Wednesday, 4 August 2021

Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Mr PAKULA:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (10:47): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021. I do so in my capacity as Shadow Minister for Small Business. When I became the Leader of the Liberal Party and the Leader of the Opposition in December 2018, I had my choice of portfolios, which is the custom and practice of the Liberal Party and I suspect most other parties in this place. I deliberately chose to be the Shadow Minister for Small Business because I know how important small business is to this state. It is the single largest employing sector of anything in this state. More people work in small business than in any other sector of our economy. It provides more jobs—that means more income, more opportunity and more security for Victorians—than any other part of our economy.

Other parties like to cuddle up to big business and big unions. My party, the Liberal Party, and our colleagues in The Nationals have always been the parties of small business, people who actually stand up, put something on the line and create opportunity for others—create opportunity that gives other people work and create opportunities to give other people access to services and goods in their communities. When we talk about backing Victorian small business, we are talking about backing the Victorians who run them, we are talking about backing the Victorians who work in them and we are talking about backing the Victorian community, who relies on them. That is why small business is so important in this state.

Prior to entering Parliament, I worked as a solicitor at different firms and had a lot of small- and medium-sized business clients, and I know how much they put their heart and soul into their businesses. They often put their houses on the line to try and create something, to generate a new enterprise that gives other people opportunity. And to see the pain of so many small business people in this state over the last 18 months has been heartbreaking. These are people who have done nothing wrong; they have done everything right. They have worked hard every day. They have taken a risk not for themselves but to create something. Through the circumstances of the pandemic and this government’s response, these people have often seen their businesses fall, and we see that, sadly, in Victoria’s unemployment and underemployment statistics. Victoria now has the highest combined unemployment and underemployment numbers of anywhere in the country—14.5 per cent. That is a lot of Victorians out of work. That is a lot of Victorians who cannot find the work that they need to sustain them and to sustain their families.

So we will always be strong, loud and proud advocates for the small business sector, because it is not about the petite bourgeoisie, which I am sure some people in the Labor Party think small business is about; this is about the heart and soul of our state. It is about the heart and soul of people in the communities. It is the small businesses who go out there and support the local football and netball clubs. They are the ones who are out there backing the school fetes. They are the ones who bind this community together. So to see what has happened to our small business sector over this last 18 months has been tragic—absolutely tragic.

You go down the high streets of any suburb, any town in this state, and you will see row upon row of empty shops and ‘For lease’ signs—too many of them. Every empty shop, every ‘For lease’ sign in this state represents a broken dream. It represents something that was and is now no longer. Why? Because this pandemic and the government’s response to it has caused this damage to small business. When we talk about small business we talk about the people behind it. They are the ones who have lost, and we need to step up as a state, as this government needs to step up and as a Parliament we need to step up and support these small businesses that are left, because when this pandemic ends—and one day it will end—we need those small businesses to be there on the other side. Who else is going to employ our young people? Who else is going to give them their first jobs? Who else is going to actually provide the services in our communities? Who else is going to prop up our country towns? If we do not have small business there, we can forget it. We need small business to be there on the other side of this pandemic, and that is why we have been advocating for more support—more support than this state government has given them.

Even New South Wales—they had lockdowns—introduced grants programs for microbusinesses, the businesses with turnovers between $30 000 and $75 000. The answer here from the Premier and the answer here from the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery was that they are not real businesses—they do not count. You go and tell that to the freelance make-up artist, Amelia, who I met, who was in tears because she had not been able to work because of the lockdowns. She runs a small business. Her income was what she could get from her work. But this government said, ‘You’re not real. You don’t count. Oh, if you haven’t registered for GST, then you’re made up’. That is not the way these people live their lives—but this is symptomatic of a Labor government that just does not understand small business.

Mr Angus interjected.

Mr M O’BRIEN: They do not understand it, they do not get it and, as the member for Forest Hill said, they do not care about it. They just do not care about it. Well, we do and we always will, because small business is the glue that binds this community together. It is the biggest employing sector in this state, it is the heart of innovation and enterprise in this state and we will be backing it 100 per cent.

Looking at this bill, this bill seeks to reintroduce a version of the commercial tenancy relief scheme which operated through the first 12 months of the COVID pandemic and ended on 28 March this year. There is not a lot in this bill apart from enormous regulation-making powers. The government came out last Wednesday and said, ‘We’re reintroducing this scheme. We haven’t decided all the eligibility criteria yet, we haven’t decided many aspects of how it’s going to operate yet, but it applies from today’. How on earth do you expect people, be they landlords or be they small business tenants, to apply from last Wednesday to a scheme where there is no detail? That is not the way the real world works. In the real world you need to know what you are doing before you do it. That is something this government seems to have missed.

Mr Angus: They are making it up as they go.

Mr M O’BRIEN: They do make it up as they go, member for Forest Hill. All small business ask for and all their landlords ask for is a little bit of certainty. It is not as though this is something that has dropped out of the clear blue sky. The government has said that this is something that is basically replicating what was in operation last year, but the government still has not got the detail. Now, I know we are in a pandemic and I know things move quickly, but people need detail if you want them to implement it. We are only asking for fairness to all sides in this.

How will this scheme work as far as we know? Well, according to what we have been told in the briefing—again, this is not necessarily reflected in the legislation before the Parliament; we are simply going on the basis of press releases, press conferences—

A member: Verbal assurances.

Mr M O’BRIEN: and verbal assurances. Last time I looked you cannot take that to the bank very much. Your bank manager will not extend your overdraft on the basis of a verbal assurance from a minister or a ministerial adviser at a briefing.

But let us just put on the record what the government has told us and has told industry about how this scheme will operate. ‘A business that has an annual turnover of less than $50 million’ is the first criteria for eligibility. Now, let us just stop there. A business must have an annual turnover of less than $50 million. How does that apply to franchisees who may have one store? Let us take McDonald’s as an example. You could have one McDonald’s store. Does it mean that one store has to have a turnover of less than $50 million? What if the franchisee owns four McDonald’s stores? Is it cumulative? Does that mean they are then over the limit or is it for each store? Again, nobody knows. Nobody knows. The government says, ‘We haven’t worked that out yet. We’re thinking about it. We’ll get back to you. Oh, but the obligations apply from last Wednesday’. They apply obligations from last Wednesday when they cannot even tell you if you are in this scheme or you are out of this scheme. How on earth is business supposed to respond in those circumstances? We have many unanswered questions about how that turnover requirement of less than $50 million to be eligible will actually apply.

I will go into the second criteria. The business—that is, the tenant—must have suffered a decline in turnover of at least 30 per cent comparing turnover in the fourth quarter of 2018–19 to the fourth quarter of 2020–21. Well, that at least seems to be relatively straightforward. In the briefing the government advised us that a letter from the business’s accountant would be sufficient to determine if that criteria was met, and again that seems to be actually a relatively sensible way of doing it, so no complaints about that.

Landlords will then be required to provide rent relief proportional to a business’s reduction in turnover. So, for example, if the business had recorded a reduction in turnover of 50 per cent between the fourth quarter of 2018–19 and the fourth quarter of 2020–21, then the landlord would be required to provide a 50 per cent reduction in rent. That is one way of doing it, I suppose, and that is designed, I guess, to provide some proportionate level of support so that the more impacted the retail tenant is by the pandemic and lockdowns and ongoing restrictions the greater the level of support the landlord is required to provide. What I find interesting, and I find concerning, is that the government said in its press release from Tuesday, 3 August, this week that:

Eligibility for the scheme will be a one-time test. Businesses which are eligible at the beginning of the scheme will remain eligible throughout, with the proportion of rent relief adjusted in line with their turnover.

So if this scheme started last Wednesday, the government said that it will apply until 15 January next year—although the legislation is dated to apply until the end of April next year, but let us take the government at its word; let us say is it going to apply until 15 January next year—a business can be eligible, let us say, because it has had a 30 per cent reduction in its turnover. If that business then bounces back and gets back to 100 per cent of its turnover or let us say 200 per cent of its turnover, it is still eligible for rent relief right throughout the length of the scheme. So you can have a landlord—a self-funded retiree, a mum or dad—who might have one commercial tenancy in their super fund, and they are required to provide rent relief right throughout the scheme, even where the tenant does not require it anymore. I understand that the government must be saying, ‘Oh, well, it’s administratively simpler to say once you’re in you’re in and you’re in for the entire time’, but on the counter side, where is the fairness of that for the landlord, who might have been required to provide rent relief to a tenant that does not require it anymore? Again, it is easy to spend other people’s money, which is what I think it comes down to. This government is very, very good at telling other people how to spend their money. When it comes to their own, they are not quite as good.

Now, it also says that:

A mandatory reassessment of turnover further into the new scheme will support fair treatment for all parties.

What does that mean? ‘A mandatory reassessment of turnover further into the new scheme’? When? How? How are people supposed to budget between now and the middle of January next year, whether they are a tenant or whether they are a landlord? How are you supposed to budget, not having any idea of how this mandatory reassessment is going to work? Is it going to happen in six months time? Is it going to be only prospective, or will we have retrospective application? Nobody knows, because the government will not tell us, because the government is making it up as they go along.

And again that is the trouble. This is the government that has been at the helm of this state for seven years. It has been at the helm right throughout this pandemic, and it is still making it up as it goes along. And it expects Victorians, Victorian small businesses—be they Victorian small business landlords, be they Victorian self-funded retirees, be they Victorian small business tenants—to just be ready, willing and able to change at a moment’s notice because this government cannot get its facts right and cannot actually tell people what is going to be happening. That is the guts of it.

In relation to the relief that will be provided, I will give you the example of a 50 per cent reduction in turnover. That 50 per cent relief can be provided through a combination of waiver and deferral, with at least 50 per cent deferred. So let us say 50 per cent of the rent has to be paid; of the other 50 per cent, 50 per cent will be waived—that is, sacrificed by the landlord—and the remaining 25 per cent can be deferred. Now, we understand that the government is proposing that deferral would be through to the end of the scheme in January next year, but again that is not clear.

This is an important scheme because small business tenants do need help. They have been affected by the fact that we have been the most locked-down state in the country. We have had five lockdowns now—five. And even when we are not in lockdown, as arguably we are as of today, there are still massive restrictions on the ability of small businesses to trade. You go into hospitality venues and the density requirements there mean that for many of them it is really hard to even open the doors, and for those that can open the doors it is barely worth their while because the restrictions on the numbers that you can have in make it so hard to actually break even, let alone turn a dollar. So we do need support for small business, because this government’s lockdowns and the restrictions have had an ongoing impact on small business and they need support. That is why my party and the National Party called for rent support to be made available. When we did it we said it has got to be fair, and fairness does not just mean making landlords subsidise rent for tenants. It means that the state government, which makes more money out of the property sector than anybody else, needs to pull its weight too.

How much extra money do you think this government is taking in land tax in this financial year? $558 million extra in land tax in 2021–22—over half a billion dollars. How much money of that $558 million extra—I am not talking about total land tax; I am just talking about the extra cream that the government is scooping up this year—is the government putting into land tax relief to try and help out landlords who are being asked to provide rent subsidies to their tenants? $100 million—not even 20 per cent. What a pathetic contribution that is, pathetic.

I see the member for Bentleigh and I see the member for Oakleigh here in the chamber. A number of their constituents have contacted me, and I suspect they have contacted them as well. I suspect they have contacted the members for Bentleigh and Oakleigh. A lot of their constituents have worked very, very hard and been great contributors to this state, and part of the way they have worked hard and been great contributors to this state is by investing. They have worked hard, and they have invested so they can look after themselves in retirement, and that is a good thing and that is something that we should all be encouraging. Many of their constituents have invested in property, and that is a good thing too. We encourage that; that is a positive thing.

But they feel absolutely let down. They feel absolutely ripped off. They feel absolutely betrayed by this Labor government because they see this Labor government ripping land tax out of their bank accounts hand over fist every single year, including with another big increase in land tax this year in the budget. They see the Labor government ripping land tax out of them hand over fist and then turn around now and say, ‘And we want you to give rent subsidies to your tenants, but we are not going to give you a fair go when it comes to land tax’.

The government is talking about, ‘You may get up to a 25 per cent reduction in your land tax if you’re required to provide subsidies to your small business tenants’. Twenty-five per cent of the land tax bill—that is not even going to touch the sides when it comes to the sort of rental subsidies these landlords are being required to pay. So the question is: why should hardworking mums and dads, who have often done it tough, who have built something up from nothing and who have invested in property and rely on those property rentals to pay their bills, be ripped off by a government that is taking land tax out of them hand over fist and then, through this scheme, failing to provide the support those landlords deserve?

I will just read some comments from an email that was sent to me by a lady, Grace. I will not put her surname on the record because I have not cleared that with her and it would not be fair to her, but I will just go through some extracts. This is just an example of the sort of correspondence I have had from people who are very concerned:

Dear Mr O’Brien

I write to complain and beg for your help.

Mum owns a commercial property … My mother lives on a budget. She relies 100% on her rent income to support herself and pay her bills. When the tenant does not pay the rent, my mother cannot pay her bills.

…

In the past six months mum has had to pay her deferred 2020 land Tax, 2021 land tax, GST tax, Income tax, Health insurance, Ambulance cover, Home and contents, Water rates, council rates, utilities, phone bills in addition to food and other expenses totally over $45,000. With the tenant owing her over $20K it has been very difficult for her to pay her own bills.

…

At nearly 94 years old my mother does not need this added stress in her life.

Grace went on to say:

Please help self funded retirees like my mother … Please allow provisions that take into consideration whether a person is in a self funded retiree or in financial position to offer the rent reduction.

This government could have done the right thing. It could have said, ‘We understand that we are in a pandemic and there is a burden to be shared fairly’. It could have said, ‘We will share it fairly between the tenants, who won’t get a full rent reduction but a significant rent reduction, and we can share it fairly with the landlords, who are required to provide some rental support’. But the government could have stepped up and done the right thing.

The government could have provided a far more generous—a decent—land tax reduction. To put in only less than 20 per cent of the increased land tax in the budget this year is a disgrace. It is weak. It is unfair. This government is being unfair to self-funded retirees—those mums and dads who have worked hard all their lives, who have invested in property and who rely on that rental income to put food on their tables in their senior years. It is unfair, and the government needs to explain itself. Why does it think that taking an extra $558 million of land tax out of this sector justifies only putting in $100 million in land tax relief?

Now, the government says, ‘Oh, we’re also setting up a $20 million fund’. Goodness me, you are patting yourselves on the back for $20 million? This is a government that spends that on pot plants. There is $20 million for a landlord hardship relief fund. Now, the first thing we were told was if you are eligible for the landlord hardship relief fund, you are not eligible for the land tax reductions. So it is one or the other. The second thing we were told is the government does not know who is going to be eligible yet. The government does not know how much people are going to be able to get. The government does not know much. It only knows that landlords apparently are an endless supply of money to be taken and spent by the Labor government whenever it feels like it.

We are just calling for fairness. We think everyone should be treated fairly in this state—fairness for small business tenants, fairness for mum-and-dad self-funded retiree landlords. Fairness, that is all we ask for, and this government is not fair. The structure of this scheme could be fair, but the government is too stingy to put the money in to be fair to both sides. This government likes to see landlords and tenants pitted against each other, but in fact I can tell you they are smarter than that, and they understand who is taking the biggest slice of money out of this sector—and it is not the landlord, it is not the tenant, it is the government. This government is the highest taxing state government in the country. That is a gold medal Victoria does not want to get, but it has got it. Under the Liberals and The Nationals we were not number one on taxes, but we are number one on taxes now, with 39 new or increased taxes under this Andrews Labor government—39 of them—and that is why we are the highest taxed state in the country. We are the highest taxed people in this country. And despite all those new taxes, despite all those increased taxes—and just in the last budget there were new stamp duty taxes, new land tax taxes, new payroll taxes—this government still short-changes tenants and landlords when it comes to a scheme like this, and that is to the shame of this government.

We have been having a lot of feedback and consulting with different groups about this. I have read some of the concerns that Grace had on behalf of her mother. The Property Council of Australia, I will note some of their comments from Danni Addison, their executive director:

It should not be the responsibility of landlords, who’ve felt the impact of lockdowns acutely, to keep supporting profitable businesses. That should be the responsibility of the Victorian Government which has taken the state into repeated lockdowns and should foot the bill.

In May the property sector was slugged by the Victorian Government with big hikes in land tax and stamp duty as well as a new windfall gains tax on rezoned land. Now it’s been whacked again by the reintroduction of an ill-conceived commercial tenancy relief scheme.

… Many landlords are smaller companies than the big businesses tenants in their buildings, or self-managed super funds looking after retirement savings for Victorians.

The Property Owners Association of Victoria Incorporated said:

The proposal takes absolutely no account of the property owners capacity to survive the foregone rent.

The State government has increased Land Tax, water and council charges, yet takes away the only means of paying those bills from mostly self-funded retirees who hold property for superannuation and are ineligible for government pensions.

We need to get this city, this state, back to life. Being here in Melbourne, you go down Bourke Street and you see that it is a ghost town. The Herald Sun today reported ‘8000 desert the city’:

Greater Melbourne lost a net 8237 residents …

last year, the biggest exodus of any capital city in the country.

Mr Dimopoulos interjected.

Mr M O’BRIEN: Well, that is actually not what it says here. It says:

By comparison, Sydney lost a net 8169 people …

Member for Oakleigh, that is not what is in the Herald Sun today. So what you actually see are consequences of a government which does not have any plan to get us through lockdown, does not have a plan to rebuild, does not have a plan to grow the economy. Their only plan is for higher taxes. Their only plan is for more wasteful spending, more budget blowouts on botched transport projects and more plans to tax Victorian home owners, Victorian jobs and Victorian small businesses, because that is all this government is good at—taxing—taxing small businesses, taxing family homes and taxing jobs. That is what they do. That is all they do.

So we have a scheme here. As I said, we have been calling for rent relief for small businesses for some time, so we do not object to the structure of the scheme. What we do object to is the lack of detail in it, and what we really object to is the unfairness of a government that has been ripping money out of the property sector hand over fist through increased land taxes and is failing to do its bit to make sure that the burden is shared evenly, fairly. We all know we are in a pandemic. We all know it is hard. But government has got much broader shoulders than self-funded retiree mums and dads. Government has got much broader shoulders to carry the weight than small businesses in high streets desperately trying to stay open while the shops on either side of them are closing down and putting up the ‘For lease’ sign. This is an opportunity for this government to step up and do the right thing—to provide more support. The $100 million land tax relief? Pathetic. Just put back what you are taking out this year. Just put back the extra you are taking out this year. You would make a real difference. You would make a real difference to the lives of a lot of small business people, a lot of mums and dads. That is fair. You have got the opportunity, government, to be fair for once.

You are happy to spend billions of dollars on cost overruns on union-run construction projects. How many billion is the West Gate Tunnel over now? How many billion is Melbourne Metro over? They would not even know. We would not know how many billion the level crossing removal program is over, because the government refuse to provide the data. So you can spend billions of dollars in those areas, but you scrimp and you are mean when it comes to supporting small business and self-funded retirees and mum-and-dad investors. That is wrong.

We want to see a real plan from this government to get us through this pandemic, to get Victoria open and to keep us open. We have been putting ideas out there. We have already announced a local business action plan to support small business, to go from having the worst payroll tax in the country for small business to the best. We have been talking about introducing rapid testing to get this state open again and keep us open. Let us get our events back. Let us get our major events back. Let us get people back into the offices safely. We are up there with the ideas. All this government says is no—no to me, no to Professor Marylouise McLaws, no to Professor Sharon Lewin from the Doherty, no to Professor Tony Blakely, all advocates for rapid testing. This government does not listen.

I heard a criticism from the federal Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, yesterday. He said of the Prime Minister, ‘If the Prime Minister didn’t come up with the idea, he’s not interested in it’. I thought that is not very fair when it comes to Prime Minister Morrison but it is a pretty good nail for this Premier. If this Premier does not come up with the idea, like rapid testing, he is dismissive. He says, ‘No, I don’t care’. Well, Premier and government, there are hundreds and thousands of Victorians out there who need you to care. There are millions of Victorians who rely on this government to actually come up with a plan to get our small businesses back, to get our jobs back, to get our events back, to get our offices back, to get our lives back. You are muddling along day to day; you do not have a plan. We need a plan. We need a vision for this state. We need to back small business. We need to back the jobs engine rooms of this state. We need to back the people who work in them. And that is why only the Liberals can be trusted.

Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh) (11:17): It is a real pleasure to speak on this bill for a range of reasons, and partly it is to inject a bit of reality and fact into the debate, particularly on the cusp of the Leader of the Opposition’s really mendacious contribution. Nonetheless, the commercial tenancy relief scheme for me was probably the biggest thing that businesses told me they value—JobKeeper and the commercial tenancy relief scheme. They are amongst the biggest costs; rent and staff wages are amongst the biggest costs for many, many businesses. Beyond the actual financial costs are just the pressure and the strain of having to anticipate how to pay such a significant bill, your rent bill. It is not one you can dispense with. It is not a product line, a cost of goods, that you can just dispense with; it is actually the building that you operate your premises from, so it is a big, big deal for many businesses.

When you think about the costs those businesses have worn, they have shut or have not been able to have indoor activities—if they are a hospitality business, for example—to keep the rest of us safe. Sometimes people forget that—they shut to keep the rest of us safe. We know that there is COVID transmission in commercial premises. I had one in one of the best businesses in my electorate. So they had to shut to keep the rest of us safe. That is a monumental contribution, so it is absolutely appropriate and heartfelt that we support them, and we will do that through this commercial tenancy relief scheme.

The details are in the second-reading speech, but we adapted this scheme after we heard from tenants and landlords about the previous scheme. This scheme is available to those businesses with a turnover of less than $50 million. As the Minister for Small Business said at a press conference the other week, we expect that landlords will provide a rent reduction proportionate to the turnover loss of that business. For example, a business with a turnover of 40 per cent of prepandemic levels can only be charged 40 per cent of its rent. Of the balance of the rent, half of that must be a waiver and the other half can be a deferral. Of course more can be waived if the landlord decides.

We have also listened to the landlords. We do not want the fairly disgraceful conduct of some big, big tenants, national tenants who just spat the dummy and said, ‘We’re not going to pay the rent’ and just walked away, because that is also not appropriate conduct. That is why this particular version of the commercial tenancies scheme is targeted for small and medium businesses and has additional resources to the mediator and regulator, so we are not having landlords—or tenants in fact—waiting for weeks or months to have their matters heard.

I read a statistic years ago that close to 50 per cent of small businesses in Victoria are run by people from culturally and linguistically diverse heritage. They could be first- or second-generation Australians. The success of business is a migrant success story. I heard the member for Northcote talk on a committee report about unconscious bias and discrimination and racism in employment. For those reasons and many more, and for aspiration and building bigger dreams, many migrant communities got into small business so they can fulfil their vision and their dreams, and it is that kind of story that we want to support through this bill today, the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill.

But it is not just that, and this is where I take enormous exception to the Leader of the Opposition’s contribution. Seven billion dollars of support to small businesses in Victoria, at least $7 billion since this pandemic started, and the member for Malvern takes a reference point of $120 million, which is the landlord relief provided here in this bill and says, ‘Compared to what you are collecting in property taxes, that’s a minuscule amount’. He did not talk about the $7 billion over 18 months. This is what I mean about being mendacious, about choosing selective facts to paint an unfactual picture. We offer a lot of assistance to small business, and of course they need more.

Members interjecting.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: Acting Speaker, if you could just quieten the chamber, because this is a little bit distracting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Connolly): Members at the table, it is a little bit difficult to hear the member for Oakleigh.

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Connolly): A very important contribution.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: I put up with it for 6 minutes—calm down.

What also matters to small business, which again the Leader of the Opposition failed to talk about, is our COVID check-in system, our contact tracers, all that work our contact-tracing team does, public health does. It does not just support Victorian individuals, it supports businesses. It means we can open up more quickly. That is why we have defeated two outbreaks of the delta strain. Business support also comes in the form of contact tracing and exceptional public health and taking some leadership, as our Premier and our government has, not delaying lockdowns, not pretending it is going to go away. That is also business support. It creates an environment where we can reopen and business can have a normal trading environment. Customers go out in droves to support businesses after a lockdown. They feel compelled. They identify with their local businesses.

But I have got to say, being in business is not a risk-free environment. There is no chequebook big enough to underwrite every eventuality. If you are in business, you are going to expect that you will be hit with things out of the blue, from pandemics to natural disasters to just plain competition. I was in business. We absolutely are required to and we support small businesses as best we can, but it is not a risk-free environment. If someone wants a risk-free environment, go and be an employee. In fact that is not even a risk-free environment—you could be restructured out of your job tomorrow. This is what, unfortunately, comes with being in business. It is hard, and that is why we have so much admiration for small business and medium-sized business, because they deal with all these things and they still make it work.

Just in response, in the last couple of minutes I have, to the Leader of the Opposition: we have adapted our business supports. He talked about microbusinesses. We have adapted for sole traders, non-employing sole traders, allied health providers like physiotherapists, supply chain businesses who were open by law but their business dried up because their business customers were not trading. You know, we have adapted the support of business in the grants over the last 18 months, because we have listened to the feedback and because of the excellent consultations undertaken by the Minister for Small Business, the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery and the Treasurer. And the reference point of the Leader of the Opposition—how out of touch is he?—was McDonald’s, a global giant. Yes, of course there are franchisees, absolutely, but they were not shut. He could not even think of an example that was a bit more attuned to the losses that businesses have suffered. McDonald’s is a business that survives on takeaway and drive-through generally.

And he talked about, ‘Oh, the government is making it up as it goes along’. Oh, sorry! Sorry, no, no, we developed a policy 16 years ago for how to support business during a pandemic we did not know would happen! I mean, what a ridiculous proposition. We come out with this support immediately and we do more work over the coming days so we just do not keep businesses waiting for two weeks while we develop every single detail of it. We want to give businesses the support and the relief they need immediately, in terms of ‘We are here with you; give us a few more days and we’ll put the rest of the package together’. What would be the alternative—wait a month? This is not a normal policy development environment. And Mr Have-a-Bet-Each-Way said, ‘Oh, the landlord relief is not enough’. The landlord relief is not enough? He talked about this poor family—and I understand—and the mother who relies on her commercial property, but he did not talk about the billions of dollars of investment this government has put in to make her asset worth more, from level crossing removals to hospital funding to new schools to new roads to new hospitals to new community facilities. This government’s expenditure on infrastructure has made every property owner wealthier, at least on the books. No, he does not talk about that. I am sorry, but to give a true picture of Grace’s mother—and I have all respect for her and her work over the years to acquire that commercial property—to give more respect to that, give us a global picture. What was it worth 10 years ago and what is it worth today? Our government has helped landowners because of that investment.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (11:27): Could I just remind the member for Oakleigh that it is not the government that defeated the COVID outbreaks here in Victoria, it is the Victorians that actually made the sacrifices to achieve what we have achieved. For the government to pat itself on the back that it somehow defeated COVID without a huge cost to all Victorians—financially, their mental health, their family, their children’s education; everyone has paid the cost to defeat the various outbreaks of COVID—and for the government to say, ‘We beat it’, I think is just showing absolute disrespect to everyone in Victoria who actually suffered through this.

Mr Dimopoulos interjected.

Mr WALSH: And the fact that you want to talk back means you just do not get it, do you. You just do not get the sacrifice that Victorians have made. You may not have had the people in your office crying for the things that they have lost because of the COVID pandemic—the motel operators I have had in Echuca who have had their life savings stripped away. They have been in my office absolutely bawling because of what your government has done with lockdowns. They have paid the price. You have not made it happen, and I think you should remember that. And to say, ‘We have done this immediately’—this is lockdown 5. You would have known there were going to be further lockdowns. You could have been more organised in saying, ‘This is what we’ve done really, really quickly to make it happen, because we’ve suddenly got another lockdown’. Everyone knew there were going to be more lockdowns, and tragically there may be more lockdowns into the future. So how about having a longer term plan about how these things can happen into the future?

I rise to support the Leader of the Opposition in my contribution on the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021, and can I commend the Leader of the Opposition for his commitment to small business and what he has done as a shadow minister to actually put small business’s case on the map here in Victoria, because those on the other side of the chamber, the government members in here, only relate to big businesses that employ union members. They do not really care about small businesses, and that is reflected in the way they talk about small businesses and the fact that they are expecting in this case small landlords, generally small landlords, to pay the price to help their tenants. Particularly in country towns, in the communities that the National Party represent, you will actually find that a lot of the main streets are owned by the mums and dads through their self-managed superannuation funds. They are relying on that rent, that money, to survive, and if they have to give rent relief, that will come out of their pockets. They may get some reduction in their land tax, but it will affect their personal ability to live into the future.

As I drive down the main streets of our country towns, and I think the same applies in Melbourne, the number of vacant shops now is frightening. It is absolutely frightening what is happening to the shopping strips in all our country towns. Those people that own those vacant shops are the mums and dads that have spent their life savings to get into those shops and that is part of their retirement. Let us not forget what the pandemic and the lockdowns have done to the small businesses and the landlords in our particular country communities.

The pandemic has now been going for something like 18 months. Where is the plan? Every time there is a lockdown we hear the government is acting quickly to do something about this. Where is the plan? We have had 18 months. We have had 18 months for a government, with all the resources of government, to actually do the modelling, to understand what may be needed in certain circumstances, but it is not out there for people to know, it is not out there for people to be able to plan into the future about what will happen in certain scenarios into the future.

Can I put a particular shout-out for small businesses, both landlords and tenants, along the cross-border communities, whether they be with Victoria and New South Wales or Victoria and South Australia, because they have suffered double lockdowns. When New South Wales has done a lockdown against Victoria, those communities suffer; when Victoria does a lockdown against New South Wales, those communities suffer. So they have suffered double the lockdowns of what the rest of Victoria has in reality. And particularly at the moment there have been no COVID cases along the borders except for the one case that went back to Mildura from the MCG a few weeks ago, and very fortunately that did not spread any further. But for the rest of those communities, they have not had a COVID case in over 12 months.

If you talk about the issues on the Victoria-New South Wales border at the moment, the New South Wales side is 700 kilometres from Sydney—700 kilometres from any outbreak in New South Wales. From a Victorian point of view, and we are seeing the numbers come down here in Melbourne now, they are anywhere between 250 and 500 kilometres from Melbourne and any outbreak here as well. So why are they being penalised so much at the moment? The simple answer in my view of the world is it is because we have a Premier who just wants to beat his chest and say, ‘I am tougher than the Premier of New South Wales and I can do it better than the Premier of New South Wales’. It is a bit like the member for Oakleigh saying that the government defeated COVID. We have got a Premier making statements and making decisions without really understanding the impacts that they are having on the people that are bearing the brunt of those particular lockdowns.

I really give a shout-out to all those businesses on both sides of the river who are suffering terribly at the moment. They are at their wits’ end. As I said before, we have got motel owners. If you bought the lease of a motel with your life savings, with your superannuation, you are locked into keeping going, because if you walk away from that lease, you have lost everything—you have nothing to sell into the future. And for landlords that may be their life savings invested in the real estate. They are relying on the income from those motel operators to actually survive and to pay their bills and to live into the future. That equally applies to the restaurants. The restaurant trade has suffered huge losses right along the river, and I think that was very well articulated in an article in the Herald Sun today.

A couple of things with the specifics of the bill: this again is what is called ‘enabling legislation’ rather than ‘prescriptive legislation’. It is a pet hate of mine that we deal with legislation in this house where all the rules are done later by regulation. It is all based on: ‘These are the principles, this is the press release, this is the second-reading speech, this is the intent of what the bill will do’, but we are not actually debating the detail of the bill, so the regulations can be done later. A bill will go through this house and go through the other house, and then people come back to us and say ‘Why didn’t you raise this particular issue when you were debating the bill?’. Well, we cannot raise that particular issue because it is actually not in the bill. I am a great believer that as a principle in this Parliament, in government in Victoria, we should move back to more prescriptive legislation rather than enabling legislation, because we are doing Victorians a disservice by leaving it to the government of the day through Governor in Council to actually set the detail around this legislation. I think the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Minister for Small Business, touched on those issues in his contribution.

The last thing that I would like to touch on is out of the second-reading speech, where it talks about minimal paperwork in the application:

… a valid letter from a tenant’s accountant will be sufficient to demonstrate a decline in turnover, and it is the Government’s expectation that landlords will accept this in good faith and provide rent relief in proportion to that decline …

That is sensible, but if you actually look at the applications for other business support for small business, they are extremely prescriptive. You have to be registered for GST, which means you have to have a certain turnover, you have to have a WorkCover number and you have to have the right ASIC number, otherwise you miss out. I have been dealing continually with businesses that do not meet the strict criteria for other small business support in this state because the government is so prescriptive about how the application should be. They are not actually just based on someone’s reduction in turnover as is the case to get the rent relief.

If the government expects private enterprises to actually work in good faith between themselves to do this, why can’t the government apply similar rules to the applications for all the other business support that has been out there? Again, it is a government with double standards. They are very prescriptive, very tight, so they do not spend as much money or do not spend all the money they have announced, but when it comes to someone else’s money, they are very happy to have it done effectively on trust. So on this particular bill, yes, we welcome the support for small business and landlords, but again the government is actually spending other people’s money and claiming credit for it rather than putting their hand in their own pocket to help these businesses.

Mr FREGON (Mount Waverley) (11:37): I will just point out quickly, if I am correct here, the member for Murray Plains just made mention of businesses under the $75 000 cap who will not have an ABN. You can have an ABN if you are under the $75 000 cap; you have to have one if you are above it. I mean, detail is sometimes important. I believe in the last round of business support from the government those businesses below the $75 000 cap who did have an ABN still got the support, so if people are ringing your office, Leader of The Nationals, you should probably point that—or get your staff to point that—out to them.

I rise to speak very happily about the COVID-19 Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021, and I do thank all the previous members for their contributions. I believe the Leader of the Liberal Party was a barrister—I could be wrong here—and barristers usually run their own practice. Obviously the member for Oakleigh was a small business person himself. I ran a business for 20 years. I am not sure of your history, member for Murray Plains—I am not commenting either way, obviously. But we all have an understanding of what it is like to be in small business, I think, at least from the four speakers so far. It is a very important part of our economy, and small business and very small business, of which I was part, are obviously a very big part of the families that are involved in them. Throughout 18 months of serious interruption to our normal lives, the pandemic and the associated carnage that we have had has obviously affected families in small, family and micro business to a huge extent. And my office is no doubt no different from anyone else’s in this room in having received many calls for assistance or to let them know the issues.

I have one particular business that comes to mind on just the extent of how this pandemic has affected people. There is a trophy guy in our area—I will not name them, but I think anyone in my area probably knows who they are, because they are the trophy guy. Obviously with COVID, with lockdowns, with restrictions community sport, school competitions—all of these normal aspects of life which we will hopefully get back to very soon—have been stopped, or at the very least severely restricted. The run-on for businesses like our trophy guy is that his business has dried up. Early on the make-up of the business was such that they were a partnership, and early on partnerships—because you think about the large partnerships and legal partnerships—did not fit into the standards, but we managed to make these changes for people, including the said business, over time. It shows that we as a government have listened to the small businesses who have made mention of the issues that they are dealing with day to day and we have addressed those concerns, and in the last two rounds of the support that has been given to businesses, the business that I am referring to received that assistance.

As the member for Oakleigh quite rightly said, ‘Does that fix the problem in its entirety?’. Of course it does not. Government, whether it be federal or state—in this case both of us working together in the last rounds, which is really, really comforting for all of us that we can work together on this—cannot bankroll the industry and the economy of the country forever. We just cannot, and I think everybody knows that. So we assist. We have got to get over this. As the member for Oakleigh quite rightly said, ‘The work that our health experts, that our doctors, our nurses, our testers, our contact tracers are doing gets us open quicker’. Today is a doughnut day. Who would have thought those two words would have been joined together two years ago? But we know what it means. Today is a day when, well, yes, we all take a sigh of relief. We have gotten over this one, we hope. Now, tomorrow might be different. We know that too, and that is stressful. I presume, Acting Speaker Connolly, in your house you hear the case number come up in the morning and everyone goes, ‘Oh, we’re here again’.

Members interjecting.

Mr FREGON: We all think about it: ‘Okay, what does this mean? Are we in for four weeks more or are we in for two weeks more? Are we in for just one day?’. But when you hear the doughnut day one we all take a sigh of relief and go, ‘Okay. All right. We can just pop our head a little bit further up’.

So a day like today when we introduce this bill is a day hopefully where our small businesses—and I have had conversations with a number of them—can pop their heads up a little bit and just go ‘Okay. All right, the government is going to continue to assist’. Will it be everything for all people? No, of course it will not. And I know that. The member for Oakleigh quite rightly said, ‘You go into business; you know there’s little certainty in business’. I think of a business I worked with in the safety area and all of a sudden there was an earthquake in New Zealand. Remember the Christchurch earthquake? Their business had to act in a number of hours to assist their clients over in New Zealand. Business is used to doing that, but nobody can prepare for a pandemic, as the member for Oakleigh said. You were not going to sit there 10 years ago and say, ‘Well, this is what we’ll do if COVID comes’. But what we can do is act when it is in front of us, and we have done that and we continue to do that. The support that we offer—and I commend the minister for her work—evolves as our understanding of the effects of this pandemic evolves.

Now I want to go to landlords. There has been some talk about landlords. I want to thank our landlords, and I want to thank our tenants as well because I think in general our landlords and tenants have worked together. They have understood that we need to be together to get through this, and for the most part they have all done their bit. The member for Murray Plains made a comment that ‘All Victorians should be thanked’, and they should. It is the community and our society that have got us to this point and it is the community and our society that will get us through, and we will get through.

But I want to point out a story, because I am a little bit miffed at the banks. I have a constituent who wrote to me. He is one of the landlords that last year worked very hard with his tenants to come to terms, to defer, to reduce payments, and who has done everything that you would expect a landlord to do. His tenant is a hairdresser, and the hairdresser was very worried about what this meant. Obviously they had shutdowns last year. They were worried about what that meant for their ongoing lease. The lease expired and it was to be renewed. The landlord said, ‘That’s fine. We’re in the middle of a pandemic. We’ll put a clause in the lease that caters for COVID with a reduced rent, so we all know where we stand’. This is good business, and these are good people working together. So they put that clause in the lease. The constituent of mine is managing this investment in a trust that his father set up for his father’s grandchildren. They put this in the lease. Then he goes to the bank and he wants to renegotiate. He has to refinance the loan. He goes to the bank and says, ‘I just want to refinance the loan’. Usually this would be a no-brainer, but the bank looks at the new lease and sees this COVID-19 clause and says, ‘Oh, not sure about that. You’re actually going to get less money if this happens’. All he wanted out of the refinancing was a $5000 overdraft. That was it. That was the change. And the bank said, ‘No, we’re not happy’.

You have got landlords and tenants working together, you have got government trying to give every bit of assistance they want. And I am not saying all the banks are always bad—they are not. I am sure they have given a lot of help, and they have. But in this case—come on, surely we can do better than that. On their website—and I will not say who it is—the first thing that comes up is ‘We’re here to help’. Well, I would encourage our big four to have a look at some of these agreements. Businesses will go into these sorts of arrangements because it makes sense, and the banks need to be a little more agile. So I hope that gets through. I commend this bill to the house. It is fantastic legislation, and I hope it gets a speedy passage.

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (11:47): I rise to speak on the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021, and in doing so I want to set the scene for where small business finds itself at this point, about 18 months into the pandemic. There seems to be a continuing amount of data that comes out from various sources on small business. Over the past fortnight we have had a survey from Vistaprint and the NAB small business and medium enterprise survey, the ABS has brought out some data and NAB has also done a monthly business survey. What we are seeing here is that Victorian small businesses are doing particularly badly compared to those in other states. So, for example, Victorian small business owners are twice as likely to have remortgaged their family home—that is, 10 per cent of small business owners versus the national average of 5 per cent; 60 per cent of small business owners have been forced to dip into their savings; and about the same number have cut back on household expenditure. One out of three small business owners in Victoria is not optimistic about the future. This is not a picture of a sector that is rosy. It is a picture of a sector that is suffering, that is in hardship.

The NAB survey shows that Victoria has the weakest small- and medium-sized business conditions in the nation and the weakest business confidence in the nation. It then perhaps is not surprising that Victorian consumers have the highest consumer stress in one metric, and that is government policy. There are other metrics where they do not have the highest stress. Victorians are far more pessimistic about how long it will take for life to get back to normal relative to other Australians, and this has also increased in the last month compared to the last collection in November. The monthly business survey from NAB said that there was an 18 percentage point fall in June in business conditions—that is a very large fall in one month—and business confidence has also plummeted 14 points. That means Victoria has recorded the worst business conditions of any mainland state and the sharpest fall in business conditions of any state in Australia, and unfortunately we are now seeing increasing business insolvencies every month.

It was against this background that on 27 July the Leader of the Opposition, in Melbourne, and I, in Ballarat, called for new commercial tenancy relief and for support for landlords. And to the extent that this bill brings that, we welcome it. It is absolutely clear that Victorian small business has done it really hard and continues to do it really hard as we go through this pandemic. But as the Leader of The Nationals said in his contribution, we are now 18 months into this pandemic. Why is it that when the Leader of the Opposition and I called for tenancy support and landlord support on 27 July we needed to make that call? Why hadn’t the government got its act together and had a plan before then? This is public data that I have just talked about. It comes from the NAB, and it comes from the ABS. It is well established that business tenants and their landlords in Victoria are hurting incredibly badly and increasingly so.

It is a bit rich for speakers from the government to say, ‘Well, who could plan for a pandemic?’. That is not what we are saying. We are saying the pandemic has been now going for 18 months, and we now get enabling legislation for a new landlord-tenant package. This legislation, as has been pointed out by both the lead speakers for the opposition, is enabling legislation; almost all of this will come in regulations. There is no reason that the government could not have brought in enabling legislation, if they were going to do stuff by regulation, at any time before now—if they cared about small business, if they thought about the situation for small business. But they had not, because they just do not have a plan. They do not have a plan when it comes to Victorian businesses. It is all very much seat-of-the-pants stuff.

As a result, we have ended up in a situation where we have some additional support being brought in today. Clearly on the tenancy side we do think that this is a reasonable way to go, but on the landlord side once again the government has failed to take into account the diversity of landlords in Victoria. Yes, there are some very big landlords that are very big businesses, but there are tens of thousands of very small commercial landlords—people who own one property. And those landlords are limited to a proportionate cut—but it would not be the same dollars in any way—on their land tax bill and a $100 million fund.

Now, I trust that speakers on the government side will not be too bombastic and too glowing when talking about their $100 million fund, because when you put into context just how much additional land tax this government is taking out of landlords just this year, they are taking out $558 million in additional land tax and they are giving back $100 million in this program. So they are not even touching the sides of the general land tax bill. But just on their increase this year, they could have made that, I think, a benchmark for giving back to landlords, who are doing it very tough here as well. That would be why the Property Council of Australia has noted that:

Commercial landlords are overwhelmingly doing the right thing and supporting their struggling small business tenants on a case-by-case basis and have continued to do so right throughout the recent fifth lockdown.

They go on to say:

It should not be the responsibility of landlords, who’ve felt the impact of lockdowns acutely, to keep supporting profitable businesses. That should be the responsibility of the Victorian Government which has taken the state into repeated lockdowns and should foot the bill.

Similarly, the Property Owners Association of Victoria has said:

The proposal takes absolutely no account of the property owners capacity to survive the foregone rent.

The State government has increased Land Tax, water and council charges, yet takes away the only means of paying those bills from mostly self funded retirees who hold property for superannuation and are ineligible for government pensions.

The balance is not right here when it comes to those landlords who use this as their only source of income. The government has failed to recognise the diversity here. In their welcome attempts to help tenants, they just have not got it right for landlords. We need them to do two things I think—firstly, to go back and have another look, a serious look, at how they can really support the struggling landlords. A $20 million hardship fund does not touch the sides. Nobody should be even spruiking that as a solution to anything. Twenty million dollars for severe hardship is just not going to cut it here when you have got tens of thousands of landlords for whom this is their income. So I do think they have got to go back and have another go at the landlord side of the equation. But before they do that, could they please sit down and think about how we have been living with this for 18 months and we are likely to have it a fair while longer. Where are the plans? Where are the plans that can tell Victorian landlords and tenants what support there is and in what circumstances they will get it over the future journey? This is once again another stopgap measure. They have no plan. They need one.

Mr HAMER (Box Hill) (11:57): I too rise to speak on the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021, a bill which is being introduced to provide relief and support for businesses that continue to be impacted by the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. I do want to, I guess, emphasise the words ‘continuation of the pandemic’. I think that we were all 18 months ago hoping we had seen the first wave and it would be over. Then obviously we had a second wave here in Victoria. Again, legislative measures were put in place at that time. We were hoping that 2021 would bring about a change, but we just have to look at what is happening internationally even this week. It does not really make the news broadcast, particularly during these two weeks when the Olympics are on our screens, but just over the last week there was an average of 600 000 cases a day and 9000 deaths a day internationally, for a total of more than 200 million cases and more than 4 million deaths.

This is not a pandemic that is going away anytime soon. We continue to see what is happening in other states. We know that at any time there is a chance that there will be further incursions in the state, and that is why we have to continue to have restrictions that follow the health advice and have these restrictions in place. That inevitably means, as national cabinet has agreed, particularly until we get a much larger vaccination rate, that lockdowns do remain a tool in the toolkit of governments. The challenges that these restrictions have placed on local business, particularly on our retail business, throughout the last 18 months cannot be overstated, particularly over the last six months when we have seen the JobKeeper and JobSeeker supports of last year no longer in place to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic, particularly on the operations and turnover of small business.

I was speaking to one of our local businesses, a local cafe, during the May–June shutdown, and this was before any federal government support had come through. They told me that obviously revenue was taking a massive hit for them, and they had to make a decision. Along with casual staff, who they were not able to provide that employment for, they did have some permanent staff, some salaried staff whose wages they needed to pay as well as other cost overheads, rent being a key one. They said to me, ‘Look, we don’t have the revenue coming in for this week. I have to make a decision: do I pay my staff or do I pay the rent? And I’m not going to pay the rent this month’. That was a reality, particularly at that time when the federal government was blaming lockdowns as a state government driven initiative and not accepting that we are still in a global pandemic. Being able to then give those businesses the flexibility and the surety that the workers could continue to have an income would then enable the small businesses to use the business support that the state government had provided to them for those overheads and keep that money flowing in that way.

Look, full credit to that business. As many retail businesses, particularly food businesses, have done, they pivoted quickly, as they did back in August last year. The food that they had pre-ordered and was ready for the weekend patronage, they spent the first couple of days of the lockdown cooking it all up, freezing those meals and putting other meals in the fridge and basically pivoting from an onsite, eat-in option to providing take-home, ready-to-eat meals. A lot of small businesses across my electorate and across everyone’s electorates in this house as well have made those choices and have pivoted to make sure that there is some income stream coming in.

It just goes to illustrate how important these supports have been and what a difference that income support has made and what it meant when that income support was not provided, taking two weeks to even provide it and putting in a seven-day limit before that initial payment could be made—people were just waiting and waiting. For many people, particularly if you are a casual worker, you do not have that capacity or flexibility to say, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t get paid this week, but you can pay me back two weeks later once I’ve gone through that time’.

In terms of talking about the specifics of the bill, it does temporarily empower the making of regulations in relation to certain commercial leases and licences for the purpose of responding to the pandemic. In particular it will enable the regulations to be made that will reintroduce a commercial tenancy relief scheme. The original scheme was introduced to help to protect the viability of the small business operators, to weather the public health response measures and to obviously reopen and rebuild once the health advice allows. Obviously, as the member for Mount Waverley commented, we all take a huge sigh of relief when we see days like today, when there are zero cases in the community. We look forward to better days, particularly in the business community, and look forward to those days when it is more open and they can have more customers in place.

Similar to the previous scheme, the proposed scheme to be introduced through regulations will provide support to small businesses with a turnover under $50 million that have suffered a decline of at least 30 per cent in their turnover. Without the JobKeeper program to provide the level of evidentiary support that was required in the previous program, tenants will be able to demonstrate their eligibility by providing a standard letter from their accountant. As it stands at the moment this legislation is due to be repealed on 30 April 2022, with the scheme operating through to 15 January 2022, with payments that perhaps have already been deferred being able to be deferred again and repayment requirements frozen until that date.

Just in the small amount of time that I do have remaining I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of landlords. This is probably an area where I do agree with the member for Ripon. I do recognise, and I think everyone in the government recognises, that there are many landlords—I know there are many in my electorate of Box Hill—that you would classify as mum-and-dad investors. They might have one or two commercial properties which really do help to supplement their income, particularly if they are older members of the community, and that might be among their key sources of their income. Their contribution and their willingness to negotiate with a lot of commercial tenants have been greatly appreciated. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (12:07): I am pleased to rise this afternoon to make a brief contribution in relation to the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021. Can I say at the outset that I have been contacted by just an incredibly wide range of small businesses throughout my electorate and indeed beyond and also by a very large number of landlords located within my electorate and beyond. In relation to this particular issue, of course, there are two sides to the equation: one is the tenant and one is the landlord.

I want to start my comments in relation to looking at the tenant’s side of things. Many, many small businesses that have been in touch with me have been struggling enormously, obviously, from having to close their doors, and within the cohort that have contacted me there has been a range. The range goes from tenants that have had a very understanding, gracious and good landlord to tenants that have had a rather hard-nosed, if you like, landlord, and perhaps that has been for justifiable reasons. So there is a wide range of players in the field, but I have had so many people speaking to me just about the pressure that has put them under. Obviously the fundamental issue of not being able to trade is the core issue here.

I want to start my comments by just saying that the fact that the government has not had a clear plan to navigate the state out of the crisis that we are in is of most concern to me. It is not like this happened yesterday; we have been in this mess for coming up to 18 months. We have got a situation that was evidenced as recently as yesterday, with the government issuing a press release on 3 August—yesterday—about the rent relief on the way for commercial tenants. We had the bill rushed into this place yesterday. We have got the debate on it now with a view to getting it through this week. That just epitomises to me a government that is in chaos. It is chaotic behaviour when we have got bill briefings on the morning of a sitting day. They are not thinking ahead. This is not news, this is 18 months in, and they are just not foreseeing where we are going in relation to these sorts of matters. That is probably the most concerning thing to me, that we just have not got that understanding. I guess in many ways that is the heart of the issue, that the government does not understand small business and does not understand that you cannot just turn it off and on like a light switch. There are going to be lead times, and there are going to be considerations that have to be made and thought that needs to be given to the particular circumstances of individual businesses. It is very, very disturbing that we find ourselves here at this stage of the crisis and at this stage of the sitting week debating this, when the matter should have been foreseen and dealt with some time ago.

In terms of my own background, I ran my own small business and I acted for many, many, many small and medium and indeed large businesses, but I will concentrate on the small and medium. In my experience, next to the wages and salaries bill very often the rent expense would be the most significant expense for those small businesses, because for many of them, whether it was a retail situation where they had a shopfront or some sort of an outlet, whether they had extra square feet in terms of a factory or other particular manufacturing or warehousing they needed, the rent is one of the most significant overheads. That is why it is of such concern to people that are in small business that this has been left to languish.

I have been contacted by hairdressers, dentists, florists, myotherapy providers, beauticians, play centres, restaurants, hotels, physiotherapists and a range of other small businesses which would qualify for this particular relief, given that it applies to businesses with a turnover of less than $50 million and that have had a 30 per cent decrease in their turnover—and I note that that particular calculation goes from quarter 4 of the 2018–19 financial year against quarter 4 of the 2020–21 year. Those people have been struggling. They have been struggling for the last 18 months during of course the times of lockdown, of which we have had five here in Victoria. They have been completely shut down and unable to trade at all, and so the fact that they have still got fixed overheads such as rent coming every month is an incredible stress and an incredible strain upon them. So we will see what happens with this particular piece of legislation.

I thank the government for organising the—albeit hastily organised and brief—bill briefing yesterday, but I want to flag also the area of concern that arose from there, inasmuch as we had a number of questions and some of the answers from the bureaucrats that were there were that they did not have the answers and that particular answers to some of the questions we had were still being developed. Again, that is what I find very disturbing—the fact that the government says, ‘Here’s the bill. Trust us. Put the bill through. Most of it’s going to be in the regulations. That’ll be the complex part. We’ll make it up as we go. We’ll work it out. Just trust us, and let’s put it through’. So that is a concern because that to me reflects the attitude of the government to the Parliament and more broadly to the people of Victoria. With all of the thousands and thousands of bureaucrats and people they have got working for them they should have been able to nail this down a long time ago and they should have been able to present to the Parliament a finished product, not a work-in-progress product. So I think there is some significant concern in relation to that.

Also in relation to the quantum of the whole scheme, if you like, the fact that it is going to be $100 million of land tax relief, when you put that in light of the increase in the current budget to land tax of $558 million it hardly touches the sides. That is quite extraordinary, because what we see in that $558 million is a further impost upon the people of Victoria, whether they be businesspeople or investors, whatever they might be. That is just further increased taxation by this government, which has an insatiable appetite to tax and to take other people’s money. That is obviously evidenced as well by the 39 new and increased taxes that we have seen from this government in the last two terms.

In considering this we have got to also, as I mentioned before, look at the other side of the equation—the investors. I had some people contact me very early in the piece. They were self-funded retirees. They had one asset that they lived off the revenue from, and that was a factory, a commercial property. The tenant there was in a position where they were able to trade because of the nature of their business, but they basically went on a rent strike. They refused to pay, and as a result of that the person that contacted me was without any income, that being their sole income. They were not dependent on the government. They had provided for themselves, had bought this property and were reliant on that for their income.

We have a range of situations like that as well where we need to see how this particular bill and these regulations are going to treat a person that finds themselves in that situation when the particular business has not had that downturn. We will see what sort of relief there is. We know that there is a hardship fund of $20 million incorporated in this, but is that enough? Who knows? The government, I am sure, would not have done the numbers—they probably just made that up on the back of an envelope in the frantic rush to get this bill before the Parliament. It is disappointing that we find ourselves in this situation and that we have here a bill where the government says, ‘Trust us. We will work it out’.

Ms BLANDTHORN (Pascoe Vale) (12:17): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute on this very important bill we have before the house today, the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021. This bill is a key part of what we know must be an ongoing and indeed evolving and flexible response to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the many challenges, both predictable and unpredictable challenges, that our community and our economy face now and into the future.

Today we stand just over 18 months on from the first incursion of the coronavirus into our community in January 2020, our nation’s beginning of a one-in-100-year pandemic, an event that none of us could have fully predicted nor imagined the full effect of. With life-changing vaccines now going into arms right across the globe, we all have the opportunity to experience some level of optimism as we continue to grapple with this ongoing crisis. But we all know that the pandemic is by no means over, and the events of the last few weeks have definitely shown us that. Our community should be so proud of the resilience, the adaption and the compassion we have continued to demonstrate together. This has indeed been a community effort, spending time apart, adhering to health advice and finding new and transformative ways of looking out for one another when each of us has needed it most. And of course our thoughts have been with the many industries that have faced periods of time unable to operate in complying with expert health advice. They have sacrificed so much and have always put the health of their customers and indeed the wider community at the forefront.

No-one denies that it has been hard. It has been very hard, and we all have had constituents come through our doors with stories of hardship. But we also all acknowledge that lockdowns have been a necessary, although extremely difficult, part of suppressing this virus. Going hard and fast has been vital in avoiding longer periods of restrictions and stopping chains of transmission out in the community. As we have learned more about this virus and the new delta variant of concern, our experience as a state tells us just how crucial a strategy of getting ahead of transmission is for the health and wellbeing of the community in the longer term. Indeed the constituents that have come through my door, even with their stories of hardship, have broadly acknowledged this and have been broadly supportive of this strategy. But as we all know, where there has probably been the most concern in representations that have been put to us has been from our business community. As the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, stated in his 8 July speech, ‘The Labour Market and Monetary Policy’:

One source of uncertainty for the near term is the recent outbreaks of the virus and the lockdowns. We are watching developments carefully, but it is important to remember that Australia’s experience has been that, once an outbreak is contained and restrictions are lifted, the economy and jobs bounce back quickly.

However, while we can recognise that this strategy works and while we have experienced that to be true, we cannot dismiss the very real struggle of our valued small businesses who indeed continue to do it tough. These businesses represent livelihoods. They represent jobs. They are the drivers of our thriving economy and a vibrant part of Victoria’s distinct cultural history.

Victorian small businesses have shown so much resilience through the past year and a half, many of whom have had to completely transform their modes of delivery in order to stay afloat. Just in and around my electorate, as we all do, I have had so many examples of that. Lankan Tucker cafe on Albion Street has transformed from just being a cafe to offering take-home meals. The Studio 3 Pilates studio, just outside my electorate but frequented by many a constituent, had not long before the pandemic hit opened their second studio over in Yarraville—the risks that they have carried through this period. The O’Heas bakery in Coburg switched to a delivery model, as did West Street Fruits in Hadfield. Or there is the Pascoe Vale Hotel, which has, like all other businesses and hospitality venues in particular, experienced the ebbs and flows of being able to offer hospitality through the restrictions. While they may not be operating at times, this does not cease the onset of their bills, their rent and other overheads for businesses. Small businesses continue to need our support to pull through this extremely difficult time, for them to recover and for them to rebuild for our future. This bill will play such an important role in this, and I am sure the community is eager to see its passage through the Parliament today.

In continuing our government’s work to back small businesses as they emerge from this lockdown, this bill will reintroduce the commercial tenancy relief scheme. The bill will enable regulations that allow for the reintroduction of the scheme. It is intended that the scheme will be as consistent as possible with the original scheme; however, it will include some changes that are necessary due to the absence of the JobKeeper program. The commercial tenancy relief scheme will run until 15 January 2022 and the act will cease on 30 April 2022. The scheme will apply retrospectively from 28 July 2021 as the date of the announcement. This reintroduced scheme will, like the previous scheme, provide small businesses with a turnover below $50 million with support should they suffer a decline of at least 30 per cent in their turnover. It is important to note that this bill has not been constructed as a way of enabling big business to improve their bottom line, and it does not allow tenants to walk away from their contractual obligations either.

What this bill is aimed at is providing much-needed help to businesses to survive throughout what is a time of great sacrifice and what has been a time of great compromise. We are one community, and we must share this burden together. We must act now to help restore livelihoods and ensure that our economy can bounce back for the future prosperity of our state.

It is expected that most commercial tenants and landlords will continue to work together in reaching agreements targeted at best assisting the ongoing survival of businesses. In the circumstances where the landlord or tenant cannot reach agreement, the matter can be referred by either party to free mediation by the Victorian Small Business Commission. There will also be an additional $3 million in funding directed to the small business commission to meet increased mediation costs incurred from the reintroduction of the scheme.

As has been highlighted, while the scheme is intended to be as consistent as possible with the previous one, there are some required changes. These changes relate to eligibility criteria of the scheme, now impacted by the absence of the federal government’s JobKeeper program as a criterion, and to improvements to the scheme’s practical operation. The key eligibility criteria will include small commercial tenants with a turnover under $50 million and evidence that a business has suffered a decline in turnover of at least 30 per cent in comparison to the previous relevant period. Special arrangements will be in place to enable eligibility for businesses that have been newly created. Evidence would generally be provided through the means of a standard letter from a practising accountant.

There will be landlords with concerns relating to this decision to reintroduce this important scheme, and I want to acknowledge those landlords. In particular the member for Murray Plains made note of landlords being not just big businesses but mums and dads in main streets in country towns. There are also mums and dads in Sydney Road in Coburg, in West Street in Hadfield and on Pascoe Vale Road in Glenroy—indeed right across our state. I think every member of this Parliament has sympathy for those landlords who are mums and dads who have invested their life savings in properties and businesses, which then provide tenancies for others to run businesses in.

Indeed in my community many of these people are migrant workers—people who have worked extremely hard to develop the assets that they have and to earn income from those assets. There is certainly no disregard for that commitment that those people have shown—in fact the opposite. This bill is about delivering fairness to both the commercial tenant and to the landlord, and the concerns that they have expressed have not been disregarded by our government. We know that there will always be two parties impacted by these negotiations—indeed two parties impacted by the effects of this global pandemic.

In addressing some of these concerns we are taking into account the feedback from landlords in the design of the regulations, which are aimed at improving the practical operation of the scheme—for example, timely responses between parties. We will also outline behaviours that the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal will be able to take into consideration as showing evidence of good-faith negotiations by both the landlords and the tenants. There will be additional resourcing and improvements to service delivery, all aimed at the delivery of timely mediation through the Victorian Small Business Commission. Our government has also announced a $120 million support package that will be directed towards commercial landlords facing hardship from the provision of rent relief to their tenants under this scheme.

This bill is important because we know that the impacts of this pandemic have produced significant increases in experiences and feelings of uncertainty for many industries—uncertainty for their future, the future of their employees and their ability to continue to operate, to find and secure new markets and to provide their unique products and services to the community. There has been uncertainty about their ability to pay the next week of rent, of wages, of overheads, at times not only for their businesses but also for their homes and for their families. Our government has right from the beginning of this pandemic always sought to ensure businesses are supported so that we will see them bounce back on the other side of this one-in-100-year pandemic, and it has done so recognising the significant role business plays in achieving our public health objectives and keeping our communities safe. I am pleased to recommend the bill to the house.

Mr HIBBINS (Prahran) (12:27): I rise to speak on the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021. This bill puts in place essentially the same scheme we had last year, with much of the detail not in the bill but actually left to regulations to support commercial tenants. It will run until January 2022. We will have the rent relief scheme back, and so if commercial tenants have lost more than 30 per cent of turnover, then they will be eligible for a rent reduction, with the landlord eligible for a land tax discount of up to 25 per cent should they give rent relief, with the Victorian Small Business Commission managing the mediation system for landlords and businesses who cannot agree.

Certainly we welcome this bill, though I do acknowledge the criticisms of the timeliness and the fact that so much of it is being left to regulation rather than being put in the bill. But we do need this, because our commercial tenants, our traders and our small businesses—I would like to particularly focus on those in our local shopping strips—have been doing it tough. One of the first things that the Greens and I as a local MP pushed for was support for our local traders when we first had the lockdown in 2020 and making sure that they also had a moratorium on their evictions. Small businesses and traders in my electorate certainly have done their utmost to adapt and to adapt their offerings to fit in with the rules and have been doing their best to follow the rules as well and do the right thing by everyone. But it has been tough for them, and sadly there have been, obviously, many that have struggled. Some of them have simply not been able to stay open, which of course is incredibly regrettable. Our shopping strips are the economic and social hearts of our communities, whether you are talking about an iconic shopping strip like Chapel Street in the Prahran electorate or the smaller ones, the neighbourhood shopping strips right across suburban Melbourne and right across Victoria as well—and the CBD as well, which relies so much on people coming in to work.

There are some significant challenges now, long-term challenges, for the CBD as well. But they are still doing it tough, so we welcome immediate relief for them. But it is going to have to now be a focus of government in the long term to adjust to these structural changes in place, and an opportunity as well for focused support for our shopping strips. Even before the pandemic, a place like Chapel Street had, I guess, its ups and downs and was cyclical in terms of vacancy rates. Certainly when vacancies rose people would often come to me, and it was one of the significant things that people would come to me about. When there is a downturn it affects the whole community. The empty shops obviously impact the vibrancy, but it is also about work, the critical local employment, those people that work in retail, in hospitality and in the service sectors. Many of them are young people, women—who of course have been hardest hit by the pandemic—people in casual work, people without penalty rates. So it is significantly important to employment and to local employment.

In addition to this bill and to the immediate relief provided for the remainder of the year and in the short term we really think that all levels of government have got now to play a really proactive role in supporting our shopping strips and doing what can be done to transform our shopping strips. I think one example that has worked really well has been the pop-up outdoor dining that has rolled out across our shopping strips. That was a welcome investment and support from the state government, which was then taken up by local governments and many traders, and that has had a really positive impact on our shopping strips in these really, really difficult times. Yes, they helped with the various social distancing requirements that were put in place, but now people are realising that this is actually a positive change for our local communities and very, very good for the urban realm. Certainly I would like to see many of those made permanent and in fact become a permanent feature of our shopping strips.

What the Greens would really like to see, though, is the creative industries being given a lead role in revitalising shopping strips. I think in particular this is relevant to the CBD as well, which, as I said, is facing those long-term structural changes where they are no longer able to rely on that steady stream of nine-to-five workers coming in, whether that is public servants, financial industries or what have you. They are no longer able to rely on that to support the various hospitality and other services and other businesses. Now they are going to need to make sure there is that steady stream of people coming into the CBD at all hours of the day to have an experience, and the creative industries certainly play a very strong role in that. We would like to see some government support for artist studios to be set up in vacant shopfronts. That would really go a long way to invigorating areas that are depressed. There are examples of where this has occurred around the world—indeed where the creative industries can actually lead an economic revival in local areas.

I think there is also an argument for supporting pop-up shops and supporting traders to get a start. One of the biggest barriers to actually people becoming a trader or setting up a business is just the proof of concept, the barriers to entry. If that can be supported and a person can test their business or test what they are selling, and then if it becomes profitable and if it works, then they can stay on long term. But certainly giving those sorts of pop-ups and startups and new ideas support to actually fill those vacant shopfronts would, again, go a very, very long way. Again this is something that has been put in place in various local governments where they support with sourcing properties, negotiating rent, administrative, marketing—those sorts of things.

As I said, the pop-up dining has gone a long way, I think, to making our high streets really great public spaces. And that is something that certainly I know, even pre COVID, was a focus in my area—in Chapel Street with the Chapel Street master plan—making our shopping streets really just great places to be. And there are so many opportunities just to bring people in with great streetscapes and more greenery and really nice street furniture and what have you, expanding footpaths and really making them good places for people to come, because there is a changing nature of our shopping strips. They are not necessarily just come in, drive your car, park, buy what you want and nick off. These are places where people go for an experience. They are places for people to spend time. They will go to various shops. You know, it could range from shopping to services, to eating out. So there is a range of things that people will do, and the more time that people can spend in a certain shopping strip, the more money that they are going to spend. We would like to see some significant investment there.

One of the challenges prior to lockdown, when it was certainly exacerbated, was the fact that much of the vacancy rate was caused by the simple fact that rents were too high for the commercial tenants. Landlords were leaving them vacant because to offer a discounted or lower rent would actually then devalue their property, so you had these ridiculous circumstances where it was actually better for a landlord to leave their shopfront vacant. I am glad to have been informed that many landlords are now, because of the pandemic, coming to the party and offering reduced rents and much more flexible arrangements for their tenancy arrangements, but certainly this is something that we need to keep an eye on. We need to make sure that that is realised across all our vacant commercial properties, and so there is certainly much more that can be done at a government level to make sure that rents remain low. That could be through subsidies or making sure that landlords do not unreasonably leave their property untenanted. You could be offering subsidies, again for the creative industries or for other preferred industries that you might want to move into your shopping strip. I think that would go a really long way, again, to reinvigorating our shopping strips—you know, the heart and soul of many of our communities.

Events and festivals, I think, again are going to be really important to generate income for traders. As I said before, the CBD in particular is going to need many more events and festivals to bring people back at all parts of the day. I know the member for Melbourne has done some significant work with her local community in re-envisaging just what the CBD is going to look like in this pandemic world and post-pandemic world, when the reality is that even when we get back to so-called normal there are going to be significant changes for a place like the CBD. Inner-city Melbourne relied so much on people coming into work from 9 to 5, when the reality now is that necessarily is not going to be to the same levels as it was before. What is actually going to be put in place to bring people back? And I think that is going to be, again, the creative industries. It has got to be events. It has got to be festivals. It has got to be experiences that bring people back to communities.

I know the St Kilda Festival obviously is very successful for that particular area. For some traders the trade that they do on that particular day might be their profit margin for the entire year. I know there have been a push and moves by local traders in my area to bring back the Chapel Street Festival, and certainly that is something that I would support, a festival back at Chapel Street, so we can encourage more people to come there and really show off what Chapel Street has to the wider community.

They are just some of our ideas that we think need to happen to really bring back what has been lost and in fact, as the saying goes, build back better. I think there is now a massive opportunity. We are now seeing the transformative nature of what can be put in place to support our shopping strips to make sure that they are reinvigorated, to make sure that they are resilient—and, you know, a lot of them have shown a lot of resilience over the past year and a half. Just around my area you have got Toorak Road, South Yarra; you have got Hawksburn and Toorak villages and a lot of other smaller places; and you have got Prahran East, Domain and St Kilda Road. A lot of them have shown a lot of resilience, and traders have shown a lot of resilience to get through. There are many new businesses opening up, but so much more needs to be done to support them and to support our local communities.

I reiterate my call for a dedicated unit to be set up within the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions to support our shopping strips—one that is dedicated. When I speak to my local councils and they tell me about the works that they are looking at doing in their local shopping strips, it is with various departments; it is not a one-stop shop. If there was a unit embedded within government, it could coordinate a lot of the works for some of these unique ideas that might not necessarily sit within one particular area of government or another. If there was one unit that had dedicated oversight, had funding streams, had strategic oversight and was dedicated and focused on revitalising our shopping strips, that would probably be the best area where some of these unique, innovative ideas could probably actually then be put in place, where you have got accountability and responsibility there. So we would like to see that set up within government to really lead that and to work across all levels of government and traders as well to implement those initiatives and any other great initiatives. There are plenty of examples around the world of revitalised local areas and neighbourhoods and shopping strips.

I will leave it there. The Greens support this bill, but as I said, I think there is a lot more that needs to be done for the long term.

Mr TAK (Clarinda) (12:42): I am delighted to be speaking on this COVID-19 Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021. I would like to say thank you to the Minister for Small Business for bringing this important bill to Parliament and for her ongoing commitment to supporting small business through the COVID-19 recovery. I understand that the last year has been extremely difficult for so many of our small businesses in Clarinda and across our state, and these challenges are continuing as we speak. I have had many calls from constituents with small businesses requesting information on the tenancy relief scheme. The pandemic has obviously hit a lot of Clarinda businesses and families hard, and this government will do everything in its power to support those businesses and families to the other side of this pandemic.

Throughout the pandemic I have been really heartened by the way that landlords and tenants in our electorate have worked together in partnership during this crisis. We have heard many stories and helped in many cases to facilitate good-faith negotiations, and it is a testament to the character of our community that landlords and tenants have been able to come together to find a solution. We have an extremely motivated and determined small business community in the Clarinda district, and we are lucky to have some fantastic associations and traders groups helping to coordinate these businesses. Like the member for Oakleigh rightly pointed out, many of these small business operators are from our multicultural community. The Springvale Asian Business Association is one; the Clayton Traders Association in Clayton is another. I have tried to keep in regular contact with our associations and with our local business owners throughout the pandemic, and I will continue to do so throughout this recovery.

I was really happy to see Monday’s announcement that applications are now open for the business cost assistance program round 2 July extension and the Licensed Hospitality Venue Fund 2021 July extension, which is fantastic. This is really welcome news for many businesses in my electorate. The extended program gives eligible businesses that did not apply in June or have since become eligible the opportunity to apply for the equivalent of July top-up payments. We have been working with several businesses in Clarinda and beyond that missed the support, and I know they are really appreciative of this extension and that the support is sorely needed and will be put to really good use. It is significant support, namely, the grants of $4800 to eligible businesses, including employing and non-employing businesses, depending on their industry sectors. For any business in Clarinda that did not apply in June or has since become eligible, please take a look at the Business Victoria website, check the program guidelines and make an application if you are eligible.

Thank you also to Business Victoria and the coronavirus hotline staff for their hard work during the pandemic as well as to the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery and his staff for all their assistance during this pandemic in a timely manner. It must be a very difficult task. Each business has its own unique set of circumstances and needs workplace-specific advice. So thank you for helping us all to navigate the supports and the guidelines for operation.

Again, I am really glad to see this bill here today. It is an important bill, with its overall objective to introduce a new legislated commercial tenancy relief scheme to provide rent relief and protection to small commercial tenants, as announced last Wednesday. The scheme is similar to the original commercial tenancy relief scheme—I remember that scheme well—operating as part of the COVID-19 commercial and residential tenancy amendment legislation. As the name suggests, that was a host of support measures for both residential and commercial tenants which included a ban on rent increases and blacklisting of tenants as well as the establishment of the Consumer Affairs Victoria front-door service and a separate dispute resolution service. I was proud to support that bill, and I am proud to support this bill here today and the important assistance it will provide to our small businesses and tenants.

As the minister has explained, the eligibility criteria have been updated to take into account the fact that there is no longer a JobKeeper scheme at the commonwealth level, which was a key determining factor previously. This scheme—the 2021 scheme—will provide support for small businesses that have turnover under $50 million and can demonstrate a decline in turnover of at least 30 per cent. From my discussions with many of the small businesses about the business cost assistance program extension I understand that there are still many businesses in the Clarinda district that are experiencing a decline in excess of 30 per cent. These businesses need and deserve our support, and I hope this bill will help to provide some much-needed relief.

In terms of what support the scheme will provide, again it will provide similar benefits and protections to the previous scheme. This includes proportionate rent relief—as an example, a business with a turnover of 40 per cent of prepandemic levels can only be charged 40 per cent of its rent, and of the remining rent at least half must be waived, with the remainder to be deferred; a ban on rental increases; and free mediation for commercial tenants and landlords to support fair tenancy negotiations. In addition, the government has also announced $80 million in funding to support commercial landlords to provide rental relief to eligible tenants, and I understand the details around that support are being developed as we speak and will be announced shortly. So just in terms of the operation, as announced, the regulations will be in place until 15 January 2022 and the legislation will be enacted retrospectively to commence on 28 July 2021 and remain in place until 13 April 2022. I should also mention that tenants and landlords can access free mediation, which is important, from the Victorian Small Business Commission to help reach agreement on lease changes. That service is available by contacting the hotline number—13 87 22—or through the VSBC website. I should also say thank you to the VSBC staff for their hard work during the pandemic and for having been a really important resource for tenants and landlords alike.

In terms of consultation, just to conclude, the bill has been prepared by the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, which has engaged in consultation with the VSBC as well as other key stakeholders such as the Shopping Centre Council of Australia, the Property Council of Australia, the Law Institute of Victoria, the Franchise Council of Australia and the Australian Retailers Association. So this is an extensive consultation process, and these are extensive support measures that are surely needed by many of our hardworking small businesses. These businesses need and deserve our support, and I really am looking forward to working with the Clarinda small business community to provide whatever assistance and support they may need and that we can help with in this recovery process. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (12:52): I take great pleasure in joining the debate on the Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Bill 2021, but we would all regret the circumstances that meant this bill was necessary due to the impacts of the world pandemic and its particular impacts in the state of Victoria. I do want to thank the Minister for Small Business for her tremendous frenetic activity in support of small business. Minister Pulford in the other place is a well-known champion of regional Victoria but also of small business, and I just wanted to thank her and the department, who have worked so hard around this.

I take pleasure in joining my colleagues who have spoken on this bill, and I note the Greens have spoken on this bill and the debate on the other side was led off by the Leader of the Opposition. With such an important bill to small business, which is the engine room of the economy in Victoria, it is indeed disappointing that from the party on the other side of this house that would present itself as the champion of small business, their speaking list seems to have already run out. I think it was three speakers from the Liberal Party and one speaker from the National Party, and I just think if anyone were giving them a mark, it would be ‘Could do better’. Given the current Leader of the Opposition, the member for Malvern, is the Shadow Minister for Small Business, I think it just shows that there is not a very united team behind him if they cannot get up here and speak on this bill and its importance to the community. And I note that the—

Ms Thomas: And no support for their current leader.

Ms GREEN: And their support for their current leader. And I note that the Minister for Regional Development is the minister at the table at the moment, and she and I both work very hard on cross-border issues. It is something that she and I both understand, having lived and spent many of our formative years in border communities, and it was something that the Leader of the National Party raised in the issues around what it has meant for small business and for communities on the border. I would say to the Leader of the National Party: could do better.

Where has his voice been with the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, now back in that role and with what we see happening in New South Wales? I should say that we absolutely want New South Wales to be successful in getting on top of this outbreak. It is just tragic what is happening with the delta variant running riot in New South Wales. Anything that we have had to do with our border closures has been with extreme reluctance and certainly has been done with respect to our border communities from a very early stage. But I would say in particular, ‘Where has the National Party been and the Leader of the National Party?’, given we have now seen that one of the biggest threats to the recovery of regional economies and border communities on both sides of the New South Wales and Victorian border is the lack of product, the lack of vaccine, the lack of supply across our nation but particularly to regional areas.

I do want to commend Geelong and Bendigo for being the top areas in Victoria that have stumped up and got themselves vaccinated. People in those communities have voted with their feet and have gotten themselves vaccinated. But something that struck fear into my heart last week—and I do not envy at all the Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian—is what they have done due to the low level of supply to that state and every state, whether it is Pfizer or whether it is AstraZeneca. I understand, yes, you would want to vaccinate your years 11 and 12 students, but they have taken that from regional areas. The member for Murray Plains mentioned that there had been that one case in Mildura, but when you look at the number of Indigenous communities and vulnerable communities living in our border regions and our regions, where has the National Party been in saying how outrageous it is to remove the vaccine stocks from regional communities? Not only will that harm regional communities in New South Wales, it will harm our border communities.

The Victorian government has a very strong interest in the health of border communities, because it operates the Albury Wodonga Health service. The Premier, when health minister, having grown up in Wangaratta, knew full well the importance of having a very effective health service in that border region. As a volunteer disability guide in the ski areas, I volunteer with a surgeon from that health service, and he in fact lives in Albury. I know that it will be very difficult for people like him that have to traverse that border now to undertake their work each day, but any health provider and anyone in the health workforce would be deeply, deeply concerned at the fact that regional vaccine supplies have been relocated from New South Wales regional communities. I absolutely urge all of the conservatives in this Parliament but in particular the Leader of the National Party to advocate in the strongest possible terms for the federal government to get their act together, because the best way that we are going to have our small businesses thriving and get rid of lockdown is to get those vaccines out and into people’s arms.

Every day we are hearing, whether it is on television or radio, there is still abject confusion—in New South Wales in particular, where this disease is running rampant—about how people are going to get themselves vaccinated. I did note that in one of the multicultural communities Lakemba mosque had a vaccine session where people turned out in droves, but I know that the GPs in my community are saying they are just not getting enough product to be able to get out there and undertake mass vaccinations. The key to getting our small businesses back—yes, we are going to provide this support for landlords and tenants through this scheme—and the best way to come out of COVID and have our small businesses thriving is to get more people vaccinated, and particularly in our regions.

Sitting suspended 1.00 pm until 2.00 pm.

Business interrupted under resolution of house of 3 August.