Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:48:218:): Thank you, Mr Limbrick. I actually feel like I understand a few things better as a result. I cannot say that I necessarily agree with Mr Limbrick in his assessment, but I certainly listened with interest to that contribution. He is absolutely right, and, as Ms Watt says, it is not very common that we come in here to debate a constitutional amendment, to debate changing our constitution. Certainly entrenchment in statutory law like this means we will need a full majority to do this, but it does not mean that it cannot be taken away, as we know. But this bill is about entrenching the fracking bans into the constitution. As we know, as this amends section 18(2), it does need a special majority.

Entrenchment is dealt with in section 6 of the Australia Act 1986, which Mr Limbrick mentioned, which posits that:

… the constitution, powers or procedure of the Parliament of the State …

In this context ‘the constitution’ means how the Parliament is constituted—for example, how many houses it has. Mr Limbrick mentioned Professor Anne Twomey, and while she believes quite rightly that introducing fracking into the constitution will be legally valid, its entrenchment would not be. I think that is where Mr Limbrick’s debate here is. It could be removed very easily by a simple majority, but it is unlikely that it will be. It is very unlikely because everyone is in furious agreement about the permanent prohibition on fracking in this country.

I could be concerned, and certainly when thinking about this it did give rise to concern about whether this was setting a dangerous precedent and whether we would see things like mandatory sentencing entrenched into our constitution, but—and I think it was Professor Twomey who actually helped me on this—it was not that I did not need to be concerned about this but that bad laws could be removed relatively easily. This was actually quite a revelation to me. I had no idea that the constitution was actually that malleable—because it has been so rare that we have seen changes to the constitution—and that actually you can introduce things into the constitution and you can take them away. I am sure Mr Limbrick and I are on the same line—that if there was something around decriminalising all drugs put into the constitution, he and I would possibly agree with the idea of decriminalising all drugs but certainly he would not like to see it in the constitution, and it never would have occurred to me to put it in there until today. So it has really opened up a whole lot of ideas, but I suspect now is not the time.

I take up Mr Limbrick’s notion that we would be governed from the grave because of this entrenchment into our constitution. As Professor Twomey says, it is actually very easy to remove these entrenchments in our constitution, which does then pose the question: why are we doing it? However, I accept—and I have been saying this, and I think I was saying it an awful lot yesterday—I am not the opposition. I respect that the government actually went to the 2018 election with the policy that they would in some way entrench the prohibition of fracking in this state. So I am not going to oppose this.

I think it is interesting that the only other example in the Victorian constitution that we have on this is water services. I understand that the Liberals and The Nationals are also not opposing this bill. In fact I understand that the Nats and the Greens may even be taking credit for this.

Mr Bourman interjected.

Ms PATTEN: Who’s on first?

When we look at something like the water services, which is the only other time that we have seen an entrenchment into our constitution, that has never been removed. No successive governments have found a need to do it. No Independents have found that that entrenchment in our constitution was so appalling that it needed to be removed. I think what I am quite comfortable in is the fact that we all, or almost all of us, probably, are in furious agreement that there should be a ban on fracking in Victoria. This may be an example of a policy that is worthy enough to test those constitutional limits of our Parliament. I will be interested to see the commentary on this, because I suspect this bill will get the majority vote that it needs to pass and to change the constitution, so I will read with interest the academics’ views on this.

But I think what we do know is that we have the ability to do it, which is something I was not aware of, but we also equally have the ability to remove it. So therefore entrenchment seems to be a fairly strong word for what we are doing here because future governments actually could take it away. But I do not oppose this bill.

 

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 4/3/21

 

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (10:10): Pursuant to standing order 23.29, I lay on the table the final report from the Legal and Social Issues Committee on the inquiry into homelessness in Victoria, including appendices. I further present transcripts of evidence and the final report and summary booklet and I move:

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

Motion agreed to.

Ms PATTEN: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

This is a report that this Parliament will be proud of. The inquiry into homelessness epitomised the good work that this Parliament strives to do. Before I speak about it, I want to thank the committee team. Each and every one of them put so much into this inquiry in an extraordinary time. They adapted and innovated. They brought together witnesses from around the world literally through catastrophic fires, personal tragedies and a global pandemic. Thank you to all of the secretariat team and in particular Kieran Crowe, Alice Petrie, Caitlin Connally, Justine Donohue and of course Lilian Topic, who gave above and beyond. Thank you to my colleagues who contributed so much time and thought to this inquiry and report: Deputy Chair Tien Kieu, Tania Maxwell, Kaushaliya Vaghela, Wendy Lovell, Craig Ondarchie, Jane Garrett and the many, many participating members, including Enver Erdogan, Lee Tarlamis and Sheena Watt to name just a few—and of course Rod Barton, who initiated this inquiry and has been passionate throughout.

Homelessness is the deepest expression of social exclusion in our society, and it is a growing and seemingly intractable problem. When we embarked on this inquiry it was difficult to see where we would start and how we might create something that would be useful, because the issue seemed so big. But we found that it was possible, through better prevention and of course more homes. Many of the dedicated individuals and organisations working with people experiencing homelessness share this view and are determined to realise this goal. This inquiry received detailed and robust submissions from organisations working in the sector and from individuals in the community who care deeply about this issue and wish to see it addressed, and I thank them all wholeheartedly. I particularly want to thank Kate Colvin and Jenny Smith from the Council to Homeless Persons for the assistance they provided us and their in-depth evidence, and Associate Professor David MacKenzie, who provided, amongst many things, sobering information such as: national spending on health and justice services for young people experiencing homelessness each year was more than the total cost spent on homelessness accommodation and support for all ages. I also want to thank the department. This has been an extraordinary year, and I really appreciate the time that they did give us.

This report puts the voice of people who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness at the forefront. As you will read, the report has been designed to follow the paths that a person, or one of our constituents, may follow when at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

The committee has made 51 recommendations, which include of course more stable and long-term housing but also greater flexibility in the approach to the funding of homelessness programs and the recognition that housing is a human right and that it should be incorporated into Victoria’s charter of human rights. We must prioritise and strengthen early intervention measures, such as tenancy support programs and assistance for those fleeing family violence, and provide social housing that meets the needs of those experiencing homelessness. The recent report from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System has also recognised the importance of addressing homelessness. The recommendations are bold, broad and innovative, but they are sensible and most importantly they are achievable.

We can solve homelessness and, as I said at the start, the simple cornerstones are preventing people from entering into homelessness and building more homes. I commend the report.

 

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Statement on report 4/3/21

 

 

 

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:28): I am very pleased to rise to speak to Mr Meddick’s motion today, and I agree with Ms Crozier: I think it is an extremely good motion to be debating today, and I have been really moved by quite a few of the contributions. As we know, family violence is such a scourge in our society. Ms Crozier just gave some statistics there, but when I think of how on average one woman is killed by a partner every week, that is just too shocking.

In reflecting on Mr Meddick’s motion around the impact that family violence has on animals, when I was first elected and I was wanting to get to meet all of the organisations in my electorate, I went and visited all of the animal shelters and the RSPCA. I went and visited all of them, and I recall having a conversation that came out of the blue with the manager at Lort Smith, who said, ‘You know, Fiona, sometimes we have to pull someone aside because we know that that dog has been beaten. We know that, and quite often we see the fear in, more likely, the woman there’. He said, ‘There have been times when we have found reason to pull the woman into a room on her own and have that conversation’. So we know that, and it should send alarms when we see animals that have been harmed coming into our vets and into our hospitals.

Everybody calls their animal part of the family. It is always part of the family: ‘They are our furry babies’, ‘He’s like a member of the family’ or ‘We have lost a member of the family’. That is so true. In part it is reflected in the Family Violence Protection Act 2008, but I think it is a very good time to be reviewing that, to look at how that coercion is used and how family pets or companion animals are used in the coercion of largely women.

But family violence affects a lot of people and in fact during COVID I was speaking to one of the frontline organisations, Safe Steps, and they said during COVID they were incredibly surprised by the number of men who started calling. This, it would appear, was because a lot of men had moved back home, they had moved home back with parents, and there was violence in those homes. Sometimes it would be that sons had moved home and there was violence against the father, and extreme violence. So to be calling Safe Steps is a point when you fear for your life.

We are trying to address everything to stop the scourge of family violence, to try and eliminate it in our community. We do not have enough refuges. We know that. It is very hard, and we heard this during the homelessness inquiry. When someone is escaping family violence, they have nowhere to go. Particularly when they have a pet, particularly when they have an animal, there is nowhere to go, so they must stay where they are—or move into their car. We heard that so many times because refuges could not take pets. I know that is not necessarily part of this motion, but it is certainly something that we saw. We need to see a lot more that companion animals are included in our homelessness strategy, in our housing around family violence in those refuges, in moving people into housing. Mr Meddick spoke in his contribution about people who do not want to leave home because they do not want to leave their pets. They know that if they do, something terrible could happen to that family member and so they do not leave—or if they do, something terrible does happen.

I am pleased that in my electorate we have got Keeping our Pets Safe. That is a program that has been adopted through Hume, Whittlesea, Darebin, Moreland and Yarra councils. It works with the Victoria Police family violence advisers. They also work with Safe Steps and Womens Health in the North. They recognise the importance of threats on family animals and the effect they can have. In fact going back to Lort Smith, who offer accommodation to support animals that are part of a family fleeing family violence, they have actually been doing this for over 20 years. Another shout-out would be to the northern metropolitan victims assistance program, which operates through Merri Health. That works to build networks across the northern metropolitan councils, encouraging and educating councils to support families needing exit strategies, and that includes those companion animals.

I know that there are other people who would like to speak. I know that this is an issue that certainly my team and the people in my office were very engaged with. Really, this is something that is so acute because people know the love that they have for their companion animal, they know the love that they have—they grew up with that pet, so it is so hard to imagine having to leave it or having to put your family member at risk. I think also we would like to see some other areas where this can be expanded and that is in looking at caravan parks, rooming houses and places like that, that would also accept pets. I commend the motion.

 

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Mr Meddick’s motion 3/3/21

 

 

 

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:46): I could say it feels like groundhog day again, but I do not want to say that, because this is different. After a number of sleepless nights and after a number of weeks of negotiations with the government on this bill, I am satisfied to support this bill. Not only that, I know that not supporting it would have been the morally wrong thing to do. To just say no would have been the morally wrong thing to do. It would have been the easy thing to do. Thank you to the Liberal Party—I received 7000 emails on Saturday all sent from a Liberal Party endorsed website saying all kinds of things to me. Sadly none of them provided me with a return email address, so I could not write back to them, because I do enjoy writing back to some of them; I do enjoy writing back and questioning them. But using the type of language that they used towards me, suggesting the things that I should do with all sorts of instruments and animals—I question how that helps them advocate for their position. How does that encourage me to change my mind? How does that encourage me to understand their position? But we did get a lot of those emails, and this had a lot to do with the opposition. I could have just said, ‘No, I’m out of here. This is not my circus, not my monkeys. You work it out’. But it is my circus. This is our state all together, and we have a responsibility to do what is right.

In supporting this legislation, I would have loved to have seen this legislation actually probably introduced six months ago, in October—when we were looking at this, when we asked for specific legislation, when we recognised that COVID was not going to leave us anytime soon. We just heard the World Health Organization today note that the number of COVID infections in the world is back on the increase. We had had seven weeks of steady decline. It has started increasing again today, or their reporting said there was an increase today. This morning we woke up to notifications about two wastewater announcements in Victoria: that fragments of COVID have been found in wastewater in the west and wastewater out in the Yarra Valley. It is still with us. We are still going to need controls. We are still going to need to act with caution. But we want to have some confidence, and I think certainly for me this was the hardest thing: how can we live in a state of emergency? And this is what we have been doing—we have been living in a state of emergency, and we cannot go on with that.

I am pleased to see house amendments today that also address some of those human rights issues—that right to protest, that right to question your detention—and that change the way that COVID fines will be applied specifically to children. These are all good amendments, but I think what got me over the line was really the absolute commitment to develop COVID-safe legislation—that we will be doing legislation that is focused on health.

We will actually be doing something that no other state in Australia has done. Let us not forget that every state in Australia is operating under a state of emergency. If we just said no, or if we said, ‘No, it must be one month’, I can tell you that my inbox could not deal with debating this every month, and I do not think it is necessary. We negotiated last time for at the very least the declaration to be tabled in Parliament so we could look at that. We also negotiated that we would get a briefing from the minister and the chief health officer, and that has happened every four weeks—we have been invited to these briefings. To me, this is a kind of level of transparency that no other jurisdiction has. There is no other Parliament that is getting this type of transparency.

But going forward we are going to have something better. We are going to have a piece of legislation that will be developed over the next few months, and it will be developed by an expert group. They will be consulting with business groups. I heard my good colleague Mr Meddick speak about this as well. They will be speaking to business groups, to the multicultural community, to the GPs, to the health services, to the rural and regional local governments, to the Department of Transport and to the tourism department. They will be speaking to everyone about how we can create legislation that is nuanced, that has the right risk measures and calculations in it.

On those risk measurements, I was very pleased that the government has also confirmed that within the next few days to a couple of weeks we will see some very specific regulations and information about how we deal with regional areas. Frankly, I have been spending a little bit of time in the regional areas with my colleague Ali Cupper in the other house, and I can tell you that the people at Wycheproof, the people at Birchip, the people at Manangatang, the people at Sea Lake could not understand for the life of them why they were in a five-day lockdown, why they were in stage 4 last month, when they had never been in stage 4 before. However, they want to remain safe. So the conversations in the Patchewollock pub were about sheep racing, but they were also about the fact that they understood that we need to stay safe, that we need to have hotel quarantine, that we need to self-isolate when someone has been infected or someone was a close contact of someone. They understood all of that. They just want it to be nuanced and they want the risk to be properly assessed, and I am very pleased that we hear that this is what is happening.

Now, the government has not got it perfect by any means. We have seen mistakes made; I acknowledge that. I am not the government, though. But I am also not the opposition. I am actually here as a member of Parliament to do what I think is best for my community, and having no ability to quarantine, having no ability to self-isolate is not the answer. In fact we would see our borders locked down. We would see New South Wales, South Australia, WA, Queensland, Tasmania—every other state—lock us out. We may be free to walk around our own state, but we would be locked out of every other state; that is without doubt. Or we would have seen the government having to rely on far more draconian legislation, like state-of-disaster legislation, and I do not think any of us would have liked to have seen us go down that pathway.

Again, many people have said to me, ‘So you’re going to trust the government for another nine months?’. Frankly, we have to do something, and COVID-specific legislation is the right way to do it. I would have loved it to have been done when I asked for it back in October, but I am pleased that we are doing it now. I am pleased that we have an expert group doing it. I am also pleased that the government has agreed that they will report back to this chamber and report back to the Parliament every three months about the progress of that group. We will still see the same reporting back of the declarations, with that same briefing available to members of this chamber every four weeks.

So we have got some levels of transparency that do not exist in other jurisdictions. I am not saying it is perfect. I know my good colleague, Mr Limbrick, will raise a number of issues around human rights and the transparency of those tests to our charter of human rights. I think he makes some very good points. However, just saying no here is not the answer. We actually have to do something. I have come into this place and so regularly I have said, ‘Let’s not let the perfect get in the way of the good’. This is another circumstance where we cannot let the perfect get in the way of the good.

I had 7000 emails, as I told you, telling me to stop the state of emergency—you know, ‘Stop the grab on power’ or whatever they were saying. But—I apologise; I will be very quick, Dr Bach—I spoke to the Burnet Institute. I spoke to the AMA. I spoke to the Australian Industry Group. I spoke to numerous groups that actually had significantly more nuanced approaches to this than ‘Just say no’, ‘Stop the state of emergency’ and the whole range of other kinds of wacky ideas that I heard. So who do I listen to? Do I listen to those 7000 emails that were generated by a Liberal Party website, or do I listen to the experts? Do I listen to the head of infectious diseases? Do I listen to the solicitor-general, Kristen Walker? Yes, I do. Do I listen to the Human Rights Law Centre? Yes, I do. Do I listen to the Law Institute of Victoria? Yes, I do. And they are telling me that we are on the right path—that this is the way to go.

Again, I accept that this is not perfect. I also accept that Victoria is more acutely aware of what a state of emergency means. I am acutely aware that the Northern Territory, the ACT, Queensland—well, Queensland had some lockdowns—some states, have never had to go into any form of lockdown, and that is great. I accept we have had a very tough year. I am talking to my constituents daily about how to improve that. I am working with small business operators in my community on how we can improve that. But I am seeing so many more people walking around the streets at the moment. I am seeing so many more businesses opening. I am actually starting to see some ‘For lease’ signs come down on Nicholson Street, on Sydney Road, on Lygon Street. I am starting see businesses build back up. I am starting to see us coming back. We will not bounce back, but we will come back, and we will come back stronger. I am starting to hear from mothers who are saying, ‘I love the flexibility that this has created—that I didn’t have to seem like some desperate person for wanting to take some time off to take the kids to school. I can do that. I can now work and take my kids to school, and I can do that effectively and efficiently’. I think we will keep some of the changes, and we have seen that with a piece of legislation that is coming to our house around the way the courts operate.

I have taken up this time so Dr Bach does not have to start for 30 seconds before cleaning. You can thank me later, Dr Bach.

I do not think this is perfect. I do not think that the government is without fault. But again I know that we are going to need something to take us forward. I know that COVID is not going to end, and it is not going to end in December. We are going to have to have a health response in place for this pandemic, and I plan to work with the government on this. I plan to have a seat at the table. I can bet that I will have a seat at the table and Mr Meddick will have a seat at the table. I kind of bet that the Shadow Minister for Health wishes she had a seat at that table. But by working with governments, by negotiating with governments, that is how you get a voice and that is how you get a seat at the table.

 

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading speech 2/3/21

 

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:22): I am pleased to rise today to make a contribution on the debate on the decriminalisation of public drunkenness. Let me be very clear from the outset, the Reason Party will be supporting this legislation today. We think it is a very important step to start framing substance use and misuse as a health issue and not a criminal one. But I think more importantly it is another step to reducing deaths in custody, particularly the deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who we know are 10 times more likely to die in custody than non-Indigenous people in Australia.

We certainly have not rushed to get here. Thirty years ago the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made 339 recommendations, one of which was to decriminalise drunkenness. As we have heard today there have been many other reports, even from this very Parliament, about public drunkenness. We have seen every other state in Australia decriminalise public drunkenness, so I am pleased that we are finally here.

I would like to really acknowledge the very hard work of Nerita Waight from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Jill Gallagher from the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, the Human Rights Law Centre and, as most of us today have acknowledged, the Day family. We know that Tanya Day was much loved and a proud Yorta Yorta woman. She was removed from a train and taken into police custody for being intoxicated in public. In fact she was asleep in public. While in custody she sustained a serious head injury from falling in a police cell and died 17 days later. If that was not tough enough that a grandmother, a mother, died in custody, the fact that in 1982 her uncle also died in custody made this even more tragic and certainly more poignant. To think how strong the Day family has been to continue on this campaign, because Harrison Day died in police custody in Echuca in 1982, having been arrested for a $10 unpaid fine, a charge for being drunk and disorderly.

So I thank the Day family and the many First Nations people and families who have brought this to this house today, because while Aboriginal people account for 0.8 per cent of the population in Victoria, they account for 6.5 per cent of all public drunkenness offences.

I welcome this amendment to the Summary Offences Act 1966 to decriminalise public drunkenness. This obviously was recommended 30 years ago in the deaths in custody report. This was recommended by the expert reference group in Seeing the Clear Light of Day. It was recommended in the coroner’s report, and as we have heard, recommended in many other reports.

We have heard from Mr Grimley, Mr Bourman and certainly Mr O’Donohue about some of the concerns from the police. I too met with the Police Association Victoria and heard some of their concerns about this. They are concerned that they are going to find themselves at the front line ill-equipped to help someone who is intoxicated, that they are not going to know how to manage this—and, frankly, this is what we heard. They are not equipped to manage this; they do not have the appropriate health- and community-based skill sets. If you look at the testimony that the police gave in the coroner’s report, they could not find a service available for Ms Day. The local resource, such as the Aboriginal community justice panel, which is a volunteer service run by VALS, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, they are so profoundly under-resourced that they were unable to intervene on that particular day with Tanya Day.

In fact Mr Bourman had a story where he reflected on a circumstance that he was in as a police officer when he was not able to help a person and that person died in custody. While Mr Bourman was using that as an example to oppose the legislation, in my mind it just further strengthened the fact that police are not equipped. It is not right when you think someone is very drunk, dangerously drunk, to have them locked in a police cell, where the police with all the good will in the world to keep that person safe certainly do not have the skills to do it. That poor man that Mr Bourman spoke about, who sadly died because he had bleeding on the brain, to me is just yet another reason why we should be welcoming these amendments today. And we should welcome them today. We do not need to delay this any further.

We do need to fund organisations. There is no doubt about that. In fact had these been funded earlier, maybe Tanya Day could have actually had a different pathway and maybe her family would not be missing her every day—children without a mother, grandchildren without a grandmother. So I support the initial budget announcement of $16 million, and I think that will certainly go a long way to initiating the reforms outlined in the Seeing the Clear Light of Day report.

Despite what we have heard today that we are not ready to do this and maybe we need to get ready to do this, we have seen from that report that we are very ready to do this. We are more than ready to do this. In fact we have been trying to do it. In fact—

Mr Limbrick interjected.

Ms PATTEN: I will take up Mr Limbrick’s interjection. We should have done this 30 years ago. This is something that we are well behind in. I acknowledge that the legislation is largely a vessel. It enables us to set up the systems that will keep people safe, to establish pathways to a health response rather than a criminal response. And also there is that 24 months, so this is not going to be implemented tomorrow, as you would kind of assume with some of the contributions we have heard today; this will be implemented in November 2022. We have a number of months to get this right, to prepare for this, to train for this, to establish services. There will be three trial sites, as we know—Mildura, Dandenong and the Melbourne CBD—and what might work in Fitzroy will not work in Mildura. This is what we are going to look at.

When I look at the expert reference group’s recommendations—of which there are many—they also talk about the fact that there may be other legislated powers that will be required. So as we are working towards this implementation we may see that we may need to give police further powers in a strictly limited way to enable police to detain people or to transport them. But there are so many other recommendations here that set through really clear pathways—that talk about staff ratios for sobering-up centres, that really go into significant detail. So I do not think that we are not ready for this, that we need to delay this while we try and work out what we are going to do. We know what we are going to do. The expert reference group has given us a very clear path, has given us very clear recommendations and instructions, as did the coroner in her report. She went to great detail in discussing what changes needed to be made in the health system and what changes needed to be made in our emergency response when someone is found intoxicated in a public place.

I think of course that this is the first step also in treating all drugs as a health issue. We speak about this often. We cannot keep arresting our way out of the drugs issue or the drug war. We have to treat drug use as a health issue, and this does that. But I would love to see us go further. I would like to see the decriminalisation of drug use across the board—treating it as a health issue, because that is what it is.

I am pleased to support this bill. I thank Ms Watt for her really powerful and personal stories. What gives me great optimism about this legislation probably for the most part is that when someone is intoxicated to that degree, they are in trouble. They need help. And when someone is—as we see in some of our regional areas and certainly as I was hearing about in Mildura—getting picked up every Friday for being so intoxicated that they cannot walk, then they are not getting the help they need in that police cell. What they actually need and what has been laid out in front of us by the expert reference group is a pathway to help. That first point of call—when we treat that drunk person as someone in need of a health response, not a criminal response—also opens up the doors to further rehab.

I will watch with interest as we start preparing for this legislation. I will watch with interest as we start establishing the systems and putting them in place. I will watch with interest the trials that will be underway over the next two years. And what I really hope is that this is for many people the first step to recovery, that it is not that they go into a sobering-up centre and then leave but that they are then given the opportunity to take that next step to recovery—that this is actually a non-judgemental, non-stigmatised way of enabling more people to seek help for their drug use or misuse. I commend the bill.

 

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 19/2/21

 

 

 

 

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:32): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Provisional Payments) Bill 2020. Let me say from the outset that the Reason Party will support this legislation. I think it goes to the idea of early intervention on mental health issues. It goes, hopefully, to the notion that help is immediate, which I think actually goes a long way to helping prevent people from going down a more serious path of mental ill health or unwellness. As previous speakers have mentioned, this bill amends the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 as well as the Accident Compensation Act 1985, and the effect of this is to provide workers who claim a mental injury access to provisional payments to cover the costs of their medical bills. This is incredibly sensible, and as I say, this is actually about early intervention. It also ensures that the employer notifies the authority of the claim within three business days. I take the point that my colleague Dr Bach made about the fact that this is being delayed, so this hopefully will allow time for employers to prepare for any changes that they need to undertake in their systems.

We know that thousands of Victorians are injured at work every year and that the number of people claiming mental injury is on the rise. As previous speakers have said, we expect that to probably account for nearly 30 per cent, or one-third, of WorkSafe claims by 2030. So being a lot more cognisant of the reality of mental injuries is what we need to do, and I think this bill actually catches up to the reality that we all know—the impact that mental ill health and mental workplace injuries have on our constituents, the stories that we receive in our offices and via our emails on a weekly if not daily basis—because we know that physical and mental injuries are fundamentally different.

It is not that difficult to recognise a physical injury—that someone’s leg is broken or that they have cut themselves deeply. But sometimes it can take a lot of people to accurately diagnose a mental injury, and so the purpose of this bill is to take some of the pressure off when people do claim that mental injury.

I was recently given the example of an ICU emergency nurse who works part-time in order to look after her son. As with many of our workers in the care industry, in our health industry, she is working two jobs and looking after a young child. Unfortunately last year while working in the two jobs and looking after the child, a culmination of bullying in one of the hospitals that she was working in resulted in a stress and anxiety WorkCover claim—I mean, not surprisingly when we are putting a lot of our healthcare workers under such extraordinary stress at the moment. Now, her prognosis was really good. Her GP was really helpful. But the cost of that psychology treatment that she needed, or that was recommended to her, was too much for her to cover. She was not working. She had a young child to be looking after. Her case eventually was actually rejected, but had she been able to get that access to that help at that point, at that acute point when she could not cope with work, she would have been able to get back to work a lot quicker, and I think that is what this bill does. So when people talk about the costs of it, I think about the savings that this actually will result in.

We saw that the Police Association Victoria was part of the pilot on this. I think one of the most poignant statements that I saw was that it meant that people were believed. When you have got a mental health injury, to have someone say ‘I believe you’, and these provisional payments go towards that—that ‘I believe you’—will assist in providing treatment that is not delayed. Again, when someone actually is able to say that they have got a mental health injury and get immediate help, that will save us millions in the long run. That will save us having to deal with the acute aspects of mental health that would quite often be the end result when someone does not get help early. This will actually save lives, and it certainly will help people get back to work. I certainly think that the costs of this will be offset. I think it is in line with what the community expects with our growing understanding of mental ill health, of mental health injuries, in the workplace.

On those short comments, I will commend the bill to the house to the house.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Second reading 16/2/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:48): We have heard today people say, ‘I oppose conversion practices and suppression practices, but’ and ‘We are against conversion practices and suppression practices. However’. There should be no buts and there should be no howevers on this bill today. This is good legislation. I thank Ms Terpstra for outlining some of the main points of the legislation and some of the misinformation that has been going on, and I might touch on that later. These laws will protect people from harm. That is probably one of the most important reasons we are all in this chamber today. This bill will save lives. This bill is about respect, this bill is about equality and this bill is about fairness. This bill will, I hope, start to end the significant sense of shame that so many people spoke to me about, that so many people of faith spoke to us about.

I was at the Pride March when the Premier announced that this bill would come to this chamber, and that was actually a couple of years ago, so it has taken a while to get here. Right now I thank all the people that helped it make it here, and in particular I thank the survivors, because this was not an easy journey. Many of you have told your story not once but many times, and that has been difficult. The journey itself was difficult, then getting to the point that you could express that was even more difficult. I admire your courage and your commitment and everything that you did and everything that you went through, and what you have done will help others to not have to go through what you had to go through. You will prevent others from being harmed in the way that you were. I would like to especially thank the gender and sexuality commissioner, Commissioner Allen, for their advocacy and leadership in shepherding this campaign, in shepherding this bill.

I met with survivors, as I said, and I spoke to religious leaders and I spoke to organisations, including the Australian Christian Lobby. I am not sure why, but we seem to meet once a year for some reason or another—they seek me out, for some reason or another. I also spoke to doctors and I spoke to academics. But again it was the conversations with survivors and the families whose children did not survive that have led me to give my absolute support for this bill. I know for some this bill does not go far enough, but I want this bill to go through in the form it is in now.

I thank all the people who wrote to me and phoned me about my concerns. Yes, you are right, Ms Terpstra, I did receive hundreds—actually I received thousands—of emails and certainly my office received hundreds and hundreds of phone calls patched through from the Australian Christian Lobby Canberra office. They patched them through to me. To be honest, in doing that, it sharpened my consideration of this bill. It actually made me go back and double-check. Did this bill actually ban prayer? Oh, no, it did not actually. But it sharpened my consideration and it led me to actually ask more questions about the bill. I thank the minister’s office for the assistance and the constant back and forth in responding to our queries about this.

But I can tell you: you did not convince me that this bill is not right and you convinced me that this bill is needed. In fact you showed me that these practices and the beliefs that back these practices, that instil these practices, which I thought were obsolete, are still alive and kicking in our society. This is not something from back in the good olden days, as Mr Finn would say. This is not in our past, this is in our now. This is happening now, and we heard that. This has to stop, and this bill will help stop it.

This bill will not be everything. As we know, as we all know, legislation is just part of the process. We set up the legislation, but in that, that is about changing attitudes, that is about changing opinions, that is about educating the community. It is sad to say in 2021 that we still need to educate the community, that we still need to say that our LGBTIQ brothers and sisters are not broken, that they are equal in every respect, that they do not need to be changed. In fact for those in opposition to the bill—almost 100 per cent; there were a couple of people who opposed the bill for different reasons—for nearly everyone their reference point against this bill was that homosexuality is wrong, that anything but heterosexuality is wrong, that they may purport to love the sinner but hate sin. Frankly, this is all based on a very narrow—very narrow!—interpretation of a couple of lines in the Bible.

I will quote a few of the survivors, but I would like to also quote Reverend Avril Hannah-Jones, who is a minister at the Uniting Church. She said:

One of the most painful things that can happen to a queer person of faith is being told that they have been somehow mismade by God, that somehow their sexuality or their gender identity was a mistake.

Mr Bourman mentioned, actually in a very respectful way, consent—that people should be able to consent to conversion practices. You cannot consent when you have got a congregation and you have got a pastor always telling you that you are absolutely wrong, that you must be fixed. I say now, again: no LGBTIQ person needs to be fixed. As one survivor said:

“The idea that via exorcisms, casting out demons and other spiritual processes God will somehow change my sexual orientation from gay to straight, I was so brainwashed by the teachings of the church, so desperate not to be gay and so terrified of eternal damnation that I willingly signed up to the program.”

Is that the type of consent we are talking about? That is. That is why this bill is worded in the way that it is. The reason people want to consent to some of these practices is because they are told they will not go to heaven and that they have to leave the congregation. This is not free will. This bill will not mend the past, and I know that for many survivors the journey to self-love and to renewing your spirituality will not be a straight line and you may never, ever come to the end. You should not have to choose between your sexuality and your spirituality.

The misinformation that has gone on about this bill is not just in the emails that I received, not just in the rantings of some of the people in this chamber—and in fact I think it was disappointing to hear such misinformation being spouted in this chamber—but Martyn Iles, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, came out to say that this bill:

” … is the biggest attack on religious freedom in Australia’s history.”

In Australia’s history! I think he also said, and I think the Christian lobby also believe, that the safe access zone legislation was one of the biggest attacks on religious freedom. Then again, I think he also said that about the anti-vilification bill that I put forward in this house some time ago, and I think he also said it about marriage equality. He went on to say that this bill:

” … could put people like you and me in jail. It will certainly see criminal action against Christian parents. It could even outlaw the teaching of the Bible.”

With that sort of misinformation out there—and that was represented in nearly every single email that my office received in opposition to this bill. It was that misinformation being perpetrated by people who should know better. Martyn Iles, I have no doubt, has read that bill. I have no doubt he knows that that is rubbish—that that is not true.

Then today to again hear this deliberate misinformation being spouted and spread in this chamber—I mean, for Mr Grimley from Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party to conflate paedophilia with this bill was absolutely disgusting and absolutely unforgivable. If you support victims—as the Hinch party continually tells us that they are here for the victims—then how can you not support this bill? How can you vote against it? What alternative facts are you taking heed of? Freedom of speech and freedom of religion do not allow you to cause harm. So let us be clear: this bill will not stop you from being a homophobe. It will not even stop you from preaching hate. You can still share your views of Sodom and Gomorrah; you just cannot single out an individual.

You have freedom of religion, and this bill does not at all restrict that, but freedom of religion has its limits, and that limit is when it harms someone else. Expressing your beliefs through genital mutilation is such a limit. Expressing your beliefs through an exorcism to release the demons of sexuality is another. I cannot understand why some in this house who stand up for victims of crime will not support this bill. The perpetrators of this abuse may believe they come from the right place, but that does not reduce the harm they cause.

Let us not forget that these are the same people who for decades practised a different form of suppression—that is, they suppressed the information about child sexual abuse happening in those religious institutions. They are still doing it. Archbishop Comensoli, one of the biggest, loudest opponents to this bill, is still saying that the sanctity of the confession trumps the reporting of child sexual abuse. This is not religious freedom, this is about religious privilege, and your religious freedom does not trump the rights of our community to live safely and without harm.

After a royal commission found that Australia’s churches perpetrated nearly 5000 sexual assaults of young children and tried to hide it, I do not know why we are even asking them about their positions on sexuality and on sex, frankly.

Mr Meddick: Irrelevant!

Ms PATTEN: They are irrelevant, and that is exactly why they are trying to do it here, to inject yet another dose of aberrant and I would say deviant sexuality into our lives.

This bill, as I say, will not prevent you from being a homophobe, I am afraid. It will not stop you from being nasty. But to suggest, as Mr Hayes did and Mr Finn did, that prayer will become a criminal offence is wrong and it is harmful. Frankly, to say things like that in this chamber when you know better says a lot about you. It is spreading fear about this bill, as we have seen, by distributing disinformation. We saw the Australian Family Association deliver pamphlets on this bill in Northcote, of all places, saying things like, ‘Parents will go to jail’ and ‘This is an affront to our freedom of speech and our freedom of religion’, as Mr Finn tried to put today.

The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee was clear on this, and I thank the Attorney-General for actually making available her response to the SARC questions. It was very clear. As I say, this does not prevent you from being a homophobe. This does not prevent you from saying, ‘All gays will go to hell’. It is not true—well, I do not know. I do not actually think there is a hell. Just as a quick aside, I was sent a copy of a letter. I do not know if others got it. It was an open letter to Premier Daniel Andrews and it was from the Noosa Temple of Satan. I know Mr Finn thought I might be Satan’s little helper—

Mr Finn: Not might!

Ms PATTEN: Well, maybe I am, because the Temple of Satan actually supports this bill. As a little bit of light relief, they said:

‘We see demonic possession as being crucial to helping us maintain a stable membership base …’

This is why they wanted to outlaw exorcisms, so the demons could stay within those bodies and they could continue to grow.

‘The performance of exorcisms to drive Satan out of people’s souls is a direct threat to our aims.’

Mr Meddick: Are they a registered charity?

Ms PATTEN: No, they are not a registered charity. I know that the Liberals have put up amendments—and again I go back to this. ‘We are opposed to conversion and suppression practices, but how about we defer this bill?’. As Ms Terpstra quite rightly pointed out, this has been through lengthy consultation processes: the Health Complaints Commissioner; 12 months of consultation through Engage Victoria; and we saw the La Trobe University study. This is not a new conversation; this conversation has been going for some time. I do not actually see how the Legal and Social Issues Committee spending another two months in consultation will make any difference to this bill or will change it.

I know that some concerns have been voiced by the AMA and by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, and I appreciate that the Liberals have put some amendments forward in response to that. I actually think the better way to deal with those concerns is through the committee process, and I will be asking the Attorney-General a number of questions in that area.

I would just like to finish on a couple of points in regard to wanting further consultation. I got a text message from a Uniting minister, Minister Peter Macleod-Miller, and he told me their starting point is the need to change orientation or for our LGBTIQ community to be given a second-class seat at the community table. It is like a group of butchers commenting on the benefits of vegetarianism. That was quite esoteric for an Anglican minister.

Ms Lovell interjected.

Ms PATTEN: I apologise; he is an Anglican minister, Peter Macleod-Miller, from the Albury Anglican Church. But I will leave the last quote to Mr Comensoli—that is, Daniel Comensoli, Archbishop Comensoli’s nephew—and he said this bill will save lives and foster a more inclusive and affirming Victoria for the LGBTIQ+ community. There is nothing to fear in this bill being passed. I commend this bill to the house.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
sECOND READING SPEECH 4/2/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:25): I prepared to speak to one motion, but with the rather substantial amendment to that motion, will there be three original words in the motion now?

Mr Davis interjected.

Ms PATTEN: There will be four, will there? Right—four original words in the motion.

I do not know if I was unusual in this action, but prior to considering this motion I phoned the Ombudsman this morning to see what she thought about the motion. Much to my surprise, she was very surprised by the motion. She had not heard about it, she had certainly not seen it until I sent it over to her, and she said to me, ‘I think it would be entirely inappropriate for me to appear in the chamber in such a way’. And I thought ‘not only inappropriate but uncomfortable’, because she would have to stand at the gate, we would not be able to provide her with a chair, we probably would not even be able to give her a glass of water. It is not something that we have done. In fact I asked the clerks, ‘When was the last time we did this?’. It was a good 50 years ago, and it was to chastise some journalists about some inappropriate material that they had published. Apparently we then reversed that chastisement a little bit later. But it is not common, and I do not think it is appropriate.

However, I am supportive of the proposed amended motion that we have consideration of this issue. I actually asked the Ombudsman, and she is going to send me some information—if this gets up, I will watch with interest—how do other jurisdictions deal with funding the bodies that provide oversight to the government? How do they do it? Because I think it is a wicked problem that we pay for the people who are providing the oversight and that can put us into a difficult situation where governments may be seen to withholding funds because they do not like what those oversight bodies are doing. I think that is not a position that governments of any persuasion would like to be accused of. So I do think that trying to find some other approach to this that provides some space between the Parliament and those oversight bodies is worthwhile investigating. As I mentioned, I have asked the Ombudsman if she would have a look at how similar offices are funded in other jurisdictions, and she said that she will get back to me about that.

I will keep this quite brief because that is really all I had to say about this. Those organisations must operate unfettered. We know that both the Ombudsman and the Commissioner of IBAC, Mr Redlich, are concerned about the lack of funds that they are receiving. They are concerned about the effect that that may have on their work. They are concerned that this may reduce the work that they are doing, and I know that that would be the last thing the public wants. I certainly think of the very substantial work that IBAC has done and the substantial work that the Ombudsman has done, not least that inquiry into the high-rises in Flemington and Kensington and the work that she did there. Let us hope that we never have to be in that situation ever again. And let us hope that those incredibly hardworking public servants in the Department of Health and housing do not have to make that quite horrible decision that they made again. But I think with the work that was done and with the opportunity of hindsight that the Ombudsman had on that, the dive that she was able to do into the significant human rights issues that she raised in her report, we will not do that again, and we will take the advice and the recommendations of the Ombudsman in that report.

I know that there is not a person in this house who does not fully support the independent work of IBAC and of the Ombudsman, but it may not seem that way when you listen to the Ombudsman on ABC or 3AW asking, pleading, for more resources. It may seem that we are starving the body that is keeping us on the straight and narrow and is keeping us honest, and that is not the perception that I think we should be presenting to the public. So I am fully supportive of the amended motion that the Integrity and Oversight Committee undertake a very short, sharp and urgent inquiry.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Mr O’Donohue 3/2/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (11:12): I would like to rise briefly to speak to Mr Barton’s motion, which is fundamentally a documents motion. I am never sure if my support for Mr Barton helps him or hinders him. Knowing my position on ridesharing and some of the work that I did in the previous Parliament on this, I am never sure that Mr Barton wants to hear me supporting him or if he would prefer that we stayed in opposite corners of the ring.

But this is a very sensible motion, and I am interested to learn more about this trial for a number of reasons. A couple of years ago I was actually up in Newcastle and saw the trial there. But in New South Wales they had not extended the subsidy to the ridesharing cars there, so they were actually just working on a fixed rate. In talking to Mr Bourman about the idea of working on fixed rates, I can see how that could be very unfair to a person who was riding a very short distance and would be paying an excessive amount.

But this is a trial that seems to have been conducted without much conversation, particularly with the taxi industry. And as much as people have said of taxi drivers, ‘I hate them’, many years ago people used to ask me what my favourite car was and I used to say, ‘It’s yellow with a light on’, because I have always been a supporter of getting somebody else to drive me. But these days I drive myself a lot more. Anyway, this scheme, the multipurpose taxi program, has had its problems. Certainly speaking to some disability groups, they used to lament that they would have to wait up to an hour or 90 minutes for a multipurpose taxi, because—I would see this firsthand—you would see them lined up at the airport hoping to get a good, long fare with a large family or a large group of people. So I think we do need more vehicles on the road to cater for the disability market. However, they need to be playing on a level playing field, and certainly when you are talking about vulnerable groups in our community you want to make sure that we do everything to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those people that may not have some of the abilities to communicate problems as you and I might have.

In seeking the information about this trial, I think we will understand what parameters the cars were operating within and who they were servicing. We have really only heard that they did 170 trips and everybody loved every single trip—that they gave them all five-star ratings. This did not include wheelchairs. While this trial, from what we see on the face of it from the few sentences that we have seen published, was a great success, I think this documents motion will allow us to consider it in far greater detail and see what the successes were but also what improvements are required and what we need to ensure that we keep a level playing field in this very important service that we offer to people with disabilities.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region
Motion by Mr Barton 3/2/21

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:17): I rise to make some brief comments on the Consumer and Other Acts Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2020, and an omnibus bill it is. To start with, just to look at the amendments to the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 in regard to the wagering and betting of keno and the monitoring of licences, I think it actually does do some good things.

I must say most times when we have been talking about gambling in this chamber, or I have been speaking about gambling in this chamber, it has been about pushing the government to do more. But I think this goes some way to protecting under 18s from having access to gambling facilities. It goes some way to curbing money laundering.

It certainly does remove some of that bureaucratic red tape, which has actually led to, I think, some greater transparency around the licensing scheme. Obviously I would love to see it go further, but I was pleased to see that this is also giving the minister power to issue harm minimisation directions, and I would hope that the minister takes advantage of that position that this bill gives the minister.

As we know, the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that, while most 16- to 17-year-olds do not gamble, a significant number—one in five boys and one in eight girls—have reported spending money on at least one gambling activity in the last 12 months. So it is important that we do look at ways to address this amongst young people.

We know the scourge that problem gambling is on our community. We know the effect that problem gambling has, and I would again implore the government to do more to assist those problem gamblers. I am pleased to see the ability to introduce some harm minimisation, but I would love to see a reduction in cashless gaming, enabling maximum bets-per-spin of $1 and reducing the trading hours of poker machine venues.

We saw last year that millions and millions and millions of dollars were saved by households because they did not go to poker machine places, because they were shut. We would love to see a reset here, where we show concern for the effects that gambling has on many people and on their lives. There are small things to do, but I am pleased to see that this bill does introduce some greater transparency. But over the long term let us see if we can decouple the Victorian government from poker machine revenue.

The other area of this bill that I would like to make some quick comments on is the reforms to the Residential Tenancies Act 1997. I completely concur with my colleague Mr Hayes that this was a missed opportunity with rooming houses. Certainly, as the chair of the homelessness inquiry, we have heard terrible, tragic stories of people living in incredibly unsuitable accommodation—that being rooming houses. These are some of our most vulnerable people being forced into some of the most unsuitable and often most dangerous forms of housing. To make it even worse, we are paying for it. Through the various schemes that we provide in our homelessness services, we are actually paying for our most vulnerable community members to go into rooming houses that are not properly regulated. I know we have made attempts and I know we have tried to improve that but, as Mr Hayes said, I think this was a missed opportunity.

The same goes for part 4A parks. This is this incredibly difficult space where many of the people who are living in part 4A parks are retirees, yet these places are not considered retirement villages and they do not have the same protections. Those parks quite often are overcharging for utilities and are not providing adequate services. I do not think we have found the right balance of regulation in those areas. I think that is another vulnerable cohort of people that in future I certainly hope this government addresses.

I think it is important that this act provides the means for victims of family violence to exit leases without financial penalty. Deputy President, we are both members of the inquiry into homelessness, and we have heard time and time again that family violence is one of the main causes of homelessness in Victoria; 44 per cent of people who are using specialist homelessness services report family and domestic violence as the reason.

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has suggested that those domestic violence support programs cannot compensate for the absence of affordable and suitable housing. There is very little that we can do moving from crisis into stable and secure accommodation, and I think enabling people to exit those leases more quickly is one way to do it.

I would suggest one of the other areas that we heard about during the inquiry is that for many people family violence actually does damage to the house that they are renting, and when those people have to escape that house, escape that family home, not only are they left with the bill for the repairs but they are left with a very black mark against them when they go to the next real estate agent for a home. I am not trying to pre-empt the report from the inquiry, but I think certainly we have heard time and time again that we need to do more to assist survivors and victims of family violence to find stable long-term accommodation.

So with those few notes, I would say I think this bill is a good step forward. I would certainly like to see us—through tenancy legislation, through a variety of levers that governments have—focus on early intervention to identify and support those at risk of homelessness and look at coordinated multi-agency and well-funded responses for homelessness. I am really speaking from the Reason Party’s bible in this area.

We would love to see the appointment of a Victorian commissioner for homelessness. I think also just finally—and I know this is not completely connected to this bill—we know that social isolation amongst young people is another area that we can do more on. There is a connection between kids spending a lot of time and possibly moving into gambling online and social isolation—you can put those two things together. With those few comments, I commend the bill to the house.

Fiona Patten MP
Leader of Reason
Member for Northern Metropolitan Region