Wednesday, 7 February 2024

Bills

Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Sam HIBBINS (Prahran) (15:05): I resume my second-reading contribution on behalf of the Greens to the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023. The point that I was making prior to the lunchbreak was that right now Victorians are really suffering from the cost-of-living crisis, the high prices that supermarkets are charging for food. More and more Victorians are unable to put food on the table and cannot afford the essentials. The impact is profound. It is significant. It is impacting on people’s mental health, their quality of life. There is increasing hardship. People simply cannot afford the essentials and are going without. This is a massive impact right across our community. At the same time that this is occurring – this profound harm across our community – supermarkets are increasing their profits and their profit margins. They have got a combined market share of almost 70 per cent – it certainly is a duopoly – and this is allowing them to jack up the cost of groceries for already struggling Victorians.

By using the Essential Services Commission to regulate supermarkets the government can stop them from price gouging. It can lower the cost of food for everyone. It can give the Essential Services Commission the power and the objective to deter and stop excessive price increases, and this is something that governments used to do. There have previously been policies in this state and legislation enacted to actually prevent supermarkets from unfairly hiking up the price of groceries. It was once the purpose of the Department of Consumer Affairs; it had an express objective to deter excessive price increases. They did this through the Office of Prices. They even had a Minister for Prices overseeing this objective. They could monitor price rises. They could receive complaints. They would undertake price investigations. They would support community groups in collecting information about prices. They even had, for a period, legislation that backed up their targets for limiting price rises and gave power to the minister at the time, if they found that prices were unfair, to actually set a reasonable price.

So what we are calling for is for the government to give the Essential Services Commission that objective of deterring excessive price rises; the ability to monitor and report on grocery prices, including, for consumers, retail prices, but also wholesale and supply chain prices; the ability to monitor and report on the competitiveness or lack thereof of the supermarket industry in Victoria; and if supermarkets are found to be price gouging and refuse to lower their prices, the ability to set a fair price for consumers and make sure that, for consumers and producers, there is a fair price for all.

It has been good to see in recent months that in the upper house the Greens have secured an upper house inquiry into food affordability and food security. The federal Greens have secured an inquiry into supermarket price gouging, and subsequent to that the federal government commissioned the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to do their own review. We had the ACTU releasing their review today, with some damning findings about unfair price hikes and profiteering right across the economy. But I would point out that in terms of powers, although in terms of competition it is mainly the federal government, the state does have a role to play when it comes to planning laws and retail leases to prevent land banking and unfair deals that lock out potential new entrants to the supermarket sector. These are issues that the state government, when it comes to competition, needs to look at very closely. It is state governments that have the power over price regulation.

By legally making groceries in the supermarket sector an essential service and having them covered by the Essential Services Commission Act 2001, supermarkets would face greater, ongoing monitoring – not just a one-off inquiry that will take a year but more scrutiny than ever before. This would bring greater transparency to the supermarket sector and the prices paid – both retail prices and to producers – pressure the supermarkets to stop unfair price hikes, make sure farmers get paid a fair price and, importantly, give the essential services commissioner the power to stop price gouging if supermarkets continue with unfair price hikes. This can either be done by way of separate legislation or, alternatively, the government can make a declaration under section 4 of the Essential Services Commission Act, which goes into great detail about how the government can do that and what the government can actually regulate. They have wideranging powers when it comes to regulating industry, and they can do this to prevent supermarkets price gouging. I urge the government to act, because there is an immediate, urgent need for the government to act on price gouging and make food affordable for everyone.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (15:10): It gives me great pleasure to rise today to speak on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023, and as others have noted, this reform bill is the second regulatory reform omnibus bill that this government has brought before the Parliament. Our government is committed to making it easier to do business in Victoria, and this bill forms a key part of our agenda. This bill is full of relatively simple reforms which will have great benefit for our state by supporting increased productivity, making it easier to do business in Vic and protecting consumers, community health and safety and the environment, and that is exciting for all involved and affected by the outcomes of the changes proposed herein.

Having run two businesses concurrently, I can assure you that when the regulations which govern your business are made easier to follow, this has a significant and really positive impact on the experience for business owners and by extension their families, their staff and their customers. When you are in business, every minute and every hour saved from burdensome paperwork is time a business owner gets back with their family or spends working on their business as opposed to in their business. For anyone wanting to build a successful one, this is a key component.

With my organic greengrocer and cafe, life was very, very busy, and I have got to say honestly, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Weekends were pretty much non-existent, and the second I was out of the shop I was working on paperwork at home. So every bit of regulatory burden that we lift as a government off the shoulders of businesses – which are run by people – but in particular small businesses, is hours we give back to them to have a chance to catch their breath and maybe even spend some extra time with their loved ones.

Across my electorate of Monbulk there are cafes, restaurants, takeaway stores aplenty, retail stores supplying the goods we need, trades-based businesses providing the services we require and a large number of horticultural businesses making the best of the beautiful rich soil of the hills to grow the fruit-bearing trees that feed us, the ornamental trees that provide us shade and capture the carbon emissions and the indoor plants and flowers which decorate our homes and buildings across the country. Small businesses collectively, as we all know and have acknowledged, are the largest employer in our state, and so it is important that we support them. This bill goes quite a way in doing so.

It was wonderful actually, speaking of agriculture, to have the Minister for Agriculture come and visit some of my growers in Monbulk and launch our biosecurity strategy at Auravale Alpacas. That was only back in November, and that is a key legislative reform that we have actually made too which protects our agricultural industry even further. And I would like to echo the member for Yan Yean, who stated earlier how great it is that we as a state are leading the nation as the largest exporter of food and fibre in this country. That is no mean feat, I have to say. In the financial year 2022–23 we had $19.6 billion in exports. Victoria on our own amassed 24 per cent of our nation’s total, and that is something to be celebrated. It is an excellent achievement for our state, and I am really proud because I know quite a bit of that fibre and food is coming from my beautiful electorate of Monbulk.

So for these business owners everything we do as a government to ease their burden is absolutely a wonderful thing, but not with the scattergun ‘Let’s cut red tape and make a headline out of it’ approach, as was the case with the previous coalition government when they came to power in 2010. It is more than just a headline. When you amend or cut some red tape you need to fine-tune it carefully. You need to be considered, precise and judicious with how you do it. That is the only approach to take if you are being responsible, and that is exactly the approach we as a government have taken here. And I do have to say, having mentioned the opposition, that whenever I hear them sort of stand on their feet to speak – as I was listening intently to several contributions beforehand – it really does sound like all doom and gloom, which is a bit of a shame because it is actually not the reality.

Our economy in Victoria is a powerhouse. My good friend the member for Pascoe Vale here and my good friend the member for Yan Yean both referenced the Deloitte Access Economics Business Outlook, which forecasts that Victorian growth in gross state product in 2023–24 will be 2.5 per cent. We are leading the nation on this one, and we are forecast to continue doing so over the next five years. I know that sometimes those opposite like to be the harbingers of doom, but here we go, let us bring some reality into the chamber with some actual facts. We can see that things are actually going well for our economy, and we should be incredibly proud of that. I know I am, as a member of this government, the Allan Labor government.

Addressing a specific part of the bill, I want to look at a matter very close to my heart and stomach, and that is food. We have simplified Victoria’s food safety requirements throughout our term in government. We have saved 25,000 businesses nearly 40,000 days per year in preparing and managing their food safety programs, which is time back, as I mentioned before, that they can spend on their business. I am not sure how many people who sit in this chamber have actually had to provide or produce a food safety program – I know of at least one other – but I can tell you I had to do it a good seven times. It is a lot of work. We are now amending the Food Act 1984 too to make sure that the regulator has the capacity to issue directions to a proprietor of a food premises to revise a food safety program. I consider this to be a really important change. I remember only too well how much time, effort, energy and thought needs to be given to your food safety program, and it is for very, very good reason, because poorly handled food has the ability to kill people, especially those with vulnerable immune systems. And I am not overstating a fact here – unfortunately, food poisoning can end up with terrible outcomes. Those who provide food to the public have an absolute duty to do so safely, and authorised officers who are obliged to check that food premises are handling their food safely have an equally important job.

If you are unfamiliar with a food safety program, it is a requirement for any class 1 or 2 food premises. To work out which you are in, put simply, if the food you sell requires temperature control, your business is going to fall into one or the other category. That food safety program becomes a manual which any business that handles food, from production through to retail or serving, must abide by. It sets out processes and procedures for each establishment. It incorporates templates for the recording of key information, such as the temperatures of your refrigeration for cold storage and the temperature of the food which you cook and reheat. Every morning in my business we took the temperature of every single fridge and every single freezer. You track and monitor how the temperature changes. If you see it trending up, if it is your fridge or your freezer, you know you may need to call someone to service it. It might be losing a bit of gas. You do not want to get to a point where the food being stored in there is being held at an unsafe temperature.

These food safety programs are not an ethereal concept, they are practical ways to ensure that when we all go out and eat food at a cafe or a lovely restaurant, or we go and buy it from a deli or we buy it from the butcher or wherever, that food has been stored and handled correctly to ensure that we are not going to get incredibly sick or hospitalised or, even worse, have a fatal outcome. I have got to say, no-one wants to eat chicken that is raw, so I am sure most of us felt quite ill when we saw the former Prime Minister’s curries at home. I know I did. I still cannot look at that picture without going a little bit pale and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, I tell you what. To be quite honest, the former Prime Minister probably could have done with a good Victorian food safety program. Things may have been better.

Anyway, as I was saying, currently the Food Act 1984 relies on third-party food safety auditors to approve and certify food safety programs as being adequate, but there are occasions where the council or the secretary may form an opinion that a previously certified food safety program used by a specified food premises is inadequate. It does happen; circumstances change. This bill, importantly, includes a power to provide a clear mechanism for regulatory intervention where risk to health is identified. Again, I cannot overstate the importance of this. I know with an omnibus bill everyone sort of thinks ‘Okay, there’s some tweaks or changes here’, but these are really practical changes which will have better outcomes for those who manage food premises and actually more widely for Victorians when we go out and eat anything that has been produced there.

So I have got to say it is a really vital reform. I am very pleased to see it in this bill. It is excellent to see that this work is being done, because as I said before, we are fine-tuning regulations and trying to lift some of that regulatory burden from businesses – in particular small businesses, who do not have HR departments and who do not have a coterie of people who can deal with and manage the paperwork; usually it is just one person or perhaps them and their partner doing all of that work. So everything we do as a government – as the Allan Labor government – to make it easier for businesses to conduct their business and thrive is absolutely the best step forward. It is the only way forward, and I commend this bill to the house.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:20): I rise to speak on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023, and I pay tribute to my predecessor who somehow managed to make this quite interesting and entertaining. Very passionate about this particular piece of legislation is the member for Monbulk. I dips my lid to you, because I am not sure if I am going to be able to do that. With the greatest respect to our advisers in the box – I am sure they and many other public servants have put a lot of work into it – this is what I would call the boring but important legislation. And it is important, but some of it does boggle the mind when you read certain things that absolutely make no sense whatsoever unless you understand the particular area of interest – something for example like our part 2 provisions, which amend the Monetary Units Act 2004 to provide greater flexibility in fee setting by allowing regulations in Victoria to prescribe small fees in the form of fee units by removing an unnecessary prohibition that means a fee less than the equivalent of one fee unit, currently $15.03, cannot be fixed in fractions of a fee unit. This means that fee units can be set to small fees and indexed annually to keep up with inflation.

Mathew Hilakari: Finally.

Danny O’BRIEN: Finally, says the member for Point Cook. We have all been waiting for this for years. Yes, I am taking the mickey a bit, but I do understand that we have this type of omnibus legislation quite regularly, and the people of Victoria have no idea what we do sometimes. This stuff actually is important because there will be people – organisations, businesses and others – that will find some of the small little things in legislation absolutely perplexing, frustrating, flabbergasting, whatever it may be, and it is important that they are reviewed and updated from time to time.

I understand the process for this legislation was effectively an invitation to all departments to come forward with their minor amendments to things that can reduce red tape, that can clarify aspects of legislation and that can make the world a little simpler and more efficient for everyone here in Victoria. At least that is the intention. As I said, I am not going to deliver the world’s greatest speech here, but as I understand it that is the intention of this. I literally have not read the entire bill. I will acknowledge that from the very beginning but say that I do hope the intention of streamlining legislation is actually being addressed here, because this legislation before us amends 14 acts across 10 different portfolios, at least one of which is actually mine in the liquor and gaming space – so I might say a few words about that in a moment.

As I said, it is important to be tidying up pieces of legislation to make changes that better reflect the modern world, which is often the case with legislation like this. What was passed in 1986 is no longer as relevant today or may not have the nuance that is required to operate efficiently and effectively within today’s environment. So it is that this goes to those 14 acts and across 10 different portfolios to address these issues.

The government claims that these regulatory reforms will provide $2.6 million in annual savings to businesses in Victoria. There is not much detail on how in fact that will occur, but even if we take it on face value as my previous colleagues have spoken, if you apply that just to small businesses – of which there are 710,000 in Victoria – that would equate to a saving of $3.66 per year. If you are a bit tight and like a coffee from the Shell servo, you can maybe get two coffees for that. But if you are a usual at your local cafe and go in to get a latte or a flat white, you are not even going to get a coffee for that.

I do not know that there will be dancing and singing in the streets from our small business community that these savings are being achieved, let alone from the wider business community – the larger businesses that have copped a whack in tax from this government over the last few years in particular. Indeed I want to go to that and highlight the concerns. We have heard some of the government members speaking in glowing terms about how this continues their regulatory reduction journey. But in fact, as the member for Gippsland East pointed out, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry undertook a report two years ago titled the Cost and Ease of Doing Business in Victoria. It highlighted that effectively with a technical investigation, with a ranking of the ease of doing business across the state and with a survey of more than 700 of its members capturing the experience of doing business, and it came up to the conclusion that Victoria was the worst state for doing business.

One of those issues was that Victoria ranked seventh out of the eight states and territories on the average number of permits needed to start a business. What was concerning too were some of the statistics from the survey of 700-odd business members of the Victorian chamber. Less than half of businesses feel they get fair value for money from the taxes they pay. Only 7 per cent of businesses think the government is doing a good job of reducing the cost of doing business in Victoria. Forty-four per cent of businesses think government service waiting times are getting worse. We will have some debate tomorrow on the Service Victoria Amendment Bill 2023, which may allow some members to highlight the issues with direct government service in this state. Eighty-five per cent of these businesses said regulatory culture was a barrier to doing business. Some of those statistics are pretty alarming, or they should be alarming for any government that values the job creators of our state and gets on and makes sure that it is supporting business and removing regulation and red tape to ensure that they can create the jobs that Victorians depend upon.

I mentioned that there are some minor changes to gambling regulations through the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 and the Casino Control Act. Part 3 amends the Casino Control Act 1991 to remove a requirement for casino special employee licence applicants to provide evidence of certain former employment that is not relevant to the licensing criteria. I am sure that is neither here nor there for the vast majority of us, but for those people applying for those jobs – and indeed the people reviewing their applications and their suitability for casino special employee licences – hopefully that will remove somewhat of a burden. But it reminds me of the government’s attitude when it comes to the casino. We saw the government be dragged kicking and screaming into the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence here in Melbourne. While we have been seen a number of pieces of legislation come forward, I think three, to implement the findings of that royal commission, some of those issues have now been extended to others in the private sector.

I know the minister at the table, the Minister for Police, and possibly a few others in the room – no, pretty much only ministers I think – attended the Australian Hotels Association drinks last night, where I am sure ministers were regaled with the concerns of the hotels industry about the gaming reforms that have been proposed by this government. In particular mandatory carded play and mandatory precommitment for gaming the government has announced and is apparently now consulting with the industry on. But there is great frustration that after the appalling and, as was described by the commissioner, disgraceful behaviour of the casino and the amendments that came about as a result of that those amendments are now being extended to the hotels and clubs sector when it comes to gaming venues. I do not think that is fair. I think it is certainly the wrong decision by this government.

As I said, this legislation contains a multitude of minor changes. They are boring but they are important, and I wish the bill a safe passage through both chambers.

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (15:30): It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Gippsland South. He did raise issues around one of the regulatory changes, and as he knows, I am always here to help and assist. He raised an issue around $15.90 being the regulation for fees at the moment, and that the intent of this bill is obviously to change that so we can take fractions of those fees, which is important. An example that the opposition may be interested in of course is FOI requests, which currently have two fee units, and that is $31.80 at the moment. Now, as we reduce regulatory burden in Victoria and we make our systems more efficient and easier to use, the costs can therefore come down. We could bring that down by the full unit, but that would take a great deal of efficiencies within the system. But maybe we can save 20 per cent and take those units down by 20 per cent, and that would save the opposition a lot of money in those fee requests. So I know that that is your active support for this particular piece of legislation. It is now improved in your understanding as well.

The member for Monbulk raised her cafe days and her food handling days, and it was such a pleasure just to be reminded of my own time working in cafes and monitoring various different fridges for their temperature and recording them in a fairly clunky way on pieces of paper with thermometers that I hoped worked. When we got the better thermometers we could press them and they would tell us the temperature wherever we pointed them. They got even better. There are some real practical examples, and she discussed some of the practical examples of when things go wrong and people get unwell, and that has a real cost. It is not just a regulatory burden, it is a cost on people and the lives that they experience and their wellness.

The member for Mornington – I heard his speech earlier, and I just wish he was not so down on Victoria. I want to give him some hope. He should not be so down on Victoria. CommSec has said Victoria is the number one for economic activity in all of Australia. The ABS’s most recent report talked about our wonderful record jobs growth in regional Victoria, which I know so many members of the Nationals would be very pleased with – 826,000 more jobs in regional Victoria and unemployment at 3 per cent, which is amazing. It is an amazing effort by this government, in helping to coordinate, and that is sometimes through the decrease in regulatory burden, because people can spend their time and their money and their efforts on growing their business rather than filling in paperwork, which is so often the case.

The member for Gippsland East did spend a little bit of time going through the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) report, and it is unfortunate that he skipped the very first dot point of the summary. It is worth putting on the record for the house that unfortunately he missed that. He must have just passed it over:

The Nous Cost and Ease Ranking puts Victoria first in the country for skills and labour and second in entrepreneurship and growth …

A member interjected.

Mathew HILAKARI: I might not have picked up the skills part of the ranking, but certainly others around me have, and I thank them for the assistance there. But it is always important to read the first dot point and the first thing that VCCI would like to say about the state of play in Victoria in the report’s findings.

This bill goes through 54 amendments across 14 acts and 10 ministerial portfolios, and it is important that we keep on this effort of regulatory reform, because it does change the experiences that we have. If we think about every action that we do that interacts with government departments or with business, there is a lot of paperwork, and technology has been a great advantage in making changes to that. We are seeing these changes across businesses and social services, to support emergency preparedness and ensure technology neutrality and other simple and uncontroversial changes. The uncontroversial nature of these changes means that we should see a speedy passing through the house. I am really glad to see so many members of the opposition making strong contributions on this bill. Of course $2.6 million in benefits is estimated by the Department of Treasury and Finance. That will be an annual benefit, so we will keep getting that year in and year out. I expect those benefits to be of more value over time as the economic activity in this state continues to grow.

The first objective of the bill is to modernise and streamline requirements for business and social service providers. Some members here have talked a little bit about refrigeration and the movement and production of dried beef versus fresh meat, which is an interesting topic but not an area of particular expertise for me, so I might move by that. But it is good to hear that we are no longer requiring poultry and game processors to provide information to PrimeSafe that PrimeSafe does not need, a particularly obvious improvement that we can make. This bill enables a streamlining of mandatory notifications by registered social service providers. It ensures that the Secretary of the Department of Health and local councils can direct a business to undertake improvements in inadequate food safety. The member for Monbulk did a wonderful job of talking the chamber through that.

The second objective of the bill is to improve emergency preparedness through the transportation of waste for the purposes of meeting a temporary emergency, providing for the temporary relief of a public nuisance or community hardship or enabling the commissioning, repair, decommissioning or dismantling of any item of plant or equipment. Of course we need this. We are seeing more floods and fires and emergencies across our state. Continually we are seeing them increase, year on year, and I have no expectation with climate change that that is going to change – heavier rains, more fires, more emergencies and more need for our emergency services and our councils to be flexible. We should give them the opportunity for that flexibility, because they improve the lives of Victorians when they are given that opportunity.

The third objective of the bill is to support technology-neutral legislation and allow for the electronic transmission and publication of closure orders, amongst other matters. Increasingly with electronic transmission – and we see this with signatures – where once members of our community would always have to provide a written document with a physical, wet signature on the document, more and more we are seeing that become a relic of the past. People are able to provide electronic signatures for all sorts of things. It is an important thing that we are able to continue to improve as technology improves.

We have been on this path and this journey of improvement for almost a decade now. We have had so much rich opportunity to make regulatory reform because we were left so much opportunity by the previous government. The previous government obviously had some good catchphrases like ‘cutting red tape’ and a scattergun approach to regulatory change, but it really did not go beyond that, so we were left with a rich vein of opportunity to make the changes that we have continued to make in this state to make things efficient and fair, because we have got a clear pathway of making things more efficient and fair, not just having a slogan.

Over the last 10 years we have reviewed and reformed regulations in liquor, environmental protection, essential services, electricity, building and construction, health, planning, consumer affairs, fee pricing, owners corporations and so much more – the list just goes on and on. The member for Gippsland South mentioned the gambling reforms. We both sat on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee most recently to consider those. We heard from the commissioner of the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission about how those reforms are changing the work that she undertakes and the really significant findings that have come out of the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence and those activities that happened afterwards.

We also see the changes in cladding safety. That affects so many people across our community with the building and the rectification works that they need to support them as well as worker screening processes, green energy and greater energy market protections, to name a few.

There is one in particular that I just want to mention before my time runs out – and I could really go on on this bill before the house – and that is wage theft. When we talk about efficiency and support for the business community, for those businesses who pay their workers properly, they are put at a severe disadvantage to those who rip off people’s wages. And every day we should be fighting for those wages to be properly paid for businesses who do the right thing and for those workers who need the right thing to be done for them. So I commend the bill to the house, and I hope it has a safe passage shortly.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (15:40): I rise to also make a contribution on the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023. As has been noted by most speakers, this is an omnibus bill that amends 14 acts across 10 portfolios, and given that it is doing so, it is actually fairly skinny in its form. I will just quickly point out some of the purposes of the bill. There are amendments to the Monetary Units Act 2004 about the use of fee units; the Essential Services Commission Act 2001; the Water Industry Act 1994; the Meat Industry Act 1993; the Seafood Safety Act 2003; the Food Act 1984; the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981; the Regional Development Victoria Act 2002 – it really does cover quite a broad number of elements; the Environment Protection Act 2017, which we have heard just previously; the Casino Control Act 1991; the Gambling Regulation Act 2003; and the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005. So there is a lot in this bill, and because it is actually quite skinny and there is so much in it, it is fairly easy to leap to the conclusion that these changes are mostly minor technical changes, that they clarify the nature of some areas and that they in essence do not represent substantive changes to the acts in question.

The majority of the amendments are aimed at streamlining requirements or rectifying specific instances where current provisions are not working as intended or have become impracticable, and we often see that these bills provide that opportunity to clean up a whole lot of things at once. There are drafting errors that happen; small mistakes get in there, and things alter that do need to be cleaned up here and there. As I said, they are typically not controversial, and as such the coalition do not seek to oppose the passage of this bill, but we do want to draw the house’s attention to a number of areas, in particular how the government performs in regulatory reform and red tape reduction. And whilst you hear the government sing their praises, there is anything but the truth there. We had an omnibus bill last in 2022, which was not terribly long ago, and as I have mentioned, there are a range of portfolios and acts that are touched by this.

The four objectives of the bill are about streamlining requirements for business and social services providers, and I am going to talk about this in relation to small business in a moment; improving emergency preparedness – for somebody who lives in the region that I do, which was subject to flooding only just a few weeks ago in January and in October 2022, and noting today is 15 years since the Black Saturday fires, which were a completely different type of emergency situation, and we have had a large number of storms or little cyclonic activity in certain areas that have brought powerlines and trees down on houses and things like that, improving emergency preparedness is certainly important; supporting technology-neutral legislation; and, fourthly, making simple and uncontroversial amendments to support an efficient regulatory system through the amendments to acts.

I have got to get to the government’s red tape reduction, some of their claims and certainly what the private sector and the business sector have to say about this and a lot of the taxes that have been brought forward. The government claims that these regulatory reforms are going to provide over $2.6 million in annual savings to businesses in Victoria. We did ask for details about this at the bill briefing, how that figure was put together, and it was pretty surprising that we were not really able to be given answers.

Firstly, at the bill briefing the government did not have representatives from each of the portfolios that were represented. Now, I understand that with 10 portfolios that is a tricky thing, but we had a lot of questions around some of the areas, and I do not think there was anyone from Agriculture Victoria in the room that could answer the questions in that area.

With regard to the $2.6 million in annual savings, how is it cobbled together? We are not quite sure about that. The government says these are achieved by removing licensing and permit fees and making regulatory compliance easier. We are amending the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to remove requirements to provide notice of price determinations to all regulated entities. The Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 amendments create a mechanism for the secretary to authorise a specified class of entity to undertake an activity that would otherwise require a licence or a permit – so perhaps there are some savings there. And we are amending the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 to provide licences with remote access to keno systems and allow for single approval for linked jackpots. When you have a look at this, there are 710,000 small businesses in the private sector. The importance of the private sector is absolutely not lost in this instance. But if you have got $2.6 million worth of savings, that averages out to $3.66 a year. So we have got these huge changes – the omnibus changes about streamlining – when we are going to save each business on average about $3.66 a year. I think we can do a lot better, particularly within the current state.

I want to have a look at the landscape for business, because this is about streamlining for businesses. The landscape for business in Victoria, whether you are small, medium or large, is there are a host of new or increased taxes. There have been 53 new or increased taxes since Labor came to office. We have got a tax on jobs, a tax on health and a tax on rent. WorkCover premiums went up by 42 per cent and power – electricity and gas – prices have gone up. I was at the Australian Hotels Association function last night, and it was not lost on a lot of the employers there. Hotels and clubs are small. They did talk about the impact of these increased taxes. Not everyone owns their own property. You might be leasing a building or a shopfront. It might be a warehouse; it might be a storage shed. There are so many ways you could be leasing or renting, and this all adds up if the land taxes increase and get slugged back to the tenant.

The government always seem to look at businesses as being cashed-up. And you may have some pharmacies, perhaps, that have done very well over time, but we know that a lot of businesses at the moment are really doing it tough. They are cash-strapped. In fact I went to a pizza place where they said that they cannot afford staff anymore. He had his parents in there working because it saves on the payroll, because the cost of cheese had gone up significantly and that was putting pressure. They could not put the price of pizzas up because they knew everyone was doing it tough in their area.

I want to refer the house to the Partners in Wellbeing program, which ceased last year from 1 July. This was put together coming out of COVID to recognise the difficulties with business. What it did was it saw 14 qualified mental health clinicians embedded with peak bodies – the chambers, for instance – to support members through the challenges of surviving COVID. I know Ballarat, Wodonga, Bendigo and Geelong’s chambers were all involved in this. Following that, it was around the ongoing financial stress that many businesses continued to suffer. Whilst the government was looking to cancel that – they did not have budget allocation – they did kind of keep it going to a degree through flood recovery. But again, businesses are doing it exceedingly difficult with the cost of living, and it has been referred to previously in VCCI’s Cost and Ease of Doing Business in Victoria report from January 2022. It is not easy to do business in Victoria. There are a lot of things that can be done. $3.66 savings on average for each business is not particularly a great start, because we are overburdened with the permits that are needed.

A business in, say, the CBD would deal with councils. Maybe if it is on the Yarra, they would deal with Parks Victoria, Melbourne Water – all the relevant water authorities as you go further out – or the EPA. You might need fire services involved. You might have to get a liquor licence. All of these things add up, and the more time businesses have to spend going to multiple agencies where they get different advice is more lost productivity. VCCI at that time were saying having a one-stop shop where you can get one lot of advice – a concierge service – would be a lot better and a lot more efficient way of doing business, and I hope the government will provide that.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (15:50): I also rise to speak in support of the Regulatory Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2023, which of course, as all the previous speakers have said, is a piece of legislation that deals with numerous amendments to many pieces of legislation that have been passed in this chamber over many years. Much of the legislation that we deal with here in this chamber makes amendments to existing legislation, although the Victorian Labor government has also introduced and implemented completely new acts of Parliament, because we have been on a path of huge reform to make a better and fairer Victoria for Victorians, as well as doing the necessary work of updating legislation from time to time because things change. Our experiences guide us, and we often need to modernise what has been done before.

I know that the opposition coalition is not opposing this omnibus legislation, but they are using it as an opportunity to do their normal whingeing and complaining. This bill is about amendments to change legislation and in particular regulations that are designed to make it easier to obtain permits and licences while retaining the protection for which the regulations were designed. This also demonstrates that the Allan Labor government is a doing government, that we are always looking for continuous improvement and that we are always looking to introduce bills that can make those improvements, make the adjustments, in order to make them work better and also to be better for the Victorian community. We look at identifying loopholes and unnecessary difficulties. It is also something that we look at in changing times. We need to change legislation, to make amendments, to keep up with things such as technology, community attitudes or even restructuring. This demonstrates how the law is something that changes and must adapt to the changing circumstances of society.

As with all speakers, I have not got the time in my 10 minutes to talk about all the aspects of this bill, so I want to identify just a few areas to talk about and give some examples. This piece of legislation covers 54 amendments across 14 acts, and the areas that it relates to are really around the social services area, business, emergency preparedness and also some consumer protection. A lot of this legislative change that we are talking about here today demonstrates how the Allan Labor government is a listening government, because many of the changes that are contained here are based on the consultation process with individuals, organisations and departments. We are often trying to address problems that they have identified, that they have found in the real-life working of pieces of legislation. This is an attempt to listen to people, to take on and understand and recognise their expertise and then to use that information to change legislation to make it work better for all of us. We have talked about some of these changes being relatively small, but even small changes often make big impacts. We expect that this omnibus bill will make a big impact and make things easier for people in many areas of their life.

When we are talking about smaller changes with big impact, I would like to give the example – and I know the member for Broadmeadows raised it earlier in the day – of aged care facilities. At the moment each individual entity must make an application for a permit or a licence to hold and dispense or use particular medicines. This legislation will allow the Secretary of the Department of Health, instead of looking at individual entities, to talk about a class of entities. For example, a class of entities would be aged care facilities, and therefore it would make it easier for them to then obtain and administer, for example, antiviral medicines, which we know are so important in protecting lives, particularly since their major development and coming to the fore in combating the worst aspects of the COVID virus. Aged care facilities have a lot of things that they need to do, and it is much better that they are caring for older citizens of Victoria rather than spending a lot of time working out how to fill out paperwork for antivirals when of course they already have licences and they already have oversight and people in the medical profession in those facilities.

Another good example of changing technology is that this omnibus bill also makes amendments to the Meat Industry Act 1993 to allow for the same regulation or system for dried meat sold online as it does for that which is sold in a normal store. It is about not just the technology but also a different way that people buy goods and services, and again it is about making changes to legislation to ensure that people continue to be protected by law even though the way they do things may change. Habits may change, but those protections must continue to apply, because of course the same protections are needed and the same regulation is needed whether it is online dried meat or you are buying it from a store.

Another example is the legislation to make changes to provide for the EPA to be able to transport waste during emergency situations. We might sort of think, ‘Well, wouldn’t that already happen?’ The issue is that there is often legislation that applies to, for example, transporting waste or making orders around making things safe in emergencies such as a flood or fire or an animal disease outbreak. Often the legislation does not actually cater for that particular case, and this will broaden out the ability of the Environment Protection Authority Victoria. We are all protected just as well, but the legislation provides for some flexibility depending on what the emergency is and what the requirement is for the community to make sure that not only are we dealing with that emergency situation but we are also trying to prevent further things from happening as a result of, for example, the dispersion of waste in a flood. We want to try to remove it from the area, and that is why we are giving organisations like the EPA that ability to do that.

Over $2.6 million has been assessed and calculated as savings for businesses. This of course is particularly important for small businesses, who we as a Labor government really want to do what we can to support. We recognise small businesses are great employers within Victoria and also contribute hugely to our economy and are often people that want to use local content and want to ensure that they are committed to their area.

The SPEAKER: The time has come for me to interrupt business for the grievance debate.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.