Tuesday, 16 June 2026

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (16:24): I fear that I am going to need an extension of time to speak on these bills, because there is a lot to cover and I have got quite into the weeds, actually. I am really pleased to speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. As we know, these are being debated together as cognate bills. I want to start with: why do we have occupational health and safety legislation? We need to have occupational health and safety legislation for a reason. It is about protecting the people and it is about protecting workers. It is about protecting the physical and psychological health, safety and welfare of workers. The core purpose of the legislation is to prevent workplace deaths, injuries and diseases. It is governed by the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, which is being amended here.

I mentioned that one of the key core purposes is to prevent workplace deaths, and I want to reflect on that for a moment, because the number of deaths in the workplace is too high. If I look at the data from the last decade, in 2014–15 there were 20 workplace deaths. Last year there were 53. It seems that prior to 2018–19 the numbers were in the 20s. Now they have been in the 50s or 60s. At the moment – as of 9 June – we have had 19 confirmed workplace fatalities. These deaths are too high in Victoria. At the minute it is a bit of a decrease on last year, but we know if you look at a decade ago, there is a long way to go to really make some changes here.

The legislation that we have around already, the occupational health and safety legislation, has clear duties and things that it is trying to do to make sure that workplaces are as safe as possible. Some of these objectives include eliminating hazards at the source. This requires businesses to identify and remove or minimise workplace risks before harm occurs – I think all of us here would know and understand that and have probably been subject to a bit of a check here and there to make sure that safety is paramount where we work and those hazards are reduced – and also to protect the public, to ensure that work activities do not endanger the health and safety not just of employees but of the general public. Another core purpose is to promote collaboration, and that is fostering the cooperation between employers, employees and worker representatives to establish and apply safe standards. Of course there is a legal framework around this which outlines specific rights for workers and enforcement powers for WorkSafe. It is WorkSafe here that is the overarching body.

We have dangerous goods legislation in existence at the moment, and it is important to have this legislation because there are catastrophic risks attached to a number of hazardous chemicals. These are things that we deal with in everyday life, and it is easy to take it for granted that the risks associated with dangerous goods are managed, but there is legislation that sits around that. There is compliance as well as enforcement that need to make sure that our streets are safe, our workers are safe and people in communities are safe as well. That legislation is to prevent catastrophic incidents and mandate safe practices for manufacturing, storing and transporting substances that, for example, are explosive, flammable, combustible or corrosive. I will talk about those a little bit later.

To enforce the accountability here is about deterring reckless behaviour by imposing strict penalties, because dangerous goods can have quite catastrophic and wideranging impacts. These penalties, particularly around industrial fires and illegal chemical stockpiling, which has occurred, again are about protecting public health, about keeping the workers and the general public safe from chemical exposure, poisoning and large-scale environmental damage. These laws are governed and enforced by WorkSafe, so if you are involved in the extraction, production, manufacture, transport, sale or use of dangerous goods you need to be protected but you need to make sure that those in that work environment are also protected. That is so broad that if you have the tankers driving down a highway, you want to know that if they are carrying something that is explosive it is marked properly and they are perhaps taking the safest route through the cities. I am a bit alarmed that I am not sure that that actually happens now. You get some trucks carrying really highly explosive materials heading down King Street, which is an area in the middle of the city with a lot of traffic, a lot of people and a lot of offices. I think that that is something that we need to have a look at perhaps in the future.

The dangerous goods legislation and the occupational health and safety legislation work hand in hand. They are particularly intertwined. The changes that are being made through these bills are complex, but they are being debated concurrently because they are very intertwined. It makes sense to do so, and I had no issue whatsoever in agreeing to that.

The purpose here today is to create a new principal act to regulate the transport of dangerous goods, including high-consequence dangerous goods and explosives by vessel on inland waters, by road or by rail to promote public safety and protect property and the environment from harm. That is creating a new principal act. I have mentioned already that there is an existing Dangerous Goods Act 1985, but this bill creates a new act because it is about the transport of dangerous goods. Also the Occupational Health and Safety Act will be amended to incorporate the regulation of the handling of dangerous goods, excluding their transport, because that is going to be in the other bill. It will repeal the existing Dangerous Goods Act 1985 on commencement, which is going to occur sometime in the future, hopefully well before 2028, which is an exceptionally long lead time. I understand that it is complex, but I certainly think that by 2028 – on my birthday in fact. Because the Dangerous Goods Act is going to be repealed, the Occupational Health and Safety Act will provide the regulatory framework for handling dangerous goods in Victoria once that is repealed. It is important to understand that there are two bills before the house. One is an amendment, and the other is the creation of a new bill. Our position here is not to oppose these. I would have been very keen to have supported these bills. I do have a couple of concerns. Some of them I will outline towards the end. But the timeframes to get these important changes made are particularly long.

How did this come about? What caused these bills to be on the agenda in the first place? Why was the legislation being reviewed? We had a couple of catastrophic fires as a result of illegal chemical stockpiling. They released toxic smoke and hazardous substances into surrounding communities. Most notably, there was the West Footscray blaze that burnt for two weeks in August 2018 and a major fire at the Campbellfield chemical waste facility in April 2019 that took several days to bring under control. I want to just mention quickly the 2018 fire in Somerville Road, Tottenham. 140 firefighters and 30 appliances battled this inferno. It was contained after 14 hours, but the firefighters remained onsite for quite some time to manage hotspots and hazardous run-off. They were there for another couple of weeks. One thing that was particularly concerning for the firefighters was that they were so hampered by the narrow passageways created by the illegally stacked shipping containers and thousands of 44-gallon drums. The illegal chemical stockpiling was an issue. The warehouse was not registered under the Dangerous Goods Act to store hazardous chemicals. There was a regulatory failure. The post investigations revealed thousands of litres of volatile solvents – acetones, for example – detergents and welding chemicals. Not only was this a disaster in the spot where it happened, but it caused other environmental disasters and community health concerns. There were plumes of smoke. Suburbs were affected. In Yarraville, Brooklyn and Kingsville people were urged to stay indoors. Symptoms of exposure were raised, and there was an asbestos risk. There was a wildlife impact. Water containing PFAS et cetera entered Stony Creek, killing approximately 2500 fish, eels and birds. The clean-up took ages.

The one in Campbellfield took probably six months, maybe a little bit more later, and it was also a disaster, you would say. It took four days to fully extinguish. Two workers were hospitalised. When we have our firefighters and emergency workers going into these situations, it is very, very risky. This is where they really are tested – their skills and how they manage things.

Again, there were failures here. There was excessive storage. At the time of the fire they had approximately 330,000 litres of chemicals, more than double the 154,000-litre limit. The EPA had suspended the licence just weeks earlier, discovering the company had three times its permitted waste. There were unsafe conditions, things were stacked too high. Again, there were environmental disasters. Ten nearby schools were closed, and that is a huge impact for communities and families. The local creek required a major clean-up by Melbourne Water and the EPA to try and contain toxic sludge. The air quality was low. There was a ‘watch and act’ in place for some time. These were pretty catastrophic fires that occurred.

It is quite ironic that whilst we have these bills before us now, only last week there was a fire at a Campbellfield chemical plant which was licensed to receive and dispose of chemicals. Twenty-three firefighting appliances and 70 firefighters worked quickly to contain that.

As a result of these pretty awful fires that we had, the government realised that they needed to do something about it. There was a review that took place. It was conducted by Andrew Palmer, who is now KC but was not at the time. The brief was to address contemporary challenges in managing dangerous goods, which he did, and it was released in October 2022. That was 3½ years ago. Now we have an implementation date of April 2028. This is such a long period of time. That is 10 years after the first incident, and I just do not think that is good enough.

The review specifically recommended, through recommendations 3.1, 11.4 and 13.2, that Victoria’s dangerous goods legislation be incorporated within the OH&S act and regulations. This is where we see the OH&S act being amended, and other areas are going to be put into the regulations. It was recommended that dangerous goods transport be regulated by its own act and that explosives and high-consequence dangerous goods be regulated under separate legislation. The reforms that we have here are about embedding dangerous goods regulation into the existing OH&S act, including a new duty to handle dangerous goods safely. It creates the new Dangerous Goods Transport Act, covering rail, road, boat and inland waterways. If you think about how dangerous goods are transported, we import a lot of things. Some of them might come in by ship through Melbourne’s ports, or they might come in by plane out at the airport.

This makes it an offence to risk serious injury or death involving dangerous goods, and it strengthens WorkSafe’s powers – the ability to enforce compliance – and gives the courts broader sentencing options. It aligns dangerous goods laws with other regulatory frameworks and facilitates better coordination and information sharing between jurisdictions. That addresses some of the weaknesses in interstate transport that have been identified. These regulations will be developed after the bills pass, and I hope they are developed quickly. They will align Victoria with other jurisdictions by adopting the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road and Rail – as I said, with commencement sometime down the track – which will allow more than sufficient time for the industry and duty holders to prepare for and comply with the changes.

Some commentary about the legislation – it is a significant reform, and it does move the Dangerous Goods Act to a more modern, transport-focused framework that I believe is timely and necessary and is clearly there to protect the safety of all Victorians. The structure and intent of the bill reflect a shift towards a more contemporary risk-based approach, and I think that is a good thing. It is closely aligned with the principles that already exist in the OH&S act. It completely bans the transport of extremely dangerous goods; there are other mechanisms in place for that.

What is important to consider here is how this will work in practice, because it must work for the regulator and the industry. We are looking for good behaviours here so that the risk can be reduced as much as possible and everybody is kept safe.

I am going to talk about duty, because one of the important changes here is the introduction of a clear, overarching duty on everybody involved in the transporting of dangerous goods to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, that activities are carried out safely and without risk to people, property or the environment. It has been said to me that ‘reasonably practicable’ might not be the right term because a defence goes straight out the door when someone is seriously injured or killed, and we do not want companies putting prices on death in the first instance. The element of duty applies really, really broadly. It is not just drivers or operators, it extends across the supply chain. That supply chain is very broad – consignors and contractors, company directors and senior executives. These changes will sting cowboy operators badly, and hopefully it will drive these guys out of business, which is positive. I am sure that is one of the aims.

This is a positive step because it reinforces that safety is a shared responsibility, and it does lift expectations considerably. Organisations need to demonstrate that they are actively managing risk through effective systems and governance, so that cannot be somebody else’s job. As senior leaders, you need to be across this and actively engaging to make sure that your company does the right thing; you cannot just rely on procedures or paperwork. It moves away from a prescriptive compliance-based model towards one that focuses on whether the risks are being properly controlled. In practical terms, that means organisations will need to show that they have well-maintained equipment, competent or trained people, clear processes and the ability to respond effectively if something goes wrong.

Moving now to enforcement, this area has also been beefed up and will send a message around accountability. If you are a good operator, this will be easier for you. If you are not such a good operator, then it is going to be a little bit tricky for you. As I said earlier, to get those that behave a little bit irresponsibly out of the system will be a good thing. The bill introduces aggravated offences and provisions around reckless conduct, particularly where there is potential for serious injury or death, and it sends that very strong signal around accountability. The level of penalties, including the possibility of custodial sentences, places dangerous goods transport alongside the more serious end of occupational health and safety regulation. As I have mentioned, a key point is the explicit duty on officers to exercise due diligence, so the directors and senior leaders really need to understand the risks of operations and ensure systems and resources are in place and appropriate and satisfy themselves that they are actually working. They must be actively engaged – real engagement at that senior level.

Another area that is being strengthened here is incident reporting and the requirements there. Immediate notification, preservation of incident sites and ongoing record keeping will improve visibility and support learning from incidents, which is a positive development. From a regulatory perspective, inspectors are given strong powers to enter, inspect and intervene where needed. This has been raised as a concern, what this will look like and how this will work, particularly by the Victorian Transport Association (VTA). I urge the government, as they take the next steps in the development of the regulations, to engage properly with the industry to make sure that they are on board and understand. There is the addition of cost recovery provisions, which is notable and will change your focus to compliance.

The powers of entry have also been raised with me as an issue. They are broader than what has traditionally been applied in the dangerous goods space, so people are a little bit edgy about that – they are a little bit antsy about what that means – but the powers are largely consistent with what already exists under the OH&S legislation. The VTA raised concerns with me about inspection enforcement and powers in relation to entry.

Within the OHS context, inspectors are generally empowered to examine anything reasonably connected to risk, not just the immediate hazard. In part they have greater powers than police on the right of entry. The police might require a warrant, but inspectors do not always, and they can enter on a suspicion.

We raised some of these questions, and I really thank from the minister’s office Gil and Emily and the people from WorkSafe and the Department of Treasury and Finance who participated in the bill briefing and the subsequent responses to questions on notice, because it was greatly appreciated and I got proper detailed responses for which I was really pleased.

It is about prompt and effective responses and community safety. I do understand the issues, because they are worried about inspectors looking beyond just the dangerous goods and into other areas of the vehicles, for example. So dangerous goods might be contained in one area, but the vehicle may be inspected more broadly. That may be the case, but from a practical standpoint sometimes this can be problematic because many of the real risks sit in the surrounding systems, maybe in the vehicle condition, in the load restraint, maintenance, documentation, competence of operators and so on. So it can be argued that allowing inspectors to look more broadly can lead to better safety outcomes, provided these powers are exercised appropriately. Like all roles, there are professionals who are well briefed, well intentioned and focused on achieving safer outcomes rather than simply enforcing compliance for compliance’s sake. Sometimes inspectors can be a little bit more rigid, more regimented, and there could be inconsistency in how powers are interpreted or applied, and sometimes this can be changed with a government direction and whether your government uses a big stick or a carrot. I think that we really need to be working closely with stakeholders to bring them along the journey, to make sure things are implemented as smoothly as possible.

It is so important that inspectors demonstrate a sound understanding of risk, particularly in higher hazard environments. In relation to inspector training, WorkSafe inspectors typically undergo structured internal training and mentoring and have established capability frameworks, and inspectors often come from industry backgrounds such as engineering, operations or safety. Formal training is supplemented by on-the-job experience and, in some cases, external technical courses. WorkSafe also engages external expertise with specific knowledge, if required, in particularly complex or emerging risk issues. And this area and the changes is complex. I spoke to many in the sector who were intent on doing the right thing, and I was impressed by the level of engagement and how well they took their responsibilities. It was put to me that less mature operators who perhaps prioritise cost or productivity over risk management might be the ones that we need to work with to either help them change their practices and come along on the ride here or look at helping them realise that this is not perhaps the right industry for them.

I sought a lot of feedback and I got great feedback, and I do want to mention the comprehensive feedback I received particularly from the Australian Institute of Health and Safety. I am not sure whether the government have been given the extensive feedback that I was provided, and if they have not been, I urge them to contact them to go through some of the issues. The institute certainly understood the broad application and were supportive of the reforms generally and understood that level of complexity. I quote:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

The reforms introduce a level of complexity and ambiguity, particularly in relation to the expanded duty holder obligations, the interaction between workplace and transport legislation and the increased reliance on principles-based interpretation. Without the clear articulation of roles, responsibilities and practical application, there is a risk of diffused accountability, inconsistent implementation and increased legal uncertainty for businesses who conduct undertakings in Victoria.

They had a lot more to say about that, but I think that that is particularly important, because there are risks. When I worked as a management consultant, one of the things that we did consistently with leadership was talk about accountability, roles and responsibilities, and clarity around the roles and responsibilities. I cannot urge the government enough to make sure here that this is done.

The exploitation of weaknesses in interstate movement of hazardous waste has been addressed here through better coordination of information sharing between jurisdictions, and that feedback has been noted positively. The Victorian Farmers Federation also had concerns, and I would urge the government to work with the VFF to make sure that farmers are not unfairly targeted, because farmers do use a lot of dangerous goods on their properties and we do not want farmers getting caught in a whole lot of paper-based compliance activity which is drowning them. We need to make sure that they understand the changes as simply as possible, that they meet the requirements and that they know that very quickly and simply so that they are not unfairly targeted.

The effectiveness of these reforms, though, will ultimately depend on how well they are implemented by industry and the regulator. The main challenge will be implementation, and I have covered off on a couple of those areas already. Many organisations, particularly smaller operators, will need support to move from a compliance mindset to a systems-based approach, and this is where clear guidance, practical compliance codes and education will be important to ensure the intent of the legislation is achieved on the ground.

There is a little bit more that needs to be done here, I would suggest, and I would like to see a structured independent review after implementation to provide valuable insight into whether the intended safety and governance outcomes are being achieved. This industry is high risk, and it is important that workers in the supply chain and the community at large are kept safe. Community members do not always know what is happening in the area where they work or how close they may be. They do not know that there is a truck driving down the road in front of them that is in itself a risk. I would like to suggest an audit of the scheme to ensure that safety outcomes are achieved, focusing on regulatory compliance, regulatory governance and oversight, licensing and the authorisation framework, compliance and enforcement effectiveness, transport operator compliance, incident management, goods that are too dangerous to transport, emergency preparedness and response and scheme outcomes. There are a lot of stakeholders involved here, because they each have different roles. I mentioned earlier the EPA, for example, and the firefighters, whether that is the CFA or Fire Rescue Victoria. We have those that work on the ports and those that work in the airports. There are a lot of stakeholders here that need to be worked with and brought on board.

We might think dangerous goods sometimes are just a toxic substance – cyanide you might know of, things in hospitals, the X-ray equipment. It is important when they are disposed of and they have got to be transported that the legislation around transporting them is done correctly. We see in hospitals puncture-proof containers because we know their contents are dangerous. There are fireworks and ammunition, TNT and things that we know of, gases that are used every day: LPG, propane, butane, aerosols, some flammable, some non-flammable. We work with dangerous goods all the time and take for granted how important this is. We are seeing a lot more now with lithium batteries and the risk associated with those, including in a vehicle. We saw a golf club burn down because the lithium batteries in a golf cart caught fire and set all of the Eastern Golf Club in Yering on fire, and there was millions and millions of dollars worth of damage because of that. That changed storage processes in so many different organisations because they knew it was a risk. It has taken too long for this bill to reach this point. It is a long lead-in time as well to 2028, when these incidents happened in 2018–19. Overall though, the bill is well considered and a necessary step forward, and I hope the government listens to my contribution.

 Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (16:55): Thank you to the member for Eildon for taking us away. The member for Eildon could have continued for a very long time, I am sure, but I am here now, so you will have to put up with me – I am very sorry. It is my great honour to rise and speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 in conjunction with the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026, and I have been looking forward to this one. I will come back to this gentleman further, but I have been looking forward to this one because I have a constituent in my area, Mr Jeff Simpson. Jeff is from Haztech Environmental and is a hazardous chemicals and regulatory affairs consultant. Jeff lives and breathes trying to make our state a safer place in regard to dangerous chemicals, and for that I thank Jeff for his wisdom, although I do not 100 per cent agree with everything he has said, and he knows that – but I will I will come back to that.

I think we have come a long way in 40 years since the original dangerous goods bill was introduced. I thank the Deputy Premier for his work. But as a government, I can recall many instances when we have made small changes to make our state a safer place. It is not always in dangerous goods. I note the Minister for Consumer Affairs is at the table. In our rental area I remember making the change to allow renters to put hooks in the wall or to have shelves nailed into the wall so they would not fall down. That seemed at the time like a fairly obvious thing.

Paul Edbrooke interjected.

Matt FREGON: ‘Common sense’, the minister says, and he is absolutely right, because up until that point, a landlord could have said, ‘You know what? I don’t want you putting holes in my wall,’ and you can understand that. But I have got to tell you, there is no way Bec would have let me put some IKEA shelves up anywhere near the house without making sure they were screwed into the wall for the safety of our children. This, if I can use the minister’s words, is another commonsense thing. We did not just make it up on the spot. This is obviously following tragedies and very problematic fires from 2018 and 2019. The member for Footscray was just enlightening me about her personal circumstances when that was happening, but I will not steal her thunder; I will let her talk about that.

Katie Hall interjected.

Matt FREGON: You are not speaking? Well, okay. Apparently you do not want to have a very large factory fire when you are in labour; it does create extra complications in what I am sure is a complicated time – at a guess, obviously no personal experience there. We had the Palmer report commissioned, and a number of recommendations followed, and this has led us to this bill.

I will just come back to Jeff, because Jeff has looked at this bill. Jeff is a very knowledgeable man in regard to this area. Jeff proposed a couple of amendments, which I do not actually agree with, and I am going to explain to him on the record – I have already explained to him in person, but I am going to repeat it on the record – why I think his proposed amendments are not necessary. Jeff proposed that in part 3, clause 16, of the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill – and then also in clause 20, part 3, that we have a similar line – says that the person who has to be aware of the dangerous goods should know and understand the hazards and risks so far as reasonably practicable. He wanted to put in those words. We did forward that correspondence on for consideration, but I do not think it is necessary. I will go into this further, but I think the reason, in summary, why it is not necessary is because, if we take the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill section, we have division 1, under duties relating to dangerous good transport, a duty to ensure dangerous goods transported in a safe manner and related offences. So there is already a duty to ensure the dangerous goods are transported. Now, you can only do that if you know and understand the hazards and risks. The knowledge that I think Jeff wants everyone to have in regard to managing these is already implied in the section that this is at. Therefore, it is not necessary to specifically arrange it. More than that, not that I am a lawyer, but my understanding in general is that ignorance is not a defence in these things.

I would say to Jeff that the bill does introduce a new due diligence duty for officers of body corporates to ensure that the body corporate complies with the relevant duty or obligation. Therefore it is not necessary to specifically say that you must have the knowledge, because it is implied that you have to have that knowledge in order to do safe and to be safe, and that would fit into the due diligence. More than that, it goes on to say that exercising due diligence is defined in the bill and includes taking reasonable steps to stay informed about health and safety, understanding business operations and associated risks and ensuring that adequate resources, processes and systems are in place to manage those risks. Once again, that implies, fairly obviously in my mind, that knowledge is required and therefore we would not need to exactly specify it in the light. I thank Jeff for his contribution. He is right that managers should have to know this thing, because otherwise they are not going to be able to comply with the laws that will be enacted. But more than that, it is also worth pointing out to Jeff and any other interested bodies –

A member interjected.

Matt FREGON: I am going to react to the interjection: Jeff Simpson. Again I will mention him. It is worth pointing out that stakeholders will have the ability to be involved in the regulations as they are generated with a code of conduct or whatever the process is. Therefore I encourage all the Jeffs out there, whoever they are, to get involved in that process, because it is the very people who work in this industry, who have this knowledge in chemicals, that we need to have helping with that process for WorkSafe. I am sure that we will have further conversations. This is just another step in all the laws that are a work in progress as we chip away to make our state a better place.

I can vaguely remember one of my first jobs over summer when I was doing work in a cable factory. They said, ‘You can help us out on the forklift, right?’ And I went, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve never ridden a forklift.’ We were a little more lax on the old licences for forklifts back then, so I drove it for a little while and luckily did not hurt myself. But obviously we have come a long way since then, and it is fair to say that anyone who is going to drive a vehicle that is going to lift heavy loads should have a licence, and I think we all are safer because of that work that WorkSafe do in our community. On that, I will commend the bills to the house.

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (17:03): I rise to make a contribution on these bills that we are debating concurrently: the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. The changes in these bills are being delivered, as our previous speaker mentioned, after a report was done – a review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, it was, by Andrew Palmer – and it was released in October 2022. This has been a little time coming around, but we are here – it has been a while in the making. They aim to modernise the regulation of the transport of dangerous goods and to strengthen WorkSafe’s ability to enforce compliance with dangerous goods transport law.

In reading a bit of the background on these bills, a lot of these changes have come out of two very, very significant events: the suburban chemical fires that we had in 2018 and 2019, approaching a decade ago. It is about time we got around to making some changes that needed to be made after that. Refreshing my memory on what occurred in those incidents, illegal stockpiling of chemicals was a major contributor to those fires, I guess, creating that catastrophe that they did.

We had one in West Footscray that burned for around two weeks, and it seemed to be on the news, just thinking back, for the full two weeks; every night there was an update on it. The second one was in Campbellfield, which I think also took at least a week to bring under control. I can remember – and it is well documented on the public record – the issues that caused with the health of people living in the area. A lot of people had to move out of home and move to another area because of the smoke. It really impacted on communities; it impacted on some of the waterways and just the general environment. Changes needed to be made around making people more responsible, making people more accountable and ensuring that certain standards are met so that we do not have a repeat of those situations.

As I said earlier, one of the biggest contributors to that was the illegal stockpiling of chemicals. I think part of the reason that that occurred was because the repercussions for doing that were not great. Those who undertook that illegal stockpiling were not concerned about what faced them legally, so they were sort of happy to put up with it. This bill goes a fair way to addressing that by making the penalties tougher and making people more responsible and more accountable. Similarly, there are changes to occupational health and safety that also needed to be made similar to the changes that were made to dangerous goods. As the member for Eildon said in her initial speech, there have been simply far too many deaths for us as a society to continue to not take action, so it is good to finally have this bill before us.

The bill creates a new act that covers road, rail, boat and inland waterways. I read ‘inland waterways’ with a little bit of interest, because in my electorate of Gippsland East we have one of the biggest waterways in the Southern Hemisphere – or it actually is the biggest waterway in the Southern Hemisphere. We have had a few spills in recent times where we have had to call in the expert authorities to clean them up, and it got me thinking, going back over the years, that my family has had a pretty long association with transporting goods around the Gippsland Lakes. My great-grandfather Captain James was born in Shalford but came out here in the 1870s and took up a job for six weeks captaining the Tanjil paddle-steamer on the lakes. He was only here for six weeks, and he wrote in his diary that he thought the Gippsland Lakes was a mosquito-infested swampland and he never wanted to come back, but he actually met a lady there and married my great-grandmother. He went on and worked on a number of paddle-steamers on the lakes – the Sarah, the Ariel, the Tarra and the Tanjil II after Tanjil one got burnt – carting a lot of freight and goods around the Gippsland Lakes. I am not sure there would have been too many dangerous goods, but there was a lot of fuel and oil. He also went on one little expedition there of interest, while I digress slightly; he actually bought a paddle-steamer – the member for Narracan will like this story – called the Burrabogie, and he set up the only on-water pub on the Gippsland Lakes on the paddle-steamer Burrabogie. Imagine that these days: getting on a paddle-steamer pub and going for a cruise around the lakes. It would be pretty hard to get off and get home. We did not have phones in those days, but you would be ringing your wife, saying, ‘I can’t get off the boat.’ That went well for a couple of years, so I do not know what dangerous goods they had on there apart from maybe a few alcoholic drinks, but it was a very interesting period in the history of the Gippsland Lakes but also in the history of my family.

Getting back onto the bill, it makes it an offence to risk serious injury or death involving dangerous goods. Laws along these lines are already in place, but this makes things a bit tougher in that regard, and it strengthens WorkSafe’s powers to give court orders and broader sentencing options.

On that, a person involved in the transport of dangerous goods must ensure they are transported in a safe manner. There is more onus in this bill to do that and make people more responsible without posing risks to public safety, to property and to the environment, which is what we saw with those couple of incidents that I mentioned a little bit earlier in my speech.

Before I finish, I want to just touch on one element of the bill, and it was feedback we got from the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF). Our farmers and our rural sector have been caught up in this transporting of dangerous goods. Although they are not officially or formally in the freight industry, this bill now covers them. We need to make sure that this legislation does not impose a disproportionate regulatory burden on our primary producers. Our farmers are doing it tough enough at the moment without having to find themselves in bother doing this. Of course they do need to be responsible, but they are not transport operators of dangerous goods by trade, yet they are captured under this legislation, and we just need to have some oversight on that. We have got some members in the chamber at the moment that have big farming districts within their electorates. I have got the Macalister irrigation district and also the Lindenow Valley, which is a massive horticulture area. Those farmers do, particularly in the vegetable industry and the horticulture industry, transport a lot of goods around. We need to make sure that we support our farming sector and our rural sector and make sure that there is not overreach on this that impacts on them unnecessarily.

I will mention that interestingly, one of the people who has flagged this concern, Brett Hosking, is going to be a candidate for Murray Plains with the retirement of Peter Walsh. He was a previous president of the VFF, and he flagged some of these concerns with this bill in his role as VFF president, which he stepped down from to contest the next election. I am sure if and when – I will say when – Brett gets in here that he will be keeping some pretty strong oversight on any unnecessary repercussions that this bill applies to our rural and farming sectors.

This is not a bill that we are opposing. We do wish it the best through the parliamentary processes of going through the two chambers, but with the acknowledgement that we need to monitor, like we do with all legislation that passes through this place, how indeed it plays out on the ground. We have a society that is heavily regulated, in many cases for good reason, but we often, history will tell us, have passed laws and legislation in this place only to see when it gets royal assent and gets implemented that there are repercussions on the ground that we have not foreseen. We just need to make sure that this is not another one of them. That aside, we wish this legislation a clear passage through the Parliament.

 Danny PEARSON (Essendon) (17:13): I am delighted to make a contribution on this bill because it is a really important piece of legislation. At the outset I do want to acknowledge the contribution made by the member for Eildon. The member for Eildon was my shadow minister for an extended period of time when I held this portfolio, and I do want to acknowledge the fact that the member for Eildon is a detail person and she spends a lot of time getting across the detail of really complex legislation. I think that was clear and evident in relation to the contribution she made earlier today.

The genesis of this legislation goes back a number of years, and I had stewardship of it when I held the portfolio. It has taken a while to get here because it is deeply complex. Both pieces of legislation are incredibly complicated pieces of legislation. Why is it complicated? You have got to cover a number of different industries and a number of different sectors and you have got to try and find the balance between making sure that you are protecting the environment, protecting workers and protecting the community and doing so in a way in which it is not too onerous or too much of a burden for employers and employees. By its very nature it is difficult and complex work.

For me this is really important because of the consequences when you get it wrong. The member for Gippsland East talked about the events of 2018. I think that is a clear example of market failure: where you let the private sector just go off and manage these things but without a proper and appropriate regulatory regime you see really bad consequences.

I am really pleased that the member for Narre Warren South is in the chamber because it gives me an opportunity to acknowledge the contribution that the member for Narre Warren South played in relation to the Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee. When I took on the portfolio, I did not really know much about the WICC. The member for Thomastown sat down with me and she spoke with me about her role on that committee. For the benefit of the house, the Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee is a lived-experience committee comprising members who have lost a loved one through a tragic workplace incident. I had never heard of this committee prior to taking on the role, but I went before them and I could not get over the bravery that these people displayed on a regular basis. You can imagine for a moment you get that dreadful call advising you that your partner has been killed in a workplace incident. You go through that whole trauma of the event, you go through the trauma of the impact that it has on your life and your response is to retraumatise yourself regularly so that no-one goes through that trauma. The member for Narre Warren South was the co-chair, and for the benefit of the house I do want to read in the names of the members of this committee because I worked with them and the member for Narre Warren South was my proxy. The way in which the member for Narre Warren South dealt with people who had been traumatised and brutalised and did so in such a deft and empathetic way was remarkable. To Dr Lana Cormie, who was the co-chair with the member for Narre Warren South, an outstanding person who led that committee; Samantha Burns; Joe Alderuccio; Dave Brownlee; Sophie Leonard; Francis Malek; Elvis Martin; Nick McHugh; Bette Phillips-Campbell; Jacquie Robertson; Ralph Snider; Abha Somesh; Llewellyn Stevens; Michael Stone; Brett Struhs; and James Wood, all of you made such a huge contribution in trying to make our community safer. Again I want to extend my deep thanks to the member for Narre Warren South, particularly given the fact that he has indicated that like me he will be retiring at the election. Gary, you should be so proud of the contribution you made in making workplaces safer.

I always felt very strongly about these matters. I was working here in the 1990s, and I remember during the federal election campaign – it was Friday about lunchtime – I was working in the old chook house and word came through that there was an explosion at the Longford gas plant. Pretty quickly we ran out of gas. We had run out of gas by the following Saturday, which was grand final day – Adelaide I think were the victors that day. The state went through an extended period of time, probably 10 days, before the gas was reconnected with New South Wales while we dealt with the trauma of the Longford gas explosion. Interestingly, those of us who were working in the building at the time realised pretty quickly that there was actually an electric hot water service on the Council side of the building on the second level, and we availed ourselves of being able to have a hot shower when we found this out. But while it is a glib remark at one level, the reality is that when the Longford gas plant exploded, Peter Wilson and John Lowery were both killed. I at that stage was working for John Brumby. We sought leave to appear at the Longford royal commission. A very, very good, generous barrister gave his time pro bono, who sadly no longer with us, Greg Meese. We sought to ensure that there was a recognition that the Victorian Workcover Authority, as it was back in those days, had not done a great job in terms of regulating the industry, and we saw the consequences. It was not just the fact of the economic dislocation, it was not the fact that we all could not have a hot shower for two weeks or most of us could not; it was the loss of life – the fact that these two workers had seen that there was a leak in relation to condensate, went over to investigate and were killed.

They were killed and a number of workers were badly burnt and injured. It was because the regulatory regime had failed. It had absolutely, comprehensively failed, and these workers paid with their lives.

I can appreciate that, yes, it has taken a while to get here, but when you are dealing with a multiplicity of industries all along a risk curve, with different levels of training and education and with different levels of engagement, it is really difficult to get it right. As you look at the size of the proposed legislation, the proposed acts – the bills that are on the table – it gives you some sense of their complexity. Obviously, yes, of course there will be a need to make sure that the regulations, which are the teeth of the legislation, are appropriately drafted and presented and to make sure that we get the balance right. But we have had to do this because if we do not do this, we know what the consequences are. Similarly, in relation to the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, that was a piece of legislation that was proudly passed by the Parliament when John Cain held the Legislative Council for those three weeks before the Nunawading supplementary by-election, which then provided the opportunity to have that level of safety in relation to these major industries and major worksites.

Again, I do want to acknowledge the contribution that the Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC has made in bringing this legislation before the house. This legislation will make sure that our regulatory regime is modern and fit for purpose. It will ensure that we can avoid the tragedy of workplace injuries and workplace deaths. You have got to get the balance right, because if you vacate the field – if you do not have a proper regulatory regime in place – then you will see that people who are motivated by the wrong things in life will take hold and you will have a repeat performance of what we have seen previously.

The bills that are before the house are important because they will mean that there will be fewer members of our society who will be the victim of a workplace injury or a workplace incident, or who will lose their life. But again, for me, I wanted to speak on this bill because I feel a great level of gratitude because of the way in which the WICC conducted themselves over that period of time. I recognise their bravery and their courage – their absolute courage in wanting to make sure that no-one experiences what they experienced.

I think that again, with work that the member for Narre Warren South did, we wanted to do better. We wanted to be better. We wanted to improve the experience of those victims and their families. I hope that through those concerted efforts when we worked together, member for Narre Warren South – Gary – we made things a little bit better and we made things a little bit easier. I commend the bills to the house.

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (17:23): I am pleased to rise to talk on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. From the outset, we do not oppose this bill, and for good reason, because anything we do through this chamber that makes workplaces safer should be supported. I take on board the honourable member for Essendon’s comments in his contribution on the bill, and I know he actually is passionate in this space. I will give him credit where credit is due – when it comes to health and safety and WorkSafe issues, he actually is quite passionate. But it is an interesting bill, this one.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: I have got two people down the front there who are annoying me, but I would like to get on with it. These changes have come about, as was referred to by the member for Gippsland East – and there will be other members who refer to this as well – because of the two major chemical fires we had in 2018 and 2019. I actually can accept that this bill is probably highly complex in the sense that we have to cover a range of products, chemicals and everything through the industry.

I can appreciate that it would have been complex to get this legislation up and going. Although these fires happened seven or eight years ago, I can appreciate why this would take some time to come forward. The two fires back in 2018 and 2019 were really around the stockpiling of illegal chemicals and substances within these areas. They were terrible blazes. As I pointed out, one of them burnt for two weeks and another one burnt for a week. You can only imagine the residents in those areas having to live next door to those toxic plumes of smoke. If the wind is blowing a certain way on a certain day, then it covers a fair area. It is good that we are bringing in these bills, because in Victoria and in fact Australia we do transport a lot of materials, a lot of chemicals, a lot of whatever around the state – we pretty well transport it everywhere. This legislation is going to make people more responsible for what they transport or what they carry and how it is stored, and they should be.

When I think about this bill my assumption is – there are some points here – that we are coming into line with other jurisdictions, and I hope that is the case. You can imagine if you are a truckie in WA, South Australia or the Northern Territory – wherever – that our legislation and our regulation, when that comes through, will go into line with those other jurisdictions, because I would hate for a truck driver in one jurisdiction to drive into Victoria when that is illegal in this state. Part of me wonders: was this better off being an approach on a national level so we have all the same regulation throughout the country when it comes to the transporting of goods, particularly dangerous goods and dangerous chemicals? We need that to align. Australia is a transport country; we know that. We have trucks running north to south, east to west. My assumption is that the government has done its homework on this and that we are coming into line with those jurisdictions, because it is important that we have consistency within our laws and within our regulation. Maybe there will be a point in time in the future when we may look at this legislation again and need to adjust it a little bit to bring it in line, or maybe other jurisdictions will look at us and say they need to adjust to come in line with Victoria. I hope that governments in other states actually take that on board, because it is very, very important.

Everyone that goes to work deserves to come home. By strengthening our transport that can happen –that should happen. Nobody wants to make that phone call. As an employer for many, many years, the last thing you ever want to do is make a phone call to someone saying that, ‘I’m sorry, your partner has been injured at work,’ or that they are not coming home today. That is a terrible phone call to make. Even if they get injured, it is a terrible phone call to make. I had to make a couple of those phone calls in my working career, and it is not nice. But when there is a fatality, I cannot even imagine what that phone call would be like. Anything that brings health and safety to the forefront so people that go to work come home I think is a good thing, and I would always support it.

The key reforms really are around the embedded dangerous goods regulation to the existing Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, including a new duty to handle dangerous goods safely. That is pretty well what I have just touched on, and it is very, very important that we do that. The legislation creates a new Dangerous Goods Transport Act covering road, rail, boat and inland waterways.

This one is interesting for me. I do not know how this will work in a practical sense, being that we have a lot of imports into the country. Whatever countries they come from, when they land – it could be at the port or via air freight, for example – if those goods get plucked off the ship and put onto a truck, is there a stopgap here that we check those goods and we check how they are handled? I am not quite sure. Again, I am going to put faith in the government that they have addressed that issue, because not every place around the world is going to handle things like we do here. Obviously with these bills we are trying our best to keep people safe; not everywhere around the world is like that. I am not up to date with port and air freight regulation and how things are delivered in that manner, but my assumption is the government has handled that.

The legislation makes it an offence to risk serious injury or death involving dangerous goods, and so it should be an offence. Sometimes truckies will jump in a truck and drive off and someone else could have loaded the truck not in a safe manner but in a manner that puts people at risk. Bringing this reform in really does put the onus on them by saying that if you are transporting this, it has to be done in this manner so it is safe. It is protecting not only the driver of the vehicle but also those around them. If something spills off a truck and explodes, there are other people at risk as well, so it is very, very important that this is an offence. The bills strengthen WorkSafe’s powers and ability to enforce compliance, give courts broader sentencing options, align dangerous goods laws with other regulatory frameworks and facilitate better coordination and information sharing between jurisdictions. That is very, very important. As I touched on earlier, the information sharing should be with other jurisdictions because we are a country of transport, particularly truck and rail. We do a lot of it, so to share that is incredibly important.

To get back to the member for Gippsland East, he was telling us his story about his grandfather on the Gippsland Lakes and pulling up to the pub boat, as he put it. Pub boats still exist, believe it or not. I have got an uncle on the Gold Coast who is a bit of a boatie. He pretty well lives on the water, and I was up there with him one day and we are out fishing. It was a bit hot, and he had run out of the vessel of happiness, so he rang up the pub boat, which pulled alongside and he loaded up his boat again and kept fishing for the rest of the day. He had quite a happy day by the end of it. Just for the member for Gippsland East, they still exist. His family may have invented them or been part of it, but they still exist in Queensland; I know they are up there. As I said at the start, we do not oppose these bills, and nor should we when we are making people’s workplaces safer. That is something we should always support.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (17:33): I rise to support the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. I would like to acknowledge the in-depth and bipartisan contributions from all sides of the chamber today. We had the member for Eildon, followed by the member for Ashwood, who gave us the story and the experience and the feedback from Jeff from his electorate, who had a lot to say about this bill that I am sure we all enjoyed and got a lot of value from hearing about. Then we had the member for Essendon with his personal experience directly in this policy space and firsthand knowledge of the impact that dangerous workplaces have on those directly impacted and their families and communities. And we had the member for Narracan talking about the booze cruise that still is in place essentially, if I am not mistaken, up on the Gold Coast.

These bills represent the most significant change to Victoria’s dangerous goods framework in more than 40 years, improving the safety of the Victorian community, strengthening enforcement and supporting businesses to make their workplaces safer. Dangerous goods are an integral part of our economy and are used across industries, including agriculture, construction, manufacturing and health care, to provide services and to produce essential goods such as cleaning products, food, fertiliser, fuel, plastics and paint. Dangerous goods include chemicals that carry inherent risks to persons or property, such as goods that are corrosive, flammable, combustible, explosive, oxidising or have other hazardous properties.

Dangerous goods also include explosives and security sensitive ammonium nitrate, which present security risks to the Victorian community. When they are not dealt with safely, dangerous goods can result in incidents exposing Victorian workers, emergency service personnel and the wider community to risks of harm to their health, safety and property. These risks to health and safety include for Victorians whose jobs require them to work with such chemicals, including transport workers, which I will touch on soon, emergency service personnel of course, as I said, who respond to these incidents involving the chemicals and members of the public who live, study or work near these places where those chemicals are stored or located. That is why safe storage, handling, disposal and transport of dangerous goods is absolutely critical and why this Victorian Labor government is improving safety by modernising the regulation of dangerous goods and strengthening WorkSafe’s ability to enforce compliance with dangerous goods laws as well.

High-profile incidents across Melbourne involving illegal stockpiling of chemical waste occurred in 2018 and 2019. In August 2018 a major fire broke out at a warehouse in West Footscray, which contained millions of litres of toxic chemical waste, and the fire took more than a week to subdue. More than 200 firefighters and 40 firefighting appliances were involved in the response. MFB personnel reported more than 100 injuries, including health issues from exposure to smoke and other substances, musculoskeletal pain and fatigue. A number of firefighters continue to, sadly, experience health problems as a result of fighting that toxic fire. The fire had a terrible impact on the local environment, with fire water run-off contaminating the neighbouring Stony Creek, killing wildlife and vegetation. More than 2300 dead fish were collected from the estuary, and many dead eels were collected further upstream. Community health warnings were issued to avoid human and pet contact with the creek for several months after the incident. Rehabilitation works conducted by the Environment Protection Authority, the EPA, Melbourne Water and other agencies have included the removal of more than 70 million litres of polluted water and approximately 2800 cubic metres of contaminated sediment from Stony Creek.

Not long afterwards, in April 2019, another large fire broke out at a chemical waste processing facility in Campbellfield in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. The fire also took several days to subdue, and I remember even my father-in-law, who lived in very close proximity along Barry Road, was heavily impacted by that at the time. The MFB deployed more than 175 firefighters and 40 appliances to contain the blaze. Two factory workers were hospitalised as a result of the fire. One of these received serious burns and another an eye injury. The fire also emitted toxic smoke across all of Melbourne’s northern suburbs, including across Pascoe Vale, Coburg and even Brunswick West. Nearby residents and workplaces were warned to close doors and windows, and five local schools in the immediate area there in Hume were shut down. After working on the fire for four days the MFB handed the site to WorkSafe. The EPA stepped in under its powers to oversee the remaining clean-up of the site, which was completed in December 2021 at a cost of $6.5 million. In addition to the EPA laying several charges against the owner of the facility for breaching the Environment Protection Act 2017, WorkSafe also filed three charges relating to the fire.

After these fires, joint inspections by regulators, including WorkSafe and the EPA, uncovered 14 sites illegally storing dangerous chemicals in Melbourne’s northern suburbs and further waste dumped at a property in rural Victoria. WorkSafe led the huge clean-up operation of these 13 to 14 sites at a significant cost. These events are a clear example of dangerous goods risks not being safely controlled. They led to a key question being asked: is the legislative framework regulating dangerous goods safety still fit for purpose in today’s context? In response to this issue, the Labor government commissioned Andrew Palmer KC to conduct an independent review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 and associated regulations.

The final report, the Palmer report, was provided to government in January 2022 and found that the Dangerous Goods Act and associated regulations were no longer fit for purpose, nor were they consistent with other regulatory frameworks that applied to dangerous goods duty holders, most notably through the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. In the final report it was noted that Victorian regulators, including fire services, WorkSafe and the EPA, had already done a substantial amount of work to address the risks posed by fires, including introducing stronger environment protection legislation through the Environment Protection Act 2017. The EP act 2017 increased the maximum penalties for serious offences. The courts were able to fine severe polluters between $1.6 million to $3.2 million. Individuals who commit aggravated offences can receive a jail term of up to five years under those changes. However, the Palmer report noted that the key legislation that regulates dangerous goods in Victoria, the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, had remained largely unchanged since it was introduced – now 41 years ago, the year of my birthday.

WorkSafe is the safety regulator for both dangerous goods and occupational health and safety. However, major incidents involving dangerous goods are very different from occupational health and safety incidents.

Andrew Palmer KC said in his report on page 3:

While conducting this Review, I noticed that major incidents involving dangerous goods seem to occur every 10 to 20 years in Victoria. This observation led me to speculate that in the immediate aftermath of a major incident there would be increased regulatory focus on dangerous chemicals and calls for legislative change. But as the incident receded from memory, the regulatory focus might wane, and the calls for change subside. And after enough time had passed, there might be another major incident and the cycle would begin again.

My hope is that this Review will be a step towards breaking that cycle –

through these recommendations. He put forward what I believe were nearly 50 recommendations, supported in full by government across a range of areas. He particularly noted on page 23 that:

Transporting dangerous goods is an inherently risky activity. Mishandled, accidentally released or spilled dangerous goods can cause injury and death, and seriously damage property and the environment.

This bill, across the changes in both the Dangerous Goods Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act, will implement most of those recommendations that he has put forward. The dangerous goods bill modernises the regulation of the transport of dangerous goods in Victoria by introducing a new broad general duty for a person engaging in the transport of dangerous goods by vessel on inland water, by road or by rail to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that dangerous goods are transported in a manner that is safe and without risk to public safety, property and the environment. The bill creates a standalone act to regulate the transport of dangerous goods, including dangerous goods waste. This will support businesses to understand and comply with their duties and will align Victoria’s regulation of the transport of dangerous goods with most other Australian jurisdictions as well.

The occupational health and safety bill of 2026 incorporates the regulation of dangerous goods into the OH&S act, making the OH&S act the primary regulatory framework applying to the handling, manufacture, processing, use, treatment, dispensing, supply, packaging, import, export, storage, sale or transfer of dangerous goods. The bill modernises the regulation of dangerous goods in Victoria by introducing a new broad general duty requiring a person to comply with these new, better and safer standards as well. In this respect I particularly want to acknowledge that it is all about making workplaces safer, particularly for those in the freight and transport sectors, and particularly those from the Transport Workers’ Union, who I would like to acknowledge as well, who literally work every single day to carry this country and to make it what it is. Without our transport workers the country would come to a stop – that is a fact. They also handle very dangerous goods as well: chemical toxins, petroleum and gas – and many of them are TWU members, who I acknowledge and for whom this bill will help make the workplace safer as well.

It is also about making communities and suburbs safer as well. Like I pointed out earlier, we heard about that experience in Campbellfield, the toxic fire. My community in Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West is one of the Victorian government’s new activity centres, so we are forecast for more growth over coming years with new housing. That will mean increased densification. In that respect as well we are traditionally part of the manufacturing heartland of Melbourne’s north, and we still have a very strong and vibrant manufacturing corridor through the Newlands corridor in North Coburg. I do also have in my community many major arterial roads that carry a lot of these vehicles that carry a lot of these goods and services as well. Whether it is through CityLink, Tullamarine Freeway, Pascoe Vale Road, Sydney Road, Nicholson Street, Melville Road, Boundary Road, Gaffney Street, Murray Road, Bell Street, Bakers Road, Newlands Road and Moreland Road, of course we need to make all of these corridors safer for the communities that live in and around them every day, and that is why I commend this bill.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (17:43): I rise to speak on the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026 and the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026, two bills that we will be debating in cognate tonight. These bills represent the culmination of a significant body of work arising from an independent review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985. This this review was conducted by Andrew Palmer, now Judge Palmer, following a series of chemical fires that exposed weaknesses in the Victorian regulatory system. I think most people will recall those catastrophic chemical fires of 2018 and 2019. As a result of those fires it was pointed out that there were some issues that needed to be addressed because major industrial disasters burning for days and in some cases weeks, releasing toxic smoke and hazardous substances into the surrounding community, clearly is not something that we ever want to see. The Palmer review examined these events in detail and produced 49 recommendations. The Dangerous Goods Act is now more than four decades old – it was a 1985 act – and the nature of the freight industry, the movement and logistics industries and regulatory oversight have actually changed drastically during that time, so it is appropriate that these reforms seek to modernise the law by embedding dangerous goods regulation within Victoria’s existing occupational health and safety framework while a dedicated transport-specific legislative regime is also part of that change.

The Occupational Health and Safety Amendment Bill introduces a new duty requiring dangerous goods to be handled safely and without risks to people, property and the environment. Everyone wants to see safety. This bill introduces a new offence relating to conduct that risks serious injury or death involving dangerous goods, increases WorkSafe enforcement powers and provides courts with more sentencing options. Overall stakeholders such as the Victorian Transport Association and the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) recognise that there is a need for reform and acknowledge that modernising Victoria’s dangerous goods framework is both necessary and overdue. However, we need to acknowledge that the Victorian transport industry is an incredibly important industry, and we need to make sure we enable them and do not hamstring them with more regulation and more red tape that actually does not provide an outcome.

We are not opposing this legislation, but I am always hesitant about whether these reforms are focused on better outcomes rather than more administrative burden that does not actually get the result that we are all sitting here saying we want to see. That is why I also say that the Victorian Farmers Federation have made some contributions to this debate through input back through the consultation process, saying that farmers recognise the importance of safety but they are not usually transporters of goods. They are not the transport industry, but on farms they do have dangerous goods. Let us make sure that we respect the work of our transport operators and our farmers, who do so much to feed our community and provide goods at a high standard, which they take pride in, and have those goods transported for the people of Victoria, of Australia and internationally to be able to enjoy the benefits of.

They have raised some important issues that do warrant consideration as the regulations are developed, and the Victorian Transport Association’s concerns were regarding the new powers-of-entry provision. Brett Hosking, the current VFF president, has put forward some suggestions. My request of the government is to make sure they are listening to the farmers and listening to the transport industry, because let us remember that when trucks do not move, we do not get goods and the nation stops. When farmers cannot produce food, we all go hungry. All these regulations need to make sure they are practical and are in consultation so that that does not actually hamper the good work of our truck drivers and our farmers. These concerns should be carefully considered.

I always find when we have got a transport bill or a roads bill, as this is, that we sometimes are missing the opportunity to really improve the situation that is experienced on the ground by truck drivers, people trying to get goods to market or families just trying to get around. Right now in South-West Coast the rain is pouring down again, just like it did last week, because in June that is what generally happens. Our roads have just deteriorated to a point where last sitting week in the Parliament, nearly a fortnight ago now, I was here on the late session that went all night on Thursday talking about how people were calling me, how the roads have become massive craters that look like a moonscape and how many, many cars were pulled up on the side of the road. I was literally getting calls because they could not get home.

Now I have got a tow truck operator who is telling me he has gone and bought a tow truck. He has been trying to get a tow truck licence for some time, but trying to work through the government bureaucracy is proving to be absolutely impossible. The introduction of a transport bill is the opportunity to fix some of these bureaucratic bogging situations that people are finding themselves in. This is certainly where someone has found themselves bogged. We had 12 cars lined up on the side of the road in Panmure the week before last. There is a Cudgee Cars operator who has got a tow truck sitting in the shed and cannot get a licence, because they say there are enough tow trucks in the region. If that was the case, why did we have 12 cars sitting by the side of the road? He actually had to turn down 11 jobs when his tow truck was sitting in the shed. We have had licences retired in Terang. We have had licences retired in Camperdown that have not been renewed. Right now there is a 77-year-old man from Cooriemungle, which is about 50 k’s from Cudgee, and the logic says that that licence could be transferred to this operator, who wants to be out on the roads, as we need people to be at the moment, picking up people who have hit these potholes, blown tyres, smashed rims and who should not be sitting in the dark on cold rainy nights because of the environment that has been created by a lack of transport, a lack of maintenance of the roads and massive potholes, where it has just become impossible to navigate them.

So I implore the minister to look at how these licences are issued and review the licence issue for the Cudgee Cars operator. Matthew Bouchier is just wanting an outcome so that he can look after his community.

Under the current system, administered by VicRoads operators, you have to hold a licence to operate a tow truck, and there is no issue with that, but if they think there are enough tow trucks around, well, they probably have not looked at how many potholes are emerging in our roads, and it is not because potholes are normal, it is because the government have not done their job of maintaining the roads. The potholes are a consequence of that, not a consequence of rain. Just filling them over and over again is where we are at, and not because that is the smartest thing to do. It is like pouring money into the ground and just stomping all over it. It just makes no sense when we should have had the works done last spring that the government has been boasting about but did not take place. Clearly that has left us in this crisis situation that we find ourselves in. We clearly are finding these sorts of things out of step with a community that desperately needs a government that understands their needs and addresses their needs. And when we have got tow truck capacity in the region, last week’s weather just exposed that failure starkly, and it will soon be exposed again with this rainfall this week. It started last night with 15 mils overnight, and it has been raining again all day today.

Back to the bill, the VFF supports safety outcomes and stronger accountability across supply chains. However, they rightly argue that these reforms must not impose disproportionate regulatory burden on farmers who are simply undertaking everyday agricultural operations, and that is really a fair point. They are primary producers in need of certainty, practical guidance and genuine consultation and are not to be unfairly caught up in compliance obligations that were never really intended for farmers. Even though they do have the transportation of goods coming to and from their farms, they are not actually transport operators in most cases. In many respects the success or failure of these reforms will depend on the quality of the regulations, the clarity of guidance materials and the ability of duty holders to understand and comply with their obligations. Without that clarity there is a risk that complexity could undermine the very safety outcomes these reforms seek to achieve.

We will not oppose this bill. However, we do strongly encourage the government to continue meaningful engagement with industry, transport operators, farmers, safety professionals and other stakeholders as the regulations are developed. If the government gets these regulations right, these reforms have the potential to deliver a safer and more modern and effective dangerous goods framework for Victoria, rather than just making it more difficult for the good operators. I certainly saw a lot of those during my time as the shadow minister for transport among the people I visited who handle dangerous goods, and rather than making it harder for those guys who are doing a really good job and meanwhile the cowboys are really getting away with it, that is where the focus can often make a real difference.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (17:53): It is funny when we are thinking about what we label as dangerous goods, they are things that so many of us rely on each and every day: cleaning products, food of course, fertiliser, fuel, plastics and paint. We do not always reflect on how that paint got to Bunnings or the store otherwise that we all want to use day in, day out across the community. Certainly, I must say from the outset, I want to express some gratitude for those who are involved in producing the goods and those that are handling the goods, and that is certainly what this legislation is pertaining to. Thankfully it does not happen often, but when it has happened – and there have been some very dangerous incidents, and certainly they are the impetus behind these reforms – the ramifications can be so devastating that there is no question about why we are making one of the largest reforms in this space in over 40 years. Certainly they are very important for the people who actually produce and handle and transport the goods – the workers in that sense; the emergency services who, unfortunately, when there is an incident have to clean up after the fact; and then of course members of the public who live in proximity to or study or work near places that store these goods.

It is absolutely imperative. It seems we have a pretty good agreement across the chamber in terms of getting these reforms through. I think it is well understood that for these reforms to have true meaning, they do have to have a practical, user-friendly element in terms of their application so that workers in the various industries that will be impacted, and I say impacted from a positive connotation, will have a better and safer existence because of the reforms that we are bringing through. Thinking back, this was discussed in the chamber in 2018 when a major fire broke out at a warehouse in West Footscray. More than 200 firefighters and 40 firefighting appliances responded. MFB personnel reported more than 100 injuries, including health issues from exposure to smoke and other substances and musculoskeletal pain and fatigue, and a number of the firefighters continued to experience health problems as a result of fighting the fire. That is absolutely devastating, I am sure, for them. In the local environment, fire water runoff contaminated the nearby Stony Creek, killing wildlife and vegetation. More than 2300 dead fish were collected from the estuary, and many dead eels were collected further upstream.

We can see that, apart from the fact that I think we feel a sense in our conscience that we do not want to be impacting other human beings, flora or fauna, the cost of the clean-up is a huge impost and certainly something to be mitigated, if not avoided, in terms of having to be in those circumstances in the future. Of course you always have to clean up where there is waste – I am not saying that we do not do that – but mitigating the risk of that happening is absolutely vital.

Another incident has been referred to here, involving 175 firefighters, 40 appliances and so forth – serious burns and another eye injury. That was an incident that occurred in Campbellfield, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, in 2019. Furthermore, after those incidents, joint inspections by regulators including WorkSafe and the Environment Protection Authority Victoria uncovered 14 sites illegally storing dangerous chemicals. It is very unsettling to think that that did happen, the risk to community and risk to the workers. That was in the northern suburbs, and further waste was dumped at a property in rural Victoria.

WorkSafe led the huge clean-up operation at 13 of these sites at a significant cost. They did the right thing and made sure that the situation was remedied. Nevertheless, we can see why it is so important that we have tighter regulation in this domain. I pick up on the points that have been made about making sure that the regulations are workable. I absolutely respect that. It is a delicate line. I think always you have err on the side of safety because the alternatives are just unthinkable. We have already been there, and we would not want to see that repeated or anything worse still.

I will make a caveat that the Environment Protection Act 2017 increased the maximum penalties for serious offences. The courts can fine severe polluters between $1.6 million and $3.2 million. That gave the EPA much greater teeth. Individuals who commit aggravated offences can receive a jail term of up to five years. I think that is absolutely appropriate. But the Palmer report noted that the key legislation that regulates dangerous goods in Victoria, the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, remained largely unchanged since it was introduced more than 40 years ago. When we think about how society has changed, even the kinds of vehicles that are transporting goods and the goods that are being transported and also our awareness of workplaces and ramifications for workers, et cetera, again it is a logical step to be moving forward with these changes.

I should say that WorkSafe is the safety regulator for both dangerous goods and occupational health and safety. We know, however, that major incidents involving dangerous goods are very different from occupational health and safety incidents. As I said at the outset, serious incidents involving dangerous goods, although potentially catastrophic, are relatively infrequent.

The risk with that is we can forget about it. You know, when you are not the one handling those goods day in, day out, unfortunately there is theoretically a risk of overlooking these matters. Of course we are not doing that. There has been a deep dive and proper consultation and evaluation and of course the Palmer report. I am just saying that thankfully, if we reverse it, because so many workplaces and people are seeking to do the right thing, we do not have these incidents every day of the week. Nevertheless when they do happen, the consequences can be truly, truly terrible. So it is very good that we are moving on these reforms today.

I should say the bill introduces several new offences that will apply to breaches of dangerous goods obligations to reflect differences in the severity of offending and differing degrees of culpability of offenders, including offences for a failure to comply with the new dangerous goods general duty, an aggravated breach of the new dangerous goods general duty and recklessly undertaking an activity involving dangerous goods that places or may place another person in danger of serious injury or death. You can see the very nuanced elements, as it should be in this legislation. We have got the cognate debate because there is the difference between storage of goods – I do not mean to oversimplify this – and the actual transportation of goods, which of itself will have its own risks.

The only other point I was going to say is I used to represent, as an organiser, Border Force, and they did a lot of checking of cargo and other elements. That is going into a federal domain, but it was raised in the chamber. When they are even at a mail centre they have the risk of drugs and other things – and we are not talking about narcotics here, we are actually talking about everyday chemicals and things. Even when just opening to check for what products are inside, to do their cross-checks to look for drugs, they could be exposed to things like fentanyl and other things. When we are thinking about the various dangers that workers can be exposed to, there is obviously the regulated industry and then there are the truly illegal elements. I am saying this from a point of view of compassion for workers who do this important checking of products coming in and out of the country, let alone those moving within the state. We are relying on various checks and balances to mitigate risk. You cannot completely do away with all risk, but certainly we need to mitigate risk, because we do not want anyone not being able to go home safely at the end of the day.

I am certainly really pleased to see these legislative reforms that are seeking to improve the outcome and the likelihood of workers being safe in their role but also the community at large, because when we have much tighter systems and better enforcement, then ultimately the risk of the community being harmed as well is reduced significantly. There are benefits all round.

 Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (18:03): I rise to talk on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. We have two bills here. We have all seen it: when we are driving around and we have been behind a truck with a sign on the back that says ‘Dangerous goods on board’. It is part of our day-to-day life really, as we drive around on the streets here in Melbourne or in regional Victoria. It does not matter what it is that the trucks are hauling, we need to make sure that we do have rules and regulations that people have to be accountable for, and that is why these bills have come in, one for transport obviously and one for the storage of goods around the place. At the outset, the number one priority that we do need to have is the safety of the workers, for one, but also the safety of the general public, especially those that are on transport routes around regional Victoria and inner-city Melbourne as well. We need to make sure that we are protecting them. These changes in the bills deliver on the reforms recommended in the final report of the independent review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 from Andrew Palmer QC.

They were released in October 2022, so they have been a while in the making. As the member for Essendon said, if you see the actual bills together and the amendments, it is a lot of legislation that has had to been worked through, tricky legislation, to make sure that we do get it right, because it is covering, as I said, not only stockpiling of dangerous goods but then transport of it around not only Victoria but interstate as well. There are states that have different rules and regulations, so we need to make sure that we are ticking the boxes for everybody.

The member for Essendon, when he gave his contribution – Acting Speaker, I am not sure if you were in the chamber – actually spoke about the Longford gas explosion back, I think, in 1998. That is down in my area in the valley just pushing into East Gippsland. At the time I think there were two losses of life in that situation, and we need to make sure that we learn from all these experiences. I am sure there are other examples around the place of chemicals having been stored and losses of life. Being involved predominantly throughout my lifetime in the construction industry, there were times when people at work were injured, which was very unfortunate. And on the odd occasion, it actually cost people their life. So we do need to make sure that we are doing what we can, when we can, to make sure that people can go to work safely.

Two major suburban fires were the catalyst for these two bills coming together, in 2018 and 2019, and they triggered an independent review on dangerous goods. It was probably at a time when there had been incidences previously. But as we move on quickly in life, once we cleaned those incidences up we probably did not have the regulations in place to make sure that it did not happen again, and eventually there would be another incident. It has taken a while to get this here to the chamber, but to go through it so as to make sure that when we are debating these new laws that are going to come in, we do it once and we do it for a final time, so there is a step and a pathway for business owners and also for our workers to do that. The catalysts for this review back in 2018 and 19 caused mayhem across metropolitan Melbourne and in the suburbs. There have been other members on their feet who have spoken about the fire, the toxic smoke and how many firefighters there were. I think it was a couple of hundred firefighters and 40 trucks to actually put the fire out, but then there was the next step of all the toxins leaking into the creeks and into our river structures, which caused great concern and actually killed wildlife along the way. So we can see that there is a huge need to make sure that we do get this right.

We need to make sure of the truck drivers that are actually transporting these chemicals around because most of the spillages have been on sites. It would be frightening. I do not know what the number is of how many dangerous goods we move around the state on a daily basis. I think that would be – not an alarming amount, because that is our day-to-day work, but I think it would leave a lot of people in here surprised as to how much is taken around the state by truck on daily and weekly bases. We have got truck owners in the Latrobe Valley that, as I have said to you before, Acting Speaker Kathage, not only do runs around regional Victoria and into the city but are interstate drivers, so they are travelling between Victoria and Perth and Victoria and Sydney and Brisbane. They are travelling a lot of kilometres, so we need to, one, make sure that we do not have an incident, but if there is, we need things in place to be able to clean it up the best that we can.

If there is an incident, it puts our first responders under the spotlight as well. We are probably better now with our registers of knowing what dangerous goods are on board, but I am sure many, many years ago there would have been a stockpile of dangerous chemicals that would have been just pushed around the corner – not through anyone’s fault, I would not think, but that is just what the rules were that they could work with back in the day. We need to make sure that we are stamping these out and that there are reasonable ramifications for people that are doing the wrong thing.

One of the concerns – and I think the member for Gippsland East spoke about this – with the Victorian Farmers Federation and our farmers is that one rule sometimes does not fit all. Whilst I understand the intent to strengthen the accountability, and we should be strengthening the accountability to improve the safety outcomes across the supply chain, many farmers and many farms are using these dangerous products all the time. It is stated in this critical response that these reforms do not impose disproportionate regulatory burdens on our primary producers. Farmers are not transport operators. They may be moving chemicals around, and they need to do that safely, on their farms, but they are not transport operators by trade. We just need to make sure that they can still safely go about their daily activities on their farms. I think there were a few concerns raised by the VFF, so the need for more meaningful consultation and input into the development of regulations is essential so that unintended consequences are not impacting our farmers, because they do a mighty job and are on the roads constantly as well, bringing the produce down to Melbourne to be consumed by the people of Melbourne. We need to make sure that we do look after them.

But in saying that, the reforms that are coming through here are well and truly needed. They are probably overdue. They have taken a while to work through and be talked about by everybody. But the number one thing that we do need to do is to make sure that there are ramifications for people that are doing the wrong thing. Most – nearly all – will be doing the right thing, but we need to make sure that we are looking after our workers that are working at these storage facilities and, more importantly, that are the ones that are on the roads transporting dangerous goods around. As my time winds down, it is pleasing to see reforms come through like this. We are not opposing the bill. I think that we are doing a good thing here in the chamber today.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (18:13): I rise to also speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. I wanted to reflect, as many have, on some of the impetus for having these changes, particularly some of those industrial waste fires that we saw back in 2018 and 2019. As someone who has been to their fair share of fires in different contexts, there is nothing scarier than when you rock up to a job and you get the taste of metal in your mouth or the feeling of vapours coming through your nose, and you are like, ‘This is going to be a really risky job. We need to take care and follow all our precautions and dynamic risk assessment to be able to manage what could be a serious risk to life and property.’ In thinking about that and the training that we have as firefighters too, we are always told to be able to understand dangerous goods, and the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 is something that forms part of our training. But what we are doing with this bill is not just about what happens when things go wrong. It is also about making sure that we empower WorkSafe, as well as other agencies, to be out there actively investigating and looking for these risks and also being able to manage these risks when they are identified, either through reporting or through their investigations.

It is particularly important to have these two bills here in the house today. I know it is a fairly bipartisan thing, but particularly for the Labor government, our focus is always on protecting the public as well as workers. These two bills go a long way in that commitment to protecting the public and workers when it comes to dangerous goods.

In reflecting on the 2018–19 fires, at the time I lived very briefly in Footscray, not far from where the fires took place. I remember seeing the large, angry black plume of smoke flowing across back towards the bay and thinking, ‘Oh my God, we have a huge problem here.’ But it is not just obvious things like West Footscray that drive the impetus for these bills. Some people may say, ‘Member for Werribee, you have a lot of houses, and you have a lot of new estates; surely that’s all you’ve got to worry about in Werribee.’ We have a lot of legacy industrial estates in the middle of old residential areas in the electorate of Werribee, including in places like Lock Avenue and Riverside Avenue, where we have quite serious industrial operations only 200 or 300 metres away from general residential zones. It is legacy planning but also things that still exist and things that are still quite a risk to the community. I know at the fire brigade we are always very conscious of these little pockets of industrial activity around my electorate.

Something that people might also not realise is that any explosives that are being used by the defence force get transported through Werribee from Point Wilson, which forms just on the edge of my electorate, through the explosives pier there for the defence force. Not only that, we have got two or three quarries that also use explosives and test explosives for quarrying not far from the boundary of my electorate, out in places like Mambourin. Dangerous goods are everywhere, even in places that you would not expect them to be. We are not just thinking about places like Coode Island; we are also thinking about communities like Werribee when it comes to these reforms. These reforms are quite sensible. They come out of that report that others have mentioned, the Palmer report, which came out of those 2018–19 incidents, and the suggestion and recommendation that we look to have the Dangerous Goods Act components incorporated in OH&S legislation as well as ensuring that there is a separate and specific dangerous goods transport bill to bring us more in line with other states.

In reflecting on why this was important I also turned back to some of my other firefighting experience up in Dimboola. Not only did we have places where there was illegally dumped industrial waste and materials on the outskirts of the desert in Dimboola – there were lots of sites that were not clearly identified, and a lot of investigation happened around that over the last few years – but also we had the transport of dangerous goods across the border into South Australia. Every night you would have hundreds of trucks rolling through Dimboola carrying all sorts of things. To have that harmonisation across the entire country I think is particularly important. Yes, we have our intergovernmental agreement around the transport of dangerous goods not only with road but also when I was living up there we had the major rail line to Perth running straight through the middle of the town. Having these codes is important at the local level because it means that those operators are held to account and there is a similar standard across all states no matter where that train travels or that semi goes across the border. It is towns like that that are at the heart of our transport community, and it is areas like Werribee where we have that light industrial mixed in with residential estates where it is particularly important to have these really clear laws incorporated into our Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.

Why is it important to have these laws in the OH&S act? I guess it is because our OH&S act is that primary source for how we work on a worksite and how we make people safe on a worksite. It is not only people who are working in that context but anyone who may be affected or impacted by the work that is happening there. What is interesting about the bill, particularly the OH&S bill, is that it has a broad general duty requiring a person who undertakes activities involving dangerous goods to ensure so far as reasonably practicable that these activities are undertaken in a manner that is safe, without risks to health, safety and property.

Having a general duty like that means that it does not matter if you are the manager, you are the person who is working on the line or you are the person who may be using the forklift with a licence – unlike the Leader of the Opposition – to transport goods across that yard safely, that general duty applies to everyone in that context, which is very, very important.

Something else that I welcome in this bill, and we saw this as a particular issue with some of that illegal dumping in western Victoria, is the provisions for civil penalties to make sure that they can be ordered, particularly around improvement projects, so fixing the thing up, injunctions to make sure they stop doing it, looking at the monetary benefit that they are making out of it and how we restrict that but also adverse publicity. There is nothing like a little bit of name and shame when it comes to people who are doing the wrong thing by workers and the nearby community.

I spoke a little bit about those light industrial areas that are very close to residential areas in Werribee, and some of the work in this bill goes to the powers of WorkSafe inspectors to be able to go onto different properties. We have a new entry power allowing an inspector to enter a place if such entry is necessary to allow an inspector to exercise their power to intervene to address a serious or immediate risk at a nearby property. It is not just about the property that they believe the risk is emanating from; it is also those properties nearby. This is particularly important – you may think of a storage facility that backs onto a residential area. We need to have the ability to have our WorkSafe inspectors go through those houses, to be able to see how that other site may potentially impact on those residential houses and vice versa. It is important to have that flexibility and that clear power for our WorkSafe inspectors, because in the end it is those powers that give them the opportunity to keep Victorians safe.

This is part of a range of reforms that we have had in this space around WorkSafe and keeping the community safe when it comes to dangerous activities or dangerous goods. In this budget we have invested $22.4 million to help keep workers safe, particularly around return to work and supporting families who may have had a loved one killed at work, which I know is something particularly sensitive in my community because we have had a few over the last year. We have invested in 20 extra WorkSafe inspectors to target five of the most dangerous industries for workers – construction, health care, social assistance, public sector, agriculture and manufacturing – which is on top of the 60 additional workplace inspectors that we already have. Returning to that, I would like to thank all those people who do work for WorkSafe. They often do not get recognised enough. They get called out at all sorts of hours to all sorts of places and all sorts of situations. As someone who has been there when they have had to show up to an industrial accident or a rescue job that we have had, I know that they are extremely diligent and professional. Making sure that they have those powers to continue to do their job and the clarity in the two bills is particularly important, and I commend these bills to the house.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (18:23): I rise to speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. As we have heard throughout this evening and this afternoon, we on this side, the Liberals and Nationals, do not oppose these bills, because anything that improves workplace safety should be supported, anything that reduces risk or serious dangerous incidents should be supported and anything that helps a worker walk back through their front door after a day’s work is something that we support on this side.

To break it down into the two separate bills, we have got the transport bill, and that is looking at how those dangerous goods are moving across Victoria by road and rail, and the OH&S bill, and this is really about how those goods are handled, which is critical to my electorate of Euroa when we look at the agricultural industry, the freight corridor that runs through the centre of it and all the industries that benefit from those businesses and the transportation of goods but, importantly, need to do it safely. On fuel, ag chemicals, fertiliser, industrial gases, explosives, we need to eliminate those risks wherever possible and reduce them as far as is practical, and it makes a lot of sense.

I think my comments today are around the fact that we take enormous responsibility for dangerous goods and their safe transportation, and it is really a daily reality for a lot of the industries in the Euroa electorate – fuel that fuels our cars, diesel that powers the tractors and harvesters, fertilisers, industrial chemicals. Never have we had such a hot topic around diesel and fertiliser in my electorate as the current cost and the impact that is having on agriculture throughout the cropping industry. I think that whereas a lot of contribution has been around the emotion today, I think we need to look at it from the practicality as well, because in the end, when we look at our agriculture and our primary producers, they are working at home and they often work in isolation, and making sure it is a safe contribution to the industry is really, really critical.

We also have a significant freight industry throughout regional Victoria, but certainly through Benalla, Euroa, Violet Town and really all of that Hume corridor and all of the periphery roads as well you really see our region ignite during harvest, the peak of the agricultural industry. You can see it also in the fact that we transport some significant concrete, as well as having all of our quarry operations. Getting the products into the centre, getting them between Melbourne and Sydney, you come through the wonderful Euroa electorate, and we need to make sure it is done safely. We actually have had a few transportation accidents, where you have seen the EPA on the ground because of the consequences of those. My heart always goes out to making sure that the drivers and those that have been playing a role in the transportation are safe and that their families have someone coming home to them at night-time.

Euroa I am very proud of – the fact that our region and my community and electorate help feed and power Victoria and keep Victoria moving. This is why we are supportive of these reforms. But I think that it is appropriate to also highlight that you cannot legislate safety into a freight task while the roads beneath the wheels are falling apart. They actually have to go hand in hand. While we are debating dangerous goods and safety here, what my office and my community are feeling is a very different situation. They are inundated – and I am sure that most members here are in the same position – with complaints about the condition of the roads and the impact that is having on the safety of them getting home as well.

One decent rain event after months of dry – actually, we have had several decent rain events recently – will see new potholes and new erosion on the sides of our roads. The deterioration is so significant. Whether it is your industry that is moving, your agricultural industry or your emergency services, having safe roads is the foundation of all of this. To move industry, move business, move your communities and move your families safely is critical. The Midland Highway between Benalla and Mansfield is crumbling, and you can actually see the toll and the consequence on those roads in the level of wire barriers that have also been impacted. You know because they sit like that for several months, if not years – the amount of wire barriers that have been destroyed and then not fixed. Actually, on my way to Parliament I did see a small section of the Hume Freeway that had been destroyed and sat like that for several months finally getting fixed.

I have mentioned at length Archie Baines, who is 82. I went for a drive with him, and he actually analysed the condition of the roads and the impact it is having on his business. He has got a rather large transportation business that is known across Australia. He had a critical incident that nearly took his life. The wire barriers are still destroyed. I anticipate they will probably remain destroyed for a few more years under a Labor government, but they do have a role to play. They actually prevented him from exiting the Goulburn Valley Highway and having a potentially fatal accident. He was quite traumatised when he was reliving that story with me. He was dragged across several lanes. The consequence of that pothole and that deteriorated road was actually a lot of damage. We estimated it was worth a couple hundred thousand dollars – this one single pothole and the destruction it caused to people’s cars and vehicles.

And I know that because I went to Wahring Motors, which is the nearby mechanic, and I asked him, ‘What are the most lethal potholes in the Euroa electorate?’ and he mentioned the ones, and he can almost put a value on the damage because he is repairing the vehicles. During cost-of-living pressures, having vehicle damage is really extraordinary for people’s livelihoods at the moment. It is tough going when you are paying $400. As we know, the government have increased the cost of reimbursement up to $1500 strategically so that they are not paying any out.

But imagine Archie’s truck was carrying fuel. Imagine the consequences not just to him but the environment and other drivers as well. The consequences are serious. This is a quite a segue to make, but it just reminded me of the situation during the Longwood bushfire, when the Longwood fire jumped the freeway. Because of some of the dysfunction of the incident control centre and the communications, when the fire jumped it actually went down the freeway on either side of the Hume Freeway and it trapped about 30 vehicles, including a fuel tanker, on the road. The consequence of that is extreme. I honestly think that legislation around safety and making sure people come home is critical, but there are so many other areas that the Labor government could be looking at that it is just completely avoiding.

Many of us have complained about the deterioration of rope barriers and how long they take to fix. Hundreds of metres of barriers where Archie tore through are still broken, which is so concerning. I think that the responsibility of these two bills has to cut both ways, doesn’t it? A government is not exempt from those safety requirements. What we are asking in this legislation is that employers, transport operators, workers, directors and company officers all carry that responsibility – entirely appropriate. But if the Allan Labor government does not take on that same responsibility and ensure the same safety to make sure that workers get home, that goods are transported safely on safe roads, that workers are walking through the door after a day supporting our state’s economy, then it is a double standard that I think is unacceptable. Barrier maintenance has to be a greater focus of the government. A freight operator can meet every requirement of these bills – immaculate vehicle, fully trained driver, comprehensive systems – and still be driving on roads that deteriorate year after year.

I want to mention briefly rail, which is also mentioned in this legislation, but I am running out of time. I just want to very quickly talk about the fact that, when you talk about safety and talk about the condition of the roads, that also has an impact on the safety of our drivers. They feel it every time they hit a pothole, every time a repair fails after the next rain, every time a train is cancelled and they are forced back behind the wheel. Safety is the road beneath the wheels of a freight vehicle and a barrier maintained after it has done its job.

 Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (18:33): I rise to speak in support of the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026. At the start I would just like to make the point that it is the Labor Party and Labor governments, together with unions, that have a very strong and proud history of supporting and enacting legislation to support workers rights at work, in particular their right to a healthy and safe workplace, and also of course their right to come home. This legislation continues to build on the work that really started with the Labor government in the 1980s, when the strongest health and safety legislation for workplaces was introduce – and opposed vehemently, might I add, by the opposition, the Liberal–National party. That was well before my time, but even during my time in this place most of the legislation that we have introduced around workplace health and safety has been, while not always opposed, sometimes opposed. Certainly there has been a lot of talk about how this is not going to be good for employers, and the focus was on the employers and their income rather than the safety of working people and their right to return home in a safe way without injury or illness.

Dangerous goods are a huge risk to the health and safety of working people as well as the community generally. This legislation comes from the learnings from those terrible chemical fires in 2018 and 2019, starting with the fire in West Footscray. Workplaces and residents were told to close their windows, schools were closed, traffic was diverted – not to mention the absolute worry and concern of residents: would the fire expand, would it become out of control, would it come near and burn places they were living in? That is not to mention the toxic fumes that people were worried about: had they breathed that in, what would that do to their bodies?

When we are talking about health and safety and compensation, do not forget that it was the Labor government that introduced the presumptive legislation that applies to firefighters, both CFA and the full-time firefighters, and the workers that maintain the trucks in the firegrounds and in structural fires. The presumptive legislation is protection for those that are protecting us when it comes to fires. It also demonstrates the very well proven fact that chemicals are a huge risk to the safety of people, that they cause all sorts of illnesses and cancers, as well as some of the shorter term effects such as all sorts of skin problems that can continue on. This is the sort of thing that individuals in 2018 and 2019 in particular were exposed to, from people doing the things that risk communities and the health of those communities in the most irresponsible way.

The CFA involved, the EPA and WorkSafe were all involved in the clean-up and control of these fires and chemical dumping. One of the comments from one representative of one of the authorities was:

This is at the extreme end of offending in terms of what we allege and there’s a complete disregard for community safety, complete shirking of responsibility.

And:

We believe this has been a highly co-ordinated … highly organised illegal activity.

In order to address these issues, the Victorian Labor government conducted a review, because you do not know – you really need to get all the evidence together to see what is the best way to protect people, what is the best possible legislation to ensure that there are no loopholes, to ensure there are no unintended consequences and to find what will be best to protect residents and Victorians from these sorts of actions. The review was conducted by a now judge who looked into what had happened in particular around the West Footscray fire, and not only that but there was also a fire in Campbellfield. In the electorate of Thomastown, the electorate I represent, in Epping there were a number of warehouses that were stocked so high with illegal chemicals and waste and dangerous products that the CFA, the EPA and even WorkSafe found it really difficult to get into those workplaces – they were so full of this contaminated stuff. It seems that what was happening was that individuals, to make a quick buck, were collecting these dangerous materials and these chemicals and so on, and instead of disposing of them in a responsible way with the proper authorities and the proper licences, they just hid them away in warehouses, left them there just to continue on and become a massive risk to the community.

People do not learn. I know you, Acting Speaker Kathage, would recall that at the height of the fire season that we have just had a completely irresponsible criminal person was dumping chemicals on properties in the top end of Wollert and then started to burn them off on a total fire ban day. Luckily he was caught, along with others that were involved, and we expect that the full force of the law will deal with that offending.

This legislation, though, as I said, is in response to the Palmer review, and I suppose the mechanics of it are to have a piece of legislation that just deals singularly with the transport of dangerous goods. There is the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, but this bill will bring all the legislation and regulation around the transportation of dangerous goods into one piece of legislation. That will cover transportation – whether it is by land, whether it is by sea, whether it is road or by rail – all in one piece of legislation to make it easier for those involved in this industry to understand and comply with, as well as strengthening the penalties and the regulatory framework in which it will operate and the business.

When we look at some of this sort of legislation, sometimes it is really just a matter of experiences that show where legislation is lacking or requires further amendment, whether it is because of the changing nature of industry or whether it is because of a change in ways of doing things. This legislation looks at bringing everything together but also strengthening the penalties to make sure that people that break the law and put the community at risk are subject to the strongest of penalties and sanctions.

First of all, just going through some of the amendments – and I know I do not have a very long to do that – this is going to make it easier for duty holders to understand the responsibilities clearly outlined in the legislation, what the transport of dangerous goods is and how to ensure they are transported in a safe manner. There is also going to be greater strength in enforcement and prosecution and penalties so that there is an effective enforcement system so we can actually catch those that are committing these crimes and effectively charge them. Those sorts of enforcement tools will be things such as allowing authorised officers better entry powers into facilities that are suspected of storing dangerous goods and also allowing pre-emptive action, so it is about not just when a crime is committed in this area but when an authorised officer may suspect that something is going to occur or has occurred so that we can nip it in the bud before it becomes the worst case scenario. There is also ability in this legislation for compensation, so road and rail authorities will be able to seek compensation for damages. Because again, we know that some of the damage, particularly in the fires, was to public facilities, and of course there ought to be compensation for that.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (18:43): I rise to speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026. These bills seek to modernise Victoria’s dangerous goods regulatory framework, strengthen safety protections and provide greater clarity for businesses, workers, emergency services and the broader community. The legislation follows recommendations arising from the independent review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 and represents a significant overhaul of laws that are now more than four decades old. Dangerous goods are a necessary part of modern life. They include substances that are flammable, explosive, corrosive, oxidising or otherwise hazardous. They are used every day across agriculture, manufacturing, construction, transport, health care and many other sectors. While essential, they also carry significant risks if not handled, stored or transported appropriately.

The Dangerous Goods Transport Bill establishes a dedicated legislative framework governing the transport of dangerous goods by road, rail and inland waterways. It replaces outdated provisions and aligns Victoria more closely with national approaches, providing greater consistency for industry while enhancing public safety. Both of these bills seek to enact the recommendations that were put forward in the final report of the independent review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 by Andrew Palmer – at the time QC and now judge – back in October 2022. Importantly, the bill introduces a general duty requiring those involved in transporting dangerous goods to ensure those goods are transported safely and without risk to public safety, property and the environment. This places the focus where it belongs – on identifying and managing risks before accidents and incidents occur.

The bills that we are debating concurrently today aim to modernise the overall regulation of the transport of dangerous goods across Victoria as well as strengthen WorkSafe’s overall ability to enforce compliance with current dangerous goods transport laws. Dangerous goods are an important part of the state’s economy, and in particular dangerous goods are used across a variety of different industries, especially agriculture, construction, manufacturing and health care, in order to provide services and produce essential goods. We know that dangerous goods present significant risks to the community that need to be controlled. Ultimately every Victorian expects dangerous goods to be handled and transported safely. They expect workers to return home safely, communities to be protected from avoidable risks and regulators to have the tools necessary to enforce the law when serious breaches occur.

These bills recognise that prevention is always better than response. By strengthening duties, improving accountability and ensuring clear safety obligations the legislation seeks to reduce the likelihood of serious incidents occurring in the first place. It is also important to acknowledge the vital role played by emergency services personnel who respond to dangerous goods incidents. Strong regulatory frameworks assist not only workers and businesses but also those who place themselves in harm’s way to protect the community. Importantly, stronger penalties for reckless or negligent conduct send a clear message that safety cannot be treated as an afterthought. Where individuals or organisations fail to meet their obligations and place others at risk there must be appropriate consequences. The community expects that those responsible for managing dangerous goods do so with the highest regard for safety and responsibility.

My electorate is one of the largest and most successful agriculture, manufacturing and industry suppliers, with both national and global success, and we have an enormous amount of transport movement. My region is home to close to 25 per cent of the state’s trucks, and that number continues to grow. It is incredibly busy when it comes to the transport of dangerous goods, whether that is down the Goulburn Valley Highway, onto the Hume Freeway, down to Melbourne, interstate or, as I said, globally. We need to ensure that the truck drivers and everyone involved in handling dangerous goods are protected with safe legislation so that their lives are not put at risk, and everyone deserves to get home safely.

There have been incidents over time that have raised the need for these reforms. We saw the two chemical fires back in 2018 and 2019. At the time they were both linked to illegal stockpiling, which as a result released toxic smoke and hazardous substances into surrounding communities. There was the West Footscray fire that burnt for almost two weeks back in August 2018, and then following that the major fire at a Campbellfield chemical waste facility in April 2019, which took several days before being brought under control by our first responders. Both these incidents impacted the health of not only individuals and our first responders but also neighbouring communities surrounding the fires. We also saw waterways contaminated and substances being released from these blazes, as well as the overall environment being severely damaged as a result.

These illicit activities had been occurring in the lead-up to the independent review being commissioned, which later highlighted the weakness in the system that needed to be acted upon, including the interstate movement and transport of hazardous waste. In the final report handed down by Andrew Palmer QC back in 2022 it included a total of 49 recommendations made to the government, with 37 of them since having been fully supported by the government today. Change is needed to make people more responsible and more accountable. The report specifically recommended that the state’s dangerous goods legislation be incorporated within the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and such regulations, as well as that dangerous goods transport be regulated by its own act and regulations, with explosives and high-consequence dangerous goods regulated under separate legislation.

There are a number of key amendments the bill contains, such as the creation of a new Dangerous Goods Transport Act that seeks to cover road, rail, boat and inland waterways, makes it an offence to risk serious injury or death involving dangerous goods and strengthens WorkSafe’s powers and overall ability to enforce compliance. It gives the courts broader sentencing options and also aligns dangerous goods laws with other regulatory frameworks and facilitates better coordination and information sharing between jurisdictions in addressing the weaknesses in interstate transport of dangerous goods. The adoption of a duties-based approach means that a person involved in the transport of dangerous goods must ensure that they are transported in a manner that is firstly safe and secondly without risks to public safety, property and the environment. That is incredibly important when we consider the nature of such goods being transported across the state but also interstate, whether that be on our roads or via rail.

Pending the bill’s passage the regulations to come are expected to align Victoria with other jurisdictions across the country by adopting the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road and Rail, with the commencement of these changes not anticipated until April 2028 in order to allow for sufficient time for the industry and duty holders to prepare for and comply with the changes as the bill sets out.

As the member for Eildon touched on as well in her lead contribution, the Victorian Transport Association, the VTA, have raised concerns regarding the bill’s new powers relating to entry. In particular the VTA has expressed that these new powers are too broad and that they do not direct the inspector to focus solely on dangerous goods, instead allowing all parts of the vehicle and vessel to be searched and seized as a result. When you consider the practicality of all of this, many of the real risks sit in the surrounding conditions such as, for example, the vehicle’s condition, load restraint, maintenance, documentation and competence of operators. Most of the changes that are contained in the bill are with already existing OH&S legislation. The member for Eildon also raised that the VTA holds concerns around the seizure of vehicles without some degree of formal notice that can be communicated to the owner of the vehicle or freight.

The Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) also raised concerns about the reforms in the bill – that they do not impose disproportionate regulatory burdens. Farmers are not transport operators by trade, yet under these bills they will be directly captured by these provisions through normal farming activities. As a result of this, there is a need for meaningful consultation and input into the development of the regulations. It is essential that farmers are not unfairly exposed by the amendments contained in these bills.

Whilst we do not oppose these bills, it should be noted that these bills are significant. We need to monitor how well they play out on the ground. Moving away from the Dangerous Goods Act to a more modern, transport-focused framework is timely and necessary, as it is clear that there need to be more protections and safety in place. That is critically important, especially when you take into account such goods that are being transported across Victoria and interstate. The overall structure and intent of these bills also reflects a shift to a more contemporary and risk-based approach that is closely aligned with the principles that we see also in the current Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, which completely bans the transport of extremely dangerous goods. It not only improves compliance, it also reduces compliance costs for industry by supporting national productivity.

The Australian Institute of Health & Safety recognises that these changes are positive and timely, yet the concerns they have outlined, particularly around the ambiguity and potential risks, are real. Similar to the VFF, their concerns about their members being caught up in the new reforms are also fair and need to be considered by the government when developing future regulations pending the passage of these bills. That is why we, the Nationals and Liberals, are calling on the government for consultation around the development of the regulations and, where feedback has been provided by key industry stakeholders, that it be taken into account.

Whilst we do not oppose this bill, we do note that these bills are significant and also complex in nature. Moving to a more modern and transport-focused framework is welcomed and necessary. It is important that it is there to protect the safety of all Victorians, something which is incredibly important. As I have mentioned, the government must take into account the feedback that has been provided by industry stakeholders when developing future regulations pending this bill so that most people are not severely impacted.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (18:53): I am pleased to have quite a few minutes left on the clock to make a contribution on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026 and follow on from what was a very sound and measured contribution from the member for Shepparton, who I think went to the key components within the bill that go to providing for better safety for our state and go towards providing for a better system of management in terms of regulation and control.

I think broadly the debate on this piece of legislation throughout the journey of the evening has been a good one. Indeed, it is on the back of some really significant work that other members have mentioned around the report and the significant amount of work that has been done to improve the control and management of dangerous goods. Certainly a number of members have made really significant and important contributions to what we have seen in terms of a number of safety incidents across the state. I think that the learnings that are contained within the bill before the house and the work that has been done in terms of the report make this a really important step, because it goes to safety. It goes to the safety of not just those who are working within particular industries who might be further exposed or have a higher risk in terms of the management and the control of such substances, but also the wider community. What has been really well canvassed through the journey of the debate this evening has indeed been that contribution around those incidents that have occurred and the way in which the learnings can evolve and the way in which the government and agencies can respond.

I do want to take the opportunity to thank and acknowledge those in our emergency services family, who do amazing work in responding to any incident, particularly those that involve dangerous goods. Picking up on the thread that a number of other members have raised around that additional training and the safeguards that are put in place for the management and the control of such goods, it is something that is really important to put on the record, our thanks and acknowledgement of that, as well. I think when you are speaking to the wider community on these matters, people know and understand that the existence of all of these chemicals is indeed within the community. But knowing and understanding that the safeguards are in place and that that is backed up by solid research is something that is really important.

From the position of transport, understanding the work that needs to be done around having our agencies equipped with the resources and the tools that they need to be able to respond is something that is really, really important. Making these provisions on the back of these reports is a really important part of government, and I want to thank those that have done the work to make the report possible and take the opportunity to acknowledge that that is a really significant and valued contribution. This piece of legislation goes to community safety and the management and responsibility of our agencies. When we are guided by the principles, those that are contained in the report around better safety, better management and better control, we of course get better outcomes.

I did not get to hear all of the terrific contributions that were made on this piece of legislation this evening, but listening to quite a few, I think there has been a really measured, responsible debate this evening around this piece of legislation, in those that I have heard, and making those provisions that go to that better control, that better certainty and that better understanding is really important. The member for Thomastown I think articulated a number of these matters really well in going to the safety of workers and the safety of community when it comes to the management and the control of dangerous goods within our community. I think certainly picking up on the member for Shepparton, some of her points around that transport and those matters is really important, and it goes to those better safeguards.

As industry changes and as different products come to market and are used in different ways, we need to make sure that we are responding accordingly. I do not think by any stretch of the imagination anyone is saying that this is the final piece of legislation that will be drafted on these matters. We need to make sure that we are responsive, and we need to make sure that we are continuing to operate in a way that makes our state a fairer and better place as we move forward.

I think the final observation for me that I would make would be that we need to make sure we are supporting our agencies to be able to do this work. The government’s announcements that we have made within the budget certainly go to those matters. That is something that I think is really, really important. There has been a lot of work that has gone into this, and I think we should be really pleased that this piece of legislation is before the house, and it is for those reasons and a few more that I happily commend this bill to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.