Tuesday, 3 March 2026

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (13:11): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table the report on the inquiry into community consultation practices, including an appendix and extracts of proceedings, from the Environment and Planning Committee and present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Ryan BATCHELOR: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

The Legislative Council’s Environment and Planning Committee has undertaken an inquiry into community consultation practices in Victoria by state and local governments. The committee, in making this report, received 133 submissions, held three days of public hearings and two online community round tables to determine how engagement in the state of Victoria by state and local authorities could be improved. We have made 28 recommendations and 59 findings in the report that is being tabled today.

The broad brushstrokes of the report are that the committee concluded that the Victorian government’s public engagement framework is not consistently applied to all engagements conducted by departments and agencies and has made a series of recommendations about improving the application of the engagement framework by departments and by their consultants and/or contractors who engage in those processes on behalf of government. With a real focus on consistent application of the framework and its principles and also supporting a genuine partnership and dialogue between government and the community, a series of recommendations have been made.

I want to thank the community members from right across Victoria who participated in the inquiry, advocacy organisations and local government. We had engagement experts, academics and representatives from government agencies sharing their range of experiences. People obviously spend a lot of time engaging with consultation processes, and that is a really important thing to recognise and value. Consultation processes often result in improvements to proposals. Sometimes not everything that a participant in a process wants is achieved through the process, and the processes themselves have to be robust enough to take account of that.

I want to thank all the members of the Environment and Planning Committee and those who participated in its proceedings for their genuinely collaborative work on this inquiry. I also want to thank the committee secretariat staff: manager Lilian Topic until her retirement and then Kieran Crowe and the research and inquiry officers Jessica Summers and Adeel Siddiqi, supported by administration Sylvette Bassy and Monique Riordan Hill.

It was a good inquiry. I think it gave the committee members a deal of insight into the range of matters that are being consulted on across Victoria on a daily, monthly and yearly basis, and I commend the report to the house.

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (13:14): I am pleased to speak on this report conducted by the Environment and Planning Committee, of which I am a member, following the inquiry into consultation practices. I do want to echo the chair in thanking all those who made a contribution to this inquiry, because their feedback and insights certainly helped shape the findings and recommendations of this report. But I wish the deliberations of the committee were broadcast live, because it was evident from the issues raised by MPs on all sides of this chamber that many were on the same page. The current Labor government seems to be allergic to community consultation. There are requirements and there are guidelines, but the public engagement framework standards are not being met; in fact we are seeing the absolute opposite.

We had examples presented about the government enforcing non-disclosure agreements, which close down genuine consultation. We saw that with the Municipal Association of Victoria not being able to talk to their own members. Consultants are being used often as scapegoats to shield the government from accountability. The disability sector spoke. The government likes to spruik ‘Nothing about us without us’, but our committee heard the opposite is the case. When it comes to transmission lines and energy projects in regional areas, people feel as though they have no voice and their rights are being removed under this government. We heard about the Bendigo showgrounds redevelopment following the Commonwealth Games debacle, and certainly community consultation did not occur with that. Dale Webster, a journalist, referenced the issue and said:

Calling a process in which you tell stakeholders what has been decided after the major works have been put out to tender a “consultation” does not make it a consultation.

Too often we heard that this government’s approach is consultold rather than consulted, and the fact that the Department of Premier and Cabinet did not make a submission to this inquiry or present, when it falls within their ministerial responsibility, speaks volumes. Effective community consultation must be grounded in local knowledge that adds value to projects, not top-down directives from a desktop. This report makes for some interesting reading, and I encourage everyone to access it on the committee’s website.

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (13:16): I also rise to speak to the committee report that has been tabled today, and in doing so I thank the secretariat of our committee, who put in an enormous amount of work to support the committee in their work. But mostly I thank those Victorians who took the time to contribute submissions or to participate in some of the round tables. Mr Batchelor said that the committee report found that the consultation practices were not consistently applied across departments. And that is true – that is what it found. But what we actually heard were voices that were highly critical of the Victorian government’s engagement strategy and their willingness to listen. I hope that out of this the government will listen more carefully to those Victorians. As Mrs Broad said, the use of non-disclosure agreements was highly criticised by members of the community, and members of the community were also highly critical of consultation often being about information rather than genuine consultation where they had the ability to contribute before decisions had been made. Far too often the consultation is coming after the final decisions have been made. Particularly we heard from people in regional Victoria around solar, wind and transmission lines, and they were highly critical of the lack of consultation with their communities and the lack of opportunity to have input into any decision-making. They felt that their voices were not heard at all by the Victorian government. As I said, I hope the Victorian government takes our recommendations on board and that future consultation is genuine consultation, not just information giving.

Motion agreed to.