Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (18:03): I rise with some disappointment and sadness to speak to this bill. It is rushed. I do not feel that the report is actually as compelling as other reports that we have seen when we have been asked to sack an elected government, to sack 11 elected representatives. In fact the report goes to great lengths to tell us that all 11 representatives did not act badly, did not bring the council into disrepute. In fact it was just a few. The monitor does not go to name who they were, but he certainly does...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (17:09): I am very pleased to rise to speak on this important issue. Following on from Ms Terpstra, I just want to correct a couple of things. This motion does not suggest that vaping is completely safe. This motion in fact says that it is ‘not without risks’, but it says it is a damn sight—well it does not say damn sight—but it says it is ‘certainly far safer than smoking’. In fact the London college of physicians, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and Public Health England all attest to the fact that while vaping...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:32): I am very pleased to speak on Mr Quilty’s motion, and I have to say, for a man who is normally brief, this is not the briefest of motions. It almost speaks for itself in the facts that it lays out within the motion and really paints a very sad picture, particularly of Victoria Police. This is a picture that was painted by Victoria Police themselves. This was a survey of the police and it is their concerns, and I think it is those concerns that I would like to focus on today. But we know,...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:27): I rise to speak briefly to the Health Services Amendment (Mandatory Vaccination of Healthcare Workers) Bill 2020. As previous members have said, this enables the secretary to direct public hospitals, health service establishments, ambulance services and those employees to be required to be vaccinated or prove immunity to certain specified diseases. I think for the most part the community already assumes that that takes place. I think the community would be quite surprised that hepatitis, for example, was not already mandated for our healthcare workers. Certainly I recall when I started working at the AIDS Action...

  Ms PATTEN: I would like to just make a couple of comments now that we are in schedule 1 of this bill that we quite rightly have debated for nearly 25 hours—and it has been in committee for nearly 25 hours. And guess who has been in that committee for that 25 hours? The Independents and the small parties—the crossbench. Guess who has colluded to introduce a bill that will not be equitable, that will not improve democracy and that will not improve grassroots? It is the two major parties. ‘Get out of politics’, they tell us. The crossbench is...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (23:50): I rise to speak briefly to the Road Safety and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2019. We know that politics is personal; it is something that we often say, but it is true. Like many in this chamber I pay my respects and extend my sympathy to the people in the gallery—Jeynelle Dean-Hayes and Josh Hayes—for the loss of their son Tyler. This bill is born out of that tragedy, and not just that of Tyler but Chloe Dickman as well as many others. It is often the case and it is sad that often our response...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:09): I am pleased to rise to speak to the Local Government Bill 2019, having had many conversations in the last term about the Local Government Bill 2018. By all accounts, in 2019 and 2020, the 2018 bill won. In fact most people who came to speak to me said, ‘I wish we could just have the old one’. However, as Mr Grimley said, so many people just want this to happen. They want to see some of these reforms, but every time they see a new iteration they feel that they have lost some of the...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:27): I am pleased to rise. I will make a fairly short contribution, but I would like to congratulate Dr Ratnam for bringing this committee referral to the house because I think this is very important. I have listened to ‘nothing to see here’ from the previous speaker—’You should have been here in 1930, then you would have seen something really bad’. Just a fact check there: I was very surprised by this figure that the 1939 fires were bigger than the 2019–20 fires, because I had not heard that. And as somebody who was getting ready...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:34): It is a great pleasure to rise to speak to the Gender Equality Bill 2019, and I think it is really fitting that we are debating this bill on the World Day of Social Justice. As other speakers have mentioned and as we all know, this bill introduces measures to improve the status of women and promote gender equality in Victoria. It will change us, it will change our culture, it will change our future. And equality is one of the reasons why the Sex Party existed. It is why Reason exists. It was the inequality...

  Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:59): Before I move motion 162 in my name I would seek leave to amend slightly the reporting date that was set in this motion at April 2020. I seek leave to extend that date to August 2020.   Leave granted.   Ms PATTEN: 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...