Tuesday, 4 March 2025

Remembrance Parks Central Victoria

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:42): (1455) My adjournment is for the Minister for Health, and it is regarding the failure of the minister to table annual reports of Remembrance Parks Central Victoria (RPCV), a class A cemetery trust, and the reappointment of the chair Margaret Lewis for a further three years, from 1 March 2025 to 29 February 2028, despite the trust failing to meet annual reporting deadlines for the past two financial years and many other governance failures under her watch. The action that I seek is for the minister to immediately table the 2022–23 and 2023–24 annual reports for Remembrance Parks Central Victoria and for the minister to give a full explanation as to why she has reappointed the chair under whose watch the trust has failed to meet legislative reporting timelines for the past two consecutive years. Despite a statutory obligation to table financial and operational reports and hold annual general meetings every year, the board of Remembrance Parks Central Victoria has failed to do so for the last two years.

Under the Financial Management Act 1994, when reports are submitted late section 46(3)(b) requires the responsible minister to cause the reports to be laid before each house of Parliament as soon as practicable after they have been received. RPCV claim it is not their fault that the reports have not been tabled. They have been clear in statements to the media that they have submitted both reports to the Department of Health and have further stated that they are unable to meet their legislative requirement to hold an annual general meeting until the minister tables the report, so they have dropped the minister right in it. If the department has the reports, why hasn’t the minister tabled them? Is this because the chair Margaret Lewis, who is a former Labor MP and cousin of the current Speaker of the Assembly, was up for reappointment and the minister did not want the true state of the trust’s finances and actions to be scrutinised prior to reappointing a Labor mate to a plum position that is handsomely remunerated? This raises serious suspicions of a cover-up to protect and reward a Labor insider.

Under this chair the failure to meet legislated reporting timelines and hold annual meetings is not the only failure or scandal; under this chair the trust has gone through three CEOs and presided over scandal after scandal, including in 2022 attempting to implement an exorbitant increase in the cost of burials. In 2023 came the adornments scandal, when cherished family mementoes were removed from graves without permission. Then later in 2023 came the scandalous change to the style of headstones at the Pine Lodge Cemetery. 2024 started with two controversial incidents in which graves were recklessly disturbed. There is no doubt – (Time expired)