Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Electoral reform

Tim READ (Brunswick) (17:01): Today I rise to grieve on behalf of everyday Victorians, whose voices are too often ignored by their government. Many Victorians are rightly proud that we live in one of the strongest democracies in the world, where we are not only encouraged but required to make our voices heard at the ballot box. But behind the scenes here in Victoria our votes are manipulated by dodgy preference deals, our major political parties are beholden to corporations and time after time we watch as this government ignores expert advice and popular opinion to make our lives worse with bad policy. Victoria is the only remaining state in the country where group voting tickets are allowed. In the upper house, most people vote above the line, but in Victoria you are only allowed to choose one party above the line and cannot allocate your own preferences. Political parties then make deals with each other to direct voters’ preferences in a way that benefits them rather than the voter.

This system is manipulated for profit, allowing parties to effectively buy a seat in Parliament for about the price of a new car. Group voting tickets subvert democracy, tricking voters into electing parties that they have not heard of and may not support. For example, I might write 1 next to the I Love Bananas party, but without my knowledge backroom deals direct my vote to elect someone from Abolish Fruit. Or, for a real-life example, in 2018, 13 per cent of people in the Southern Metro Region voted for a Greens candidate who then lost her seat to an anti-immigration candidate with just 1.3 per cent of the primary vote.

Labor does not want to get rid of group voting because it suppresses Greens representation while filling the upper house crossbench with a hotchpotch of often right-wing micro-parties. Another way to put that, though, is that Labor would rather hold on to power than listen to the will of the people. And we see this in the City of Melbourne too, where the state government has the power to end council candidates’ group voting tickets and end the practice of giving votes to non-resident landlords and double votes to business owners, but they would rather not listen to the people because perhaps they do not like what we say.

Speaking of council elections, the shemozzle that was the 2024 Victorian local government election has not gone unnoticed. We saw renter disenfranchisement; long American-style queues at voting booths, with many ultimately sent to vote in another municipality; allegations of ballot theft and fraud; and candidates hiding their party affiliations, among other signs of democracy gone wrong. That is why the Greens have written to the Premier, the Minister for Local Government and members of the Electoral Matters Committee seeking an inquiry into the 2024 local government elections – to fix these issues before Victorians go to the polls again.

But it is not only at the ballot box where our voices are ignored.

We have seen countless instances of this government wilfully ignoring the voice of the people to achieve their own ends, usually to keep business happy. Just yesterday we saw Labor and the Liberals unite to vote down a sensible Greens amendment to the new Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024 backed by public health stakeholders, like the Cancer Council and Quit Victoria. It was simply asking the regulator to consider public health and safety when approving tobacco retail licences. We understand this was struck down because industry did not like it – industry, also known as tobacco companies, merchants of death, who contribute massively to the burden on our already stretched health system and keep Victorians sick and dying. Victoria spends $600 million treating people with diseases due to smoking, and if you are worried about uncontrolled increases in health spending – and we should be – we could cut this by reducing smoking with the sorts of measures we wanted to introduce into that bill. It is no wonder my Greens colleague Aiv Puglielli from the other place recently called for a ban on political donations from tobacco companies in his minority report for the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s inquiry into vaping and tobacco controls.

It will take more time than I have today to list all of the evidence-based reports and inquiry recommendations that this government has ignored despite countless submissions from subject matter experts and the public, but I will mention a few. This government barrelled ahead to approve yet another duck-shooting season despite public outcry, an extinction crisis and the number one recommendation of their own inquiry. They refuse to build a life-saving second safe injecting room. Following the recent inquiry into food security they teamed up with the Liberals to block any recommendations aimed at reining in the supermarket duopoly despite numerous submissions clearly outlining price-gouging practices that keep Victorians hungry while lining the pockets of these exploitative corporations.

They have refused to build accessible tram stops along 5.5 kilometres of Sydney Road despite years of outcry, including a protest just this afternoon on the steps of Parliament, and despite federal law requiring them to have made all tram stops accessible by the end of 2022. They have also refused to improve Sydney Road, Brunswick, by installing protected bike lanes despite their own VicRoads survey showing this is what the majority of Sydney Road users want and despite their recent inquiry into road safety recommending that bike lanes be prioritised to keep commuters safe and reduce traffic congestion.

Shamefully, this government backflipped on their earlier commitment to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, giving in to the bad-faith law-and-order crowd known ironically as the Liberals despite a massive public campaign and compelling evidence from First Nations justice organisations. First Nations people, especially children, deserve better, especially after last year’s harmful Voice campaign and results.

Speaking of selling off public assets, this government’s determination to knock down all 44 public housing towers is disappointing given the land will go to private developers, who will replace the public housing with social housing and around twice as much private housing. Public protests, a class action lawsuit and evidence from architects and researchers all tell us to refurbish these building instead of knocking them down. The government insists this is not possible, but not only is it possible, it is preferable in terms of cost, environmental sustainability and not displacing the thousands of people who live there. The problem is of course that this government would rather wash its hands of public housing and sell off land to private developers instead.

When it comes to renting, the government are all too happy to unlock public land for developers and give tax breaks to investors while throwing a few crumbs to renters like portable bonds and dispute resolution services, but they refuse to do anything about the real issue facing renters: unlimited rent increases that renters simply cannot afford. This government’s refusal to listen to renters and public housing residents has led to a huge jump in Victorians experiencing rental stress, and homelessness services in Victoria reported last week that 1 million Victorians are now at risk of homelessness, a 67 per cent increase from 2016 to 2022.

In 2024 it is impossible to speak about grieving without thinking about Gaza. I grieve for the millions of people trapped, displaced, bombed, starving and dying in Gaza and many more elsewhere in Palestine and Lebanon who Israel has targeted over the last year, all with the backing of Western governments, including our own Victorian government, who have finally bowed to public pressure and said that they will not renew their MOU with the Israeli defence ministry but who continue to maintain ties with Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems.

Countless Victorians have loudly voiced their opposition to Israel’s assault and demanded that their governments take action. Unfortunately this government has taken plenty of action not to stop the slaughter but to silence the people speaking out against genocide. University students are taught the mistakes of history, encouraged to question authority and told to stand up in the face of injustice, only to be suspended, expelled, arrested and vilified for doing so. Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jewish people and their allies are chastened by those in power, who say they are ‘morons’ who are disturbing ‘social cohesion’, a disingenuous Howard-era term that was repeatedly used to oppose immigration.

Earlier this week one of my constituents James Crafty, who himself is Jewish with family members who survived the Holocaust, went to Caulfield to peacefully protest a panel event discussing Israel’s ‘challenges and opportunities in a new Middle East’. The event was to be held in a synagogue and featured Israeli military and government figures, one of whom was ultimately barred from Australia, possibly in part due to her numerous abhorrent comments calling Palestinians ‘little snakes who should all be forced out of Gaza’. James said he went to protest this event because he objected to Jewish institutions being used to advocate for war crimes. But when a group of right-wingers saw James walking on the footpath wearing a keffiyeh, they surrounded James, began jostling him and then threw him to the ground. But it was James who was arrested and charged, amid honks and shouts of, ‘You’re not welcome here’ from cars passing by.

Meanwhile, a group of RMIT students face disciplinary hearings for attending an on-campus meeting to discuss Palestine. The complaints against them include the fact that some attendees were wearing keffiyehs, which were said to have caused ‘anticipatory anxiety’, whatever that means. Personally it causes me anxiety to know that there are people in my community who are more offended by a traditional scarf worn as a cultural garment or an expression of international solidarity than by the indiscriminate killing of many thousands of people, not to mention the politicians who objected to seeing the keffiyeh in this chamber, presumably because they do not like being confronted with visual reminders of their inaction in the face of genocide.

I am disturbed by the efforts to silence people who are standing up for what is right. In the case of many migrants from Palestine and Lebanon, as well as Jewish people who are concerned that Israel’s actions are contributing to antisemitism, they are standing up for the safety of their own families. I am also concerned that the government’s new anti-vilification legislation may be designed without considering whether it will further suppress dissent. I notice that this government has adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which has been described by its own lead drafter Kenneth Stern as being weaponised to suppress freedom of expression and to limit criticism of Israel’s actions. In our democracy we must be able to express our opposition to war crimes, and we will keep doing so until our governments finally listen.

I want to return to a point I made earlier. We know that treating smoking-related diseases costs this government $600 million a year. I have got a number of other suggestions for saving money for this government. I would recommend, for example, that this government no longer sponsor the obscene festival of war known as Land Forces. I would also recommend that we stop subsidising the cruelty of horseracing and greyhound racing. We could save a lot of money by not over-funding private schools, and we did not need to spend a billion dollars on an unnecessary new prison and then spend millions of dollars a year keeping it open with no-one in it.

I look forward to offering more money-saving tips to the government, should they require them. I hark back to the 2022 election when our calculations showed it was possible to close two prisons in Victoria. The then Premier, Mr Andrews, commented that he was not sure where the prisoners would go – perhaps they should go to Brunswick – and I note with approval that the government has recently announced the closure of two prisons.

To conclude, the major parties, both the Liberal Party and this Labor government, are determined to maintain the status quo, too often in spite of widespread community opposition on a great many issues, more than I have listed here today. But it is important to recognise that community campaigns have had a number of amazing wins recently. Let us start with this government deciding not to renew their MOU with Israel’s defence ministry, fossil fuel giant TGS cancelling their plans to carry out damaging seismic blasting in Victoria’s waters and this government finally bringing pill testing to Victoria after years of community pressure.

But it is clear that community pressure works. The major parties may be captured by corporations, but the Greens and I are proud to bring the voices of people into Parliament, making it harder every day for the major parties to ignore us.