Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:40): I rise today to speak to this Education and Training Reform Amendment (Protection of School Communities) Bill 2021. From the outset I am greatly troubled by this bill. I think the objectives of the bill are obviously commendable. The process in 2019 where there was a task force that reviewed the issues around violence in schools seemed to be an excellent process, the recommendations that came out of that task force were excellent, but this does not reflect that. It has been interesting to hear so many teachers speak today. I do not think I had quite fully recognised the number of teachers that are in our chamber, and it is very pleasing to hear their experience in this.

According to an independent wellbeing report conducted by the Australian Catholic University and Deakin University, more than 40 per cent of principals reported being a victim of physical violence in 2019. Threats of violence towards principals have increased dramatically. In a survey that was undertaken by the Victorian Principals Association they found that parents were the main offenders in threats, bullying, sexual harassment, conflicts and gossip. However, students were responsible for most cases of actual incidents of violence. This included, as we have heard in some of the contributions, punching principals, throwing broken glass at principals, holding them up with a knife.

Yes, all workers should be safe at work, without doubt, and the data shows us that workplace violence is on the rise across the board. The number of nurses that are now being assaulted in health settings has increased by a shocking 60 per cent, and that is just in the last three years. We know that we have seen rises in family and community violence as well. Now, I know that in 2016 the education union pleaded for greater protection of teachers, pointing to the link between the rising number of students with a disability entering schools and a spike in violence against teachers. This certainly does go to the nub of the advocacy and the letters that I have received during our investigation and review of this bill.

Does this bill address the rise in violence in our school communities? Does this bill address the rise in violence against staff from students? No. As I mentioned, that task force in 2019 made 12 recommendations on preventing and reducing violence and aggression in schools. The recommendations went towards preventing violence and said that it required a sustained, four-tiered, multifaceted approach. Building positive school climates and upskilling the education workforce, strengthening schools as safe workplaces, strengthening early intervention and information sharing and enhancing support for students with highly complex needs—all very sensible recommendations and very sensible broad objectives. They then went deeper into that with their recommendations, and these included maintaining the Safe Schools program, addressing violence and building cultural safety—the resilience that we want to see schools provide or help our students achieve.

It also talked about educating support staff and building skills in trauma-informed education strategies. I certainly heard Dr Bach, Mr Grimley and Ms Bath all speaking about the challenges that teachers had and the skills that they had to have to deal with those, which are really commendable. But the recommendations from this task force was that there needed to be more. It did say to consider ‘the benefits and risks of legislative change that enables harsher penalties for threatening or aggressive conduct towards school staff’. That is the only part of the task force recommendations that goes towards this bill—the only part. My team would say that maybe the benefits had been considered but certainly not the risks of this legislation for the families, the community and, ultimately and most importantly, the children.

Serious cases of violence and the threat of violence can and should be dealt with through existing legal mechanisms, notably personal safety intervention orders issued by a magistrate and obviously—obviously—when urgent assistance is required, the police. Now, the government has not explained to me or to the stakeholders that I spoke to why the police and personal safety intervention orders are not adequate, why we need more. I note that this is effectively creating a parallel system, but it is a parallel system where an official without legal training, without any I would say procedural fairness, can basically issue an intervention order, can actually even order a parent to participate in a program. If this is about addressing an imminent risk with a temporary measure, is that the time that you pull out your notebook and write in an interim order—when there is an imminent risk? I would say that is actually the time that you would ring the police.

I have got a number of questions that have been raised with me. I spoke to a number of stakeholders. I have heard from the members of the government that they had great consultation with Parents Victoria. Parents Victoria do not agree that this was good consultation. In fact I have two pages of questions from Parents Victoria about this. Probably the most important one is: what does harmful, threatening or abusive mean? I note that Mr Grimley also has raised a number of questions from Parents Victoria.

Also concerning was that the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service are listed as a supporter of this bill. It has been said that they support this bill, that they have been consulted on this bill. Well, I do not know if anyone else got today’s media release. They do not support this bill. They have huge concerns about this bill. They have said that the Parliament may have been misled by statements that they support this bill, because they do not. They think that this bill will create unfair outcomes for Aboriginal children and parents—and they are right.

I have not heard any evidence either today in the contributions, which I have listened to carefully, or in the briefings that we need this. Now, we know that education is a key protective factor that reduces the chances that marginalised children and particularly Aboriginal children will come into contact with the criminal justice system. We know keeping them in school is one of the most important ways of keeping children out of the justice system. Keeping kids engaged in school is so important.

I am sure that many of us have had an opportunity to read the landmark report Our Youth, Our Way, which was published this month by the Commission for Children and Young People. It found that leaving school early or experiencing chronic difficulties engaging in education while at school can push some children and young people towards the youth justice system. Now, I know that we all know that. Excluding parents from engaging with their children’s education risks those students themselves becoming disengaged. I think Mr Grimley also said if there is a parent that obviously has some issues I suspect that the best thing we need to do is keep that child engaged with the school.

So disengaging from the parent runs the real risk of disengaging that child. In 2016, 10.6 per cent of 15- to 24-year-olds in regional Victoria were disengaged with education compared to 8.4 per cent in the greater capital cities. Over 1 million kids are enrolled in school in Victoria, and that means that over 100 000 of them are disengaged. Now, I do not believe that this bill will service those families, and instead it will probably drive more children to disengagement.

The powers in this bill are highly intrusive and would ordinarily only be exercised by a court. Again, I say you are asking a principal to make some extraordinary considerations and decisions about a parent, including an order that could exclude them from school life for 12 months, and this does raise a lot of questions about how that parent can still remain engaged with their child’s education. Now, we also spoke to Amaze. They also have considerable concerns, and I know and I have no doubt that many of you have had meetings with parents of children who are on the spectrum, parents of children with disabilities and with special needs, and the fights and the battles that they go through to ensure that their child gets the education that they need and deserve—they are constantly battling at it. Today I raised as a constituent question that the Northern School for Autism does not have enough electricity at their school. They are running on generators because they have received no funding, because they have been overlooked time and time again for funding.

So yes, I think you are going to get some parents who are frustrated, but you know what? Disengaging them from the education system, telling them they cannot come near the school, that they cannot comment, that they cannot drop their kids off at school, is not the answer, and this is why I am really concerned about this bill. We also do not know what it means, and I think Mr Grimley raised this in his contribution—we do not know how many times, what harmful gossip is or what it means to make a threatening remark on social media, and I know from personal experience that threatening remarks on social media are viewed and read in very different ways by lots of different people. I think that the rights of families and children may be limited by the proposed bill. It interferes with the ability of parents, carers or family members who are subject to an order to attend school events, accompany children on excursions and school camps, volunteer at the school, communicate with school staff or otherwise engage with a child’s education at school.

What our community needs and what was recommended by the Protective Schools Ministerial Taskforce are safe and effective circuit-breakers to prevent violence and more clearly define mechanisms for addressing underlying causes of anger and frustration and for setting relations right and in the interests of all children who have a right to be educated in our school system. That is what the task force recommended. This bill does not do that. I will not go on, but South Australia and Queensland have taken a very different approach. South Australia included a statewide bullying prevention strategy. That was engaging with students, teachers, principals, parents and carers, and that appears to have great support from all different groups of people. The Queensland state government also recognised the need to increase support funding for children with disabilities and behavioural difficulties. They focused on student engagement and identified an engaged student as one who participates in all areas of school, feels included in the school, has feelings of belonging and is personally invested in and takes ownership of their learning.

This bill does not do this. This bill does not even attempt to do this, so I am greatly concerned about it. I am greatly concerned that the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service has not supported this bill.

They are feeling very frustrated that the Parliament may have been led to believe that they did support this bill. They are very concerned about the impact that this bill will have on the families most in need of support and the most marginalised children in Victoria.

Really, if there are problems like this, we should be dealing with them. We should be de-escalating this. We should not be kicking these parents out of the school family. We should be embracing them. We should be looking at early intervention to do this. That is what I want to see. That is what the task force recommended. That is not what is in this bill.

I have got a few questions which I will leave to the committee process, but in its current form the Reason Party cannot support this bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 22/6/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:33): I rise to speak on the State Taxation and Mental Health Acts Amendment Bill 2021. We could be forgiven for thinking that that is not what we were speaking about when we were listening to Mr Finn. This bill does a lot of things. It looks at first home owner grants, it looks at temporary exemptions and concessions for the transfer of new homes, it certainly looks at amending some of our land tax rates. It also looks at amending some of our stamp duty rates and, as has been predominately discussed today, it looks at putting a surcharge levy on our payroll tax for certain large corporations, a levy which will be hypothecated and directed to mental health in this state. This was absolutely one of the more significant recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

We know we have a mental health crisis, and certainly we have heard stories. We have heard testimony from almost every speaker today about that, and I do not think a single one of us has not been personally affected by mental health. Not a single one of us has not tried to help a desperate constituent get a family member or a loved one into help. Not a single one of us has not received tragic and urgent phone calls and messages from our constituents asking for our help. As someone who has sat on the Legal and Social Issues Committee for a number of years now, the number of times that mental health is raised as a symptom of other issues or as a result of other issues—whether that is misuse of drugs, whether that is homelessness, whether that is criminal behaviour, mental health is just always in the picture, almost always part of the problem, but almost always also part of the solution.

So to commit to fixing our mental health system we have to find the money, and how do we do that? I do not like taxes, and I appreciate I had a very good conversation with the Business Council of Australia. It was very far-reaching, but one of the questions that no-one seems to be able to answer who opposes the increase in or the levy on the payroll tax is: where will we find the money? How will we respond to that recommendation by the royal commission that we establish a dedicated stream of funding for mental health? How will we do that?’. And the business council were representing their members, and I completely understand that, and I think they represented them well. They also quite rightly gave me examples of where their members—Woolworths, large mining companies, large banks like the Commonwealth Bank—actively did help their employees with mental health programs within their businesses, and I commend them for that.

But as I was thinking about it last night I was thinking, ‘Well, if I was asked to pay a mental health levy, if I was asked if I would pay a levy that would be some 0.5 per cent’—when I had a business it would have been maybe 1.5 per cent of my salary bill—‘without a doubt I would have said yes’, and I do not think there are many Victorians who would not say, ‘We need to fix our mental health system, and we understand it needs money to do that’. And as I reflected as someone who has run a small business—this levy is not going to affect small businesses, it is really only going to affect a few large businesses—I thought, ‘As a small business operator I would’ve not had any hesitation in supporting this’. And in looking at that and in speaking to the Business Council of Australia, they said, ‘Well, this will be passed on. The customer will end up paying this’, and again I kind of thought, ‘Well, okay’, because not a single one of us has not been affected by mental health. Not a single one of us has not been desperate to find a service or to help someone find a service and not been able to find that service. So again, no-one has presented another solution.

Now, I do have one other solution, and that would be to look at the expenditure—and the incredible increase in the expenditure—of our prison system.

Since this government came to power it has spent over $4 billion on major projects in the prison system, and sadly the more we build—you know, ‘Build it and they will come’. That could not be more true with our prisons because we are now at almost 95 per cent capacity in our prisons. We are now going to have to build more prisons. We are projected to spend another $2.6 billion on our prisons. We will be spending a billion dollars on a new prison in Geelong, $400 million on a new youth justice facility and $190 million to put more women behind bars, so unless we change our strict sentencing system, we are going to keep spending billions on prisons.

As we saw in lockdown, as we are seeing now and as the Legal and Social Issues Committee heard in the spent convictions inquiry and will hear no doubt as we start embarking on our justice inquiry, we have an arms race on bail laws. Our bail laws are illogical, but it seems that one government tries to get above the other and tries to be more draconian than the other. Of course some people should go to prison, but it is ludicrous that as the crime rate has gone down our prison rates have gone up. We know this is because we are putting people into remand for short periods of time, not where they can seek rehabilitation, not where they can get into treatment, and in fact it has actually worsened our recidivism rates. You know what the real kicker about this is? That 53 per cent of the children in our prisons have mental health problems—diagnosed mental health illnesses—61 per cent of the men in our prisons have mental health illnesses and 65 per cent of the women in our prisons have mental health illnesses. If someone was to say to me, ‘Fiona, the solution is to stop building more prisons and to stop sending non-violent offenders to jail’, I would probably say, ‘Well, that would be very brave of you’, because I suspect the other side of whichever side of this chamber would suggest that would howl them down.

Getting back to the question of ‘How do we find that money?’, I know that I am not going to see a significant change in the way we deal with crime in this state. I know that there are a lot of supporters in here who would like to see alternative versions to incarceration. I hope that the justice inquiry investigates alternatives to incarceration, because, as I am laying out, we are spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on incarceration and half the people in those prisons have mental health illnesses.

So how do we find this money? If someone had suggested—as they did—that the Medicare levy be increased to recognise the national problem we have with mental health, I think most Victorians, most Australians, would have supported that. I think that would have been sensible in recognising and trying to reduce the stigma and discrimination around mental health by saying it is like physical health and it should be treated in the same way. It is not, but it should be. I hope for a day when a federal government will recognise that and will actually see funding mental health services as as crucial as funding our physical health services.

This payroll levy will affect 9100 businesses in Victoria. I am not a fan of payroll tax. I remember the days in the 1990s when Prime Minister John Howard said that with the introduction of the GST we would see the phasing out of payroll tax. That never happened. But I appreciate that state governments have very few levers to generate revenue, to generate income for their state. A payroll tax is one way to do that.

Now, some people say that we should have broadened that payroll tax and in fact every business should pay a payroll tax. Again, I would say that it is probably a very brave government who would suggest that more businesses pay payroll tax. In fact in this bill we are seeing an increase in the threshold of payroll tax so less businesses will be paying payroll tax, but certainly those at the top end will be paying a levy to help specifically fund our mental health.

As we know—and this was stated in the royal commission’s interim report—the economic cost to Victoria of mental health illness is $14.2 billion every year. This is $4.8 billion in lost wages, equivalent to 1.1 per cent of the Victorian economy, and $1.9 billion a year in cost to employers from lost productivity and workplace injury. When we think about the suicide rates and the cost to our families, why wouldn’t we be jumping up to say, ‘Let’s find the money to pay for this. Let’s do this’? The opposition were quite vocal in the media saying that they were going to lobby the crossbench to oppose this increase, and certainly I have received some correspondence on this, but no-one provided me with a solution of how they were going to pay for this and how they were going to turn around the $14.2 billion that we lose due to mental ill health by trying to spend $4 billion—and it is not $4 billion that this will be raising.

Despite all this and even speaking to the business council, we are still competitive in payroll tax. We are still in there. When you look at the increase in the threshold, when you look at the discounts to regional businesses in Victoria, overall Victoria still sits very modestly in the payroll tax—

Mr Ondarchie: And you’re okay with that.

Ms PATTEN: I am not a fan of payroll tax, and I will reiterate that. I would have liked to have seen the federal government, when they introduced that GST back in the 1990s, say that we would start to move towards getting rid of some of these types of regressive tax. However, when we are losing $14.2 billion every year to mental health illness, we need to do something. We need to turn that around, and we need to work out what levers we can do that with, because the federal government is not interested. So we need to do this at a state level. The federal government has refused to even consider the idea of a Medicare-type levy on mental health.

So how are we going to fix this system? I have suggested closing prisons and not building prisons. Now, I am fairly certain that I do not have majority support for that in this chamber. I know some of my fellow crossbenchers would be supportive of this. But at the end of the day, when I had to weigh this up and I had to consider, yes, the regressiveness of an increase of payroll tax versus the cost of doing nothing for mental health in this state, I came down on supporting us doing something and supporting us finding a specific funding stream, a dedicated stream of funding, for our mental health system that will build a better system going forward, that in the end will make us all the more productive and that in the end will positively affect and impact on our economy. It will also help the $1.9 billion lost to employers in lost productivity and workplace injury.

I would briefly like to also thank Dr Bach for having a conversation around exempting universities from this payroll tax levy. I thought it was a well-considered position, and actually I took it to the Treasurer to discuss and talk through.

I also had I think a very good conversation with the Treasurer about this, as I did with Dr Bach. I think the arguments around this were strong. We know that our universities have been under extraordinary stress over the last 18 months, and that is not going to change. We are not going to see international students coming back anytime soon. But I remember speaking to the vice-chancellor of RMIT some years ago, and he also suggested that their reliance on international students was not sustainable, that they actually had to change that model, and it had to change because they were entering into more and more competition from the countries where they were attracting their international students from. I am not saying that this will provide the catalyst for that, but I did get a commitment from the Treasurer that over the next four years $206 million is going back into universities through the mental health fund. So while we are asking them to pay the levy, we are returning that in even more significant numbers so that they can be part of the solution, so that they can be part of making this state lead in mental health.

I would just like to touch quickly in the few moments I have got on the other parts of this bill. Again, I would like to thank the Property Council of Australia, the Master Builders Association, the Real Estate Institute of Victoria and the many other organisations that did come and speak to me about the concerns about stamp duty and the concerns about land tax. I again listened to them carefully, and I very much appreciated how they came to their position, very much appreciated their concerns. As an MP who represents the inner north of Victoria I am all too aware of the skyrocketing prices and the inability of young people in my electorate to get a foothold into the property market, and as the chair of the homelessness inquiry I am all too aware that we need more homes in this state. Again, how do we pay for that? We all agreed, and in fact it was a unanimous report, that recommendation 1 was build more houses—build more social housing, build more public housing. In fact even when we looked at the individuals who contributed to our inquiry, all of them put ‘governments building more housing’ at the top of their priority list. You can see in numerous surveys that our community wants governments to act in this area. Sadly, we have to pay for that.

Now, I would love to see stamp duty go. I would love to see us move away from a stamp duty system. We are seeing jurisdictions like the ACT kind of wobble away from stamp duty. I do not think they are doing it terribly efficiently, but they are making the attempt. New South Wales last year quite boldly made the commitment to try and move away from stamp duty. Certainly I remember hearing the Treasurer say that this was of some interest and that they would be looking at this. They have not in this budget. But in weighing everything up—in weighing up how we are going to pay for the housing that we desperately need in this state when we have got over 80 000 people on emergency housing lists—now is the time to be building housing. Well, no. In actual fact 20 years ago was the time to be building housing, 10 years ago was the time to be building housing, but we need to do it now and we must invest in housing in this state, and that will cost money.

The property council said now is not the time to do it. There will never be a time to increase taxes, so in weighing this up I will not oppose this. I understand that we need this. Whether I am proven wrong and we see this means people stop selling their houses—the real estate institute put it to me that they will stop selling houses—or property developers stop building houses, I am gambling on this because I suspect that the market will still provide room for them to build houses with a considerable profit.

We have seen extraordinary increases in property values amazingly over the pandemic. Of course we have also seen people who are a pay cheque away from losing their homes. Right now casual workers are not able to get any form of relief—over a two-week lockdown they can get $500 for two weeks, which would not pay anyone’s rent, let alone their housing—and through no fault of their own they are not able to earn a cent. We are seeing people on one hand seeing enormous increases in the value of the homes that they are living in and on the other hand we are seeing other people who cannot afford to pay their rent. So in weighing those up, and I think that is what crossbenchers do, and it is certainly what I do—I do try and weigh these things up—I believe that there is no reason to oppose this bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 8/6/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:55): I move:

That this house:

(1) acknowledges that Wednesday, 26 May, is National Sorry Day, where we remember and recognise the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities, which we now refer to as the stolen generations; and

(2) urges all members to reflect on how we can all play a part in the healing process for our First Nations peoples, our nation and for all stolen generation survivors.

I am pleased to put this motion in my name, but I am also sad that we need to put this motion up. This motion goes to acknowledging that today is Sorry Day and that today is the day we remember and recognise that our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters were forcibly removed from their families and communities in what was called the stolen generation. We say that it started in the 1800s and we say that it finished in the 1970s—we say that. It is not true. It still happens.

In Victoria Aboriginal children are 10 times more likely to be removed from their families. We cannot change this without accepting the truth of history, and this is what Sorry Day is about. It is accepting that truth. It is acknowledging that truth. It is then reminding us to remember those historical injustices, those injustices that still press and scar trauma into generations—generations existing today and probably to come. Aboriginal people still die in custody. Aboriginal people are still far more likely to be jailed in this state. And I think despite how we talk about treaty, when you look at parts of our criminal justice system and the way that it so unfairly discriminates against people, and Aboriginal people in particular, we only have to look at our bail laws to see the injustice, where the onus of proof is put—and this has kept particularly Aboriginal women jailed.

I would like to think that there are some areas where we are trying to change this, and I was very pleased, with other members in this chamber, to have been part of the spent convictions inquiry and part of spent convictions bills that led to the spent convictions legislation in here. I acknowledge the really fierce and proud work and strong work that Woor-Dungin did for that, which helped us acknowledge that we need to change. We need to change what we are doing, because if we do not, we are going to continue to impress trauma upon people. I would like to acknowledge Uncle Jack Charles today for also working so hard and being such a strong voice in this area.

I would just like to make a quick note about a woman—and I think this really clarifies it for me—that we are helping in my electorate office. I will call her Rosie. We are trying to find her housing so she can see her children. She cannot complete the requirements of the reunification order to see her children because she cannot find adequate housing near her children. Rosie is from Bendigo. Her children were taken into the care of a family member in Melbourne. In order to satisfy the reunification order she must see her children multiple times a week, including picking them up from school and organising dinner—absolutely right, and we should be doing everything we can to enable Rosie to do that. But right now we cannot find Rosie a home so that she can be reunited with her children. We have raised this with the minister. We have raised this with the department. I think on a day like today it just further hits home the work that we have got to do. Even though we are in our 23rd year of Sorry Day, even though it has been 24 years since the Bringing Them Home report was first published, we are still nowhere near where we should be.

I think on a day like today—and I promise not to sing—I reflect on—

A member: Do it.

Ms PATTEN: No, I promised the staff in my office that I would not sing:

This story’s right, this story’s true

I would not tell lies …

Like the promises they did not keep

And how they fenced us in like sheep

Said to us, ‘Come take our hand’

Sent us off on mission land

Taught us to read, to write and pray

Then they took the children away.

I am sorry, and I hope that we can change things in a far more expedient way than we have for the last two decades. We can do better. We must do better. We must recognise the past. We must own up to it, live it and act on it instead of what I feel is a lot of talking, a lot of reports but not the action that is required to make the change that we so desperately need.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Ms Patten 26/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:53): I am pleased to rise to speak to this bill. It has been really interesting listening to the somewhat patronising comments that have come not only in this chamber but on social media and the fearmongering that has been rampant about what I would have thought was a very modest bill—not perfect by any means. From the outset I will say that I will be supporting it, and I am supporting it because we are in a state of emergency, a climate emergency. We are in a state of climate emergency. It is not on its way, it is happening now—fires, floods, storm damage, extinction, and at a scale we have never seen before. We must act, and we must act now. I am pleased that by making that call to action I have caused Mr Finn to act by leaving the chamber.

We talked about the one-in-100-year storms, but they are now commonplace. The one-in-100-year event is now once every few years. Our children are going out there. They are taking the initiative. They are the ones going out and marching in the streets, calling for us to act on climate, calling for us to act now. So this is part of what we can do to act now.

We need to work to protect our communities. We need to work to lower our CO2 emissions. Everyone needs to do that, and we as a state Parliament need to do that.

Now, it would be great if our federal government was doing more in this area—and I will speak about that a little later—but that is where it is really disappointing. In fact if that was where Dr Ratnam had placed her criticism, I would have understood that more. But, you know, I thank a number of people for the campaign that the Greens ran that caused us to receive a lot of emails from people and a lot of phone calls. In fact I actually really thank them because I have probably investigated this far more than I may have done previously. I certainly learned far more about the electric vehicle industry here and overseas. I learned far more about the EV market in Australia and overseas. I learned more about cars than I have ever learned before. I mean, I just used to like a yellow car, generally with a light on top, and we used to call it a taxi. Now we call it a commercial passenger vehicle. I never had great interest in vehicles myself, but this bill has caused me to learn a lot more about this and to speak to EV drivers.

EV drivers are not telling me that paying $240 a year is going to break the bank for them. In fact anyone I spoke to who is interested in buying an electric vehicle is not saying that a road-user charge will actually be the final thing for them to not buy one, because that is not why people are not purchasing electric vehicles today. They are not purchasing them because they have range anxiety. They worry that they will not be able to get from A to B. They worry that they will not be able to go on their school holiday road trips with those cars. Part of this package that this bill is a component of is about addressing that range anxiety. When I speak to people who own electric vehicles—and I hope to be one myself very soon—that range anxiety goes out the window the minute they purchase a car and they realise that it is very simple and that it does not take much more planning than just knowing where the next petrol station is or knowing where the next charge is. I think there are some other areas that I will campaign on to change how we charge our electric vehicles to ensure that we are, wherever possible, using renewable energy to charge our electric vehicles. But this bill is not going to stop people from purchasing EVs. I can categorically promise Dr Ratnam that that is the case.

This is about a road-user charge. It is completely disingenuous to be telling the crossbench that we are not progressive, that we do not understand the issues, that we are stupid and that we are misinformed. The type of condescending rhetoric that we have received really says more about them than it does about us, because I have investigated this issue. I am comfortable with how I am voting today, and do you know why? Because when this bill came up, when this was announced, do you know what I did? I wrote to the Treasurer. I said, ‘Treasurer, I need to understand this. And while I understand you want to do this, my reading from my consultation is that we need to do more. We need to incentivise the industry’. So when I wrote to the Treasurer—I believe I have made this letter public—I said that I wanted to hear more about the expansion of charging stations across the state to address that perception of range anxiety, I wanted to see the government fleet purchase and I wanted to see plans and targets for how we are going to transition our government fleet from combustion to electric vehicles. The government has announced that they will be purchasing 400 electric vehicles to form part of the government fleet.

When I spoke to Volkswagen, Hyundai and many other car traders, they were very pleased with that, and they said, ‘That is actually what we need’. This is the type of lever that we as governments can use to expand the number of EVs on the road, and that also flows into the second-hand market.

As part of not just saying no and actually sitting at the grown-ups table, I spoke to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change about this and asked her where we were going with targets for our government fleet for EV.

Mr Ondarchie: Did she know?

Ms PATTEN: She assured me that they have got a business plan now and that they expect to be able to provide us with targets in August–September this year. That is on top of the 400 that they have announced and have budgeted for now.

We asked for stamp duty exemptions. We asked for registration fee waivers. We asked for toll waivers. We asked for discounts. We asked for interest-free loan programs. We asked for incentives for purchasing vehicles. And that was based on the evidence that we received. That was based on the consultations that we did. This was at their request, and I will be pleased to alert the house that vehicle traders, car dealers, will be exempt from the levy up to 1500 kilometres, and I note that Mr Limbrick mentioned that in his contribution. And certainly in speaking to the Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce, they raised this with me and I raised it with the minister, and the Treasurer did come back and say, ‘Right, we are willing to provide an exemption here’. We understand the difficulties that there will be for traders to really encourage people to go out there and test-drive EVs, to go out there and get them on the road but then have to pay sometimes what might be a minuscule amount of a road levy each time the car changes hands. So I am pleased to say that the government did listen to that.

But on top of speaking to the Treasurer and advocating for greater incentives, I spoke to the Grattan Institute. I spoke to the Electric Vehicle Council, the Institute for Sensible Transport, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Infrastructure Australia and, as I mentioned, the Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce. Do you know what? Apart from the Electric Vehicle Council, the rest of those peak bodies that I spoke to did not oppose this bill. They did not oppose the idea of a user charge. Now, certainly they had suggestions on how you might make it better, and I think that will be something that I will continue to advocate for to improve this.

When you look at some of the reports by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), guess what? It was not road-user charges that they thought would discourage people from taking up electric vehicles, it was the cost. It was not only the cost, but it was also the lack of range. And I do not mean range anxiety—the lack of range of a car—I mean the lack of absolute range. There are barely 20 models to choose from in Australia. Now, that is not the Victorian government’s fault. In fact if we were to look at how to improve the range of models in this nation, we actually need to speak to the federal government. The federal government could do something about that today, and I will touch on that a little bit later.

But in speaking to all of them, one of the biggest impacts was the up-front cost—the financial costs for up-front purchases—and that is why I was pleased to see what the government did. And I am sure that it was not me, but I am sure that I had some part in pushing for greater incentives. So, yes, there will be a $3000 incentive for 20 000 electric vehicles over the next four years. Now, I hear: ‘Oh, that’s nothing. That won’t do anything’. I can tell you: ARENA, Infrastructure Victoria, the Grattan Institute and many other organisations will say, ‘That will actually provide the incentive. That is what people need to do’.

Look at what Norway is doing. Now, Norway is put as a leader here in bringing out electric vehicles. I do not think that there would be a government in Australia that would be brave enough to do what Norway does. Norway does not necessarily provide great incentives for electric vehicles; Norway taxes and taxes and taxes petrol cars. They tax cars that are not low emission, and that is actually where we have got the problem here. Because we have no emissions regulations, because we have no fuel efficiency standards in this country, we are getting all of the cars that the rest of the world reject. It is impossible for Volkswagen Australia to do a deal to bring out electric vehicles for Volkswagen, because every single one of them is being sold into Europe because Europe is saying, ‘If you don’t sell an electric vehicle, you will be charged for selling a petrol vehicle’.

Every single report—from Infrastructure Victoria, from the Grattan Institute, from the Institute for Sensible Transport—is saying, ‘What we need is incentives on purchases. What we need is a rollout of infrastructure. What we need is campaigns around electric vehicles’. If you actually do not just say no, if you actually go to the table and negotiate on these things, I think you do the right thing for your community. You do not say, ‘No, no-one should pay this tax’, or, as I was hearing from some, ‘Yes, we should have this tax, but not now’. If not now, when? If we do not start levying road users now, when will we? In 2025? Is that going to be a better time to levy electric vehicles? What is the four years difference going to make? Because there will be more on the road, so that will mean that more people will be willing to pay the levy?

As the Liberal Democrats say, a user charge actually makes sense. It is actually, I think, a fair and efficient way of raising revenue. We do it with our public transport. We do it with many things, and this is no different. As I say, this is a good measure going forward, and the package that this is part of is good. It is sensible. Why should EVs not have a user charge? Let us remember, when we are talking about a user charge we are talking about about $240 a year, which is far less than a petrol car would pay through the fuel excise. But there is also the $100 waiver on registration fees, there is also the $3000 incentive and there is also the sheer fact that it is a cheaper car to run.

So this all makes sense, but what seems to not be discussed so much by some of the opponents of this bill is what we really need to be doing is having less cars on our road at any one time. We need to deal with congestion. This probably will not do that. In fact some of the research says that once people get EVs they actually drive more, not less. They actually are on the road, and having been in some of them I think it is because they are quite a delight to drive and be in. But a traffic jam is a traffic jam, whether it is an EV, an electric vehicle, or a combustion vehicle.

So what do we do to address that? Road user charges can do that. They can start incentivising people not to use their cars by encouraging people to save money. If they do not use the roads, then they do not pay for them, which I strongly believe is where we should be going here. Also, vehicle emission standards: if we could get some CO2 emission standards for our cars, if we could get some form of fuel efficiency standards for our cars, we would stop being the dumping ground for all environmentally unsound cars in the world, because right now we are the dumping ground. We are the dumping ground for high-emission cars, for cars with poor fuel efficiency.

Going forward I would like to see us doing more around a road-user levy, and that will be extending it to most people. This will require federal government commitment to electric vehicles. This will require federal government commitment to setting up standards for CO2 emissions on vehicles. But we could also do things like shift the TAC premiums from the fixed upfront cost to a per-kilometre cost. For example, you are paying the TAC whether you are on the road or not, but if it was actually part of a user-pays system, for every day I did not use the road, for every day I rode my bike, for every day I walked or for every day I caught the train or the tram that would come off what I like to call my rego payments. That would reduce that.

If we also look at when we charge electric vehicles—and I think this is something that I will be looking at significantly over the next few months and over the next few years—we need to ensure that we are not fuelling our electric vehicles with brown coal. We need to make certain that that is not what we do. One way we can do that is to ensure that people can charge their cars during the day, when we have got renewable energy flowing into our grid. That needs infrastructure. That probably needs planning changes so that car parks—whether they are work car parks or retail car parks—have got charging stations, have got places for people to charge during the day. I would like to see discounts for those zero-emission vehicle owners that actually do charge their vehicles on renewables.

There is so much more that we can build on this, but this gives us the foundations to start building on moving towards zero emissions in Victoria. I think it is reckless for people to say, ‘Let’s just not do it now, because it’s not good enough and it’s a big old bad tax’. It is a user levy. It is the way of the future. It has the support of the peak bodies here. I understand that the Electric Vehicle Council says, ‘Not now, maybe later’, but you know, when you are introducing a levy there is never a good time. I think that this levy, that will save—

Mr Finn: She loves taxes.

Ms PATTEN: I like user charges. I like user-pays schemes. I actually think it is equitable and I think it is fair. I would say that this bill is not perfect—I think the plug-in cars have got probably a bit of a bad deal out of it—but I will continue to go to the table. I will continue to knock on the government’s door to work out ways to improve it, because standing on the sidelines shouting ‘No’ and saying ‘It’s a disaster, it’s a disaster’ like I am Chicken Little and the sky is falling in is not going to make it better. It is not going to get us to zero emissions. It is not going to expand our EV fleet, which we must do. I would encourage people to support this bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 25/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:44): I am pleased to rise to speak to this amendment bill, the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Amendment Bill 2020. I am pleased that we are speaking about it today, because tomorrow is International Harm Reduction Day and this bill is a harm reduction bill. This bill is not—as we normally see when we see an amendment to the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981—about greater criminalisation, where we see increases in penalties and the broadening of offences under this legislation for people who use drugs.

Now, people use drugs for a lot of reasons, but those who use them problematically—90 per cent of them at least will have trauma in their history. They will have childhood abuse. They will have sexual abuse. They will have incredible disadvantage. And what we do? We lock them up in prison and we punish them for the harms that others have perpetrated against them, the harms that have caused them to move to harming themselves or numbing themselves from the pain and the pained bodies they are experiencing. So it is refreshing to see a bill that does not do this.

This bill is simple. It does two things. It makes naloxone easier. At the moment we have been rolling out naloxone in a far greater capacity than we have in previous years. Compared to other jurisdictions, we are well ahead of the curve in our naloxone subsidised programs, and I commend the government for that. We have seen naloxone being made available at needle and syringe exchange programs, which really has increased the availability of it and has increased the use of it as well. Using naloxone saves lives; we know that. The statistics show us that 60 per cent of people who overdose are with someone else; they are not alone. So if everyone had some naloxone, if all people who used opioids had naloxone, we could save a lot of lives, and there are a lot of lives to be saved. In 2018, 540 people died of an opioid overdose. That is greater than the road toll, significantly more than the road toll. And this is not just people who use heroin and the incredibly maligned poor citizens of North Richmond who are using the injecting room—

Ms Crozier: What about the residents?

Ms PATTEN: Many of them are residents of North Richmond. I was down there yesterday, Ms Crozier, just taking that up, and there has been—

Mr Finn: I didn’t see you at the public meeting though. That was disappointing.

Ms PATTEN: I was disappointed. I was not invited to the public meeting, Mr Finn.

Mr Finn: Everybody was invited. It was a public meeting.

Ms PATTEN: I would say that the people from that side of the house know that I am in North Richmond a lot, know that I speak to constituents in North Richmond a lot and know that I have been pushing to improve the circumstances in North Richmond for many years, long before you actually got on the bandwagon and started to try to break down and erode the good work that we have been trying to do there. However, let me go back to the bill at hand—

Members interjecting.

Ms Pulford: On a point of order, Deputy President, there is a disorderly level of objection occurring while Ms Patten is attempting to speak to this bill, and I would ask you to bring the house to order.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I was slightly distracted by Mr Limbrick’s conversation about the speaking order. If we could hear the member in silence, that would be good.

Ms PATTEN: Going back to the fact that we have well over 500 deaths a year from opioids, this is not just heroin, this is opioids, OxyContin, morphine and a whole range of accidental overdoses in this state. People are dying, and this bill will simplify the framework for the availability of naloxone. At the moment, in this sort of perverse way, the way it stands is the only person who is really allowed to use naloxone is the person that it has been prescribed too. Now, the person it has been prescribed to is generally the person who is unconscious, so this is about actually making it more easily available.

Some years ago, in fact just after I was elected, I did the naloxone training with Harm Reduction Victoria. It is a very simple process, and it will save lives. As I said, 60 per cent of people who die from an overdose are not alone. Imagine if we could save just half of those people. We could reduce the overdose deaths in the state, which, as I say, are tragically high.

This was a recommendation from the drug law reform inquiry, an inquiry that I initiated. I was also fortunate to be on the committee that ran that inquiry. There are 50 recommendations that were made by that inquiry in that report, and this is one of them—so one down, about 48 to go. I certainly think this is in the right direction—that we start recognising that addiction is a health issue. Addiction is not something to which you can just say, ‘Get over it, get better’, or the kinds of things that we used to say about depression, the kind of things we used to say other mental health issues: ‘Oh look, just get over yourself. Cheer up, cheer up’. It is the same with addiction. We constantly say, ‘If they could just stop doing it, if they’d just stop, everything would be okay’. That is not what addiction is about. Addiction is a very complex, complicated issue. And this helps to keep more people alive. Like the supervised injecting room in North Richmond, it keeps people alive. So I am pleased that we will see these changes for naloxone, and I have no doubt that we will see an increase in the uptake of naloxone as a result of these reforms.

The second part of this bill again is a harm reduction section. We had this probably not enforced, but if you were not actually certified or licensed to hand out a syringe, it was an offence to hand out a syringe. So people who might have been picking up syringes for others were committing an offence by providing them, and this bill finally and happily fixes that anomaly.

We know that Australia actually led the world in our harm reduction approaches. We were the first country in the world that actually started supplying needles and syringes to people who used intravenous drugs. And guess what? We did not get the rampage, the ravages, of HIV into our drug-using population that we saw in other jurisdictions. We saw it from the US to Russia, where their highest levels of HIV were actually in their drug-using communities. Australia did not see that. Australia was forward thinking and bipartisan, and we had the health minister and the shadow health minister stand on the steps at federal Parliament in unison to say we had to take a different approach and it had to be about peer education and it had to be about harm reduction. That was the beginning of our harm reduction principles that this bill goes to. So in fixing these anomalies, we are further doing this because of not only HIV but also things like hepatitis C.

Hepatitis C is not only life-threatening—and will eventually kill the person. It is also, from an economic perspective, incredibly expensive when someone gets hep C because they will go on to get liver cancer, they will go on to have liver damage and we will go on to support them. So the more we can do in preventing bloodborne viruses like hepatitis C, like HIV, the better it is for our population. And I think it also, to me, sends that important message that we actually care for our citizens—that we care for all citizens, not just the ones who are like us: we care for the citizens who are disadvantaged, we care for the citizens with mental health issues, we care for the citizens who are misusing drugs.

Both of these also go towards one of the biggest problems for people who use drugs in seeking assistance, and that is stigma—the stigma of being a drug user, the stigma of having an addiction. It is not something people want to talk to their GP about. It is not something that people speak publicly about, and we stigmatise them. We hear it very often in this very chamber—stigmatising, denigrating people who use drugs.

This enables some of those people to not have to go into a chemist and pick up needles. It means that, yes, they can continue to get them from peers and we can continue to ensure that if someone is going to inject drugs in Victoria, they will do it with safety, they will do it minimising their risk of bloodborne viruses.

I think we can go a lot further. We know that the biggest danger of drug use is the criminalisation of drug use. We know that the biggest harm to someone who uses drugs is the laws that prohibit the use of drugs. That is what kills more people. So I hope that this is part of a journey that we are going to take, and I hope it is not a long journey. I hope it is a path that we are going to go on towards greater drug law reform, to treating drug users and treating drug use as the health issue that it is and not the criminal one that we insist on perpetuating. We know the majority of the people who are in our jails use drugs or used drugs in the months leading up to them going to jail. So what do we do? The one point where I agree with Ms Crozier on this is that we do need more treatment; we do need more rehabilitation. We have a three-pillar approach to harm reduction, and that is harm reduction, law enforcement and prevention. Treatment should be the fourth pillar. Throughout Europe it is a four-pillared approach. Now, Australia led the way, I grant you, but we cannot stand on our laurels, and we no longer are leading the way. Other countries are doing things like decriminalising the use of drugs and decriminalising the possession of small amounts of drugs. Look at Portugal. Their overdose rates are nothing; I think they had five in 2018 compared to 500 here. So what they are doing is working. It has been 20 years. The evidence shows we can save lives.

Just going to another one of Ms Crozier’s points about people who use drugs and are under the age of 18, imagine being under the age of 18 and being so hurt and harmed that you have to numb yourself from life—being so hurt and harmed that you have moved on probably from alcohol to using injecting drugs. We need to keep those people as safe as possible. We need to connect with them as much as possible, and to deny them safe needles and syringes—why would you do that? That is like denying condoms for children, condoms for under 18s: ‘Just say no, and we’ll prohibit the use of preventative measures’. That is not how harm reduction works, and you cannot say, ‘Harm reduction for adults and not for children’.

I think this is a sensible bill. It meets some of the recommendations from the drug law reform report. I know that I join with some of my colleagues in here who will continue to advocate for greater reform and drug law reform. Rather than amending this act, let us repeal this act. I commend this bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 6/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:14): I am pleased to rise today to speak on the Cemeteries and Crematoria Amendment Bill 2021. It has been a long time coming, this bill, and there were recommendations for work like this to be done. But it was the work of Karen Williams’s family that finally made this happen, and I join with all the previous speakers in sending my sincerest condolences to that family and my gratitude for their work and their advocacy in this area to now change this law, as it should be, and to protect people from further harm, pain and suffering that is caused as a result of the exercise of rights of interment. As we have it now, in the case of a burial in a public cemetery, the act and regulations stipulate that the right of the interment holder, which is usually the person who paid for the plot, has control over the activities relating to the plot, including what is written on the headstone, what type of headstone and obviously the burial. This amendment changes that. This amendment protects families of victims of fatal crime, ensuring their loved ones can be released from interment when the perpetrator oversees the remains and burial arrangements.

My office spoke to the Cemeteries and Crematoria Association of Victoria, and they told me they were very involved in the drafting of this legislation and are very strong supporters of this legislation. We spoke to Rita Butera at Safe Steps about this, and she has also applauded the amendments and noted that they were just commonsense change.

We have over 550 cemeteries in Victoria, and as we have heard from many people they can be seen as a place of gloom or of sadness, but really they are a place where people can go and reflect. They can go and think about loved ones who have died, consider the wonderful lives that they had and the fond memories that they have of those people. They are often a place of social pilgrimage even. They are historical; they are social records that hold personal meaning not only for loved ones but also for all of us. They are places where people can move through grief and hopefully find a modicum of peace.

As speakers have said today, in Australia in 2020 more than one woman a week was murdered by her intimate partner, and in some cases the offending partner was also the overseer of the victim’s remains and burial arrangements. This must just be so painful for those families that have had to go through that, and this was the case for Karen Williams. It was her family that stood up to fight for justice, and as I mentioned, they have been the impetus for these amendments. In Karen’s case her murderer continued to try and control her life even after her life had ended, even after he had murdered her. He admitted to killing her, but he refused to say why or how—and still refuses today. Karen was 47. She lived in Melbourne. She was a fashion designer. She was a mother to her daughter, Sarah. She was a sister to Stephen. She was a friend. And she was murdered. Her husband has been jailed, and the time to be served has been extended. But he insisted that on her gravestone it read ‘A loving wife’. He was destined to be buried next to her. I do not think I can even imagine how that would feel. As I often do, because I find it a beautiful place, I was walking through Melbourne General Cemetery the other day with my niece, and I was telling her about this piece of legislation. As we were walking through and we saw the many graves with husbands and wives buried together, I could not help wonder how many of those were in this situation. When one woman every week or every 10 days is being murdered by her husband or her partner, how many of those people buried in that cemetery were also victims of family violence, were also victims of murder by their husbands?

It really struck me how painful that must have been for those families if that had occurred, to be going to grieve for their mother and noting that the tormentor of their mother was buried next to them. So this bill is much needed, and I very much welcome this bill. The Reason Party welcomes this. We are very grateful that it is backdated to 2005 so that the families of some of those victims will be able to have some say about where they are buried and, just tortuously, what is on those gravestones.

Safe Steps reported that they have seen a 27 per cent increase in women and children accessing their services since the first COVID lockdown. Now, when they are accessing these services, these are women calling from a public phone because they are fearful for their lives. This is when women are in the most danger. As I think Ms Shing pointed out, and some of the other contributors, they are literally at the most dangerous part of their life because when they leave is when they are likely to be killed. Every day 100 women and children in Victoria are placed into crisis accommodation. Quite often it has to be very secret accommodation. It has to be miles, if not towns, away from the perpetrator so that they can feel some level of safety.

I am pleased that this bill is before this house. I am pleased that this bill has been backdated. We still have a lot to do. But this is one more aspect where we can address those coercive controls that perpetrators have on their victims. Again, as my heart goes out to the Williams family, I commend this bill.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 6/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:48): I move:

That this house:

(1) recognises that:

(a) the ability to petition the Parliament is a right of all Victorian citizens;

(b) petitions are the only way an individual or group of citizens can directly place grievances before the Parliament;

(c) petitions provide an important tool for improving community engagement with the political process;

(2) notes that:

(a) a petition is a citizen’s request for action, but once a copy of the petition has been referred to a minister by the Clerk, no further action is required, which is a flaw in the parliamentary system of democracy;

(b) the Australian House of Representatives has a Standing Committee on Petitions which receives and processes petitions on behalf of the house and is able to inquire into and report on matters relating to petitions following their tabling;

(c) the process for petitions in the Victorian Parliament requires urgent reform;

(3) requires the Procedure Committee to inquire into, consider and report by Friday, 20 August 2021, on any sessional or standing order changes that would provide reform of petitions, including appropriate measures to require the:

(a) relevant minister to table a written response to a petition within 14 days of it being tabled in the house;

(b) Legislative Council to debate the issue raised in a petition upon reaching a certain threshold of petitioners that is to be fixed by the house;

and calls on the government to implement petition reform no later than 16 September 2021.

I am very pleased to move motion 474 in my name, and while you can see it on the notice paper, fundamentally it is requesting that the Procedure Committee investigate how we can use our petition process more effectively and, interestingly, more democratically. It recognises that petitions are a fundamental way for Victorians to communicate with the Parliament to express their grievances, to call on action from this Parliament. But once we receive at petition in this house, what happens to it? Now, I am very pleased in the previous Parliament we were able to change the petition process to allow for e-petitions. This was pretty much the first time that petitions and the petitions system in this Parliament had been changed since Parliament was formed in 1856. And the petition process that we had in 1856, in fact the petition process that we had in 2017, was very similar to the petition process that we had in the 15th century. So not a lot has changed. This motion is requesting that the Procedure Committee looks at how we change this, looks at how we can better respond to the growing numbers of petitions that this house is receiving.

Now, as of today, this house since the introduction of e-petitions has received 335 petitions, albeit not all of them have been tabled in this house.

I would like to talk about the ones that have been tabled in this house. What has happened to them? I was curious. Where do petitions go once they have been tabled here? Once they have been put on this table, where do they go when they leave this table? Well, they go into a cupboard—they go into the petitions cupboard.

Mr Atkinson: It’s a very big cupboard.

Ms PATTEN: It is a very big cupboard, Mr Atkinson. It is a very big cupboard. In fact they are never thrown away I am assured by the reliable tables office. They eventually might leave this house, yes. They may leave this house. They may go to some place where we archive all of the words and the papers that have come out of this chamber and this Parliament, but they are never destroyed. Unfortunately what does not happen—

Members interjecting.

The PRESIDENT: Members, I am struggling to hear Ms Patten.

Ms PATTEN: Unfortunately what does not happen is a response. What does not happen is an action, unlike other jurisdictions that have very robust petition systems. I have to remember that we did speak about this last year, but I would turn to parliaments like Scotland’s, which has a very robust petition process. Once a petition is tabled there it goes to a petition committee and then that committee considers what action the Parliament should take on it. If a petition was to be tabled in the German parliament and that petition had received over 50 000 signatures, there would be a public hearing. There would be a debate about the issue that that petition was bringing to the Parliament. In other parliaments if it is over 100 000, you could almost say that it needs to get acted on. In fact that is the rule in the United States: if there are over 100 000 signatures on a petition, the White House in the United States must act on it.

I think many of the people who petition us would actually like a response. They would like the minister to write to them, and right now because we have e-petitions responding to the people who signed a petition is a relatively simple process. Through changes that I hope the Procedure Committee will investigate, will consider, we could improve the communication with our constituents, between the community in Victoria and this Parliament. Because as has actually been raised today, trust in government is ever diminishing. We sit at a very low level of trust for governments in Australia, in fact internationally. I think addressing the way we deal with petitions is one way to address that lack of trust in our parliaments. It is to show that we actually do care about the considerations of our community, that when they do petition us we will act, we will respond to what they have called for.

This could be a very simple system. As I said, Scotland has a very sophisticated system, but there are simple processes where a petitions committee could consider whether this might be a reference to one of our standing committees, whether it just requires a ministerial response or whether it requires a debate in this house. In fact shortly after the debate on this motion we will actually to statements on papers, petitions and reports. That may be a time when we could formalise the responses to petitions that are brought before us.

I note that Mr Davis has put forward another motion on petitions, asking the Procedure Committee again to consider how we respond to petitions, how we accept petitions.

So I would like to move, and I do not think there is anyone in disagreement with me, that this motion be agreed to, and that the Procedure Committee inquire into, consider and report by 20 August on any sessional or standing order changes that would provide reform of petitions, including appropriate measures to require the relevant minister to table a written response to a petition within 14 days of it being tabled and the Legislative Council to debate the issue raised in the petition upon it reaching a certain threshold of petitioners that is to be fixed by the house. This is happening all around the world. This is a modern way. This is what our community expects.

When our community puts the effort into petitioning us then it behoves us to respond to that. It behoves us to react to that, to act on that, and I think this would go a long way to improving the consideration that our community has of this Parliament. We know this Parliament does some great work. We all see it. We see what happens that is not on the nightly news. We see what happens in our committee processes. We see the consensus that so often occurs in this Parliament. We want to engage. We are constantly asking the question: how do we engage better with our community? And I hear each day—we all hear each day—the members statements, where we hear all of you talking about your engagement with your community, talking about the issues that your community is raising, and we hear that again through constituency questions, through adjournments. But petitions are where the constituent, where our community, raises an issue with us that they want to see acted upon, and I believe that we can do better than what we do now. We can do better than just putting a petition in a petition cupboard and then into an archive. We can respond to those petitions. We can act on those petitions. We can, in this very simple way, show the community that we do hear them and we want to hear from them, and I know that that is the will of most of us in this chamber.

I am not sure that there are many other speakers on this motion, but I would—

Members interjecting.

Ms PATTEN: Thank you. There was a very interesting petition that was brought to the White House—it was an American petition. It was some time ago. They actually wanted to build a Star Wars death star to protect them, and they wanted the government to build one of those giant Star Wars death stars to protect them. It received 109 000 signatures—for the US government to build a Star Wars death star. They received 109 000, so according to their standing orders they actually were required to build this Star Wars death star. Now, as far as I understand, it did not actually happen.

A member: Such a shame.

Ms PATTEN: That is right; it is a shame it did not happen. However, in other places we actually see more sensible approaches to this, and we have seen real development in the response to petitions. We have seen it even in Australia in jurisdictions such as Queensland. In fact in our own Federal Parliament we have a petitions committee that also considers in much more detail a response to that petition. In some of those countries and some of those jurisdictions, very nicely, the people who petitioned the Parliament are written back to. There is a communication—‘Thank you for petitioning us’—and a response to the action that is sought in those petitions. Now, I think that is something that we should consider, and I think the Procedure Committee could do this very well. There is some great work that has been done before us. Certainly, the parliamentary library has written a terrific report into e-petitions, and it considers what is happening in other jurisdictions.

And it goes far and wide from Luxembourg to the Netherlands to Finland to Ukraine, Romania, South Korea, Norway and even the United Kingdom. All have more robust processes for petitions, and I certainly would like to see greater responses here.

Our young constituents probably sign petitions on a daily basis. They would be signing the change.org petitions, the do-gooder petitions—the whole variety of petition processes. They would be signing petitions on Facebook. But our petitions should stand out from those. Our petitions should really stand out. This is our community calling on us to act, and we should respond to that. Now, how we respond to that I think should be up to the Procedure Committee. I think there are many ways that we could do it, and we can certainly look at the other jurisdictions that are already doing different things and providing different responses depending on the size of the petition.

I know some of us have probably presented a petition with just a handful of signatures. It does not mean that we should be silent on that petition. This is still something that we should respond to. I know in my office in another form of petition will be the large number of emails that we all receive on certain issues. Now, I try as hard as I can to respond as much as I can to many of those emails. Sometimes it is not a personal response; sometimes it may be a group response; sometimes the emails that I receive are not personal emails. But, again, I know all of us have received significant representations from our community asking for our help—asking for assistance in some area. We do what we can in this chamber and we raise these on adjournment. We raise these as constituency questions. We advocate to the various ministers or members of government who might be able to assist our constituents, and petitions are just an extension of that.

Look, I would love to see the Legislative Assembly one-day adopt e-petitions. They have not yet, but I would certainly like to see some changes in the Legislative Assembly. Of course I have no way of influencing that but one day—

Ms Shing: They need to be more like us.

Ms PATTEN: If they could be more like us, Ms Shing. If they could just be a little bit more like us—certainly if they had e-petitions. But most importantly I would like to see the Procedure Committee of the Legislative Council investigate how we can more thoughtfully, more carefully and more transparently respond to the petitions that we receive in this house—the petitions where our community has sought our assistance and they have shown the support for the action they seek by either going out and standing at supermarkets and collecting signatures or going out there online and encouraging people to support the action that they are seeking.

So the action I seek from this motion, and I would hope that we would have the support of this house, is to request and require the Procedure Committee to investigate this very important matter and find and recommend ways that we can improve the petition process in the Legislative Council. As I said, in 2017 it was the first time we had seen some changes since 1856, and I think in 2021 we can take another step forward for a better procedure for the petitions that this house receives. I commend this motion.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Reference to Procedure Committee 5/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:05): Not surprisingly, I join my crossbench colleagues in opposing this motion. In some ways if this motion had been more nuanced, if this motion had been about how do we get the best out of the Legislative Council, how do we get the best for the people of Victoria, how do we get the best diversity of representation in this chamber, then I think it would have been a very different conversation. But the tone and the way this was taken was that for some reason under the current system, because of the current system, many of us are undeserving of being here. That is really what this motion goes to: that we do not deserve to be sitting in this chamber. That is not the case.

As Mr Limbrick has said and as I have said in this chamber and I have said in the media many times, the people of Victoria, about 25 per cent of them, voted for someone other than the Greens, than the Labor Party, than the Liberal Party, and that is reflected in the make-up of this chamber. I actually think that that shows the diversity of our community and it shows the will of the people. Twenty-five per cent of people did not want the Greens, Labor or Liberals in this chamber.

I will acknowledge I am not happy with preference harvesting for cash. I have certainly first read a bill to debate that, and I intend to pursue that. I am not completely happy with the way it works today, but that does not mean baby out with bathwater—that means working together to find a better system, to find a system that works that still reflects the will of Victorians, and this motion does not go there.

To say people here should not be here does reek of self-interest. I note Dr Ratnam assured us that she would be called a hypocrite, assured us that she would be accused of self-interest, and she is absolutely right. I have many times been sat in back rooms with not-so-faceless people from the Greens insisting that I put my preferences in a certain way. If I was to get any support from them, I must allocate my preferences in the way that the Greens saw as suitable. In fact because I denied them that in the 2018 election, they preferenced against the Reason Party everywhere they could. They tried their hardest to ensure that I was not re-elected here. I am pleased that they were not successful.

This motion has provided a catalyst for Mr Druery to come and visit our Parliament. I have seen him doing the rounds and knocking on various doors. I do not think it was about any of the bills that we will be debating this week; I suspect it was about something quite different. But the way that I go about trying to change that is by actually introducing legislation.

Again we have a motion here that is self-serving but does not go anywhere. It does not go anywhere to achieve anything. It does not change the Electoral Act 2002. It does not even try to change it. It basically says, ‘There should be more of us. You guys shouldn’t be here. Please discuss’. I think quite formidably the crossbench has discussed it, and there have been a few drop-mic moments. I would like to certainly compliment Mr Barton on his contribution here. It was passionate, and it is the reason we so admire and appreciate his presence in this chamber. As we have all said, we do not all agree with each other. In fact I think this would probably be one of the very few times that the majority of us agree with each other. Before Mr Quilty accuses me of self-interest in this regard, I would say that I do not think it is self-interest; I actually think that we are doing some really good work. We are actually going and sitting at the table.

We are not the government—we recognise that. We are not even trying to be the government, but what we are trying to do is nudge and advocate on behalf of our constituents, advocate on behalf of the platforms that we went to the election on, the platforms that we were elected on. I look around this chamber and I look at my crossbench colleagues and I see that they have done exactly that. For me when I was selected in 2014 it was voluntary assisted dying. That was the first thing I put up in this chamber, and we are now heading to two years of that being operational in this state. Supervised injecting room, drug law reform—there are a whole range of issues that the Reason Party has brought to this chamber and has effected change on. And some of those policies were not things that the government was necessarily going to travel down regardless—it was with advocacy, it was working with the government that achieved these things. I think this is something that the crossbench has done well.

Certainly we oppose the government on certain positions, but on other positions we work with them to make them better. There would be numerous instances where I know of the work that my colleagues have done in improving legislation, in getting change for the people that they came here to represent. For me, I represent the people of Northern Metro but I also represent the people that voted for the Reason Party not just in Northern Metro but across the state, and I am proud to do that.

I do not support this motion, and sadly I do think it is hypocritical and I do think that it reeks of self-interest. I actually will stand by this. I think that this is somewhat of a stunt. There were so many other things that the Greens could have brought to this chamber in those two precious times we are allocated to lead debate, but we are not talking about deaths in custody, we are talking about a group voting ticket. I oppose this motion.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Ms Ratnam’s motion 5/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:49): I must say: the revolutionary talk that is coming out of this place! I mean, normally we would be expecting to try and bring down the federal government coming from the other side of the house. That was a very interesting contribution, Mr Finn.

From the outset, I actually support a reduction in payroll tax, and while I do not recall 1939 and I do not recall—

Members interjecting.

Ms PATTEN: I am not sure whether the government side should take it as a compliment that Mr Finn wants to give the government back the right to introduce state income tax and take it away from the federal government and actually sack half of his federal colleagues.

It is an unusual day when Mr Finn and I are in agreement, but today is one of those days. I certainly have supported the reduction in payroll tax for many years. What I do remember was 1992. We started to see the introduction of the GST over the 1990s and the conversation about the GST. In one of those conversations about the GST I believe our Prime Minister in the late 1990s, Prime Minister Howard, assured us that the introduction of the GST would see the end of payroll tax. Now that did not happen. That did not happen. We are seeing it diminish. We see each year either the thresholds go up or the percentages go down. You look at somewhere like the ACT where I think the threshold now sits at $2 million. This is not about a small business tax.

However, I agree that this tax is not a healthy tax. To tax jobs is not helpful, and certainly it was the Australian Sex Party’s policy to reduce payroll tax and it is the Reason Party’s policy to reduce payroll tax.

A member interjected.

Ms PATTEN: Yes, we were radicals, that is right. I mean, I am all for taxing cannabis, but taxing jobs might be another matter. However, this motion does not do this. Today we have got two motions. We have got Mr Quilty’s motion here that is ‘payroll tax should be reduced, please discuss’, and the next motion will be, ‘Group voting tickets should be abolished, please discuss’. There is not an action there. We are not actually achieving anything.

Another brief point I wanted to make is that the crossbench gets a few small precious opportunities to lead debate. I get two opportunities a year to lead debate, and I am very thoughtful about those and I really work on them, and I know exactly what I will be doing in my next opportunity to lead debate, and I will be letting my crossbench colleagues know that very shortly. But we got notice of this motion—was it Friday or was it Monday—

Mr Gepp: Friday.

Ms PATTEN: late Friday afternoon. What they were passionate about was reducing payroll tax, and they were so passionate about it they decided to talk about it on Friday; you know, three working days before we were to debate the matter.

So while I support the notion of reducing payroll tax, putting forward a motion like this saying, ‘Let’s reduce payroll tax, let’s discuss reducing payroll tax’—it will not reduce payroll tax. It gives the great opportunity for a wideranging conversation about all taxes and about revolutionary ideas like abolishing the federal government, or abolishing two-thirds of the federal government. That would be another interesting debate; I am just not sure about whether this is the right chamber for that to occur. That may be a matter for the federal government to debate. On that point, they were the few points I wanted to make on this motion.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr Quilty’s motion 5/5/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:51): I, too, am very pleased to rise to speak to this Spent Convictions Bill 2020. When I was thinking about what to say about this bill, I actually found it quite hard to resolve where I would begin on this. Over the last few years I have had a number of opportunities to speak about the controlled disclosure system for historic convictions, many times in this house and also outside, and this bill is similar to the one that was tabled in this house two years ago—on 4 February 2019, to be precise—but, to be honest, this bill is better. This bill is better because the community has contributed to the formation of this one. This bill reflects the testimony of the people and organisations that contributed to the Legal and Social Issues Committee’s inquiry into spent convictions.

And this is the bill you write when you are not the first one off the ranks. Very often Victoria can take the lead in progressive legislation—and we certainly saw that with voluntary assisted dying and we also saw that with medicinal cannabis—but this time we are certainly not the first. In fact we are the last state in Australia to enact spent convictions legislation. It is so fundamental, and I think, as Ms Shing said, it is so important to also recognise redemption in our justice system. This is a crucial part of our justice system. It confirms our commitment to rehabilitation, not just punishment, and, frankly, we should have done it years ago. For many people today a criminal conviction is a life sentence. Sometimes it was a small idiot action, and sometimes it was something more serious. But it was just part of someone’s life. That moment in time should not define them, and that is what this spent convictions legislation will do. It will change the lives of many now and into the future.

I would like to acknowledge all the people that have been part of the campaign to have spent convictions legislation in Victoria, and there have been many. There have been dozens and dozens of organisations. We heard from scores of individuals who were willing and brave enough to come forward and tell their stories, but I also particularly want to acknowledge my office.

We wrote the first spent convictions bill in 2019. We worked on that; we worked with the community on developing that bill. It was a modest bill—and as a crossbencher quite often you do want to do something modest, because you actually want to try and get it passed. We were not successful in getting it passed, but what we did get was this inquiry into restricted disclosure of past convictions—and that inquiry is all through this bill. The recommendations of that inquiry are on nearly every page of this bill. There are some areas where they are not and there are some areas where I think we still have some work to do, but that is not necessarily in legislation. So I thank Andrew Shears from my office, who worked very hard to get this to this Parliament. I think we certainly gave the first step for this Parliament to be here today to pass a spent convictions bill in Victoria.

The bill largely reflects the recommendations of the committee, but that was also because of the incredibly thorough work of the Woor-Dungin criminal record discrimination project. I really want to acknowledge their work, and I would commend their report on criminal record discrimination. It is a terrific report. It has the voices of those with lived experience throughout it, and the work that they did, the way that they were able to collaborate and work with just about every single Aboriginal organisation in Victoria showed how important it is to our Aboriginal people. I am very pleased that their work is reflected in this legislation, and I think that very much goes to our commitment to self-determination.

As members have attested before, the inquiry process really was extraordinary. For the first time this Parliament had an open mic night where we invited people to come up. They did not have to give their actual names, but they could tell their stories—and they could tell their stories of how historical criminal convictions affected their lives and how the ongoing impact of having to disclose that mistake from which they had been fully rehabilitated still affected their lives. I think Professor Kieu will remember when we had Mr Zed come in. Professor Kieu was interviewing Mr Zed during one of the inquiries—but it was beautiful and it was extraordinary and really, when you consider the amount of interest that that inquiry received, it is testament to the importance of this bill.

You know, I have to regret that the committee did not recommend that the legislation be called something else. I do not know about you, but if you try and explain what spent convictions are out in your community, it generally becomes much more than a 1-minute conversation, because it is a confusing term. It is an archaic term. I wish that we actually had called it a ‘controlled disclosure system for historical convictions’. But apart from that, I will have few negative things to say about this bill.

Let us be clear from the start: this does not mean that your past is erased, and I think this is why ‘spent convictions’ sounds as though somehow you are purged of this conviction. That is not the case. That will never be the case. Your past will not be erased from your record, even if you are a child. It means that in certain circumstances you will not be obliged to disclose certain historical convictions. The bill should be called, as I said, a ‘controlled disclosure bill’, because that is what it is. As I say, your record is not erased; it is not expunged; it just will not be publicly disclosed in certain instances. When applying for a job, your character will be assessed on who you are, not who you were.

This has been a long time in the coming—and as we have heard during the debate, a spent convictions scheme has broad support in this house and of course in the community, because we all generally believe in rehabilitation, we all have some faith in our justice system, we all believe that criminal records should be available to the courts, to the police and to others in certain circumstances and we all agree that people should be able to move on. Where we diverge is actually just where we draw that line. How long should someone carry the record before they can leave it behind?

Sitting suspended 4.00 pm until 4.17 pm.

Ms PATTEN: As I was saying, I think the debate that we are having today is not about whether we have a spent convictions scheme. It is not about whether we accept the fact that people can be rehabilitated or that we can accept the fact that someone’s past should not weigh them down for their whole life. Where we diverge is where we draw the line. We agree, I believe, that children and young people should be treated differently to adults, but again we diverge on where that line should be drawn. This bill draws those lines but also recognises that sometimes it is not black and white.

The bill has effectively created three parts: an immediate conviction being spent, an automatic system and by court application. For my community—and I know when I first started looking at this I was astounded to find that when you went to court and you had a no conviction recorded, that was actually recorded. If you did a police check or a criminal check, a non-conviction would be recorded on your criminal record. That is one of the examples where this bill says that if there is a no conviction recorded, it will be spent with immediate effect. Convictions of children under 15 will also be spent with immediate effect. I know this is the contentious issue for a number of people in this chamber, and I will certainly speak more about it a little bit later.

For adults who have been convicted of a crime and sentenced to 30 months or less, their conviction will automatically be spent after a 10-year rehabilitation or, as it is called in the bill, a ‘conviction period’. Serious convictions are excluded from this, and serious convictions include those that are sexual and violent by nature. For young people, their convictions will be automatically spent after five years. This is in line with current practice in Victoria. It came as a surprise—and I know Mr O’Donohue mentioned this in his contribution, and I think Dr Kieu did as well—that the police have been running their own spent convictions scheme with their own policy, just they kind of made it up themselves.

I must say it came as a bit of a surprise when we were hearing about this—‘Oh, we’ve been running this for years. We’ve had our own spent convictions scheme. Here, let me tell you all about it’. And actually in many ways this bill reflects the way that they have been operating, but this ensures that that system operates absolutely to the letter, because with the police system, while it was a policy, there was also, it would appear, an awful lot of discretion in that policy as to what police disclosed and what they did not.

Now, the third avenue to have a conviction spent is by application to the court, and the application can be made to the Magistrates Court. This is not a simple process. This is not a tick and flick or filling in an online form at Service Victoria. This is restricted to convictions where the sentence imposed was less than five years and the conviction period has expired—that is, after 10 years. The applicant must provide information, including on supportive rehabilitation. The application that is then lodged with the Magistrates Court must be served on the Attorney-General and the Chief Commissioner of Police. Either office can make a submission to the court on that application. Clause 19 of the bill outlines what the court considers in more detail, but it includes the nature and seriousness of the offence, the impact on any victim of the offence, the personal circumstances of the offender and in particular the unique factors affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons. This is largely in line with the recommendations of the Woor-Dungin project, which was endorsed by 60 Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organisations. This is because it is not black and white. There will be circumstances where it is in the best interests of the community for an offender who has been fully rehabilitated to have their convictions spent.

But again, this is not about wiping the slate. There is a table in part 3 of the bill that runs to four pages that provides a pretty extensive list of where there are specified disclosures, so where historical criminal convictions should be disclosed or will have the effect of being disclosed. Further, division 2 of the bill provides for the disclosure by law enforcement agencies, courts and tribunals. As I said, this bill does not wipe someone’s record. There are numerous circumstances where convictions will always be disclosed and organisations will always have access to a person’s criminal record. So the question comes back: does this bill go far enough? Have we correctly drawn the lines? You know, if I were some form of benevolent dictator of this state, I might say no—that this probably is not where I would draw the lines—but I do think that this is a good bill, and I do not think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. There may be parts of this bill that you do not agree with; however, overall this bill is important. This bill is a missing part of our justice system. This is the bill that tells people that they can be rehabilitated, that a sentence is not a life sentence.

But 10 years is a very long time for an Aboriginal person, as we heard from the Woor-Dungin project. Imagine committing a minor offence when you are 22 that will affect your employment opportunities, your ability to travel and even your ability to volunteer. It could put much of your career prospects on hold. We know that employment is one of the best prevention tools to fight recidivism, and we also know that having to disclose a criminal past, no matter how minor, negatively impacts on your ability to get a job. If that criminal record prevents someone from getting a fulfilling job, they risk further offending. This is a loss to the community, but it also perversely makes the community less safe. A waiting period or a rehabilitation period—it is an imprecise science. In fact the committee could find very little evidence on how long that period should be.

The United Kingdom has probably been the most active in this area. They have been assessing this and they have a now a very nuanced system. Their rehabilitation period or waiting period ranges from one year to seven years and it varies from looking at risk factors, rehabilitation opportunities and the seriousness of the crime. So what we have here is a fairly blunt tool that we are using. And we know that recidivism declines over time, and some research out of the US found that most reoffending took place in the first three to five years after arrest. After seven years there was no distinguishable difference in the risk for future offending between those with an old criminal record and those without a criminal record.

Where we draw the line, as I said, is the most contested question in this debate. Some in this chamber have expressed that this bill goes too far. Some may say that it does not go far enough. I mean when is a sentence a life sentence?

Arthur Bolkas contributed to the inquiry considerably. Now, he committed a pretty serious offence for which he was sentenced to 11 years in jail and served 5½ years. While he was in prison, he completed a masters degree in criminology. He has now been tirelessly working in the prison and youth justice systems to support prisoners. He has designed and implemented pre- and post-release programs to help rehabilitate offenders. He has not offended in 32 years. Instead, he has made a contribution to society through his work with offender education and rehabilitation. But this bill will not help him. He will live with that record publicly and disclosable for the rest of his life. And, as he says:

If you are not prepared to give me a chance as an individual—not put me in some sort of statistical basket with everyone else—if you are not prepared to do that, then you need to reassess what you mean when you are asking people like me to become contributing members of our community.

It is a double standard, it is hypocritical and it is wrong.

And I think he makes a good point: if we believe in rehabilitation, then why don’t we believe in the rehabilitation of Arthur Bolkas? Why are we saying that Arthur Bolkas should have a life sentence, where someone may have actually committed a similar crime and may have had less time in jail? He is only six months over the line of where we have drawn the lines.

Mr Erdogan: Get him to apply to the Magistrates.

Ms PATTEN: He cannot apply to the Magistrates, I am afraid, Mr Erdogan, because it is over five years. And I see that Mr O’Donohue and Dr Ratnam will both be putting up amendments to this bill, and these are contesting where those lines should be drawn. But I am satisfied that this bill draws the lines appropriately. I think this bill is modern. It has listened to the community. It has understood that just drawing specific lines may not always be in the best interests of our community, so having an application through the courts for a conviction to be spent is good.

The former victims of crime commissioner, Greg Davies, said to the committee:

In my experience, victims of crime do not necessarily seek the ‘throw away the key’ outcome for offenders who have committed criminal offences against them.

What the vast majority of victims of crime want is to prevent what happened to them from happening to anyone else.

Now, we know that employment, connection with family, housing, drug and alcohol services—that is what we can do to prevent crime. We know our recidivism rates are so high, and we know that employment is one of the biggest protectors from that.

After listening to the contributions from others I just want to make sure that it was very clear that sex offences and serious violent offences cannot be automatically spent, even if the term of imprisonment was less than 30 months, and I heard some people suggesting otherwise. As I say, there is an exemption for children under 15, which has raised concerns in this chamber, and Mr O’Donohue has introduced amendments that reflect this concern.

This was not a recommendation of the committee, but it certainly reflects the many submissions that we received in regard to young people and in regard to ensuring that young people are rehabilitated.

I note that we all received an email this morning from Smart Justice for Young People, a coalition of over 50 agencies, including Jesuit Social Services, Centre of Excellence in Child and Family Welfare and the Kimberley Foundation, all supporting this. After listening to the contributions the other day I actually wrote to the CSA, the Crime Statistics Agency, and asked for information about serious crimes committed by 10- to 14-year-olds. They are incredibly, incredibly rare. They find it even hard to count because there are so few of them. Yes, it happens; I know it happens. We hear about it. But let us not make the exception the law. Let us make the law for the good of the people.

This bill will be profound. It will change people’s lives. It will change the way that people see their sentence in jail. Some of them will see that there is an end game to this, that they start their rehabilitation process the minute they are convicted and that they can continue that process and at the end they can be acknowledged and their conviction is spent.

I have much more to say; I could speak forever on this, but I will not. I would like to give the last word to Uncle Larry Walsh, a Taungurung elder who was convicted at the age of two. He was convicted at the age of two for being a neglected child, and that stayed on his record. In fact he recalled a judge saying, ‘My, young man, you’ve got a very long record. You have got years on it’, and he had no idea. He found out that the first conviction on that long list of convictions was a conviction from when he was two because he was convicted of being a neglected child, and that has actually stayed on his record. Uncle Larry Walsh said to us:

… it is hard to live a life where everyone has respect and admiration for you and then all of a sudden something you did as a teenager is being held against you.

This bill will change that, and I commend the bill to the house.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 18/3/21