Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:49): I am pleased to rise to speak on Dr Cumming’s bill. Integrity in politics is the cornerstone of my party’s platform. In fact the first line on our website reads, ‘The public deserves a political system where their representatives act with integrity and in good faith’, and that is what we expect. That is what the public expects from us. At Reason our focus on open and honest dialogue with the public is there. I know many of us receive so much correspondence to our offices, and I make every concerted effort to respond to as much of it as I can.

Whether I believe it, whether I support the position, whether it is an insult to me, I do try and respond. I think that is part of having those open and honest dialogues that we need to have with the public. We need to have that to ensure that the public has a sense of trust in us. As I have said here many times, we believe in evidence-based policy, informed by expert knowledge and research, not ideology or polls.

And in 2018 election we had a policy that stated, ‘All politicians to be legally bound and required to act in the public interest’, and that we should place a cap on election spending, report political donations in real time, establish and enforce MPs expenses rules and remove some of our vague entitlements.

Now, some of that actually has happened, and I certainly think the Victorian Independent Remuneration Tribunal has gone a long way to hopefully getting the public to understand that this is done independently, that it is done away from this place—it is not us signing our own cheques. But we also wanted to see the extension of the powers of IBAC to investigate the misuse of these public funds.

Just to make it clear: I am not suggesting that Dr Cumming in any way misused any public funds, and in fact Dr Cumming did not commit any offence. She did absolutely nothing wrong, although you certainly would not think that if you had read some of the media articles and the attacks that she took on this. So in that context I commend Dr Cumming for almost falling on her sword today in bringing this integrity matter to the Council.

I actually stated yesterday that I was pleased when the government, through yesterday’s legislation, the Judicial Proceedings Reports Amendment Bill 2021, had recognised that their well-meaning solution had not been quite correct and had willingly come back in here and made those changes, which was positive. In some ways Dr Cumming is coming in here to highlight what may not have passed that pub test—and using one of her precious debating spots in this chamber to do that. It does show integrity, Dr Cumming; it does.

To highlight that mistake and tinker with our integrity rules to improve the way this place operates should be commended. We all know how difficult it is to find staff, and particularly when you are first elected. Yes, Dr Cumming and I do not have—

Dr Cumming: The machine.

Ms PATTEN: Yes. We do not have, I guess, the advantage of having the party structure around us, so there are not people there that have got electorate office experience that you can bring in quickly. Sometimes filling those gaps actually does require employing people close to you—while they may not be your permanent staff—certainly to fill in or just to get you going, get your doors open, get your emails cranking and all of those sorts of things.

But what Dr Cumming experienced and I think more importantly what her children experienced from that was unacceptable; it was absolutely unacceptable. I know that many of us have experienced this.

My electorate staff sometimes have to take a deep breath when they come into our office or an even deeper breath when they answer the phone because they know what is coming down the other end, and it is not nice. So we need people around us that we can trust, and sometimes, as we have seen in this case, it is family. I think we have all had a pretty torrid time online, and certainly I have. Certainly my family has been affected by that.

I had to block my nieces from my social media. They are teenagers and they are on social media, but they could not stay on even my Instagram accounts because of the horrible comments and the horrible posts that people were making.

My other close family ring me and say, ‘I would love to support you, I would love to say something nice, but I can’t because I’m going to get jumped on’. Having to protect our family members like that is very important. But I think people do need to understand and the public does need to understand that we are all humans and we do have families. And our families do not choose to come into this place; our families do not choose for us to be here.

Well, some of them may vote for us, but they do not choose to be affected. We never come in here dreaming that our desire to be representatives would have such an impact on our families. This bill goes to a lot of that. It goes to that expectation that the community has that we do act with integrity, that we do act with accountability and that we are here to serve the public interest, and I do not think there is a single person in this chamber that I would say is not here for the right reasons.

We are here to do all of that, but I think that message is getting lost. We look at the trust barometers. We look at the Edelman Trust Barometer. Every time we are seeing a decline in trust in our institutions, and this institution as well—our Parliament. This is dangerous in the time of COVID, in times of pandemic. It is dangerous if we see the trust in our government being diminished. We need to act at a higher bar. Our pub test has to be a much higher pub test than others.

We have to act with as much integrity and we have to act with and exercise as much good judgement as we can, and we have to be held to the highest standard. While it was completely within the regulations and the law for Dr Cumming to employ relatives, the perception out there was that this was not the right thing to do.

Dr Cumming interjected.

Ms PATTEN: And we listened to that—that is right—and we really do need to. I have avoided the attacks on the political parties—the ALP attacking the Liberals and vice versa. I try and avoid and stay out of those dogfights, because I do not think they do anything.

In fact what I do think they do is they diminish the trust in this place. If we keep yelling at each other, saying, ‘You’re a liar, you’re a liar’, well, I tell you, that sticks out there. If all they see is the negatives about everyone, then that sticks, and I think this is something that we all could reflect upon: the effect of our actions in here or the effect of our actions in the media and the effect that they have on this very institution.

So while this bill is a small piece of cutting and pasting from the federal legislation into a state bill, I think it is important and I think it is another step to really showing we take this job seriously. We take the privilege of being in this place, this privilege of representing our community very seriously. It is critical that there is trust out there.

As I mentioned at the outset, finding electorate officers—I have to say, while I am very grateful for the electorate office budgets, we do not pay our staff extraordinary bucks. They are pretty modest salaries for what we expect them to do.

We expect our staff to be available to us on the weekends if we need it, available to us after hours when we need it, available to do so many things. I mean, they become our family. I know in my office my electorate team is my family. We are close and we care for each other deeply, and we care for our electorate deeply.

As I say, when we were getting so much abuse coming into our office it was so hard for me to see our staff working so hard to help people and yet having to answer 60 phone calls a day and being told how terrible they were, how hopeless they were, how pointless they were, what liars they were. It was awful. I would never wish that upon a family member. I would never wish it upon a friend. But it is the work that we do, and I think it is really important.

I was thinking back to family members working here, and I have to go back to the minister for Fiona Patten, Inga Peulich, who employed her son. We used to joke that she just employed him so she could badger him, both during work hours and after work hours, because she had that type of relationship with him. She certainly enjoyed badgering us in this chamber as well.

I support Dr Cumming’s bill. I support the motivation behind it as well. I think while it is a small change, it actually sends one of those bigger messages—that we do need to stand at a higher level and we need to claw back the trust of our community. We need to regain that faith in the institution of Parliament, in the institutions of government, because if we are going to get through this pandemic, we certainly need to do it. I commend the bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 8/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (11:56): Just very quickly, I absolutely support this motion. The crossbench recognises that we need to live in a COVID-normal way and that, as a quarter of this chamber, we should have the right to have our position recorded, to have our position on legislation recognised. Now, this is not the same as last year; we are now with COVID delta, a far more contagious virus. We now have vaccines, which makes this more possible. We have a national recognition that go hard, go early lockdowns are the way to do this. I think this is worthy of discussion. I am happy that the Procedure Committee and the President are going to look at this. We do need to operate in a COVID-normal way. This Parliament does need to be able to sit, and the crossbench should have the right and the ability to have our position on legislation and on other questions acknowledged.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Ms Ratnam 7/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:22): Pursuant to standing order 23.29, I lay on the table a report from the Legal and Social Issues Committee on the inquiry into the management of child sex offender information, including appendices and a minority report. I further present transcripts of evidence, and I move:

That the transcripts of evidence lie on the table and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Ms PATTEN: I move:

That the Council take note of this report.

I am very pleased to present this report on the inquiry into the management of child sex offender information in Victoria. I think certainly on sex offences and sex offenders there would not be a single person in this chamber that was not passionate about preventing and stopping them. So in looking at what we could do to improve this, what we could do to keep our community and in particular our children safer, we spoke to different organisations and we looked around the globe at other models of the maintenance and the register of child sex offender information. I think it should also be said here that these are not supposed to be punitive registers. These are registers to keep people safe. We heard loud and clear about that. We heard from organisations that what they wanted was public awareness and prevention, and this report makes a series of recommendations there.

It also makes a recommendation that the Victorian Law Reform Commission should consider how we might change the management of child sex offenders and the register in particular and whether there might be instances further to what we already disclose—instances where further disclosure of information would be warranted.

I think this was a very thoughtful inquiry. I suspect we probably heard things that we were not expecting to hear—things like that deceased people are maintained on the register. Now, we are not entirely sure why, but there is concern that this might skew some of the figures around child sex offenders and that register. So I was very pleased, and I think I certainly probably changed my position throughout this inquiry, which I think is something that is the work of committees and it is why we do these things. So I would particularly like to thank all of the people who contributed to this—people who told their stories as well, and we know that that is an incredibly powerful part of the committee process.

I would really like to thank the team that prepared this very comprehensive report—that would be the research team of Vivienne Bannan, Samantha Leahy and Anique Owen, with the administrative assistance of Justine Donohue, Sylvette Bassy, Christianne Andonovski and Rachel Pineda-Lyon, under the management of Lilian Topic and later Matthew Newington. I would like to really acknowledge the very hard work they did—again in lockdown—to produce this report, and I would like to thank all my committee colleagues for their really collaborative work on this report.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Report tabled 7/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (10:20): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Judicial Proceedings Reports Amendment Bill 2021, just as I was pleased to speak on it last year as well. This, as Mr O’Donohue mentioned, is the second or third time around for this legislation. The background, as we know, is that the unintended consequence of the last well-meaning piece of legislation that was designed to protect victims inadvertently silenced victims who wanted to speak out and tell their stories. We fixed that, but now we are talking about those families of victims who, incredibly sadly, have lost loved ones to sex offending crimes. Certainly what is very sharp in my mind right now is that John Herron, the father of Courtney Herron, appeared before the justice inquiry yesterday and spoke about the death of his daughter. I think certainly wanting to speak out was really important for him. But that is not always the case. Last year we clarified the unintended consequences for living victims of sexual assault and really gave them the choice, and it gave them the ability to control their own narratives, to tell their own stories without barriers, or not, if that was what they wanted. It became harder when it comes to deceased victims because, sadly, they are not here to make that choice. They are no longer able to control their own story, and that is the complex issue that we are dealing with today. I think, certainly as far as I have heard from stakeholders, they have been quite pleased with the consultation that the government has conducted over the last six months.

This bill will allow the publication of details that identify a deceased person as a victim of sexual offending. It also introduces a victim privacy order scheme, which will allow persons close to the deceased sexual offence victim to apply for a court order to restrict or prohibit the publication of details that would identify their loved one. In effect this reverses the presumption that was built into the legislation that we passed last year, and it supersedes it.

I think, unlike Mr O’Donohue, I would actually commend the government for recognising that they had made an error and for listening to those campaigners—listening to the Let Us Speak campaign and listening to those advocates like Nicole Lee and like Nina Funnell. In fact sometimes I wish this happened more, that we acknowledge that we did not necessarily get it perfectly correct and we go back and talk about it and we come back and keep talking to the community, we keep consulting, and in that way we create better legislation.

But in saying that, I think there is one aspect of this reform that troubles me, and I note Mr O’Donohue has got a similar amendment. I mean, there are many things about the criminal justice system that trouble me, but this section in this bill is something that I will seek to amend. Actually, can I get my amendments circulated please, Acting President.

Independent amendments circulated by Ms PATTEN pursuant to standing orders.

Ms PATTEN: As it stands, when this bill passes, the victim privacy orders are good. They are a good thing. They protect that small cohort of deceased victims’ families who want to maintain their privacy in relation to sexual assault cases. But the ability to expand the scheme via regulation without parliamentary oversight means the scheme could theoretically be applied to an infinite number of criminal offences, proven or even alleged, and there is a pretty low threshold, that being ‘undue distress’. All of this could be done—this expansion of these, effectively, victim privacy orders—just by regulation. It would not have to come back to the Parliament. Effectively, suppression orders could be expanded to many other crimes, to many other circumstances, without any debate in this chamber

While I am grateful and I thank the Attorney-General for corresponding with me on this issue and I have no reason to doubt that she has no intention of using this power unduly or unfairly, what happens in the future? We do not know what will happen in the future, and I think the checks and balances of the Parliament for something as important as this are important and are crucial. Who knows who could be the next Attorney-General—maybe Mr O’Donohue. Who knows who it could be? And so I think the idea of leaving the door ajar for the suppression of independent free press—you know, these types of privacy orders could be manipulated in many different ways. Our proposition here today via our amendment is to simply remove the regulation-making powers. I note, as I said, that Mr O’Donohue has moved amendments to the same effect. So I think it is a sensible change that I would hope the majority of the house can support. Apart from that, I fully support this bill, and I hope that it does bring small comfort to the families that it affects.

I would just like to make a final note on those victims of other crimes that this bill does not extend to. I would hope that we can talk about that in future and that we can talk about how we might amend legislation going forward. But I believe that it should be amended by the Parliament, not via regulation.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 7/9/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (10:26): Pursuant to standing order 23.29, I lay on the table a report from the Legal and Social Issues Committee on the inquiry into the use of cannabis in Victoria, including an appendix, extracts of proceedings and minority reports. I further present transcripts of evidence, and I move:

That the transcripts of evidence lie on the table and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Ms PATTEN: I move: That the Council take note of this report. Despite the incredibly disappointing start to today and the information that we saw in the Age, I am very proud of this report. I think this is actually a foundational report. It is probably one of the first in Australia that goes into such detail about the use of cannabis and the current circumstances and the effects of the current legislation not just here in Victoria but we also considered legislation around the country and internationally.

This is, as I say, a foundational report. It is an extremely comprehensive report, and my thanks go to the research team and the committee team, who worked in really difficult circumstances. I mean, I know all committees when working under COVID understand how difficult it is to bring together people and to try and tease out sometimes very personal information while doing it over a computer screen, so I express my really deep gratitude to Kieran Crowe, Caitlin Connally and Justine Donohue under the management of initially Lilian Topic and later and currently Matt Newington.

I would also like to thank my colleagues on this committee, because we did do a lot of work. There were numerous submissions. In fact there were 1475 written submissions to this committee, which is I think close to setting a record for submissions to a committee. We did numerous public hearings, including a regional hearing in the town of Beechworth.

We had a youth forum here to really tease out the issues, because we know that the use of cannabis is far more prevalent in young people. We have 21 findings and 17 recommendations. The main recommendation is that the government investigate the impacts of legalising cannabis for adult personal use in Victoria. The overwhelming majority of stakeholders supported the need for cannabis law reform.

This was not about whether cannabis should be available or not. What we heard is cannabis is readily available. In fact over a third of Victorians have used cannabis and close to 30 per cent of young people regularly use cannabis. So this is not about whether it should be available or not. This is about how we regulate it. Right now Victoria spends millions of dollars criminalising cannabis, and criminal organisations make millions of dollars from supplying cannabis.

If we were to listen to the experts—for the last 18 months we have been saying, ‘Listen to the health experts’—we would be looking for reform, and this report really makes the case for reform. The findings in it are detailed, and the evidence we received was significant. We heard from the police, we heard from health organisations, we heard from legal organisations and we heard from the general public. In fact when looking through some of the submissions this morning I came across one by Regina Clark, and she wrote: Illegality of cannabis has created a … windfall for organised crime. It creates links between ordinary citizens and criminals that undermines faith in the law.

We looked at the education, or lack of it, about drugs in our schools, and certainly we have made some significant recommendations around improvements to be made in drug education. We looked at the link between cannabis and mental health, and we followed many of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System—that we need to better fund and support drug and alcohol treatment programs in Victoria. This is absolutely crucial.

We looked at the current diversion schemes and youth caution schemes for people who are caught with small amounts of cannabis or using cannabis and the need to probably reform those as well. I think this report and its findings really do deeply reflect the evidence that we heard, and I think that the evidence we heard is very reflective of where the community is on this issue: drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal one.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Report tabled 5/8/21

The Petition of certain citizens of the State of Victoria draws to the attention of the Legislative Council that the Government has created municipal councils to service the needs of their communities. Despite the rigour and precision applied in determining councils and their boundaries, substantial geographic, demographic, and economic differences exist, and will always exist, between them. These inherent structural characteristics such as population size, population density and community income levels are externally imposed and virtually beyond Council control. These factors determine capacity to raise revenue and contain costs (sustainable capacity) and have a substantial impact on council financial sustainability. It is widely acknowledged that metropolitan and large regional councils have greater financial capacity to meet their service needs because they possess the geographic and economic capacities and community income levels to support them. Conversely most rural municipalities, particularly the smaller, more remote, rural councils experience the greatest difficulty in doing so. They have been forced to cope in two ways: by greatly increasing rate levels of communities less able to afford them, and by reducing service standards because of the much higher costs they incur to deliver them. The result is that ratepayers in rural municipalities pay substantially more for properties that are worth substantially less than their metropolitan counterparts. This is a major economic injustice. Long term, recurrent grants are required to assist in flattening this imbalance.The petitioners therefore request that the Legislative Council call on the Government to take action to address the imbalance in the capacity of rural councils to service the needs of their communities, thereby lessening the difference in sustainable capacity between rural and metropolitan councils.

By Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (1255 signatures).

Laid on table.

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:06): I am rising to speak to Mr O’Donohue’s motion on a range of things, but I think most importantly a select committee to review the casino regulators. Two years ago I sought a motion of urgent public importance in this chamber to launch a parliamentary inquiry. It was not successful then, but it was clear then that there was not sufficient oversight to ensure that our casinos were free from criminal influence, that the gaming was being conducted honestly and that problem gamblers were being protected as the act requires them to be. It seemed, as I said at the time, that the gambling regulator just was not up to the job. It was not up to the job to mount proper investigations. At that time we said that the public had a right to know what was happening at Crown and nothing short of a thorough investigation by the Victorian Parliament would satisfy that, and yes, we have been proven right.

Now, a lot has happened since then. We have had the Bergin inquiry in New South Wales. And it was interesting watching the 7.30 report on the ABC last night, where Crown’s lawyers said, ‘Yes, we’ve failed. Yes, we are wrong. Yes, we have done the wrong things. We’re terribly sorry’. And I kept thinking to myself, ‘Where was the regulator in all of this? What were they doing?’.

As I said, this is something that has been of great interest to me for a number of years. When we released video testimony with Andrew Wilkie in a quite unusual collaboration between state and federal Independents, again calling for action, that was a whistleblower who said he had witnessed the abuse of women. He had been forced to courier drugs and to break customs regulations. And at that stage we said that there needed to be an inquiry into the regulator. No-one was able to say that Crown was free of corruption, and now certainly we are seeing this with damning inquiries interstate and here in Victoria, where we have seen QC Ray Finkelstein run a very in-depth and a very detailed commission. I think we will all look forward to his report, but a lot of it will be stating what we already know: that Crown really thumbed their noses at their regulator.

Crown was reviewed every five years, and I remember seeing the recommendations from the regulator—you know, ‘This must be improved’, ‘This must be improved’. Five years on nothing had changed. Things like designing little sticks to put into poker machines so you did not have to press the button—I mean, absolutely illegal actions. When the regulator raised it with the casino, the casino basically failed. They have failed.

Now, certainly Mr O’Donohue spoke about the lack of staffing and the reduction in staffing, and when we spoke to whistleblowers from the regulator, they spoke to this and they spoke to the fact that they were stretched very thinly. So I commend the government in recognising this and in moving and certainly in Ms Cope’s review of this. But I do not think this select committee will interrupt that, and in fact I think this committee will actually assist in getting a better regulator for casinos and gambling in Victoria.

It may also show the failings, not just as the opposition would say, of the Labor government, but I think it will show the failings of Liberal governments in the past as well—that they have failed in their responsibilities. We talked about this being the biggest and the best casino in the world, and this goes back to former Premier Kennett and also former Premier Kirner. I think what we have now seen is, no, it is not. It may be the biggest, but it certainly is not the best. That casino should have been learning, but our regulators should have been fiercer, should have done their jobs, and I do not believe that they have done their jobs adequately.

As I say, I do commend the government for recognising this, for making changes, but more needs to be done, and I think that an inquiry like this that has been placed here will assist with that, because, as I mentioned, successive governments have failed to adequately regulate Crown. We have seen now the sort of frantic purging of their board, of all of their senior management, and share prices taking a dive. Crown is really facing an existential moment at the moment, but where was the regulator in all of this? How did it get to this? This should have been picked up. We know problem gambling is the cause of so much misery in our community, and Crown should have adequately protected those people, and, from everything that we have heard during the Finkelstein review and during the Bergin review, that was not happening. So why wasn’t the regulator making sure that was happening?

I think the public needs to have confidence going forward. We want to have confidence that the largest employer in our state is operating ethically, morally and legally. I think we can get there, but I certainly believe that this select committee will help us do that. This will certainly be about reviewing some of what has gone past, but it will also look at how we go forward, how we develop a regulator that can have the faith of the community but also have the teeth to ensure that we do not have the same problems that we have seen, the same corruption that we have seen, happen again in our gambling facilities in Victoria. So I am hoping that this will provide an opportunity to reduce the chances of repeating those mistakes, and I commend the motion.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr O’Donohue’s motion

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:57): I am very pleased to rise to speak to this motion, and it is a very simple one. It is about freedom and it is about fairness, and it is that simple but it is that profound. From the outset, and let us make this clear, I am not against the Lord’s prayer. I know it by heart. I used to say it many times. This is pro-religion. This is about disadvantaging no-one and making space for everyone. Should any member wish to continue to recite the Lord’s prayer here, of course they can under my motion. Should those of other faiths wish to recite a different prayer, well, they can. And for those of no religion, I invite you to reflect on your responsibilities and how you are going to serve the community while you are here. Why are you here? And I would urge all of us to reflect on that, to think about that, to consider the start of the day with a sincere moment of reflection.

This is not a crusade against Christianity, as some of the more hysterical voices and extremes would have you believe. Again, as I say, this is pro-religion and thus pro-Christianity. It is not some form of culture war. It is not cancel culture. The power that people seem to think I have is quite extraordinary. ‘Cancelling God’ I think someone from the other house may have accused me of. This is not about cancel culture, and those that are resistant to this are really arguing this on the grounds of tradition; that is all—that this is tradition.

And of course tradition is important. Our heritage is important. But it is not immutable, and I think it is certainly insufficient grounds to reject a simple change that reflects the changing nature of our community. Were tradition the key determinant to so many things, we would not evolve. Women would not be voting. Women would not be here in this house. Children would still be beaten as a matter of course in our schools and in our homes.

There are so many examples of this change. Change is how we progress our civil society, but it does not deny our heritage. Evolution in rules and proceedings just reflects and respects the changing nature of society and economies.

When this was first debated, and I would encourage people to look at the Argus of 1851, it was the first vote that was made in this chamber, and at that vote they opted against a compulsory recitation of the prayer. It was a very interesting debate. Most of it came down to the fact that they were saying, ‘If you want to pray before you begin Parliament, by all means do that—but do it outside. This is a chamber for everyone from all religions, from all races, and we should be respectful of that’. This is a secular chamber. It is not a church. It is not religious. Yes, we have angels surrounding us—little naked ones as well—but this is the Parliament of Victoria. This is a place where we are here to represent everyone in Victoria. And when the prayer was finally adopted by the standing orders in this chamber, nine out of 10 people in Victoria identified as Christian. Today that has halved. Today many, many religions are practised here. Today almost a third of Victorians follow no religion. Today half of our entire population was either born overseas or has at least one parent who was. And so today the compulsory recitation of one religion’s prayer has become divisive and disrespectful but also discordant to our society.

I know many of you have received letters from a range of people, but I just want to quote a couple that I have received, including one as late as today. A voter from Mornington said:

I’m shocked that such a practice continues in 2021, when we have come so far to remove discrimination. If a prayer was recited at my workplace, I’d soon be getting a call from HR.

I think for many of us when we have discussed this around our community—I know from my experience when I have discussed this with my community—the first thing is that they are shocked that we do it. They cannot believe that that goes on in a parliament—a parliament that they just assumed had a clear separation, a parliament that they just assumed was secular. Indeed Yehuda Hamor, who wrote to me today, said:

You start each day with a statement that automatically excludes me and people like me. I see it as an unambiguous declaration that you are not in a place to work for my kind. I understand that this insult may be a historical anachronism, but it’s insulting nonetheless.

So my motion is in the spirit of inclusion, and it is about being more inclusive in our daily proceedings, progress and respect. I mean, seriously, I think as someone who spent a lot of time—well, maybe not a lot of time, but some time—at Sunday school and certainly in religious studies, as most people my age grew up with, we heard about a Jesus who was very progressive. We heard about a Jesus who was there for everyone. We heard about a Jesus who advocated for fairness. He championed the downtrodden. He denounced the abuses of powers. In fact he was probably one of the most prominent progressives in history.

Now, as I said in an article yesterday in the Herald Sun:

Everybody has the right to religious faith. Nobody has the right to impose their religious faith. No religion has a spiritual or moral monopoly.

With freedom of religion comes the responsibility to respect others’ freedom to follow another god, or none.

The Age’s editorial said:

While Christianity is still the most common faith, it is evident that the religious and ethnic make-up of our state is far more diverse today than it was a century ago, when the Lord’s Prayer became a daily feature of Parliament.

They went on to say that they believed that:

… Parliament should reflect these societal changes—

and that they could—

… see a future where there is an opening of Parliament that is more inclusive of all faiths than the current practice of reading the Lord’s Prayer …

I would like to note that this is not something that we have not been talking about. This is something we have been talking about for the last couple of years. We certainly had the Premier a couple of years ago also agree that we needed to move in another way. And I actually appreciate the conversations that I have been having with the government about this—about how we can be inclusive, how we can greater reflect our community and how we can not insult people in our community by leaving them out and by them feeling excluded by the way we start our day.

I get this from most people that I meet. They want to see an inclusive parliament. They want to see a parliament that reflects the people that it represents. In conversations with different faith leaders, with different organisations, this came out clearly from them too, and I include in that the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Victorian Council of Churches and the Buddhist Council of Victoria. They all supported a quiet moment of prayer or reflection on the duties and solemn responsibilities that each and every one of us has in this place today.

We also had an open letter that was circulated today from eminent people across the community, and those signatories included people like Reverend Ian Smith, who is the executive officer of the Victorian Council of Churches; Daniel Aghion, the president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria; Eddie Micallef, the chair of the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria; Professor Gary Boumer, who is the UNESCO chair in intercultural and interreligious relations; Father Bob Maguire, a Catholic community leader; Professor Pat McGorry, professor of youth mental health at the University of Melbourne; and Simon McKeon, a lawyer, philanthropist, sportsman and chancellor of Monash University. In part, that letter that they were all signatories to said:

We believe it promotes community harmony, better protects freedom of religion and reflects the evolution of Australia from its Judeo-Christian heritage to its current and future diversity of culture and religion.

It is clear too that we can do this, but we probably should do this in both houses—and that is beyond my remit. But certainly if the knocks on my door and the emails that I have received over the past couple of weeks are any indication, there is a great willingness for change not just in this chamber but in the other chamber as well.

I note the opposition’s position—and this was I think very eloquently put by Mr Davis in the Herald Sun yesterday as well—but the point that they raised when we discussed this in the Procedure Committee was that we need to respect the rights of each and every individual. Now, in some perverse way, to do that we maintain a prayer that excludes people and we maintain a process that excludes a large number of people even in this chamber, not to mention the exclusion of people in our community. I think you just have to look at the census to see that that proposition of maintaining a prayer is utterly inconsistent. I think people who are opposing this motion are reading the community wrong.

A number of people from both sides of this house have privately shown support for this, and I understand that this has been difficult. I also want to just make the point that, when you look at this motion, this is actually about how we begin our days on sitting days. In recognition of that tradition and heritage that Mr Davis has spoken about, which the minority report of the Procedure Committee about this exact same issue spoke to, on that opening day when the Queen’s representative comes to this house, when we have the chamber filled with that tradition and heritage at the opening of each session—when we have the black rod, when we have that pomp and ceremony—that is the day that I believe that we can maintain that recitation. That is a day that is a tip to our heritage and to our tradition, but on a daily basis it would be far more inclusive and it would be far more reflective if we actually did something that reflects our whole community: a quiet moment where we could think about how we are going to behave in this house—how we are going to reflect and represent our community. That, I think, would be a very important activity for us.

Elizabeth Reid, who was the first women’s adviser in the federal government many, many years ago, was making this point, because she was arguing that a moment of reflection at the start of a council meeting would be more appropriate than a prayer. She said: in a place where you are going to conflict, where there are going to be contrasts of opinion, where there are going to be disputes and differences, maybe starting the day with silence actually starts the day in a better way to listen to others—to listen to the views of others and to be respectful of other people’s views. I think that that would be something that our community would love to see.

This is a compelling change, and it is based on the evidence that Parliament needs to evolve with the community. It is driven by the fundamental value of fairness, of justice. It is driven by freedom—freedom of religion and personal liberty. These surely are principles upon which we can agree. Anglican Bishop of Wangaratta Clarence Bester put it well the other day:

The Lord’s prayer is relevant to those of us who are part of the Christian society and … a secular state should not and cannot favour a particular religiosity or even where people do not adhere to any religion or faith.

He said:

No particular faith or religious tradition should have the monopoly of our ever changing society …

It is beyond doubt time to give all religions a fair go and all people their due respect. I commend my motion to the house.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion on sessional orders 4/8/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (10:49): I am sorry to disappoint Mr Finn again, but I do not go along with your line of argument there, and I think where you lost me was that you had not actually contacted the Ombudsman about this. If I was this concerned, the first thing I would have done is write a letter to the Ombudsman asking her to investigate this. I think that is how most of us expect this. But no, you have skipped a step, and you have decided to ask the Parliament to force her to investigate this. Now, yes, we have got every right to do that under the legislation, and I acknowledge that, but I am not comfortable with skipping over the first steps of actually asking the Ombudsman to consider this—just picking up the phone, making a call, speaking to that office directly—rather than taking this heavy-handed approach of asking the Parliament to force a fiercely independent office to investigate something on our behalf.

Now, if this was a referral for us to investigate it, well, so be it. Had you come here and said, ‘We asked the Ombudsman. We didn’t get much of a response, so we thought we’d take it to the next level and do this via the Parliament, do it via the legislation’, then I might have listened more carefully. What do they say? ‘When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck’. This does sound like political opportunism. I—

Mr Finn: When it sounds like corruption and looks like corruption it is corruption.

Ms PATTEN: Well, in that case the Ombudsman will investigate this, and I am sure—

Members interjecting.

Ms PATTEN: As I say, up until yesterday I was not aware that we could force the Ombudsman to take on investigations. I am now well enlightened of that—

Members interjecting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Bourman): Order! I am having trouble hearing Ms Patten. If she could continue without assistance, that would be great, Mr Davis.

Mr Davis: No, but she actually voted on that. She cannot say she did not know.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Bourman): That is great, Mr Davis, but I would like to hear Ms Patten’s contribution, thanks.

Ms PATTEN: I have actually finished my contribution, and as I say, I think there would have been far better means to achieve this.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Mr Davis 4/8/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:23): I am pleased to rise to speak to Mr Grimley’s motion. I think, following on from Mr O’Donohue, for the Legal and Social Issues Committee’s inquiry into the justice system: challenge accepted. You are right: the system is broken, and we do need to repair it and we do need to explore all ways of doing that. We need to understand fundamentally why people are in our justice system, what has caused them to get there. We know a significant number of people in our prison and justice system will come from five postcodes in Victoria. We know that this is about disadvantage and it is about trying to do things differently and certainly looking at prevention rather than, as we constantly say, dealing with these issues by putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Mr Grimley’s motion today is looking at expanding electronic monitoring for offenders and introducing 24/7 alcohol monitoring as a sentencing option. From the briefings and certainly going to the motion that Mr Grimley has put on the notice paper, the Hinch party would like to see a trial of this in Victoria.

At the outset I welcome the thorough approach that Mr Grimley has taken to this motion. We were provided, along with I think all of you in here, briefings and plenty of information that explained the rationale and the reasoning for Mr Grimley putting forward this motion. And Mr O’Donohue is right: the fundamental base of this is about reducing recidivism. I think that that is honourable and it is something that I certainly deeply care about, because as I mentioned, the system is failing. It is failing its victims. And one of the areas it is really inadequate on is alcohol and other drug treatment.

We know that our prisons now are almost de facto institutions for people experiencing mental health issues, issues with trauma, alcohol and drug dependence and homelessness, as we heard in our homelessness inquiry. In the last budget we put more money into prisons than we did into housing, so we really are looking at housing our disadvantaged population in prisons rather than in public housing. If you look at the IBAC report released yesterday, again, it shows that certainly our corrections system has huge problems. We have got prison officers bringing in contraband, stealing from prisoners and selling it on the market. Prisons are not safe, especially for someone with mental health issues, so any policy that diverts people away from them should be considered.

I certainly think alcohol monitoring of offenders can be another tool in our toolbox for repeat offenders. We know that well over half of prisoners who enter into our prison system have got alcohol and other drug issues. We also know that over half of them actually have mental health issues and for many of them that has actually been diagnosed. Mr Grimley has made a very strong argument for electronic monitoring, but I do not think it is a panacea to recidivism by any means. Whether it is a cost-effective way to reduce recidivism, I think that is worth investigating.

I must say that I was surprised when we reached out to some stakeholders about this motion, and we reached out in particular to the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education—FARE. They were extraordinarily, emphatically opposed to this, which I must say I was not actually expecting. They said the devices are stigmatising, they breach human rights, they are expensive and they are ineffective; and the technology is unreliable, it does not reduce reoffending, it does not reduce prison populations, it increases incarceration and it does not treat problematic alcohol use.

Mr Grimley mentioned the trial in New Zealand of ankle bracelets as part of effectively their drug court over there, and they found that 32 per cent of offenders committed a crime while wearing the bracelet. The reconviction rate generally for offenders on community sentence orders is around 25 per cent, so they are actually seeing higher rates of reoffending. Look, this was a very small study, but it probably just shows that this is not a magic bullet. I will note that Mr Grimley does not attest that this is a magic bullet either, that he also agrees that this is another tool in our toolbox, as I said.

I note that Mr Grimley also in his briefings to us said that any trial would be a voluntary trial, so the offender would agree voluntarily to enter into the trial. But it was interesting when FARE reported to us that the largest group amongst the interviewed offenders in the New Zealand trial explained the testing had no effect on their substance use because they had already made the decision to abstain from drugs and alcohol. And I wonder, in a voluntary circumstance, whether that is who you are going to get. If it does help someone in maintaining their abstinence from alcohol, if that is what they want to do, then it should not be dismissed.

I think the evidence is out, which is why the motion asking for more consideration of this is welcome, and I certainly would hope that the justice inquiry is going to get an opportunity to do that as well. But may I also say: treatment, treatment, treatment. VADA, the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, said that even if we were to go down this path of drug testing as part of sentencing, then we need far greater treatment services. The wait times for treatment are absolutely appalling, and this will not necessarily be a cheaper option. I note that there has also been an investigation into the notion of using electronic monitoring in Queensland. The Queensland Human Rights Commission stated that electronic monitoring breaches the human rights of privacy, that the lack of controls in how the information is gathered is being used by governments and that it leads to stigmatisation and there is a possibility of vigilantism.

This Saturday is Support. Don’t Punish day, and this goes to the heart of what we are doing. Certainly if you look at the Sentencing Act 1991, punishment is just one of those objectives, but when we look at the recidivism rates of the people we punish, that is not working. We need to be looking at how we can keep our communities safe, how we can rehabilitate people and how we can provide the safety nets that people need so that they do not reoffend. Electronic monitoring and these types of bracelets may be one of those things, but I would say employment would be one of the major solutions. We know that employment is the biggest protector against brushing against the justice system. We know education is another protector and we know housing is a massive protector. In some ways, once we get all the things that we know in order, then maybe we should start looking at things that we know less about again. I certainly do not oppose this motion, and I thank Mr Grimley for raising it. I think it has certainly enabled me to look at this issue. We are all very busy and I know we do not get opportunities to do free reading, but I did learn a lot in considering this motion. I really welcome this being part of the discussion of the justice inquiry, and I will leave it at that.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr Gimley’s Motion 23/6/21

See motion here.