Thursday, 18 May 2023

Business of the house

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (16:02): (241) My adjournment is to the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council, and the action I seek is for the Leader of the Government to provide an explanation about why the government’s agenda is so thin that this place needs to knock off a freckle past 3:30. We are on the eve of a horror budget. There are a lot of bills to discuss. There are a lot of bills in this place that we could be discussing. We could be discussing the brilliant Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Home Stretch) Bill 2023, which Mr Bach put in this place. We could be discussing how to make sure Denyer never gets out of prison so the families do not have to go through the torment of going to the Adult Parole Board of Victoria every couple of years. We could be discussing the Children and Health Legislation Amendment (Statement of Recognition, Aboriginal Self-Determination and Other Matters) Bill 2023. We could be discussing that.

What I would like is an explanation as to why we are knocking off a freckle past 3:30. Maybe the minister can ask the AWU workers or AMWU workers whether they get a 6-hour day, because that is what we are subject to in this chamber. I think as mature, sensible, hardworking elected representatives we should be putting ourselves forward as equals of the community and as equals of people in my electorate – the people that work up in Campbellfield and the people that work up in Broadmeadows that do long hours. I think it is not good enough – it is absolutely not good enough – that we knock off early.

I would love to go back to Mr Davis’s bill on Operation Clara and operationalising those sensible recommendations from that IBAC report with very disturbing findings about corruption and soft corruption. I would love to be going back to that bill, and I do not think it is good enough for us as elected representatives just to get to knock off and go home early. That is just not good enough. We are sent here by the Victorian people to do a job, and the government seems to want to knock off early. They have got a horror budget next week. They might have other things to do, and maybe they just want to go off home and hide under the doona about the debt position that we are in and hide under the doona about paying $10 million a day in interest just to serve the debt that they have racked up. I think it is absolutely not good enough.

There are a lot of bills we could get to in this place. You know, in the last sitting week we were here till about 10 or 10:30 pm. We were doing our job. We were looking at important legislation, and now we are not. Now we all get to knock off early and the Labor members get to knock off early. So the action I seek of the Leader of the Government is to come back and provide an explanation as to why we have to knock off early.