Wednesday, 31 August 2022

 Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:27): I rise today to speak to the inquiry into Adem Somyurek’s use of government resources, which the Privileges Committee sat and deliberated on. Mr Somyurek reported himself to the Privileges Committee; the inquiry was referred to the committee on 22 June 2022. It sat in July of this year, and this report was very quick and came back in August of this year, unlike the other inquiry of the Privileges Committee that we have just received the report of, which was the inquiry into breach of committee deliberations and report contents, which went to the Privileges Committee in August 2021. That report took 12 months to come back from the committee. They were inquiries by the same committee, but this report only took one month to come to us and the other report took 12 months. In this other report, which was tabled today, the committee found that Ms Patten’s actions amounted to contempt of Parliament. It would seem that this house has to now decide what action it is going to take. But when it comes to the small, itty-bitty inquiry into Adem Somyurek, it only took one month.

This report says that IBAC sent a letter to the committee—IBAC sent a letter to the chair, Ms Shing. It says here that IBAC was concerned about its powers in particular and the commissioner had concerns about potential breaches of the members code but felt that they could not do anything about it. Same committee, two different results—one took 12 months and one snapped back within two months. This report is much thicker than the other report we received, but it only took a month.

One of the things that Mr Somyurek wanted to achieve with his self-reporting motion was in relation to the Victorian Electoral Commission. Currently I am going through the Victorian Electoral Commission. I am trying to register the Independence Party, and there have been many concerns around the VEC’s handling of getting small minor parties registered at this time. It would seem that there was a process—that you registered on 28 July and they would send them out. I gave them 550 members. They are meant to be returned on 1 September, but it would seem that the VEC has not actually sent them out to all of my members. I would love to know what the process is behind closed doors in the way of the VEC, and there are other ways here in the way of reports that we could find that out. We have our own committee here, the Electoral Matters Committee, a joint committee that could actually make sure that this state election is going to be fair—that between now and the November election we would guarantee that all Victorians will have a fair election.

It would seem that we use our committees here to give out reports, and they are quite light on. How tough or how soft those reports are that come to Parliament depends on who sits on the committees and what they are about. I would just hope that this government would actually guarantee a fair state election without corruption and would investigate themselves and have reports that come to this Parliament that we can all be supportive of.