Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (21:26): I also am very pleased to rise to speak to the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2021. I was pleased to speak to the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment (Consent) Bill 2019 and the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Amendment Bill 2020, so this has been an ongoing process to consider in particular the Gorton review.

I am particularly happy—as I was back in 2020—that, as Mr Meddick mentioned, we amended the legislation to remove police checks for people seeking assisted reproductive treatment. That was an amendment that I had put up in the 2019 bill. I think this goes further to the point that Dr Kieu and Mr Meddick and Ms Crozier have also mentioned—that this actually has this sort of normalising effect so that assisted reproductive treatment is not seen as ‘other’. It is not test-tube babies, it is not some sort of mad science; it is actually really part of our society and part of our community, and thousands and thousands of people have been through this process—sadly sometimes unsuccessfully, but happily successfully for many others.

I think the changing of language that this bill brings forward is the normalising of that language. Instead of talking, as Dr Kieu said, of ‘commissioning’ parents, we talk about intended parents—exactly as we should. And we do not talk about ‘donors’ when we are talking about two people in a relationship; we talk about partners now. This is what this bill goes to, and I am very pleased that we are implementing these further amendments.

I will not repeat all of the other measures of this bill because other people have done that before me, but I certainly do like seeing that this enables reproductive treatment assistance to become available far more easily in regional areas. When we allow for registered nurses to provide this treatment and we allow for doctors outside a clinic to provide this treatment, again, this makes it easier. As I say, this further normalises this wonderful treatment that assists so many people to have the families that they dream of.

I think we should again recognise the great work of Michael Gorton, AM, in doing the really considerable review that he did of this industry. His report was thorough, and his recommendations were all sensible and they were excellent. I sometimes wonder why we have not just adopted them all and why we have been going through this sort of cycling and rolling adoption of them. To that end, this bill has my complete support. But also to that end, I would like to table some further amendments to this legislation.

Fiona Patten’s Reason Party amendments circulated by Ms PATTEN pursuant to standing orders.

Ms PATTEN: Before I speak to these amendments, I would really like to extend my gratitude and thanks to the Victorian Pride Lobby for their really terrific work and dedication to this issue over the many years, and I would particularly like to recognise my former colleague Nevena Spirovska for her diligent leadership in these issues.

The amendments that I have circulated and that I am tabling today and that I hope will be supported today just very much go to the Gorton review, and they are in line with Mr Gorton’s recommendations. The first amendment is simply replacing the wording ‘intersex status’ that exists in the legislation now to ‘sex characteristics’. This is modern, best practice language, and it is consistent with language within our Equal Opportunity Act 2010. And I am pleased to see that this is the type of language that is considered best practice by Intersex Human Rights Australia. I understand that this is something that has been considered favourably by the government.

The next amendments are around the counselling. Now, we do not actually ask parents or women who are planning to get pregnant or who get pregnant to seek counselling, so why should we insist on some form of compulsory counselling for women seeking access to assisted reproductive treatment? As I say, we do not ask that for any other women seeking to get pregnant. We only ask it of these women, and I think that that is discriminatory. It is discriminatory. It should be optional, and we are the only state in Australia to mandate counselling for women. In fact I would suggest that this would actually interfere with our charter of human rights to treat women differently when they are seeking reproductive treatment as opposed to women who are becoming pregnant through other measures. Now, again, Mr Gorton recommended that counselling become offered but not mandatory and it become part of a patient’s individual plan of support, and if that patient needed counselling, well then it should be provided in that plan.

My amendments 4 and 5 remove the requirement for same-sex couples to obtain a letter from a doctor stating that they are unable to become pregnant. This is because that is absolutely pointless and also can be quite demeaning. It can feel quite offensive to those couples to have to go and seek a letter from a doctor to say that because of the biology of that relationship, because of the biology of the two people in that relationship, they cannot get pregnant. So I think, again, this is in line with the Gorton review. Mr Gorton certainly agreed that this type of approval should not be necessary for same-sex couples and that, as I said, it was demeaning and quite often offensive.

Amendment 6 that I have circulated will soften the ban on surrogacy advertising to permit advertising of altruistic surrogacy, and that is while maintaining a ban on advertising for commercial surrogacy arrangements. I think that this is something that probably, ultimately, we would like to see changed as well. But right now, just putting out a Facebook notice, making some sort of reach-out to say, ‘I am looking for a surrogate’, could be deemed an offence under this legislation, and I do not think that is right and I do not think that is the intention. I think the intention is to ensure that people are not exploited through surrogacy. What we do not want to stop is people actually finding surrogates. Right now this prohibition creates unnecessarily hard barriers for same-sex couples who want to have a family. I think it is an issue that we should consider today. Again, I think the community is with us. I think the community is very relaxed about these treatments, and I think they are fully supportive of people’s access to them—almost everyone.

So my amendments are all about equality for our LGBTIQ friends, and I see no reason why we would not support them today in this house.

As I say, they are in line with the Gorton review. They follow on from the excellent work that is within this bill, the excellent work that was in the 2020 bill and the excellent work that was in the 2019 bill. Again, I commend this bill, but I also commend my amendments.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 7/10/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:58): I rise to speak to Ms Crozier’s bill, the Mental Health Amendment (Counsellors) Bill 2021. You know, I do not think there is a single person in this chamber who does not passionately believe that a child’s mental health is crucially important and mental health support in our schools is very important. I am also clearly of the view that we should have highly qualified mental health support available to Victorian students, but I have to say I am perplexed by this bill, albeit we have only looked at it over the last few days. I have read the second-reading speech and heard Ms Crozier provide it, but this bill goes to amending the Mental Health Act 2014. It does not relate to or touch on schools at all. It changes the definition of mental health practitioners for the purposes of the Mental Health Act. The definition of mental health practitioner in the Mental Health Act only relates to those who can make a mental health assessment order under that act. If you read that act, and I went through that act this morning, that is what the definition for mental health practitioner relates to.

And under that this means that this allows the people who are defined specifically and directly in that act to make assessment orders, which is the first step in initiating compulsory mental health treatment.

A mental health practitioner under the act may make an assessment order. An assessment order then enables an authorised psychiatrist to examine the person without the person’s consent to determine whether they have a mental illness and need compulsory mental health treatment. An assessment order enables a person subject to the order to be taken to and detained in a designated mental health service for assessment if necessary. It is a really narrow purpose in this act, and it does not in any way relate to counsellors in schools. So I do not understand why we would add counsellors to that definition in the act, because it will not actually help. It will not make the case for bringing more counsellors into schools, which I entirely support. In reading the second-reading speech, everything around the bill I support, but when we go to the bill, that is where it just does not make sense.

Ms Watt listed substantially where counsellors are in schools and in fact where student support services are available through regional Department of Education and Training offices. There is dedicated access for secondary students to counselling through Headspace. Primary welfare officers, who are often counsellors, operate in 800 or 1200 schools. There are counsellors there already. So I am still quite perplexed as to why we would want to define them under the Mental Health Act and for some reason come to the conclusion that that would increase the number of counsellors in schools. The second-reading speech says that by doing this it will provide approximately an additional 2000 counsellors. It will not. It will not make any difference.

We have just seen the announcement from the government of the mental health practitioners program—and I think Ms Watt also spoke to this—where every Victorian government secondary and specialist school will have funding to employ a mental health practitioner. That is a very broad range, everything from therapy dogs to psychiatrists. I wonder if that is where the confusion has come with this bill and whether it was because of the term ‘mental health practitioner’ in that announcement that it was thought that maybe it was only allowing those defined under the Mental Health Act as mental health practitioners to become part of that program.

But I do think there is an area I am passionate about, and that is actually ensuring that we have qualified, good mental health practitioners in our schools—that we have the right people to do the right job. We need to weed out those that are deficient. You know, some that support there is completely unqualified, and I think it will come as no surprise to this house that I am speaking about the chaplaincy program.

To become a chaplain in Victoria you have to be a Christian, one. You need a cert IV in youth work or pastoral care or even both. That is it; that is what qualifies you to become a chaplain to provide student welfare in the schools. Now, the department’s guidelines say that chaplains may be from any faith or no faith, and the chaplain’s job and work are not meant to be religious, but you cannot get a job as a chaplain unless you are religious—and not any religion; the chaplaincy program is limited by the providers of the program, and all bar one insist that they will only hire Christians, because they can.

So this is incredible discrimination, apart from anything else. I would just like to also mention there are chaplains out there who have got very high qualifications and are very good at their jobs, and I grant that, but when we are talking about wanting qualified people in our schools to provide mental health assistance to our students then maybe we should be looking at where we are not providing qualified people.

Maybe we should be reconsidering that, because I think our children do deserve highly qualified mental health support now more than ever. But a 13-unit, one-year course in youth work or pastoral care is not it. Those are not the professional qualifications I want for my children to help support their good mental health. Now, yes, as we increase the volume of mental health support in our schools we as a state should also increase the calibre of that support, and I would say that one way to do that is by cutting out the obvious deficiencies that place underqualified staff on the front line with our vulnerable kids—that is, getting rid of the chaplaincy program in this state.

But again, I support counsellors in our schools, and I certainly think that given the announcements and given the rollout of all of these new mental health programs we are going to see more counsellors. I think that is a wonderful thing, and I will do whatever I can to assist the schools in my electorate to access those programs. But I still cannot understand, and maybe Ms Crozier will be able to sum up and explain, how amending the Mental Health Act to add ‘registered counsellors’ to the definition of a mental health practitioner puts more counsellors in schools. It just does not.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 6/10/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (19:46): I think this is actually kind of exciting, and I am sorry that we have diminished it to conceiving children, council oversight and concrete. This is the biggest infrastructure project in the state’s history and I think Mr Davis also said possibly in Australia. That is quite extraordinary. To be here thinking about something that will be the biggest infrastructure project in my life—well, actually, not in my life. I probably will not be alive to see this, unless those stem cells that I have been taking actually work and those vitamins I have been taking actually work. I may not see the end of this project, and that is not a bad thing. But I think that is an important issue about this—that this is about having faith in governments, having faith to plan beyond the future, having faith to plan beyond our time on this earth.

When you look at people in other great cities—and I know Mr Ondarchie has travelled and lived in many of them—most of them put infrastructure in way ahead of their lifetimes. They put in significant infrastructure—and that goes back to the Romans, when our first sewerage systems came into place. They did not live that long then, so they did not get to see the fruits of their labour. This is one of those projects that we in this place will not see, most likely. Although for some of the young ones here, of course you will, but for many of us, we will not. But in many of the cities that we looked at around the world we saw this plan, we saw this vision, we saw these projects. And we have all, I suspect, as tourists or as people who have lived in other countries and other cities benefited from those projects.

Melbourne is going to be bigger than Sydney. That is a fact—Melbourne is going to be bigger than Sydney.

Mr Finn interjected.

Ms PATTEN: With or without you, Mr Finn—with or without you. And may I just make a note, Mr Finn, that I am a Sydney Swans supporter. But Melbourne is going to be bigger than Sydney, and in fact by 2051 we expect Victoria to have a population of 10 million.

Now, look at other cities that have those types of populations. Tokyo, 9 million—look at the infrastructure. Look at greater Tokyo and the trains and infrastructure that they have—the fast train. I was actually born in Canberra, so throughout my life we have been debating a fast train in the ACT. I doubt we will ever get there.

If you could have a business case for something that is planned to be finished in 2050, I do not know, but right now what they are presenting to us is quite a good business case. Now, I do not have the wherewithal to know what is going to happen between now and 2050, but at the moment the current business case is that there is between $1.10 and $1.70 for every dollar invested. That compares to something like the east–west link, which I think will probably ultimately be part of our city, but it did not have the same business case that this one does.

But what this requires is trust. This actually requires some form of trust in government, and right now that is lacking. It is not lacking just in Victoria, it is lacking around Australia and it is lacking around the world. We have to bring back that trust, and we have to be up-front about the costs of this project. We have to be up-front that this is going to be an expensive project. The current figures are, what, $50 billion, I think, or—if you break that down—$2 billion a year. But more importantly I would suggest that it is about that trust. It is about that faith—and I use that word again—in the government, the faith in this Parliament that we can see to what we want for our grandchildren and what we want for our great-grandchildren. Something like this is one of those projects. It will be transformational. It will change the shape of our city.

I may raise this in committee, but we are planning for something that is 40 years in the future—and part of this bill enables us to plan for that. It enables the government to maybe purchase land, to do those sorts of things to achieve that. We need to plan that future, and we need that absolute faith in government—and I think that is something that is absolutely lacking around the nation and certainly around this state at the moment. So we need to be transparent, and we need to continue with that transparency.

Certainly I looked at one of Mr Davis’s amendments here, which was around having some oversight in the Parliament and having some form of public works committee. Now, I think a public works committee is long overdue in this Parliament. I know it existed before my time, and I think the idea of some sort of public works committee is very valid and something that I would be very supportive of. Because you want that oversight over such a giant project. And yes, we will have government oversight; yes, we will have the giant departments that this bill will create today.

But probably one of the other issues—and I know everyone will speak about concrete, population growth, climate change and the rest of it—I would actually like to talk about is women and the impact that women can have on this project going forward.

The business case that we have read expects 24 000 jobs during construction. I do not know how they got to that number, but I am happy to accept that, and they will be highly skilled, well-paid jobs that could transform the lives of those workers. I am hoping that this project will enable women to be able to access those opportunities because it has been a longstanding and persistent problem, gender inequality in our construction industry. I do not think that anyone is going to deny that we have a gender issue in our construction industry. We have really tried to change that, and there have been many changes. I know that many organisations and I that know many governments—I would say even the federal government has tried to make amends in this area, but they have largely failed. But given the significant money that we are putting into this—at least $2 billion a year—surely we can use it to start addressing and reducing sexism and gender barriers in construction and in engineering.

I know the government has done some work on this, and I note that they created the Women in Construction Strategy. We need to ensure that that is put to work. We need to ensure that it does not just gather dust. This is our chance. You know, this is the time when we should be encouraging kids into STEM. This is an intergenerational project. This is what STEM is about. This is what education is about. I can see the Minister for Higher Education nodding as I say this, and I am really looking forward to hearing that we are funding apprenticeships and training to unpack the gender bias in this area and that we are looking to unpack the gender bias in career counsellors. I am very pleased to hear those in the government saying, ‘Yes, we’re doing this. Yes, we’re doing this’. One of the solutions in that strategy, the Women in Construction Strategy, is:

a campaign to eliminate the attitudes that underpin the culture of gender inequality, involving all construction workers—including managers and employers

Great. Can we please get that done, because that underpins the sexism in the construction industry, and we know it is still rife. We know the industry is still, frankly, 99 per cent male, so this is a project that could change that. You know, at 99 per cent male this is like an all-boys school, and the behaviour in the construction industry mirrors that of an all-boys school. I cannot even repeat what a manager—a female engineer—told me about the comments that were made by her boss. I just cannot. It would be unparliamentary, and I think the clerks would certainly stop me from saying it. When she complained about those comments, her boss said, ‘Oh, no, that’s not sexist. He says that to everyone’.

Now, that is what we need to change, and when we are looking at transformational projects like this, we should be focusing on some of that transformation that we can make around gender equality as well. Highly sexualised comments are not the only issues that women face in construction. They are perceived as weak. They are perceived as not up to the job. All of that still pervades the industry. Quite often they feel like they are spotlighted, like everyone is watching them to make sure they can do the job as well as everyone else, and that means that they feel like they have to overperform. They feel like every time they might make a mistake. It is a very anxious time in this area. You know, they are likely to have comments like, ‘Well, we had to put up with way worse, mate. You’re up for it’. Multiple studies have confirmed that sex discrimination and workplace culture are the most significant barriers to tradeswomen’s careers, so I would hope that the government sets this up. You are an equal opportunity employer. Do not tolerate sexism in any form. This Suburban Rail Loop gives us the opportunity to do that.

Women are going to contribute to this in their taxes, so I want to see them benefit financially from this project. I want to see them being part of this project. For the time that I can I will be watching this project carefully and specifically on this issue of gender equality. When we spoke to the government about this they certainly talked about Indigenous quotas. They talked about a range of quotas. I would like to see some real targets for female workers, for female engineers as part of this—not putting aside Indigenous employment.

The other area I would like to see in such a long project: we will be planning decades in advance, and having just recently been part of and chaired the homelessness inquiry, we know that VicRail has enormous amounts of land that quite often sit fallow, sit unused.

Mr Ondarchie: VicTrack.

Ms PATTEN: VicTrack. Thank you, Mr Ondarchie. It sits unused, and during this time we need to be nimble with that land. We need to be modern with that land. We need to look at how we can use that land to great effect. I would really ask the government to use some of that land; some of that money that they are using to buy land, to buy houses and to prepare for this can be used to address homelessness and can be used to address our lack of housing in our community. I think this is a great opportunity to do that. At that point I will leave my comments and commend the bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 5/10/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (13:51): I would like to rise to speak to the substantive motion but also Dr Ratnam’s amendment, which I have to say was a bit of a team effort. I almost feel still out of breath from some of the running around that has occurred over the last 24 hours in finding a compromise position to enable in particular the crossbench to have their opinions recorded when they are not able to be in the chamber to do so, and we know that this is coming. We know that any number of us may find ourselves in a tier 2 spot or a tier 1 spot or, hopefully never, find ourselves COVID positive—or whatever reason. So I think this a good step in the right direction in doing that.

I do not share Mr Davis’s concerns about being stabbed with a knife just off camera on the TV screen or something. I think we have managed. Certainly we have seen in the last 12 months in our committee process that we have been able to deliberate on reports. We have been able to conduct ourselves voting even in an online fashion, which has been effective and which has not been questioned.

I thank the clerks, and I read with interest the President’s report because I thought that it went a long way into seeing online voting and seeing us being able to operate very effectively if we had to from remote locations. So I look forward to continuing to work in this. I do want to be able to see the crossbench being able to pair in the future, and I would like to see that in a formal arrangement, not just for us, because I think some of the concerns about the crossbench pairing were that you would not know what was happening. And so in some ways us codifying our processes actually enables the greatest transparency to see that, which in the traditional pairing that occurs between the major parties is obvious because of the remaining members in the chamber. For single-member parties like me and like Dr Ratnam and for Independents like Dr Cumming that is not as clear. With those words, I commend the amendment and support the substantive motion.

Amendment agreed to; amended motion agreed to.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion moved by Ms Symes 15/9/21 

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (13:15): I too am very pleased to rise to speak to this motion. I had the privilege of meeting Ron Fenton and Yogi a year or so ago. Not only did Yogi bring joy to Ron and assist Ron, he actually really could fill a room. He was a really wonderful—I do not know; yes, you can say it—charismatic dog. He really was—

Mr Grimley: Beautiful eyes.

Ms PATTEN: Gorgeous, gorgeous eyes. I think, listening to the story about the background of the connection between Benni and Yogi and Ron, it has got all the makings of a great film. I was just thinking while I was sitting in the chair who would play Ron. I am putting my hand up for Sam Neill for Ron; I think he would be happy with that. But it also reminded me of another film, where we saw the beautiful work that dogs can do as therapy. I think I would commend a film called Backtrack Boys, which again showed that relationship that dogs and people can have and the therapeutic effect—nigh on medical effect—that they can have. It really is wonderful to see, and I am really pleased that Mr Grimley is advocating on this issue. I am pleased to see the ministers in the chamber as well, so I certainly hope that we do see moves in this area.

We have seen dogs being used in a whole range of areas. We are seeing assistance dogs being provided to victims and witnesses in the courts now. We are seeing dogs in the prison system, and certainly Mr O’Donohue referred back to the Bathurst trial. We are seeing that dogs in the court system have actually had a really positive impact particularly on the victims of crime, where they can calm them and they can reduce the trauma of the whole experience. In actual fact it has reduced the instances of retrials, so it has had a very clear impact in that area.

But directly to Mr Grimley’s motion about those that are suffering from post-traumatic stress injury (PTSI), we know that our frontline workers are really over-represented in those statistics and we need to be doing everything to prevent that. But we also need to be doing everything that we can to look at those new and emerging treatments and services, and in many ways WorkSafe is one of the perfect places to be doing that. Certainly I have raised this here, and just in the brief few minutes I have left I would just also like to raise some other emerging therapies, and those include MDMA. Now, someone said to me, ‘That’s like puppies and pingers’, this speech, but it is absolutely not. These are, absolutely, trained assistance dogs who are trained in the way that we heard Benni had trained Yogi—extraordinary. And when I talk about MDMA I am talking about a pharmaceutical-grade drug in a controlled, clinical setting with a therapist, so it bears no relation. It is working and we have the evidence, yet every time we have actually tried to see this new emerging therapy being used, particularly for PTSI, it has been refused by WorkSafe and many other organisations.

In the US they are in stage 3 trials for MDMA therapy for PTSI, and that is going to the Food and Drug Administration at the moment. It is running out of the University of California plus the University of New York. It is showing extraordinary results, single-treatment results—one treatment and they are getting results. They are literally curing PTSI through this substance. I implore the government that we do look at these non-established, new or emerging treatments and services, NeNETS, that Mr Grimley has raised today in the like of therapy dogs. But I would certainly like to see other treatments that are also doing this. We have got 35 clinical psychiatrists in Australia now seeking to use MDMA for this exact thing. I commend this motion, and I hope it opens the door for new and emerging therapies, particularly for people with PTSI and particularly for our frontline workers.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr Grimley’s motion 15/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (10:41): I am pleased to rise to speak to Mr Davis’s motion 621. As Mr Davis quite eloquently put, this is a simple documents motion. It is simply suggesting, as the Bret Walker advice to the New South Wales Parliament stated, that this Parliament does have the ability to compel independent organisations or statutory organisations to provide documents to this Parliament. Under our evidence act, under our Parliamentary Committees Act 2003, we see this. In fact, the Legal and Social Issues Committee has used that power a number of times in recent years to compel witnesses and documents to be brought forward to the committee as part of its inquiry process.

So, on the face of it, asking for a report or a review done by a statutory body such as the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission would seem quite simple and it would seem that Mr Walker’s advice supports that. However, there is one I think very substantial fact that has not been mentioned in the very motion that is on the paper or in Mr Davis’s contribution earlier—that there is a court order on this review. And not just a court order; it is from the Court of Appeal. It is three judges ordering VEOHRC not to publish the review or the report. So we are now asking and we are putting VEOHRC into an extremely difficult position, I would suggest. We are also, I would absolutely suggest, effectively overriding that order—or fighting or arguing to override the order of a Court of Appeal.

Now, Mr Davis says that we are entitled to do that—but does that make it right? And what sort of precedent does that set? Last week Mr O’Donohue and I put up amendments to limit the ability of the government of the day to expand suppression orders or victim privacy orders, and we were very concerned that this was giving the government too much power to make directions to the courts. We were specific about that, and Mr O’Donohue, on behalf of the Liberal Party, and I put up very similar amendments that successfully passed this house. Today we are being asked to overrule a court order, to overrule the Court of Appeal, to do this.

Mr Davis says we have every right to do that. I am yet to understand the public interest in doing that. I have great concerns about what sort of precedent this would set. Could a future government override a suppression order, override a victim privacy order because they may suggest that it would be in the interests of the Parliament or in the interests of the government of the day for that information to be made public?

Now, this is a report that was done five years ago. If this motion was serious about achieving equality in our emergency services, well, that would have been an interesting motion to debate: how do we do that? I have a constituent; she is a terrific football player at Fitzroy, and she just got into the fire services. Just last week she was accepted in, and she is extremely excited about this, and I am very pleased to see that. But she will be in the minority. She will be sadly still just one of a handful of female firefighters, and I would support anything that changed that. But to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and put the very treasured institution VEOHRC into a position where they will be in contempt of court or contempt of Parliament—you choose. I choose not to put them into that position.

Today is the International Day of Democracy, and I certainly feel that one of the pillars of our democracy is that clear separation of powers. It is one of the pillars of our democracy, and I feel that this would be an absolutely egregious encroachment upon that separation.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr Davis’ motion 15/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:56): I rise to speak briefly on this motion. I was just reminded of how beautiful horses are and how wonderful it is to see them run. I was reminded because across the river from our property is actually one of those places that Ms Shing spoke about, a place where retired horses actually do go. Watching them race up the hill in the morning, racing against each other—it was such a natural state of being, and it was so beautiful.

So we know that these horses love to run, and it is a natural state of being. So why do we need a whip? Why do we need horse tongue-ties? I note that in 2018 Reason, our party and me, spoke at length about the use of tongue-ties. That was back in 2018. We know that a tongue-tie is a strap that immobilises a horse’s tongue, attaching it to the lower jaw and is believed to prevent airway obstruction while racing, although there is not a lot of science around that. In fact there is now a pilot going on around not using ties in the racing industry. We have seen things like nylon ties be prohibited in the racing industry, and I think right now we are actually probably seeing the end of the use of ties in the racing industry in Australia; that is good, because they are cruel.

Now, whipping a horse—whipping any animal, anything—is illegal in most circumstances, except for this small exception to that rule—that is, that a jockey in a thoroughbred race can strike the horse up to five times during the race and pretty much every second stride in that last 100 metres. Jockeys have been fined for over-whipping, many times. In fact in the last two Melbourne Cups jockeys were fined for over-whipping. Now, I do not think that fine really stopped the celebrations. I do not think that fine really dug in very deep into the prize money that they had received or the earnings that the owners of those horses had received. So, as a rule, those fines do not really act as a deterrent.

In 2020 Racing Victoria conceded that the current whipping rules were not really appropriate and that we needed to reform. So I think Mr Meddick’s motion here actually has extraordinarily widespread support. In fact it is hard to find people who do not seem to agree with it. In fact in Victoria they attempted to trial whip-free. And one assumes, if those horses love racing as much as they do, and they love running as much as I could see across the river from my place, they would not need a whip to continue them racing. If nobody used whips, if it was only hands and feet in the race, it would be a level playing field, as it were—a level racing field, as it were.

It seems anachronistic in the 21st century that we provide an exception to whip an animal. If we saw someone whipping an animal in our streets, we would be outraged. If we saw an animal being whipped on a farm, we would be outraged. Yet we have this exemption for thoroughbred horseracing.

Now, we know that the community is behind us, and that includes the punters—they do not want to see a whip. I think Mr Meddick’s motion is a very modest motion. It is saying, ‘Let’s renew this conversation about the use of whips; let’s trial something different’. And it seems Racing Victoria is behind this, the community is behind this and I would probably say that even the vast majority of the industry is behind this.

We are in I suppose a very different time than when thoroughbred racing first started. We have seen the gradual removal of whip usage, we have seen the gradual decline of it, and we have seen the regulations be strengthened. I think Mr Meddick is on the right course. I think he has got the RSPCA behind him and he has got the community behind him. I would hope to see not only Racing Victoria but Racing Australia get behind this. I would be interested to hear jockeys getting behind this as well. Because they talk about jockey safety, and I have never been a jockey, but I do not understand how that whip that they suggest does not hurt the animal, that they suggest is not painful at all, actually keeps them safe, particularly when we are really talking about the limit of it to the last 100 metres of a race.

I wish Mr Meddick well in this. I think, as I say, it is a very modest motion. And we know where the Animal Justice Party stands on racing; there has been no secret in that. But I think when you are in this place it is about not letting the perfect get in the way of the good, and I think this is one of those motions that does that.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr Meddick’s motion 15/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan)

Incorporated pursuant to order of Council of 7 September:

I rise to speak on the Forests Legislation Amendment (Compliance and Enforcement) Bill 2019, which principally makes a number of improvements to the regulation of timber harvesting and firewood collection.

In late 2018, the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change directed the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to initiate an independent review of timber harvesting regulation.

The independent review was tasked with an initial assessment of whether further regulatory or legislative reform was required to ensure modern, best practice regulation of timber harvesting in Victoria.

The independent review made several recommendations, which I do not take significant issue with, but I do note this: since the report was published, over 1.5 million hectares of Victoria burnt in devastating bushfires, including more than half of the East Gippsland LGA.

These fires wiped out firewood that is the subject of this bill, they have put significant strain on our endangered species, and if we to quantify it terms of climate change, pumped between 5 and 30 tonnes of carbon emissions into the air per hectare.

In terms of VicForests, that included 40 per cent of the area earmarked for native timber logging in East Gippsland.

At the end of 2019, the Victorian government announced the native forest transition package, part of the Victorian Forestry Plan. It supports Victoria’s forest industry to transition away from native forestry. As part of the plan, harvesting native forests is due to cease in Victoria by 2030.

I simply don’t see why that transition can’t be brought forward, particularly given it’s mostly for pulp.

Changing tack, I would just like to address the amendments before the house.

The Greens will move amendments with respect to clause 8 of division 3, which provides for the secretary to enter into an ‘undertaking’ with a person who has contravened or allegedly contravened the code, which then prohibits any third-party criminal or civil proceedings against the person.

It could be claimed that this clause is designed to remove the capacity of civil society to exercise its rights to challenge logging operations on publicly owned land in the courts.

There have been six recent court cases between local activists and VicForests, where in most cases applicants allege that the OCR/DELWP process for review had failed to adequately implement the law. If clause 8 was ratified, the fear of the constituents that have lobbied me is that their options for recourse would be stifled.

I accept that the government has provided an alternate explanation and I do not believe that they have misled me, but irrespective I believe that on balance, and given the limited adverse impacts this amendment will have on the functionality of the bill, it is something I can support.

I note also that the Liberals have amendments—amendments that they did not advise us of or circulate until 9.07 pm yesterday and amendments for which they offer no explanation as to their purpose, not even a phone call until 10.30 this morning during the debate. This is very unfortunate and I have to wonder if they even wanted my support.

Coming back to the issue of pulp, I would like to finishing by saying that hemp can be the future of paper. And it can be a provider of jobs in an industry transition.

Hemp grows to 13 feet in 100 days—it’s the quickest carbon to biomass available.

The University of Melbourne is undertaking extensive research into how we can move from logging native forests to using hemp instead.

Hemp is cheaper, restores the soil and doesn’t destroy old growth forests.

Hemp paper can be made from hemp plants’ long bast fibre or the short bast fibre (hurd or pulp).

Hemp paper was first used in the Chinese Han Dynasty around 200 BC and they were onto something:

• 1 acre of hemp can produce as much paper as 4–10 acres of trees

• hemp stalks grow in four months, whereas trees take 20–80 years

• hemp has higher concentration of cellulose than wood, the principal ingredient in paper

• hemp paper does not yellow, crack, or deteriorate like tree paper.

Many of the current timber building products currently produced from native forest can be produced with hemp. This includes many products from particle board to high-strength beams.

The rest of the world is progressing this and Victoria should join them.

I am excited to meet with the agriculture minister shortly to continue the discussion about using hemp to meet our environmental needs.

That is sensible forward thinking.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 14/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (13:19): I am really pleased to speak on this motion, and I thank Ms Maxwell for bringing it here. I will commit to speaking very briefly on this motion because I know it is Dr Kieu’s smoko time very soon.

Australia was a leader in tobacco harm reduction, tobacco reduction. We were a leader in reducing people smoking. We are no longer. We have stalled, and as a result of that we are also losing control of the market. As Ms Maxwell stated in her contribution, we are seeing that the illicit tobacco market is growing and organised crime is taking hold. In fact just last night there was a major bust up in my region—Reservoir, Campbellfield and all of those areas—where three gang members were arrested. There was a huge haul of heroin along with a huge haul of illicit tobacco. So that is what we are seeing.

It is very hard to value the illicit market. I know that Ms Maxwell has put a value going by the AMA’s submission to the federal government, but I actually looked at this as well. We spend about $14 billion a year on tobacco, and there is an estimate that the illicit market is about 17 per cent of the market, so that is actually $830 million. So you can see what a great incentive that is for organised crime, when some of our poorest people are our biggest smokers. We know when we look at the statistics it is not Kew and Toorak where we are seeing smoking, it is actually my electorate. It is Campbellfield. It is the lowest five SES areas where we see the highest level of smoking. The highest level of smoking is in our Indigenous population and in people who are unemployed, so the people who can least afford $48 for a packet of cigarettes are being charged that—I looked it up, Dr Kieu. It is the leading cause of preventable death, but what are we doing? We are pushing people into the illicit market.

Now, I support Ms Maxwell’s proposition for licensing for greater control of that market; I get that. But we have got to find the sweet spot in demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction, the way we treat all other drugs, and we are not doing that. So for a very brief moment what I do want to talk about is that harm reduction, is that supply reduction. In the Australian health survey one in four smokers said that price would have an effect, four in 10 said that health impacts would have an effect and one in three smokers said they did not want to give up. So if we want to reduce the illicit market, we need to reduce the demand for this product. It is harm reduction; it is drug policy 101. So how do we do that supply reduction?

I would suggest: let us look at harm minimisation. Let us look at something like vaping. That is something this government could do. This government has actually repeatedly prohibited vaping in Victoria. It is absolutely crazy. We have got countries like the UK putting vapes on their PBS. They are actually paying for people to use vaporisers, because they know that it reduces the tobacco market and saves lives. I want to yet again repeat that vaping saves lives. If this government was brave, if this government was serious about addressing the tobacco market, if it was serious about addressing the illicit tobacco market—by all means license tobacconists, license people who are selling tobacco, try and reduce that. But when you have got a product that is so expensive and is so addictive, you have to deal with demand reduction and harm reduction. So I yet again implore the government, in looking at addressing this really important issue that Ms Maxwell has raised, to reconsider their position on nicotine replacement therapies such as vaping.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan
Ms Maxwell’s motion 8/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:17): I am pleased to speak on Ms Crozier’s motion, which I support. I think it is really important to consider what we are doing in talking about mental health. In some ways the commentary around mental health has been almost more damaging than the pandemic. We have been using it, you know—there have been sound bites, there has been misrepresentation of the statistics, and quite often we are frightening the same young people that we are here to protect. I note today a new survey from Mission Australia and the Black Dog Institute was released, This is a survey that has been running for a number of years; in fact, close on a decade. They have seen a steady increase in young people experiencing psychological distress from 2012 to 2020, and in actual fact in their survey they have seen a decrease between 2019 and 2020. It was insignificant, but that one in four young people suffering mental health issues has been steady. This is not pre COVID.

I think if we take one silver lining out of this, it is the interest in mental health and that we are seeing bipartisan support for mental health and mental health funding and dealing with mental health. Tomorrow is R U OK? day. Tomorrow is the day we will be checking in with our friends, our colleagues. We will be talking about it. I think there is a fine balance between frightening people about mental health and providing that space for people to talk about it, for reducing the stigma around mental health. We know at least probably a quarter of us in this chamber will have a mental health experience and suffer a mental health issue—it may be even more—but we know that it is happening, and we need to address that.

But I think one point that I just want to make—I only want to contribute for a short time—is actually about mental health nurses. I have been getting calls from mental health nurses in my office. They are exhausted. They are suffering from some of the rhetoric out there as well. I had one mental health nurse who called last week. I did not get the chance to speak to her, but she said to my staff that she had responded to so many critical incidents of self-harm recently that she had had to take three weeks off. The psychological stress that these frontline workers are facing is immense. It is not only psychological, it is physical. When you are working as a frontline mental health nurse you are getting abused, both mentally and physically, and you are being paid $28 an hour to do it—$28 an hour to be a trained mental health nurse. If we are so concerned about mental health, then we should be paying our nurses significantly more. In fact a mental health nurse on average earns $10 000 less than her colleague who is a social worker. Why would anyone want to join the mental health workforce to be paid poorly, to be abused and right now to be hearing that what we are doing is not working—that what they are doing is not working? In fact up to a third of the workforce is considering leaving. They just cannot cope. They cannot cope. We hear about the mental health system, but we do not talk about how that system is not necessarily buildings. That system is people. That system is the mental health workers at the front line helping our friends, our constituents, deal with this, so we need to invest in that workforce.

We know, and there is no doubt, that there has been an increase in demand for mental health services. Certainly I commend the government for their commitment to act on every single recommendation from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, but we have got a workforce that is under so much pressure that it could explode and we could lose a third of our workforce when we should be trying to recruit them. So while I support this motion, I can say that one of the things we need to be doing, and I would hope that the government will be doing this, is paying our mental health nurses and workers more.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan
Ms Crozier’s motion 8/9/21