying that at no time should the Parliament be dealing with a motion. There are meritorious motions that the Parliament considers often: condolence motions, for example, or moments of national or state importance where the Parliament comes together and speaks on those motions.

But what the government is doing week after week now, because they have run out of a legislative program, is simply trying to deflect from their own problems by moving to political motions. That is why I phrased and coined these motions ‘sledge’ motions, because that is what they are – they are sledge motions. The government hop up one by one and attack the opposition and then feel very, very clever about it. Well, they are not clever. They are not clever, and I think –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

James NEWBURY: Victorians say so, Leader of the House. So you can see, because they are on a 25 primary, that is how you know what Victorians think. Victorians do not think this stuff is clever. Victorians know that the Parliament’s time should not be used for simple, outrageous sledging.

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: You can hear the sledges coming across the chamber now. Do not worry; you are trying to move the motion to waste the Parliament’s time, government, to move to a sledge motion. If their motion is successful, that is what they will be able to do. But when they try and do it, what they have not thought through, because this is now the third week where this has happened – the government has not realised that you have to go through procedural motions to get to your sledge motion. You do not just simply get to debate your sledge motion. You do not simply get to move a motion in the house and move to that sledge motion immediately and allow the Parliament to use its time in that way. No, you have to move through procedural steps.

What we are doing now is the first of those procedural steps, where the government says ‘That’s the end of this bill.’ Now, the next thing the government is going to do is try and move the bill that they were considering until ‘later this day’. That is another procedural step, which, as the Acting Speaker will know, allows another 30-minute opportunity. In both instances, there will be a vote, and the coalition is going to take every opportunity to call out what this government is doing and require all the members of the government to come in here and hopefully listen to me on a procedural debate – because I know how much the government loves coming in here to hear me on a procedural debate. And every time they do that, we are going to call it out, because the Parliament should be doing better and this government should be doing better.

The government should be using time better. What we know is that in a few weeks time this government is going to publicly say, ‘We can’t do everything we promised this term, Victorians, because we have run out of time to do it.’ So I am putting a bookmark in that, and we are going to come back to this, I can assure you. When the government say they cannot do everything they promised to do because they have run out of time, I am going to remind the government of all this wasted time, when they simply came in here to sledge. That is what the government is going to be doing in a few weeks time, saying time has run out and they cannot do everything they promised. This is just raw, outrageous politics. It is a waste of the Parliament’s time. They need to be called out for it. And we certainly will not be helping them, so we will oppose it.

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (17:33): I am going to speak briefly, because I look forward to hearing and speaking on the notice of motion regarding TAFE, because to this side of the house TAFE is actually important; to Victorians TAFE is actually important. The member for Evelyn, who has been sitting at the table – we remember what happened in Evelyn before the last Liberal government. They locked the gates; they chained the gates. The bellicose member for Brighton – I hear him more on procedural motions than any other member.

Members interjecting.

Mathew HILAKARI: That is right: it is because he is trying to hide the lack of substance, and not just the lack of substance for him but for the other members of the house, because we had run out of speakers from the Liberal–National parties; they just were not ready to talk. Despite the bill in front of them having 1370 years of savings in time for our community, they did not have 15 minutes, 10 ‍minutes, 5 minutes or 1 minute to spend on it. So I am spending 1 minute on this because we have got to get back to the job that is important for Victorians.

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, just on relevance, as far as I understand it, the member on his feet should be arguing why debate should be adjourned. I am not sure that what the member is currently saying is keeping strict relevance to that particular circumstance.

Mathew HILAKARI: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, I am happy for you to rule and happy to continue to speak for 3 more seconds.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): I ask you to come back to the procedural debate.

Mathew HILAKARI: I support the adjournment.

 Bridget VALLENCE (Evelyn) (17:35): The member who was just on his feet foreshadowed that he was only going to speak for 3 more seconds when he still had 3 whole minutes on the clock, which just goes to show how disorganised this Labor outfit is. Twelve years of Labor rule and they still cannot even manage the house properly. Of course, if this government wants to move to a motion on TAFE, so be it, that is fine. But I think they are bereft of any policy ideas, because we only just debated a TAFE bill in this place a few days ago. It is absolutely crazy. The reason we are not seeking to adjourn debate is not because we do not want to discuss the merits of TAFE. As I said, we only did that a few days ago with the government’s free TAFE bill. The reason we do not want to adjourn debate is because we want to provide members with more opportunities to talk about regulatory reform in this place. The Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2026 is before us, and there are members who wish to talk about that very important matter – or, might I say, what is not in the regulatory reform bill. All of the regulatory reform this Labor government should be doing –

Members interjecting.

Bridget VALLENCE: Victorians have an expectation that their government reforms things. What this government does is spin and rhetoric. They have got this regulatory reform bill. We want to talk much more about some of the contents within that bill and in fact some of the things that are not in that bill but should be in that bill for genuine regulatory reform in the state of Victoria. Some members may want to talk about the contents and changes that are proposed in the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill – for example, things around the environment and the circular economy. Circular economy is particularly important for people right across Victoria. In fact it was the Victorian Liberals and Nationals who led the way when it came to the container deposit scheme, as an example, which is provided for within the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. It was this Labor government who dragged the chain and finally came to the table to introduce a container deposit scheme. They did not want it run by volunteer organisations; they wanted to side with big corporates, actually – big corporates like Visy, who are now no longer providing a good service –

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is now well off the adjournment motion, talking about container deposit schemes. I ask you to bring her back to the adjournment motion before the house.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): I ask the member to come back to the procedural motion, please.

Bridget VALLENCE: I would have thought a former Speaker would actually understand these things. The reason I do not want to adjourn debate is because I think members need more opportunity to talk about Labor’s Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill, and they are denying people the opportunity to do that. They want to gag members who want to speak about this in this chamber. Members want to be able to speak about regulatory reform. They want to speak about the proposed changes within that bill. They want to speak about what is not in the regulatory reform bill, and that is precisely why we are opposing this adjournment debate so that we can get back to the government’s proposed government business program, although we all know that it is a pretty slim legislative agenda that this government has. As I say, they are bereft of ideas. They are failing on their legislative program. I do not know, did they even introduce a new piece of legislation today? They introduced one piece of legislation today. There are not many pieces of legislation on the government business program, so you have got to wonder. After 12 years of Labor rule, they are clearly tired, because they cannot think of any new legislation, anything else that needs reform, that needs to be improved and legislated in this state – for example, introducing Construction Enforcement Victoria or introducing a royal commission into the $15 billion of corruption on the Labor government’s worksites.

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I repeat my previous point of order. The member on her feet is straying way off the debate, which is about whether debate should be adjourned on the bill that we were talking about so the house can then consider what we will go on to next.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): The member’s time has expired.

Assembly divided on Colin Brooks’s motion:

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Women) (17:46): I move:

That debate be adjourned until later this day.

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (17:46): Of course we are going to oppose the government’s second motion, the second attempt by this government, to move off this bill of the day for a sledge motion. How concerned are we? Very concerned, because we know a normal government would have a legislative agenda that is packed. In the final eight months of the year you would expect a logjam of legislation from a government trying to work through what it can possibly get through in the year, before the election, but instead what do we see? We have seen a motion to adjourn, and now a motion to adjourn to later this day so that the government can waste the Parliament’s time. How terrible to think that the government would misuse the Parliament’s time in this way. This is – for those who are watching – the fourth week in a row where the government has done this. You would suspect that the government might slip in a sledge motion at some point in the first set of sittings, but they are doing it on at least one day of the three-day week every sitting. What a sad reflection on this government. And this week – I suspect, and it would be very, very fair to say – the government is likely to move to a sledge motion on all three days this week.

What the government do not realise is when they do this they are not only setting a terrible, terrible tone for this Parliament but they are actually sending a terrible signal to their own backbench. They have not worked that one out yet. They have not worked out what message this sends to the caucus.

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

James NEWBURY: Well, Leader of the House, I would not be talking about getting along with our leader if I were you. In all seriousness, we are very concerned that the government would be misusing the Parliament’s time, and that is why on every occasion we will be standing up and saying, ‘No, of course we will not allow the Parliament to have its time wasted on sledge motions,’ which descend, frankly, into government members getting up and really speaking in a way that you would not traditionally see other than through the grievance debate. It is really lowbrow debate. But that is what the government wants to do each day this week. And what signal does that give to Victorians – Victorians who are worried about corruption, Victorians who are worried about the cost of living? They have seen an interest rate rise, and they are hurting.

We are concerned not only, as we just spoke about, about the motion that was just moved to adjourn debate but about moving it to later this day with no clear understanding from the government of when that will be. When will they go back to a bill? There was no clear guidance from the government on when they will do that. Could we stay on sledge motions for the rest of the week? It is possible. We have had no understanding from the government otherwise. They are getting the Parliament together to frankly try and politicise, in a very lowbrow way, this chamber, when this chamber should be doing better. So we will be calling it out. We will take every opportunity to frustrate their doing that. And what the government keeps making the mistake of doing is not understanding how to manage a chamber. The joy I get every time the Leader of the House moves a motion which just allows me to debate it and laugh the whole way through in terms of the lack of tactical understanding really gives me a smile, because it happens every week and the Leader of the House keeps doing it, and we are going to keep opposing it.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (17:51): I get joy in listening to the member for Brighton just sort of take his time to get through the 5 minutes there. This government of course values and respects our TAFE, and our TAFE investment has been significant. We of course are debating, as it stands at the moment, the opportunity and indeed the conversation that has been going for some time now around that investment and around what has been needed to make sure that the investments in TAFE are provided for by this government and will continue to be done in each and every way. What of course we have seen from those opposite, and I had the opportunity to be the lead speaker on regulatory reform, is an opportunity to be able to do both. We remain committed to that, and that is exactly what this government will do.

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (17:52): I am happy to get up and speak on this. I just heard the Leader of the House come in and say, ‘What’s this waste of time?’ This is coming from the Leader of the House. What time are we? We are not even at 6 o’clock on the first day of sitting during the week and the government has already run out of ideas. We had one piece of legislation introduced today. We have got two bills this week, one of which is very grandly titled, as the member for Evelyn has indicated, a regulatory reform bill but in fact is just a statute law revision bill that we have a couple of every year, and now the government wants to go on and talk about TAFE.

There are so many things that this Parliament could be talking about on this particular day. For those who are going to say, ‘Oh, why don’t you want to talk about TAFE?’, we did last week. You had a bill, do not forget. They had a bill last week. It is in the other place. If you want to go and talk about that, you can go and listen up there again. But here we are on the very day that regional Victoria should have been hosting the Commonwealth Games. They say, ‘Oh, forget that whole $600 million that we wasted, forget that broken promise that we made to all Victorians and particularly to regional Victorians. That’s just groan factor. You should just move on, you people.’ That is what this Labor government want to do, because they think it is not important, because they burnt another $600 million on that. The one thing that was sporting about that was the big handball to Glasgow: ‘Here, take $200 million. Put on a show for the rest of the world. We don’t want it anymore, because we messed it up.’

Juliana Addison: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I ask you to consider bringing the speaker back to the procedural motion that we have before us.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): I ask you to come back to the procedural motion.

Danny O’BRIEN: I am speaking exactly on why we should not be adjourning this until later this day, because –

Colin Brooks: That’s not the question.

Danny O’BRIEN: It is the question.

Colin Brooks: No, the question is ‘later this day’.

Danny O’BRIEN: That is what I just said, minister at the table. I just said ‘until later this day’. We know exactly what we are debating now: we are debating whether we should adjourn until later this day. That is what I am arguing – on the things that we could be doing and why this does not need to be debated and why this government is wasting the chamber’s time. I know those opposite will say we are wasting the chamber’s time by having this debate. Like I said, it is not even 6 o’clock on Tuesday and the government has run out of ideas. We have had one piece of legislation. Sorry, I tell a lie –

Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member on his feet is not discussing the motion at hand. The motion at hand is about when the debate should be adjourned to. I ask that you bring him back to that motion. He could express an opinion on that. If he suggests that it is not later this day, what day does he suggest it should be adjourned until?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): I ask the Leader of the Nationals to come back to the procedural motion.

Danny O’BRIEN: This is one of the things I find amusing with these procedural motions. The Leader of the House does not speak on them and takes a minute of my time on a point of order. But the question is: if we are to debate what is happening in the chamber, how do we debate it without discussing what should or should not happen? That is exactly what we are doing. We are saying here that this should not be adjourned till later this day, because this is a stunt from the government – a government that has run out of things to talk about. It does not want to talk about the Commonwealth Games; that should have started today. It certainly does not want to talk about corruption. It certainly does not want to talk about what is going on with the Big Build and with the Premier, who has now been found to have been warned about this when she was the minister. These are the things the government –

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member has been warned on two occasions now not to stray from the very narrow procedural motion that is before the house. He continues to stray from it. These motions are not an opportunity to stray and to talk about anything you want by saying, ‘We don’t think debate should be adjourned till later this day. We think we should talk about all of these other things, and give us the licence to talk about all of these other things,’ when he needs to bring it right back to the particular motion before the house.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): The member will come back to the motion. The member’s time has expired.

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (17:57): There is a lot of emotion on that side. I do not know why they are so reluctant to talk about TAFE – I wonder why. There is a lot of emotion. I feel that maybe they just do not want to visit 2010 to 2014 – the era of cuts to TAFE. I know a lot in my community were affected by that. They do not want to hear about it on that side. They just want to bury their heads in the sand. I actually look forward to talking about TAFE, because my community benefit from free TAFE. Free TAFE benefits the community of Mulgrave, and I look forward to talking about that. I would really love to hear what those on the other side have to say about it too, but their history on TAFE is not very great. But I have got a lot to say, and I am sure many on this side of the chamber also have a lot to celebrate about free TAFE – seven years of it in fact. Let us have a little party; let us celebrate that. I ultimately look forward to talking about that. I am really concerned as to why those opposite do not want to. I look forward to debating it.

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (17:58): It is very, very interesting today. You have got the government saying they want to forget about the very light business program that they have put in front of us, and they want to adjourn things off to, as the member for Mulgrave has just said, have a party and celebrate things that they might have done years and years ago instead of actually doing the hard work leading up to government. For those at home that might want to understand how Parliament actually works, Parliament may work in terms of the government proposing legislation that we debate here; that is what the government’s role is. Normally in previous governments we would have four bills or maybe five bills that we would debate within a sitting week. This particular sitting week we have two. The last sitting week we also had two. What is really interesting about all of this is that we are in pretty much the grand final of a parliamentary sitting term – the fourth year, the final year – when you would think the government would be up and about with all of their ideas and that they would be saying, ‘This is how we would fix Victoria. This is what we would do.’

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Caulfield is a bit slow out of the blocks. He is way off the motion. I ask you to bring him back to the very narrow motion before the house, about whether this should be delayed until later this day or another time.

David SOUTHWICK: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, the minister is completely way off the planet. Can I suggest that the minister needs to understand that the job of the government is actually to provide legislation before the Parliament so we can debate it. Why we are saying we should not be adjourning this off is because there are other priorities that we need to be talking about.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): What is the point of order?

David SOUTHWICK: I would suggest the government are wasting time because the government cannot handle the truth that they are mismanaging the economy and wasting taxpayer dollars.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): This is the first time I have sat in the chair for a procedural debate. It is certainly a very interesting experience. People out ahead of me have much more experience than I do. I ask you to debate the procedural motion.

David SOUTHWICK: What I would say, in terms of adjourning something off to later this day, is that we absolutely need to actually understand what this government is doing for Victoria. When there are so many other priorities like the corruption this government is knee-deep in, $15 billion, and the minister –

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker – yes, I will be very brief – if the member cannot keep to the motion, he should be sat down.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Mercurio): There is no point of order.

David SOUTHWICK: I would say that this government needs to actually focus on the issues that matter to Victorians, like corruption, like the $600 million that has been wasted for the Commonwealth Games. On this particular day the Commonwealth Games should have been running in Victoria, but instead we are talking about sledge motions because this government has got no agenda to debate in this Parliament. They have run out of ideas. This is a tired government that has run out of ideas and are now just bringing waste-of-time motions because they have not done their homework – and Victorians are paying for this. They are paying for an incompetent government that is corrupt, that is wasting taxpayers money, that has seen time and time again – $600 million for Commonwealth Games, $15 billion of corruption.

Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, again it comes to the fact that this is a narrow procedural debate. The member on his feet is not being relevant. I ask you to ask him to come back to the debate.

David SOUTHWICK: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, again, this is the Minister for Health that will not get up and speak on these motions but is very quick to try and bring points of order because this minister wants a protection racket. The minister, again – $15 billion of corruption. She is part of a government that is knee-deep in this corruption, she does not want to talk about corruption, the Minister for Health, but – (Time expired)

Assembly divided on Mary-Anne Thomas’s motion: