Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (18:51): I rise briefly to speak to Mr Grimley’s motion. I think it is interesting having this motion coming off the back of the debate that we held yesterday, which really talked about the very pointy end of sex crimes. I know I said yesterday, ‘How do we reduce sex crimes? Well, we stop people committing them’. That changes culture, and I know Mr Grimley mentioned this in his introductory remarks to this motion—and it is true. Like many people in this room, I have experienced sexual assault and I did not report it. I have written about it, I have talked about it and I have been public about it, but I did not go to the police. As a young woman, I felt that shame; I felt all of those things. So I understand that we do have these cultural issues around this and that we do see under-reporting, and even when someone reports it there is the difficulty of that going forward. Attitudes do need to change, and as Mr Grimley said, listening to that police officer on that radio station, someone’s first question was, ‘What was she doing out there?’. The question is: ‘Why were those people raping a young woman?’. That is the question; it is not what she was doing there. And that was the same question for me, although I know I questioned whether I could have done something to have changed those circumstances. So I agree that this needs to change.

My concern with this and the reason that I am troubled by this—I cannot actually support this motion—is that I feel that what we are seeing here is a back door, a Trojan horse, to a national public register for sex offenders. Now, I look forward to hearing Mr Grimley assure me that this is not what he is saying, and like him I am passionate about reducing sex offending. But even seeing Mr Hinch on social media—when we talk about things like sex offender information inquiries, Mr Hinch’s response to that is, ‘That’s why we need a public register’, and I do not support that. I do not believe in public registers. This is a difference of opinion; I appreciate that.

I also believe that there is very good empirical data that says that public registers do not reduce offending but in fact they increase it. They increase recidivism; they actually make things more dangerous for us. I really feel that in the way that this is mentioned—and I appreciate Mr O’Donohue’s amendments to this and appreciate that Mr Grimley did let us know that while this information would be centralised and publicly available it would be made anonymous, and I accept that—this is a Trojan Horse and it is a thinly veiled access to a public sex offender register, which is something that I actually passionately, passionately oppose.

I want things to change and I want things to change in so many ways—not just for myself but for my nieces, for my daughters, for my granddaughters. I want our culture to change. I do not want those questions of ‘What was she doing there?’, ‘Why was she there?’, ‘Why were they there?’ being the question. The question is: ‘Why did that person do it?’. That is the question our community should be asking. That is the question, and that is what we need to be changing.

I take some comfort that we are seeing that the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) is investigating this, is doing this work and will be looking at the impacts of the changes that we have made to legislation. And frankly the changes that we have made have not improved the statistics, have not improved where we are at and have not improved the number of women and men who will come forward and report a sexual assault and who, once they report it, will continue to pursue that sexual assault. So I have a lot of sympathy with this motion. As I say, I am really pleased to see the law reform commission’s work on this. I feel that the work that the law reform commission will be doing on this will actually meet some of the calls that this motion asks for—that we look at why it is not working, why our system does not work for the victims of sexual assault.

It was a conversation that we all had passionately and respectfully, which was very pleasing to see—for the most part respectfully—yesterday around the victims. Yesterday was about letting them speak; today we are discussing—if we were to take this on its face value—how we learn more. I think this is what the Victorian Law Reform Commission will do. It will do the work that Mr Grimley is asking for the government to do.

Finally, I also say that I have found with the inquiries that I have been involved in—whether it was the end-of-life choices inquiry or whether it was reducing the age of driving to 17—that the data that we have, the crime stats that we have, are inadequate. We do not have the data. Every time we go to the police to ask for data it is just not there. I certainly think that there is an issue with data collection. I certainly think that we have not got that right, and we need to do that. I look at the terms of reference for the VLRC’s inquiry into improving the response of the justice system to sex offences, and I see that that is actually part of their terms of reference. So unfortunately I cannot support the motion today, but I hope that I live to the day that sex offending is rare and reported 100 per cent.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Mr Grimley 11/11/20

Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (17:57): I move:

That this house:
(1) notes that:

(a) the 2016 personal safety survey recorded that only one in 10 women who had experienced a form of sexual assault by a male contacted the police to report the offending;
(b) the experiences of victims and survivors are not often considered when proposing reforms to Victoria’s legal system;
(c) the under-reporting of sexual offending and sexual assault cases is not the result of any individual cause;
(d) some victims withdraw sexual abuse charges due to the lack of support or belief in the reporting process and feeling pressure from the offender or family in the process;
(e) as the gatekeepers to the pursuit of legal action in a sexual assault, training of sexual offences and child abuse investigation team officers, which considers the complex relationships and trauma experienced by the victim, is fundamental to providing positive outcomes for victims, therefore combatting rates of attrition and non-reporting;
(f) it is impossible to determine responses to under-reporting without the centralised recording of reasons for the withdrawal of sexual assault cases

(2) calls on the Andrews government to:

(a) create a centralised and publicly available database of victim’s experiences and complaints when pursuing sexual offending charges; and
(b) undertake authoritative investigation into the specific causes of low rates of reporting and high rates of attrition at each stage of progress through the legal system and consequent reform recommendations.

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:19): I am pleased to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Supporting Victims and Other Matters) Bill 2020. I feel quite privileged to have been in this chamber and listened to so many of the contributions—and some extraordinarily heartfelt contributions. We know that many of the issues that this bill does cover are personal—they are very personal. For some people here they formed part of the pathway to this place. It was some of those experiences that people have shared with us today that formed who they are and formed the members of Parliament that they are today.

Before I get to the matters of most importance in this bill, I would just like to also note—probably as a note to the people who spent all this time writing this bill—that it does address other matters. Certainly it amends the Judicial Proceedings Reports Act 1958 in relation to the circumstances in which information likely to identify a sex offence victim can be lawfully published, and we will get to that in a moment. But it also implements the model defamation provisions, which finally in Australia create uniform defamation laws. It amends the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 to exclude the reduction in earnings due to COVID. It amends the Victims of Crime Assistance Act 1996 to provide some delegation for the tribunal staff. It does a range of things around the Corrections Act 1986, and it amends the Forests Act 1958. However, as I mentioned earlier, the point of contention and the source of debate on this bill is the amendments to the Judicial Proceedings Reports Act.

The background, as we know, is that there were unintended consequences arising from a piece of legislation that we debated last year and that the Attorney-General undertook to fix as a matter of urgency. That unintended consequence was the inadvertent silencing of victims who want to tell their stories, and it has been the source of a very strong public campaign. I really would like to congratulate and recognise the work of Nina Funnell, Nicole Lee and many more who have been mentioned here today for the great work that they have done in raising this issue, in raising this intention and in forcing this bill back to the chamber as it is today. But I would also like to recognise the work that they have done in the years before this.

During the break, when some of us were speaking together, we were thinking, ‘This is difficult’. There is no easy path for this legislation. There is no easy path to remedy this—to give the rights to victims to speak while protecting families or protecting victims that do not want to speak. In fact the only solution for this is for people to stop sexually assaulting and raping people. That will fix this. But until we do that, we need to deal with the unintended consequences of the previous legislation, and this bill does go, to some degree, to fixing that. It clarifies those unintended consequences neatly for living victims of sexual assault and really gives them the choice, the control, to tell their own story without those barriers that we put in place of the court process and the attached expense. As I learned from Nina Funnell and her fundraising, sometimes it was in the realm of about $20 000 to get the right to tell your own story. So that is a good thing that this bill does, and it is a widely held view of victims advocates that this bill is on track in that area.

It is funny. I have spoken about my own personal experiences with sexual assault. In fact I put them in a book, and to think that some law would have excluded me from telling my story in my own book is obviously wrong. This bill goes towards fixing that, and it goes towards many of those central issues that Let Us Speak and others have sought to address.

It is so much more complex when it comes to the deceased victims, because sadly they are not here to make that choice. They are no longer able to control their own story. I think that is the matter that we are here to deal with today.

Now, what the government has said is that this issue needs greater consideration. And I think pretty much around this chamber we are unanimous in that. This needs greater consideration, and we need to speak to the victims. We need to speak to the families to find out what that right balance is, because we do not have it right now and I do not think this bill finds that balance. In fact the government acknowledges that. The government has undertaken to sunset any changes made today, which is in effect a guarantee that we will undertake that consultation and we will change this bill that is before us. We either change it today or we will change it later. I would like to acknowledge the work of the Attorney-General’s office, and I have spoken to them many times over the last few weeks about this legislation.

What we are debating here today is not what the permanent law will be; rather it is how we set the law in the interim, while this consultation takes place. It is what the law will be for probably about the next eight months. It is not what the law will be after that. I greatly respect Mr O’Donohue and there are many, many times that I agree with him, but I do not think he acknowledged that this is a temporary measure. He has certainly framed this as a permanent change—that this is setting in stone a situation when clearly it is not. But the matter is: where do we set that default position on the identification of rape victims who are deceased? Do we give the victim’s family the control and say that the media can only report on them with their permission, or do we let the media report freely and publish whatever graphic detail they might like? We know that that has caused extraordinary hurt and harm. We know that quite often the family does not want that detail out there, and certainly I am aware of a family that was incredibly hurt by the media’s reporting of their child’s murder and rape. They had felt that they had no control.

Obviously and absolutely I have no issue with the default position that gives the victims that control over their own story, but the problem with this legislation as it stands before us right now is that it is clunky and it is not nuanced. As a result, it may silence families who want to speak, who have been speaking—as we know, the families of Eurydice Dixon and Jill Meagher, rapes and murders that actually happened in my electorate, in Mr Ondarchie’s electorate, of Northern Metropolitan. Too many rapes and deaths have happened in our electorate, and as Mr Ondarchie says, yes, one is too many.

We have set up this position and it is clunky and does not meet the needs there, because it now makes a process too arduous and it involves a court application for people to continue to speak when they have already been speaking. The question for the time being is: where do we set that default until the government completes that consultation—until the victims and families can talk about where they see the balance and where they think it should lie? How do we find that balance? I would suggest that journalists—and I would include Mr Hinch in that—would prefer that that option is not restrictive, as would many families who are strong enough to speak out publicly about their tragic life experiences.

But sometimes families are not ready to do that, and certainly I know that many of you received a letter from Eileen Culleton, whose sister Anne-Marie Culleton died some 30-odd years ago. She never spoke about it. Her family did not want to speak about it. They did not. It was too painful, and that was honoured and that was accepted. But they did not want to speak about it, and they wanted the right to not have some details said. They were happy and they were grateful that sometimes the police spoke about it and that when the murderer and rapist that killed Eileen’s sister was brought to justice people spoke on behalf of her sister. But some 30 years later she is ready to speak about her sister. She is ready to speak about this, and she should have every right to do that.

But I also know of people—and Ms Crozier mentioned people who were represented in the Betrayal of Trust report—who do not want to speak about the sexual assault and rapes that they experienced as children, and they certainly do not want it spoken about after they have died. They want to take that with them. That is their private and their personal story, and they do not want that released after they have died. So we need to find that balance. We need to ensure that that person’s story is that person’s story, and I believe a number of colleagues have said that probably far more eloquently than me.

We do not want to see those personal tragedies aired after someone has died, retraumatising with graphic details of that tragedy splashed over the paper. On the other hand we do not want to silence people who want to remember, who want to keep talking about this, who want to keep honouring their family member’s death by talking about it, by ensuring that it may never happen again, by talking about it to ensure that the law is changed, that the attitudes change, that our culture changes, that we see a reduction in sexual assault crimes in our state. Sadly, we have not seen that tipping point yet, but I hope that I live to see it.

But we could ask ourselves: if it were your daughter, would you want those graphic details to be freely reported, or would you want some control over that? That is kind of what this bill is about. Some people want both, like Eileen Culleton. They want to be able to grieve in peace and then speak when they are strong enough to do so. Unfortunately having that control and taking that control under this temporary proposal is just too hard. It is too onerous, it is too much of a barrier and the last thing we want to do is punish victims any further and in any way, nor do we want to punish and make it difficult for their families to speak if that is what they want to do. We do not want to unnecessarily preclude people from speaking who want to speak and have been speaking already.

I spoke to the really wonderful and extraordinary woman Nicole Lee, who has been an activist in this area, who tells her story. This morning she said to me, ‘Fiona, what, do I have to put it in my will that I want my story to continue?’. And in some ways this bill actually would insist upon that, and even that may not be enough for her story to continue to be told.

I do not want, in all good conscience, to delay this bill as a whole because of the very significant effect that it has on living victims—that it fixes that, that it lets us speak. But I do not think we have got the balance right on deceased victims. The law could be more nuanced. It could be written in such a way that families who are already speaking publicly can continue to do so. It could be written in a way that does not prevent us from acknowledging Jill Meagher on the anniversary of her death in just a few weeks time and remembering everything that our community learned as a result of her devastating tragedy.

We acknowledge that this is complex and it is going to take time. It is going to take several months of consultation to find the right solution.

The discussion here today was not about what our law will be permanently but how it should sit in the interim as that consultation occurs. I take comfort that the DPP has assured us that she has no intention, and nor does she believe that it would be in the public interest, to prosecute victims’ families if they make comment. Her focus, as it should be, would be on journalists or commentators on social media. Despite this, and for now, I do not think the government’s proposal gets us close enough to where we might eventually land. On that basis, I think almost the status quo might be preferable.

Just to turn finally and quickly to Mr O’Donohue’s amendment, which he contests retains the status quo, I think in fact he is shifting the law in the direction of one or two possible legal interpretations and in doing so is moving the law in the opposite direction to what is desirable and where I expect the government, after that consultation, and where I expect the families and the victims will land. His amendments would also interfere with the DPP’s ability to contact the media, as I know she does regularly, to ask them to amend their reporting when they have overreached or when they have reported in a way that does not accord with the wishes of the victim’s family.

I am supportive of the sunset clause and the guarantee it provides. I understand that Dr Ratnam will be putting forward some amendments that I think actually find a balance for this period while we undertake this consultation. I think it is certainly what the emails—the heartfelt, the honest, the brutally honest emails—that I have received, that we have all received over the last few weeks, want. They do not want us to change this law until they have had their say. On that basis, I am in favour of supporting the significant and important changes that it makes in favour of living victims, but I think we have not landed in the right place for deceased victims. I will not stand in the way of this bill, but I do hope that we can find an amendment that better meets the needs, better meets the wishes, of the families of the deceased victims.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 10/11/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:32): I am pleased to rise to briefly speak about the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2020—or 2019 because, yes, it is one that has been sitting on our pink for quite some time. Certainly I was fortunate to be here in 2015 when we first started this notion of ratios, and while the idea began in 2000 it seems that certainly we have seen ratios being taken very seriously over the last four to five years. This new tranche will provide that extra support we need in those postnatal wards, birthing suites and residential aged care and will also reclassify the Warrnambool Base Hospital, which will provide extra support down there. I certainly recall, and I think Mr O’Donohue will recall, that when we were down that way during the end-of-life choices inquiry it was noted the real need for extra support to deal with not only the growing population but an ageing population down there and with some of the remoteness of those communities down there. So that is really pleasing.

Now, I remember when I last spoke about nurse-patient ratios, which must have been earlier this year, in COVID time. It seems like a long time ago, but I do not think that it was such a long time ago. It was a time when I wanted to use the heart emoji in Hansard, and I understood that Hansard was saying no to emojis. I have just checked; the Oxford dictionary is now accepting emojis, so I am wondering if Hansard can accept the heart emoji.

Mr Leane: Don’t mess with Hansard. Trust me!

Ms PATTEN: In fact the Oxford Dictionaries 2015 Word of the Year was the ‘face with tears of joy’ emoji, so I am hoping one day we may see heart emojis in Hansard, and that is for our nurses.

I certainly think that since I first mentioned that, our appreciation for nurses has skyrocketed. We used to sometimes call them the front line, but in fact conversely we now think of them as the last line of defence. If our masks are our first line of defence, if washing our hands is our first line of defence, then our nurses become our last. We have seen how critical nurses are in our society. It kinds of pains me in fact just to hear myself using those military terms for nurses, because I do not think that is appropriate and I do not think that using that sort of military language and strategy is what is going to work for us. We actually, in looking at COVID, need to take a health approach; we need to possibly stop trying to think of this as some sort of arms war or some sort of race in that way.

But as we know, as we have seen, these changes are really just going to give nurses the basic needs so that they have enough staff, so they can catch a quick break, so they can have time to re-energise between shifts and so we can look at reducing that nurse burnout. I know during this year I have spoken to the union and the union head, Lisa Fitzpatrick, and that has been her concern, the wellbeing of her nurses, because they put us before them almost all the time. They let themselves get incredibly run-down to ensure that we stay safe.

I think, in looking at that, I would also take this opportunity to call to, well, Mr O’Donohue for some federal assistance. Maybe he can speak to his federal colleagues around providing paid pandemic leave for our nurses and healthcare workers. I know it is a federal matter, so I would urge that we get our friends from the opposition to speak to their mates in federal government to support pandemic leave for nurses and other healthcare workers. I think that would be of great assistance, because COVID has shown us the fault lines in our healthcare system and the problems that have been raised here many times. Certainly Ms Maxwell raised a number of those concerns in her contribution, and I do concur. We have seen our nurses stretched too thin. We have seen their sick leave being inadequate. Nurses do not want to go to work sick, but in many cases they do because there are just not enough people to cover those shifts and their sick leave has run out.

So this bill has support from, it would appear, everyone in this chamber, which is a lovely change and probably a lovely way to finish this week. When we think about this, I wonder if we had listened to nurses sooner, if we had really taken this on sooner, whether we would have been in a better place. In my electorate, when the housing towers in Flemington and Kensington were closed down, many people contacted my office and said, ‘Why did we send in 500 police? Why didn’t we send in 500 nurses?’. Because that would have been the health response that was needed there. It would have been a much better response, I think, but we simply could not; we do not have that sort of surge capacity in our healthcare system, and we should.

So I am also very happy to see the government providing more midwives. I certainly have one of the busiest birthing hospitals in the state in my electorate, Northern Hospital in Epping, which is I think getting about 70 new babies every week. There are also 70 new houses being built out in Hume every week. This will really help them up there. The extra midwives will be incredible for the mums and nurses in the postnatal wards up there.

At the moment we have got one midwife to four mums and four babies, and if there are no twins on an evening shift a midwife will be responsible for six to eight mums currently. So this legislation will actually really lighten the load for all midwives, but particularly I would like to do a shout-out to the midwifes at the Northern Hospital.

We see that those midwives, given those numbers, are just constantly on the run to give every mum and baby the medical attention they require, and sometimes, as I have been hearing, it is just not possible. They are just trying to do their best, and this puts strain and stress on nurses who are feeling that they want to do everything they possibly can but it just physically is not possible. In fact one nurse was telling me that in one case she rushed to assist in an emergency in another room and left her patients for 3 or 4 minutes, and in that time one of the babies she was responsible for had its heart rate drop really dangerously. So then she had to hit the emergency button in the next room, and she was running from emergency to emergency and there was chaos. The strain and stress that that put on that woman is something that we really need to avoid and we can avoid, and this bill will assist us in doing this.

More nurses and midwives will benefit our society. It will not just benefit us, but it will hopefully benefit the nurses so that they can work better and so that they can work without the stress and strains that they are experiencing today. I am very happy to support this legislation. I know it will improve safety, and I continue to emoji heart our nurses.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 30/10/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (17:22): I think today is a very good day to speak about the report into a legislated spent convictions scheme—a controlled disclosure of a criminal record information framework for Victoria—because today the government introduced a bill for spent convictions. This is a very memorable day because it is a day that we have been waiting for for decades. In fact in 1987 the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended that we introduce a scheme to protect the disclosure of historical criminal records. Fifteen, 20 years ago nearly every state in Australia adopted a spent convictions scheme—except Victoria. Now, I know Victoria wanted to, but it just could never get the political motivation to do it. So today is a good day. I am very pleased—and I think this is the great work that committees do—because the legislation reflects the recommendations made by this report. And the foundations of the recommendations in this report are from the stories we heard from people who were affected by not having a spent convictions scheme in Victoria.

For many the term ‘spent conviction’ is actually a difficult term. It is hard to define, and I think this is what the committee found. In fact the committee thought that this would actually be better classified and better described as a controlled disclosure of criminal record information, because that is what it is.

A spent conviction does not mean that your conviction and your criminal past is erased. It means that you can control who that past is disclosed to. Post COVID, given we have seen incredibly high levels of unemployment, we are going to be seeing people seeking jobs everywhere and this is going to be more important than ever. Just in 2017 there were 700 000 police checks in Victoria. That is 700 000 people who had to declare possibly a mistake they made in their past to a prospective employer. While you should not judge people on mistakes they made in their youth, people are judged on those. The report shows that the inquiry found that was one of the biggest barriers to employment. And not only that but we heard from people who wanted to work for the dole to improve their prospects of employment but the mistakes they had made in the past that left them with criminal records excluded them from doing even volunteer work, from even being involved in kinship care and helping foster children from their own families. We know that we have made it harder to get jobs, so today is a great day. Today is the day when many of those people know that they can now move on, that they can now have a future.

I would really like to recognise some of the people that helped us, certainly those at Winda-Mara Aboriginal Corporation, who invited us onto country to talk about the stories. Uncle Wenzel Carter was part of the Woor-Dungin program that really looked at how we can reduce recidivism in our Aboriginal community, how we can reduce the over-representation in our criminal justice system of Aboriginal people. He said, ‘It is a life sentence after the sentence has been served’. That is the case currently in Victoria, but hopefully not for long. I will leave the last quote to Uncle Larry Walsh, a Taungarung elder, who said, ‘It is hard to live a life where everyone has respect and admiration for you and then all of a sudden something you did as a teenager is being held against you’. So today, for Uncle Larry Walsh, I am pleased to say that this is about to change.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Statement on committee report 28/10/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:04): I do not plan to speak for long, because hopefully I will be chairing this inquiry. I think it is a very important inquiry and I thank Ms Crozier for bringing this inquiry referral to the Legal and Social Issues Committee.

It will be a quick inquiry, and the Legal and Social Issues Committee knows how to do that. We have done it with I Cook Foods. We have been able to turn it around. This will be a quick inquiry and an important inquiry.

We have heard a lot in the media about the deficiencies in Victoria’s contact tracing, and I think certainly when we have been looking at the hotel quarantine it is almost like we should have been looking at how we did our contact tracing. I must say I have been reassured in recent times that our contact tracing has improved significantly. I would say we are probably one of the few states where contact tracing has been stress tested. We have been contact tracing at a very different level to any other jurisdiction in Australia and probably in the world, because in most jurisdictions contact tracing is out the window. You cannot contact trace in the UK, you cannot contact trace in most countries in Europe—it is beyond that now. But what this inquiry will bring is that confidence and that assurance that we are on top of our game, that we do have it in hand and that we can feel confident that Victoria can open up and stay open, because contact tracing will be the absolute key to that.

It actually seems like a decade ago, or it certainly seems like more than a year ago, that we started talking about the COVIDSafe app. I for one actually downloaded that app, and I for one actually keep it open. Of course that app did not prove to be what we had hoped it would be for that contact tracing. So that did not work. That does not mean that other apps might not work going forward. COVID is going to be with us for quite some time, and we want to be as open as possible and as safe as possible, but we want our businesses to feel comfortable opening up.

We want our community to feel comfortable going out, and certainly when I speak to my friends and colleagues in other countries, in the US and in Europe, many of them are frightened to go out. So even though they are open, people are not actually going out, and we want people to be shopping, we want people to be supporting our local businesses. And I think if this inquiry does one thing by ensuring that we have the best contact tracing in Australia—probably in the world, but certainly in Australia—this inquiry can provide the confidence to our community and gain the trust of our community that we can do this, that we can do this safely, and that we are not going to find a third wave. As Minister Pulford said, it sends a shiver down your spine to even think that we might enter into a third wave.

I am also pleased to hear that there are other inquiries, and I am pleased to hear that Alan Finkel is also looking at this. I have no doubt that we will be speaking to those inquiries and sharing that information and learning. Having a state-specific inquiry to do this will bring the expertise of this state, bring the knowledge of this state into this inquiry, and I think it will complement the other inquiries that are occurring. I note that we are continuing to improve. I hope that this inquiry looks forward and does provide the confidence and assurance that our community needs right now that we can live with COVID.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
LSIC Reference by Ms Crozier 28/10/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:40): I would just like to say a couple of words about the Alert Digest No. 10, and while I concur with much of what Mrs McArthur has said, this has been very difficult for the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) to produce that scrutiny in a timely fashion given the nature of these bills and the urgency with which they have been going through the house. I think some consolation can be drawn from Alert Digest No. 10 in that the amendments that were put to the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020 were scrutinised and were reflected upon by the experts who assist us on that committee, and they did find that the amendments to that bill and the consequences of those amendments left them with no concerns about breaches to the charter. So I think we can certainly look at the review of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities—from 2015, I believe—which made a number of recommendations on how SARC could operate more effectively. I think given the experiences of SARC at this point it would behove the government and it would be a good idea to go back and look at those recommendations and how we can ensure that the house is properly informed about the effect on the charter that bills that come before us have in a timely way.

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (11:12): I would like to join this motion as well. I obviously did not have the pleasure of working with Ron Best here. Although he did not remember, we did meet while he was a member of Parliament here and I was trying to sell him on the idea of changing the censorship laws. He did not buy it at the time. But I got to meet him in my first term, the last term, and I met him as Louise Asher’s partner. I have to say I really enjoyed his company and he was very happy to talk to me about politics and to talk to me about this place. I must say I learned an awful lot from Ron in those times that I got to spend with him. I think what I also saw was that love between him and Louise Asher and just how strong and beautiful that was. My heart really goes out to Louise at this time.

Much to people’s surprise, we were in Canberra one evening and we saw Ian Thorpe—this was during the marriage equality debate. We hastily drew up a little sign saying ‘We support marriage equality’ and got a selfie with Ian Thorpe. Ron Best was first to join us in that selfie. I think it shows that he was a thoughtful person. He respected other people’s judgements. He respected other people’s opinions, and as I say, I think the partnership of Ron and Louise was something to behold and something to admire greatly. My condolences to Louise Asher. I did not get to meet Ron’s children and grandchildren, but he told us many stories about them.

Just finally on a moment of being in New Zealand with Ron, we were at the high commission there having a fairly stilted, stifling kind of meeting, and he was out in the front yard kicking the football with the diplomats’ children. I think that really depicted the man he was.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Condolence motion 27/10/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (11:06): I am pleased to rise very quickly. I actually have been giving this some thought, because certainly Dr Cumming has had this motion on the paper for some time. It has been an issue that has been around. With therapeutic medicines I think we have all spoken about the benefits of them and where people have found benefits. I know that I have been reading a lot about vitamin D in regard to protection around respiratory infections, for example, particularly given the pandemic that we are experiencing now.

However, we have got eight inquiries going at the moment. There are eight reports that have to be done before 21 June, and this inquiry would be to report before 21 June. I know that the committee staff are actually 1.5 members down at the moment, and that is over four committees, so we are really, really stretched. The motion seeks to set up a select committee. I pushed for a select committee on COVID, and that to me is the type of thing that you should have a select committee on—something that is urgent, something that is happening now.

I am really interested in this, because I do think that we need to be looking at the snake oil that is being sold at the moment to people who are unwell. We need to be addressing that. We need to ensure that regulation, but we also need to ensure the safety of it, and a lot of that is done federally through the TGA. We have seen things like cannabidiol—CBD—going through that process right now. We are seeing the recognition of medicinal cannabis by traditional medical practitioners. We are seeing things like mindfulness now being recognised for the benefits of it and, as Ms Shing mentioned, the health benefits of a variety of foods.

So I understand this. However, I just do not feel like I can say yes to a select committee when there are so many other reports going on, including Dr Cumming’s own report on air quality in the west. I have got three reports—homelessness, cannabis and sex offenders—and I just feel that if we were to set up this select committee, we would be taking away from the committees that exist today.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Dr Cumming 16/10/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:27): I am pleased to rise to speak somewhat briefly to the Police and Emergency Legislation Amendment Bill 2020. This bill does a range of things, as the previous speakers have mentioned and talked to: expanding the definition of the designated places for PSOs; enabling someone who is in jail for one reason to be questioned by the police and moved within the police station to be questioned on another offence; and certainly changing some of the abilities for sheriffs to serve applications for family violence, as well as amending some of the Fire Rescue Victoria Act 1958 in regard to district map references.

So again, two in one week—two omnibus bills in one week. The problem with omnibus bills is quite often you support parts of it but you are vehemently opposed to other parts of it. Now, I cannot say ‘vehement’ is the word I would use for this bill, but I am struggling with some parts of this bill whereas others I am completely comfortable with. This is the difficulty, and I think it was the difficulty that many of us found also with the previous omnibus bill that we debated this week—that there were certain aspects of it that many of us supported and others that we found difficulty with. And as we saw with the debate and the differences of opinion on that bill, that was very apparent, and again we are finding that with this bill as well.

I would like to speak predominantly around the expansion of the protective services officers’ powers. I know that some people might say this is semantics, and certainly I appreciate and thank Minister Neville’s staff for their briefings and answering of questions about this bill, but when we mentioned the expansion of powers they said, ‘Of course it’s not the expansion of powers of PSOs, Ms Patten, it’s just the expansion of where they can use those powers’. So I think there are some semantics there—that it is not an expansion of the power; it is just expanding where those powers can be used. That was raised with me certainly by Ariel Couchman from Youthlaw, who wrote to us, and I am sure wrote to many of us in here, asking I think the very good question: why? Why do we need to expand the powers of the PSOs? Why do we need to expand where the protective services officers can operate?

At this point I would actually just like to do a shout-out to the protective services officers here at the Parliament precinct, where I think is an extremely appropriate place for PSOs to be. Certainly as someone who catches public transport as well, I also would like to add my appreciation in those areas. I think they are doing what they were established to do in 1988. I am not convinced that where this bill takes them is actually where it was intended when they were established back in 1988. In some ways you would see this as a kind of bracket creep and very much a blurring of the roles of the police and the PSOs here. In fact I think it was only in 2017 that we were having this same conversation about yet other expansions of protective services officers’ powers, and we are back here again, three years later, talking about another expansion of powers of the PSOs—and this is concerning to us.

As other speakers have mentioned, PSOs undergo 12 weeks of training—12 weeks—and we are now expanding their roles to detain, to arrest, to apprehend and to use lethal force in shopping centres, in and around showgrounds, and in any large area, this bill says. So I do have concerns about this. I was also kind of surprised that all the people that were yelling at me on social media about the expansion of powers in the last omnibus bill that we debated this week are silent on this one—absolutely silent. In fact we are actually seeing some amendments from the opposition to give PSOs more powers, to expand these powers, and to ensure that there are more of them on the train stations, to see that they are travelling in pairs.

Mr O’Donohue: It is just maintaining the current model. It is not expanding it at all.

Ms PATTEN: Again, I think this is a matter of semantics—that ostensibly this bill is not expanding the powers of the PSOs. I think due to the pressure of a number of us in this chamber, the omnibus bill that we debated earlier this week was amended, because we saw that the expanded powers in that bill went too far. But this bill is not just about expanding those powers in a state of emergency; this is expanding those powers full stop. This is a permanent expansion. We have raised this, and IBAC has raised concerns about the powers of PSOs—about their use of them. The IBAC report in 2015 reported 182 allegations of assault and excessive force and 76 reports and allegations of predatory behaviour by PSOs between 2012 and 2015. The IBAC parliamentary committee inquiry into the external oversight of police corruption and misconduct in Victoria in 2018 made 69 recommendations that the government, sadly, never responded to about how we could improve the oversight. And I think in today’s newspaper again, there is talk about the lack of oversight and the lack of funding for IBAC to be able to appropriately do the investigation and oversight that they are appointed to do and that we would very much like to see them do.

When we go to the committee stage, I will be very interested in hearing the government’s response to the lack of training for PSOs, particularly when we are looking at some pretty significant expansions of powers. As I said, after just 12 weeks training, they will be able to use lethal force in a shopping centre, to use lethal force in a showground, in a sportsground or in any large area as specified by the commissioner or, I understand, the deputy commissioner. We know that when these expanded powers occur—and this was the concern that we had in the previous omnibus bill—that those powers will affect the most powerless. They will affect our Aboriginal community; they will affect our young people the most. And certainly when we are talking about spaces like shopping centres, like showgrounds, like those places, it is those most disadvantaged that will probably come into contact with the PSOs more often and more regularly certainly than you and I would in here.

I will listen closely to the further debate on this, but as I say, some parts of this bill I do find ominous. Interestingly those parts which I think are very similar to the bill that we debated on Tuesday evening and well into Wednesday morning, when we heard people saying how egregious those parts of the bill were and how they were going to be this incredible infringement on our freedoms, they are silent today on—silent. But in contrast to this, I am supportive of some of the aspects of the bill as they relate to Fire Rescue Victoria and the lodging of the updated boundary maps that take into account, as we saw, the recent movement of the CFA around Hoppers Crossing and the new station that is just opening in Tarneit. I think these are fairly commonsense amendments that do assist in that transition of the fire service reform. As I say, with a sense of ambivalence I will finish my contribution here, and I will listen to the debate closely.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 15/10/20

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:29): This year has been, it does feel—many of the days feel—like groundhog day, particularly as we are coming back to debate the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020, which amends the legislation we debated in March, earlier this year.

Although, it was quite different last time we debated it. It did not go to a vote. In fact the whole chamber supported the bill. And frankly, I am not sure what has got in the water. I am sure our wastewater testing could probably tell us, but something has changed.

Mr Barton: What can it be?

Ms PATTEN: Mr Barton, I am not sure what has changed. But I think I understand what has changed, and I will talk about that in a minute. Most of this bill is exactly the same bill that we debated in March. We debated about how we needed to keep our prisons, our courts, our systems, our local government and our parliamentary committees working. And way back in March that did not seem too radical. It seemed quite sensible. It seemed quite practical. In fact some of the measures—things like being able to put forward electronic documents and the like—are things that I actually think we should consider.

Certainly I was speaking to some groups who were working with prisoners, particularly at the women’s prison the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre and they said one of the effects of this is that it has enabled video visits with inmates’ families. For some prisoners it is the first time they have seen their pet, it is the first time they have seen their dog, it is the first time that their children have been able to sit comfortably at home while they speak to their mother. These are things that I think, coming out of COVID, we should be looking to adopt. But now is not the time to talk about any further legislation, given the fear and fury that has been instilled in us today listening to the previous speakers.

However, this is not the same bill that passed the lower house. This is a very different bill, because what passed the lower house was overreach. What passed the lower house was not good. What passed the lower house instilled greater fear in our community. The proposal that authorised officers could pre-emptively detain Victorian citizens not because they breached COVID quarantine or they breached health directions but because they might—or because an authorised officer thought that they might. That went far too far. There was no judicial oversight of this either, nor was there any appropriate review mechanism. And I, amongst many of the people in this chamber, was vehemently opposed to that section of the bill. I am very pleased that the government did listen to the representations that were made not just from me but from other people in this chamber, and also from the Law Institute of Victoria from very senior barristers, from the human rights commissioner and so on. So those detention provisions are gone.

The provisions relating to authorised officers have also been significantly pared back. I note that the bill now seeks to really constrain the powers in this category of authorised officers so that, obviously, they cannot detain anyone, and also it seeks to limit those powers in various spots. And I note Mr Davis also touched on this, but we will have effectively four classes of people that will have different powers under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 if they are appointed and trained as authorised officers. So the police will have a certain number of powers, you would then see WorkSafe Victoria inspectors having certain powers within workplaces and you would then see possibly health service professionals and interstate health professionals, particularly in the regional areas, helping as we open up.

I just want this state to open back up. I think we all want it. We all desperately want to be able to see our friends and families. We desperately want our businesses to open. And I have to say I believe that this bill is actually sensible in assisting us to get there. I think that specifically and particularly when I look at regional areas, where people are worried and scared that the dirty Melburnians will be sneaking into their regional areas and using their hairdressers and enjoying their wine and visiting their cafes—sorry, that is probably a bit too touchy at the moment, the cafe visiting.

We need to be able to strengthen how we have the controls that keep our community safe, and they are really important and it will not be as it was 12 months ago; it will be different and we will have to socially distance and we will have to be careful about getting tested when we think that we been near someone or we are feeling unwell. We will have to be cautious about hotspots. We will have to learn to deal with this and to keep ourselves safe because we are not going to be without COVID. I hope next week that we start opening up. Let us accept—and I know everybody here will be probably clicking the refresh button every morning to see the morning numbers—that Victoria is going to have some COVID for quite some time. We can open up, but we do need people out there in the workplaces ensuring that workplaces are as safe as possible. We do need people out there, health officers, providing contact tracing out in the regional areas. We need all of this to ensure that we can move to step 3, to step 2, to step 1 so that we can open up again in whatever that COVID-normal way will be.

So I think this bill is now a functional bill. It does that. It will allow us to keep functioning. I am desperately hoping that we will open up in Melbourne next week, and I really hope that the regional areas almost go back to normal next week. Ms Lovell actually yesterday raised some interesting points about the border bubbles where you have got a vineyard open in Albury but not one across the river, but the people from Victoria can visit the one in New South Wales. There are these contradictions around it, and I think this is what can be fixed and this is what we need to be doing.

But if we do not support this bill, if we just say, ‘No, I don’t want to support it. I supported it in March; I’m not going to support it now’—and it has not changed. Let us just remember that. It really has not remarkably changed. I will get onto possibly why I think people have changed their position on this bill, but if this bill was not successful we would be back to 1500 Victorians travelling across Melbourne into the Melbourne Magistrates Court every day. We would be back to having pools of 200 people getting interviewed for jury duty. We would see the end of any online local government meetings. We would see the end of any online joint committee meetings in this place. We would see changes in the way that we could operate our courts. We would see significant changes which right now are ensuring that our prisons and our courts for the most part can work safely at the moment. So there are many areas where this bill will assist us to open up. This bill is not about keeping us shut in my opinion.

However, that is not what you would think by listening to this chamber, by listening to some of the misinformation that is being spread out there, hearing the Leader of the Opposition undermining the chief health officer in this place, hearing Mr Finn questioning the mental health of the Premier. This is actually now becoming a trust issue, and I am very concerned about the fear in our community because people are really scared. Looking at some of the things that people are writing to me about this legislation, they think that this means that people are going to walk into their houses and steal their children. They think that this means that they are going to be locked away. They think that this is a horrific attack on the Australian people’s democratic freedom.

I mean, every state in Australia actually has—well, if you want to call it draconian—more draconian legislation than this. Every state in Australia has authorised officers with far more power than we are debating here today. Yet that seems to be silent. No-one seems to be speaking about the powers in Queensland, the powers in New South Wales and the powers in Tasmania. No-one seems to be speaking about this. But here we keep wanting to blame someone for this pandemic; someone has got to be at fault. Now, in my mind, I would actually like to know what went wrong, and I want to know how we can make sure that that does not happen again. But I do not think that sending around misinformation that breeds mistrust helps our community. It makes our community even more fearful. It makes our community scared. When you say you cannot trust the chief health officer, when you say that the chief health officer is not up to the job, this does not help the community. This does not help the community’s mental health. This does not help the community feel safe. This does not help the community in moving forward.

This bill has not materially changed, yet all of a sudden it is the most treacherous breach of our democratic freedoms ever. Yet in March no-one had that to say about it—no-one. In fact we all reluctantly supported it. We look at what is happening around the world, and I know my friends, when I speak to them in the United States or England, think we are blessed. They think we are actually bloody lucky.

I am desperate for this state to open up. I am desperate for my local businesses to open up. I am desperate for my constituents to be able to get back to work as they did and for my constituents’ children to get back to school. I am desperate for that to happen, but I know that we actually are going to need some controls to ensure that that happens safely and to ensure that our constituents feel safe, because I know that right now, because of all this fear out there, our constituents do not feel safe. They are scared. They are scared that if they go out there something bad will happen—that they will get arrested on the street.

This bill is supported by the AMA. This bill is supported by the Australian Industry Group. This bill is supported by Liberty Victoria. This bill is supported by the Commissioner for Human Rights. This bill is supported by the Law Institute of Victoria—by the QCs that criticised this bill. They are now saying that they are satisfied that this bill finds the balance between health measures and civil liberties. Felicity Gerry, who is one of the prominent QCs who wrote to the Premier about this—I spoke to her last week—says we need these health measures. She is in the UK at the moment—again, another one who wishes that the UK could do some of the things that we are doing here, that wishes that they could see their infection rates going down, that they could see their infection rates at the rate of ours and that they could even have a chance to do contact tracing, because that is just out of the question in these jurisdictions. But we need this.

We need these measures to ensure we can do the contact tracing, to ensure that we can create this ring of steel around Melbourne and to ensure our regional areas can go about their business in the free way that they should, because at a 0.4 infection rate they should be back in business completely. That is what I want to see. I want to see regional Victoria and I want to see Melbourne open up, and I think we can do it. I think we can move to step 3. The epidemiologists are telling us that we can do this if we do it safely, if we do it with some of these measures that ensure that we can do it safely and that ensure that our justice system can continue to operate but can do it safely and if we can ensure that we can keep our aged-care facilities safe. But we have also got to—and it behoves us in here to do this—try and instil a level of trust in our community, because that is what we are losing, and we have been losing it for a long time.

We know about the Edelman Trust Barometer. We no longer trust our churches—possibly for good reason; we no longer trust our corporations; we no longer trust so many of our institutions. Sadly, some of the rhetoric and the vile information that we are feeding our constituents is further breeding this level of mistrust in our community, and that is something that we need to stop. That is something that we need to fix. I, for one, actually support this bill. I do not support everything the government has done, and on saying that and on finishing, I support the amendment that Mr Davis presented today on the 5 kilometres. I have yet to see the evidence of that. Now, probably if I was in a regional area, I would not want to be saying that, but as a Melburnian and as someone who represents an inner-city electorate, I do support the abolishment of the 5-kilometre rule. But we do need health measures. We do need the health department to be as well resourced as possible to ensure that we can come out of this safely and to ensure that our businesses can open up and they can open up safely.