Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (11:25): I used public transport this morning for free, and it was wonderful. It is a really big cost saving for the community that I represent and for so many others across Victoria, and it is very sad that the member for Warrandyte does not support such initiatives, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis. It is very sad to hear, member for Warrandyte.

Fraud and Corruption Control in Local Government: A Follow up of Two Auditor‑General Reports is what I plan to speak on, and the Deputy Speaker, who is usually in the chair at this time –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Sorry, I did not quite hear the report.

Mathew HILAKARI:Fraud and Corruption Control in Local Government: A Follow up of Two Auditor‑General Reports. It relates to two Auditor-General reports, the first being report 40, Fraud and Corruption Control: Local Government, 2019; and audit report 316, Fraud Control over Local Government Grants, 2022. I thank the secretariat because I have thanked many others, including the member for Yan Yean next to me, for their efforts in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee on this report. The chair of this report wrote in her foreword:

Ultimately, integrity in local government depends as much on culture as on compliance. Systems can be designed, but they must also be lived. Leadership, transparency and accountability are not optional features of public service; they are the foundation of trust between communities and their elected representatives.

This is a real challenge in the community that I represent at the moment, and we have all seen the challenges related to particularly the newly elected mayor – I think he is about a week and a half in – who is under a real cloud. I understand most recently that he has stepped aside but he has not resigned from his position – that is breaking as of this morning. Maybe he should use this opportunity to consider whether he does indeed resign.

I will not say this too often in this place, but even the Leader of the Opposition was calling for members of her own party who write support letters, character references – something that this government is moving to ban – for people who have ultimately been convicted of very, very serious crimes to no longer run for preselection and said they would not be welcome in their party room. Mr Preet Singh, the mayor – because he has not resigned – is also a member of the Liberal Party, and I hope that the Leader of the Opposition shows that same leadership in calling for that across all public offices, because this is a matter of leadership. I hope that the Liberal Party sees this as a real problem for them, these people who are being preselected in invidious positions, because I do not think there was a lot of choice in this preselection.

Wyndham has had its challenges, and in this place you have heard me talk a few times about Point Cook and the tens of millions of dollars of developer contributions being shifted from the community. For the residents of Point Cook, embedded in their households are developer contributions, yet they are getting shifted across the community because there is probably a real lack of imagination at Wyndham council about opening up their facilities. They say they are going to take this money and move it to other facilities and other suburbs, which they should not. However, there are facilities for community events, for large-scale community events, in the City of Wyndham already, but they choose by policy not to open these up to the public, not to allow the public to have access to the food that they need for their services, for their celebrations. Too often the community that I represent go down the road to Williamstown, down the road to Bacchus Marsh – and down the road is a long way to Bacchus Marsh from Point Cook – because they cannot access the services that they need.

I will take us to finding 24:

It is difficult for the public to assess the expenditure and planned expenditure by local government …

Their budgets need to improve. There are multibillion-dollar line items in Wyndham that do not describe how they are spending their money.

That is a real outrage for our community. It is not something that would be acceptable for federal or state governments at any point in time. We are able to tell from our budgets when the money is going to be spent and how it is going to be spent. There is a lot going on in communities like Wyndham; there is a lot more needed in that support. Many people from the community have approached me around the current mayor, and I hope he considers his position over the coming days and does what is right for the community and right for the position of mayor, which is important in our community.