Thursday, 17 August 2023

Video on demand

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:40): (415) My adjournment matter today is for the Leader of the Government. On 6 September 2017 the Legislative Council Procedure Committee tabled its report on a proposed parliamentary video-on-demand service. The proposed service would provide streamlined internal access to Legislative Council video recordings and search functions to locate specific records. While this has been done and has been quite useful for my office, the report also recommended the implementation of a Parliament video-on-demand service and work towards the possible expansion of this service to the public. This change would bring Victoria up to date with other jurisdictions across the country. The Commonwealth, ACT, Tasmania and Queensland parliaments all provide a video-on-demand service for house proceedings and at least some parliamentary committee proceedings to the public through their respective websites, while the South Australian Parliament offers an internal video-on-demand service to its Parliament and some licence-holders.

The initial request from members of this house to the committee asked for the inclusion of committee hearings in the proposed Victorian video-on-demand service and for the service to eventually be made available to the public. Given the recent increase in public interest in matters currently before many of the committees of this house and the other place, the time for implementing this service is well overdue. It has been six years since the Procedure Committee recommended:

That the Government enter into discussions with the Parliament in relation to funding that would be required for the Department of Parliamentary Services to expand the video on demand service so that it is accessible by the general public.

All of us are here at the service of the Victorian people. Our wages are paid for by taxes. They have elected us, and laws are made which affect their lives. The very least that we can do is provide them with meaningful access to follow what happens here. My request is for the Leader of the Government to adopt the second recommendation of the 2017 Procedure Committee report on video on demand and work to establish a parliamentary video-on-demand service for the general public.