MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:55:57) — I rise to speak briefly on the point of consumption tax and the Gambling Regulation Amendment (Wagering and Betting) Bill 2018. I am pleased that we are seeing it in the house today. Certainly at one stage it was looking quite shaky as to whether we would get to this bill in this term of government. I certainly commend the Alliance for Gambling Reform for their pleas and advocacy to ensure that this bill did hit our chamber prior to the end of this term. This legislation really is overdue. If it had not got up,...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (10:30:01) — I would just like to take this time to thank all of the people here who have made this four years quite a journey, and in fact overall an incredibly pleasurable one. It seems like a long time ago that we were standing here being sworn in, but in actual fact it also seems that it has gone very fast. I would like to thank the red coats, the attendants, the clerks, Hansard, the library staff, the restaurant staff and particularly the committee staff, because I think the committee work was one of the most surprising...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (17:46:47) — I rise to make a contribution on this largely omnibus bill. As previous speakers have gone through all of the various wideranging areas of this bill, I will not, although I will just give a shout-out to the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, which was very pleased to see that some of the issues around ensuring that vendors pay commissions owed to real estate agents are remedied in this bill. Sadly, though, they were disappointed that it was in a bill about mandatory sentencing, which is what I will focus my contribution on. I have to say that...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:17:59) — I too would like to make a brief contribution to Mr Elasmar's motion to amendment the standing orders and Ms Pennicuik's amendments to that motion as well. I come from a position where I do not really know Parliament without the existing sessional orders that we have had, and I have to say that I have thought that many of them have been quite good. At other times I have been completely frustrated in here by the delays and by the continuation of unnecessary debate. In some ways I would like to have seen more being done to address...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:18:47) — I too would like to commend this report and also again thank all of the staff from the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, both present and past. I have to say that I think this report is an incredibly good, concise report. It very well depicts the work of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. I kind of wish that this report had been available to me when I came onto that committee. I would have had a much clearer understanding of how the committee operated. But having said that, I learnt an awful lot on...

MS PATTEN — I do support this amendment because I really do support the community health sector, and I support the fact that they have had a portable long service leave program for a number of years. This bill — and I think it was unintended — does overlap on that and does give them a quite incredible level of extra work that money needs to be put aside for. These are organisations that have very slim budgets, and they do remarkable work for our community. Certainly the ones in Northern Metropolitan Region and around Victoria do remarkable work in primary health and...

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:24:31) — I would like to make a brief contribution to the Long Service Benefits Portability Bill 2018. As many of the speakers before me have said, and as we all know from the amount of time this bill has been on the notice paper, this bill provides portable long service benefits to certain industries and, I would say, certain vulnerable industries. I met a number of workers who will be positively impacted by this change. They were cleaners who might have been cleaning the exact same building for 25 years; it is just that they had eight different employers...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (18:02:32) — I rise to briefly speak on the Prevention of Family Violence Bill 2018. As previous speakers have said, this is a new principle-based approach to family violence and, most importantly, to the prevention of family violence. We know that inequality is one of the causes of family violence. We know that a lack of respect is one of the causes not only of family violence but of violence in our community, so I am very pleased to support this bill. I am very pleased that this bill and the establishment of Respect Victoria is entirely about prevention...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:18:26) — I will make a brief contribution to the debate on the Environment Protection Amendment Bill 2018. As others have mentioned, the bill reforms the legislative framework for the protection of the environment and human health from pollution and waste. What the bill fundamentally does is shift the focus of the Environment Protection Act 1970 to prevention. I would have thought that this was quite natural. I suppose that prior to coming to this place and learning so many things, I would have just assumed that environmental protection meant prevention, but this bill really does fundamentally look...

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:39:28) — I move: That the Council take note of the report. I encourage everyone to have a look at this report, Inquiry into Civics and Electoral Participation in Victorian State Parliamentary Elections. We are still finding increased informal voting in Victoria, we are finding a decrease in youth electoral participation and generally we are finding less interest in the parliamentary process in Victoria. This has been an ongoing issue and is certainly something that the Electoral Matters Committee has considered over the last few years, whether it has been in the general review of the 2014 election or in our...