By Jon Faine

Image: Paul Jeffers

May the games begin. After an atypical summer, the Victorian parliamentary year resumes February 2.

The Premier returns only partially refreshed, having interrupted his leave at his wife’s insistence. Spending his ‘holiday’ on the phone was never going to work. Dan Andrews went into ‘command and control’ mode early in 2020. Since his fate lay in how the pandemic was handled he decided to micromanage rather than delegate…

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It is not at all clear if Finn can be purged from the Liberal’s Upper House ticket. Only State Council can suspend an MP, but with COVID restrictions, there is no meeting planned. He cannot be easily removed as the Whip either. Andrews cannot believe his luck.

The crossbench – the independents – in the Upper House led by the strategically and tactically canny Fiona Patten can censure Finn using their own procedures. The government will watch with bemused interest but will wisely let others do the heavy lifting. It would not look good during a pandemic for a government to devote energy to a sideshow…

Read the full article on The Age’s website.

By Simone Fox Koob

📷: Paul Jeffers

A Victorian MP says an unprecedented level of “fury and anger” is being directed towards politicians online.

Reason Party leader Fiona Patten’s comments came after a man in Queensland was charged with harassing her on social media.

Ms Patten last year reported to parliamentary security a video posted to Facebook in which a man said he would “shave her head” and drag her up the street if she supported the government’s COVID-19 omnibus bill.

“It was just so extreme and so violent,” she said. “It was really outrageous, incredibly threatening and we just thought we can’t let that slide.”

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“While I support free speech, I don’t support [the] inciting of crimes and vilification of people. Even now, I’m not on social media as much as I used to be, it did have a silencing effect.”

Ms Patten is pushing to widen the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act to include hate speech targeting people for their gender, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as addressing online trolling.

A parliamentary committee is reviewing Victoria’s anti-vilification laws, with hearings held last year.

Read the full article on The Age’s website.

The View from Left Field with Fiona Patten, Reason Party Leader.

Click PLAY below to hear the conversation.

BY FELICITY GERRY, SUZAN GENCAY
AND SIMONE CURMI-BLACKWELL

The Victorian government has just received a landmark review into the state’s sex work laws, which has not yet been made public.

We made a submission with a focus on the decriminalisation of sex work, including raising awareness of Australia’s commitment to non-punishment of trafficked persons. In Victoria, sex work is regulated under a legalised model, which means that sex work is only legal if it takes place within the licensing and registration framework.

Under that framework, an adult may legally engage in sex work provided they are licensed and unless they are engaging in street sex work.

The decriminalisation of sex work is typically understood to mean the removal of criminal laws relating to consensual adult sex work and the regulation of sex work through standard business laws. Our submission sought to assist in distinguishing between sex work and sex trafficking. From the research conducted for that submission, we concluded that criminalisation creates discrimination and fear of being “outed” if a person reports issues, particularly in civil, family, immigration or criminal complaints.

Decriminalisation can contribute to all sex workers feeling safe in contacting law enforcement to report crimes, instances of abuse and human trafficking. The research also showed that decriminalisation of sex work leads to better health outcomes as sex workers maintain good health practices with a low level of STI/HIV infection.

Decriminalisation also leads to improved workplace safety regulations, social equity and reduced discrimination. This article summarises the key findings and recommendations contained in our submission and expands on the background and reasons for our current legislation…

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Read the full article on the VicBar website.

A PETITION, a delegation to Melbourne and a stakeholder action team are among the key measures in a new campaign by Member for Mildura Ali Cupper to
highlight the “unfair” rates system in Victoria.

Ms Cupper will today launch RateGate, which will engage the community as she continues her push for the Victorian Government to introduce structural reform to address the “scandalous” disparity between the sizes of regional and metropolitan rates…

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Read the full article on Sunraysia Daily’s website.

Leader of the Reason Party Fiona Patten @FionaPattenMLC is on the line with some Xmas cheer. She talks about her plans for 2021

A parliamentary inquiry into Victoria’s COVID response has found Victoria’s failure to invest in the state’s contact tracing system cost lives.

The Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry has issued 47 findings and 19 recommendations.

Press PLAY below for the full interview with Heidi Murphy.

An inquiry into Victoria’s contact tracing regime has found the state government’s reluctance to concede errors meant it wasn’t up to scratch when required.

An inquiry has found the Victorian government’s reticence to overhaul its overwhelmed contact tracing regime cost lives during the state’s deadly second wave of coronavirus.

The scathing assessment from the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues committee comes in a 260-page report tabled in the Victorian parliament on Monday…

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Despite these shortcomings and others, Ms Patten said she believed lessons had been learnt by the government, with the new and improved contact tracing regime now able to deal with up to 15,000 test results a day.

“We are now far better prepared should Victoria face a similar situation in the future,” the chair wrote…

Read the full article on SBS’s website.

By Melissa Cunningham
Photo Wayne Taylor

A failure to invest resources into Victoria’s contact tracing system in the years preceding the coronavirus pandemic cost lives and led to significant mistakes that stopped the state swiftly getting on top of its deadly second wave, a parliamentary inquiry has found.

A report into the state’s contact tracing and testing regime was tabled in the Victorian Parliament on Monday following an inquiry established in October to probe the state government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis…

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Reason Party MP Fiona Patten chaired the parliamentary inquiry which examined issues with contact tracing across the second wave that saw more than 18,000 people infected and led to 801 deaths.

The committee said it found no evidence the government had acted on numerous reports outlining the need to employ more contact tracing staff in the years before the pandemic…

Read the full article on The Age’s website.

Callum Godde | AAP

An inquiry has found the Victorian government’s reticence to overhaul its overwhelmed contact tracing regime cost lives during the state’s deadly second wave of coronavirus.

The scathing assessment from the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues committee comes in a 260-page report tabled in the Victorian parliament on Monday.

The upper house inquiry found the previous regime was “not fit to deal with any escalation in cases” at the start of the pandemic and was “significantly overwhelmed” as the second wave took off.

Improvements have been made to the system but the government’s reluctance to concede or acknowledge errors contributed to substantial implementation delays, the committee ruled.

“However capable the current contact tracing solution is, it was not available when the Victorian public needed it,” it said.

“This failure cost lives and was unable to be rectified without strict lockdown measures throughout the state.”

The committee, chaired by Reason Party MP Fiona Patten, also found there was no evidence the Victorian government acted on reports that identified the need for extra contact tracing staff…

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Read the full article on The West Australian’s website.