Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (18:03): On the surface, the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025 looks like a tidy-up, tweaking small and technical aspects of various bills and basically harmless. It corrects spelling mistakes, fixes cross-references, updates departmental names and replaces outdated references to Commonwealth tribunals. But here is another interesting part. The fact that we have to amend over 70 acts just to clean up typos and outdated references shows how distracted the government has become – distracted by bureaucracy, obsessed with spin and branding but failing at the core areas of law and order, health, disability, energy and support for regional communities. This bill is not about reform; it is a big, massive spellcheck. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with correcting the many wrongs in the over 70 pieces of legislation, Victorians are crying out for a government that can write legislation that enhances the future, not just fiddle around the edges with spelling and grammar. We have seen that recently with bail reform and the government’s efforts: you need a microscope to see the differences that will be made, they are so small and minuscule. But there are pressing issues around the state that require attention.

Let me begin with justice. This bill updates the Crimes Act 1958 and a range of tribunal statutes. It ensures that references to the old Administrative Appeals Tribunal are replaced with references to the new Administrative Review Tribunal – very neat, very technical. But while the government is busy renaming tribunals, out in our suburbs people are terrified. Families in Kew have faced violent home invasions, shopkeepers across Melbourne have been terrorised by machete-armed youth gangs, supermarkets have had to lock their doors against swarms of offenders and, devastatingly, two young people were murdered in my electorate recently. My heart goes out to the families of the victims. In recent weeks a candlelight vigil was held, and I want to place on record my sincere condolences to the families, friends and the communities of Cobblebank. I also know the impact on the police force members, because I went to Melton and spoke to them myself, and I thank them for their work. This tragic event has rippled through the community like a shock wave. Ask any parent in my electorate what keeps them up at night. It is not whether a clause refers to the AAT or ART, it is whether their children can walk home safely from school, whether their elderly parents can shop without fear and whether our police have the resources they need to keep our streets safe. The government claim to be tough on crime, but the lived experience is so different. Court backlogs are blowing out, bail reform has been massively bungled and the police are under-resourced, left to do less with more. By all means, let us fix the typographical errors in the Crimes Act, but let us also fix the real errors in the state: the errors of judgement by the Minister for Police, who thinks that machete bins are the solution instead of actually hiring more police. ‘Victoria – the bin state’ – that is the next number plate.

The bill also makes corrections to the Disability Service Safeguards Act 2018. Here again, the government is quick to correct a comma or tidy up a cross-reference, but painfully slow to deliver the care and support that people with disabilities actually need. We have had the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, and its findings were damning. People still wait for respite. Carers still struggle with inadequate support. People with disabilities are still navigating a system that is fragmented and under-resourced. I recently spoke to a parent of a young adult with autism. Their greatest fear is not what happens today but what happens tomorrow when they are no longer there to fight for their child. That fear cannot be corrected by a tidying or drafting of an amendment. It requires genuine reform. I say again: the government can fix all the typos they like in the legislation, but that does not fix the disability system itself.

Then we come to energy and the environment. The bill updates references to departments, replacing the long-forgotten Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions and the Department of Environment and Primary Industries with the shiny new Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. But this is not a reform, it is rebadging. Victorians are not asking for another department with a glossy title. They are asking for affordable power bills. They are asking for reliable energy supply. They are asking for a serious plan that balances renewable energy with stability for households and businesses. But instead, we get endless churn, endless rebranding – a government obsessed with announcing new departments, new divisions and new strategies while families open their electricity bills with dread and open their wallets with less and less and less every time they have got to pay a bill.

Look at the VicGrid legislation. We know that the government hates farmers. They continually punch down on rural and regional communities because the government like to pick on the people they see as a target. No farmers, no food – that should be ringing through the government’s ears day in, day out, but the government have used the VicGrid legislation to smash regional and rural communities. People are angry and landholders feel ignored. Even industry is uncertain. Then whilst at the bush summit in Ballarat, the Premier, with her infinite ability to read the room, said:

… I’m so proud of the work my government is doing in regional Victoria because we know how much it matters.

I can tell you right now she was met with widespread boos. You could not get more tone-deaf comments if you tried. This is a Premier that does not listen and does not care about regional Victorians. She treats them like she treats small business in this state: completely and utterly irrelevant. Small businesses right across the state are paying the price for a confused Premier. They are expected to power the economy on unreliable and unaffordable energy rates. They are crying out for gas, but Labor wants to turn the gas off. The bill will give us neat department names, but it will not give us cheaper electricity, it will not give us reliable energy and it certainly will not give us any climate and environment action, which the government loves to boast about but has not delivered.

This bill also sweeps across health legislation – again cosmetic changes. But Victorians know the real state of health in this state, and it is not good. The Victorian Auditor-General’s report on planned surgeries is damning. The government promised 240,000 surgeries under the $1.5 billion COVID catch-up plan. It has delivered 209,925 – that is 30,000 people left waiting, their lives put on hold. The report found that new public surgical centres, meant to be a flagship reform, were woefully underperforming. Blackburn delivered just 1519 procedures in its first year against a target of 5760. Frankston performed only 6053 against a target of 9000. It is actually scary that the level of underperforming is so happily accepted by the government.

On community health, Infrastructure Victoria has confirmed what frontline workers have known for years: community health centres are neglected. Only 0.3 per cent of the state’s health infrastructure budget goes to them. Forty per cent of the buildings are not fit for purpose. I visited these centres. I have seen the staff working miracles in these buildings. So forgive me if I am not excited about the government correcting a misplaced reference to a health statute while thousands of Victorians are sitting on waiting lists, community health centres crumble and our hospitals struggle to cope. I do not even need to mention the report on ambulances, which was absolutely damning, released today.

The bill also touches on agriculture and animal-related statutes – again largely cosmetic. But here is the reality: regional communities are being left behind. Farmers face mounting red tape, rising costs and increased government indifference. Look at the domestic animals legislation. The government has bungled this area time and time again, failing to consult councils and creating frameworks that are cumbersome and ineffective. The latest reforms shift the burden onto volunteer-run rehoming organisations that are already stretched to breaking point. Meanwhile, in regional Victoria communities are crying out for real investment in roads, schools, hospitals and jobs, and instead what they get is another round of departmental relabelling.

Finally, let us not forget the central point that this bill amends over 70 acts. That is 70 acts riddled with errors, inconsistencies and outdated references. Over 70 acts requiring correction because of sloppy drafting, rushed legislation or bureaucratic neglect. This is not a sign of a government that is on top of its brief. It is a sign of a government that has lost control and is not across the detail, a government that lurches from one announcement to the next without proper planning, without proper drafting and without proper consultation. I do not know, maybe we should have another four days of announcements on trains – that might solve the problem.

The opposition does not oppose this bill, but we do support clean laws because they are better than messy laws. But Victorians deserve more than clean laws; they deserve competent government. They deserve a government that can deliver outcomes, not just deliver a spellcheck. So let me conclude with this: the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025 is tidy. It is technical and it is unobjectionable, but it is also a metaphor for the government – a government that is obsessed with cosmetics, obsessed with names and obsessed with process but lacks in substance and deliverable outcomes. Yes, we support the cleaning up of legislation, but what Victorians really want is a government that cleans up crime, that cleans up health waiting lists and that cleans up the chaos in energy policy. This bill may correct typos, but it will not correct the government’s failures, and until those failures are addressed Victorians will continue to pay the price over and over and over again.

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) incorporated the following:

I rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2025 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria.

This bill:

•   Is the annual machinery-of-government check of statute books

•   Updates a wide variety of acts for grammar, spelling and incorrect references

•   Makes sure our laws remain clear, relevant, and accurate.

You’ve got to ask yourself, is debating a bill about spelling and grammar each and every year really a good use of Parliament’s time?

Surely there’s a better way to deal with these kinds of changes that doesn’t use up time and resources that could be better spent passing legislation to improve Victorians’ lives.

To make matters worse, this is all happening at the same time the government claims to have a backlog of 30 bills to pass before the end of the year and is threatening to add another sitting week to catch up.

Yet here we are – using a bill about grammar and spelling as an opportunity for Labor and the opposition to play politics and test out their talking points.

When people look at Parliament and see this kind of behaviour, you don’t have to wonder why trust in government is lower every day.

I will admit I had the same temptation when I saw that this bill amends the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. I wanted to get up here and talk about the government’s atrocious record on recycling and waste management and their plans to burn our state’s rubbish in giant incinerators.

But I digress, because this government claim to have so much work to do, and while I haven’t seen it yet, I will end my contribution here so they can get on with it.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (18:15): I move:

That debate on the bill be adjourned until the next day of meeting.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until next day of meeting.