Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ros Spence:

That this bill be now read a second time.

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn – Leader of the Opposition) (11:07): I am pleased to be able to rise today to speak on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. I can say at the outset that the opposition will not be opposing this bill. It is a bill which deals superficially with a number of fairly basic changes, but what the bill really reveals is the absence of any meaningful agenda from this tired, old, rotten and corrupt government to deal with the challenges that our state faces. It is a particular concern to us in the opposition because we have called on the government to address these issues, and repeatedly the government does not do that.

Let us look at the proposed changes to the Docklands Act 1991, which is a good place to start because Docklands is symbolic in many ways of the housing crisis and the home ownership affordability crisis that Victorians face today. With Victorians struggling to afford to buy a home in what is the highest taxed state in the country, Docklands is a good place to start, I would suggest. The government is overseeing a decline in the number of units that are being approved and developed in this state at the very time we need more supply into the system. This year alone we are likely to see the government, if it is lucky, track a little over 50,000 homes, which will complete a decline since 2021 in the approvals and completions of dwelling units, to take an example. This is contrary to what we are seeing in New South Wales and Queensland, where we are seeing approvals and completions actually tick up. This year we will see, on average, Victorians pay around $2200 in property taxes per person in this state by way of revenue raised. That is an enormous burden to put on the Victorian people. We also see that in Victoria property taxes contribute around 45 per cent of the cost of a new build. For the median-priced home in Victoria, Victorians can expect to see around $430,000 to $440,000 on average simply going to meet the taxes that this government is imposing – the highest in the country. That is certainly according to the Urban Development Institute of Australia, a respected source on this type of matter.

Is it any surprise that Victorians are paying the highest taxes? Last year the Allan Labor government imposed what it called a pandemic levy across payroll and land tax and property, which would have seen it raise, at the time, a forecast $8.6 billion.

But we now know with today’s news it is on track to raise another nearly $600 million, which will see just the levy added last year alone impose on households, taxpayers and businesses right across Victoria over $9 billion in extra taxes from last year’s budget over the four-year forward estimates period. I mean, how much does this government think that Victorian households and businesses can cop to make up for the financial incompetence, financial delinquency and financial vandalism of this corrupt government? I say ‘corrupt’ because it has distorted basic decision-making and due diligence in this state and it is a sad spectacle to watch, but we are fighting on behalf of the Victorian people.

When we look at this poor record of housing delivery under the Allan Labor government, let us look at what it did a few weeks ago. Desperate to respond to repeated and intensifying calls for an answer to the housing crisis that was supposed to be addressed when it delivered its housing statement last year in September, which was nothing more than a 30-odd page brochure of some colour pictures with no detail in it, what did we see? We saw the Premier come out and engage in a communications and media blitz. It was impressive in the sense of how much chutzpah can you expect from a Premier who has no actual substance to deliver but a media strategy. I want to say to all Victorians who will be watching this debate: it was a vacuous media strategy devoid of any substance. It was facile, it was superficial and it was non-responsive to what the industry is calling for and what Victorians are calling for.

I just want to go down and address the key parts of the housing statement, if we can call it that, that the Premier engaged in a few weeks ago. I begin with this: it was an admission of failure, of abject failure, that the government under Premier Jacinta Allan has failed to meet any of its targets that it set for itself last year – 800,000 homes in 10 years, 80,000 homes a year abandoned abjectly and in a humiliating fashion, and it would not have escaped anybody.

But let us then go through the series of announcements that the Premier made. We saw an announcement around activity centres, a combination of 10 activity centres where it would allow up to 20 storeys in the core of those activity centres and, in the broader catchment zones, six-storey buildings. I will come back to those height limits in a moment. Then it announced transport activity centres, which would see much higher buildings, so called. Let us look at these height limits, so called. They talk about 12 storey, 20 storey and six storey. A couple of things to note for our viewers – those limits are fluid. They can be set aside. They are not set in stone. If a developer comes along and engages in a sweet deal with the government about funding the very things the Allan Labor government should be funding, this government has made clear, through a combination of value capture and also what I would call a de facto inclusionary zoning policy, they will give the developer whatever the developer is prepared to pay on behalf of the Victorian government. To viewers of this debate and Victorians more generally: do not believe anything this government says about height limits.

It is also important to understand just how farcical the announcement over the activity centres is, not just the 10 activity centres but the transport hubs that the government announced. Why it is so farcical is that the government had to admit a few days afterwards that it is not likely to settle on its better apartment design guidelines for another two years at the earliest. The concerns of planners and urban designers that we are going to end up with apartments that are too small, too dark and unfit for young families and young Victorians will bear true and will come to pass. These buildings will only deal –

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, this is a statue law repeals bill, a very narrow piece of legislation. To my point of order, the Leader of the Opposition started with the hook of the Docklands Act repeal part of the legislation and then expanded that argument well past the matters that are contained in the bill to talk about broad housing policy.

John PESUTTO: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, as the lead speaker I do have a wide berth, and it does involve housing; Docklands is a location for housing.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): On the point of order, being the lead speaker, I am going to allow some range. I think this will be a wideranging debate. I will listen intently to see if we can keep to the bill, but I think this allows for others to have debate as well, as part of the debate today.

John PESUTTO: That will have to go in Rulings from the Chair, Acting Speaker. Well done. Docklands is a classic example of why this farce of a housing policy, so called, really symbolises the failure of policy on behalf of the government. If you take Docklands and areas like it, the government makes an announcement about these massive towers but there are no better apartment design guidelines which will deal with not just built form like setbacks and heights but minimum room sizes for bedrooms and other rooms and balconies, or street widening – there is nothing in there for that. There is nothing in there for neighbourhood character and livability – and I emphasise that point, livability, which I know Victorians right across Melbourne and our state are very concerned about. There is no money for infrastructure. This is a government that is nickel and diming its planning policy. Let us break this down and call it for what it is. The government does not have what I would call the intellectual bandwidth, but not just that, it does not have the financial bandwidth to actually develop and outline a vision for the whole state. It cannot do that for a range of reasons, chief among which is the fact it does not have the money – it has run out of money for it – but it actually does not have a vision for the whole state. So what it says is, ‘Well, we’ve got public transport modes in and around metropolitan Melbourne, so –

Natalie Suleyman: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I know you are listening intently, but this is the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. Again, the Leader of the Opposition has strayed right out from what is before the house, and I ask you – that is the point of order; I have made it very clear – to ask the opposition leader again to stick to the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024, which is before the house.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): On the point of order, I ask the Leader of the Opposition with his remarks to bring them back to the bill at hand to make that distinct –

John PESUTTO: Don’t worry, I will make sure every single –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Order! I am just ruling on the point of order, if I can have the time to do that. If you can bring it back to the bill at hand, that would be helpful.

John PESUTTO: The Docklands Act 1991 is the basis on which I am addressing the future of Docklands, and I would argue that the Docklands Act is relevant to Docklands. That being the case, I would say that the housing issues that I am talking about are directly relevant to the residents and families and businesses that are situated in Docklands governed by the act which is amended by this Statute Law Repeals Bill. Docklands is a good example, as I have said, of this. We have got apartments and units that are too expensive to build in Victoria for young families and young Victorians, and Docklands exemplifies that. The proportion of young people and young families who live in Docklands is very low by comparison. When we are developing planning policies, we need to have in mind that the state government’s responsibilities include a range of things, not least of which is that it needs to manage our finances well enough so that there is capacity to invest in the infrastructure that will support the livability and neighbourhood character of these places. So we need to have a state government that meets its responsibilities so that it does not have to impose punitive taxes to the point where developers of multistorey apartments can only deliver them for people who can afford to buy two-bedroom, three-bedroom and above apartments at a price point of at least $1.2 million. If you are looking at apartments in the inner and middle-ring suburbs of Melbourne – and I would include Docklands as an inner suburb – that are pricing two- and three-bedroom apartments and those larger than that at $1.2 million and higher, then you are not answering the challenge of housing affordability for young Victorians and young Victorian families, and that is the problem here.

We have got a government that has left Victoria broke, so whether we are seeing houses built and units built in Docklands or anywhere else in Victoria, it is too expensive to build those homes. We have a government that is not only not doing anything to reduce the costs of building apartments in Docklands and everywhere else but actually not supporting that with the infrastructure that is needed.

We saw in the first tranche of announcements that were part of that media blitz on 20-storey towers and potentially 50-storey towers in transport hubs there was no effort by the Premier to address taxation and the costs of construction and certainly no effort by the Premier to address the problems that continue today with CFMEU coverage over large-scale apartment construction and design. We know the CFMEU is driving up costs in this state, and we see the corruption that we have campaigned on repeatedly over the last year and a half going completely unaddressed by this government and by this Premier, who is too weak to act and too unprincipled to act because this government is corrupt – I say corrupt.

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition has again strayed a long way from the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Thank you for the succinct point of order. I do ask the Leader of the Opposition to come back to closely debating the bill at hand.

John PESUTTO: I just want to move to the next stage, because this is very relevant to residents and potential residents of Docklands, the off-the-plan stamp duty concession. This was announced in a very knee-jerk manner by the Premier. The questions we have been asking are: why was it limited to 12 months? Who was the Premier actually trying to help here? How can you get more housing supply, which is we understand to be prompted by this concession, which only reinstates for 12 months the concession they removed in 2017? How does this expedite the delivery of housing supply if you limit it to 12 months? Any of these types of projects take at least two to three years at the minimum once you have got through the building and permit application processes. How much stock is actually going to be delivered here that was not already? We will be asking questions about this, about who the Premier spoke to and what she was trying to address by limiting this announcement to 12 months only. It will not do anything to actually assist young Victorians and young Victorian families. Yes, it will assist some people. Foreign buyers, for example, who want to come in and purchase property in Melbourne and in Victoria will benefit from this, and we do not necessarily cavil with that. Why should somebody get a $300,000 or in some cases a $1 million concession as a result of this but be denied that if they want to buy a freestanding house in Tarneit or Kalkallo or Greenvale? Why would you do that? Why would you discriminate? If your purpose is to put young Victorians and young families into homes of their choice, then you would not limit this to 12 months, but that is in fact what the government has done.

I will move to the third tranche that the Premier addressed in her media blitz just to demonstrate how farcical all of this is. The universal developer charge was an announcement the Premier made to say, ‘We’re going to get developers now to fund things like schools and hospitals and roads.’ Our first reaction to that was, ‘Isn’t that the job of the state government to deliver schools for Victorian households and communities? Isn’t it the job of the Victorian government working with its authorities and local government to deliver local roads?’ Yes, we understand and have always accepted that developers will contribute to that, but this is an example of what I spoke about before, where you have a government that is financially incompetent, engages in economic vandalism and does not leave any capacity in its budget –

Nina Taylor: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to repeal certain redundant or spent provisions in Victorian legislation. I cannot see how what we have been listening to for the last 20 minutes or so has any relation to the central tenets of the legislation that we are debating. You cannot just pluck one word out and say, ‘It’s relevant.’ It has to fit the intent of the bill.

Nathan Lambert: Further to the point of order, I think there is a longstanding convention, as I understand it, that a speaker can speak widely within the portfolio area of the legislation, but none of the acts that we have here in front of us in this bill are in the housing or planning portfolios. If the Leader of the Opposition wishes to speak with respect to the Docklands Act, he should draw his remarks back to the precinct’s portfolio.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): I do believe we have strayed slightly from this, Leader of the Opposition. I think that you need to show a link, Leader of the Opposition. You need to come back to the bill at hand to ensure that this debate does not become too wideranging.

John PESUTTO: I know that the universal developer charge is relevant to Docklands because this is the complaint that you get from a lot of businesses and residents in the Docklands precinct – that none of this was planned for, because the state government abdicated its responsibilities and did not invest in the infrastructure that it should have invested in. I also wish to address this –

James Newbury: What’s happening with that wheel at the Docklands?

John PESUTTO: The wheel? It is a bit like the state government: going nowhere – and if it is, it is going around in circles. The other thing I would say about Docklands is that it is bearing a lot of the burden of government failure. That takes me to the fourth tranche of the government’s announcement that the Premier made that they would look at the growth corridors, which was simply a rather pathetic response to what we had announced. Now, this is relevant to areas like Docklands, which is governed by the Docklands Act, because it puts more pressure on it. What we are seeing is the government said it would release more PSPs, precinct structure plans, in the growth corridors, but it did not in fact do that. What it said is that it will release further PSPs in the future, and it only announced three more – Cardinia Creek part 2, Kororoit part 2 and Northern Freight – but it had in its fine print that it will not actually release those PSPs, if we understand it correctly, until on or before 30 June 2025, so we will see nothing more coming –

Nina Taylor: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, with respect, I believe that the Leader of the Opposition is defying your ruling. I would ask, out of respect for the whole chamber, that he be pulled back to the central tenets of the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): I would like to rule on the point of order. I have said several times now that I feel this is becoming a very wideranging debate, which I have allowed because you are the lead speaker for this bill and subsequent members may like to talk to that as well, but I need to direct you back to linking this to the bill that is at hand.

John PESUTTO: I am actually going to leave the Docklands in a moment, but I would just say the precinct structure plan announcement, because it is a failure, puts more pressure on Docklands and areas like Docklands, because there is no support for infrastructure out there and none of those precinct structure plans are coming online. What that means is if you are looking at boosting supply, which the government says it is doing, it is going to be areas like Docklands, areas like Bayside and areas like Boroondara and Glen Iris who are all going to bear an unfair burden, which could be borne more fairly and equitably if as a government you were allocating your resources fairly across the state with a vision for the entire state, which is lacking under this government. I will finish on this point by saying to all those who will read and watch this debate that under this government you get no voice and you get no choice, and these illustrations that I have offered bear that out.

I just want to talk briefly on the Road Safety Act 1986 amendments. This is a particular concern for us and we know for Victorians right across the state. We have seen the area of road maintenance be slashed savagely by 95 per cent. We saw the amount of funding drop last year from $201 million the year prior to just $37 million in 2023–24. What are you hoping to achieve across a state like ours with a road network like ours with $37 million only allocated for maintenance of roads? We saw the Shadow Minister for Roads and Road Safety speak quite eloquently on this to make the point that we are only going to see 422,000 square metres maintained, as opposed to 9,000,000 square metres the previous year and 11,000,000 square metres the year before that.

If we look at what is happening, we are on a steep decline. We are feeling it this year, and it is going to get worse because it is something that, in terms of the road network, if you are not maintaining it the cost of actually catching up later is all the greater. We are seeing a government that is absolutely abdicating its responsibilities to maintain our road network. It is an example of a government that does not have, as I said earlier, a vision for the entire state. What it does is it governs for the internal precincts of the tram tracks, and beyond that it neglects the growth corridors. If you live in Melbourne’s west or Melbourne’s north or the south-east in particular or the regions, you will miss out.

I make the point about why this is so important. The government’s own population projections show that in the northern metropolitan precincts of Melbourne between 2021–22 and 2036 you will see around 450,000 people move into those areas. In the western region you will see 300,000 people in that period of time. In the south-east, those two areas combined, you will see over 350,000 people. Yet in the inner suburbs of Melbourne you will see a fraction of that population growth. What we are on track for is a massive dislocation of resources in our state with a government that cannot see what is coming down the road. With that population growth, you need a housing policy, you need an infrastructure policy and you need a fiscal and budgetary policy that is actually anticipating that growth across our community. But we are not seeing it from this government, and Victorians are going to pay the price for that. One of the big problems with this obviously is that we have an economy that is tanking under this government. I just want to finish on these points –

Nick Staikos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, around relevance, the Leader of the Opposition claims to be speaking on the amendments to the Road Safety Act 1986, which as far as this bill is concerned include repealing sections 95B and 95C. He has spent the last 25 minutes not speaking on this bill, and I ask that you bring him to order.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): I do ask the Leader of the Opposition to keep tightly now to the bill, please.

John PESUTTO: I did want to explain why under the Road Safety Act we are not seeing the investment in our roads occur. I am entitled to address the background to why that is occurring, and that is because of the financial vandalism and the economic delinquency of the Allan Labor government. It cannot manage money and there is no money for our roads, and there are some data points that I need to refer to that back that assertion up. We have the highest unemployment in the country. We have 4.4 per cent unemployment. If you look at New South Wales and Queensland, they are in the low 3s. We are in the mid 4s for unemployment. New business growth is flatlining in Victoria. We have the highest level of insolvencies, particularly across critical areas –

Natalie Suleyman: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the opposition leader continues to stray from your ruling. This has been on numerous occasions. Again, I ask that you ask the opposition leader to remain on the specific sections of the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Leader of the Opposition, I do need to bring you back to the bill at hand.

Cindy McLeish: On the point of order, Speaker, I seek your guidance, Acting Speaker. This is a one-page bill where a number of sections are repealed. The lead speaker has 30 minutes to speak on that. I seek your guidance as to what is in and what is out because I am very aware that government speakers are going to be looking eagerly at what they are going to be able to speak to. Could you please advise the house on how that is to be done.

Colin Brooks: Further to the point of order, Acting Speaker, I take it that you are aware that, on the issue that has just been raised, this bill refers to a number of pieces of legislation that are affected by these provisions. The points of order that have been taken have been taken when the lead speaker from the opposition has stepped outside of those particular pieces of legislation.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): I have ruled on a couple of points of order on this point – that we do need to stick to the bill that is at hand. I understand this is not as engaging a debate as some other bills that have been here and it is quite wideranging in the topics that are able to be debated. I know further speakers may like to also talk to those topics, but I do say to the Leader of the Opposition that he had strayed slightly there.

John PESUTTO: I have said what I wanted to say on road maintenance. In the 1½ minutes I have got left, I just want to talk about two things, including the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012 amendments. It is important to bear in mind that we have seen under that legislative regime the number of active rental bonds collapse. We have had the biggest collapse in 25 years in active rental bonds, and what that is telling us in Victoria is that there are fewer places to rent because there are fewer places available, because it is too expensive to build housing supply in this state. That needs to be fixed. I say to everybody who is wanting to acquire a home – and we know that today between 70 and 80 per cent still want to buy their own home, but even if you cannot buy a home or you do not want to buy home, if you want to rent, understand that under this Labor government, under Premier Jacinta Allan, your rents are higher because of the economic mismanagement and financial vandalism of this Labor government.

I did want to talk just very briefly about the Marine (Drug Alcohol and Pollution Control) Act 1988. I just wanted to make a point here that we have seen in the Federal Court in recent weeks a dispute about –

A member interjected.

John PESUTTO: That’s all right. I’m surviving; don’t worry about that. I’m okay; don’t worry about me.

Colin Brooks: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I just draw the house’s attention to the protocols of sub judice.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Thank you, Minister. I think we are out of time.

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, I wish to move, by leave, an extension of time for 30 minutes for the Leader of the Opposition.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): No, I do not think that leave will be granted.

Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Development Victoria, Minister for Precincts, Minister for Creative Industries) (11:37): A good ruling, Acting Chair. Before I come to the very narrow provisions that are outlined in this bill – and I will stick to those – the Leader of the Opposition did raise a few matters there that I think are worth responding to directly, which I think I would be entitled to do. The first thing is just a quick remark that it was quite bizarre to see a leader of the opposition come in and speak on a statute law repeals bill and have only a small number of his team come in to listen to that. It was quite surreal.

James Newbury: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, the minister was at pains repeatedly to take the previous speaker up on relevance. I mean, this is an appalling abuse considering the fact that he tried to hold us all up to some standard. Now I would ask that the minister be held to the standard that he has asked us to uphold.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): I will repeat, as I have said before, that this does need to continue to stay close to the bill. Even though we have seen wideranging topics, I would ask the minister to stick to the bill.

Colin BROOKS: I will stick to rebutting some points that were made by the Leader of the Opposition, which I think I am entitled to do in a debate in this place.

Cindy McLeish: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, the minister at the table wants to rebut points of order that were I think upheld by you. Can he rebut them?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Thank you, member for Eildon. Some points of order were allowed in that they asked the Leader of the Opposition to come back to a tightly held debate around the bill. I will be asking each member to do the same.

Cindy McLeish: Further to the point of order, Acting Speaker, can the minister clarify whether he is responding to those points that were ruled out of order or not?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): That is not a point of order.

Colin BROOKS: The Leader of the Opposition spoke about Docklands, and I think he demonstrated that he has a lack of understanding of what is happening with Docklands.

James Newbury: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, immediately after taking a ruling, the minister has abused the ruling and has used it as an opportunity to sledge the opposition rather than talk to this clearly important bill that requires the minister to speak closely to it.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): The point of order has been raised about relevance. The Leader of Opposition had talked about Docklands, and that is what the Minister for Creative Industries is doing.

Colin BROOKS: The Docklands precinct is one of the most successful residential precincts in Victoria. It is seeing extraordinarily high residential growth demand. We are seeing many young families move into Docklands, as opposed to the view that was put by a previous speaker that young families are not buying into that area – in fact they are. Docklands has seen some $15 billion worth of private investment to see residential and many other community facilities built in that precinct. We have got about 10,000 homes already built in Docklands, with about 7500 homes to come over the life of the development of that precinct. Something I think people often overlook is that Docklands, while it is a mature precinct, still has some significant residential growth to play out: nine hectares of parks and open space, the relatively new library, the primary school and of course the recent redevelopment of the Docklands Stadium in partnership with the AFL. It is a great precinct for people to live in, and therefore, contrary to the view that was put earlier, we have seen strong residential development come through there.

Developers in the area are pushing ahead with big developments down there: 675 new homes completed in September 2024 at GFM’s build-to-rent apartments at 685 Latrobe Street; AsheMorgan’s 925 build-to-rent apartments; and just last week the Premier was down with the Minister for Planning at Docklands, announcing the go-ahead for the Elysium Fields development stage 1, which is 700 homes. Contrary to the view that was put earlier in the debate about the lack of residential development here in Victoria, Docklands is a shining example. Of course I remind those opposite that their sort of anti-Victorian doom-and-gloom picture is not borne out by the facts. Victoria in fact –

James Newbury: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, this constant sledging does the minister no service when he has just spent some half an hour attacking the opposition on relevance.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): Thank you for the point of order. I do not believe this point of order is relevant to the bill..

Colin BROOKS: The fact is that Victoria is commencing and approving more dwellings than any other state in the country, and that is because of the policies that the Allan Labor government have put in place. We have seen, contrary again to the views that have been put by those opposite, this government announcing a whole raft of further housing initiatives to make sure we are pulling every lever to deliver more homes.

I will move now, after rebutting the nonsense put by the lead speaker of the opposition, onto the aspect of this bill that deals with the Filming Approval Act 2014, which is item 3 in the legislation. I just want to give a shout-out to VicScreen here, which operates under the relevant act. It is delivering a four-year $191 million screen strategy based on top of the wonderful skill sets that exist in Victoria in our creative sector and screen sector and also off the back of the $46 million expansion of Docklands Studios. The legislative framework is important, but it is also important off the back of the skill sets that we have got the right infrastructure in place and the right incentives for the screen sector to go ahead. We have seen 29,000 jobs created out of that strategy and just over a billion dollars worth of economic impact to Victoria. It is not a sector that Victorians see a lot of up-front and close, but I will tell you that sector is booming at the moment. I was down at Docklands Studios last week, having a look around the studios down there – just teeming with people working on the sets, working behind the scenes – and meeting with some of the people in the production sector.

War Machine is a movie that is being filmed at Docklands Studios I think as we speak but was previously in Bright filming in the High Country and again at the RAAF base at Laverton. It is an incredible movie investment, American dollars flowing into our jobs here in Victoria – $73 million worth of economic activity and some 2100 jobs during the life of that production. Then I also had the chance at the same time in the other part of the Docklands Studios to see the filming of All Her Fault, which is an eight-part series starring Sarah Snook. Again, it is a great investment in Victoria, and you could see the car parks down there at Docklands Studios packed with unit trucks, production trucks, cars and people. Another movie that has wrapped up but will be released at Christmas that was produced here, again at Docklands, is the Robbie Williams movie Better Man, which will come out and again is showcasing the skill sets of people who work in the screen sector here in Victoria.

I think it is important to reflect on the fact that whilst we have to make sure that legislation is kept up to speed and we have the relevant adjustments to legislation that we see in this bill, you also have to make sure you have the funding coming in behind that and make sure you have the strategies in place and the people in place to deliver the very best outcomes for Victoria. I think what we have seen in terms of the Docklands precinct that is mentioned in this bill as part of a housing strategy precinct and the measures that we put in place as a government to boost housing supply is what sees that housing growth being the highest of any state or territory, and then the success we have seen in terms of our screen industry off the back of good legislation in place, a good strategy, good people and significant government investment to drive in behind that means that we see prosperity in Victoria both in terms of precincts like Docklands and in terms of the screen strategy. So I commend this bill to the house.

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (11:47): I rise to speak on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024, and what an exciting piece of legislation this is today. Gee, there is a lot in here, the one-pager has led the day. It is very, very exciting, and I am sure that points of order will continue and perhaps be the most entertaining part of the debate this afternoon. However, I do not want to anticipate what the incredible contributions will be on this side of the chamber and also of those opposite.

This is really a repeal bill, as it states in its title. It is looking at repealing a number of sections amongst various pieces of legislation, and I would like to do a deep dive in some of these aspects of legislation, because it is important in this place that we understand that legislation helps to guide and direct decision-making in this state. The decisions that we have seen in some aspects of the Allan Labor government have left a lot to be desired, particularly for those Victorians who live outside of Melbourne in rural and regional Victoria. So often we hear that decisions are made by people in Melbourne for the people in Melbourne with no understanding of and no insight into what it means to live, work, do business and study in rural and regional Victoria. One of the clearest aspects of that has to be when you look at the Road Safety Act 1986 and the state of our roads in regional Victoria.

Roma Britnell interjected.

Emma KEALY: Behind me I hear the member for South-West Coast, who is my neighbour to the south. We are on a unity ticket when it comes to the appalling state of Victoria’s roads in far western Victoria. It is an absolute disgrace, where you do not drive on the left side of the road, you drive on what is left of the road; where we have to pay our regos and we have to show that our cars are roadworthy, but we have roads which are not carworthy. We see from the Allan Labor government time and time again spin and nonsense when it comes to announcing big road blitzes. It is always this time of the year, always just a rejig, maybe a change of the date of the media release that goes out but no additional money that comes through, or if money is announced and it is boldly heralded that ‘We’re going to fix all of Victoria’s roads,’ it does not happen. The money is actually held up, and this is something that is fascinating to speak to local civil engineers about who tender for those rare roadworks in rural and regional Victoria. What they say is they might have won a tender two years ago for a certain piece of work, but by the time the money flows – and as I said, this can be two years later, as in the example given to me just a couple of weeks ago – that pothole is not just in one small section of the works that they tendered for, it now extends right down the road.

This explains what so many Victorians experience every single day, which is when they drive along they think, ‘You beauty, we’ve got some slow-down signs, a few roadworks. We’ve got maybe a little bit going on. Perhaps they’re going to fix this road.’ And then they finish halfway through a pothole. It just drives people crazy. It has finally given me an insight into how badly Labor manage our roads, and it is Victorians that are paying the price.

Our road networks are so important in rural and regional Victoria because they are the only way to get to work. They are the only way to take your kids to school. They are the only way to go to football or netball training or maybe out to Mount Arapiles – not to go rock climbing, because we are not allowed to do that anymore. We can go and have a look at some invisible rock art and where some stone was chipped away to be used as tools and taken to another site. This is what is happening in rural and regional Victoria. After 10 years of Labor we have got the worst roads. We know that because as soon as people head over into South Australia, which my electorate abuts, they know when they come back home and when they come back into Victoria they get a rattling awakening. It is the alarm clock of Victoria’s roads that says, ‘Welcome home to the pothole state.’ We have got more potholes than you could ever, ever imagine, and it is Victorians who know that when they arrive here. It is tourists who come here and see it. It is truck drivers, and we need to value our truck drivers because without truckies Australia stops.

I will make mention that I went to a fabulous truck show in Horsham a week ago. I saw one of the best trucks you will ever see in your life. It was a Mack bicentennial edition. There were only 16 of them made. The Captain Cook was the one that was there. Richard Wilken did an enormous amount of work in coordinating the Horsham truck show. I think he went above and beyond in acquiring one of the most impressive trucking vehicles that has been made in Australia and put on the roads of Australia. He actually got this truck as a special thing to bring to the Horsham truck show. Now, that is above and beyond. To Richard and all of the crew at the Horsham Motor Sports Club, to the committee and the volunteers who helped out and to the 100 people, I would say, who brought their trucks to the truck show, thank you so much. Thank you so much for putting on such an impressive event for our region. But most importantly, thank you to our truckies who drive on our terrible roads every day. It is their workplace; it is dangerous. They not only have to put up with dangerous roads but they have to put up with dangerous drivers as well. I thank them for their work and for putting up with Victorian roads.

I can guarantee things will get better. They are going to get better in two years time when we are in government and we have an opportunity to actually give the support that VicRoads needs and that Regional Roads Victoria or whoever the Labor government sell it off to needs – because we do not know who they are going to sell it to get a bit of money to tip into that budget black hole that Labor have created by building a tiny, tiny little train line in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. It is a tiny little train line.

Members interjecting.

Emma KEALY: I hear the questions from the bleachers over on the other side. I do not know whether we will have those same little squawks in a couple of years time from the other side. I think they are getting concerned. I hear from the other side quite regularly about the builders and the blockers. Well, I tell you what, Labor are pretty good at building taxes. They are pretty good at building debt. They are pretty good at blocking housing. They are pretty good at blocking roadwork going on and making sure that that does not go ahead. I will tell you what I really look forward to blocking and that is a number of the people from the Labor backbenches from coming back to this place after October 2026.

Natalie Suleyman: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, this has been a wideranging debate, but the speaker knows too well that she has now strayed way, way away from the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. We are hearing all sorts of things that have no relation to what is before the house, and I ask you to ask that the speaker continues to remain steadfast with the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): I will ask the member to come back to the bill, please.

Emma KEALY: Let us look at an element of this bill, and that is the repeal of an element of the Road Safety Act, which is exactly what I have been speaking about. Labor have cut the road asset management budget so that now it is 16 per cent below what it was in 2020. Labor will also reduce the area resurfaced or rehabilitated statewide by 75 per cent next year compared to just two years ago. We know that Labor cannot manage money, they cannot manage our roads, and it is Victorians that are paying the price. It is not just from these statistics, of looking through the budget papers, looking through the KPIs and getting information through questions on notice, that we know Victoria’s roads are badly managed; it is something that people are experiencing every day. Ninety-one per cent of roads were rated poor or very poor in a government survey just last year, and yet the road toll is still a terrible, terrible problem.

I did hear earlier today an interview, and it was actually a comment on how we cannot blame drivers for the road toll in every instance. What I would urge the Allan Labor government to consider is that their failure to invest in our road surfaces is putting lives at risk. I heard recently that there was a truck accident, which was a horrific rollover where a large number of stock were killed. It was determined to be caused by a medical incident. That medical incident was the truck went through a pothole and the driver hit his head on the steering wheel and was rendered unconscious. That is not what we should be seeing on our roads and on one of the nation’s busiest freeways and highways. In fact it was on the second-busiest highway in the state. I urge the government to consider the amendments in this legislation but also consider what they are going to put in next year’s budget. Fix our roads and make them safe.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (11:57): I am very happy to speak on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. I know that it is very easy to mock and trivialise the premise of a statute law bill, and I can see the opposition have gone to great depths to mock and trivialise the premise of this bill. However, there is a fundamental underpinning of democracy, and that is whenever you are transacting legislation you are up-front about it and you transact it through the Parliament. It may not be the most exciting moment of their lives – I get that – nevertheless if we are to value democracy and we are to maintain the confidence of the community that when legislation is varied in any way it will be transacted openly and in an up-front manner in the chamber, then we need to adhere to that. That is an adult and mature thing to do as members of Parliament. I certainly do not come to Parliament every day expecting to have entertainment and for it to be exciting from moment to moment. On the contrary, we have a tremendous responsibility to represent our constituents. On that premise that means we are to deliver changes in a way that adheres to the governance and conventions of Parliament, henceforth why we are adhering to various points of order to ensure that those fundamental tenets of parliamentary processes are adhered to and respected. That is why we put such legislation before the Parliament – sorry, it is not as entertaining as you would like it to be. Nevertheless if we are going to respect the premise of the voters who put us in this place, we need to deliver such parliamentary processes and legislation in a way that respects the Parliament and the democracy which we serve. That is a point I just did want to make for the benefit of the chamber, respectfully.

The purpose of this bill is to repeal – I did hear the word ‘repeal’ before, and I was very pleased to hear that, because that means we are adhering to the premise of the statute before us – certain redundant and spent provisions in Victorian legislation. This ensures that with the vast amount of legislation that accumulates over time we are continually ensuring its relevance and appropriateness and making sure that it is, for instance, not duplicating other provisions that may be present in other pieces of legislation because of the potential impacts that could prevail should that duplication be allowed to continue. There are all sorts of contingencies, which we would all be aware of, as a result of any and every word that is in any piece of legislation. As I was saying before, you might like to think that this may not be the most substantive reform, because these are not substantive reforms as such, but nevertheless they are changes to legislation, and hence we need to honour that.

In terms of legislation introduced and passed, we have been a very busy government, passing 43 bills in the past 12 months and introducing 32 bills in 2024 alone, and we all should I think use some perspective when we are comparing some bills to others. I just think that is important when we are looking at the relevance of debates and discussions in this chamber.

The other point I do want to make before proceeding to other elements of this Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024 is that the Leader of the Opposition, if he wants to make points about his tremendous advocacy on housing, should not sit on the back of a ute defying the Bills Street, Hawthorn, development. He has form. He might want to think about that, because it is on record, and we all know about it. Speaking with a forked tongue in this place has consequences. I just wanted to make that point.

Now I shall resume on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. You will notice that I have repeated that about three times, just as a little reminder of the purpose for which we are here today in this moment. This is a statute law repeal bill, and these sorts of bills are passed as part of Parliament’s regular housekeeping to ensure that legislation across the statute book is accurate, clear, maintained in an orderly manner and accessible to the public – yes, the public, constituents who we represent. This is common practice. It is not only a Victorian thing; it is actually practised in other jurisdictions in Australia and around the world. I will be clear on the point that this bill does not make substantive amendments to how Victorian legislation will apply. That is clear. That does not mean it does not matter and that does not mean that we can mock every single segment of this piece of legislation for the purpose of a jovial moment necessarily without vindicating the purpose for which this legislation has been brought before the chamber.

Indeed current legislation provides that repeal statutes do not, unless there is a contrary intention, affect the operation of other acts. I think that is very important when we are talking about adhering to the central tenets of a particular bill. Section 15(1) of the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 provides – just to be really clear on this point – that:

Where an Act or a provision of an Act, being an Act or provision that directly amended another Act or a subordinate instrument (whether by the insertion of words or expressions in that Act or subordinate instrument or the substitution of other words or expressions for words or expressions in that Act or subordinate instrument)—

is repealed …

…

the repeal … of that Act or provision shall not, unless the contrary intention expressly appears, affect in any way the direct amendments made in the other Act or in the subordinate instrument or the operation or effect of those amendments.

That is just to be crystal clear about the frame in which are operating when we are debating this particular legislation in Parliament today.

I just want to point out an interesting comparator, and this is an example to vindicate the purpose of having these statute law revision bills, although the opposition do not seem to think they are very important. I am just going to give you a good example. In Ireland in the mid-2000s the government there repealed over 3500 statutes. The Irish Times noted in 2008 that:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Examples of the acts to be repealed include the last of the penal laws such as legislation prohibiting Catholics from owning certain lands or holding certain positions and a 1537 act of Henry VIII suppressing St Walstan’s Monastery in County Kildare and transferring it to the Crown.

Who knew?

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

An 1825 act designed to encourage the surplus population of Ireland to leave the country will also be removed from the statute book.

When we look at that now with current eyes we can see that that is glaringly out of touch and inappropriate in the current era. This is why it is so important for vigilance to be practised when we are looking at all legislation that falls under the Victorian constitution and within the jurisdiction of our state, not to mention that of the country, Australia, and of course globally as well. This is deemed important enough for the Irish. It is important enough for the UK. I think it is important enough for Victoria as well.

I hope that the opposition will take heed of that and recognise that there is an important premise for having these sorts of bill before the house so that any kind of amendments to legislation are not simply dissolving into the air without being properly acknowledged before the Parliament, where they can be appropriately transacted and debated.

I should say, comparing to that interesting example in Ireland, a similar process is undertaken with statute law revision bills, with one such bill introduced earlier this year to, in the words of the explanatory memorandum, make:

… minor amendments to a number of Acts to correct grammatical and typographical errors, to update references and for other similar purposes.

So while repeal bills and revision bills do not make new policy, you would not have known that from the discussion we had from the opposition before. It seems like they did not really understand the premise of a statute law repeal bill, so this is why I am labouring this point. While repeal bills and revision bills do not make new policy and are unlikely to make the front pages, they are important to ensure our statute book is accurate, clear and accessible for the Victorian community. I hope that I have appropriately transacted and respected the premise of the Statute Law Repeals Bill, because it is important and it is to be respected, as are the processes of Parliament.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (12:06): I rise to speak on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. This is a statute law repeals bill that repeals redundant or spent provisions across seven Victorian acts in this instance. One of those acts that I will be focusing on is the Road Safety Act 1986. This repeals sections 95B and 95C, which are no longer required. However, I will begin by talking generally about the state of the roads in Victoria, particularly in south-west Victoria. As the member for Lowan, my neighbour to the north of me, has already pointed out, Victorians know when they have reached the border, because they head into South Australia and they quickly send me an email or ring my office and say, ‘Goodness me, the roads are so vastly different. Why can’t Victorian roads be like this?’ Or when visitors come from South Australia and into Victoria, I get similar emails saying, ‘What is going on? The potholes are dangerous. Your roads are appalling. It’s actually quite frightening.’ They are the words I often get sent to me, the word ‘frightening’, the word ‘dangerous’, the word ‘concerning’ about family members.

Why is this? Well, we can see that Labor reduced the resurfacing and rehabilitation funding that they spend on roads in the last financial year by 95 per cent. We know and have known for some time that Fulton Hogan, who had the contract in my part of the world, the alliance that existed for 10 years, have actually gone interstate because there is no work. There have been no government tenders for some time. Now, this is 16 per cent less than the government were spending on their roads in 2020. They can crow and boast about all sorts of ways of fiddling numbers and they can claim they are spending money, but please, please, those on the other side, nobody is fooled by your misinformation, because they drive on these roads every single day and they see what the government’s own report highlighted recently – that 91 per cent of roads were rated poor or very poor in the government’s own survey last year. I am constantly getting told by my constituents the problems they see.

The government took a bucket of money, and out of that bucket of money from the road safety TAC area they spread wire rope barriers right across regional Victoria. They did not fix the roads first. They did not put substantial improvements on the roads, they just fenced them in, and people are having massive problems with this. A constituent of mine Leon Condon, who lives on the Princes Highway between Warrnambool and Portland at Codrington, has a very large trucking company and takes hay to farmers in the north right up to the Wimmera and into the Mallee, across to the Riverina and across to Gippsland. It is a very big service to farmers who need to feed their stock, particularly when we are in critical situations like some of the areas of Victoria and New South Wales are finding themselves in now. This is a gentleman who cannot get his truck off his property onto the Princes Highway without having to go kilometres the wrong way.

When you are running businesses, it is very hard to get a margin. When you are trying to deliver a service for the farmers who have not got the money to pay for lots of high-cost feed, you cannot afford to add on fuel costs and extra kilometres totally unnecessarily because the government did not actually consult with him and put the breaks in the wire rope barriers where they should logically be. In the last six months, Leon Condon tells me, there have been three incidents where people could not see the wire rope barriers, because of sun in their eyes, and one was a significant incident. On the safety that is supposedly being met, I know the government is going to say, ‘Oh well, they could’ve really come to grief; there could’ve been a fatality,’ but I am sorry, there are more accidents there, he tells me, since the wire rope barriers have been put there. That is just one example where the minister could actually send someone from VicRoads and authorise someone to go and have a conversation with the gentleman and come up with a solution that works for both the safety of the road and the farmer being able to run his business.

Another business is Cameron Leske’s business right on the corner of the Princes Highway at Heywood, where recently in foggy conditions a truck ploughed into the business, just missing their house with young children. He is just asking for the government to do an assessment, to be there and actually see it, because when I have been there and seen it, it is quite logical that it would be a concern. All he wants is some barriers, maybe a bit of bluestone, just something to prevent a truck ploughing into his house. But no, the government did, I imagine, a desktop study and came back to him through me and said, ‘Nup, no provisions to change anything.’ Well hello, there was a really very close, near miss. This is a business that is at risk, and it really would not be hard for the minister to authorise someone to go on a site visit – I have said I would meet them there – and have a discussion about how we can address this. It is the responsibility of the government on road safety.

There is another gentleman who I met recently, who drives trucks. He has been driving trucks all his life. He is, I do not know, about 35, 40 tops. It was the middle of winter when I was talking with him, and he was telling me how bad it is on the roads. He said he is getting jostled so much that he has actually got a back injury and is having to wear a support belt. I think you call them a kidney belt for when you use an excavator or a forklift. He is having to wear one of those. It was the heart of winter when I was speaking to him, and he had thongs on, which is why I started the conversation, because it was way too cold for thongs. He said, ‘My back is so bad from driving my truck on these pothole-ridden roads that I can’t bend over and put my Blundstone boots on, so I have to wear thongs.’ This is a workplace injury caused by the government’s mismanagement of our roads.

There are stories that go on and on and on, and we have got the government crowing about what they are doing. Well, we mention roads in this Parliament and what we hear are the most disingenuous responses about how much the government are doing for our roads. Just last week a press release was put out about how 3 to 5 kilometres is going to be fixed on the Terang-Mortlake Road. Well, let me say: go for a ride on that road. It is way past its use-by date, so it is fantastic that it is having some renovations. However, it is probably just going to be pothole fixing. The reality is there are thousands of kilometres as bad as that road and we are seeing them ignored, from Illowa to Port Fairy, another significant area. The government is hopefully going to fix the Illowa road. Let us hope they do it with some longevity in their mind about it, because we are sick of seeing roads repaired and fall apart within a week or two weeks and then hearing that it is the rain that is to blame, for goodness sake.

Fulton Hogan have headed up to Queensland to fix their roads, and they know, like we know, that monsoonal rains appear in Queensland and that Victoria has had wet seasons for years and years. We farmed in Victoria for 25 years, and we have had really wet years over and over again. It is about making sure the contract has the right specifications and has the right amount of rubble and then tuff on top, or whatever material you are using at the top, and the right camber and making sure you supervise the contractors. That is what Victoria needs to see – the right amounts of resources given to the contractors and the right specifications and then the government taking the time to make sure the job is done properly. That is what is lacking in Victoria – a government that cares.

We have got the Princes Highway between Port Fairy and Portland. People are ringing me and actually talking about arriving in Warrnambool after that journey in tears, and I am not making that up. People are so frightened. You just hit these potholes, because often you cannot see them if it has been raining, and bang – it is such a frightening experience.

You just wait for the next few minutes for the sound because you have done a tyre or a rim. It is just constantly concerning.

The government’s answer is to put up ‘Slow Down’ signs. Well, I am sorry, the people of Victoria pay their taxes. They expect safe roads. They want their children safe. I am terrified when I know my children are driving home to Warrnambool from Melbourne, when they lived down there, or my Warrnambool children are driving to go camping up in the bush somewhere. I am terrified, and it is not unusual for mothers nowadays to ring. I am not an over-the-top mother – my kids would probably say I do not care about them enough – but surely it is reasonable, because we are so frightened, to ring at the start of the journey. I actually often ring in the middle of the journey because I am so worried about their safety on the road.

My children are getting older and they certainly have experience, but it is not even about experience, because on these roads, like I said, when you have had a little bit of rain you cannot see the potholes. On the way to Portland you go around a bend and – bang – you see a massive pothole, and it is natural to swerve. There are double lines at that particular pothole that I have in my mind right now, and we are going to have head-ons. Like the member for Lowan just said, there is the story of a truck driver who hit a pothole and knocked himself unconscious. These are issues that we are absolutely very, very likely to be seeing more and more of. It is a horrendous and frightening experience. On country roads we share the roads with very, very capable truck drivers, who take our products from farm to market. We need to give them the workplace they deserve. We need people to be able to share the road with trucks and do that safely. It is not about compromising the state of the road; it is about fixing the roads properly.

Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (12:17): I am happy to rise today to make a contribution on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. It is a necessary bill, one that will repeal redundant and spent provisions in Victorian legislation to ensure Victorian legislation remains accurate and up to date. These necessary changes are happening across a wide range of acts. The first of those is the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012, administered by the Department of Government Services in the Minister for Consumer Affairs’ portfolio. It was fantastic to have the minister come out to the Clarinda district earlier this year, along with Consumer Affairs Victoria director Nicole Rich and the new renting taskforce officers after they attended inspections for rental properties for the first time.

That was a really exciting day, and it is a really exciting initiative backed by a $4 million investment from the Allan Labor government. The rental taskforce is using intelligence and market analysis to boost monitoring of rental campaigns, conduct targeted inspections and act on identified breaches. It is great for my local community, because in suburbs like Clayton and Clayton South more than 60 per cent of the properties are rentals, which is really significant to my electorate. It was fantastic to see the enthusiasm of the taskforce team, who were attending rental inspections in Clayton and Clayton South and the surrounding area, checking that rental properties meet the mandatory minimum standards and agents and rental providers are meeting their obligations. As we have heard from the minister, the rental minimum standards in our state include things that most people would reasonably expect in a home, such as a functional kitchen, lockable external doors and being structurally sound and waterproof. I commend the minister for that work and the range of initiatives happening across her portfolio to protect Victorian consumers, and I am also happy to support the change here to the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012.

There are a host of other changes to a wide range of acts, removing redundant or spent provisions. These include amendments to the Docklands Act 1991, administered by the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) in the Minister for Precincts’ portfolio, the lead speaker on this side. Further, there are changes to the Filming Approval Act 2014, administered by the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions in the Minister for Creative Industries’ portfolio.

While we are on the subject of creative industries, I would like to congratulate Nic Clark of Nicholas Clark Management, who has been successful in their application to Creative Victoria’s Touring Victoria program. Nic’s business is a great local business that works in tour development, management and bookings across the state and across the country. It was fantastic to hear about the brilliant creative work taking place with this company, with some amazing performances coming up. The creative arts are alive in Victoria, and I could see that with Nic’s passion. I am really happy that Creative Victoria is supporting their work, which is bringing a lot of positive benefits locally to our community and across the state.

Further, this bill includes an amendment to the Greenhouse Gas Geological Sequestration Act 2008, administered by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, DEECA, in the Minister for Energy and Resources’ portfolio, as well as an amendment to the Marine (Drug, Alcohol and Pollution and Control) Act 1988, which is administered by departments within the portfolio responsibilities of both the Minister for Ports and Freight and the Minister for Outdoor Recreation. Again, these are changes that remove redundant or spent provisions to keep this up to date and clear.

We have heard a lot of speakers, including the previous speaker, the member for South-West Coast, talking about the potholes in our roads. I would like to say that we have amendments to the Road Safety Act 1986, administered by DTP in the Minister for Roads and Road Safety’s portfolio. It is really important – if I can take some minutes to talk about that – that we have the Road Safety Act up to date and clear, as we know how important the safety and maintenance of our roads are. Over the past few months this is something that has been raised consistently with me and my office.

It is a really important and really challenging time, with repeated flooding and above-average rainfall causing unprecedented damage to our roads, which means that our maintenance program needed to focus on rebuilding damaged roads last year. Simply resurfacing these roads would not have prevented further degradation. We have felt that locally – as we drive through our electorate, we know that – so I am really happy that we are entering an extended period of warmer and dryer conditions, which is what we need for most of the work to be done. That will be happening between now and May, ensuring repairs last. Again, I am very glad to see the rolling out of the major road maintenance blitz to rebuild, repair and resurface roads right across Victoria, including in my electorate of Clarinda. It is very much needed and supported by the largest single-year investment in road maintenance in the state’s history.

A host of road workers have begun delivering $964 million worth of roadworks – the equivalent of $2.6 million for every day of the year. Over the next several months crews will complete thousands of projects on our network, ranging from road rehab to resurfacing, patching potholes and the maintenance of bridges, traffic lights, signalled roads and infrastructure. There are some major works happening in my electorate on Centre Road, which is really positive. Community feedback on Centre Road has been really strong. I am really happy to see that those works are taking place, improving the conditions of our local road and road safety for all of our road users. It is great to see Centre Road being prioritised, which is based on expert assessment and community feedback, ensuring that upgrades are focused where they are most needed.

In the time remaining I would like to also mention the changes to the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017, administered by the Minister for Water’s portfolio. These changes really are wideranging across a host of acts, again aimed at removing redundant or spent provisions that remain on the statute book.

Again, I am happy to support these changes to ensure that Victoria’s statutes are up to date and clear and that our legislation is operating effectively to deliver the best outcomes for Victorians, whether that is record health and education funding or the government’s massive infrastructure agenda, with level crossing removals, the Metro Tunnel and the Suburban Rail Loop, ensuring that Victorians can get to their homes. They want to live close to their job and also to their loved ones.

It is really important to make sure that our statute book is accurate, clear and accessible for the Victorian community, and that is what we are achieving here with this bill before us today. I commend the bill to the house.

Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (12:26): Acting Speaker Addison, welcome back. I am pleased to rise today to talk on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024, which is repealing a few bills: the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012, the Docklands Act 1991, the Filming Approval Act 2014, the Greenhouse Gas Geological Sequestration Act 2008, the Marine (Drug, Alcohol and Pollution Control) Act 1988, the Road Safety Act 1986 and the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017. It has been a wideranging debate today, and thank goodness for that because I have got to try and fill 10 minutes on this. But I will start with the Filming Approval Act, and I will take up from where Minister Brooks, the Minister for Creative Industries, left off. It is good that we are seeing film investment in Victoria. I think that is very, very important for our economy. He made a comment that it is important to have funding behind legislation we bring in, and I agree. I could not agree more. We had Liam Neeson down in my area at Walhalla.

A member interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: Yes, Ice Road 2 they were filming down there. It was actually quite interesting to have someone like Liam Neeson come down there. I did not see one Labor MP turn up, which was a bit of a shame. It would have been nice if the government had turned up. But we had Liam Neeson down there. I do agree with what the Minister for Creative Industries said: when you need funding, you fund it behind your legislation. Unfortunately for Walhalla, they had an international star there but it is a town that does not have a sewer. You would think in 2024 that they would have a sewer, but they do not, and it is something I have brought up with the government on several occasions. You can imagine the whole crew there for this ice truckers film. You have got – I do not know what they are called – all the roadies and all the staff and all the set guys and everything else, and there was no sewer in the town, so they were in portable toilets. How is that for an international reputation? These are the things that we need to fix.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: These are the things that we need to fix, member for Point Cook. If we want to promote Victoria as an international destination for film, or for whatever other reason, we need to invest in these regional areas to boost their economies. It is really quite simple. Unfortunately we tend to get ignored in regional Victoria a little bit. You do not get ignored if you live in Bendigo, Ballarat or Geelong. The government actually favours those areas quite well, but anywhere else in regional Victoria tends to get ignored. I have driven up the Calder Freeway to Bendigo – a beautiful road, but we do not have that down our way. It is just going that way, to Bendigo East. They get good roads; we do not.

The funding behind the legislation is important. Let us talk about the Road Safety Act, because roads at the moment are in a terrible state – nobody can deny that. We have seen and we have heard the amount of funding cuts there have been on roads. I know I am not alone in my electorate – this would be common all over the state.

We heard the member for Gippsland South the other week putting over all the press releases that the government had done – there were about six in a row – saying, ‘We’ve spent X amount on this blitz, that blitz, that blitz, that blitz.’ Honestly, if that is true, if they had spent that amount of money and done that much blitzing, why are our roads in such poor condition? It baffles me. I am new to this place; I am not up with all the press releases from 2020 or whenever they were, but when we look at our roads and 91 per cent are in poor or very poor condition, where has the money gone? It is not going into fixing the potholes; it is going somewhere else.

In my electorate, things are not getting any better. I take on board from the Minister for Roads and Road Safety that some of these roads have been affected by floods. I get that you have road damage from floods, but in my electorate we have not had that much flooding that has affected our roads. We have just had poor maintenance. And because the maintenance has been so poor, now it is going to be more expensive to fix. That is the problem: if you do not look after the roads, if you ignore the problem, the problem becomes bigger and the fix becomes bigger.

We heard from the member for Lowan, who got up before, and she had a very good point about the contractors pricing roads. They get a tender and they price the road, but that tender does not come through for another two years. The problem they have already tendered on, by the time they get there, has multiplied, so they do not fix it properly. The contractors are only going to fix what they priced for. If there were 10 potholes up the road two years ago and now there are 50, they are only going to fix 10, because they are not going to do work they do not get paid for; it is really that simple. No contractor does.

I have road contractors in my area now, A1 Asphalting, which is a very big employer in my area, in the town of Drouin. He employs 130 people in his civil construction business, and this will give you an idea of how many cuts the government has made. I was talking to him not that long ago, and he said that because of the cuts to road funding it looks like he is going to have to let go of at least 30 people. That is 30 people that will now lose their job with A1 because the government has cut funding so dramatically. It has gone from $201 million to $37 million. That is a massive, massive cut in funding, and it is continuing year after year after year. The government has been very neglectful of our roads in regional Victoria and not just regional Victorian roads but major highways as well. If you go down the road from Pakenham East to the Bunyip River in particular, that section of road is a major highway. The number of potholes in there is absolutely ridiculous. We have speed zones changing constantly because of the conditions of the roads – we do not fix the roads now; we just change the speed zone.

I have talked in this Parliament before – and I have to say it again because it frustrates me – about the Thorpdale slip: 70 per cent of Australia’s brushed potatoes come off the hill at Thorpdale. B-doubles come down this hill. The road has got that bad now that the speed is down to 20 kilometres. They may as well make it walking pace. Under this government that road has been needing to be fixed for the last 10 years, but all they have managed to do in 10 years is, every time that road moves down the hill, just get another load of crushed rock and another load of crushed rock. That is all they do. It is very dangerous. I cannot believe that it has not been a priority for this government to fix that, given that Thorpdale is probably one of the most productive areas in Australia for fruit and vegetables. It is not just potatoes that come off that hill; you have got onions – you have got everything else. It is a very high producing area of Victoria.

Jade Benham: Not as big as Mildura.

Wayne FARNHAM: I would not know; I do not go to Mildura.

Jade Benham interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: I will take you up on that.

I know the member for Gippsland South will back me up that Thorpdale is one of the highest producing areas in Victoria for that product. But getting back to the point, that for over a decade this road has not been fixed is pretty shameful. I constantly talk to Regional Roads Victoria about it and they say, ‘We’re monitoring the condition.’ I can tell them the condition of it is that it is stuffed. It is not that hard. You do not have to monitor it. What you actually have to do is get a plan to fix it, and it comes back to what Minister Brooks said: funding behind the announcement. If you are going to make an announcement, you have got to have the funding behind it. You have got to have the funding behind the legislation. As far as our roads go, they say they are fixing the roads and they say they are doing the blitzes, but there is no funding. So the Victorian public do not believe them because they are getting beaten up and down in their cars when they are driving down roads. They are swerving potholes trying to miss them. I think we had a pothole every 100 metres in Victoria. At some point in time this government has got to realise that they need an uplift in funding to fix our roads.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (12:36): I am also standing here to speak in favour of the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. At the outset, I would like to thank and commend the parliamentary counsel and officers and departmental people that have actually had to go through all these pieces of legislation that I will list shortly in order to tidy them up by taking out pieces that no longer apply or things that are out of date or redundant. Looking at this piece of legislation, I think it is pretty clear that there is a lot of work involved. I am not sure if it is rewarding work – in the sense that it does not actually provide legislation that is life changing, that makes a huge contribution to the way people in Victoria go about their business – but it is something that is very, very important and vital to ensure that our legislation is up to date and that we are decluttering pieces of legislation in which there are references that are no longer necessary or no longer apply.

There are seven acts that are being amended or having parts repealed where there are redundant or spent provisions, and they are the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012, Docklands Act 1991, Filming Approval Act 2014, Greenhouse Gas Geological Sequestration Act 2008, Marine (Drug, Alcohol and Pollution Control) Act 1988, Road Safety Act 1986 and Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017.

As an example of the changes this legislation is going to make, in the case of the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act one of the provisions way back there was a requirement to put a notice on public display for one month around changes in the act. That was many years ago, so there is really no requirement that a notice needs to be put up on public display for one month when that time has well and truly lapsed. So that is an example of the things that are being repealed or taken out of current legislation in order to tidy it up and make it more concise and clear.

In the last 12 months or so we have as a government been doing a lot of work in terms of introducing legislation that actually does change people’s lives and does make things better for Victorians. I think in the last 12 months something like 43 bills have been introduced into this Parliament and have passed. In 2024 alone there have been 32 pieces of legislation, and of course we are not finished yet. We are debating really important legislation this sitting, including the legislation around licensing of tobacco premises, and I know that this will be much welcomed by residents of the Thomastown electorate, where terrible things have been happening in terms of some of the tobacco shops and organised crime.

This, hopefully, will be making sure that people are safe and that we can break up some of these illegal activities and terrible crimes.

In terms of the Road Safety Act 1986 – again, where things have been made redundant – I know there has been a lot of talk on the other side about road maintenance and the need to fix up potholes. I do know there has been quite a bit of that work going on in the Thomastown electorate, particularly in the older, established areas where the roads are very old. Maybe it is just that the other side is not advocating hard enough to ensure that that work is getting done.

There is also other legislation in this list that is being amended or changed or is having pieces repealed. The piece of legislation the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017 was a first for the state Victorian Labor government. We passed that legislation in 2017, and it was the first bill to be co-titled in a traditional owner language. That was a first in terms of legislation titles, so we are very proud of that legislation. It was also a first in that the legislation was looking at treating the Yarra River as one entity rather than what was going on prior to the legislation, and that was where councils pretty well had control over the piece of the Yarra River that was running through their city, meaning that there was a lot of overlap and there were a lot of inconsistencies in the way that the Yarra River was being looked after in terms of the river itself, the health of the river and the biodiversity. Now traditional owners have a big voice in ensuring that the Yarra River is looked after and is there for the long term for all future generations to enjoy.

Sadly, I do not live, and residents of the Thomastown electorate do not live, very close to the Yarra River, but we do have the Merri Creek, and that is also a waterway that is having quite a lot of attention paid to it because, again, we really need to clean up these waterways and make sure that the living things are continuing to thrive and that our environment is clean and can be enjoyed into the future. There is the Merri Creek Management Committee, there is the Friends of Merri Creek and there is also our local Lalor Landcare group, and all of these organisations do incredible work to support, to clean and to ensure that our waterways are at their best.

I would like to give a shout-out to Malcolm Wrest, who was the one that started up the Lalor Landcare organisation. He is incredibly active. Often he gets, for example, the local scout groups, such as the Lalor scouts, out there on planting days, and we have planted hundreds and hundreds of trees. It really is great to see the young scouts out there learning about things growing, how to plant a tree and how to keep it watered. They are all native plants that are being planted, and we are also getting a little bit of education about the type of foliage that was there way back many, many years ago, and how we want to bring that back to make the area even nicer.

When you look at some parts of the Merri Creek and what it is looking like now, it really has improved and come a long way. There are also, I cannot deny, some sections that do still need a lot of work. There are also some pieces that have been concreted up. There is a lot of congestion in some areas, but it is certainly looking much better than it has in the past. As a government we have supported these programs to make sure the waterways in Victoria are constantly looked at to try to make them better, to try to improve the water quality and to try to attract and bring back the living things that were there but may not be there now because of pollution.

I guess there are a couple of examples of where we see the work that is being done on an environmental level in Victoria as really having some great effects and as really good work – and I notice that the Minister for Environment is in the chamber. There is the growling grass frog, which is a native of the Merri Creek grasslands. I have to say that a number of years ago this frog was endangered, but now that has gone down a level and it is only threatened to be endangered. These are very small incremental changes, but they are changes nonetheless, and that does actually mean that there are more frogs. On that note I will sit down. I commend the bill to the house.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (12:46): If anyone takes a point of order on me on anything that I am talking about when you can talk about the growling grass frog, you are all warned. The only thing that is endangered on that side is the member for Point Cook, because I am sure that he will be looking for a new career in 2026.

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: Yes, but you protected the growling grass frog, Minister. That is obviously why people still vote for you.

I am pleased to rise on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. We get these opportunities once or twice a term – maybe a bit more often than that, sometimes once a year – and despite what might have been said in the Leader of the Opposition’s contribution and the many points of order taken, it is a very, very, very, very broad or very, very narrow bill, whichever way you want to look at it. It does cover a number of bills, and anyone who is speaking on it who considers taking a point of order should think about how they are going to speak on the one page of points that this bill literally is. Not surprisingly, I want to mostly refer to item 6, which repeals section 95B and section 95C of the Road Safety Act 1986. It is pertinent that we are talking about 95B and 95C, because as we heard yesterday in the chamber, under this government road maintenance fell by 95 per cent in the 2023–24 year. That is not my figure. That is nothing that I am suggesting; that is in the Department of Transport and Planning annual report. That was the figure for regional Victoria, which has the vast bulk of the road network, but equally the metropolitan figures were very much similar. That is in a situation where we are already facing an absolute crisis on our roads throughout regional Victoria and indeed throughout metropolitan areas.

I was sitting in here one day a few months ago when the member for Malvern, the member for Rowville, the member for Nepean and the member for Narracan – three out of four are virtually metropolitan MPs, some of them inner-city MPs – raised concerns about potholes. It is not just a regional issue anymore, because this government has abandoned proper maintenance on the roads. They like to talk about what happened 10 years ago, but they do not mention things like the fact that last year’s road maintenance output budget was actually less than it was under the former coalition government 10 years ago, which is an extraordinary figure given the growth in the population and the needs in that time. As a result we have got a road network in our state that is in just appalling condition.

I do not really need to convince members opposite or anyone else. Anyone who drives on our roads will see it every day, and as I said, it is not just on country roads. Coming in on the Princes Highway at Pakenham on the dual-lane freeway parts of the road are breaking up and there are potholes there – on a freeway, which is just an indictment. It is no surprise that there was a survey done for the government last year by the National Transport Research Organisation looking at the state of the roads. It focused on about 8000 kilometres of roads out of the 23,000 kilometres in the state that are state-owned roads and found that 91 per cent of them were in poor or very poor condition.

Surprisingly enough, the government and the minister are challenging that contention, saying ‘That’s not what the survey says.’ I have seen a slide from the National Transport Research Organisation presented to an industry conference that says exactly that. The government says, ‘No, no, no, that’s not what it says.’ I say to the minister and to the department, ‘If that’s not what it says, release the entire report to the public.’ What is the answer I get to that? ‘Ah, it’s very complex, Mr O’Brien. It’s very detailed. It’s a lot of data.’ They will not give it to me. Anyway, I assume we will get it under freedom of information at some stage, probably after a long fight in VCAT, as is usually the case. Nonetheless, we do not necessarily need the survey data to tell us what we already know, and that is that our roads are in an appalling condition. The budget in the current financial year is still 16 per cent less than it was four years ago. We have got ongoing damage to vehicles. In the last couple of years around 2000 people have lodged claims for compensation for damage to their vehicles, and given that there is a threshold for that compensation of around $1640, I think it is, this year – it is indexed each year – very few if any of those people actually get access to that compensation, notwithstanding that they might be dealing with cracked rims or broken struts or whatever.

The trucking industry in particular – obviously their trucks are on the road all the time – tell me repeatedly that the cost of maintenance and repairs is going through the roof for them. I was with the member for Shepparton last year with a trucking company at Tatura talking about an increase of around 30 per cent each month on the maintenance bill, purely due to the state of the roads. We will also hear from the government on this, ‘Well, that’s because we’ve had floods. It’s been wet, Mr O’Brien. Don’t you understand we had this rain and there were floods in 2022?’ Yes, of course there were floods in 2022; we have had a couple of wet years. But that should not mean that you do not continue to maintain the roads. By all means, no matter what the minister says, there was not 100 per cent, not even 50 per cent, coverage of floods across the roads, particularly in the south-west – and in most of Gippsland we certainly did not have floods to that degree – and the south-west of the state is the most appalling. We just cannot have a situation where the state accepts that, because it has been wet, that road is going to be terrible. The Romans had wet years. The Romans had a lot of wet years. I was doing a little bit of research before.

Steve Dimopoulos: You sound like Danny Pearson.

Danny O’BRIEN: I was thinking a lot that I was sounding just like the member for Essendon, and it is about to get worse. I did this bit of research, and I found that one of the very first roads that was constructed was Via Appia in 312 BC. For the minister at the table – the member for Essendon will know this for sure – Via Appia is still in use today, 2330 years later. It is still in use today. I found on a website called engineeringrome.org that when bicycling down Via Appia its smooth paving stones have worn away into a bumpy and difficult road to travel on. That is terrible. But after 2300 years you might expect that the road has got a bit worse for wear. In Victoria we cannot do it for about two months, let alone 2000 years, before the road is cracking up.

In fact it was relevant to the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, because I recently put a question on notice to him about the long-delayed duplication of the Princes Highway between Traralgon and Sale. There is a section there where about half a dozen patches have been put on. When I am talking patches, some of them are over 100 metres long, and this is a brand new road. It was only opened at the start of 2023 and already it has got massive patches on it. This is the response I got from the minister – because I asked him, ‘Who’s paying for this? Is it the taxpayer? Is the Victorian taxpayer having to pay for this, or does the contractor actually have to remediate that as part of the terms of the contract?’

He did not answer my question of course, but he said that technical experts are looking at it and trying to find out what caused this failure of the road and whether any local environmental conditions may have contributed. That particular stretch of road has been a road for over 100 years, so if there were any environmental conditions we should have known what they were and we should have planned for them, but the Romans would have done it better, you would have to say. So in answer to an interjection from before, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’, well, they taught us how to do roads better, but under this government we are actually not getting it.

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: No, I have been working on that for about 15½ minutes, Minister. We asked the question yesterday – in fact, Acting Speaker Addison, you will be disappointed to hear this – about a crew from Ballarat that has had to go 2500 kilometres to Far North Queensland to do work because they simply have not got the work in Victoria. We know that SprayLine, the government’s own agency – which is on the chopping block for sale, by the way – had to go for tenders in South Australia last year. We have got the whole charade of what was Regional Roads Victoria, which was set up in Ballarat and is gone now because no-one cares about the roads anymore in this government. This is a debacle, our roads, but on this bill I have no issues and I look forward to seeing it pass.

Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (12:56): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. From the outset I will say that it has been a wideranging debate today, and I allowed that when sitting in the chair where you are, Acting Speaker Addison, in making sure that everyone had a thoughtful contribution to this wide bill, which has a lot of changes to different acts. It is what we do in this place here.

We have always in this place some very serious and important legislation that comes to be debated, and as I have said in other debates, it is important that we as a government continue to have modern and fit-for-purpose legislation. What is important in doing that work is making sure that all those finer details are also addressed, and this bill particularly does that. It looks at those finer details of what needs to be changed in acts.

Representing the Bellarine now for a couple of years has been very much a privilege and a responsibility that I take very seriously. I am committed to serving not only those who may have voted for me to be in this place but all those residents in the Bellarine electorate, families and community members, and I do so with dedication. I work incredibly hard, but I also think integrity and transparency are really important in this place, and the electorates put trust in all of us to represent them here in this place. I am mindful of the many voices that I carry into this room.

Across the Bellarine electorate we have seen more people come to the regions to enjoy the lifestyle that the Bellarine offers, being near many coastal towns. We have families raising children. It is a great place to start a family. There are very many small businesses that enjoy the thriving tourism economy. It is a wonderful place, and we have got a wonderful environment as well. In that regard, I stand in this chamber and am reminded of that responsibility to address their concerns, and every constituent does deserve a representative who listens to them, who speaks for them, who fights for them and who can develop policies to improve their lives. One of the core duties that I have had to obviously learn more about is the role in this place of debating legislation that truly reflects the values of this government. It is a pleasure and an honour to be part of that process of making legislation, drafting laws and debating and casting votes here in this place, but it is more than that. It is about doing the hard yards, the hard yakka, all the grunt work behind the scenes to get those things done. That is what the Bellarine electorate certainly expect, and they expect us to get on with the job of governing for the state.

This is a statute law repeals bill. Bills are passed as part of Parliament’s regular housekeeping, and we do ensure that legislation is accurate and clear, and it is to maintain that orderly manner and accessibility for the public to understand, and this is just common practice that we have.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.