Thursday, 4 August 2022

Bills

Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Mr LEANE:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (10:55): I am pleased to rise and make a contribution on the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022. This is a bill some bits of which we like and others we have significant reservations about. In the circumstance, we will not oppose the bill, but I will mark out a number of areas where we have some significant reservations indeed. The bill contains lots of little housekeeping things. It removes the ability of councils to impose rates or charges for the provision of water supply or sewerage services. It ensures special rates and charges are levied within 12 months. It gives councils more power to grant rebates and concessions on rates that are being used for public benefit, and we have some serious concerns about the way that certain councils may misuse this. I understand the intent here and I understand that there is a legitimate aspect of this, but we would be very, very concerned if councils were to use this as a way to cost-shift rates onto standard ratepayers and to standard business ratepayers. If they were to exempt a whole class—for example, social housing—that would concern us because it would shift the burden onto other ratepayers and would drive a surge in rates for many, and we are very concerned that that is the intent of the government in this matter.

I put on record the government’s attempt last year to impose a big new housing tax, a massive new levy, on new subdivisions of 1.75 per cent, which would have equated to around $20 000 per household in metropolitan areas and about $12 000 in the country. I note the very significant imposition that that would have been. The government argued that that was balanced, although no-one knew about this so-called ‘balancing’ until it popped out publicly. It was to be balanced by some changes that would reduce red tape and other matters, and also as part of it councils were to be forced to forgive social housing projects their rating component. We think the rates need to be done in a way that is pretty even handed. We think that where you provide a benefit to one group of ratepayers it will inevitably be paid for by higher rates for standard ratepayers and higher rates for small businesses, and we think this is not the right time to do that—certainly not the right time. We think there is a problem in principle, but we also think it is a time when the cost of living is very significant for so many families and businesses. Many businesses are coming out of a period of real toughness, real struggle, through COVID, and clobbering them with more council rates is the wrong way to go. That, we would argue, also applies to the general ratepayer. Families I think have found it very difficult through this period. Cost-of-living pressures are becoming greater.

It allows for the minister responsible to make guidelines relating to payment of rates and charges, replacing the requirement for penalty rates to be calculated at a rate fixed under section 2 of the Penalty Interest Rates Act 1983. It gives councils more discretion as to a payment plan, duration amount and frequency. It amends the Local Government Act 2020 in a range of areas related to freedom of information and council integrity, mainly in relation to the disclosure of confidential information. We are very nervous about where some of those changes may go to. We note that the government seems to have had significant impact on many councils, and the government is routinely using secrecy provisions, gag clauses, gag agreements, to prevent local government from consulting fully and properly with its community. I can instance several examples of this with level crossing removals, where community reference groups are not able to consult properly with the community because of the gag orders. Councils are not able to consult properly with communities, and in the case of the Suburban Rail Loop all of those councils along that line have been forced to sign a gag agreement which prevents them discussing anything the government does not want them to discuss and prevents them effectively consulting with their communities.

Mr Atkinson interjected.

Mr DAVIS: Or indeed, as Mr Atkinson says, their elected representatives, unless they are one of those who have signed the agreement, are unable to consult properly with the whole council, and the officers are unable to present information to the council to inform its decision-making or indeed present equivalent information to the community. It is an absolute and utter outrage. It is Stalinist. It is actually just one of the most profoundly unsettling things that we have seen in many years, this increasing use of these gag orders, these gag agreements. Councils are told, ‘If you don’t sign the agreement, we won’t even discuss this with your officers. We’ll just build it, and off we go’.

In the case of the planning instruments, the minister has taken all these planning powers for himself. For example, if you look at VC170 on transport projects or 187 and 190 on social housing projects, they tear away the planning responsibilities from local government—rip them away and take them back to the minister, who also has powers to exempt himself from any consultation requirements whatsoever—and they are routinely doing it. It is an absolute outrage. This is one of the most undemocratic governments in the state’s history.

The government says that one of the main reasons for the introduction of the bill is in response to the Ombudsman’s report in May 2021, Investigation into How Local Councils Respond to Ratepayers in Financial Hardship, and the Local Government Rating System Review. We introduced an amendment to a bill in this chamber to try and provide some advice in effect to councils that they should be more open and direct with their ratepayers about the hardship provisions, because legitimately ratepayers from time to time need to access those provisions, and councils have been traditionally a bit secretive about that. That amendment, although defeated, certainly sent a clear message. But the Ombudsman’s report made it very clear that the need was there to better deal with these hardship matters, so in that sense we support some of these points.

The reforms, as I say—rebates and concessions, the key changes in the bill—enable councils to grant rebates and concessions on land if it is used for public benefits, and I have made clear our serious concern. We think this is a cost-shifting provision. We think it is an attempt to clobber, to smash, everyday ratepayers. We are very worried about how this will be used, and I would welcome the minister’s assurances that it will not be used in that way—it will not be used to oppose the provision of special arrangements for social housing which will shift the burden to everyday ratepayers and in particular too to business ratepayers as part of that arrangement.

The payment plans—we are actually just a bit concerned that there may be a drift out with a lot of these payment plans and that it may be that councils are very slow to collect. Now, there is obviously a balance to be struck there. We obviously understand what the Ombudsman has said. We understand about financial hardship and indeed that is why we moved that earlier amendment, but that needs to be done with great care. We do not want to see a situation where people are not paying their rates—where ratepayers are actually avoiding their responsibilities over the long term. I think they are the main issues that I really want to draw the chamber’s attention to.

I am just going to make some general reflections on councils and where we find ourselves with councils. I say I am a strong supporter of councils and my local councils in particular. I believe they generally represent their communities pretty well. That is not to say that there are not some councils that go off beam from time to time, but I do believe in local democracy and the ability of local communities to express their broad views. I think equally it is true that a number of councils—and I want to instance Yarra but in particular the recent steps by the City of Melbourne—have moved to take a highly political position on Australia Day. I think this is beyond the purview of local councils. I think this is ultimately a matter for state and federal governments. It is not a matter for local councils, and I think that local councils have gone too far in this regard. I think the central city council and the Lord Mayor in this case have lost the plot on the matter. I think that in fact councils would be well advised to focus on their collection of rates, collection of rubbish and the basic duties that they have to look after—their parks, their spaces and their planning responsibilities. I strongly support all of those roles.

It is not as though the Melbourne City Council has covered itself in great glory in recent years through the period of the pandemic. I do not think they have led the way very well, and I do not think they have been prepared to stand up to the state government on behalf of their ratepayers. Again, there is a significant balance to be struck here—I understand that—but they have focused on closing down road access and closing down access for businesses to their premises. I have spoken to quite a number of small businesses that have had real trouble with the various road and bike works that have occurred in actually getting their goods into their premises. Nobody consulted them. Nobody spoke to them. Restaurants have struggled to be able to get small trucks to actually be able to do regular deliveries.

I mean, this is council failing at some of the basic tasks that it should have. It should be engaging with its community and listening to its community. Instead it appears to be hell-bent on a frolic very much against the broad public opinion that actually Australia Day is an important reflection of our history. In no way does that mean that we have to say there is no place for recognition of the impact of settlement. In no way do I say that there is no place for that recognition. But having a broad cultural day across the country—I accept that it relates to a date in 1788 that was in one sense a New South Welsh date. I mean, in truth my own view of the date we as Victorians should be standing up for is 1 July 1851, Victoria Day, when Victoria got its self-government and broke free from New South Wales, but that is an aside. My central point here, in the context of this local government bill, is to say that I think the City of Melbourne has embarked on a wink and a nod on one hand as a stalking horse for other levels of government perhaps—or is it just so absorbed with these things that it really wants to run its own holiday regime? Holidays are usually gazetted by the state government and the responsibility of the state government. In this case it is a national holiday. I think most Victorians see the value of it. Many Victorians got their citizenship on that date, and I do not think we should diminish the significance of that.

People who have come from overseas do think of the day fondly because it has resonance for them after they have gone through their citizenship ceremonies, and Mr Atkinson and I over the years have been to many of these citizenship ceremonies and have watched the growth in the significance and importance of Australia Day. I for one think it is a divisive approach of the City of Melbourne. I think that it does not have a moral mandate to take this stance, and I think that it has actually lost its way on this. It has not focused on the key things that it should have been focused on, instead heading out into this territory which I think many would see as a frolic. With those comments I want to indicate again that we will not oppose the bill. We do have those areas of significant concern.

Ms WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (11:11): I rise to speak on the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022, which most notably is a bill that makes rate collection fairer. With this bill the Andrews Labor government is ensuring that those who are struggling to pay their rates are not being driven further into debt or out of their home. This bill implements a range of recommendations from the Local Government Rating System Review and the Ombudsman’s Investigation into How Local Councils Respond to Ratepayers in Financial Hardship. The bill will empower the minister in consultation with the Essential Services Commission to set a maximum amount of interest that may be levied on unpaid rates and charges, which currently can be as high as 10 per cent, and develop ministerial guidelines councils must follow in dealing with ratepayers experiencing financial hardship. Councils will be limited in using Magistrates Court orders for recovering unpaid rates in situations where rates or charges have not been paid for two years or more. This bill makes a range of improvements to the ability of councils to provide rate rebates and apply special rates and charges. It also makes technical changes to a number of acts.

In 2018 the government committed to a review of the local government rating system, involving extensive consultation with ratepayers, councils and peak bodies throughout our state. The government responded by supporting 36 of the review’s recommendations and committing to prioritising the recommendations that relate to greater support for ratepayers in financial hardship. This bill is the first stage of these reforms and is focused on ratepayers experiencing hardship and improving the way rates are collected. The second stage of reforms, which relate to structural improvements to the way the rating system operates, will be further explored in 2023 in consultation with ratepayers and the local government sector.

The bill also implements the recommendations of the 2021 Ombudsman’s report Investigation into How Local Councils Respond to Ratepayers in Financial Hardship, as I mentioned earlier. The Ombudsman report found that people who were struggling to pay their rates were often met with debt collectors, high penalty interest and in some cases costly litigation. This causes more stress and fears of losing their homes for those who are already struggling and may be dealing with a range of compounding and complex issues, including family violence and mental health challenges.

This bill is based on extensive consultation over the past three years with councils, ratepayers and local government peak bodies. Important stakeholders included Ratepayers Victoria and Financial Counselling Victoria. They have welcomed the move, saying it will help thousands of people across the state. It is also based on the Ombudsman investigation into all 79 councils and their rating of hardship policies and the experiences of ratepayers who were dealing with financial hardship in those municipalities. Throughout this process all key stakeholders have been consulted.

The bill expressly prescribes payment plans as a means by which councils can recover unpaid rates and charges. Currently councils are required to provide four instalments, and it is up to them to provide or not provide additional payment options. It creates a new power for the Minister for Local Government to ensure ministerial guidance to guide how councils deal with ratepayers experiencing financial hardship. The ministerial guidance will be developed in consultation with the Assistant Treasurer and the Essential Services Commission. These guidelines define financial hardship, require early engagement with people who are struggling to pay their rates and gets rid of debt collectors and legal action unless ratepayers refuse to engage and all other options have been explored.

There will also be a new power created by the Minister for Local Government in consultation with the Essential Services Commission to set out a maximum amount of interest that may be levied on unpaid rates and charges. This enables it to be set to a far more reasonable rate. As I mentioned, this can be in some cases across our state as high as 10 per cent. A council’s use of Magistrates Court orders for recovering unpaid rates will also be limited to situations where rates or charges have not been paid for a period of two years or longer.

The bill will further explore changes to the local government rating system, including expanding the criteria for councils to provide rate rebates and concessions for properties that provide a public benefit; repeal redundant service rates and charges powers; amend the power for councils to declare a service rate or charge to ensure that services related to modern waste management activities are indeed covered; and ensure the timely levying of council special rates and charges to minimise delays between declaring special rates and charges schemes and the subsequent billing to ratepayers.

The bill also amends the Domestic Animals Act 1994 to facilitate reuniting lost pets and the scanning of deceased pets on council property for microchip identification and notification of pet owners. Let me just say this is really great news for pet owners, including those in this chamber, many of whom are pet owners, as we heard yesterday during the vet motion. I know that if my darling Pickles ever got lost, I would want to be safe in the knowledge that he could be found and reunited with my loving mum, who would be absolutely distraught, let me tell you.

The bill implements a range of recommendations from the rating system review and the Ombudsman investigation into how local governments respond to hardship, as I have mentioned—going back to the bill, because otherwise I will start talking about Pickles for far too long again. The rating system review involved consultations with industry bodies, ratepayers, councils and other important stakeholders across our state. The government response supported 36 of the review’s recommendations and committed to implementing these recommendations in two stages, prioritising the recommendations that relate to greater support for ratepayers in financial hardship. The Ombudsman’s 2021 Investigation into How Local Councils Respond to Ratepayers in Financial Hardship report made a range of recommendations in response to concerns from ratepayers, financial counsellors and community lawyers about the way councils treat people who cannot afford their council rates. The report found that people who are struggling to pay their rates were often met with debt collectors, high penalty interest and in some cases costly court proceedings, as I mentioned earlier. I cannot truly imagine the stress that must come upon somebody when fearing losing their home in some cases for such a small amount of outstanding rates. That is why I think this bill is so, so very important.

There are other entities that we should look to, including water corporations. It has been found that through implementing early intervention and flexible approaches to payment collection methods they reduced the outstanding debts and legal costs overall. So there are truly some things for us to consider here. By bringing debt collection back in house they are often able to work with people who are behind and to find a way forward. During the pandemic we have often seen councils adopt a far more flexible and compassionate approach to those experiencing financial hardship. These will be further strengthened and supported through this bill. The awareness of ratepayers about options when it comes to their hardship is something also worthy of consideration. This can be strengthened through a uniform approach to hardship.

The bill will empower the Minister for Local Government, in consultation with the Essential Services Commission, to set a maximum level of interest that can be levied for unpaid rates and charges and to develop ministerial guidelines for councils that they must follow in dealing with ratepayers experiencing these hardships. This truly will strengthen the limitation on councils using Magistrates Court orders. Also, can I just say that councils will retain the ability to pursue those who choose not to pay their bills despite having the ability to do so to prevent the rating burden unfairly falling on other ratepayers.

There are other changes relating to rates recommended through the rating system review that form part of this bill. The criteria for councils to provide rate rebates and concessions will be expanded to properties that provide a public benefit. Councils are apparently limited to providing rate rebates and concessions for the purposes of the preservation of buildings, protection of the environment and assisting in the development of the municipality. The power to declare a service rate or charge will be amended to ensure that services relevant to modern waste management activities are captured and also that this definition is consistent with the recently enacted Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. There will be time limits put on the levying of councils’ special rates and charges to minimise delays between the declaration of these special charges and rates and these schemes and the billing of ratepayers subsequent to that.

The bill also makes amendments relating to the implementation of the new Local Government Act 2020 to ensure it is operated as intended. This includes amendments to address concerns raised by the Victorian information commissioner, or OVIC, in relation to the processing and handling of freedom-of-information requests by councils. These amendments will ensure the confidentiality provisions in the Local Government Act 2020 are not contrary to the principles of transparency and accountability in the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

This bill will also expand the current exemption to entitlement under the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 for a mental injury caused wholly or predominantly by the reasonable management of complaints. This includes an application for or proceeding in relation to serious misconduct by a councillor. This bill will also expand an application for proceedings relating to misconduct, which was strengthened under the Local Government Act 2020.

In 2018 the Victorian government committed to a review of the local government rating system, and, as I said, a ministerial panel was appointed to lead the rating system review in consultation with community ratepayers and councils. The government did support indeed all 36 of the panel’s recommendations, either in full, in principle or in part. As part of this response the government committed to prioritising reforms that will support ratepayers in financial hardship, improving transparency and consistency in decision-making and building greater equity and fairness in the rating system. The bill implements many of the recommendations from this review, notably the ones around hardship provisions, debt recovery, billing and the use of legal action and debt collection.

In the Ombudsman report that I mentioned there was an investigation into each of the 79 councils and whether information about councils’ financial hardship assistance is easily accessible for ratepayers; whether assistance is fair and reasonable; how council assistance schemes compare to best practice, including the energy, water and telecommunication sectors; and what councils can learn from the COVID-19 relief schemes implemented during the recent pandemic. The report found that most people who experience hardship do not apply for council assistance and the information about it is often really hard to find. Utility companies in fact have a far more proactive approach to identifying customers in hardship. They take steps to identify these customers themselves, whereas councils rely on people asking for help.

The report highlighted cases where interest charges have built up over time to the extent that it is 25 to 50 per cent of the total debt, creating an unimaginable poverty trap for those who are already struggling financially. The investigation found that improvements had occurred as a result of the pandemic and that all councils now attempt to contact ratepayers about unpaid rates before resorting to legal action. The report noted that councils had shifted to a more proactive response in locating and contacting ratepayers. Also in that report was the finding that nearly all councils have a hardship policy in some form. However, only 77 per cent publish these standard policies on their website. Forty-eight per cent do not include rate waivers as part of their policy despite having the discretion to do so, and 26 councils limit the use of deferrals as part of these standard hardship policies. This is usually only applied to aged pensioners, as the debt can remain on the property until it passes to a new owner, and it is not used for those seeking short-term assistance.

Ninety-seven per cent of councils use debt collectors. Banyule City Council, which is part of my electorate but more substantially in Eastern Metropolitan Region, as I understand—and I am supported now by my colleague Ms Terpstra—is one of only two councils that do not use debt collectors. Councils sued ratepayers for unpaid rates more than 7000 times in 2018 and 2019, and only seven councils mention family violence in their hardship policies. At least 11 say that legal action is now a last resort in their policy, but truly there is more to be done.

This bill is about making rate collection fairer and ensuring people struggling to pay their rates are not being driven further into debt. Coercive tactics to collect local government debts are now legislated as being a last resort, and this bill is the first of those recommendations and is a starting point for legislating 36 recommendations of the rating system review. I commend it to the house.

Dr RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (11:26): I rise to speak to the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022. Our local councils play such an important role in building local communities and providing essential services. They form an entire level of government and are frequently the ones left picking up the pieces and supporting communities when state and federal governments fail them. This bill is responding to recommendations from the Ombudsman’s 2021 Investigation into How Local Councils Respond to Ratepayers in Financial Hardship. The Ombudsman found that while all councils had a hardship policy they varied greatly between councils, resulting in disparate outcomes for different residents. This inconsistency was heightened by a lack of guidance from the state government, who had effectively left councils to their own devices on hardship policies. The reforms in this bill are designed to rectify this and put some hardship provisions into legislation, which the Greens welcome.

However, what we do not welcome is the way the government has embarked upon and framed this reform. We know that our local councils have been at the forefront of supporting their communities, especially during the pandemic. They pivoted rapidly to providing material support to their communities, empowered their health and community care teams to be available to help with the broader public health campaign and stood with some of the most vulnerable members of their communities, advocating for their needs when no-one else would. I think of the City of Hume’s work especially in my electorate, but I know of so many councils that went above and beyond to support their residents throughout some of the hardest times in the pandemic. However, the government does not seem to have recognised that and instead has chosen to misrepresent this vital sector yet again. In the second-reading speech for this bill the then Minister for Local Government said:

Some councils have clearly improved their practices as a result of the pandemic, but overall, the local government sector has fallen behind other sectors in the compassionate and proportionate treatment of those who are facing financial difficulties.

Honestly, this is such an insult to the hardworking people in local government. This is a deliberate mischaracterisation of a sector that I know work so long and hard to look after their communities, and these days they are doing so in an increasingly challenging environment and with limited resources, largely due to ongoing cost shifting and funding cuts from the state government.

The majority of councils, if not all, have hardship policies and provisions in place. Officers work very hard to ensure that accommodation is made for those unable to pay their rates in a timely way and have developed compassionate pathways that respond to these issues. The Municipal Association of Victoria says that these reforms are too little too late. Councils have been asking for guidance from the state government for years, yet the government has been largely silent since the passage of its Local Government Act 2020. And after the Ombudsman’s report all councils used the report as a basis to rework their hardship policies, meaning many policies have already been improved and rolled out to residents.

While the government has tried to suggest that councils are frequently taking drastic measures to recover unpaid rates, deploying debt collectors and seizing property, the evidence on the ground suggests otherwise. In her investigation the Ombudsman found that in 2018–19, 28 properties were sold for debt collection, a minuscule 0.00001 per cent of all properties valued, and just 7000 cases involved debt collectors, approximately 0.002 per cent of all properties valued. So while the Greens welcome measures to help support residents in hardship, it is disappointing that councils have once again been thrown under the bus by this state government and held out to be the villain.

What is striking from this bill and the way that it has been introduced is that the state government seems to have no vision or overarching strategy to support local government beyond repeatedly cost shifting onto councils while cutting their funding, scapegoating problems onto them and not taking responsibility themselves. Early this year, for example, we saw the government attempt to pass responsibility for public housing maintenance onto local councils by exempting itself from paying rates on social housing properties. And next sitting week we are debating a bill that appears to push responsibility for addressing the combustible cladding crisis onto councils as well, a crisis that is very much the responsibility of the state government. The rate cap has had a detrimental impact on the local government sector. It suppresses wage and jobs growth and forces councils to cut overdue services, and it has had a particularly negative impact on the sector’s predominantly female workforce—a rate cap this state government introduced onto local councils.

We have also seen democracy at the local level attacked by this government. Under previous local government minister Mr Somyurek, the government succeeded in gerrymandering local electorates by doing away with more democratic multimember ward structures in favour of single-member wards for all councils. The shift to single-member wards will stack our local councils with the major parties and shut out smaller parties and independents. It is an extremely poor model that has clearly been introduced to try and reduce the impact of Greens and independent councillors. And we are still waiting on the promised donations reforms at a local government level.

The last few weeks in Victorian politics have been dominated by issues of integrity and dodgy donations. The risk of donations corrupting decision-makers is not limited to state politics but is also a risk in local government. We have seen this all too clearly through IBAC’s investigation into Casey council. For property developers in particular, councillors who have the power to make lucrative planning decisions that could hand them millions in profits are the perfect target for dodgy donations. The gambling industry is a prolific donor, giving over a million dollars to the major parties ahead of the last state election to help entrench their profitable yet hugely damaging poker machines throughout the community. Many local councils have been leading the fight against poker machines in their communities, knowing the damage they do. But without a ban on political donations from the industry, all that important work can be undone.

Yet the government has failed over the last eight years to tighten donation rules to limit what can be given to local councillors and candidates. It keeps saying it needs to wait for IBAC, but that is just an excuse. We do not need IBAC to tell us about the corrupting influence of donations—the evidence is writ large. New South Wales and Queensland have banned property developer and gambling industry donations from all levels of government. The least we can do today is to demonstrate a commitment to integrity in our politics by banning these dodgy donations from local government.

I also have amendments to lower the voting age to 16 for local government elections. These amendments represent a chance to genuinely engage young people in our democratic system, as I said when I introduced these same reforms back in 2020. Young people are now more than ever concerned about their future. Climate change, mental health, education and the cost of living are just some of the big issues that young people are raising. They are engaging in our democracy and demanding change. They are working, volunteering, leading in their communities and contributing to their local areas, yet our leaders often let them down and do not represent their interests. Many young people are already politically active, taking to the streets in protest about the future that they see us creating for them and demanding a better one. They should, as many of us do, have a voice in choosing the representatives who make the decisions that will shape their communities—and what better place to start this reform than in the local government sector?

With a new minister, perhaps now is the right time to revisit our vision and strategy for the local government sector. The Greens have proposed amendments to improve local democracy and strengthen our local government sector, redressing the need for political donations, increasing voter participation and bringing back democracy to elections, and I wish to circulate my amendments now.

Greens amendments circulated by Dr RATNAM pursuant to standing orders.

Dr RATNAM: In conclusion, the Greens will be supporting this bill, but it does represent a missed opportunity for more important reform for the local government sector and strengthening of our democracy. I look forward to speaking in further detail to my amendments in the committee stage, and I urge everyone to support those amendments.

Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (11:36): I rise to make a contribution on this bill, the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I have had the benefit of listening to Ms Watt’s contribution and also Dr Ratnam’s contribution. I will talk a little bit about the bill, and then I will talk about the instruction motion that Dr Ratnam has on the notice paper and also the amendments that she has proposed. My colleague Ms Watt did go to a lot of the detail about this bill, but I will just speak in broad brushstrokes for the moment. This is actually a good thing. You would think that what we are doing is a bad thing. If you listen to Dr Ratnam, we are just evil and bad, but what this is about is actually ensuring that people who are experiencing financial hardship can keep a roof over their head.

I will refer to Dr Ratnam’s contribution for a moment in the sense that she mentioned that there were 7000 instances where debt collectors were involved and they were taken to court to make sure that they paid their rates and the like. What this bill does—and we have seen a similar approach taken with water authority companies—is rather than just assuming that people are bad and evil and just do not want to pay, there is a bit of an inquiry into their own personal circumstances about why it is that they cannot pay their bills, for example. This happened with Yarra Valley Water, a water company in my own electorate, in my own region. It is as simple as making a phone call to someone to check in with them to say, ‘Hey, we’ve noticed that you haven’t paid your bill. Is there anything going on?’. What they have found by taking that approach is oftentimes people are experiencing family violence. They may have lost their job. Sometimes it is a simple matter of saying, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten to pay my rates, and I’ll get onto that straightaway’, and they do.

I think that is a much more compassionate and humane approach—to make the inquiry and establish a line of communication with that person and say, ‘Hey, is there anything going on?’. It is much more compassionate than the other approach, which is just, ‘Oh, we’re getting the debt collectors onto you. We don’t care about your circumstances, and we’re going to make your life a whole lot more miserable and painful than it needs to be’. I do not know. What is wrong with that? Is that a bad thing? It seems to have been suggested by the Greens that that is a bad thing, and it is not. It is entirely appropriate. It is being more humane and compassionate towards people. The lecturing, the negativity, the constant carping by the Greens about anything the government does, ‘Government: all bad, all negative, shocking, terrible. Local government—poor local government—is just such a victim of all of these terrible things’. I mean, local government can act on its own merits. Dr Ratnam talked about how councils do have some policies in place, but clearly it was not enough. Clearly there was a very mercenary approach to—

Mr Leane: Not according to the Ombudsman.

Ms TERPSTRA: Clearly not according to the Ombudsman.

Mr Leane interjected.

Ms TERPSTRA: That is right. Correct. Sometimes you give an industry an opportunity to act, and they fail to read the room and take those opportunities up. Then you get the Ombudsman making a report into these things, and the government has said, ‘Well, yes, we’ll implement all of the recommendations of the Ombudsman’. I am not sure how in any way the government can be blamed for that, so I just—

Mr Leane: The Greens know better, mate.

Ms TERPSTRA: The Greens the pure. There you go. I wanted to say that in my contribution today. I just said it, and I will say it again: the Greens the pure. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing just to be completely unaccountable and say whatever you like whenever you like. But you know they will never be a party of government for this reason: there are no alternatives other than something that is very simplistic and unworkable and completely lacking in any reality, right?

What we were proposing, what we did say to people and what these reforms go to is to encourage councillors that have made councils. Have a conversation with people who are experiencing financial hardship. It is about being compassionate. But blow me down, here we are getting attacked by the Greens for being compassionate towards people. Well, I do not know—that is a new one for me. I would really encourage the Greens to just stop for a moment. There is no doubt everyone is under pressure financially and trying to manage things financially and the like, but it is really unhelpful for the Greens to continue to stoke division and divisiveness. Where is the encouragement for councils to actually take responsibility and be accountable for some of these things, rather than saying ‘Government bad; you’re making councils do all these things’.

I have never heard more rubbish from Dr Ratnam than I heard today. I am sorry, it was complete drivel. I just cannot take it this week. I have reached my limit on the ‘Greens the pure’ kind of attitude coming from over there today. And it is completely opportunistic. We have got amendments, we have got this instruction motion about all manner of things. Honestly, they bang on about, ‘We need government now to act on donation law reform in local government’. Well, you know what? When you are a candidate you can actually pick and choose who you accept donations from. I do not know—would it be hard to say, ‘I, candidate A in these elections, am never going to take money from a developer or a property developer’ or whatever? That is not hard, is it? That can happen now, right?

Mr Leane: The election is three years away anyway.

Ms TERPSTRA: The election is three years away, but what happens with the Greens is they say, ‘Government bad, because you’re not doing this’, and then when we do something good they go, ‘Government bad, because you’re doing something’. We can never win, and that is hypocrisy from them: like I said, complete unaccountability, completely hypocritical. As I said, the Greens the pure never will be a party of government—will never be in government—but they just constantly attack. Well, what are you offering as an alternative? Nothing other than negativity, other than carping, rather than encouraging different sectors and tiers of government to work together: ‘No, we can’t have that’.

I will tell you something else. Every time I go out to an opening of a sports field or whatever where the state government has contributed money to that facility and where the council has kicked in I always say the same comments, and I will say this again on the record here: each level of government gets a better outcome when we all work together in a constructive fashion. Dr Ratnam, as the leader of her party in Victoria, should be leading this as well and encouraging councils, Greens councillors. She has many on inner-city councils, because let us face it, that is where their stronghold is—inside the goat’s cheese curtain, where you have got lots of Greens councillors. I am sorry, she should be leading the charge and encouraging all councillors from all stripes to work with government, because that is when community wins. Otherwise, if you just encourage division and stupidity, then there is just a free-for-all and no-one wins and the community, most importantly, loses. A pox on anyone’s house who keeps carrying on like this. I have had enough today, you can tell. My patience reservoir is zero today.

So back to this bill, which is a good bill. Like I said, we are implementing measures which go to hardship. We do not want to see people thrown out on the street because they have been taken to court by councils to get rates paid, okay? So we are implementing these changes. The government response is that we supported 36 of the review recommendations. We did a review into rates as well, so there are 36 review recommendations that we have committed to prioritising. The second stage of the reforms relate to structural improvements in the way the rating system operates, which will be further explored in 2023 in consultation with ratepayers and the local government sector. We have had plenty of consultation, extensive consultation, over three years with councils, ratepayers and local government peak bodies.

Honestly, like, it is a bad thing, right, what we have done. We are terrible: government terrible, government bad. They want to propose this instruction motion and these amendments today. Basically the scope of this bill is about hardship relief, but Dr Ratnam wants to try and go for a burger with the lot and just broaden the scope of this bill into being about something that it is not about. It is kind of weird. You want a bill to have a consistent theme around what we are trying to achieve. Like I said, the consistent theme in this bill is that we are trying to provide hardship relief. It has got nothing to do with donation reform or voting age. You just cannot chuck that stuff on the table and go, ‘Quick, we’ve got an opportunity, let’s throw all that on the table as well’. No, that is not how it works. That is called being opportunistic and annoying and frustrating—because it is; it is ridiculous. Again, just to stand up here and say ‘Government bad’ is ridiculous.

I would like to see the Greens encourage their own councillors and party members to work with the state government rather than taking every opportunity to fight with us on stuff that has been run and won. Dr Ratnam mentioned in her contribution—it is not in the instruction motion, I notice; it will be somewhere at some other point, I am sure, but this debate has been run and won, it is over—the issue of single-member wards versus multimember wards. This idea I find completely offensive, where the Greens are saying, ‘But, you know, we won’t have diverse representation in councils. We won’t have the same number of women’. Well, rubbish, because at the last council elections we saw more women than ever being elected.

What it is about—rather than them actually being honest and transparent about what it is about—is they want to make sure they can get more of their Greens councillors on councils. That is what it is about. You can talk about independents and all the rest of it—and I will reflect on my own experiences when I ran for council once and just from watching council elections—but look at the number of independents saying they are true independents when they are not. They get assistance from other parties, whether it be the Liberal Party or others. I saw a candidate who barely even stood at a polling booth but was having Liberal Party helpers run around and help put the candidate’s signs up at every house where someone knew someone who owned a property. There are candidates who do not have that level of help, and that needs to be clearly identified. Whilst there is a register where people are meant to disclose all this stuff, it does not happen. So I call ‘complete and utter rubbish’ on that, because if you are an independent and you want to act with honesty and integrity, you can do that anytime you like—you do not need government legislation to tell you to do it that way. You should disclose on the register whatever help you get. You do not have to take financial contributions from developers. You can make those decisions yourself. I am sick and tired of that, where you get the Greens lecturing government about how bad we are regarding all manner of things and about how when we do stuff it is bad and wrong and poor, but when we do not do something we are still bad, wrong and poor.

Mr Leane: They’ve taken the biggest donation in political history, the Greens Party.

Ms TERPSTRA: Correct, yes. Absolutely. So it is hypocrisy writ large over there. Like I said, I have got no time for it this week. I am completely over it. The biggest donation in history went to the Greens, so spare us all this rhetoric and complete and utter rubbish about the Greens being pure, because it is just complete and utter rhetoric, rubbish and drivel.

I will get back to the point of this bill. I hope my colleagues hook into the Greens. I say in honour of Jane Garrett, who we spoke about on the condolence motion yesterday, let us all hook into the Greens today, just in solidarity, because Jane was fantastic at calling out the hypocrisy of the Greens. I think today would be the day for that. Jane and I certainly shared a love of the lyrical jousting that used to go on in here and the take-downs of the Greens. I think this was remarked upon yesterday by other contributors in this place. Jane had an insightful and powerful intellect and a keen eye for rubbish when it came to the Greens. So let us continue that fine tradition in here today when we talk about this bill.

The Greens are not the champions of local government. They are not the champions of being pure. They are the champions of themselves, and it is all about what they want to do to advantage their own party, to get more councillors inside the goat’s cheese curtain. Why don’t you just come out and say it? Just come out and say it and be transparent: ‘Actually, no, this is what we want to do’—because we all know it anyway. They think we have a cork brain or something and that we cannot see what they are trying to do and achieve. So spare us all, and do not insult the electorate. You think that the voters and the punters out there also do not know the true purpose behind some of these things. It is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Again, the purpose of this bill is to provide hardship measures. Oh, my goodness, is that a bad thing? No, it is not, and again I call out the complete hypocrisy and just simplistic approach to this: ‘Let’s have a bill that is about hardship measures—oh, but wait a minute, let’s just throw all these other unrelated bits on it’. I can say as a lawyer and someone who used to read legislation for a living—I am doing it now too, but in a different context—you look at that and you go, ‘I don’t know what the legislators were thinking when they drafted this bill’. But that, again, does not matter, the complexities around that. They say, ‘Oh, no, no, I just saw an opportunity and I want to take it today’. I will conclude my contribution there, and in saying so I commend this bill to the house but without amendment, and I encourage every other member in this chamber to also resoundingly reject these ridiculous amendments for what they are, which is opportunistic, simplistic and complete and utter drivel.

Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (11:51): I rise to speak on the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022 today, and I will just say that I do support the intentions of the bill. I was at the Victorian ratepayers association convention over the weekend and quite a lot of discussion was about hardship and quite a few heartbreaking cases were brought up there, so I welcome these changes that the government is making in the bill.

But I would also like to mention Dr Ratnam’s amendments, and I am particularly interested in the one which seeks to ban property developer and gambling industry donations in the local government process. Amendments such as these have already been enacted in Queensland and New South Wales, so I cannot really see why Parliament in Victoria is reluctant to enact them here. I congratulate the Greens on bringing them forward for discussion. Going back 30 or 40 years, Queensland and New South Wales were once states that Victoria looked down its nose at because of their perceived—and what was proved to be real—levels of corruption, yet here we are in 2022 with some of us hoping we could emulate their anti-corruption measures. Clearly donations from property developers to local government candidates really should be banned, and they should be banned at the state level as well, so that much of the Greens amendments I will be supporting.

I myself put forward a motion at the beginning of 2020 calling for property developer donations to be banned at both state and local levels of government, and the Greens supported me in that; however, the government and the opposition did not. Both of them said that the issue of property developer donations in particular was the subject of an IBAC inquiry into Casey council and they wished to wait on the IBAC report before specifically commenting on the issue. And, guess what, the IBAC report has still not been released, so I wonder if that is what will be said again. It appears that that stance back then was really a matter of convenience, I think, rather than principle, and how convenient it was, because here we are at the end of 2022 approaching a state election in which the public will suspect that developer donations and gambling industry money are flowing into the coffers of big parties, and we have no IBAC report yet nor any suggestion of reform. Maybe they are planning to do that after the election. There is still no report from IBAC available to the public about goings-on at Casey council as the report is subject to ongoing legal challenge, so we are supposed to believe that for now there will be no change. The government and the opposition are capable of stating a position on property developer donations and gambling industry donations—whether they should continue—without having to wait for an IBAC report. This Parliament is the lawmaking body in Victoria. It is very capable of dealing with and speaking on these issues that face Victoria, very much of public interest at the moment, without waiting for reports from IBAC. Property developer donations need to be banned. New South Wales and Queensland say so and so does the Centre for Public Integrity. They are a corruption of the political process, they undermine people’s faith in democracy and they should have been banned a long time before now.

Mr ERDOGAN (Southern Metropolitan) (11:55): It has been an entertaining debate so far, hasn’t it? Local government always fires people up. I guess as someone who is a former local councillor and member of the Municipal Association of Victoria board I have heard my fair share of complaints and praise for local government. I have heard both sides of the argument, and on this issue—

Mrs McArthur: The Greens want a gerrymander.

Mr ERDOGAN: Well, that is right. The Greens contribution in this place is interesting. They complained about gerrymandering, but their solution is to create a gerrymander which favours their own constituency. They want to reduce the voting age to 16, hoping that might help them a little, but we cannot risk that, to be frank, because when the Greens get that little bit of power in local government we see what happens—indecision. But if there are any decisions in place, they are to block any social housing project or the resolution of any issues to do with hardship for people struggling, because the Greens want to just virtue signal and play to their base, it seems. It is unbelievable the way they operate. They come into this place holier than thou, and as my good friend Mr Leane pointed out, they are the party that has accepted the biggest single political donation in the history of this nation. The Greens accepted it from multimillionaires and billionaire mates of theirs. So when they talk about donation reform just remind them of that—a party that was built on billionaires’ and millionaires’ donations, the Greens party. It is interesting, and they have little regard for the concerns of average Victorians and Australians.

I am very pleased to rise to speak to this bill. It is a sensible bill. Anyone who read the Ombudsman’s investigation into the way some local councils have treated people in hardship situations would understand why it is a necessary bill in this place. We have a current system which is inconsistent. Obviously it is not uniform, and it can be very heavy handed in many instances towards people facing hardship, where the methods used in terms of the ongoing use of debt collectors to chase up late rates is very unfair. The bill before us proposes sensible changes to make sure they are common and fairer for all Victorian ratepayers.

Obviously the bill before us has had broad consultation before coming to this place. I think the more technical elements of the bill I might get into after question time, because I do note we are quickly approaching question time in this chamber. But I was shocked to hear the Greens accuse others of demonising local government when I am proud of our government’s record of investing in local government. No government in the history of this state has invested more in local councils in terms of infrastructure, libraries and sporting fields. Former minister Shaun Leane was fantastic, and he did a number of visits out to Southern Metropolitan, Bayside, Glen Eira and many other local councils, where he delivered and opened libraries and talked about the investment we are making. These are places of local learning—

A member: A great minister.

Mr ERDOGAN: A fantastic former Minister for Local Government, and he will surely be missed in that space by all the stakeholders—someone that was collaborative and heard everyone out. So when the Greens accuse us of not doing enough for local government it is just frankly dishonest. It is just dishonest, because we have done a lot, especially in rolling out the much-needed infrastructure.

But obviously there is more to do, and this bill is an important path to repairing and fixing the gaps in the sector and making sure we have a fair response to the way ratepayers are treated, especially where they have hardship. There are obviously many other aspects to this reform, and I will talk to them in more detail after question time, because it is important area and I am very passionate about local government. They did a lot of work. Most recently I spoke to their representatives, the Australian Services Union, who talked about some of the challenges the local government sector has faced through the global pandemic and how their members are fighting hard to make sure that services are delivered in a timely fashion for residents.

Whenever the Greens get up on their high horse and try to criticise I am not surprised, because they have tried to create a gerrymander to benefit themselves. A very self-serving bunch they are. It is a shame. On that point, I might continue after question time, because I can see the President is looking at his watch. I think that is a signal for me to sit down, so I will take my seat.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.

The PRESIDENT: Members, before we move to question time, we have in the gallery a former member of this house, Mr Ramsay. Welcome.