Thursday, 18 June 2026

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (15:13): It is wonderful to kick off debate on legislation. It has taken us until quarter past 3 this afternoon, with an 1 hour and 45 minutes left to debate this legislation, but it is very, very important. At the outset I would like to acknowledge all of the health service workers in the public and the private health services right across Victoria. It has been an incredibly difficult time working within health care for the past decade but particularly since the COVID epidemic and then also the lockdowns, which had a significant impact not just on health service workers having to work through the infection control risks through that period but also with the mental health impacts, the impacts on our workforce and the impacts on our community. It was our health workers who were front and centre of that response, and I do thank them for their work. There are some that just simply have not had a break since then. They did the heavy lifting over the pandemic, and then they certainly do not feel like they have had a break up to this point.

This has been compounded by some savage cuts to the health sector, where there is an expectation that our health services do more – much, much more in some instances – with much, much less. This is made a lot worse by the fact that we have had significant cuts to the primary healthcare services, the grassroots mental health and healthcare services and the community health and preventative health services – the things that make a difference and help people maintain their wellness in the community – and have had to put that impact further down the line, the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, as we often talk about in health care. The expensive end of health care, the part of health care which is the most expensive, has the greatest implications on recovery, whether it is a mental illness or an event that has occurred or whether it is about mental ill health or about a mental illness.

If you are having to go to hospital for treatment, you have missed every step before that. That is something that is extraordinarily problematic in the state of Victoria at the moment. All of the money is really being directed right to the end of the healthcare profile rather than keeping people well, keeping them in the community, keeping people engaged and making sure they are staying on top of those health issues. It is something that is of great concern to me as someone who has experience working in the health sector itself.

We know that that is further complicated by the extreme cost-of-living pressures that every Victorian is facing at this point in time. It is very difficult for myself and the team in the Lowan office to hear from people who are having to choose between putting food on the table and seeing a doctor, sending their kids on a school camp or buying a new uniform for them or making a decision over whether they get those braces for the child or making sure that there is occupational therapy or social work that is required for a child who is neurodivergent, with the thousands of dollars that it costs to go to a mental health professional to have a diagnosis for their young child. You know that is what they need before they get to school so that they can have the best possible learning opportunities and to take a lot of pressure off that home environment, to make sure that parents and educators, all of the carers for that child, have the tools that they need to bring out the best in the child and support the child.

That is something that is very, very important to me and my colleagues within the Liberal and National parties. It is wonderful to have the member for South-West Coast, my electorate neighbour, who is also a healthcare professional – a nurse. You are never a former nurse; you are a nurse. You have those skills and that experience throughout your life. I know that there are many within my team that would be able to respond and provide support if there was an issue that came up. The Shadow Minister for Health in the other place Ms Crozier is a former nurse – or a nurse still, if I keep to my language – who is an exceptional advocate and campaigner for a stronger healthcare service across Victoria but also for better supports for our health service workers, as I acknowledged earlier.

This legislation is, as it is named, a regulatory reform. There are four key aspects to this piece of legislation that will be debated today. The first is in relation to assisted reproductive treatment. The bill also makes amendments to the Non-Emergency Patient Transport and First Aid Services Act 2003, and I am certain that any members in rural or regional Victoria will be able to contribute to this with firsthand experience around some of the challenges that our constituents face when it comes to accessing non-emergency patient transport or simply getting to appointments that can have serious life implications.

This legislation will amend the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 in relation to the registration of cooling towers. For those who are of a similar mind, in my health experience I started off my career as a biomedical scientist working in a laboratory. In relation to Legionnaire’s disease, I diagnosed one case of that in my career back in the olden days. But with cooling towers, I think there was a matter discussed on 3AW this morning where somebody had come back on a flight from overseas with a suspected infectious disease and there were no public health staff available to support them and provide additional support over the weekend for what could be a particularly contagious event.

It just shows how deep the cuts have been from the Allan Labor government when it is seen as a non-frontline service to have access to important infectious disease support and information for our public health workers across the system. It does make amendments as well in relation to the Radiation Act 2005. I would like to speak to that a little bit further during debate, because during the bill briefing there seemed to be a level of evasiveness around the rationale behind this and a reticence to share some significant information that the EPA had provided to the government in relation to why this amendment was required. We will discuss that later on in my contribution today.

In relation to this legislation there have been a number of concerns raised from those businesses who are involved in assisted reproductive treatment. We know that there have been significant issues which have caught media attention, and for those who work closely in their electorate office I am certain that there are people on both sides of the chamber who have had discussions, particularly with women who are going through the process of assisted reproductive treatment. They may have friends or family members who have sought assisted reproductive treatment. They may have gone through that journey themselves. Any woman who has had to enter into that process – or if you have known anybody who has – knows how difficult it is for so many reasons. It is difficult on your body to have hormonal treatment and to have that structure and very regimented routine over when you have your injection, when you have your window of opportunity to conceive and when that all comes together, being in the right place at the right time. And of course there is a significant amount of money involved. There is a significant amount of heartbreak involved for many people. For some it never sticks. For some they have the greatest joy of their life and they do not look back ever.

It is as emotional as it is difficult physically to go through as it is financially a huge challenge for so many people and simply unaffordable for many, so it is important to support families that are going through this process so that they have confidence that the organisations that will be managing the reproductive treatment will be doing so in a way that ensures that the embryo is theirs. We have had instances where that has not been the case – where somebody has found out later on that the wrong embryo has been transferred, including of course the story that we would have heard a few years ago about a woman giving birth to a stranger’s baby and the legal complications of that. It is a heartbreaking situation, if you put yourself in those shoes for just a short period of time, for both the donor of the egg that provided that embryo but also for the birth mother. What a difficult situation to have to confront when you have created that connection with your baby which turns out to be not your own. Is it your own or not? It is a very difficult argument and psychologically extraordinarily difficult.

We also know that Monash IVF settled a class action by hundreds of patients in relation to a bungled genetic testing program, while further revelations came to light that Victorian IVF clinics were vastly underreporting the actual rate of dangerous complications. There has been a lot of focus on this, not just in Victoria but nationally, and all Australian health ministers commissioned a national rapid review back in June 2025 and agreed to its recommendations in September of last year. The rapid review found multiple failures of the current system. This is not surprising given the incidents that we know about, let alone the ones that we are not aware of that have been managed privately – even further for those who do not know that they have been involved in a bungle of some description.

The main recommendation from this rapid review was to move away from industry self-regulation to government oversight, with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care to be responsible for accreditation of fertility clinics. This is a body that already oversees accreditation of hospitals and other health services. This is something that is being worked through at present, and the feedback that we are getting from some assisted reproductive treatment organisations is that this legislation is actually a step ahead of where the national reforms are. While there is absolutely a general consensus that we need better regulation, better oversight and better scrutiny over assisted reproductive treatment, we also need to understand that there is a national program that is coming.

We need to ensure that this process of transference from the current system through to what the future system looks like does not involve an interim responsibility of new standards or a new body coming through which creates a further chance for variations in treatment and oversight or differences in the standard of support and health care that you would expect if you had IVF or assisted reproductive treatment here in Victoria versus other states. The intent is to keep it at a high level and consistent across all states. That is something that I think is very important.

I highly respect the input that has been provided from different assisted reproductive treatment services, because they are looking at this with the view that things need to change but we need to ensure that the change is a positive one and does not create any unnecessary confusion or harm, particularly for those who receive and engage in these services.

In particular there are concerns that have been raised in relation to RTAC, the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee, that that accreditation will be abolished as a registration requirement but in its place the secretary may approve one or more accreditation schemes, with registered ART providers required to comply or face penalties of up to 60 penalty units for a natural person and 300 penalties for body corporates. This replacement scheme has not yet been developed. This is what we are facing with the legislation today. It is something that will be delivered through a future change, and that is a concern to the organisations that will have to work under this new scheme. We do not know what we are working towards, but we are cutting what is already in place.

What we found during the briefing was there will be two processes in place, two different schemes in place, for a period of time, and that is through the transitional provisions within the legislation, proposed sections 169 to 171, which allow the secretary to approve two concurrent schemes immediately after commencement, recognising that some providers will remain RTAC accredited while others might be accredited to the Australian scheme. However, the requirements of the new scheme are entirely unknown, and members will have limited ability to plan or assess compliance costs until the scheme is published.

It is extraordinarily challenging in health care because there are so many standards and so many quality assurance programs that you are involved in. Something that is important to take consideration of is while this all ensures that there is a higher level of certainty for consumers, it does also mean there is an additional input of administrative time, of scientists’ time when it comes to ART and of clinicians’ time to make sure they are meeting those standards. If you are doing two standards side by side that can compete, it can consume additional time and it can mean resources are taken away from delivering the services that people are seeking, which are about making sure that more parents who are seeking to successfully implant an embryo are able to do so. While this is not a deal breaker, it is something that I would urge the government to consider very carefully as this legislation is brought into practice.

It is a challenge. I know even back in the olden days, when I was CEO of a health service, we had six different accreditations that we had to go through because we delivered aged care, we delivered acute care, we still had an operating theatre and we had a variety of allied health and community health services that we delivered, including dental services. We also had the usual accreditation that was required to ensure that financially your transactions were sound and no-one was taking money or inappropriately accounting for public funds. There were six accreditation processes that we had to go through. It was incredibly time consuming. It took funds out of the service. Sometimes it was a process where there was an incredible amount of duplication, which did not necessarily result in a higher quality of care or a higher level of transparency. Most importantly, there was a lot of information that went into these agencies, particularly the public health department, but there was not a lot of information coming back on how you could do better and how you could aspire to improve your system to make sure you did run a higher quality service, a more efficient service and a more productive service.

That is something that is required. We cannot just have these lumping big departments with lots of staff that collect a lot of information but do not support our health services to deliver better health services for our people. It is something that may be an ideology for me, but I think that it would be good to get back to a system where the government and departments work for the organisations that are delivering frontline services rather than being a barrier – a cost barrier, a time barrier, any sort of barrier – for these people who are on the ground, who want to just get on and do their job and do it well. Certainly the member for South-West Coast and I are working hard to ensure that we can be in government sooner rather than later so we can end the waste, stop the corruption and get our health services back to supporting people when and where they need it.

We are hearing from other organisations. The feedback that I read in earlier was from the Australian Private Hospitals Association. We have also had feedback from Melbourne IVF. We have heard from them that:

•   The introduction of the Bill is premature as it seeks to materially overhaul how the ART sector is regulated in Victoria before there has been any significant progress on the national accreditation scheme currently under development.

•   Any reforms to accreditation requirements should wait until all stakeholders have a clearer picture of the structure and contents of the national accreditation scheme and standards, and should be accompanied by appropriate consultation with affected stakeholders.

•   The Bill, if passed, will lead to increased cost and uncertainty for patients. This is including because it will lead to the creation of an interim regime pending the launch of the national accreditation scheme, which will require ART providers to significantly update their processes twice in a relatively short period of time.

•   The proposed reforms will also not make ART treatment safer or more widely available, or lead to more successful outcomes, for patients in Victoria.

•   There are aspects of the Bill that appear to have been rushed as numerous details still need to be properly worked through. As such, at the very least, the proposed reforms will require further consideration and consultation before the Bill is enacted.

This is not something that we made up ourselves; this is something from the people who deliver ART services, and I would urge the government in the time that is available between the houses, between the chambers, to take action, to make note that there is an opportunity to have further consultation with the people who actually will have to deliver these changes, the people who provide support to the patients, the people who make IVF a reality for so many families. We need to ensure that this is done right, and I do urge the government to take heed of these organisations, because feedback is required for a reason and that is to make sure we do it once and do it right, not do it multiple times and create additional cost barriers and confusion and perhaps even inadvertently create a more dangerous system on the way through.

Further to this legislation, I would like to speak to the element regarding non-emergency patient transport and first-aid services. This aspect of the legislation makes a relatively minor change. It expands regulation-making powers in relation to the incorporation of documents, and this is to support greater communications and make sure that there is a pathway for information sharing, particularly for the non-emergency patient transport and first-aid services that are out there.

In relation to non-emergency patient transport, we have seen a critical impact from some recent cuts by the Allan Labor government, and we had a really upsetting contact from a constituent just last week, somebody who was on the list for a liver donation and lived in, I think you would call it remote rather than rural Victoria, the Yarriambiack region. She is an older woman who does not drive or is not comfortable driving long distances. Her husband is not well at this point in time. She was told that if a liver should become available, she would need to get to Melbourne within 6 hours. We do not have access to public transport at all in some regions. For some it is maybe one trip a day that goes from our region through to Melbourne. It is certainly not something where you could have any confidence that public transport would be available within a 6-hour window to get you from point A through to Melbourne. It was extremely difficult to have the conversation with someone who is at that level of liver failure, where they were in such distress that they would miss out on their opportunity to get a transplant because they could not find anybody to take them to the appointment. This is information that came from a social worker in the public health system that was basically: if you do not get there, you are going to miss out.

We need to have a health system where there is no wrong door, where we take the time to understand the limitations of access to health services and particularly patient transport in rural and regional Victoria. We need to make sure that we do not have a situation where someone is mentally distressed and think they are going to miss out on a transplant because they have got no idea how they are going to get to Melbourne within 6 hours and they do not have the means to access that through their health services. It is problematic, and it is not just this one incident alone. We are hearing repeatedly of people who cannot access non-emergency patient transport for chemotherapy or radiation treatment. People are choosing – if they cannot find a family member, if they cannot find a friend, particularly through the fuel crisis where costs were so high that they felt like they would be a financial burden on the people around them – and people are making excuses not to have life-saving treatment to take the burden off the people around them. That is just such a hard conversation to have; it is very, very difficult. And for those of us who have loved ones who have been through or are going through cancer treatment, you cannot imagine that that would ever be something that they would have to consider as an option. It is a very difficult situation. There is more that can be done within the patient transport services, particularly for rural and regional people. People are missing out on health care far too often, simply because they cannot access a public way, a supported way, to get there. That is creating a community of haves and have-nots in Victoria, No-one should miss out on health care simply because they cannot drive long distances, yet that is what is happening under the Allan Labor government, and it is disastrously bad; it is heartbreaking.

I would like to further mention access to health care in rural and regional areas, and that is particularly in relation to bush nursing centres, because often they are the ones that provide that non-emergency patient treatment and that community health, primary health and often ambulance services as well in our rural and regional areas. They have not had an increase in funding for an extraordinarily long period of time. They have had EBA negotiations to increase and improve the pay for their nursing staff, and no-one begrudges that. But if there is going to be a government going in to negotiate a higher EBA, then that same government should be delivering a higher level of funding so they can actually pay their staff at a higher rate to continue the same number of hours for those staff, particularly in those small communities, and not have to look at what services they cut.

I note earlier in the week the member for Gippsland East, who also hosts a large number of bush nursing centres, made mention that one of his bush nursing centres was having to go from five days back to four days. There is diminished access to health services, and this is the problem with the centralised system. We have really novel healthcare services around the state, people who do things a little bit differently, who need flexibility in how they deliver care, how they deliver health care, and yet this is being taken away by a series of cuts, by productivity gains through the service, and we end up with fewer hours, fewer services and our local people paying the price for a Labor government that is insistent that only the big health services are the ones that matter. That is not the case.

We need to support bush nursing centres in our smallest communities. They need to see an increase in funding. We need to see more support for patient travel, particularly in our rural and regional areas. We need to make sure that we have got funding in place for people in my community. Recently I heard of an instance in Horsham where somebody was looking to see a specialist and they were unable to because the funding had been cut by the Labor government, and so that specialist was no longer able to travel to Horsham, which is the 10th largest regional city in the state. I had an instance also the other day at Grampians Health where somebody had been diagnosed, they had a very, very high PSA. They had a PSA that was simmering for a long time, then it just spiked, and they were told that they would not be able to be referred to a urologist as there simply was not one available to be able to send out to Edenhope. To leave somebody in that situation, where they were told just to take some magnesium – ‘It should help you sleep at night’ – is not any reassurance, and it did not help that person sleep better at night. I am very, very grateful and thankful that that individual instead went into South Australia, and today they started their treatment, their radiation treatment, and I wish them all the very, very best. They have got eight weeks of care over there, but they could not get the care they needed for prostate cancer in Victoria, so they went to South Australia. That is what is happening in Victoria. That is not good enough. That is not good enough for any Victorian, and I challenge any of you to think about how that would feel if that was your family member.

How would you feel if that was your father who could not access services here and was told, ‘You can’t get a urologist in Victoria, you have to go to South Australia. We can’t help you.’ That is not good enough. That is something that everybody should be –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

Emma KEALY: Well, former Minister for Health, I am more than happy to put you in touch with that person, because that person is my father, and I trust him implicitly. He started radiation treatment today. My father started radiation treatment in Adelaide today because the former Minister for Health centralised services into Ballarat. He could not access radiation treatment in the state of Victoria. He could not access a urologist in the state of Victoria, and he has gone to South Australia. If the former Minister of Health would like me to pass on his details, I would be more than happy to – or my mother’s, who would be more than happy to talk about it as well. It is heartbreaking, it is wrong and nobody should have to face that. Nobody in this state should be told they cannot get health care in Victoria. Nobody should get that – not me, not the former Minister for Health, not anybody. I would not wish that on anybody, but this is what happens in Victoria. It is what happens when you have got a government that is happy to throw away $15 billion, including on strippers on Big Build sites – money that should be invested in our health services in Victoria. It means Victorians are missing out.

Members interjecting.

Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is now straying way off the bill, and I ask that you bring her back to the matter at hand.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I remind the member of the bill. You have been relevant to the bill, but you did stray a little bit, so just come back.

Emma KEALY: I think that health services across the state should be funded appropriately. When they have significant funding cuts because money is being spent in ways that are completely wasteful, that support corruption in this state and that will not be investigated by Premier Allan and all of the people who stand behind her and who have confidence in her leadership of this state, I can tell you there are a hell of a lot of people right across Victoria, not just in National seats, not just in Liberal Party seats, but in Labor Party seats, who have lost confidence in Premier Allan and the Labor government. They have lost confidence that Premier Allan and the Labor government are making decisions for the people of Victoria. It feels like there is just desperation and chaos. There is such urgency and fear about what people actually want to do. All of the Labor members want to keep their own seats. They have forgotten what it is all about. They have forgotten they have been elected to represent the people of Victoria.

Paul Edbrooke: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I fear that the member is again straying from the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): The member may have strayed a little bit from the bill. I will just ask you to be relevant to the bill.

Emma KEALY: I will stand in this place with all of my colleagues from the National Party, all of my colleagues within the Liberal Party, and put forward a positive plan, because Victorians deserve better. Victorians deserve a safe pair of hands that will actually focus on Victorians, that will deliver better health services, that will make sure that our schools are high quality, that will be able to support the teachers, that will make sure there is no more waste and that will put in a royal commission to get to the bottom of the corruption in this state. We will get rid of the bikie gangs. We will hold all of those people to account who have done the wrong thing.

Belinda Wilson: On a point of order, Acting Speaker: relevance.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): The member has concluded.

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon) (15:43): I am very proud to speak today on the Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026. The bill seeks to amend the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, the Radiation Act 2005 and the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, and in addition a minor and technical amendment will be made to the Non-Emergency Patient Transport and First Aid Services Act 2003. The reforms outlined in this bill will be administered and enforced by the health regulator, a regulator which was established as a branch of the department back in early 2024. I want to take this opportunity to thank the hardworking team in the health regulator for all the work that they have done, and particularly in relation to the matter that I want to spend my time on this afternoon, which is to talk about assisted reproductive treatment, because as the staff members of the health regulator will know, no sooner had we established the health regulator than they were required to deal with some very challenging circumstances arising from Monash IVF. But I will talk a little bit more about that through the course of my contribution.

It is worth knowing that when it comes to assisted reproductive treatment Victoria has always been a nation leader. This goes back to the days of Professors Carl Wood and Alan Trounson, who established IVF here in the state of Victoria. In fact in 1980 Australia’s first IVF baby, and the world’s third, was born at the Royal Women’s Hospital. We have a long history of seeing advances in assisted reproductive treatment and care. Importantly, we have always matched that with making sure that we have law that stays abreast of those advances and continues to reflect changing norms, expectations and desires in society for how assisted reproductive treatments are regulated in this state.

I am very proud, having done a little bit of research, to see that it was in fact during the Cain government, under Premier John Cain, that we became the first jurisdiction in the world to enact legislation governing ART, and that was in 1984. The Brumby Labor government looked to rework that legislation and introduced the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, which is one of the acts that we are amending today.

Subsequently Minister Jill Hennessy led a range of reforms. It was during Minister Hennessy’s reign that we saw significant and world-leading reform that put children at the centre of our Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act by ensuring that donor-conceived children would always know, or would have access to, their biology, that they would be able to answer that question, ‘Where did I come from?’ The point here is that it is really important to continue to stay vigilant and evolve this legislation to ensure that we keep pace with changes in technology and in society. As I said, we need to make sure that we are putting at the centre of all of our legislation the donor-conceived children and their families. Since the first days when we were world leading in IVF, we have seen a multi-billion-dollar industry grow in the delivery of ART services. I have got to say that when you put vulnerable people – that is, people that are desperate for a child – up against the might of a money-making industry like the IVF industry, it is really important that we have appropriate regulation and legislation in place.

I need to correct some matters that the member for Lowan raised in her contribution. I just want to be clear that what we are proposing in this bill is to enable the implementation of a nationally consistent accreditation scheme. It is not about duplication; it is about being ready for when a national scheme is introduced. It was Monash IVF that really drove this action that was taken by health ministers, and I have got to say it was Victoria that led the charge to say that having a sector that accredits itself does not pass the pub test and that Australians expect more, and therefore it was important that we looked to have the rapid review. The rapid review was led by Professor Euan Wallace, former Secretary of the Department of Health here in Victoria and noted specialist obstetrician and gynaecologist.

It was Victoria that led for the national review. We did this also because we had seen this shocking situation in Queensland where a mother took home a stranger’s baby. It was not long after – this all happened in 2025 – that a mother from Monash IVF here in Melbourne was implanted with the wrong embryo. Quite clearly we saw a failure of this national self-accreditation system, and it became apparent to health ministers that we needed to take action to ensure that we had an appropriately regulated sector.

The recommendations of the review have been agreed to by health ministers, and the health ministers are now taking action to implement them. As I have already outlined, the amendments in this bill will enable that national system to apply here in Victoria, and that is really, really important. A national accreditation framework is being developed by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, and it will ensure that the ART sector operates in a way that is safe and transparent. This bill will ensure that Victoria stands ready to adopt this framework once it is finalised. A number of the concerns that the member for Lowan raised are in fact not concerns at all with regard to the way in which the department and the minister, I am sure, will continue to consult with the sector.

One of the other areas in which Victoria leads of course is in the establishment of a public fertility program. Again, I have talked about the way in which we have led the nation in so many areas when it comes to assisted reproductive treatment, and the establishment of public fertility care is yet another example of that. On this side of the house, the Allan Labor government believe that the decision to start or grow a family should not depend on the size of your wallet or where you live. Public fertility care is something that I am very, very proud of. We have been able to celebrate, and I have had the great opportunity to meet some of our public IVF babies, more than 350 of whom have been born as a consequence of our government’s commitment to public fertility care. It is important that I raise that here today. One of the unique features of this program is that it is led by the Royal Women’s but there are satellite sites right across the state. I am sure the member for Lowan will congratulate the government on the fact that targeting women in rural and regional Victoria is quite explicit in the establishment of public fertility care.

It is important to talk about it, because I have no doubt whatsoever that when those on the other side are scrambling to fill their $40 billion black hole, one of the first areas that they cut will be public fertility care. Do you know why? I think the member for Lowan gave it away. Let us be clear, there are people that do not support public fertility care, and they are the private fertility care providers. They do not support it. Yet the member for Lowan seems to have spent a lot of time talking to them and ensuring that their interests are protected. We will always stand on the side of Victorians, those that do not have thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to spend on private fertility care. Again, it is that equity, making sure that the key beneficiaries include low-income earners and include people living in rural and regional Victoria. It was such a delight for me to be able to meet a woman who lived in Mildura who was able to access our public fertility care and, as I have said, have that opportunity to start a family.

This is a really important bill. I want to wind back to where I started and say that health regulation is extremely important. We have got to get it right. In this area of fertility care we see advances in a national and indeed international level. I think it is really important that we strive towards a nationally consistent ART sector and that we take our place on the global stage to ensure that we have a responsible and ethical international fertility care system. I have got to say, it concerns me at the moment that that is not the case. I commend the bill to the house.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (15:54): I rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026, but I want to begin by acknowledging all the health workers who work in our health system and thanking them for their tireless commitment to the roles they play, the wide and varied roles from nurses and doctors to the kitchen staff and the cleaners. It takes a huge team of allied health staff and right through to be able to keep our community well. Over the last number of years we have seen our health services stretched to quite extraordinary levels. I sometimes think that the nurses in particular – obviously as a nurse of 30 years experience in many areas of nursing over that time, I remember feeling quite clearly that people’s health was my responsibility. You never think to say that it is beyond your capacity to help someone and fix a situation, because that is how nurses and healthcare people operate. But unfortunately, we are seeing our health service under enormous pressure. It has not had the funding to fund the primary health care that is needed so that people do not end up unwell and in hospital.

We saw an example of that during COVID, when many, many people missed their cancer check-ups or screenings, and there was an article just in the paper last week about the amount of people being treated for cancer, dying from cancer and with end-stage cancers because the screening process was missed that could have picked it up. It is a really difficult position for healthcare providers to find themselves in at the moment, working in those environments. It is just such a shame that we are seeing a health crisis which is really as a result of lack of enough funds and lack of respect and care for the nurses and the doctors and the allied health professionals and all those that do the work that brings the hospital together. Many of them are actually on strike at the moment – the support workers – because they are desperately saying, ‘Come on, give us what we need. We’re doing a hard job, and we’re not getting the proper respect and remuneration for that.’ I think we all know how hard they work, but it is very unfortunate that the Labor government are expecting them to actually take these situations and not care for them enough to actually understand the resources they need to provide the service that they should be able to provide.

On that note, I would like to give a call-out to some of the good doctors in our region. It is actually Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, and we have some amazing colorectal surgeons in South-West Coast: Mr Joe Wragg and Mr Phil Gan, both outstanding doctors who have done incredible work. They give so much of their time. Another doctor that I want to give a shout-out to is my own GP and a fellow I worked with for probably 21 years running a health clinic in the Aboriginal community. He has been there about that long; I was there about 15 years, actually. I have actually nominated him for the Victorian Rural Health Awards, so I look forward to the results on 25 June, and whether he is a winner or not he is certainly a worthy recipient of the award that he has been nominated for and for which he is now a finalist.

This is a bill that looks into improving the assisted reproductive treatment process – the ART. That is as a result of some pretty horrific situations that came about after embryos were mixed up. Victorians were shocked to learn of cases involving embryo mix-ups, including reports of a woman giving birth to a child that was not genetically related to her. It also looks at some changes around the cooling tower regulations. In the bill briefing the government thought we had 6000 cooling towers in the state, but it was quite alarming to think that they actually got that wrong; it is actually 3000 cooling towers. It is not just a health issue – well, it is a health issue, because Legionnaire’s is what results from poor management of cooling towers, and we have done a lot as a state to improve that. We still have cooling towers on dairy farms. Once upon a time it was the only way to cool milk; now we see more refrigeration technologies. On our dairy farm we had a 50,000-litre vat; that is how much milk we were able to put into the vat. It is quite extraordinary when you think about just how much milk goes into a vat these days, but cooling towers were what cooled the milk down to 4 degrees quickly so that bacteria did not multiply and we could all have safe food products. That gives an opportunity for me to say thank you to all the primary producers across our good state of Victoria who produce clean, green food and make sure that we are all very blessed to be able to have such amazing access to very fresh product and good-quality food.

This bill also makes some changes to the Non-Emergency Patient Transport and First Aid Services Act 2003. This is a very important service, and it flows right through to ambulances. We are seeing, right across south-west Victoria, some real challenges with our ambulance service and our patient transfer. We have had so many situations where people are just not able to get an ambulance on time. I had a case just a couple of weeks ago where a lady in her 80s lay on the floor for an hour and a half waiting for an ambulance in Warrnambool. Not so long ago, there was a phone call from a very distressed lady who has chronic pain issues and on one Sunday night in Portland called the ambulance, who said they could not come because it was not an emergency, and they did not have an ambulance.

We often do not, because we do not have the resources we need in South-West Coast, which goes back to me saying we have not got enough funding. This is the modern world of 2026 and this is one of the basics you would expect after a government has been in for 21 of the last 25 years – pretty much all but four years of the last quarter of a century – to think you cannot get an ambulance on time is extraordinary. The ambulance officer said to the woman in Portland, who was in extreme pain, ‘Look, how about you call a taxi?’ On Sunday nights in Portland there are no taxis. If you cannot get an ambulance and you cannot get a taxi and you are an elderly person who does not drive – that is an absolutely disgraceful position for us in the state of Victoria to find anyone in, let alone our most vulnerable.

Not only in Portland is it often difficult to get an ambulance – or in Warrnambool or in Hamilton, for that matter, in the member for Lowan’s electorate – we have had the helipad closed in Portland. The reason the helipad was put there in the first place was because it is 5 hours to Melbourne by road now. When minutes matter it is important to get people lifted by air from a hospital and into Melbourne quickly. Now we have not got that service. This is just a disgrace. Not only do we not have the service but we do not have the rationale for losing the service. The government have tried to pull the wool over Victorians’ eyes and the wool over Portland people’s eyes by saying nothing.

The previous Minister for Ambulance Services initially said that it was because of Civil Aviation Services Australia’s changes to regulation, but when I asked them about that change to regulation CASA said that was not true. The government misled the people of Portland, and since then we have not been able to get them to commit to the rationale and the reason for the shutting down of the helipad. It is absolutely disgraceful that you cannot get a helicopter from Portland. The people of Portland fundraised, they campaigned and they felt like they had achieved an outcome when they got the helipad at the hospital, and now that has been closed. It has been closed for over three years. Despite making several attempts with every health minister and the Minister for Ambulance Services, there has been no explanation.

What we really know, though, is this is a government that has lost its compassion. It is so wrapped up in corruption and waste and trying to cover all that up and denying the ability to have royal commissions that they are underfunding the health services, and that is why we have seen out in Portland the helipad closure and why we are seeing services disappear from the Portland hospital. The government says it is because we cannot access and find staff. The recommendations of an inquiry I was involved in in 2017 said we need to invest in the region’s health, and if we did not do that, there would be shortages. That is where we are at right now. Those shortages exist because the recommendation of that inquiry, the perinatal services inquiry, was not adopted.

The inquiry highlighted that maternity services would be short and there would not be enough general surgeons, anaesthetists and people able to perform obstetric procedures and that we would find ourselves in a real situation if those recommendations were not adopted. Sure enough, that is exactly where we are at. Birthing services are under enormous pressure, often unable to be accessed in Portland and right across our region, because this government has spent more time focusing on giving money to corrupt bikie gangs and doing the wrong thing by Victorian taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately we have got a health service in crisis, and that is only one of the areas of crisis of this state because of the mismanagement of the Allan Labor government.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (16:04): I am very pleased to speak on these important regulatory reforms which are helping to adapt in a changing environment in many important aspects pertaining to Victorians, particularly with regard to assisted reproductive treatment, radiation and the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008. I will start on the topic of IVF. I have friends and colleagues who have had children through IVF, and I know that it can be an incredible point in life when somebody can achieve a new life through this beautiful and incredible process. However, unfortunately we have witnessed episodes where not only has the particular IVF treatment not been successful but in fact it was mismanaged in the sense that embryos were not correctly implanted, resulting in some pretty devastating outcomes for the people involved.

It is enough of itself to have to go through the process of trying to conceive, let alone to have complications that one should not have to endure. Hence the government is on the front foot, as it has been historically when it comes to IVF treatment. I do want to reiterate that the comments that were made in the chamber by the member for Lowan are not correct. There will not be two schemes under this bill. It is simply enabling legislation to replace the current accreditation scheme with the new national independent accreditation scheme once finalised in early 2027. It is therefore enabling legislation. It is not trying to create a duplicate system or some sort of further complexity or to exacerbate costs or anything of that nature. On the contrary, in Victoria, we are being proactive in making sure we are absolutely ready for these changes, because it is simply the right thing to do. I am sure the contrary criticism would apply. They are saying, ‘Don’t rush into this.’ Okay, should we just wait until the change arises and then not be ready? I mean, that would not seem to be a very logical way to approach this very important issue. So I hope I can allay the concerns of the member for Lowan and indeed the opposition that there is merit in actually being ready for these national changes, which actually will be for the betterment of Victorians.

We know that there were a series of concerning and highly distressing incidents – and I alluded to this before – in private IVF providers. That is what has really fostered this increased public discussion and really has been the impetus behind having consistency on a national level – so not only Victorians but in fact all Australians can expect the requisite standard to be applied, and consistently, when it comes to assisted reproductive technology and the IVF sector more broadly. As part of this, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care is developing a new accreditation framework for IVF providers that will ensure that tougher scrutiny is required to obtain accreditation. The new accreditation framework will be independent, unlike the current framework, which is industry based and based on what we have observed; having that sort of self-check is simply not cutting the mustard, hence it is important that we elevate the standards across the country, and Victoria is playing its part to make sure that we are ready for these appropriate changes.

A further element of the bill when it comes to the health and safety of Victorians is actually cooling towers – because we know that, unfortunately, they can be a key vector for legionella. I should say, though, it is not about increasing the burden on the responsible person or organisations; rather, it is about providing greater clarity. The proposed amendments will require the responsible person, defined as the person who owns, manages or controls a cooling tower system, to assume obligations such as registration, development and review of a risk management plan and annual audits. The approach ensures that the primary responsibility for cooling tower safety is clearly identified, enforceable and aligned with the practical control of cooling towers, taking into account contemporary building ownership and management practices. This is a very practical change. Certainly when you think of the rather drastic ramifications of not having consistency in terms of the way or clarity, if you like, in terms of the responsibility and accountability in this space, we can see why it is absolutely imperative that we make these very important changes.

Now, a third element – and there are various elements to this bill – is with regard to the Radiation Act 2005.

Victoria, along with all other jurisdictions, committed in 2021 to implementing the National Directory for Radiation Protection, which requires legislation to ensure licence holders make adequate financial provision for managing disused radioactive sources. May I put in a caveat here that we know that the experts in this field, day in, day out, are actually conducting all manner of health treatments – X-rays or otherwise – that they are undertaking with due diligence. I want to pay respect to and thank them for the incredible work that they do. However, as is always the case with legislation, we have to allow for all foreseeable contingencies.

While licence conditions already require disposal, there is currently no effective mechanism to ensure funds are available when a licence holder fails, becomes insolvent or abandons a source. These reforms close the gap and ensure risks are managed proactively rather than reactively. It is not to in any way cast aspersions, but it is allowing for various contingencies should the government be required to intervene, as the case may be, and therefore have a financial surety element that allows for the vicissitudes of situations that can occur in a society. I would like to put the caveat that I am sure that health experts across the country, as I was saying from the outset, are doing their best, day in, day out. This is not to cast any kind of negativity in that regard but rather to say that we do have to allow for all contingencies because we are dealing with human beings.

On that note, I want to actually do a little flip here onto something really, really positive, and that is the Paula Fox Melanoma and Cancer Centre, which is in the seat of Prahran – very proximate to my electorate. They have a Quadra PET/CT scanner. When we talk about radiation, oh, my goodness – this is in the best sense, for X-rays. It is not about hurting people, it is about actually detecting cancer and other things. It can do it in 2 or 3 minutes. People do not have to have, like, a 20-minute exercise, which can be really intimidating. This thing is just absolutely amazing, and it is part of public health care, so I was a little bit concerned about the opposition trying to infer a lack of investment in health care or otherwise. Let me tell you, we have incredible health care in this state. This Quadra PET/CT scanner is something to behold – what it will do for patients in terms of the accuracy of the machine but also in reducing the anxiety associated with having to lie still for a protracted period of time and to be in that sort of claustrophobic space.

This is just as an example of where these elements of health can flip either way, because on one hand we are talking about the expiration of a particular radioactive material versus on the other, where it can actually be a fantastic help, save lives and detect all kinds of illnesses. I just wanted to end on a positive note there, because we are allowing for the vicissitudes of experiences within a health system. As a responsible government we are doing the right thing to make sure that there are those contingencies in place to allow for situations where the circumstances are not as they should be. On that note, I would like to commend these reforms to the house. They are much needed. I also do want to do a shout-out to our wonderful public IVF. That is certainly a great achievement for all Victorians.

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (16:14): Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026 – I am always pleased to rise in this place and talk about anything that makes our health system better, particularly when it affects the some nine different health services across the great electorate of Polwarth. This bill has three or four main parts, and I will just touch briefly on a couple of the others before we talk on the infrastructure side of this bill.

First of all, there is reference to improvements to the assisted reproductive treatment accreditation and registration powers in this bill. Of course many people will be aware of the very public incidents that occurred back in 2025 through two agencies in Queensland and Victoria, where people undergoing artificial reproductive treatment I can only imagine had their lives turned upside down.

I guess for many of us it highlighted how easily lives can be badly damaged and ruined and thrown into confusion when we do not get the health system right. We can readily think of problems, things that go wrong, if someone dies or something happens to someone in the health system, but the complications in the ART process really highlighted that health rules and health governance can affect all sorts of people in many different ways. It is important that this bill, to that extent, hopefully will put processes in place or assist the Victorian government in working with a national accreditation scheme that will bring about a level of confidence that will be very, very important for many people. That part is quite important.

The bill is also amending the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 to ensure the process around cooling towers, and I will touch on that in a minute. But there are two other things. There are some amendments to the Radiation Act 2005 to make sure that the various waste products at the hospitals are disposed of in a timely fashion – that makes sense. The two bits I want to talk about include the bill’s amendment to non-emergency patient transport. Of course for people in country hospitals this is a really important component of the health service, and often they can be forgotten about.

I just want to highlight a couple of examples when public transport is not available. Non-urgent patient transport is for people who need assistance and they are out in a rural country hospital and they have got to get to a service or an appointment or some other thing in a major metro or large regional location, such as the Geelongs or Warrnambools or Ballarats, from Polwarth. Unfortunately, for many people that can be really difficult. If you are an elderly couple or you are an older single person, you just do not have networks around you. You cannot rely necessarily on family and friends to help you out, and therefore you rely on services such as the Red Cross driver service, which is a really important service in my community. There is a roster of volunteers, and they rely on that to get them to the services that they need. For people that are perhaps having prolonged cancer treatments and other things, that can be multiple times a week, and that is a really important service that operates. It is also for more complicated situations, when people are perhaps laying down and not able to sit upright in a volunteer’s car, and then the more formalised non-emergency patient transport is an important service. These are critical issues, and it is part of the overall health provider service that exists in in country communities. Increasingly our health services have not exactly become satellites of the larger majors, but when working at their best they are able to provide as much local care and service as possible in the local community but then are able to rely on those larger centres for more complex or more experienced needs.

I know in my own community we have a fantastic program called the Long Road Appeal, and that has been running now for nearly 15 years. It is a community effort where as many larger metropolitan services are provided back in the local community as possible, and that is done through fundraising and other things that actually help the local health provider, in this case Colac Area Health, to raise the funds, to have the equipment, to have the training and to have the services at the local level to prevent that longer transition. One of the things we have found in our community is that we actually prolong people’s lives when doing that. If we can, as we say, reduce the long road and provide more services in a more timely fashion in the local community, we can get better health outcomes.

On better health outcomes, another element of this is changes to the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, where we are regulating cooling towers. I guess this makes me want to just put on the record the fact that critical infrastructure in hospitals is something we do not do well here in Victoria.

As someone who was on a hospital board for some 16 years, I know only too well the amount of time, effort and energy our local health services put into grant applications and other things to maintain the most basic of services. While not a cooling tower but very closely related, and that is the circulation of hot water and hydraulic services around the hospital I was involved in, it was deemed for nearly a decade that the pipework, the structure, the connecting mechanisms and the overall structure of those hydraulic services were well past their use-by date. It always frustrated me that in a normal commercial operation when organisations discover they have major problems they have no choice, they must find ways to find the money and the capital and investment to get those things properly maintained and looked after. Unfortunately, the way we fund health, we do not actually build capital wear and tear into the funding of our health services so that these basic things can be maintained, because unlike any other public service in the private sector, you have to manage your way through the capital wear and tear within your organisation. That is something we do not do particularly well. So it is good to see in this bill that we are actually formalising the responsibility for the maintenance of cooling towers, because there is no shortage of examples of when cooling tower management is not done properly. Legionella and other airborne illnesses can really spread, and quite frankly, you do not want those sorts of things spreading around a hospital – a highly compromised consumer outcome.

Something that I think the government can do better, and the health department in particular, is how we go about making sure that organisations, particularly those smaller rural health care services, are assisted with this. If I think of my own electorate, I have had the Cobden bush nursing hospital, I had before it was redistributed the Mortlake Health Service and certainly I have had the Colac health service, where ageing and inadequate infrastructure – basic infrastructure that the organisation cannot do without – has often been left to be running far from optimal circumstances. What that causes is high running costs. It causes an unnecessary amount of extra maintenance and costs. While on one hand the government is saved from a larger initial capital expense, the organisation itself, with already limited resources, is forced into ongoing costs, when if the right investment was made at the right time for that health service it could in fact be saving money and saving costs. For every dollar that a health organisation has to spend on repairs and maintenance, that is a dollar less they have to provide critical care services for their community and to support the hardworking staff and others within the organisation. The fact that we, in this day and age and in a country as lucky as ours, cannot get the basics right from time to time is a real disappointment. I guess to the extent that this bill helps sharpen the pencil on how we look after cooling towers, that is a tick, and the artificial reproduction treatment services is an improvement. Anything that we can do to speed up and make non-urgent public transfers easier is a good thing.

 Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (16:24): I am delighted to rise today to speak in support of the Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026. It is even harder to speak on this bill and follow the member for Albert Park. This is another important bill, an omnibus bill that processes reform to four health portfolio acts, regulating a range of professionals, organisations and businesses with the aim of improving the health and safety of all Victorians. I commend the minister for bringing this bill forward and for all of the investment going into our healthcare system at the moment.

We can see in the south-east of Melbourne the investment that this goes to. Just last month we had the announcement of work on the massive $535 million expansion of the Monash Medical Centre at Clayton, now underway.

It was a great announcement. The member for Glen Waverley and other colleagues attended with the minister on the day. I was somewhere else – I could not make it – but this is an amazing project that will deliver a new seven-storey medical tower above the newly expanded emergency department. It is a fantastic investment. The outcomes are really significant. Once complete, the tower will include expanded services supporting around 2400 births annually; operating theatres providing capacity for up to 7500 more surgeries each year; a new intensive care unit with modern technology to support the hospital sickest patients; and new medical equipment. A central sterile service department will help deliver more surgeries sooner than later.

This is an amazing project. As one of Victoria’s busiest hospitals, the project will futureproof care in the south-east for generations to come. Not only that but the project is expected to create more than 1500 construction jobs and support additional medical jobs once it is open. This is great news for our community in Clarinda and in the south-east. Construction is expected to be complete in 2029. That follows Labor’s delivery of a new $76.3 million emergency department in 2021, which I was extremely proud to be involved in as a local member during that time. This shows our commitment to investment in health as we build 11 new hospitals across Victoria. Our government is bringing care closer to home and making life easier for families in the south-east, which I am extremely proud of.

We see that commitment in our health system continuing here today with this bill, which, as I mentioned, is an omnibus bill that proposes reform to four health portfolio acts regulating a range of professional organisations and businesses with the aim of improving health and safety for all Victorians. The first of those reforms, as mentioned by previous speakers on this side of the house, is reforms to the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 which will support appropriate alignment between Victorian legislation, the new national ART accreditation framework and the standard to be developed by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. The reform aims to strengthen Victoria’s regulatory scheme by ensuring that registration operates independently from accreditation. The secretary will have clear discretionary power to grant, renew, vary and refuse ART provider registration based on a range of probity and suitability criteria, such as applications, criminal record, financial viability and compliance history. Further, the minister will have a power to cancel registration in specified circumstances. The secretary and delegates will also be given enhanced inspection powers.

There are important changes that will come out of the rapid review, which was prompted by two incidents last year where embryos were wrongly transferred. We saw the health minister agree to the recommendations of the review to reform how ART services are regulated and accredited across Australia. As such, we have these changes here before us today that will make it easier and safer for all Victorians when it comes to starting a family.

Further to this, we are amending the Radiation Act 2005 to create an offence related to disposal of radiation sources and enable the secretary to require a person authorised to deal with the source to provide financial assurance for management and disposal of the source, another important amendment there. In addition, there are amendments to the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 to assign responsibility for key obligations currently imposed on landowners relating to management of cooling tower systems to responsible persons – that is, the entity with actual control and management of the cooling tower system. Both of these are commonsense amendments that will improve the health and safety of all Victorians.

Finally, we have the amendments to the Non-Emergency Patient Transport and First Aid Services Act 2003, which will enable documents such as clinical protocols to be included in the regulations as they are made and in force from time to time. These are important changes that will improve the health and safety of Victorians, especially those looking to start a family. These are changes that I am very happy to support today. Again, I thank the minister for bringing this forward and for the continued investment into our healthcare system and the health of Victorians. We can see over just the last budget $32 billion in funding for our healthcare system this year alone, the biggest investment ever in frontline care.

A really popular initiative, if I may, is the $18 million initiative to enable pharmacists to treat even more Victorians with even more conditions without a trip to the doctor for a prescription. With my remaining time, I would like to take this opportunity to commend the effort – I am sure the local member for Mulgrave would agree with me and the member for Glen Waverley would also agree with me – of our local champion of pharmacists, the hardworking Richard Lim OAM JP, former deputy mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong. We can see that through his and his staff’s efforts at his pharmacy in the centre of a multicultural place in Springvale, they have done a tremendous job in terms of not only serving customers but also in fundraising to assist the Monash Children’s Hospital and other causes. I had the opportunity to attend – it was first time, but I know that Richard and his staff attend and also are part of the power in terms of getting fundraising – the annual Shine Gala dinner, this time in the city, to help with purchasing and other research for those babies born with a cleft. We can see the amounts and the great outcome of the surgeon and the staff at Monash Children’s Hospital that made it possible for another to shine with a smile. This is fantastic, so I would like to congratulate and also commend the efforts once again of Richard Lim OAM JP and his staff at Lim’s Pharmacy in Springvale for their work.

I would like to conclude by saying that there were so many significant investments into public aged care, which included delivering new government-funded aged care beds and additional capacity locally in my electorate at the Kingston Centre, now the Boollam Boollam Aged Care Centre in the Clarinda district, which provides dignity for our seniors and a place to call home. I am very proud of the government’s commitments and investment into health for Victorians, and we see the commitment continue here in this bill. I commend the bill to the house.

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (16:34): I rise to speak in support of this Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026. The need for improved regulation of assisted reproductive technology is uncontroversial, particularly in light of the recent two serious incidents involving Australia’s second-largest IVF provider, Monash IVF, mishandling embryos. Both were attributed to human error despite the existence of multistep verification protocols. This bill makes amendments to the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 to support implementation of reforms recommended by the Rapid Review of Assisted Reproductive Technology and In Vitro Fertilisation Regulation and Accreditation in Australia. The rapid review concluded that industry-based self-regulation through the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee provided insufficient governance and oversight of the growing and increasingly complex assisted reproductive technology sector.

The rapid review found that the standards underpinning accreditation are not sufficiently rigorous, that compliance monitoring is insufficient and that the enforcement powers that do exist under the current scheme are limited and underutilised. The rapid review’s first stated reform priority is a new national accreditation scheme for assisted reproductive technology providers, to be administered by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. The amendments in the bill prepare Victoria’s legislative and regulatory framework to align with the national standards the commission is currently developing. Victoria has much experience to draw on to contribute to these national standards to ensure that they are sufficiently robust. In March 2019 the then Victorian Minister for Health referred an inquiry to the Health Complaints Commissioner on the provision of assisted reproductive treatment services and unsafe and unethical practices by IVF providers in Victoria.

Fertility treatment usually involves the pursuit of something deeply wanted but never guaranteed. Parents may spend years and tens of thousands of dollars on seemingly never-ending cycles that frequently fail. Each failed cycle is often experienced as profound grief at the loss of an imagined future of one day holding your baby. That vulnerability creates conditions that unethical operators can exploit. The Health Complaints Commissioner inquiry found that consumers regularly received inaccurate or incomplete information about their prospects of success. Patients described being told that they would be pregnant within months, only to then spend years in treatment. Others were not told of diagnoses that bore directly on their likelihood of success or were given assessments of their fertility that later proved to be wrong. In some cases, patients only discovered the truth about their own medical situation after requesting their records to transfer to another provider.

The industry’s profit imperative compounds this problem. IVF is a lucrative business which generates around $800 million annually across Australia. Australia’s biggest providers are listed on the stock exchange, and Australia’s biggest provider has a market cap close to a quarter of a billion dollars. As one submission to the commission put it, fertility treatment is one of the few medical fields where practitioners have a perverse financial incentive to provide a service that fails. Each unsuccessful cycle is a potential source of further revenue and profit for shareholders. The inquiry found that some patients were encouraged to continue through repeated cycles without adequate investigation of the underlying causes of their infertility. So-called ‘add-on’ treatments offered alongside standard IVF were found to be in widespread use across Victorian clinics despite lacking an established evidence base. The inquiry found that providers gave inconsistent and sometimes contradictory accounts of their efficacy. As a consequence, people in treatment were spending additional money on treatments of questionable benefit. There is often a distinct power imbalance between a fertility clinic and its patients, and many described to the inquiry feeling entirely dependent on their provider, afraid to raise concerns or make complaints for fear of jeopardising their treatment.

We need to ensure that Victorians’ often negative experiences of the IVF industry are reflected in new, robust and enforceable national standards. People considering or pursuing fertility treatment deserve protection from providers who exploit their longing to become a parent purely for profit. I urge that the government ensures that the findings and recommendations of this inquiry inform the development of any national standards, and I take this opportunity to reaffirm that the Greens support this bill.

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (16:39): That caught me by surprise. It is a pleasure to rise to speak in support of the Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026. The thing I want to start with is to extend my thanks and appreciation to all the healthcare workers right across the system, including our paramedics and our non-emergency patient transport officers and all of those healthcare workers on the front line and in the back of house that keep the system going and support our patients across the state and make sure that their health and welfare is well supported.

At a first glance legislation like this can appear quite technical, which it is, and it deals with registration schemes, regulatory powers, licensing arrangements and of course amendments to several different acts. But behind every one of those technical amendments is something much more important of course, and this bill is about protecting Victorians and protecting their health and welfare. That is what it is fundamentally about. It is about making sure that families can have confidence in our health services that they rely on, that public health risks are properly managed before they become emergencies and that our regulatory system keeps pace with our modern health care. These are not the kinds of reforms that usually attract headlines, and in many ways the best outcome is that most Victorians never notice them, which is great when they just take it for granted that things are put in place and regulated appropriately.

The legislation strengthens the safeguards that protect Victorian families, and it reinforces the confidence in assisted reproductive treatment. We have had many contributions about that and some of the issues that did happen, and I will go to that later. It also improves the management of the public health risk, and it ensures that radioactive materials are handled safely throughout their life cycles so dangerous bacteria are prevented from spreading through poorly managed cooling towers and radioactive material will be safely disposed of before it poses a risk to workers and patients or the broader community. That is good governance, that is what it should be about and that is what we need to do about protecting our community and our people of Victoria. It is also about preventing harm before it actually occurs.

As someone who spent many years working in the health sector as a paramedic before entering this place, I have seen firsthand what happens with people’s experience through illness and injury. People often think of paramedics as responding to emergencies, but many do not appreciate that emergency medicine is only one part of the health system and behind every ambulance crew are countless people working every day to stop emergencies from occurring in the first place. That is the whole idea: preventing those sorts of things through the public health professionals that are involved, the regulators that are involved and the inspectors, the scientists and the administrators who play a very important part in providing a great system and preventing and reducing the potential of emergencies. Let us not get it to that extreme, hopefully. Of course they are the people who rarely receive any recognition, because they are doing their jobs behind the scenes in a lot of cases and as a community we take for granted what they do. They prevent outbreaks. They are improving the system all the time and looking to improve the system all the time. No family should experience unnecessary trauma because appropriate safeguards were not in place, and it is important to provide that sort of support. The legislation strengthens the systems working quietly in the background to keep Victorians safe every day and to prevent any potential extremes, such as an emergency situation.

One of the most significant aspects of this bill relates to assisted reproductive treatment, and many contributions have spoken about that. Starting a family is one of life’s most important journeys. For many Victorians, assisted reproductive treatment is not simply another health service; it represents great hope for some families. It is obviously quite an emotional process and a trying process on families, and those families place enormous trust in fertility specialists and clinics. They deserve absolute confidence that they will be well supported and well provided for through, hopefully, the expertise in that process. That is why those services are being delivered safely and ethically and to the highest professional standards.

There has been wide consultation in regard to this bill, in particular with the private IVF sector, and that consultation will continue to go on through implementation. I think there was some suggestion earlier from some of the opposite speakers that there has been little consultation. I am not so sure that that is accurate. It appears that there has been extensive consultation, and that will continue. I will make reference in particular to the private IVF sector being included in that consultation, so it is really important. Unfortunately we saw some recent failures within parts of the IVF sector, and that understandably shook public confidence. Families who had already experienced enormous emotional stress were confronted with failures that should never have occurred. That is another reason why this bill has been put in place. I commend the minister that brought this bill forward and thank them for it. Those incidents highlighted the importance of having strong independent oversight. This bill responds directly to those concerns of having good, strong oversight of this process.

Following the national rapid review of assisted reproductive technology and IVF regulation, Victoria is taking action to ensure our legislation is ready to implement stronger national accreditation standards. I go back to the point that was raised earlier about the duplication. This will fall in line with that national review and what comes out of that, so there will not be two bits of legislation. Importantly, these reforms separate government registration from industry accreditation, and that means that registration decisions can be made independently by the Department of Health based on appropriate assessment of governance, compliance history and risk. The secretary will have stronger powers to grant, refuse, vary or renew registrations, and the minister will also have the ability, where appropriate, to cancel a provider’s registration, so that is really important. Inspection powers will also be strengthened to ensure compliance can be properly monitored. They are very sensible reforms, and they improve the accountability. That is what is really important. It strengthens the transparency of the whole thing. Most importantly it helps restore the confidence for Victorian families who deserve nothing less than the highest standards of care, it and reduces any stress and duress that people could have been caused through some errors made from the past.

The bill also makes important changes to the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 relating to the cooling towers. As previously raised in other contributions, most Victorians probably never think about cooling towers. We just take them for granted too. I know there were some issues about figures quoted before about a suggestion that there were 6000 when there are only 3000. I would not have a clue how many cooling towers there are throughout the state. I did not know we had cooling towers on farms, as the member for South-West Coast said, but apparently we have cooling towers at dairy farms to cool the milk. I was not aware of that, so you learn something every day. I have no idea about the total number of cooling towers we have, but this bill relates to the cooling towers. We know that poorly maintained cooling towers can become breeding grounds for legionella bacteria, which can cause legionnaire’s disease. That is a serious and potentially fatal form of pneumonia. As we know, we have seen outbreaks of that in different parts of the state at different times, and interstate too, and the damage that that can cause to individuals and severe cases of pneumonia. From my former life as a paramedic I know that by the time someone requires emergency treatment sometimes it is really hard and it can fail. This is a really important bill. There have been some great contributions today, and I commend this bill to the house.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (16:49): I rise to make a contribution to the Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026. This bill seeks to amend four different acts: the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 to require registered ART providers to comply with an approval accreditation scheme and to make amendments to provisions relating to the registration of registered ART providers and the inspection powers of the secretary; the Non-Emergency Patient Transport and First Aid Services Act 2003 to expand the scope of the regulation-making power in relation to the incorporation of documents; the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 to amend provisions in relation to the registration of cooling tower systems; and the Radiation Act 2005 in relation to the disposal of radiation sources and to create a regulatory scheme for the provision of financial assurances and for other purposes.

Before I begin my contribution, I would like to acknowledge all of our amazing and wonderful healthcare workers, who do an amazing job every single day. Their dedication and care is really a testament to the way that they help people. In December I had a medical episode and I was in hospital. I had an asthma attack. It does not happen very often; I have had a couple. That one was quite a bad one. I was taken away by the ambulance. When I got to the hospital, just to be right in the middle of that system and to experience what they do on the job every single day was a learning. We sit back and we look at what they do, but to be involved in that process – the care that I received was second to none. I spent a couple of days in hospital, but about three days later I got a text message from one of the nurses just saying, ‘Hoping you’ve got your asthma pump in your bag. We did realise you don’t do that as often as what you should.’ There was that genuine heart, that genuine care.

We probably do not think enough about what goes on between those walls every single day. People were running, bells were ringing – we hear bells ringing here, but when you are in hospital there are often different alarm bells going off for different reasons. But the fast pace, being in emergency and then going into a ward and seeing firsthand that process in place – it is just phenomenal. I do not think, as I say, we probably understand it as well as what we could and should.

I would like to speak firstly to the amendments around the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act that come from the rapid review conducted into assisted reproductive technology and in-vitro fertilisation regulation and accreditation in Australia. I have a close friend whose daughter went through IVF. It was quite a process, and it can be quite heartbreaking. It is an exciting time, but then it also can be quite disappointing. She had a couple of misses before she got to have her little girl Ruby. But for that family to have that opportunity to have a child and for Tam to have a daughter, one child that she has, it is quite a miracle. As a mother of two children, I was very fortunate to go through that process of pregnancy and becoming a mum. It does not happen for everybody, and I think we need to stop and think about that. But unfortunately there have been some issues that have arisen. It is so important that people are protected, that this is a really tight process and that things that have happened in the past do not happen again. The rapid review found multiple failures of the current system. Recent serious incidents have highlighted why strong oversight and robust safeguards are essential.

One of the most shocking incidents involved a woman undergoing treatment at Monash IVF in 2025 – that has been mentioned in this house today – who had the wrong embryo transferred due to what Monash described as human error. The embryo belonged to another patient, meaning the baby was genetically related to a different family. The mistake was only discovered months later when the genetic parents asked to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to another provider. During that process staff found an unexpected extra embryo in storage, triggering an investigation. The investigation confirmed that an embryo from a different patient had been incorrectly transferred, resulting in the birth of a child. Monash IVF apologised to both families and commissioned an independent review and reported the incident to regulators. This incident highlighted the devastating consequences that can occur when safeguards fail. For a woman to go through IVF, which can be such a difficult time in itself, to finally fall pregnant and then give birth to a baby that was not biologically hers is just so tragic for her and her family and the other families involved. Such an incident is deeply distressing for everyone involved and raises serious questions about systems, procedures and accountability.

The traumatic incident serves as a powerful reminder that even in highly regulated healthcare settings, failures can occur when oversight is inadequate or safeguards are not sufficiently in place. A few months later a second embryo transfer error was disclosed at Monash IVF’s Clayton clinic in Melbourne. In that case a patient received the wrong embryo under her treatment plan. Her own embryo was transferred instead of her partner’s embryo. This prompted further regulatory scrutiny and an expansion of the independent review. While these incidents are rare, they demonstrate that even a single failure can have lifelong consequences for families. The fact that multiple embryo transfer errors were subsequently identified highlights why strong oversight, rigorous auditing and transparent reporting arrangements are essential to maintaining public confidence in assisted reproductive treatment services.

Whilst this bill improves regulatory powers, these recent events have demonstrated that change must happen and that stronger oversight and regulation must be in place to ensure it never happens again. Victorians expect absolute confidence in systems governing embryo storage, identification and transfer procedures, and there is a need to better protect patients from catastrophic errors. The review handed down by Professor Euan M Wallace and the Department of Health here in Victoria made a total of 10 recommendations, including strengthening the powers of the Victorian Department of Health to oversee assisted reproductive treatment providers, aligning Victoria’s IVF regulatory framework with a new national accreditation scheme being developed by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, allowing stronger compliance inspection and enforcement powers where concerns arise and giving the regulator greater capacity to intervene where patient safety or quality standards are at risk. One of the key recommendations that the rapid review handed down was that independent accreditation be pursued through the existing national healthcare accreditation body, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, and that it be responsible for accreditation of fertility clinics.

The report also found that the demand for assisted reproductive services is increasing. In 2023, 104,000 ART treatment cycles were performed in Australia, in comparison to about 56,000 back in 2010, so a significant increase. Australia has one of the highest per capita uptake rates of ART services in the world, with one in 16 babies in Australia born as a result of assisted reproductive technology. Infertility affects thousands of people and can have profound emotional, psychological and social impacts. For many Australians facing infertility, IVF provides hope where there was once heartbreak and uncertainty. IVF is more than just a medical procedure; it is a pathway to parenthood for individuals and families who may otherwise never have had the opportunity to have children. Advances in reproductive medicine have transformed countless lives, resulting in the birth of healthy children and bringing immeasurable joy to families across our nation.

Every child born through IVF represents a family’s hope fulfilled. Our responsibility in this Parliament is to ensure that those families can pursue that hope with confidence, knowing the system is safe, accountable and worthy of their trust. The review highlighted that there have been 12 previous reviews and inquiries into different aspects of assisted reproductive technology, legislation and care provision that have been undertaken in different states and territories since 2014. Reviews of ART in the ACT, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia have all identified the need for reform in the sector itself, along with improvements to accreditation processes and regulatory oversight. Some stakeholders have raised concerns that while all states and territories are reviewing and introducing legislation, these are not actually in alignment as intended, risking further inconsistencies.

The amendments that are contained in this bill are about ensuring that our legislation and regulatory framework are ready to be aligned with the national accreditation framework and standards currently being developed by the Commonwealth. The rapid review found that the current industry-led accreditation scheme is in fact inadequate and lacks the transparency that the community expects. It is important as legislators that we act in this space and have the right schemes and protections in place.

In the short time I have left, I am also going to move on to another aspect of the bill that we are debating today, which is a completely different topic: cooling tower systems. There are apparently approximately 6000 cooling towers in Victoria, and cooling towers are used across Victoria in residential, commercial and industrial settings. Whilst they play an important role in evaporative cooling systems, they can also pose a serious health risk if not properly maintained. Legionella bacteria can develop within cooling towers and, if released into the air, can cause legionnaire’s disease, a potentially fatal illness. These reforms recognise that the person best placed to manage the risk associated with a cooling tower is not always the landowner. In many cases, responsibility for the operation and maintenance of these systems rests with facility managers, occupiers, lessees or owner corporations. By aligning legal responsibility with operational control, the bill strengthens accountability and helps ensure that health and safety obligations are properly met. Currently, the owner of the land on which there is a cooling tower system located is required to prepare and implement a risk management plan, and that plan must be audited annually by an approved auditor. They also must be registered under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008.

 Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (16:59): It gives me great pleasure to speak, unfortunately for only about 40 seconds, on the Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Bill 2026. This is an incredibly important bill. I was listening with great interest to the member for Shepparton speaking about her experience in the hospital system. I am sorry to hear that that occurred. We do have an incredible health system in this state – one which we should be incredibly proud of. I commend this bill to the house.

The SPEAKER: The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

The SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.