Thursday, 19 March 2026

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (10:17): I rise today to speak on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. In opening, given the incredible impacts of fuel shortages across the state, I would like to acknowledge our amazing farmers, our growers across the state, who are tackling some difficult conditions at this point in time. It is not about the cost of fuel, it is about access to fuel. The fact of the matter is: if there is no fuel, there is no food.

I was contacted by Aaron Emmerson, who has a property just south-west of Horsham, late last night. He cannot secure enough diesel for the upcoming seeding season. In fact at this point in time it looks like he can only sow 25 per cent of his usual crop. It is a very deep concern for our farmers, who literally cannot operate their businesses because they cannot access diesel. I again urge the Labor government to take action to make sure that we have those fuel supplies prioritised for the industries that need them and for our food growers across the state and to make sure we are supporting our freight lines so we can get our food from the farm gate to market and we can keep our supermarket shelves filled, because we are at a critical point in time when it comes to food security in Victoria and agricultural security.

It is deeply concerning when in the conversations I am having across the state ‘This is going to be worse than COVID; there will be food shortages that will be worse than COVID’ is being uttered. Please, government, work with the feds, have an allocation from the stockpile put towards the spot market to make sure that independent distributors can get to every corner of the state. It is putting incredible pressure on our farming communities, on our growers. We do not even know if we can get fuel for school buses or our emergency services vehicles. We need this sorted. The spot price market is about taking a risk on the cost of the fuel, it is not about taking a risk on whether the fuel will be supplied or not. I acknowledge the great work of our farmers and industry, particularly our freight industry. They do so much for our state and our country. We need to support them right now, not in the future but right now.

I come back to the Safe Food Victoria Bill. This is a piece of legislation that has been flagged for some period of time, including through the government’s Economic Growth Statement, and it was reiterated in the Silver review late last year. It will seek to effectively bring all of the food safety regulators from across the state into one entity with the intent that this will streamline the regulation of foods across the state, making it easier. It will also capture novel foods such as lab-grown meat. The concern is, though, that PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria are dissolved as part of this legislation. These two organisations have been operating for a long period of time. They have dealt with serious issues in their own industries and have a level of expertise as a result of that, which is quite nuanced and specific to the challenges that they have faced and are likely to face in the future. Certainly it is an emphatic concern from across particularly the dairy industry but also the meat industry and the pork industry, that aspects of these amendments carry a huge risk, with a limited understanding of what the actual benefit will be for growers who rely on the reputation that Victoria grows top-quality food and when there is a contamination issue, for example, that it is dealt with – there is a prompt response; it is a rapid response – and that food is highly respected in this state. Everybody is working hard to ensure that is the outcome. But without any guarantees that there will be a reduction in the cost of regulation of food in Victoria, when there is the converse thought that this actually may create a bureaucratic nightmare and become more complex because there will not be those individual nuances and that expertise that you see in the food regulators when they are grouped by commodity and therefore have their own level of expertise, there is a fear that we will end up worse off rather than better off. The Nationals and Liberals will be seeking a series of amendments, and the intent of them is that we can ensure that there is comfort and confidence by our growers that they know that they will have a voice at the table, that they will have expertise going into the new entity, Safe Food Victoria, and that they will have confidence that their voice will be heard because they will be part of the decision-making into the future.

The other aspect which is causing some concern is particularly related to Dairy Food Safety Victoria, and that is in relation to the regulatory assets that they hold. In lay terms, each of the food safety entities derives their own levies which fund the regulatory requirements of that specific sector. Dairy Food Safety Victoria in particular have accumulated a large sum of money. They are concerned that that money will be potentially gobbled up by the new entity, Safe Food Victoria, and will not be set aside only for regulatory compliance issues and risks around dairy. We have a perverse situation where the funds that have been accumulated over some time by dairy producers could be used to cover novel groups or plant-based groups, including plant-based ‘milks’, for want of a better term, as they are commercially known. We have a situation where any funds that are accumulated by the meat industry through PrimeSafe or other entities could be used to provide regulatory support and funding support for lab-grown meat, a direct competitor to their market. I have had discussions with the minister’s office around this, and I believe that there are opportunities to ensure that those assets are protected for the commodity groups that have contributed to that into the future.

It is something that has been flagged, particularly by the dairy industry, and I do commend the dairy industry for their advocacy in this space, because they certainly have worked throughout the Engage Victoria process to convey their views on the risks around the legislation that is before us today and the intent to disband Dairy Food Safety Victoria and create a new entity of Safe Food Victoria and they continue in that advocacy today. They have been clear in their ask and they have been persistent in their ask, and there is vast support for them across the state in other commodity areas as well. But I would reiterate it is not just dairy that have concerns around this legislation. There are certainly those within the broader meat sector and the egg sector that have concerns around aspects of this legislation.

In saying that, it does not mean that it is completely broken. I think there are just aspects that people want confidence to be able to move ahead on. As I flagged, there will be amendments we will pursue in the Legislative Council in relation to that. Those amendments will be around ensuring that there is certain industry representation on the board of Safe Food Victoria. We believe that having a skills-based board is good, but when you are looking at something as complex as food safety, where there is a depth of knowledge of the industry and the risks they currently face and will face in the future, that should be at the decision-making table of the board so there is an understanding of what the risk horizon looks like for this new entity. We will be seeking specific industry representation on the board.

We will also seek to build into legislation the establishment of certain consultative committees which are reflective of commodity groups which are already covered by the entities that will be dissolved but also to ensure that with the wider producers that will be covered by Safe Food Victoria in the future, whether through this first tranche of changes or in future changes, we have commodity groups who have an opportunity to provide specific input, a specific level of expertise, and above all else ensure that growers in those key commodity areas have a level of comfort that they will have their voice heard and they will be included in decisions in relation to their own industry.

We will also seek to have representation on the board from a member from regional Victoria. So often we see boards that are predominantly made up of people from metropolitan areas. They are from Melbourne generally, sometimes from the larger regional cities as well. Given that the bulk of the people who will be impacted by Safe Food Victoria are based in regional Victoria, we are seeking to have in law that one of the board members must be a representative who lives in regional Victoria. It is important for us that regional Victorians get to have their say. It is a different environment when you are having to live and work with the impacts of decisions made by large entities in a regional context. We have a different perspective in the country on many things and for many different reasons, but having a board which is full of people who are based in Melbourne does not really reflect some of the other nuances of the industries that Safe Food Victoria will govern. We will also seek that amendment in the Legislative Council.

We will also seek to protect industry cost-recovery funds, which I have gone through previously in relation to Dairy Food Safety Victoria in particular but also PrimeSafe. We also flag concerns and will have questions in committee in the upper house in relation to how the fees and levies will be appropriately charged to commodity groups. The reason for this is that there is a differing level of levies or fees that are charged by commodity groups with regard to their respective perceived risk and the cost of regulation. However, this will change in the future given that lab-grown meat is included in this legislation as being regulated by Safe Food Victoria, with the specific regulations destined to be outlined in the future.

Currently, because this industry is not regulated, they are paying zero levies, so they are not contributing to the regulatory cost of any body. That needs to be resolved as soon as possible, but the pathway towards ensuring a fair system has to be fair. I do not underestimate that this will be a challenge to undertake, because there will be a fear that fees and levies will increase in certain areas. Of course we know that increased fees and levies, otherwise known as taxes, on our producers do have a huge impact in pushing up the cost of food, particularly when we are facing so many challenges in relation to cost-of-living pressures.

It is costing more to fill up your car or your tractor, it is costing much more for people to fill up their trucks and it is costing a lot more to fill up trains. It is costing a lot more to fill up everything. Everyone is feeling the pinch of the cost of living. We cannot also have our growers facing an increased charge in relation to regulation, because it will be passed on to their produce. It will be passed on to the people who purchase food in Victorian supermarkets. I urge the government to proceed with caution when it comes to reviewing the fee strategy. I understand the challenges that will be involved in that, but please ensure that it is fair above all else. If lab-grown meats are going to be included under this legislation and regulated by Safe Food Victoria, a fee or levy needs to be introduced as soon as possible to ensure they effectively do not get a free ride.

We need to make sure that everybody pays their fair share when it comes to regulation. I would like to think that there will be lower fees and charges out of this at the end of the day. That should be something that the government seeks to do. It is certainly something that has not yet been committed to or articulated by the government. I urge the minister to work towards trying to deliver that for every grower across the state.

As I have touched on, there are aspects within this legislation that relate to transparency and reporting. One thing in particular that stood out to me during the bill briefing was that this bill does not require any detailed reporting on regulatory outcomes. Given the context of the type of work that will be undertaken by Safe Food Victoria, it would be appreciated if that was outlined. Whether it belongs in legislation or not can be articulated during the committee stage in the upper house – we will work through that with the minister, or we will attempt to do so. People are looking for understanding and to have confidence that Safe Food Victoria is doing its job and doing it well. Information like the number of inspections, compliance actions, food safety incidents, industry fees collected and foodborne illness trends is something that the Victorian community expects and the industry appreciates because it does assist them in understanding their risks and where they need to focus their efforts in being good producers and good business operators.

Transparency and accountability are very important, so we will be pursuing that and I will be working with the minister and her office through the passage of this legislation to the upper house. We are open to conversations around any of these suggestions on how the legislation can be improved. We are interested to work with government to ensure we have a better outcome for every food grower across this state and ensure that for the food that is consumed by Victorians people have confidence that it will be highly nutritious, it will be safe, they will not get sick if they have it and there will not be any contamination. I am hopeful that we can work through some of these amendments to support our growers in doing that.

There was an aspect within the legislation that I raised in that this piece of legislation, given it is such a vast change to the regulation of food in this state, does not include a statutory review timeframe. That is quite unusual when there are such significant changes. I accept and acknowledge that this is phase 1 of a broader intent to review and consolidate food safety regulation in Victoria. However, I think that taking a commitment and promise that this is only phase 1 is insufficient when it comes to how important the regulation and confidence in food safety is for our markets. I have touched on the domestic market of course – the people in Victoria having confidence that our food is safe – but we also need to have confidence to continue to be able to access our export markets.

We cannot have such an important body as Safe Food Victoria have pitfalls on the way through or have any issues that are not addressed appropriately and that threaten the opportunity for Victorian growers to access export markets. For that reason, while I do not think it was necessarily an oversight – I think it was confidence that there would be a phase 2, but given there is no confidence really in some things and, I hate to say it, no-one really believes anything a politician says, to be honest –we certainly should have some built-in legislative supports around that. We should have legislative supports, and that is why we have it in legislation, because we need to make sure there is a fallback and a backbone. I urge the government – this is a very straightforward request for an amendment – to include a statutory review date of two or three years. I do not really mind when it is, but can we have a set down date that this is reviewed in the event that phase 2 never comes. I know there is intent to bring in phase 2, but let us just make sure we get it right the first time.

Another aspect which I have touched on broadly in relation to this legislation is it does include the incorporation of lab-grown meat. This is specifically in relation to being included in the remit of Safe Food Victoria. This is an area which is not currently covered by regulation; it is effectively unregulated. It becomes very complex. We know of the issue with Cocobella, where it was covered eventually by Dairy Food Safety Victoria because that company undertook dairy production on a larger scale than its plant production. However, it really did show the glaring need to have a specific area around lab-grown meats but also plant-based beverages. In relation to that there are some concerns within the community as to when they will be purchasing lab-grown meat or when they purchase milk whether it is real milk or not milk. We will also be seeking a number of amendments in relation to consumer transparency and consumer choice to make sure that consumers are not misled – that when packaging includes certain terms around meat or terms that are highly related to meat, people understand that it is actually a plant-based product, to ensure that consumers know what the predominant protein is in that product and to ensure that people can make an informed choice when they purchase food.

Further to that, we will be seeking amendment to clarify the use of the term ‘milk’ in the sale of certain products. This is something that has been picked up in other parts of the world where there is clarity and regulation around the use of the term ‘milk’. This is very important because we need to ensure that there is protection as well of our vital dairy industry, that we do ensure that dairy products are seen as having a space in the market and that they are not to be replaced by plant-based beverages. But we also need to ensure that our kids understand and that the community understands that almond milk is not really milk, it is juice. It is a beverage. It is a tea, maybe. It is certainly not milk. We will be seeking also to ensure that there is consumer transparency around lab-grown meat. There will be people in the community who want to make an informed choice when they purchase lab-grown meat. That may be because it is a conscientious choice to choose lab-grown meat for whatever reason. It may be a conscientious decision that they do not want to consume lab-grown meat – they may choose to avoid that product. But I think that is something that the consumer can only make an informed choice about if they can see that information in front of them, and so we will be seeking a series of amendments in that regard. We will be seeking amendments that include mandatory plant-based disclosures and lab-grown meat disclosures, we will include a clause regarding misleading descriptor prohibition and we will further seek an amendment in regard to consumer transparency requirements. We need to ensure that people understand when meat is meat and when it is not. We need to ensure that people understand when milk is milk and when it is not.

This is not downplaying these products. I know many people, including even National Party MPs, who enjoy soy milk or an almond latte, but we need to call it as it is. We need to be up-front around it. We need to ensure that milk is milk – it is a lactated secretion from a mammal – and it is protected in that way. That is something that needs to be ensured.

It is very pleasing to hear some banter has been started across the chamber. Maybe there are other members of this chamber who share my views around the use of the terms ‘meat’ and ‘milk’ and other products that are marketed in a very deliberate way. I have had this conversation with many producers over the years. I do not know why you would want to market something as being flavoured like a meat when it is clearly a veggie patty. I love veggie patties, they are fabulous, but you do not need to call it meat just to be able to sell it. It is disingenuous to do that. I do not understand why you would seek a product that tastes like chicken if it is not chicken. Eat chicken. It has not got preservatives in it. I do not understand it, but I know some do. I know that some people do seek that, but let us make an informed decision about it and just say it like it is. Why shouldn’t we protect our consumers? Why shouldn’t we be protecting our industries, which have fought hard to create a reputation for their own market around the reputation of good Victorian meat, around the protection of Victorian-grown milk and what our dairy producers do to look after their cows and make sure they have a high-quality product on our supermarket shelves? This is what we should be seeing. We will be seeking those amendments in the Legislative Council.

I realise this has been a broad-ranging debate, as is often the case when it is legislation brought through the house which is quite significant. It is a significant piece of legislation. Creating a new entity comes with pitfalls and challenges, and I trust that the minister and her representation here today can understand that we are seeking to ensure that there is a positive outcome for our growers and our producers across this state. Agriculture is facing many challenges at this time. I have gone into the cost of fuel as being a big challenge in how we actually proceed with the upcoming sowing season in particular and how our livestock commodities and dairy commodities manage the input costs in relation to access to fuel, how we can mix food and how we can protect and ensure animal welfare outcomes are continued in this fuel shortage crisis, but we need to make sure that we do not lump too much on people at once. I would urge the government to consider our comments today. I am more than happy to meet further with the minister and her office to try and put forward the views of the sector, of the stakeholders and particularly of our growers in relation to the shortfalls of this legislation.

We accept that there may be an opportunity to do things better to ensure there is a one-stop shop, particularly when there are so many councils across the state – 79 councils – that groups have to work with if there is a recall. We need to make sure that it is a streamlined process, but we do not want it to get sunk into the bureaucracy of having a lumping, heaving, heavy bureaucratic entity that cannot do its job appropriately and cannot deliver positive outcomes to support our food sector in Victoria. We need to ensure that there is some level of confidence that this will actually improve regulation and cut red tape but also cut the cost burden, the cost inputs for our growers in Victoria, to give them a head start, because they are competing against growers not just from interstate but from overseas as well. Let us support our Victorian growers and put them first at every step of the way. There is a real opportunity for the government to work with the Nationals and Liberals to deliver a strong set of amendments to this legislation so that when it passes the other place, or is returned to this chamber, the sector and our growers have confidence that Safe Food Victoria will deliver real outcomes for them.

In regard to our amendments in regard to the labelling and use of ‘meat’ and meat-related terms and ‘milk’ and milk-related terms – of course ensuring that there is a place for consumer transparency in regard to lab-grown meat, these novel approaches to foods – we need to ensure we have got the opportunity for the consumer to make an informed choice, whether it be to purchase that product deliberately or to avoid that product. It is the right of every consumer to be able to have that choice, but it is not currently clear.

It has a flow-on effect to our kids, to understand where their food comes from, which is an ongoing challenge. There are even children growing up in my community who have never been onto a farm, so you can be in regional Victoria and never have set foot on a farm. But in my view it is very important people know where their food comes from. By the government supporting amendments which improve that transparency and improve consumer choice they can support the industries that are targeting those areas that want to get into a market where there is perhaps further consumption of either plant-based products or the choice to have lab-grown meats and those types of products. They should be able to do so, but we can support them by supporting amendments and making sure we have legislation which makes those choices very, very clear.

I thank all of the stakeholders who have provided input to this legislation. I thank the minister’s office and the minister, who are open always to comments that I can contribute, whether they are good, bad or otherwise. I particularly appreciate the input from the stakeholders. It is a difficult time for agriculture, and there are many pressures and distractions across the state, particularly at the moment, the highest being access to fuel. But when you are a farmer and you are looking at some of the other changes across the state, whether it is the emergency services tax or the import of large-scale energy infrastructure and renewables, whether it is the changing use of land, whether it is urban sprawl, whether it is mining on land or whether it is the large-scale solar farms which are rolling out or wind farms, you feel like you are getting it from every single angle. There is an opportunity here to make sure that they are supported by the Labor government, to make sure that we can deliver for our growers, because thank God for our farmers. Thank God for our freight industry. We would not have any food on our shelves without them.

Again I reiterate to the government in relation to the fuel crisis that all Victorians are facing at the moment: please step up. Please make sure that we have an allocation of fuel for our growers in particular but also the agricultural industry, all industry that relies on fuels and our freight network, our freight friends. Let us make sure we keep Victoria moving, keep Victoria growing, because we know that with no fuel, we have no food.

 Michaela SETTLE (Eureka) (10:47): I rise to contribute to the debate on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. I am very proud to rise to speak on this bill as the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Victoria but most importantly in my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture. I have been honoured to work alongside the Minister for Agriculture and see her passion and commitment to the agricultural industry, which is an incredibly important part of our economy and lifestyle here in Victoria. As we all know, food production and manufacture make up about 25 per cent of our gross state product, so it is an incredibly important part of our economy but, as I say, it is also an incredibly important part of our life and our lifestyle.

This is an important bill and it certainly offers something for everyone in so much as it offers our farmers and our producers surety, clarity and also a reduction in red tape. But at the heart of it this bill is about food safety. That is something that matters to every Victorian. Most Victorians probably do not think about it every day, but it is something that they rely on every day – every time a parent is packing a lunchbox, every family sitting down to dinner and every visitor enjoying the incredible produce that we grow right here in Victoria.

I thank the member for Lowan for her contribution and her acknowledgement of her work with the Minister for Agriculture. I know that the process to come to this bill has been a consultative process, and I thank the member for Lowan for her consultation on these matters. I would like to address some of the points that she raised. Her passion around lab-grown meat is pretty obvious and loud and clear.

I think the best way to provide certainty around lab-grown meat is the effective regulation of it through this very bill, through Safe Food Victoria. The labelling aspect of it does not sit under food safety. It is a Commonwealth issue, and I know that they have addressed this through Food Standards Australia New Zealand. In relation to the matter of expertise I understand, having been a farmer myself, that different commodities certainly have different sets of expertise. With the creation of Safe Food Victoria we will be bringing the staff from each of the previous regulatory bodies across so that expertise that has existed there will not be lost. In fact it will come into Safe Food Victoria, so that expertise will continue to be there.

I can also appreciate the concerns the member for Lowan raised in terms of cross-subsidisation. The minister has been very clear and the bill is clear that there will not be any cross-subsidisation. In the way that PrimeSafe currently operates there are different meats within that. Be it seafood, lamb or beef, they have different fee levy structures within that. Safe Food Victoria will operate in the same way. Whilst those fees all sit in a consolidated fund, their usage is hypothecated to that particular industry. I certainly appreciate the need to have levies for lab-grown meats, and the best way that we can do that is to get this body up and operating.

As I say, the bill really impacts everyone in Victoria. We all rely on one simple expectation that the food that we eat is safe, and it is our responsibility in this place to make sure that that expectation is always met. This bill does exactly that. This reform is about ensuring that Victoria’s food safety system not only is strong today but is also fit for the future and those developing technologies, cell-based produce and so forth. We really need to make sure that our food system is not just strong today but absolutely fit for the future. We have had these great systems in place, and by no means is the consolidation of these bodies any reflection on the great work that they have done over many, many years. But as we grow over time the challenges that we face tomorrow are changing, and we need to make sure that we are fit for purpose.

One of the interesting case studies, if you like, is the models for businesses. I know in my own electorate we have some really fantastic producers – for example, Meredith cheese. Meredith cheese produce a very delicious cheese, but perhaps less well known they also look at marketing goat meat. If you are ever passing through Meredith, they have now set up a cafe in the centre of Meredith which can showcase their cheese to people coming along the highway. A business like that is an absolute case in point of why this consolidation is so very important. Meredith cheese, in the instance I have described, would be looking for regulation under the dairy body, the selling of meat would come under a different body and the opening of a cafe sits in a completely separate regulatory framework. They are really a perfect case in point of why this is so important, and the incredible difference that it will make to their operation of their business is something that we seek. We know that for small business, certainly in the agricultural industry, we need to look at ways that we can support them and cut red tape. But it is absolutely imperative that that is balanced with the greater requirement for food safety, and I think this bill does exactly that.

We have been absolute leaders in this country. Electronic eartags began here in Victoria many, many years ago and are now being picked up across all of Australia. This is really about making sure that we can track and trace and know safely where our food is coming from. As I said, we are home to incredible farmers, growers, processors and small businesses, and their success depends on trust. It is trust from customers, trust from markets and trust from export partners. A strong, modern food safety system underpins that trust. This bill really strengthens that trust. It creates that body. It strengthens our reputation; it strengthens our economy. This government will always choose to act early. As I said, we were out there absolutely in front in terms of electronic identification tags, and we will always act early, but we will always act responsibly and in the best interests of all Victorians. This is a really practical reform and a really sensible reform, a necessary reform which will make our food system stronger, it will make it simpler for businesses and, most importantly, it will keep all Victorians safe.

I too would like to acknowledge the wonderful people that work and operate in our agricultural systems across Victoria. I know from my own time on the farm what great communities they are and how much we owe – all Victorians owe – to their hard work, and I trust that this bill will make their lives a little easier in terms of a single regulatory body. We will certainly support them in the work that they do. Of course, as I said, it is a bill for all Victorians because it guarantees safe food across Victoria.

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (10:57): I rise to make a contribution on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. Firstly, I do want to acknowledge the issue of fuel in country Victoria, which is impacting so much of our agricultural sector. Despite being told we are not in a crisis, when we have got towns running out of fuel and last week somebody came up to me in the street in tears about the issue because their brother, who ran a large business in northern Victoria, was unable to get the diesel he needed to do the silage and harvesting, this does have big impacts on our food and fibre production. Keep in mind that the agriculture sector is a massive economic driver in Victoria and in 2023–24 the food and fibre sector was valued at over $20 billion, and the beef and dairy industries were key amongst that. The bill we have before us is particularly relevant to both the beef and the dairy industries. I urge the Premier to do all that she can to prioritise fuel and diesel supplies to regional Victoria. It is particularly important at the moment, and we need to make sure that we, as a state, do all that we can.

The Safe Food Victoria Bill establishes Safe Food Victoria as the new consolidated food safety regulator and performs functions that were previously undertaken by different bodies. To establish Safe Food Victoria we need to abolish both PrimeSafe and the dairy body. Keep in mind that some of these changes are being made because of the Silver review. Helen Silver was asked to address Victoria’s rising debt, waste and inefficiency. Part of that review said:

Establish a new Food Safety Regulator to oversee common issues across food product safety settings …

The former Minister for Agriculture and current Minister for Health can babble on all she likes across the table, but the Silver review mentions very clearly the need to establish a new food safety regulator.

Interestingly, this bill also amends the Dairy Act 2000 to regulate foods that have not traditionally been produced or processed for human consumption in Victoria or that are produced or processed using new technologies – this is the cultured food. This is particularly interesting, and I will talk about it a little bit later. There are other consequential amendments that are being made. Essentially amendments are being made to the Dairy Act, the Food Act 1984, the Meat Industry Act 1993 and the Seafood Safety Act 2003. During the bill briefing we were told that the government had done some consulting on this through the Engage Victoria platform, which I am always very suss about because people do not know to look at it. There were 120 contributions, and there were some concerns from the dairy sector. I will note that 90 per cent of those people were supportive. But when the shadow minister goes around and talks to all of the organisations with skin in the game, you hear a little bit of a different story than what is just on the Engage Victoria website.

I do want to touch briefly on PrimeSafe. PrimeSafe exists to provide confidence in the safety of Victoria’s meat, poultry and seafood. They do quality assurance. They want to make sure that the food is produced and transported safely. This extends also to pet food. They issue licences to meat and seafood businesses and support businesses to meet food safety standards. They do have a role in prosecutions – I understand that there were only a couple last year, and they had 99 enforcement actions. When I have a look I see it is a very small organisation. The corporate plan from 2025 to 2030 outlines that there are 10 staff, a couple of managers, a CEO and 10 members of the board. They have got a relatively small balance sheet, with a net worth of $1.33 million, but I do note that they have $4 million in the bank. I will move to Dairy Food Safety Victoria, which does a similar job within the dairy food sector. They have 29 employees – 23 FTE – and 10 board members, so both of these organisations currently have 10 members on their boards. Their net worth is much larger than PrimeSafe’s, with $6 million, and they have got $7 million in the bank. Their total equity is $6 million.

With the creation of this new body and as these organisations are abolished their staff and assets will be transferred to the new organisation, and that can be challenging. When you have a look at how much money they have in the bank, the dairy sector, I am sure, are very keen to make sure that they are properly represented and that $7 million that they have in the bank is perhaps not going to cultured quail but rather to supporting some of the work in the dairy sector. The jobs that they have and the roles that they do are particularly important, skilled and specific. These are science-based jobs very often. Obviously there are some jobs around compliance, but you have to know what is happening and understand the science behind it.

One of the things that does concern the coalition is the representation of stakeholders from these sectors going forward. We would like to see some amendments to this bill, and they have been outlined already by the shadow minister. I do want to raise with the house that this has been done before where bodies have been brought together, and I am going to reference the Alpine Resorts (Management) Act 1997. Within that act, in part 3, section 23 specifically concerns stakeholder consultative committees. I was actively engaged in the bill for that act at the time. Not only does it have how they should be working with consultative committees but it also talks about the appointment of the first stakeholder committee. It goes on to provide in part 4, section 50, that before making a plan they must consult with the stakeholder consultative committee appointed for each of the alpine resorts. I would think that going forward here it is only reasonable that there is that particular consultation.

Having this in the act is really important, because it makes sure that those representative bodies and the people with the current expertise have a voice. The new board will have between five and seven, compared to what we have had – 10 on each of the boards. The government introduces lots of legislation with different boards, with sometimes five to seven, and last week we had one with I think about 12. Whilst it is skills based – and I am all for having skills-based and very capable boards – there must be that mechanism for those that understand this sector and who have skin in the game to be represented, and if that is not through board positions it needs to be through consultative committees, which the government needs to endeavour to bring on board through this process. These sorts of processes are not simple, either.

I want to mention cultured food. We had a report about 10 months ago in New South Wales about some quail pâté that was made through the culturing process. It is sort of like stem cells, really, for humans. It multiplies individual cells – this time it was from quail – in a nutrient bath. They had a tank of liquid. It is kind of like being at a brewery when you are making these sorts of things. They have gone on to be able to make pâté out of cultured animal. We are not at the stage where our steaks are going to be from that same process, but as technology is changing – and whilst I might not be one that wants to eat cultured steak; as a cattle grower I am very happy to keep going with my regular beef – it is important that there are checks and balances in this place and that the science keeps up with this work. I want to mention liquids as well. We have got these milks. Oat milk is really water and oats and should not be referred to as ‘milk’. These things need to be incorporated into this Safe Food Victoria.

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Women) (11:07): I am very pleased to be able to speak on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026, and I am pleased to be able to do that at a time when the Minister for Agriculture is here in the chamber. The previous speaker referenced the origins of this bill. I can assure her that this was work that I was involved in in my time as Minister for Agriculture, which is now almost four years ago, so this regulatory reform work has been an objective of the government for some time. I am delighted to have been able to work with the Minister for Agriculture, who is the lead minister, and to support her in bringing this bill to this place with the important regulatory reform that it delivers.

The reasons why it is important that we have an effective regulatory system for food are self-evident, but I will talk to some of those. Significantly, here in Victoria we are the food bowl of the nation. Our agricultural produce is second to none anywhere in the world, and that is a reputation that we hold onto very dearly. Looking around, I see the member for Werribee in the chamber. Of course Werribee is a food bowl in its own right, still home to lots of vegetable growers. I see the member for Monbulk, herself a former greengrocer, in a community that still has a thriving – in fact leading – horticultural sector.

Protecting our agriculture and our food production is absolutely critical to our reputation as a state. One of the reasons why of course Melbourne is the best city in the world is because of the reputation that we have for food, so this is very important work. Right now agriculture and food businesses must navigate a complex system: my department, the Minister for Agriculture’s department, Dairy Food Safety Victoria, PrimeSafe and then on top of that each and every one of our single local councils. This is clearly inefficient and overly complex. Bringing these regulators together and consolidating the four state food regulators will make it simpler and easier for food businesses to operate in Victoria without compromising public health protections.

Again I reference the genesis of this bill because I want to assure everyone in the house, as the Minister for Agriculture detailed in her second-reading speech, that the consultation that has gone into the development of this bill has been, again, second to none because it is so important that we get it right. Obviously as the Minister for Health, ensuring that we have safe food for consumption is always the highest priority, keeping Victorians safe from contaminated food and foodborne illnesses. Again I go back to that issue that I talked about: our reputation not just as a food bowl but as a dining destination of choice around the world. One of the reasons for that is because of our food safety regime here.

Obviously there are many benefits in removing barriers to business, and this bill implements the first stage of a two-stage reform project, which is all about streamlining and strengthening Victoria’s regulatory systems. Safe Food Victoria will mean that farmers and food businesses can access clear guidance and quicker approvals with a reduced compliance burden through streamlined permission processes, all from a single source. For businesses, for example, that manufacture multiple food types, a consolidated regulator will mean that they no longer need to go through multiple regulatory processes with separate regulators for their different products, and obviously that will make it significantly easier for food businesses to do business in Victoria. In the second stage of the reform the government will develop a new framework for food safety in Victoria to streamline those regulatory processes, ensuring greater consistency across the supply chain from paddock to plate. As I said, that will include, in the second stage, refining the role that local councils play in our food regulation system. That work has commenced and will continue through 2027. Together, the bill that is before the house and the further work that is being done with local councils will strengthen food safety here in the state of Victoria.

I want to assure everyone that in order to keep people safe from contaminated food and foodborne illnesses the very first objective of the act is to safeguard public health. My department and the chief health officer will continue to play a critical role, working in partnership with Safe Food Victoria to ensure that the food Victorians are consuming is safe. Safe Food Victoria will play an important role in supporting the food industry to identify and manage risks in food, ensuring that food businesses are producing food that is safe and of suitable quality for all Victorians. My department will retain responsibility for receiving notifications of foodborne illness and microorganisms under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, and when such events occur the chief health officer will provide advice to Safe Food Victoria on how to manage the situation and contain threats to Victorians’ safety. The chief health officer will be empowered to provide this information or any public health advice formed from this information to Safe Food Victoria. This could include, for example, advisory information that will help identify illness or pathogens or help pinpoint the source of illness or informing the declaration of food-sampling requirements that enable statewide surveillance.

This bill is all about ensuring that various parts of government can work more seamlessly together in order to provide safe food for all Victorians, as well as a streamlined regulatory approach for food producers and manufacturers and outlets that sell food for consumption. This is a significant step forward in terms of reform for the sector.

One of the other matters that arises from the Safe Food Victoria Bill is that the prime responsibility to represent the state at the food ministers meeting shifts from me as Minister for Health to the Minister for Agriculture. I hope that the Minister for Agriculture will be able to continue the work that has been led by health ministers but is being progressed by food ministers to ensure that we deliver more informative labelling for Australian food consumers. That goes to the health star rating system here in Australia. The health star rating system is by no means a perfect system, but it is one way in which we can work to ensure that Australians have more information to help them make healthier choices about the food that they consume. The biggest problem with the health star rating system is that despite its early intention that it be taken up voluntarily by business, this has not happened, and so health ministers have endorsed work to move towards the mandating of the health star rating system for manufactured foods. This is an important tool. It is my view, as health minister, that this is a very important tool to make it easier and simpler for families to get better information about the foods that they are consuming and help them make healthy choices for themselves and, importantly, for Australian children who are exposed to a lot of unhealthy foods because the information in relation to those foods is not always as simply and readily available as it should be. This is a very important bill. I thank the Minister for Agriculture for all of her work, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (11:17): The Liberal–National opposition does not oppose the Safe Food Bill 2026. Let me say that plainly from the outset, because it matters to how this debate is properly understood. We recognise the case for consolidating Victoria’s food safety regulatory architecture. Queensland, New South Wales and New Zealand have all undertaken similar reforms and the outcomes have broadly been positive. The Silver review made clear recommendations, and we accept the principles behind them. But not opposing a bill is not the same as supporting it uncritically. The opposition will be seeking amendments in the Legislative Council because this bill, as it stands, contains omissions. They are not minor, they are structural, and if left unaddressed they risk undermining the very efficiency gains the government says it is trying to achieve.

The first and most significant concern is governance. Safe Food Victoria will be governed by a board, but nowhere in this legislation is there a requirement that the board include representatives with genuine expertise in dairy production, meat processing, seafood or regional agricultural industries. PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria are not just names on a letterhead. They represent decades of accumulated regulatory expertise, deeply embedded relationships with industry operators and hard-won credibility with export certification bodies overseas. You cannot replicate that institutional knowledge by recruiting a generalist board, however capable. Skills-based appointments are not a substitute for commodity expertise. The Victorian Farmers Federation, the United Dairy Farmers of Victoria and the Australian Dairy Farmers have all flagged this concern. The omission of mandated commodity representation at either board or committee level is of deep concern to the agricultural sector, and it should concern this government too. We will seek amendments to mandate appropriate expertise on the board and to prescribe commodity-based consultative committees in the legislation itself, not as a courtesy but as a requirement.

The second area of concern is the treatment of regulatory assets. Dairy Food Safety Victoria operates on an industry-funded cost-recovery model. The reserves held by DFSV have been built by dairy producers over many years for the purposes of regulating the dairy industry. This legislation provides no guarantee that those funds will remain dedicated to dairy regulation. In the absence of such a guarantee there is a legitimate and reasonable concern that those assets will simply be absorbed into the broader operations of the new regulator. This is not acceptable, and we will seek amendments to protect those assets. Further, this bill contemplates the future regulation of cell-cultivated meat and other novel foods. We support a regulatory framework that can accommodate innovation, but there is no defined pathway for these new food categories to contribute to the cost of their own regulation. It is not appropriate that the dairy and meat industries, which already pay their way, are asked to subsidise the regulatory burden of industries that do not yet contribute a cent.

The third concern is transition risk. Victoria’s dairy and meat industries are major export industries. Our international trading partners and certification bodies expect regulatory stability and continuity. Any uncertainty in inspection regimes, certification processes or regulatory relationships during the transition period carries real commercial risk. The government has provided no meaningful assurance on this point.

Finally, there is no statutory review date in this bill. The government’s explanation that this is phase 1 and phase 2 is coming is, frankly, inadequate. This is one of the most significant restructures in Victorian food regulation in a generation. It deserves a review mechanism, and we will seek an amendment to include one. The opposition will also be seeking amendments relating to mandatory disclosure and accurate labelling for plant-based products. Consumers deserve to know what they are buying. The use of the terms ‘meat’ and ‘milk’ for products that are neither should not continue unchallenged in this bill that establishes a new food safety regulator. We will seek amendments to enact mandatory disclosure, prohibit misleading descriptors and strengthen consumer transparency requirements. Many of my constituents in the seat of Prahran are vegan or vegetarian. There is an absolute benefit of describing what a product is made from. I would very much like to see this happen.

I want to speak now not only as the member for Prahran but in my capacities as Shadow Assistant Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Major Events and Shadow Assistant Minister for Melbourne, because food safety does not exist in a vacuum, it exists in an industry ecosystem, and for Melbourne’s hospitality sector that ecosystem is under serious stress. I represent an electorate that is home to some of the most celebrated dining and hospitality precincts in Australia. We have got Chapel Street, we have got High Street, we have got Commercial Road and we have got Domain Road in South Yarra. They are the lifeblood of Melbourne’s reputation as having a world-class food and hospitality sector. Right now the reputation is being tested not by any failure of quality or shortage of talent, it is being tested by policy settings that make it harder, more expensive and more complex to run a hospitality business in Victoria than anywhere else in the country. The Business Council of Australia’s Regulation Rumble report is quite instructive. For the third consecutive year Victoria ranked dead last, eighth out of eight states and territories, for doing business. South Australia topped the rankings and Tasmania came second. Even the Australian Capital Territory ranked ahead of us. For the third year running, dead last, eighth out of eight – Victoria is not just falling behind, we are being lapped.

To open a cafe in Victoria an operator needs roughly 50 per cent more licences and regulatory requirements than in South Australia and around 30 per cent more than in New South Wales, and this is an aberration. That is a structural policy failure. The competition does not stop at the Murray. We are not just losing ground to other Australian states, we are losing ground to New Zealand, to Auckland and Wellington. They are actively courting Australian hospitality investment, Australian food exporters and Australian tourism dollars. New Zealand has streamlined its food regulatory environment, reduced compliance costs for operations and positioned itself as a credible, stable destination for food industry investment. When a Victorian producer or hospitality group looks across the Tasman and sees lower barriers, clearer rules and a more responsive regulator, that is a problem for the state’s economy, and our competitors are not waiting for us to get our settings right.

Then there is taxation. Victoria’s payroll tax settings are the most punishing in the nation for growing a business. For hospitality operators, who are labour-intensive by nature, payroll tax is not an abstract policy concept. It is a direct, visible cost that makes every new hire more expensive. We have recorded the highest unemployment rate in the country for 17 of the past 18 months. The link between tax on employment and fewer jobs is not complicated. Payroll tax punishes you for hiring people. Victoria has the most punishing settings in the nation, and we wonder why unemployment keeps on skyrocketing. The congestion levy expanded to Stonnington in January this year is adding costs to suppliers and making it more expensive for customers to reach their venues, and my electorate will carry an estimated $4.1 million of annual burden from that decision alone. Our hospo businesses feel it every week. Property tax settings actively discourage landlords from filling vacancies, energy costs continue to climb, and this government continues to add complexity rather than remove it.

Earlier this year I co-hosted the Melbourne economic revitalisation forum at Parliament House with opposition leader Jess Wilson, and we brought together representatives from the Committee for Melbourne, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Property Council, Colliers and Melbourne City Council, who are the major peak bodies, and the message was absolutely consistent and clear: investors are looking elsewhere. Restaurant groups expanding their national footprint are prioritising Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, hotel developers who would invest here are being told by their boards that Victoria’s sovereign risk profile is too high, and we have heard directly from investors they are being told by their advisers ‘Anywhere but Victoria’. That is not the reputation this city has built, and it is not a reputation we can afford to have. Melbourne is still one of the world’s great food cities, but you cannot eat a reputation, and at some point the policy settings have to match the ambition. A well-functioning food safety regulator is part of that ecosystem. Businesses and consumers need to trust the system. Export markets need confidence that our certification processes are properly governed and industry informed. Safe Food Victoria can contribute to that confidence but only if it is set up correctly from the start. The opposition supports the principle of this reform. We will not block it.

 Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (11:27): Food safety is one of the foundational responsibilities of any government. Ensuring that the food available to consumers is safe, traceable and consistently regulated is essential not just for public health but also for industry confidence, domestic and international market trust and the reputation of a state’s agricultural and food sectors. As the Minister for Health noted before, we have an exceptional reputation, and we are the food bowl of this nation here in Victoria. The Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026 represents a major structural reform to our food safety regulatory system, and it is one that aims to modernise, streamline and futureproof the way food safety risks are managed across the entire supply chain. I am delighted to speak on this. As a former greengrocer and supermarket owner – we had a deli and cafe as well – I experienced firsthand the complexities of the different regulatory systems – not all of them, obviously, but a number of them – and I can say there was a great degree of complexity. I am absolutely delighted for everyone in the food industry here in Victoria that this bill has the intention of making life simpler and easier for them. That is incredibly important, because food is not static, and the world of food as we know it is actually going through some significant change. This act anticipates that and futureproofs for it.

It has been a really fragmented regulatory landscape. As the minister mentioned before, there are four separate acts, two ministers, two statutory authorities in PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria, two departments and 79 local councils. I can give a real-life example here of the complexity with the councils having their own interpretation of things. In my greengrocery, when we cut fruit, it was required at the time by Maroondah City Council that all cut fruit be refrigerated within two hours of being cut or it could not be sold. That was quite difficult for us because we did not have fridges for fruit display. Our temperature was controlled in the building, but we made sure that fruit and vegetables were not necessarily popped into a fridge, because it actually does change and degrade them in certain ways, so we had to handle and rotate them very quickly.

But that was not required of you if you were just down the road in Yarra Ranges council. They did not require the refrigeration of cut fruit like Maroondah City Council did. I had other greengrocers that I used to speak with, and I would say to them, ‘Do you have to do this refrigeration of cut fruit thing?’, and they went, ‘No, it’s not a requirement.’ So this actually will eliminate those inconsistencies that occur. For us, we just followed what we were told, and that was fine. I had no issue with that. But if I had had several businesses across different councils, I would have been exposed to different requirements, and I know that that is an issue that does exist for some people in the industry. So I am really thrilled that this is making things simpler for an industry that does not need it to be complex. It needs it to be rigorous, it needs it to be well considered and of course it needs to have food safety paramount, and that is everything that this bill provides. Food safety is absolutely essential because it is a health issue. You can become incredibly, incredibly sick if you contract foodborne illnesses. I have known several people over the years who have had salmonella, and one of them was actually a young child, and she suffered from debilitating effects from that salmonella infection for a good two years afterwards. It can cause extreme damage to the body, and sometimes people do not realise that. That is why food safety is incredibly important.

More than 100,000 businesses up until now have needed to interact with multiple regulators, sometimes all at once, and it depends on the nature of the food they produce, handle, package and sell. That, as I have said already, results in regulatory duplication, inconsistent requirements, unclear accountability and a system that is more complex than it needs to be for regulators and the industry. There has been extensive consultation on this as well: 123 submissions, and 93 per cent supported improving the system; and there were over 60 targeted consultations with peak bodies across last year. That is extraordinary consultation, and I think the result is borne out in this bill, which is very thorough and really well considered and puts food safety as the absolute prime objective but then makes it easier for industry to comply with it, and that is incredibly important.

We are establishing Safe Food Victoria, a new statutory authority, which will report to the Minister for Agriculture. It will replace PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria. It will take on the food safety roles currently within the Department of Health, and it is going to be established by around mid this year as part of the stage 1 reforms. Then there are more reforms to come through 2027, which will modernise the legislative framework, streamline regulation across the supply chain, consider optimal roles for local government and strengthen that consistency from paddock to plate. It is going to really assist complex businesses, in particular, by creating that single front door. Actually, as the minister mentioned before, Monbulk happens to be one of the horticultural centres of the nation and definitely of this state. There is a lot in the area and just over the boundary as well. Beautiful food is produced, but also many of the trees that are grown that produce fruit all around the country are actually grown within Monbulk. But if you are a horticulture grower who also packs and retails onsite, if you are one of the berry growers out there or the cherry growers – I do not know if you have ever been, Deputy Speaker, to go and pick your own cherries at Christmas time, but it is a real treat – that ends up being a complex business that actually we are assisting through this bill to make things more streamlined for you and for farms as well, with farm gate, retail and cafe, and food manufacturing. I know a bit has been mentioned about producers of novel foods like cell-based products, and it is wonderful that this bill actually anticipates that, because that is the future of food.

I did note the Member for Eildon was talking about cattle farming. She prefers the traditional way, and power to her. But I know that there are plenty of people out there too who would like to eat more ethically produced meat products, and cell-based food can produce those too. I did note the member for Eildon also mentioning about oat milk and what we should not call it. I was a bit unparliamentary, I did interject, but very gently, to say that it is mylk with a ‘y’. Having been a vegan cafe owner, though not vegan myself, I can tell you that I do not think calling it oat juice would be conducive for anyone who wants to order it with their coffee. Language is everything, but you know the spelling of the mylk takes away the ‘i’ and puts in a ‘y’ and makes it quite clear that it is not from a mammal.

But anyway, I digress. I think it is really important that we continuously, as a government, strive to improve the systems that our producers need to work within.

That is what this bill is doing, and that is why I am very keen to speak on it, because if you take, for example, Bega Cheese, they are currently licensed under the Dairy Act 2000, despite producing major non-dairy products like Vegemite and peanut butter.

Tim Richardson: Well, that’s a bit cheeky.

Daniela DE MARTINO: It is a bit cheeky there, member for Mordialloc. But that is the beauty of this bill, it will simplify these arrangements. When you create that single-door entry, you do not have to deal with a whole range of different organisations.

Here is another example, with PrimeSafe – when it came to freezers and refrigeration of meat products, it was not easy to get that information through one channel; you had to then go and look at the PrimeSafe website, you had to look at their recommended times. I would like to also put out there for anyone who may be listening or reading this in the future: if ever you are trying to work out how long your meat can last in deep freeze, there are very clear guidelines on this, it is worth noting, because putting it in the freezer does not mean that five years later you can take it out and eat it. I promise you are going to end up with a terrible tummy. It also depends on the type of meat you freeze because pork will freeze differently to chicken to beef and it is actually quite complex. There is a lot of science in this. I am not a microbiologist, but people far smarter than I have worked all these things out. But what is also really important is knowing what to –

A member interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Well, yes, there are other ways to work it out. It is also important to know how to manage power outages and what happens to your food in that time as well. So I am just going to throw that in there because we have those sometimes up in the hills when the trees come down, and you can save your food by being a bit clever with your knowledge of how to store it and how long it will last as well before it does that sad defrost and you cannot refreeze it. That is not a good thing to do.

In essence – because I note that there are only a few seconds on the clock – I am really thrilled that our government has obviously consulted very broadly. This work started, as the Minister for Health indicated, four years ago when she was the Minister for Agriculture. There are two great ministers who have worked on this to make sure that we always keep food safety as the prime consideration, but we also make it easier for our producers and our growers within this system to be able to do their work, do it as efficiently as possible and keep continuing to produce the amazing, beautiful food that we have. A big shout-out to all my growers across Monbulk who are terrific horticulturists. I look forward to seeing them at the Melbourne flower and garden show in the next week.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (11:37): I rise to stand and make a contribution to the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026, and I wish to begin by acknowledging my local hardworking farmers and the many industries across my electorate. My electorate of Shepparton is known as the food bowl of Australia, a region that literally feeds the nation as well as producing global exports. Twenty-five per cent of the state’s trucks are also registered in the Shepparton region, so we have an enormous amount of transport movement. Dairy is a dominant sector in local manufacturing, making up 53 per cent of food manufacturing output in my region. The broader food and grocery manufacturing sector generates over $3 billion annually. Greater Shepparton also produces 25 per cent of Victoria’s total agriculture output and is one of Australia’s most concentrated dairy processing hubs. Dairy is the largest single contributor within the export mix.

As we stand in this place today, we know there is incredible uncertainty with the current fuel crisis impacting on our regional and rural communities. As you can imagine this is hitting our farmers and our transport companies 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, community and the increased costs of fuel hit at a time when households are already on their knees. Whilst we are discussing this safe food bill, we also have to be supporting those who are producing the food – the hand that feeds us. This bill is about food safety, but we also need food security to protect our food, our land and our dedicated farmers.

Regional Victoria has been through challenging times, with the impact of recent floods, fires and storm events. It seems to be relentless, and now with the impact of the increased cost of fuel, households are pushed to the limit – and we have just had another interest rate rise. Every day we hear of everyday people, hardworking families, just trying to survive. It is overwhelming, the growing level of disadvantage and many of those that are struggling have not in the past. I know many local farmers, transport industries and small business owners, and every day they get up, they show up and they just keep going. The government have a responsibility to do all that they can to help them, particularly during these challenging times.

It is important for us to raise these matters in this place so our communities know that on this side of the house their voices are heard. The regions matter, and we will call on the government to do their job. Yet during this latest fuel challenge, in this place we have been called alarmists. Like the member for Mildura and everyone on this side of the house, we find it astounding that we are accused of being alarmist while our communities and our industries are faced with this fuel crisis. We are receiving constant messages of distress. I was informed yesterday that the small township of Wunghnu ran out of fuel. The Premier needs to get out into the regions, meet with communities and see our farmers, see what they are growing, see the food we are talking about today and see our communities and what they are experiencing. Maybe then the Premier will understand why we use our voices in this place and why we may seem at times to be vocal, but do not call us alarmists. The regions matter, and the government need to do all they can to help us, as I said, particularly during this challenging time.

Coming back to the bill, this bill will establish Safe Food Victoria and provide for it to perform functions in regulating the Victorian food industry. It will abolish Dairy Food Safety Victoria and PrimeSafe; provide a legislative umbrella, with the SFV act providing overarching governance; and create a regulatory framework to support food innovation such as cell-cultured foods. The Victorian government announced its intention to create Safe Food Victoria in September 2025 as part of a broader economic growth strategy to consolidate and reduce the number of business regulators. Consumers need to have confidence and deserve to know that the food on their table is safe, high quality and regulated by the best possible standards.

Food safety regulation in Victoria is currently delivered through a combination of specialist regulators and government agencies. The structure of the state’s food safety regulatory system comprises four acts of Parliament and two responsible ministers. On top of this, the system is regulated by the Department of Health, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Dairy Food Safety Victoria, PrimeSafe and the 79 local councils. The government has argued that the existing system is fragmented and that a single regulator would improve coordination, streamline compliance and provide clearer oversight of food safety across the supply chain. The current system has generally been regarded as highly effective, particularly in maintaining Victoria’s strong reputation for food safety in export markets.

The new regulator, Safe Food Victoria, will be governed by a board with between five and seven members. The board will be appointed by the minister responsible – in this case, the Minister for Agriculture –for administering the act, and the board will report to the minister. Safe Food Victoria will come under the ag portfolio. In addition to the board, the regulator will be led by a CEO, who will be appointed by the board and who will also have the power to employ staff. The bill does not guarantee that the new regulator’s board will include representatives with expertise in dairy, meat processing, agriculture or regional food production. Without mandated expertise, the board risks becoming dominated by generalist bureaucratic appointees rather than people with direct industry knowledge. Industry stakeholders have raised their concerns that abolishing specialist regulators is not justified in the absence of evidence of systemic regulatory failure.

There is a risk that the new regulator will become a larger bureaucracy that is more distant from the industry and slower to respond to sector-specific issues. While the legislation allows the Safe Food Victoria board to establish consultative committees to inform regulatory performance, these committees have not been defined in the legislation. Such committees should include the dairy, meat and seafood industries, as well as public health, local government and regional representation. Dairy Food Safety Victoria currently operates on an industry-funded cost-recovery model and has built up financial reserves funded by dairy producers. There are concerns these funds – regulatory assets – could be absorbed into the broader operations of the new regulator rather than remaining dedicated to dairy regulation. This issue is particularly sensitive with dairy producers.

In the bill briefing the government also stated there would be a review of fees; however, there were no guarantees offered for when this would occur or that current fees and levies would not be increased. It is likely any increase in cost would be passed on to consumers in the form of an increase in food prices, increasing cost-of-living pressures.

Victoria’s dairy and meat industries rely heavily on international markets. Export partners expect stable and credible regulatory systems. Industry stakeholders have warned that restructuring food safety regulation could create uncertainty around certification and inspection regimes during the transition period. Even temporary uncertainty could create risks for export access. We need to ensure any concerns are addressed promptly.

There is a risk that the new regulator will become a large bureaucracy that is more distant from industry and slower to respond to sector-specific issues. There is no statutory review date. While this is a significant change process which could have serious consequences on our agriculture sector and particularly for our export market, there is no statutory review date included in this legislation, as I have mentioned.

The government say this is because this is only phase 1 of the implementation and that phase 2 has been promised by government, so it is not necessary. This seems a gross risk for the sake of a single clause in a bill. The government is also seeking to frame this bill around cutting red tape. However, industry stakeholders have suggested the reform may actually increase bureaucracy and compliance costs. There is no indication that this reform will deliver full benefits, but we need to be constantly making sure that our food safety regulations are strict and are compliant.

I also want to acknowledge our hospitality industry. In the Greater Shepparton region we have a huge amount of hospitality, and they provide great service to our local communities. I do have a friend that has a little wholesale food business; she is distributing food to these cafes. We have to make sure when we have small businesses that need to be supported by councils that they have a clear pathway, that they have full understanding of the requirements and also that there is not the red tape that we often hear when it comes to small business. Overall at the moment I think we in this place are all for safe food compliance. We need to make sure that we have certain standards so that people, when they do buy food, are protected, they are not getting sick and everything is there that they need to have in place. I will leave my contribution there.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (11:46): I rise to speak in support of the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. This is a bill that will establish a new consolidated food regulator, Safe Food Victoria. These reforms will support and enable the continued protection of public health and a collaborative approach to achieving food safety outcomes with industry while streamlining and simplifying our food safety and regulatory systems for business, consumers and the community alike. These reforms are important because ongoing access to safe, fresh and affordable food that is essential to nourishing every household and person across our community and because our agriculture and food processing and hospitality sectors are economic and employment drivers for Victoria and all of our communities. Ensuring the safe growing, processing and consumption of food will always remain an ongoing priority for the Victorian government and the Victorian Parliament.

Victoria’s agricultural economic contribution continues to become more interlinked with our socio-economic prosperity. As of June 2024, there was $20.2 billion worth of value in our agricultural production; that is up 15 per cent. $19.6 billion was the value of total food and fibre exports, up 7.4 per cent. 21,300 agriculture and farm businesses were in the state, which has remained stable. 68,870 jobs were associated with agriculture; that is up 3.3 per cent. Victoria, by volume, remained Australia’s number one producer of table and dried grapes; we produced 78 per cent of national production. Milk was 64 per cent of national production; sheep meat, 46 per cent of national production; fruit and nuts, 33 per cent of national production; and vegetables, 25 per cent of national production.

By value Victoria is Australia’s number one food and fibre exporter of dairy products: 73 per cent of Australia’s dairy exports come from Victoria; skin and hides are 47 per cent; animal fibre is 46 per cent; horticulture produce equates to 45 per cent; and total food and fibre exports are 24 per cent of national exports. Across our food and beverage manufacturing industry, 84,970 jobs are associated. That equates to 74,400 in food manufacturing and 10,510 in beverage manufacturing. When combined, the total jobs across agricultural production and the food and beverage growing, processing and manufacturing sectors is 153,840 jobs.

Melbourne is widely regarded as one of the world’s great food cities because it combines extraordinary cultural diversity, creativity and quality in a way that few places can match. Across the city you can experience authentic cuisines from every corner of the globe, from Italian and Greek to Vietnamese, Lebanese, Ethiopian, Turkish and so much more, all shaped by generations of migrants that help define Melbourne’s identity. What sets Melbourne apart is not just the variety but the standards. The cafe culture is world class, with a deep focus on speciality coffee, fresh local produce and thoughtful seasonal nuts. Whether it is a simple brunch or a fine dining experience, there is a strong emphasis on quality, innovation and consistency. Melbourne’s laneways and neighbourhood strips also play a massive role, offering hidden gems, family-run eateries and cutting-edge restaurants side by side. Chefs are known for pushing boundaries while still respecting tradition, creating a food scene that is both authentic and constantly evolving. Put simply, Melbourne’s food culture is about more than just eating. It is about community, creativity and connection. It goes to the very essence of what Melbourne is about, and that is what makes our restaurants and cafes some of the best in the world.

This bill is all about ensuring we continue to strengthen food safety standards to protect industry standards and public health. The way the food safety regulatory system is structured currently is very complex, with four Victorian acts and two responsible ministers. The system is currently regulated by the Department of Health, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Dairy Food Safety Victoria, PrimeSafe and 79 local councils, including mine in Merri-bek. The first stage of reform implemented by this legislation is focused on entity reform, bringing together PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria, two regulators with similar remits, as well as some departmental food safety regulatory functions, into a new central food safety agency. Safe Food Victoria will enable more efficient regulation, better incident management, a paddock-to-plate approach to food safety that is better aligned with risk and clearer food safety leadership, including within Victoria, as part of Australia and New Zealand’s binational food regulatory system for our most important export markets. The purpose of the bill, as I said, is to establish Safe Food Victoria and to provide for it to perform the functions in regulating the Victorian food industry; to abolish Dairy Food Safety Victoria and PrimeSafe; and to make consequential and related amendments to the Dairy Act 2000, the Food Act 1984, the Meat Industry Act 1993, the Seafood Safety Act 2003 and certain other acts.

A consolidated regulator can deliver benefits for businesses and consumers while protecting public health. It will reduce the need for businesses to engage with multiple regulators and reduce compliance costs. Once Safe Food Victoria is established a further series of reforms in a second stage will be brought before the Parliament in the next term. This will further consolidate existing food safety legislation, modernising the licensing, compliance and enforcement laws. The second stage of reforms will also consider new cost recovery arrangements and the role of local councils in regulating food safety. While we expect some regulatory benefits in this first stage of reform, this legislation will largely set the foundations for more explicit benefits as part of stage 2. Reforms have been supported by an extensive engagement and consultation process over the last year involving more than 60 individual engagements with stakeholders and interest groups, and this has culminated in an Engage Victoria process across September and October 2025. More than 120 unique submissions were received, with an overwhelming 91 per cent support, and I commend the Minister for Agriculture as well, who is at the table, for her work and leadership in bringing this bill to the chamber.

Across my community the value of agriculture, food processing and consumption remains critically important: 5200 jobs associated with retail – many cafes, restaurants and hospitality – 10 per cent of local jobs; 4200 jobs associated with accommodation and food services – that is 8 per cent of local jobs; 3800 local jobs associated with the manufacturing sector – that is 7.3 per cent of local jobs; and almost a hundred jobs associated with agriculture in my community – that is 0.2 per cent of jobs. We are not the agricultural heartland that we used to be in Coburg and Pascoe Vale. We were once upon a time during early settlement days, but that baton has very much passed to Shepparton and other areas these days. In terms of businesses there are 63 businesses associated with agriculture, 0.4 per cent; 471 businesses associated with manufacturing, 2.8 per cent; 1100 businesses associated with retail, 6.9 per cent; and 870 businesses associated with accommodation and food services, 5.2 per cent.

Across my community we have many fantastic local food offerings and cafes. Elio’s panini bar and cafe – un grande piacere to have visitato e mangiato with the Victorian Minister for Small Business and Employment, Minister Suleyman, previously. Catching up with the owner, one of our newest, local and best panini maestros, Peter De Marco, it was bellissimo to have been served up some of the freshest, most authentic paninis and focaccias in town. I cannot go past the mortadella special. Named after Peter’s son Elio, this proud Calabrese-inspired cafe is a labour of love blending family tradition, homemade sugo and the most authentic, freshest ingredients into every panino e focaccia. Opened in November 2024, Elio’s has quickly become a local favourite built on passion and deep connection in our community, and you can check it out at 68 Newlands Road in Coburg North. With an extensive family history and background, having grown up in hospitality, you can just see his family wall when you go up and have a panino there. They have come from Adelaide to Coburg North. He has got a great Calabrese heritage, and he has got you covered for colazione/breakfast, pranzo/lunch e tutt’altro/everything else in between.

Growing up in West Coburg myself, on Jamieson Street, we had the Progress Theatre, which was on Reynard Street, which we spent a lot of time at. But on the corner of Jamieson and Reynard streets for many years was a pizza institution. It was originally Charlie Falleti’s Pizza, then Joe’s Pizza for nearly 30 years, and more recently it is now Ralphy’s Pizza. John Spataro runs his family pizza business, now Ralphy’s Pizza, at this location. John, his brothers Carmelo and Vincenzo, nephews Rob, Joe and Anthony, two nephews both named Nicolas and son Antonio took it up. After their working hours they would go to the shop and work hard to renovate it to make it what it is today: a fantastic, welcoming Italian pizza place where customers are warmly welcomed to enjoy their food. They got the keys on 17 April 2024, and it took them six months to complete the renovations. It was officially opened in November 2024, and the family pizza business has not looked back since. John, his son Antonio and his wife Lina run the pizza business.

Lina’s particular emphasis on food safety regulations is impeccable, and I can attest to that firsthand. They work hard to provide pizza and food for customer satisfaction. John has been overwhelmed by the local community support and how the business has grown with the support of local families. Children, including those of Coburg West and St Fidelis, are making it their regular eatery. The best thing about it all, says John, is that he feels it is in memory and honour of his father Nicola, a pioneer Italian immigrant who came here and worked very hard, who had love for his family and love for good food as well. His family origins are from Varapodio in Calabria, not far from where my families are as well.

Just further east down Reynard Street we have another wonderful family food outlet with a proud family community history. Two Franks is a gorgeous new local cafe nestled in the backstreets of West Coburg and operated by sisters Angie and Chryssie, who, like yours truly, also grew up in that neighbourhood. Angie and Chryssie actually grew up right across the road from where their shopfront is today. Drawing on the suburb’s multicultural history, Two Franks is the beginning of a new chapter where locals are gathering to meet, share in their love of soul-filled food and hospitality and excellent coffee. But the question is: why the name Two Franks? It is because the shop at 202 Reynard Street was previously a butcher’s for many years, whose name was Frank; 16 years ago Frank hung up his blades and handed the keys over to another butcher, whose name was Frank as well. So it was two Franks – that is why the cafe is called Two Franks. We have so many other great cafes across my community. There is Jack & Daisy, where Eugene does a great job. There is Carson cafe as well, where Dario does a magnificent job.

I commend this bill as someone who worked in hospitality growing up, working in Carlton, in Lygon Street over many of my formative high school and university years. There are still great food and great coffee in the northern suburbs.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (11:56): I rise to speak on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026, legislation that proposes significant restructuring of Victoria’s food safety regulatory system. Now, the purposes of this bill are clear: to establish Safe Food Victoria as a new consolidated regulator, to abolish Dairy Food Safety Victoria and PrimeSafe, to transfer staff and functions into a single authority and to create a legislative framework capable of supporting emerging food technologies. On paper, these are substantial reforms.

The government argues that consolidation will streamline compliance, reduce duplication and deliver a more coordinated paddock-to-plate regulatory model. But while the intent may be sound, the execution of this bill raises serious concerns, and it is those concerns that I want to focus on today. The first and most pressing is the issue of governance. This bill abolishes two specialist regulators, PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria, each with decades of deep technical expertise. I have a long and personal relationship and experience with Dairy Food Safety Victoria, having been a licensed dairy farmer, and I saw the good work of the CEO Anne Astin for many years, and following her, Corrie Goodwin. So I have a very deep understanding, and I have witnessed their trusted relationships with industry, with producers and, critically, with international export partners. Yet the bill does not guarantee that the Safe Food Victoria board will include members with expertise in dairy, meat processing, agriculture or regional food production. There is no mandated commodity representation; there is no requirement for specialist knowledge. While the bill allows for consultative committees, it does not define them or prescribe them or guarantee that they will be established in a meaningful way.

This omission is not a minor oversight. It is actually a fundamental flaw. Agricultural groups have been very clear. Without mandated representation, the risk of losing institutional knowledge is high and the consequences could be significant. The dairy industry pays substantial licence fees to Dairy Food Safety Victoria, and we did that very willingly in the knowledge that we were getting an excellent service, and that was to maintain that high standard, that specialist authority.

Dairy Food Safety Victoria currently operates with around $6 million in reserves, roughly one year of operating costs. There is a real concern that these funds paid by dairy farmers in the past will be absorbed into this new entity and used to cross-subsidise the development of fake dairy and fake meat industries. Dairy Food Safety Victoria’s reserves exist to manage regulatory risk, and under this bill, those funds could be redirected to support emerging sectors such as cell-cultured – which is meat grown in laboratories – or plant-based products masquerading as milk, effectively forcing dairy and meat producers to subsidise industries that directly compete with them. Dairy farmers already find it a sore point when we hear about plant-based milk. These are products labelled as milk that do not come from the mammary glands of an animal, or meat that has not come from an animal at all. Whatever your view on these products, one thing should be non-negotiable, and that is clear, honest labelling. Milk does not come from cashews or pistachios, and it does not come from soybeans or oats.

Almonds do not lactate. If you want to order an almond latte in your local cafe, that is absolutely fine; I do not have a problem with that. You are making your choice, and it is absolutely your right. But what I do have a problem with is plant-based alternatives being labelled as milk. It misleads the consumer into believing that plant-based products have a nutritional equivalency with dairy, when they often have high levels of added sugar and do not have the nutritional benefits of whole milk.

This is not about stopping innovation, it is about fairness when farmers operate already under strict standards. They have invested heavily in animal welfare, sustainability and food safety. Farmers deserve a level playing field, not a marketplace where imitation products can borrow the reputation of established agriculture without the same level of accountability. This raises serious transparency issues. Why should established industries be footing the bill for new developing ones? Producers are already under immense pressure. Meat and dairy operators fear that they will be forced to cross-subsidise non-meat and non-dairy industries, driving up their own costs at a time when cost-of-living pressures are already biting hard.

At the same time, we are facing crises like the growing fuel crisis at present. When fuel costs rise, everything in food production becomes more expensive – planting, harvesting, transporting food to market, milk getting to the processors. That flows directly through to the price at the checkout of food. So it is a timely reminder: food security does not happen by accident. Farmers cannot plant, harvest or deliver milk without fuel, and right now confidence is slipping as the regional fuel outlets dry up. If tractors stop, crops are not sown. If tankers stop, milk never reaches the processors. By the time government realises the shelves are empty, it will already be too late. The Labor government cannot sit on its hands while the foundations of our food supply are put at risk. Farmers need certainty now, not apologies later. The Allan Labor government cannot sit on its hands while fuel continues to dry up. Fishing trawler operators in Portland tell me they now need 3 tonnes of fish just to cover the fuel required to catch 1 tonne. These vessels use around 1500 litres of diesel a day. With the price jumping from $1.70 last week to $2.99 today, that is more than $1500 extra they must find every single day. These are the margins our producers are having to work with, and they totally erode the profit a producer needs to be able to operate. Farmers are being disrespected yet again. Fishing operators are being ignored. It is just another example of how this city-centric Allan Labor government treats the regions – taken for granted and left to carry the burden.

The consequences will not stop at the farm gate. The food we all rely on – milk, meat, vegetables, cheese, fish for Easter – will all rise in price. Do not be surprised if seafood costs double on Good Friday. This is why the Allan Labor government should do something about these issues today, because in the end it is the consumer who pays the price. Adding regulatory uncertainty and cost shifting at the top is simply irresponsible.

The second major concern in this bill relates to the powers of entry onto food production premises. It is typical of this government, which shows little respect for private property. We are seeing that all the time with the way they are overreaching in trying to get claims on private property. Many farms are also family homes – places where people eat, live, sleep and work under the same roof that they run their business from. Well, food production may not occur inside the home. Offices are often located in the spare bedroom or converted living spaces. So under this bill, can regulators simply invite themselves into these areas? Can they just walk in? This lack of clarity in the bill is unacceptable.

Victoria’s dairy and meat industries are our export powerhouses. Victorian dairy alone is worth $2.5 billion to our economy every year. Success depends on the confidence of international markets. Export partners expect stability, predictability and credibility in regulatory systems. Industry stakeholders have warned that restructuring food safety regulation and losing industry experts could create uncertainty around certification and inspection regimes. One single misstep – a delay in approvals, a gap in oversight – could jeopardise our export access. We cannot afford to gamble with our export reputation. The transition must be watertight, and at present the bill does not provide that reassurance. Merging three regulatory systems into one is not a simple administrative exercise, it is a complex, high-risk undertaking. The risks include loss of experienced staff, IT and licensing systems failures, delays in inspections and approvals and regulatory uncertainty for business. These are not hypothetical risks, they are actually foreseeable. Yet the bill does not include a statutory review date for reform of this scale, and that is extraordinary.

The government claims a review is unnecessary because this is phase 1 of a broader process. That is not a justification; it is an excuse. A statutory review clause is a basic safeguard. Its absence is a glaring omission. Agriculture stakeholders, including the Victorian Farmers Federation, United Dairyfarmers of Victoria and Australian Dairy Farmers, have been clear and consistent. We are taking their concerns seriously, and we will put forward amendments in the upper house to mandate industry representation on the Safe Food Victoria board, to prescribe consultative committees for key commodity groups, to protect the regulatory assets and fee reserves of each sector and to establish a statutory review period. These amendments reflect the concerns of the agricultural stakeholders and the expectations of Victorian consumers.

The bill represents a major shift in how Victoria regulates food safety. With the right amendments, this reform could be strengthened; without them, the risks to industry, to consumers and to export reputations are simply too great. Backing our farmers is good policy. We should protect the integrity of what they produce and ensure Australians can trust the food on their plate, because once that trust is lost, it is hard to rebuild. In a country like ours, we should never take for granted the people who make sure we are fed.

 Paul MERCURIO (Hastings) (12:06): Food, glorious food. I rise today in support of the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. I want to take a few moments to talk about why this reform matters and why it is the right thing to do. I would like to thank the member for Pascoe Vale for taking me on a food tour through his electorate, and I am going to get his speech so I can follow that. It was also great to hear the member for Shepparton talk about her food bowl. When I did my food show Mercurio’s Menu I certainly went to Shepparton and toured around the area in various places. I went to the SPC factory, which is historic. As a child SPC was always in the cupboard, whether it was canned spaghetti or baked beans or Two Fruits or whatever. The member for Pascoe Vale outlined Victoria and its place in Australia as a very, very important food bowl, and I think that is terrific.

The Mornington Peninsula is a fantastic food bowl. We have many, many different products, from fruit, vegetables – when I say vegetables, we have got Hawkes Farm potatoes – cows, goats, chickens of course, eggs, wines and artisanal products such as cheese and honey. We have got Gazolla, who produce some amazing fresh vegetables, and they go all over the place, and we have got Torello Farm, which produce their own beef as well as their own vegetables, and they are really terrific. The Mornington Peninsula’s food and agriculture is worth $1.3 billion and employs over 7000 people, so it is an important industry for the community, and food safety is an incredibly important aspect of that. If we are not on top of our food safety, then we lose an industry and people lose their livelihoods, so it is very important.

Food is fun, it is creative, it is exciting and it is delicious. It tells stories, gives us identity and gives us a history and a place of belonging. Food safety is not any of those things, and it does not do any of those things. It is not really very exciting. I have had my own restaurant and food businesses, and I know food safety is an arduous but important task and it is incredibly necessary that we follow it. What food safety does is make sure that we can continue to enjoy our food and enjoy all the other benefits that it provides.

Food safety is something that most people do not think of. I might be a bit strange, because I do think about it. The fact is that if people do not have to think about it, then that is a good sign. It means that the system is working. But just because something is working today, that does not mean that it is going to work tomorrow or the next day or the next week. Things change – food changes, production changes, the world changes and food production changes – so the risks also change, and our regulatory system needs to keep up with that and keep pace and change with it. Right now Victoria’s food safety system is generally complicated, and I have experienced that. We have four separate acts and two responsible ministers, the Department of Health, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Dairy Food Safety Victoria, PrimeSafe and 79 local councils all playing a role.

That is a lot of moving parts for what should be a straightforward question: is our food safe? I recall a moment when I was on Mornington council and we had a person who had a fish and chip van who also had a seafood facility and wanted to sell fresh seafood out of the fish and chip van. They were cooking fresh fish for fish and chips, but they were not allowed to do sell fresh fish. I am still not quite sure why. But the question is: is our food safe? Obviously if this van was cooking fresh fish to sell to people, the fish was safe and they should have been able to sell it. But that is, I guess, the complexity of having so many councils and so many organisations looking after food safety.

I have been lucky enough to travel around Australia, going to food bowls in each state when I had my television food show. One of the big things that farmers and producers would often talk to me about was the regulatory red tape. It is there to keep people safe, but their experience, and probably my experience too, was that it goes back to that question: is the food safe? I would go to cheese manufacturers. Traditionally cheese is aged on wooden boards. It has been like that for centuries, it is perfectly safe, it has never been dangerous, but for some strange reason in Australia they changed that around so that cheese had to be aged on stainless steel. It is not the same thing – it changes the flavour and changes timing and all of those sorts of things. I do believe that has been changed, which I think is a good thing. But again, it is just this very simple understanding that with so many different bodies looking after food safety there is confusion, there are contradictory elements to it and it makes it very, very difficult.

Food safety is hard work. When I had my restaurant we would put the food out. Obviously if we did not put safe food out, we would go out of business very quickly. The great thing about having a restaurant is putting food on the table and feeding people and nourishing them. The worst thing about a restaurant is when you close you then spend an hour to an hour and a half cleaning down – cleaning the fridges every day, cleaning everything to within an inch of its life. Obviously there are regulations about that. If you are doing meat, if you are a butcher, PrimeSafe come down on you pretty hard.

This bill is really about bringing everything together and making things simpler. It will consolidate all of those things like PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria together, along with the food safety functions currently sitting inside the Department of Health – one agency, one front door, a clear paddock-to-plate approach to keeping Victoria safe. I might take a moment to be clear about something else, because it is worth saying this directly. This is not about cutting corners. This is not about watering down our food safety standards. This is not about the idea of maybe cutting red tape so things are a little bit easier and people have an easier opportunity of getting away with things. The whole point of this reform is to make our food safety system stronger and more responsive, not weaker. Safe food is the starting point, the non-negotiable, and everything else flows from there. I think that is a really important thing to remember.

I think about businesses in my electorate, and I think about the complexity that they deal with and that I dealt with. Take a diversified farm operation, for example, a business that processes meat, grows vegetables, runs a farm gate and does some food manufacturing on the site. One of those, as I said, is Torello, which is in Dromana. They do an amazing job, but they do all of it. Over the years as a councillor I had involvement with them, trying to assist them with various food safety elements from council, from PrimeSafe and other things. Under the current system that business could be dealing with, as I said, a PrimeSafe licence, a registration with Agriculture Victoria and a separate registration with their local council all at the same time. That is not a system designed to help businesses succeed.

I had a bloke called Paul Stafford come to my office a little while ago. He has a business called Bigger Than Texas. It does smoked meats and things. He just wanted to talk to me about the fact that he can control above the line – numbers of staff and food costs – but he cannot control the stuff below that, which often comes from all the regulatory processes that he has to go through, adhere to and fill out.

He was saying that, as a hospitality person, he was thinking about getting out of the business. Maybe this bill will make a change and maybe he will consider, now that it is a one-stop shop, not getting out of the business but staying put.

I do not have too much time left. This reform has been a long time coming, and it has been done properly, with more than 60 individual consultations with industry groups and stakeholders and an Engage Victoria process that drew over 120 submissions. Of those submissions, 93 per cent were supportive of the direction. The dairy industry alone has had around 20 individual meetings since December 2024, including with the minister. I think a lot of thought has been put into this. Also, we are not the first to make this change, which is good. New South Wales has done it, Queensland has done it and New Zealand has done it, and it has worked. A consolidated food safety regulator is a proven model that works, and it is long past time Victoria joined that list. This is a sensible reform. This will keep Victorians safe and make it simpler to do business in this state. I commend the bill to the house.

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (12:16): I rise today to talk about the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026, and you cannot talk about this bill without talking about the plight and the needs of farmers, particularly those in my own electorate of Polwarth. It was interesting that the member for Hastings finished with the fact that Engage Victoria was again used – and trumpeted by this government as its cutting-edge consultation process. Can I just remind the member that, with 93 per cent approval through Engage Victoria as justification for this bill, I will also point out that this week Kim Jong Un talked about his 99 per cent approval from the people of North Korea in running his state. Governments of all persuasions can use their own market research to determine their usefulness and worthwhileness, but those at the cutting edge, those on the workplace floor and those on the farms may have a different view.

In my consultation this morning, unlike the government’s Engage consultation, I managed to speak to the Victorian Farmers Federation, I managed to speak to United Dairyfarmers of Victoria and I managed to speak to Australian Dairy Farmers. I managed to speak to those people that will be directly affected by this bill, and do you know what I found? I found 100 per cent dissatisfaction with this legislation. And why were they dissatisfied with this legislation? Because they felt that they were not listened to. Surprise, surprise, surprise, in a time when this government, every time a member of the community disagrees with them, brings in more legislation to just fast-track their own agenda.

It had me thinking. We know, for example – it is a topic today, about planning – this government cannot get houses built in Victoria, so it has decided to just bulldoze every community and not listen to anyone. Those of us out in regional Victoria have had that for a while now. You can build solar farms and wind farms, and you can do all sorts of things, but the local community is never listened to. In fact the tension that we have out in the community with not only renewable energy but agroforestry projects also is highly problematic in our region. These are the types of issues I am hearing farmers, particularly in Polwarth, wanting to have solutions to. I have not actually had anyone come and knock on my door like I do about new foreign-owned solar farms or wind farms or foreign-owned agricultural bluegum tree plantations and other things. No. I hear plenty of concern and angst about that. I am certainly hearing plenty of angst and concern about rising diesel prices, the cost of urea, all these immediate concerns clobbering farmers and food producers in my region, but actually no-one has come to me and said, ‘Look, could the Parliament please go to Dairy Food Safety Victoria? They’ve been running at a profit. They’re highly respected. All the people in the industry, from producers to suppliers all down the manufacturing chain in dairy in particular, are all really happy with the service they get. They find them highly collaborative. They’re world leading. The rest of the world looks to them. And unusually for this government, they run at a profit. They’ve got surplus funds in the bank account. They’re set up for a rainy day. They’re doing the work the industry wants them to do. Can you please pull it apart, government? Can you spend time in Parliament and come up with a way to pull it apart, because it’s not working and we want change.’ No, they are not the words that I have heard from the stakeholders in this particular debate. I have not heard those at all.

But what I am hearing is, ‘We have not been listened to. We do not have the necessary safeguards and guarantees in this new entity that the government are bringing in that will ensure that the suppliers and producers of dairy products, in particular, are listened to and their concerns are taken account of.’ So that is of great concern to me.

The government will talk much today about, ‘Oh, we need to do this because we need safe food.’ Well, of course we need safe food; that is a given. The people that work every day, seven days a week, out in our paddocks and our food producing things or out on boats bringing in fresh seafood – that is what they wake up for. They love to produce a food product that not only they can be proud of but they know gives them a good reputation and keeps their business going into the future. It is not an issue of whether we want our food safe, but is our farming future safe? That is the question I have.

There are storm clouds galore on the horizon for farming, particularly at the moment. The battles I am hearing farmers talk about are ‘The costs of running our equipment and our trucks on our roads are going through the roof because this government cannot maintain basic infrastructure.’ Our roads are crumbling; that is a cost that directly goes to transport, the cost of getting food and food supply in. There is cost of urea because of the war in the Middle East at the moment. While we cannot blame the government for the war – I am not even suggesting that – it will be a huge problem down the road because so much of that important fertiliser that goes into producing the crops right across Victoria and southern New South Wales, a significant percentage, comes back into the food production chain here in Victoria, whether it is top-up feed for our dairy industry, our pig industry, our feedlot industry or other things.

These are huge and important issues today. These are issues that we could and should be talking about in the Parliament, not looking to consolidate a department that no-one is actually worried about. I would also reference the fact that when I was preparing for today and I was wondering, ‘Why has the government gone to such effort to bring up some pretty significant changes that no-one’s really asking for? Why might they do that?’ The other little hidden bit in the government’s discussion is the Silver review. Not everyone may be familiar with the Silver review, but that is this government’s ham-fisted attempt to sort of try and cut costs. And there, amongst the justifications for this bill, is reference to the Silver review, and what that says to me is, sadly, the government have found a profitable department, one that is run and controlled and financed by the farming sector, and they are going, ‘Mmm. That’s a little bit too much of a black balance sheet there. What could we do to –

Peter Walsh interjected.

Richard RIORDAN: ‘How could we stuff this up, and how can we get our gritty little hands, our grimy little treasury hands, on these hard-earned funds?’ Can I just put this into context. If we assume that this government will do potentially to this new agency as it has done to so many others, farmers will quite rightly be very upset. They are going to be upset because over the coming years they will see massive increases in the fire service levy to pay for services that they are providing to our communities already. So, ‘Here’s a fire service which, farmers, you all do out of the goodness of your heart to keep your community safe, and you do it all for free.’ On the weekend I was lucky enough to have the Leader of the Opposition Jess Wilson in my own patch, and Jess came down, and there, after spending all day Saturday, my local CFA –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): Proper titles.

Richard RIORDAN: The Leader of the Opposition and I went there on Saturday. The CFA and the SES were all fundraising – they raised about $30,000. Then on Sunday morning there they all were doing extra training, all for free. It did not cost the taxpayer a cent, but we are going to charge them extra. Not only do we have the poor old farmers going to be slugged for a service they already provide and they are already funding profitably and in a way that is world class, but with Dairy Food Safety Victoria regulation, which they are doing a great job with, what I can see happening and what I am sure so many farmers, dairy farmers in particular, are saying is, ‘Oh, my God, we’re already paying a levy. It’s doing a good job, and these guys are going to come along, gobble up that surplus that we have got there, that good management, and they’re going to fold it into existing revenue.’

They will stack a board full of their mates, who will all probably get paid twice as much as what the existing board gets, and that is where the money is going to go. And that is the great worry. They are going to pay a heck of a lot more for a heck of a lot less, and that seems to be the mantra of this government on that. At the moment the uncertainty in agriculture continues, and this bill, sadly, does not do much to relieve the concerns that so many in primary production have as to how this is going.

Just in the time I have left, this bill, while it says it is for the betterment of food safety in Victoria, I do not believe is really keeping a strong and vibrant farming future going forward. It is not addressing the issues of today that really are keeping so many of our primary producers and food producers awake at night. This government has been silent on that, this whole past few weeks, with what is going on internationally. There is a crisis on the horizon for us. We expect the government to deal with the issues of the day that are keeping people awake and to keep our food on the table.

 Katie HALL (Footscray) (12:26): I know that Footscray is perhaps not renowned as a farming community, but we do our best locally with the amazing young people at the Footscray High farm, learning all about where food comes from and sustainability, and they do an outstanding job. I think it is a really innovative program to teach kids in the city how to grow their own food and how to appreciate and value all things permaculture. They have got some amazing learning resources down there, including a stargazing centre where the kids built their own space with a telescope, and they learn all about the environment there. I do not think the chooks are still at the farm, but we have a yabby farm there, and it is a pretty impressive set-up which was highlighted on Gardening Australia, which has been a source of pride for all of us.

I am pleased to make a contribution to the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. This bill seeks to both strengthen our food safety regulatory program while streamlining the process for businesses and those involved in the food safety pipeline. The current food safety regulatory system is pretty complex, as we have been hearing this morning. There are four acts of Parliament and two responsible ministers. The system is currently regulated by the Department of Health, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Dairy Food Safety Victoria, PrimeSafe and 79 local councils. So even before the impact of this regulatory shandy happens on business and is unpacked, the efficiency gains that can be made by reducing administrative duplication are obvious.

The current regulatory system requires two CEOs and executive Victorian public service staff, four separate and unconnected IT systems, 17 board positions and four different worksites, to name a few of the duplications. As many in the food safety industry will know, too many cooks can spoil the broth, so under this reform, rather than having four entities regulating over 100,000 food businesses, Safe Food Victoria will hold a whole-of-supply-chain role in ensuring food safety with support from departments and local councils, reducing the number of cooks in the proverbial kitchen – I am trying to get as many cliches as I can into this contribution; I am sure you will appreciate that – without cutting frontline staff.

Safe Food Victoria will reduce the number of permissions needed by businesses, making it easier for these businesses to comply with regulations. As someone who spent a good portion of my 20s working in hospitality, I know that that will be well received in the hospitality sector. Businesses can often conduct multiple activities that do not sit neatly in a specific framework and require multiple permissions from different regulators. A diversified farm business operating a retail outlet, a cafe and food manufacturing – and I heard the member for Eureka talk about my favourite cheese before, Meredith Dairy, as an example of this – may require a PrimeSafe licence to process and retail meat products; registration with Agriculture Victoria to produce and process leafy vegetables, berries or eggs; and registration with the local council to operate a cafe or a food manufacturing business. SFV will incorporate all of these systems into a single access point, making it easier for businesses to get the permissions required.

This bill is more than administrative efficiency, however. Fundamentally, this bill is making sure that we keep Victorians safe from the various food safety risks that are out there. The nature of these risks changes all the time, and that is why the government is acting proactively to manage those risks. Just because our food safety system has worked in the past does not mean it is fit for purpose to manage the risks of the future. It is only responsible to acknowledge the need for change and to safeguard the health of Victorians and the reputation of our fine agricultural industries here in Victoria. Food safety is something that can be taken for granted in developed countries like ours, and like a lot of work undertaken by governments, people do not notice things when they are done right. The implications of getting it wrong, on the other hand, are very noticeable. Whether at the beginning of the supply chain at our farms and ag facilities or at the consumer-facing end in commercial kitchens and supermarkets, food safety quite literally is a matter of life or death. Outbreaks of foodborne illnesses caused by salmonella, E. coli, listeria, norovirus and more can have devastating consequences for the community, particularly for children, the elderly and the immunocompromised. Ensuring that businesses have the knowledge, support and resources to facilitate proper food safety practices is vital to the health of Victorians and to our incredible foodie culture here in Victoria.

Our livestock industry is absolutely rolled gold, as we have heard many times this morning, and produces some of the best-quality beef and dairy products in the world. A shout-out to my mum up in Dederang – it is good dairy country. Food safety does not just protect consumers, it protects the livelihood of those farming communities. Many here will remember the mad cow disease outbreak that affected the UK and the EU in the 1990s. This epidemic resulted in millions of cattle being destroyed and hundreds of people losing their lives and cost entire industries their ability to export beef and beef products. This bill helps to ensure that everyone in the Victorian supply chain from primary producers to dinner guests are protected from harm. In order to do so, this bill will implement the first stage of a two-stage reform program to consolidate food safety regulators in Victoria, with stage 1 seeing the establishment of a new statutory body, Safe Food Victoria, to replace PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria as well as conduct the food safety regulatory functions currently undertaken by the Department of Health. This effectively creates a single front door for food safety queries to be established by mid-2026, reporting to the Minister for Agriculture.

PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria will then be abolished, and stage 2 will see the development of a new framework for food safety in Victoria. These reforms will streamline regulatory processes, ensuring greater consistency across the supply chain from paddock to plate. This process is in the early stages and will continue through 2027. This will strengthen our food safety system by making it more robust and responsive to effectively manage risk, foster innovation and facilitate continual improvement. In short, our food safety system will be even safer and smarter.

I would like to conclude my contribution by thanking Footscray Market, who have just donated boxes of fruit to the kids participating in Ride2School Day across my electorate tomorrow. I am very proud to support Footscray Market. I commend the bill to the house.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (12:36): I also rise to speak on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. I have been listening to contributions. Some are very in touch with our agricultural community, and some are a little bit more out of touch, but I certainly love our cafes in Melbourne, for which we provide the produce – the meat, the milk, the fibre for our great state. One comment that really stood out to me, before I go into my notes, was what the member for Polwarth said, and it is largely guiding my contribution today. This bill is looking at whether our food is safe, but it is a worthy argument to ask whether our future of farming is safe in Victoria.

This bill look at restructuring how food safety is regulated in Victoria, abolishing those longstanding specialist regulators like PrimeSafe and Dairy Food Safety Victoria and replacing them with a single centralised body. As someone who has spent more than a decade of their life in the agricultural industry as a farmer and as a journalist, a lot of these changes are welcome, but there are also some significant changes that we do have some concerns with.

Food production in my amazing electorate of Euroa is central to everything. It is central to our economy. Seventy per cent of our rates are largely dependent on the success of agriculture and the benefit that that has for our communities and employment: Stanhope dairy across the north-east and its livestock, in Merino unfortunately we lost our beehives. We were honey producers, but we lost our bees in the fires. Across our region, for every farm or agricultural entity, they employ the majority of our jobs in our communities, but they are under immense pressure. We have heard it throughout today, whether it is dealing with bushfire recovery, workforce shortages, regulatory burden or, right now, this fuel crisis that we are all dealing with. Their ability to produce food easily and financially effectively is under immense pressure. I think that the question we want to ask on our side of the house is whether this reform will help producers and farmers. We want to know if this will make their lives better, or is it going to add more bureaucracy and challenges at a time when they just cannot cope with any more? We stress not just the economic impact of changes that this government has forced on our farmers but that the emotional toll of some of these changes is significant.

I want to start with the fuel crisis. Every contribution this week has been commenting on the impact that this is having on the livelihoods of the individuals and businesses in my electorate. We are dependent on those independent retailers to supply our farms, our businesses and machinery operators. There are not many businesses in my electorate that do not depend on some reliable fuel, which they cannot access right now. Intel from the petroleum association is telling me that the spot market is above $3.55 a litre – astronomical, crippling to our economy. There are some retailers at the moment, independents, that are up to $3 a litre, and that is really ensuring that our emergency services have fuel and our farmers have fuel. We are coming into the grape harvest, and we are also coming into sowing. It is critical for these businesses to operate without government intervention, which is why I wrote to the Premier to ensure that she pressures the federal government to relinquish some of the MSO, the minimum stockholding obligations, onto the spot market, directing that to some of our independents, relieving some pressure and allowing our farmers to keep farming so that you can all have your lattes in Melbourne.

The allegations around panic buying from the Labor state and federal governments floor me. I have spoken to some of my business operators, aka farmers, and it is not panic buying; it is forward purchasing. They know they need fuel and they have read the play and they understand there is risk in that security. So they have prepurchased, anticipating. They need grape harvest; they need fuel. We are also dealing with the clean-up from a bushfire. Many complaints are coming through that they cannot even get a jerry can full to put fuel in their chainsaws and they are living in unsafe conditions because of that.

This is a window where we need to strike quickly. I think immediate allocation of minimum stocking obligation volumes to independent regional fuel operators is needed. We do not have public transport. We do not have alternatives. We saw some funny reels around, you know, of excavator drivers getting on their bike and taking their shovel to go do their work. It is not a joke. It will grind regional Victoria to a halt. I understand that in the coming weeks, in mid-April, when we have challenges sourcing fuel from South Korea, Japan or China, this is going to get incredibly high pressure for our community. I have got to note that considering that the CFA put out some communications two weeks ago, it is about time that we are seeing Labor coming to the table and having these conversations around fuel security. Some would say a bit late, but they are there, and we are going to guide them in making sure they are practical solutions, and the Nationals will tell them how to make sure our farmers can keep farming.

Also, just in my time remaining, I want to talk about the centralisation that is referenced in this bill. We have concerns on this side about that loss of trust that we are seeing when it comes to the power of individual government agencies, and entities as well, when on paper it might sound efficient, but in practice we do have some serious, serious concerns. I want to draw on an example of an operator, Colin Sinclair, in my electorate of Benalla, in the community. He is one of our major employers. He has a pig abattoir, and for the last 30 years he has operated this business successfully. And without it, let me tell you, you will not be getting much bacon, because they are a huge provider of meat onto the Victorian market. He has been dragged through the courts for years. He operates to the standard and beyond. Yet he has been a target of so-called animal activists – we actually think that they are terrorists, because the way that they grind our communities and our businesses to a halt is abysmal. Through legal challenges, he has been targeted repeatedly and forced to defend lawful operations, despite regulatory compliance. He came through the courts. At the time he was seen as being absolutely compliant, yet still there is another appeal and another appeal.

It is death by a thousand cuts to our agricultural industry. If we allow these individuals to attack how we operate, without protection or without a government coming back in and saying, ‘No, we actually need this business to operate,’ it is shameful. We saw this erosion of rights and protection with the VicGrid bill, and we have seen it repeatedly under the Labor government: they just continually erode and attack agriculture. To be frank, I think regional Victoria has had enough. So in centralising this authority without guaranteeing strong regional representation we risk creating a regulator that is further removed from the realities on the ground. We have heard that a fair bit recently.

My final point that I want to talk about – this is a really incredibly disappointing one, and it comes to everything we are debating here today – is around the bushfire recovery. In previous disasters right across Victoria, including the Grampians and East Gippsland, we saw direct business support to the farmers and individuals impacted, grants of around $5000 and concessional loans to help those who had been impacted and whose businesses had been, and therefore our communities because people were not spending money in our towns.

Those concessional loans and grants supported those impacted by road closures, power outages and lost tourism. In my community we lost Australia Day, and it is looking like we might be losing Easter as well. They lost peak trading periods and contractors could not operate as communities were cut off. Yet this year, through the penny pinching of this government, we have seen no business grants – none whatsoever. The excuse: ‘They’re quite difficult to administer.’ You know what is difficult to administer? All of the businesses that are leaving or closing in Victoria. That is what is hard. They are not getting replaced by others that are popping up and forming employment in regional Victoria; they are closing because it is too hard to operate. My advice to the government today is give us a break and support with business grants fire-affected communities. The precedent is there, and I will not stop raising this issue until we see $5000 grants to businesses impacted by the bushfires across Victoria and not just in my community. We know that the precedent is there. To close, these changes will be felt right across all the paddocks, all the businesses and all the farms in regional Victoria, but without fuel, we have no food.

 John MULLAHY (Glen Waverley) (12:46): I rise in support of the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026. This is a reform that goes to something fundamental: the safety of the food we eat, the confidence consumers place in our system and the strength of Victoria’s food and agricultural sector. Every Victorian every day relies on the integrity of our food system. From the milk poured over breakfast cereals to the meals shared with family to the food served in our local cafes and restaurants, we trust that what we consume is safe. That trust is not accidental. It is built on strong regulation, clear standards and a system that is capable of responding to risk not just as it arises but before it emerges. That is what this bill is about. It is about ensuring that Victoria’s food safety system is not only strong today but fit for the future.

At present our food safety regulatory system is fragmented and overly complex. Responsibility is spread across multiple agencies, including the Department of Health, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Dairy Food Safety Victoria, PrimeSafe and 79 local councils. It is also underpinned by multiple acts overseen by different ministers and often requires businesses to engage with more than one regulator at the same time. This is not a criticism of the people working within that system – they are dedicated, highly skilled and committed to protecting public health – but the structure itself is no longer fit for purpose. As outlined in the minister’s second-reading speech, the current system creates duplication, inefficiencies and unnecessary complexity, particularly for businesses that operate across multiple parts of the supply chain. In a world where food production is evolving and where businesses innovate, diversify and operate across transnational boundaries, that complexity will only grow.

This bill recognises that reality. It acknowledges that while the system has served us well, we cannot stand still, because when it comes to food safety, standing still is not neutral, it is a risk. This legislation delivers the first stage of a two-stage reform to modernise Victoria’s food safety framework. At its heart is the establishment of a new statutory authority, Safe Food Victoria. The new regulator will bring together the functions of PrimeSafe, Dairy Food Safety Victoria and key food safety responsibilities currently undertaken by the Department of Health. It will create a single consolidated body responsible for regulating food safety across the supply chain from paddock to plate. That matters because food safety risks do not exist in silo –, they move across the supply chain, they evolve with new technologies and they require coordinated, timely and expert responses. A consolidated regulator will be better equipped to deliver that. It will provide clearer leadership, it will improve incident response and it will enable a more consistent risk-based approach to regulation.

But this reform is not just about the structure, it is about the outcomes. It is about making Victorians safer and it is about making it easier for businesses to do the right thing. Right now too many businesses, particularly those that operate across multiple areas, are required to navigate a system that is fragmented and at times duplicative. They may need to deal with multiple regulators. They may require multiple licences. They may be subject to different processes for what is, in essence, a business operation. As the minister’s notes highlight, this has been consistently raised through consultation as a barrier to productivity and compliance. This bill responds to that by creating a single point of contact. A front door for food safety regulation, Safe Food Victoria will simplify interactions, reduce administrative burden and improve clarity for businesses.

When regulation is clearer and more consistent, compliance improves, and when compliance improves, public health outcomes improve as well. That is the core logic of this reform.

Importantly, this bill does not lower standards, it strengthens them. It ensures that the primary objective of the new regulator is to safeguard public health. It embeds the role of the chief health officer in providing advice on public health risks, ensuring that the connection between regulation and public health expertise remains strong. It maintains existing legislative frameworks, including the Food Act 1984, the Dairy Act 2000, the Meat Industry Act 1993 and the Seafood Safety Act 2003, while creating a more coherent structure around them. This is not about tearing down what works, it is about building a system that works better. This reform is also forward looking, because the food industry is changing. We are seeing new technologies emerge, including cell-cultured foods and innovative production methods that do not neatly fit within existing regulatory categories. We are seeing businesses diversify, producing, processing and selling across multiple parts of the supply chain, and we are seeing increasing expectations from consumers not just about safety but about transparency, traceability and trust. Our regulatory system must keep pace with that change. This bill begins that process. It creates a regulator capable of responding to emerging risks, supporting innovation and ensuring that Victoria remains at the forefront of food safety. It is also worth noting that this reform is not being done in isolation. Other jurisdictions, including New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand, have already moved to consolidated food safety regulators, and the evidence is clear. These models improve coordination, reduce duplication and provide clearer accountability, and Victoria should not fall behind. We should lead.

This bill has been shaped by extensive consultation: more than 60 targeted engagements with stakeholders and an Engage Victoria process that received over 120 submissions and strong support, with over 90 per cent of submissions backing the direction of reform. That matters, because good reform is not imposed, it is built. It is informed by those who will operate within the system: industry regulators, local government and public health experts. While not every stakeholder agrees on every element, there is a clear recognition that the current system can be improved.

I want to address a point that has been raised in some of the debate. There are those who say that if the system is working why change it? But that question misunderstands the nature of good governance. Good governance is not about waiting for failure, it is about anticipating risk. It is about recognising where systems can be strengthened before problems arise, because in food safety the consequences of failure are significant. They affect public health, they affect consumer confidence and they affect the reputation of our producers not just locally but in export markets around the world. We cannot afford to be reactive; we must be proactive.

This reform also reflects a broader commitment by the Allan Labor government to make government systems more efficient, more accessible and more responsive, not by cutting corners and not by reducing standards but by designing systems that work better for both consumers and businesses. This is about better government and better outcomes. For my community in Glen Waverley this matters. We are a community that values quality, we are a community that values safety and we are a community that celebrates our food culture through our restaurants, our cafes, our multicultural food culture and the small businesses that bring people together. Those businesses deserve a regulatory system that is clear, consistent and supportive, and the families who dine in those businesses deserve the confidence that the food that they are served is safe. This bill supports both.

Of course this is only the first stage of reform. The second stage to be progressed in the next term will further modernise the legislative framework, including licensing, compliance and enforcement. It will also consider the role of local government and new cost recovery arrangements. That work will be important, but it can only occur once the foundation is in place, and that is what this bill delivers: a foundation, a structure and a clear direction for the future of food safety here in Victoria.

Before I conclude I want to acknowledge the collaboration that has gone into this reform across agriculture, health and Treasury and across regulators, departments and stakeholders, because reforms of this scale require cooperation, they require shared purpose and they require a clear focus on outcomes. This bill is about protecting public health, and it is about strengthening confidence. It is about supporting industry, and it is about ensuring that Victoria’s food safety system is ready for the future. It is a careful reform, it is a considered reform and it is a necessary reform. I commend the bill to the house.

 John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (12:55): I rise to speak this afternoon on the Safe Food Victoria Bill 2026, and I just wish to take up some comments from the previous speaker, who talked about the importance of rationalising offices in the interests of efficiency. On a day like today, where there seems to be so much chatter on the government benches, there may be some opportunities for some rationalisation there and the removal perhaps of one office to be replaced by one or two others. I think the good member for Glen Waverley over there might want to take that point up.

Juliana Addison: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I would like you to bring the member for Hawthorn, who has a lot of understanding of leadership spills, back to the bill before us.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): What is your point of order?

Juliana Addison: Relevance, and irrelevance.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): Member for Hawthorn, you did stray. I will get you to come back to the bill.

John PESUTTO: I thought we were friends, the member for Wendouree and I, but I take your point, Acting Speaker. This is an important bill, and I just want to make a few overarching comments about this bill. The first point I want to impart into the debate is what drives reform. I just want to make the point that the two key dynamics driving this process at the moment, which would see Dairy Food Safety Victoria and PrimeSafe both abolished and absorbed into Safe Food Victoria, are said to be, as we understand from the materials, the Silver review and the Economic Growth Statement. I am a big fan of a constant dynamic in government, which is always searching for better ways to do things and to remove duplication where it exists. But let us not be mistaken about what drove the Economic Growth Statement and the Silver review. It was the increasingly parlous state of our finances. You might say reform is reform – if it leads to efficiencies, that is a good thing – but as previous speakers on this side of the house have pointed out, there are risks involved in a process of reform such as this, where you are abolishing existing bodies and replacing them with one overarching body, where you could end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and miss the whole point. If you are a government, as this one is, that is under so much financial pressure – you have got S&P Global, Moody’s, Fitch and everybody else; the Commonwealth independent agencies that conduct oversight of government operations, such as the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman and the Parliamentary Budget Office both here in Victoria and nationally putting pressure on you, for good reason, to get your finances under control – there is a risk that in the pursuit of efficiencies you will lose the very objectives that you are trying to achieve.

A good example of that is, if you look at Dairy Food Safety Victoria’s annual report for 2024–25, you will see in it that it had in 2025 proudly released its corporate plan for 2025 to 2030. How is that going? My point is no-one seems to be talking to each other. If you want evidence of a reform process that seems to be chaotic and driven by the circumstantial urgency of our financial position as a state under the Allan Labor government, there is a good example. This is an agency which by most accounts has operated well. No agency is performing to everybody’s liking, but I think Dairy Food Safety Victoria has been performing well. It has won plaudits from many people, and it is overseeing one of our most important sectors. As you know, our dairy farmers are our second-largest exporters in Victoria. For those watching and those who will read the debate, our dairy farmers produce 63 per cent of our milk products nationally and underpin our export markets. There is a whole lot riding on– I am just talking about Dairy Food Safety Victoria, but with PrimeSafe as well – whether we get that right. I say that with particular fondness because Dairy Food Safety Victoria is located in my electorate. We do not want to lose the benefits of all of that in this process. As the lead speaker in the debate pointed out, there are some risks with this, and the first one is in the creation of an overarching centralised bureaucracy.

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

Business interrupted under standing orders.