Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Business of the house
Program
Please do not quote
Proof only
Business of the house
Program
That, under standing order 94(2), the orders of the day, government business, relating to the following bills be considered and completed by 5 pm on 6 March 2025:
Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024
Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2025
Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025.
What a delight it is to be in the Parliament this week welcoming two new members to this place. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the member for Prahran on her election and on her joining us in this chamber today and also to congratulate the member for Werribee, a person who is well known to those of us on this side for all the great contributions that he has made in various roles, including for a time as an adviser to the Honourable Lisa Neville but more recently as a teacher in one of our fantastic government schools supported by the Allan Labor government.
With this government business program today there are some very important bills on the agenda, but you will forgive me for perhaps highlighting nurse-to-patient and midwife-to-patient ratios as a significant topic that will be being debated. I know that on this side of the house our members are champing at the bit to get up on their feet and talk to this bill, which of course only further strengthens nurse-to-patient and midwife-to-patient ratios in this state. We were the first state to introduce nurse-to-patient and midwife-to-patient ratios, and we were able to legislate those when we came to office in 2014. This bill, as I said, delivers on our commitments – commitments that were made in 2022 to the nurses and midwives through the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, their union.
We will also be talking to the terrorism bill, which will be being debated today. Our government recognises the need for therapeutic intervention to address the vulnerabilities that underpin an individual trajectory towards a life of crime, because no-one wants to see that. We are all agreed on that. We are particularly going to work to ensure that people have every opportunity to get on the right track to live a purposeful life here in this state. The bill notably expands the eligibility criteria for programs helping Victorians who are at risk of radicalising towards violent extremism. This is absolutely, vitally important, particularly in this age in which we currently live of instability right around the world. Further, our government has committed to getting knives out of the hands of criminals and off the streets because there is no excuse for anyone to be carrying knives around in everyday life – absolutely no excuse. It is not acceptable, so we will be debating that bill.
Help to Buy – everyone knows that right now this government has a steadfast focus on building more homes so that more Victorians have the opportunity to realise the Australian dream of owning their own home or being able to rent an affordable property. We are doing everything in our power to ensure that we can deliver more homes for more Victorians despite the unrelenting opposition of those on the other side. It is for this reason, this steadfast commitment, that our government introduced the Victorian Homebuyer Fund in 2021, four years ago, and our vision to deliver 800,000 homes over the next decade. We have more recently announced a number of measures to assist more people into housing. I think they are well known, and there will be opportunities, I suspect, to ventilate those during this debate. But the Commonwealth have stepped in and introduced their own Help to Buy scheme, yet one more example of where Victoria leads the way and other jurisdictions follow. We are very proud to have established this, as I said, to lead the way. But now it is time to pass that mantle on, and I welcome the Commonwealth government’s establishment of Help to Buy, which is making a big difference, particularly for young people. I am sure we have all got stories of young people who are accessing this very important scheme. A very important government business program – let us see if those on the other side will support it or whether they will do what they often do, which is oppose.
Bridget VALLENCE (Evelyn) (12:21): I rise to make my contribution on the government business program and also take the opportunity to welcome the two new members joining us in the chamber today, the member for Werribee and the member for Prahran. I wish to congratulate particularly the new member for Prahran and note how determined she is to be such a strong advocate for her community. I look forward to her inaugural speech on 19 March and her contributions in this chamber going forward.
I thank the Leader of the House for her explanation of the government business program. But I regret to inform the Leader of the House that we do not share the same level of enthusiasm as the Leader of the House and we will be opposing the government business program. The principal reason why we will be opposing the government business program is because we sought to go into consideration in detail on some very important bills in the program. Regrettably, the Labor government has again declined our very reasonable request, limiting transparency and hiding from scrutiny in terms of their proposed legislation. As I have said previously, we on this side of the house believe there is considerable merit in having the opportunity to scrutinise the bills put before this house. We do not think that this Parliament should be treated by the Labor government just as a rubberstamping exercise.
As we saw in the last sitting week, the government was forced to backflip on its Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 after the public outrage it provoked and the advocacy by the Victorian Liberals and Nationals, led by our Shadow Attorney-General, which resulted in the Labor government introducing house amendments. Perhaps if the government had provided this house with the opportunity to consider bills in detail, as we seek each week, it would have become clear to the government that there were problems at a much earlier stage in that particular bill, which is precisely why we have asked to do so on the bills this week. It should be remembered that we do have very limited time as opposition members to consult with our communities.
We have got the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2025, Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025 and Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024 up this week. In relation to the Help to Buy bill, we are curious as to why the government is seeking to ram through this legislation so quickly, especially given a federal election is looming and will likely be called whilst this bill is still up for debate in this Parliament, in the Legislative Council. We know that this scheme was subject to considerable opposition in the federal Parliament, and there are real question marks as to whether this scheme will continue after the federal election. Additionally, the Help to Buy scheme is intended to assist around 10,000 Victorians to become homeowners, a small figure, but we are concerned whether the government can deliver on this amount because we all know the Allan Labor government is going to break another promise and fail to build 80,000 new homes this year.
We also know the Albanese government has failed to build one additional new home under its failed Housing Australia Future Fund. As we saw last week, it tried to cook the books and pass off existing houses it had acquired as new homes.
In relation to the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024, while this bill appears to have some features that have merit, we have significant concerns as to whether there is sufficient funding available for the voluntary case management scheme. Given a number of other concerns in the bill, the Victorian Liberals and Nationals did request to go into consideration in detail on this bill, but sadly, the Labor government are so reluctant to be scrutinised on any bill that they put before this house they denied that very reasonable request.
Finally, there is the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2025. I take this opportunity on behalf of the Victorian Liberals and Nationals to acknowledge and thank our nurses, our midwives and all healthcare workers, who work incredibly hard on the front line, for what they do each and every day. However, there are legitimate concerns about whether public health providers actually have the ability to meet the new staffing requirements given the current workplace shortages in our hospitals. We are keen to understand further from the Labor government how it plans to tackle this workforce shortage, especially after it cut Skills First funding for health and hospital care training in December last year.
The important item for Thursday is that it is my son’s birthday. It is an indulgence, I know, but I want to wish my son Emanuel a very happy birthday for this Thursday.
Pauline RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (12:26): I also wish the member for Evelyn’s son a happy birthday. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the government business program. This is going to be a really important week for us. We already have two new members who have come in here to play a really important role in representing their communities. I do congratulate the member for Prahran on her election and also of course the member for Werribee. I am very much looking forward to their inaugural speeches. This week the member for Werribee’s inaugural speech will be a great opportunity for us to all come together as a chamber, and then in the following sitting week I will be looking forward to hearing the contribution from the newly elected member for Prahran. I am conscious that these are hard-fought-for roles, which were rightly and vigorously contested.
This is a classic Labor government business program this week: keeping people safe, keeping our communities safe and focusing on housing affordability and of course nurse-to-patient ratios. The Leader of the House in her role as the Minister for Health will not be surprised that I am particularly excited about the nurse-to-patient ratio legislation. I have had some nurses from the electorate of Cranbourne asking me ‘When is it coming? When is it coming? When is it coming?’, and I was able to tell them last week that it is going to be debated this week. Some of the nurses did offer by way of a bit of a history lesson that they had sat in the chamber a few Parliaments ago and had been quite vigorous in making sure that the Liberal Party – in fact Mrs Wooldridge – understood what they felt about nurse-to-patient ratios. Some of the nurses that I was speaking to were retired, and they had been fighting for this legislation and had been so relieved each time our government tightened and strengthened our commitment to making sure that this was embedded in legislation.
It is introducing staffing ratios into intensive care units through the introduction of one-on-one ratios for ICU on all shifts in level 1 and level 2 hospitals. Improving staff ratios is something that is incredibly important to any Labor government, and we have certainly done more than pay lip-service to that in this government. I am absolutely delighted that safe and high-quality care in a range of clinical settings will be the fixture of the debate this week. I will have some nurses here. I might even name some of them. Hannah Spanswick I think is certainly planning on coming in – somebody who fought very hard for this legislation – and Liz Barton as well. They are both very enthusiastic retired nurses. Both had very important roles in the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and fought long and hard to have this introduced and then of course to have it strengthened.
We know, they know and I have had plenty of nurses on polling booths tell me that they know that when it comes to recognising who has the focus on the workforce they trust the Labor government to be able to enshrine in legislation the sorts of changes that make it very hard for any other government to undo, so I am very pleased that I will be having an opportunity to contribute to that debate.
The other legislation of course is making amendments to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the voluntary case management scheme under the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act 2003 to make sure that we have community safety at the top of our agenda, and that is as it has always been, whether it is responding to the causes of crime or responding to people who are experiencing crime.
And the Victorian Homebuyer Fund will have 18,000 households going into home ownership. So many people in our community know that buying a house – having the dignity of a home – is an absolute priority, and certainly when I am speaking to people they trust that it will be Labor governments in Canberra and in Victoria that will have that focus. I am very much looking forward to the debate. In terms of transparency there are plenty of opportunities for debate. I look forward to hearing the contributions.
Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (12:31): I am very happy to rise to speak on this government business program today also. The member for Cranbourne is right: this is a classic Labor government business program. We have got some bills on the program that are of the utmost importance to communities right around the state – health, housing – and they make for great media releases, but will they actually do anything to help Victorians, particularly in the space of the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024, which, as the member Evelyn pointed out earlier, we have requested to go into consideration in detail? Obviously there are a couple of glaring omissions as far as community safety goes. As was discussed by the member for Morwell earlier, making machetes a prohibited weapon has still not occurred. We know from speaking to community members all over the state, including particularly the member for Morwell, who is very close to this issue, it is of the utmost importance.
As the member for Evelyn also stated, we are opposed to this government business program, mainly because the scrutiny and consideration we would have had by going into consideration in detail, allowing us to scrutinise each and every clause of the bill, have again not been granted by the government. The lack of transparency continues to be mind-boggling; it really does.
The Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2025 is great, fantastic for health care in general and great for patient care. However, there are holes again and practicalities on the ground. I am a very practical person. We love a good theory, but how is this going to work practically on the ground? For those of us – and the Nationals will attest to this – in regional areas there are workforce shortages. Even though greater nurse and midwife ratios are a great thing, obviously, for safer patient care, how is that going to work in regions, where we cannot fill the vacancies that we have got and we have a workforce that is predominantly agency nurses, which in small communities causes a whole host of issues? When you have got a workforce that is dominated by agency staff who are working next to permanent staff, for the morale of those permanent staff who are often on a lot less money – they are working very long hours with no regulation in this space – it just creates frustration.
Morale is low among those permanent staff, and we want to hold onto them. If we could get some of the agency workforce and make them permanent in our hospitals, it would be incredible; they could work as a cohesive team. But at the moment, unfortunately, we simply do not have that.
Then we have the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. We love to talk about housing in the Nationals, we absolutely do, because housing is one of the top three issues that we talk to our constituents about each and every week – housing, health, community safety and roads. Again, I bang on about this all the time: when you are living in a border town you can literally physically see developers jumping the river, and those that are buying homes are jumping the river to buy homes because of the ease with which they can get planning approval and there are less taxes. Mind you, they are still coming back over the river to use our health care, all of our infrastructure, our schools et cetera. So we are opposed to this government business program. It is, as the member for Cranbourne said, a classic Labor business program this week.
Before the end of my time, I do want to congratulate the member for Prahran on being sworn in today and the member for Werribee. Let us look forward to a week where the Nationals again are all over the business program, ready to speak and represent our communities, because that is what the Nats do best.
Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (12:36): It is a pleasure to rise and discuss the government business program today. Before I launch into that, I would like to also extend a hearty welcome to the new members for Prahran and Werribee. Seeing them being escorted in – not dragged in, like they once were – was a reminder to all of us about the robustness and the strength of our democracy. At this time in the world I think it is actually a really good reminder to us all of how wonderfully fortunate we are that we have free and safe elections and our democracy is strong. It relies on good, robust debate and discussions coming into this chamber, where we all represent our constituencies. We bring our stories and our values in here, and we are safe to do so. So it is a moment I just want to reflect upon and be grateful for. I also really look forward to their inaugural speeches, because I think they are such an insight into each person and what they bring here. So I am looking forward to the member for Werribee’s inaugural speech tomorrow and to the member for Prahran’s in the following week. I am sure that we will all gain much from hearing their contributions.
Legislation is at the core of our function; that is what we are here to do. We are the legislature, and our government have made use of each and every day that we have had the privilege and honour to be entrusted with the governing of this incredible, wonderful state of Victoria. But before I touch upon that legislation, I did want to make one comment about the opposition’s position on our government business program. I am a bit of a nerd, self-confessed, and I did wonder whether they would support or oppose us. Statistics can be quite helpful, so I did wonder how many times they had supported our government business program in the 60th Parliament. Last night I sat and went through Hansard and looked at every position the opposition had taken on our government business program, and the number of times they have supported us has been four since we started this term of government. There have been four times, so on one hand we can count them. I was hoping we might make a whole handful, but that time may yet come. It would be nice. The last time was actually over a year ago, on 6 February 2024, so it might come again. I was not surprised, but it was a bit disappointing to unearth those statistics.
As the member for Cranbourne pointed out, this is a classic Labor government business program, and we state that with absolutely unabashed pride. There are three bills that we will be discussing at length, and the lists are long on our side. Everyone is clamouring to contribute on these pieces of legislation: the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024, the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2025 and the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025.
I note the time on the clock, so I am not going to get to speak about all of them, but I am hoping – if the time allows – to contribute on two of those later on. I did want to call out and just reiterate the importance of the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill. They say that the best form of flattery is imitation, and we clearly have led the nation when it comes to our homebuyer scheme. Has it been effective? Yes, it has. I know people who have made use of it who otherwise would not have been able to purchase a home. They have done so through our scheme. I am thrilled, as we all are, that the Commonwealth is now adopting this, but it was very interesting to note the Manager of Opposition Business’s comments at the beginning, which maybe foreshadowed the federal opposition’s position on the Commonwealth legislation here. Watch this space, I say.
I did want to touch on the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill, because nurses really are some of the best of us. They tend to us when we are at our most vulnerable, when we are at our most ill, at times of injury and in times of need. They truly are amazing, amazing people. I did want to give a shout-out to the nurses in my electorate at the Angliss Hospital, who work tirelessly to ensure that anyone who needs them has them there and can enjoy their incredible care. The more support we give them the better.
It is a wonderful program ahead of us. I am looking forward to the debates that will ensue.
Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (12:41): I rise today to speak on the government business program, and firstly I would like to join with my colleagues – including the member for Evelyn and the member for Mildura, who spoke before – to congratulate and welcome the new member for Prahran. Well done. You did a terrific job during the campaign, and it is great to have you here in Parliament with us. I would also like to welcome the member for Werribee. I note with the member for Prahran we have a both enthusiastic and intelligent member who I know will contribute greatly to this Parliament, and I know that many of us were out there to support her. I also note that she will be giving her maiden speech on 19 March, and I look forward as the whip to hopefully soon being able to declare not only 19 members but 20 members on divisions. I also acknowledge your work with the swearing in this morning, Speaker.
I would also like to give a compliment to the government to start with. This was one of the few times, if only time, that the government business program was distributed before 5 pm on a Thursday since this new Premier has come in. It is good to see that the government has finally listened to our debates over the last couple of sitting weeks calling on the government to send this out a little earlier.
During this week we will be talking about bills on terrorism as well safe patient care and the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. As the member for Evelyn pointed out, we will be opposing the government business program this week. In particular we will be opposing it because the government has denied us going into consideration in detail on the Terrorism (Community Protection) and Control of Weapons Amendment Bill 2024. This is of course a key reason to oppose the government business program, because this, as the member for Evelyn said, limits transparency from this government once again. While we are not opposing this bill and we do support tackling violent extremism, we do have a number of concerns about this bill. We note that the government briefing suggested cuts have been made to the countering violent extremism program despite the extended mandate. We note that the Law Institute of Victoria raised serious reservations about repeated designated area declarations and whether or not there is good data to suggest that they would deter weapons-based crimes. We are, during this bill debate, moving a reasoned amendment that will be reintroducing move-on laws and addressing the issue of machetes being excluded from existing schedules. However, like with our private members bill a few weeks ago, this will likely again be opposed by the government and be blocked by the government. We do, though, need stronger bail laws, we do need move-on laws and we do need to ban machetes, and the government should be listening not just to us but to the community, who are continuing to cry out more and more on those issues.
Going to the next bill on the government business program we have the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2025. Again, we are not opposing this, because of course the opposition supports improving patient care; however, we do have concerns.
We have concerns that under this government hospitals are going more and more broke, and there are budgetary concerns. Can they find staff to meet the new ratios? Will hospitals have to divert funds away from other important things? The government’s own briefing suggests there has been no firm modelling for the additional staff required. With the member for Evelyn and other colleagues, I also thank nurses, midwives and other hospital staff, but I do note that already there has not been a safe working environment, given the shortages and budget issues under this government. That is why there are many nurses, both retired and current, who have been out helping and campaigning with the Liberal opposition, including people like Kerry, Jan, Emma and others.
Now let us move to the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. We are not opposing this, because we do want people to have homes and do want to help people to buy and so forth. It is ironic this is called ‘Help to Buy’ because under this Labor government we have seen increased cost-of-living pressures, more taxes and increased taxes and red tape making it harder to buy. The federal Liberals have pledged to repeal the scheme if they win, so why is Labor legislating this now? Another point is that the scheme’s thresholds for income and price gaps remain in draft, and there is a lack of detail. Thirdly, if Labor loses the federal election, there could well be a repeal of this soon. So we have a reasoned amendment that this bill be paused until after the federal election outcome.
Once again, this government has not listened with respect to this government business program. They should be more transparent and listen to the public. That is why we are opposing this government business program. Please listen to the community.
Assembly divided on motion:
Ayes (51): Juliana Addison, Jacinta Allan, Colin Brooks, Josh Bull, Anthony Carbines, Ben Carroll, Darren Cheeseman, Anthony Cianflone, Sarah Connolly, Chris Couzens, Jordan Crugnale, Lily D’Ambrosio, Daniela De Martino, Steve Dimopoulos, Paul Edbrooke, Eden Foster, Matt Fregon, Ella George, Luba Grigorovitch, Bronwyn Halfpenny, Katie Hall, Paul Hamer, Mathew Hilakari, Melissa Horne, Natalie Hutchins, Sonya Kilkenny, Nathan Lambert, John Lister, Gary Maas, Alison Marchant, Kathleen Matthews-Ward, Steve McGhie, Paul Mercurio, John Mullahy, Danny Pearson, Pauline Richards, Tim Richardson, Ros Spence, Nick Staikos, Natalie Suleyman, Meng Heang Tak, Jackson Taylor, Nina Taylor, Kat Theophanous, Mary-Anne Thomas, Emma Vulin, Iwan Walters, Vicki Ward, Dylan Wight, Gabrielle Williams, Belinda Wilson
Noes (28): Brad Battin, Jade Benham, Roma Britnell, Tim Bull, Martin Cameron, Annabelle Cleeland, Chris Crewther, Gabrielle de Vietri, Wayne Farnham, Sam Groth, Matthew Guy, David Hodgett, Tim McCurdy, Cindy McLeish, James Newbury, Danny O’Brien, Michael O’Brien, Kim O’Keeffe, John Pesutto, Tim Read, Richard Riordan, Brad Rowswell, David Southwick, Bill Tilley, Bridget Vallence, Peter Walsh, Rachel Westaway, Jess Wilson
Motion agreed to.