Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:20): My question today is for Minister Stitt in her capacity as workplace safety minister. Professor Johanna Maclean of Temple University in the US has just completed a landmark research paper studying the impacts of medicinal cannabis legislation on workers compensation claims. She found that there was a 14 per cent reduction in income derived from workers compensation claims in older adults, aged 40 to 62, in states that had legalised medicinal cannabis. This was in part due to a major reduction in people moving away from therapeutic substitutes like opioids. Will the minister move to...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:27): My constituency question today is for the Minister for Education. Now, whilst I was really pleased to see good funding for Lalor Primary, Lalor Secondary and Peter Lalor College—in fact they are sharing tens of millions of dollars in funding—the Northern School for Autism in Lalor, however, has yet again been overlooked. Since the beginning of this year the Northern School for Autism has had to bring in generators to provide their electricity needs. It is extraordinary in this state that we would have a school, particularly a school for children who have autism, that has...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (13:00): My constituency question is for the Minister for Planning. I have had several angry constituents contact my office after seeing reports in the media that the government-commissioned report on the North East Link has revealed the builders of the project underestimated the scale of tree loss by as much as 80 per cent. It would seem even before the project’s major construction starts later this year builders CPB Contractors have been caught bypassing the new benchmarks that were set following an extensive environmental assessment by severely underestimating the scale of tree loss. This misreporting is...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:04): My question today is for the Attorney-General. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service stated in a recent budget submission that without adequate funding they may have to withdraw from the Victorian Aboriginal Justice Agreement and cut services, so it was disappointing to see that, despite VALS having developed their Aboriginal justice hub model in response to the Victorian government’s own priorities for integrated and tailored local services, the funding announced was woefully inadequate. The funding ask was for just over $26 million. To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to the cost of keeping 224...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:16): My constituency question is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety in the other place. Anna, a resident of Thornbury in my electorate of Northern Metropolitan, has approached my office regarding concerns about the ‘keep clear’ sign currently on the corner of Station Street and Collins Street in Thornbury. She says that the ‘keep clear’ sign is painted on the road and at a very strange angle, so it is not parallel to the road. It is impossible to read and it is actually causing blockages in that carriageway. She says it disrupts the...