Tuesday, 25 August 2026

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (13:26): I am pleased to rise and speak on the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Stronger Communities) Bill 2026. I am glad to make it in time; my son was admitted as a lawyer today, so it was very exciting to be down at the Supreme Court getting photos with the family and doing what proud dads and family members do. But I am back here in time to speak on a very important matter, and that is the local government legislation amendment bill.

This bill has been billed as the biggest local government reform since 2024. It amends the Local Government Act 2020 and the City of Melbourne Act 2001 to do three things: to implement the outstanding integrity recommendations from IBAC’s Operation Sandon and the Whittlesea commission of inquiry, to create a local government fair jobs code and a new regulator to police CEO compliance with it and to lift the permitted differential rating ratio for the City of Melbourne so it can rate vacant and underutilised land more heavily. The governance changes are largely uncontroversial. It creates extended power to declare the offices of the mayor and deputy mayor vacant; fixes the councillor standdown framework; and creates mandatory leave for councillors contesting state elections, mandatory model governance rules, a new statutory framework for CEO employment and remuneration, tighter conflict-of-interest reporting to the chief municipal inspector and annual reporting by the principal councillor conduct registrar.

The opposition’s objection is that much of the bill will only be operational later, by ministerial regulation, and of course we have not seen what that ministerial regulation will be. So a lot of that is going unchecked, and with the importance of this particular bill, we are still relying very heavily on what the minister may or may not do with it. We have seen good form – or bad form – by the previous minister, the member for Bentleigh, who I think has had, under his watch, up to five councils be dismissed, placed in administration and put under suspension. I do not suggest that that was right or wrong, but they have certainly been very, very busy. It is important to ensure we get this stuff right, so that is why the regulation, in terms of what we are looking at today, is very, very important.

The other thing is that the fair jobs code, in particular, is a cost of living for ratepayers that could force contracted services such as waste and leisure back in-house and open the door for weakening rate capping. We know just how important cost of living is to many ratepayers. You hear it all the time. You hear many complaints about issues like the amount of taxes. We have had 70 new taxes under the Andrews, Allan and now Carroll government in 12 years. That is 70 new taxes. And then on top of that you have got issues in terms of rates that have continued to increase, albeit now they have been capped, and then other fees and charges all along the way. So when there is potentially an issue with opening the door for more cost-of-living pressures, then of course we are very concerned about that, and I will be introducing some amendments very shortly. I will make a point of this and talk a bit about this later, but one of the announcements that we have made is weekly waste collection to ensure that people can have their bins collected weekly. I know that is a big issue, certainly in my area of Glen Eira and many other electorates that are having their waste collected fortnightly. That has been certainly welcomed by many residents.

The report also argues that the standdown fix should be retrospective to the start of the current council term, since as drafted it does nothing about vexatious or private prosecutions that are already afoot. I will go into that. The government has agreed to some amendments on the vexatious claims, which we welcome, but I must say that it was our suggestion to do that, and I am pleased that the government has at least taken some of our amendments on board. Which brings me to wanting to commend the member in the upper house and our Shadow Minister for Local Government Mrs McArthur, who has been so diligent in contacting councils and stakeholders to ensure their voices have been heard. We know that is not very much symbolic of this government. In fact we have seen many residents, we have seen stakeholders and we have seen councils that have been completely gagged and silenced. You only have to look at these activity centres that this government is imposing on local councils without any voice for local councils. This government is a government that claims to be consulting. They do not consult even with their own, and that is why we have seen three premiers in 12 months, or a couple of years anyway. It is a revolving door of premiers. It is a backbench that does not trust the frontbench. It is a divided government and a government that does not consult with local councils, so is it any wonder that many councils do not trust this government? That is why, when we have this bill before the house, it does not surprise me when this government has done little consultation. However, Mrs McArthur has done the government’s job for them – no surprise again. The opposition is doing the work for the government yet again.

I will draw the house’s attention to a letter that was drafted to the current Minister for Local Government. I do not know how many ministers for local government we have had in a few years. I think there have been about seven ministers for local government. Again, it simply shows that this government does not care or is absolutely incompetent – either one. They do not care or they are incompetent. Who knows?

Juliana Addison interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Six, seven. Who knows? But what we do know is that this is a government that is absolutely incompetent. So we thought on our side that Mrs McArthur in the other house, the Shadow Minister for Local Government, would help out the government. We wrote to the current Minister for Local Government. This letter was urging the government to fix the flaws in the local government legislation that is before us, and it certainly said that there are significant concerns about several aspects of the bill, particularly in relation to the local government fair jobs code and regulator, mandatory model governance rules and new CEO employment requirements. The government is asking Parliament, which is us, to establish a legislative framework before supporting the regulations that have been developed, which I mentioned earlier, or publicly released. It is also suggesting that that has not been consulted upon. I think this is very important, member for Wendouree, to get this into Hansard, because this letter is very, very important:

That is simply unacceptable, especially when the Local Government Fair Jobs Code, a union-designed intervention –

underline the word ‘union’; more cost, more waste –

could severely limit contracting, labour hire –

flexible working arrangements –

… drive up costs for councils and harming small businesses.

Stakeholders have also raised that the Bill mandates CEO reporting of every councillor conflict of interest allegation with no guidance for handling vexatious or baseless reports, that its stand-down trigger applies prospectively only and so does nothing to prevent further vexatious private prosecutions before royal assent ‍…

On the vexatious thing, I acknowledge that the government have taken that up in their amendment, or I believe they will. We will wait and see, but we are informed that at least part of this letter was accepted in terms of the vexatious reports. So when people listening to this report say the opposition do not know what they are doing, clearly we do know, because we have written to the government with a series of suggestions, and when it comes to vexatious claims the government has listened to the opposition.

The final one, ‘council premises’, is left undefined, creating legal uncertainty for the candidate leave and standdown provisions if they are running for election. On this point, under standing orders, I wish to advise the house of amendments to this bill and request that they be circulated. We will be moving those amendments forthwith. The reason that I do this at this point in time is because in the letter we gave notice to the government that we would be moving these amendments. Again a hardworking Shadow Minister for Local Government has done the homework and given information up-front to give the government the opportunity to come on board in a bipartisan way.

The member for Point Cook is smiling because he knows that is the right thing to do in a bipartisan way – to get on board, to ensure we strengthen local government – because that is what we should be doing in this house. We should be working hard to ensure that all tiers of government are working hard and being strengthened. I see the member for Point Cook has moved into his chair or out of his chair. He might want to take a point of order, but surely not because he is all about the bill, the member for Point Cook. There are our suggestions and our amendments –

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: Deputy Speaker, clearly the member for Point Cook is a fan, but I cannot even hear myself with the member for Point Cook cheering me on. I am delighted, but I do want to be able to at least hear my own voice.

Our bill keeps without amendment the provisions of the government’s bill which are broadly supported by the sector. But these are the amendments we are talking about: the process for declaring the office of the mayor and deputy mayor vacant, which improves accountability while preserving procedural fairness for the office-holder; and technical corrections to the standdown framework relating to mandatory training and allowances for the prosecution of council decisions made during councillor absence, ensuring councillors are not unfairly disadvantaged through no fault of their own, and that is strengthening the process, which is a good thing. I would have thought that the government would have said it was on board with that. The third one is the continuity arrangements for arbitrators and conduct panel members whose appointments expire mid proceeding, which prevents matters having to recommence and avoids unnecessary delay and cost. This is a cost-of-living measure because, if you stand somebody down midway through their term and then you start again, it is just another cost to reappoint. Why not just extend the term to ensure that they do their work to the end of the proceeding rather than stopping mid proceeding? The annual reporting requirement for the principal councillor conduct registrar improves transparency in Victoria’s current councillor framework.

Where the bill differs is it does fix the problems in this sector and some of the issues which we want to talk about now in particular – which we would hope the government would be considering getting on board with – around the local government fair jobs code and regulator, mandatory model governance rules, CEO employment framework and proposed ministerial power to direct a council’s internal dispute resolution process, ensuring that no associate regulations are created without evidence or justification. It is ensuring that we have got that framework there. Again, we are not unduly pushing cost-of-living exercises on some of these, particularly when it comes to the fair jobs code.

It confines the automatic standdown of councillors to matters commenced by a law enforcement agency and retrospectively removes private prosecutions as the trigger so no councillor is stood down, which the government has taken up. It requires councillors nominating for Parliament to take unpaid candidate leave from the day after their Victorian Electoral Commission nomination until 6 o’clock on election day rather than ending on the day the election result is declared, providing a clear end point instead of an open-ended period which can extend well beyond polling day, and many of us know what that is like.

It strengthens conflict-of-interest obligations while making CEOs reportable on apparent council breach to the chief municipal inspector; it provides for discretionary upholding of integrity without drawing council administrations into political disputes or requiring mandatory reporting of trivial, vexatious allegations; and it limits the scope of council premises by excluding private or personal attendance at council premises from the new offence provision so councillors cannot inadvertently be caught up in the offence while stood down on candidate leave.

We did ask for a number of those to be supported, and as I said earlier, the current Minister for Local Government did support the vexatious claims. We would hope that throughout the debate that we have today the government considers these other amendments that we are proposing and gets on board in a bipartisan way to strengthen this act. This is a significant change. It is one of the most significant changes that we have seen in local government. We have seen far too many issues which have been caught up in IBAC. We have got to get transparency. We have got to get accountability. We cannot see corruption happening at any level of government. We see it far too often, which we are dealing with at a state level, and we need to ensure we deal with it at a local level as well. I know IBAC has been kept very, very busy, and we are about to have another royal commission dealing with corruption on the Big Build. We continually see governments being caught with their hands in the cookie jar, so whatever we can do to strengthen that transparency and accountability is very, very important at local government –

Juliana Addison interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: The member for Wendouree continues to interject, but this stuff is very important and most people would agree with that. That is why we have done the homework, and we would hope that that certainly does happen.

I will just go through some of the changes in some of those provisions, particularly with some of the Melbourne City Council differential rates. This is an important area. The City of Melbourne has long sought stronger powers to address vacant derelict buildings, arguing its rating powers under the City of Melbourne Act 2001 are more limited than other councils. Under the principal act, the former Cancer Council building in Carlton, which has been vacant for over a decade and is plagued by graffiti, vandalism and neglect, is a key example: a building sitting there for over 10 years, not being sold, not being turned into housing, no uplift, nothing. The amendment would allow the city to apply a differential rate specified in land categories to pressure owners to redevelop or activate vacant land sites rather than to raise revenue.

I think it is important to say that we do need to look at some triggers in terms of what we can do to get housing going in the state, particularly in our Melbourne CBD. I think we are at a point now where there are about 8000 homes that have been built that have never been lived in. To build those homes right now would be a lot more expensive. Some of the differentials in the new tax codes, particularly for off-the-plan, means that these homes were built prior to off-the-plan tax concessions, which makes them more expensive in some respects than some of the off-the-plan stuff that is being sold now. So we have an issue where you have got not enough homes being built and we do not have enough activation because it is too costly to get high-rise built in our capital city zones. We are not seeing the projects being ticked off. That is certainly being said – do not take my word for it, talk to any of the Property Council sectors and they will tell you. Talk to the Grattan Institute and they will tell you that these numbers simply do not stack up. I know that the government have got a plan to build high-rises everywhere they possibly can. It is very interesting because we are talking about a local government legislation bill here today, while at the same time, running parallel, this government are doing everything humanly possible to rip every power off council, to the point where I am surprised that they have not, in this legislation before us, tried to legislate to sack all of the councils and do all the work themselves from Spring Street. Certainly planning is all being done from Spring Street. So there will be no local involvement, there will be no local voice and there will be no third-party objections; it will literally be the government’s way or the highway. That is what the government has been doing in terms of some of the planning changes.

Here is a classic example, where the Melbourne City Council has been asking for some more powers. Granted, that is being done here in this bill, but I think it should be consistent right across the board and especially when we talk about community, because we all come here to represent constituencies and we all come here to ensure that we can take up the fight for our electorates. Whether you are a councillor or an elected member of Parliament, you have a constituency, and those constituencies elect you to go out there and do the right thing. Councils have that, and I have spoken to lots of councillors and council officers that just cannot believe the fact that one of the most significant things in their role is planning, and they cannot consult on basic structure plans, on what is being built in their cities. It is just appalling that the government would do that and take away residents’ rights. To think that people could wake up literally tomorrow and in their backyard have six storeys built, as of right, with no objection, if they live near an activity centre. They are not activity centres, they are high-rise, skyscraper centres. People’s rights have been gagged, been silenced.

We know this stuff does not work. We know that in many cases they are not being built. There will be no consistency. There is no proper planning for all of this. We even know that the Suburban Rail Loop does not stack up. That was meant to be a transport project, which then was converted to a housing project with value capture. Now we are hearing that there is $11 billion which is meant to be captured through housing – again, no say from councils about how that works. We know that the government wants you to believe that they are going to strip $2 billion off a project that was costed five years ago at $34 billion. It is more like $50 billion. These numbers do not stack up. That is why it is really important to involve councils and consult with councils.

The waste stuff, with cost of living, I want to briefly touch on before I give others the opportunity to speak on this bill. I do think that is really important, because communities elect councillors to do the job of looking after some basic services. Council is very much the closest thing to many voters, because it is very much embedded in the community. The key elements that people expect from councils are for their rubbish to be picked up and their roads and their parks to be maintained. They are the things that are the core responsibilities for councils. We do not want councils going out there and flying Palestinian flags and having ‘free Palestine’ activities or going on international delegations, doing trips around the world and running trade offices. We do not want that, but we want their core business to work. That is very much a cost-of-living thing, to ensure that we have rate capping and we have sensible management of council budgets.

I want to give a special shout-out to the Leader of the Opposition, who has very much taken that into account with the weekly collection of waste – absolutely imperative. I know that in Glen Eira, in Brighton and in Malvern – the two members that are here today – having fortnightly collection is just not workable. You have parents of big families that are running around doing the night run, trying to see where they can literally shovel waste into other people’s bins because their bins are full. Under a Jess Wilson Liberal government we will have regular weekly waste collection, and that is something that councils should be doing and really leaning into and that we will be making sure we help councils to do. I think if you survey anybody, any residents, and you say, ‘What’s the job of council?’, the job of council first and foremost is to pick up our rubbish. When they are not doing that, then they feel like, what are their rates for? That is something that we will help councils out with; we will make sure that we get regular weekly collection of rubbish. We will ensure that we have a council and community voice when it comes to planning, and we will make sure there is money there to fix local roads, because people are sick of the potholes. They are sick of them.

This government have not done their fair share of fixing potholes, and that is why we have announced $5 billion to fill and fix 1 million potholes. These are really, really important; they are basic. It is rubbish, it is potholes and it is crime. This is taking care of the basics, because this government has neglected them. That is what people will get in November, in 92 or thereabouts days. They will get a government that cares, that thinks about them, that consults and that gets involved in community.

That is why I hope that this government has the good fortitude to look at the amendments that we are putting forward today and to support our amendments. If the government support our amendments, we can work together in a bipartisan way to strengthen council. If they will not support the amendments, unfortunately we cannot support their bill.

 Michaela SETTLE (Eureka – Minister for Rural and Regional Development, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Water) (13:50): Under standing orders I wish to advise the house of amendments to this bill and request that they be circulated. These amendments are simple, sensible and necessary. They are about protecting councils from avoidable disruption, making sure that private prosecutions cannot be used to throw council governance into turmoil. The house amendments will address the consequences of private prosecutions by providing that the automatic standdown provisions in section 229(1) will only apply to proceedings for offences commenced by or on behalf of a law enforcement agency and will clarify that a councillor is not to be taken as absent from a council meeting while they are stood down. To address the risk of private prosecutions being brought by individuals before the reforms can come into operation, the amendments will provide for their retrospective application. These house amendments are practical, proportionate and necessary. They close a loophole, they reduce disruption and they strengthen the operation of law.

 Anthony MARSH (Nepean) (13:52): I am pleased to speak on the bill today. Having spent five years in local government, including three terms as the mayor of the Mornington Peninsula shire, I have seen firsthand what good local government can do but also the serious problems with Victoria’s local government integrity system. There are reforms in this bill stemming from genuine issues identified through Operation Sandon and the Whittlesea commission of inquiry and sensible measures to address the loopholes exposed recently at Hepburn. We support genuine measures to improve transparency, integrity and accountability but have serious concerns with significant parts of this bill. If the Labor government wants to talk about integrity in local government, then it is time to talk about the integrity of the system Labor has created to police it and whether that system itself is independent, transparent and accountable. This bill also gives greater power to ministers, regulators and government-appointed officials.

My concern about giving Labor ministers more power to intervene in democratically elected councils is not theoretical. Anyone wondering why just needs to take a look at Kingston. Last year the then Minister for Local Government the member for Bentleigh met with Kingston’s mayor and Kingston’s CEO. It was later alleged that he threatened the council with monitors unless it stopped pursuing a sensitive community grants issue involving a Labor-aligned councillor. Four months after that meeting, monitors were indeed appointed. As reported, the matter has rightly been referred to IBAC.

In less than a year those monitors, John Tanner and John Watson, have cost Kingston ratepayers almost a quarter of a million dollars. Just last month it was reported that Mr Tanner invoiced $2750 for work supposedly done on 30 and 31 February. There is just one problem: those days do not exist. Mr Tanner was also paid $1375 for work supposedly done more than six months before he was ever appointed, while Mr Watson reportedly submitted monthly invoices with total hours but no specific dates. These are government-appointed monitors paid to scrutinise council governance, yet they lack the very accountability they seek to enforce.

Compounding those concerns, monitors at both Kingston and Mornington Peninsula have repeatedly refused to put important views in writing. Monitors can spend months forming views and expressing views without putting them in writing to the people they affect. They may keep their own notes, but that gives councillors and officers no opportunity to challenge those views at the time they are made. If monitors form serious views about elected councillors, senior officers or council governance, those views should be documented and put to those affected in real time. If there is a problem, deal with it, rather than waiting six to 12 months to reveal in a final report what is then too late to challenge or address. Otherwise monitors retain enormous freedom to construct a narrative later, with little contemporaneous record against which to test it, and when those monitors are appointed by and report to a Labor minister, it leaves the door open to a narrative that suits the government of the day.

An integrity system should not allow history to be rewritten retrospectively, it should leave an audit trail. There is an extraordinary irony at Kingston: the one thing the monitors did put in writing was a confidential procedural fairness letter containing proposed adverse findings. And what did the metadata reveal? It showed that MinterEllison was involved in creating or editing that document. MinterEllison was also acting for the member for Bentleigh in his capacity as minister in litigation over his local government intervention powers. Curiously, the adverse letters were directed at non-Labor-aligned councillors and the mayor, who refused to do Labor’s bidding. These monitors are supposed to be independent, so why was a law firm acting for the minister involved in their adverse findings at all?

When a minister is accused of threatening councils with monitors, monitors are then subsequently appointed and the law firm acting for the minister appears in supposedly independent monitor correspondence, this Parliament is entitled to question the independence of that process. Kingston is not the only reason to question the former minister’s use of these powers. Just look at Whittlesea. The member for Bentleigh recommended the suspension of the then mayor Aidan McLindon for six months, based on a report from municipal monitors. This year the Supreme Court found the suspension was invalid, because the monitors had denied Mr McLindon procedural fairness, rendering the report invalid and leaving no legal basis for the minister to suspend him. So before Labor asks this Parliament to shift even more power away from elected councillors and towards ministers, regulators and government-appointed officials, perhaps it should explain why Victorians should have confidence in the powers that they already have.

I have experienced this system firsthand as mayor of the Mornington Peninsula shire, when Prue Digby and Rebecca McKenzie were appointed as monitors. Several councillors and council officers have told me they have no confidence in the monitors’ impartiality. Some believe the monitors arrived with a preconceived view of the problems and have spent their time looking for evidence to support it. Others believe they are there to manufacture a problem to justify their own appointment. Perhaps most concerning, though, is their selective inaction. The terms of reference cover councillor disputes, council–staff relationships, CEO arrangements and serious health and safety concerns, yet serious conduct issues continue in plain sight, complaints are made and arbitrations continue.

This bill seeks greater transparency in the councillor conduct panel system, and Mornington Peninsula shire shows exactly why that is needed. A serious misconduct proceeding involving allegations about a councillor’s behaviour towards other councillors and shire officers is now in its 16th month and remains unresolved. The chair of the councillor conduct panel is Jo-Anne Mazzeo, and the proceeding raises serious questions about procedural fairness and transparency. There have been long periods with virtually no substantive communication while procedural demands continue. There are transcripts of what occurred in the many hearings, yet at the eleventh hour the proceeding appears to have taken a sharply different direction. Concerns about the disconnect have not been addressed in writing, and all indications are that this will now be all but dismissed. Is serious councillor conduct being swept under the rug because it does not suit the political narrative?

These integrity processes demand accountability from councillors while refusing to provide the same accountability themselves. Accountability cannot operate in one direction. Ms Mazzeo’s conduct panel appointment expired before the proceedings were finished, yet she moved on to other Labor government appointments as a municipal monitor for Wyndham and has since been reappointed to the Northern Health board. The proceedings remain unresolved while appointments keep coming. Serious conduct and workplace issues continue at the Mornington Peninsula, yet I am told the monitors have focused on matters as trivial as where the mayor sits relative to the CEO during briefings. The lead monitor Prue Digby even dialled in to a formal council meeting from overseas and disrupted proceedings because of connection problems. Ratepayers are entitled to ask what exactly they are paying for. Why do these monitors appear so reluctant to confront serious conduct issues happening in plain sight? Is it because those issues do not fit the narrative of the Labor government who appointed them? Independence is not established by putting the word ‘independent’ in someone’s title; it is demonstrated by whether inconvenient issues are pursued with the same enthusiasm as convenient ones. If the process cannot demonstrate its independence, transparency and procedural fairness, how can anyone have confidence in the report it ultimately produces? A report is only as credible as the process that produces it.

There are broader questions about appointments. Prue Digby has monitored Frankston, South Gippsland, Greater Geelong, Moonee Valley and now Mornington Peninsula. She chaired the Whittlesea commission of inquiry last year and was appointed to the Melbourne Water board. Rebecca McKenzie spent almost a decade as the CEO of Glen Eira, which overlaps the member for Bentleigh’s electorate, and is a good friend of the former minister. She was appointed by him as a municipal monitor at Mornington Peninsula before later appointments at Hobsons Bay and on councillor conduct panels. I have already outlined Jo-Anne Mazzeo’s appointments. Victoria has 7 million people, yet under Labor the same names keep coming out of the hat on boards, panels, inquiries and monitor appointment after appointment. There is nothing wrong with experienced people serving the public, but when the same small circle keeps appearing across taxpayer-funded roles, Victorians are entitled to ask: is this an independent –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The time has come to interrupt business for question time.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.

The SPEAKER: I acknowledge in the gallery the Honourable Wade Noonan, a former minister and former member for Williamstown.