Wednesday, 19 March 2025

Leader of the Opposition

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (17:47): It is a pleasure to rise on the grievance debate this afternoon and grieve for Victorians if they were ever to be led by a part-time Liberal Leader of the Opposition who prioritises holidays and differing views of how that might account over community safety. But I will say this before I do get underway – I felt like a bit of a warm-up act for the member for Werribee last sitting week and now I am before the member for Prahran, who I wish very well on her augural speech. I hope for her nearest and dearest and people that have joined – just a bit of a warm-up act. This is nowhere near some of the elegance that will be shown in that speech, and I wish you all the best in your parliamentary career.

What an extraordinary week it has it been, where the opposition leader had about four or five different truths to whether he was on leave or not. I do not discourage people from taking leave – it is important to be supportive of your family and to be in that moment. I do not think anyone begrudges that. But it was quite curious to see the variances of truth that were delivered during that time, for something very innocuous. It says much around trust of the opposition and where they find themselves. Remember the big upheaval around Christmas and the new year. We saw in question time a bit of banter going across from the opposition leader to the Premier around a week off taken during Christmas and the new year, and I heard some of that banter coming through.

What was happening around Christmas and the new year, I wonder? What was going on in those pivotal times where record crowds were rocking up to the MCG for the Boxing Day test. Not rocking up to Spring Street; there were only a few that were rocking up when the lights were off. Normally it is the quietest time around here, but no, there was a chance to roll a leader, the member for Hawthorn, who was doing some outstanding work. As the member for Hawthorn in his lived experience and own words the other day said, ‘He never got time to take a break’. I say, genuinely, we saw him as hardworking and the effort that he put forward. I saw that as a window or an example into the absolute difficulties and hallmarks of the modern-day opposition and Liberal Party and Liberal–Nationals. It is more about the power and who holds control, rather than the policies and plans that are put forward.

In this grievance I will describe some of those key policy areas where it is about chasing the narrative of the story, rather than the hard work and policy outcomes that come forward. Two critical areas that I will focus on are mental health prevention work and the mental health levy, that was commentated on it by the opposition at the time, of being completely opposed to mental health and wellbeing support through the prism of a levy. That was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Mental Health. That is playing populist politics when you have a nation-leading royal commission. It was more about the grabs at that time, rather than doing the right thing for Victorians.

When the then opposition leader and then incoming Premier announced the Royal Commission into Family Violence, something as the Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change I have intimate knowledge of, now supporting the Premier and the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and Minister for Women, what was the description of that from the Liberal Party at the time around this royal commission that now has – and thankfully has – bipartisan support? The member for Eildon in her shadow work does a lot of that bipartisan work in supporting that. It was going to be a lawyers’ picnic. Reforming and restructuring the prevention of family violence, the protection of victim-survivors and children and holding perpetrators to account and those that use violence was boiled down into some of those terms around a lawyers’ picnic.

This is the challenge here for modern opposition parties that we see play out in a different frame in other states and territories. This is uniquely a Victorian Liberal Party problem, because when Peter Malinauskas in South Australia has a crisis like the Whyalla Steelworks site going under, the opposition leader was in that meeting with the Premier of the day working out emergency legislation, bipartisan legislation, that saved those jobs and saved those outcomes. When our system of democracy has half of young people thinking democracy does not work for them, we are at a serious and low ebb in the two-party structure that we are seeing erode away, and it is a race to the bottom if we keep deteriorating in the standards that we see.

Another example that we saw just recently: Prime Minister Albanese challenging the tariff changes that we saw President Trump coming forward with and the impacts on our steelworks sector as well. What does former Prime Minister John Howard say? Prime Minister Albanese is doing all he can in this space. There was a bipartisan, multipartisan approach, and it is opposition leader Dutton who comes out and says no – criticises – rather than taking the moral high ground. Maybe just take a team Australia approach and take one moment to put your political instincts aside and think for the greater good. That is what you see in the hallmarks here of what is played out in policy here in Victoria. We see time and time again the Liberal Party more focused on themselves and tearing themselves apart than on trying to put forward alternative policies and bringing them forward.

I ask those opposite, who will come in in various frames and who are tuning in across the Parliament right now: what has changed? What has been the big visceral change since the member for Hawthorn, who would do more doorstops than anyone in the day, who would go out with the blue banner in the opposition room or be out in the garden? What has changed? Because we count the amount of times that the member for Hawthorn got up there. It was every day, and that was including during some pretty challenging episodes down the road in the court precinct. He would still be out there. We have not seen anywhere near the volume and effort from the member for Berwick and Leader of the Opposition at all, and that is why the part-time rhetoric comes in. The member for Berwick had that comment of the member for Carrum, the Minister for Planning and Attorney-General, who has done an extraordinary amount of policy work in the last month, more than any of the shadow cabinet has done in 11 years. She has done an extraordinary amount of work.

Cindy McLeish interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: The member for Eildon says ‘part-time’. I know it is becoming a bit of a flavour, and we see that with some of the concerns, and it is not just in my words. I will open up the laptop, member for Eildon, again and get the notes up. It is colleagues of yours that are backgrounding.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Through the Chair.

Tim RICHARDSON: What were the comments made by an unknown source, I wonder? Well, we could do a little bit of the who’s who over there, couldn’t we? We could run through it. We see it in the little tribes that form out on the back annex. We go, ‘Oh, hang on, there are yesterday’s heroes hanging out with the member for Hawthorn, who were the ones that got rolled and lost positions.’ The member for Sandringham I thought was doing okay. I thought the baritone of Sandringham was doing an all right job. Suddenly no more. The then potential deputy leader, the member for Kew, I think everyone thought was a rising star and talent. No, it was the champion of Nepean coming through. Off you go. It is an all-bloke affair at the front of the table there. As if the hallmarks of modern Liberal Party are challenged by exactly not having quotas and representation, the talented member for Kew was then demoted from that portfolio and put back further after being an incredibly effective communicator in the Parliament and in media. You wonder why, if people are meeting performance outcomes, when people are doing fundamentally their job in holding government to account, they suddenly get demoted and impacted on. This is the hallmark of what you see that is truly a Liberal problem that we face in Victoria.

On cue – not on Kew literally, the member for Kew – the member for Hawthorn walks in. We have commentated a bit of the collective ‘why’ or ‘what if’ about where the member for Hawthorn finds himself now. I mean, we saw the doorstop going past, and we saw there was a moment: ‘Do I take up the question from Richard Willingham from the ABC? Should I? Should I?’ You saw something you had not seen for a couple of months – the glisten in the eyes, the twinkle, the mojo back, saying, ‘I’ve never taken a break. I never found the time to take a break.’ We noticed that. We noticed that, member for Hawthorn. We commend you on your service during that time. We are still wondering why on earth you are sitting on the ejector seat that has been sat on by former premiers or former opposition leaders. We are still wondering ourselves.

One big deficit during that time, though, was the effort in policy and contribution that was made at that time. That was the missing ingredient. And what we see backgrounded by colleagues at shadow cabinet right now is there is actually less energy and purpose since the member for Berwick took over. There is less policy development. People are looking sideways going, ‘When is it going to start to happen? When are things like the change that we all hoped for and were promised when the member for Caulfield and the member for Hawthorn were rolled? When is it going to start? When are we going to warm up?’ Well, it has been a few months here. There are about 20 per cent of the doorstops done. There is less engagement with stakeholders than we have ever seen before from those opposite. And we see a populist, narrow, oppositionist approach, which we see play out at the moment federally as well.

It gets into a serious dynamic, though. It is one thing for this thing to be about power and structure. It is another thing to then talk about governing. And when you have this approach, when you hate your colleagues more than you hate the Labor Party, you know you have got a lot of problems in your ranks. When you background and have a crack at your own team more than you do to the government, then you know that there are a lot of challenges.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Member for Polwarth!

Tim RICHARDSON: Just a bit of truth has been dropped here, just a few –

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Members will come to order!

Tim RICHARDSON: Just getting a bit of a feeling there, Speaker.

The SPEAKER: The member for Mordialloc, without assistance.

Tim RICHARDSON: Oh, but you know I appreciate a bit of assistance, Speaker.

There is a lot of stuff. But it gets to the serious points around governing and governing our state, when you are more focused on yourselves than you are on governing for our state and making the hard calls. Remember the member for Berwick was a champion for raising the age of criminal responsibility. Remember that fireside chat piece that he had with the Guardian on the new, modern Liberal: ‘I’m up for raising the age. I want to change bail outcomes.’ And then as soon as the populist approach comes through, we see a different change in tone.

We saw it recently, and the extraordinary, extraordinary thing – and I thought the member for Berwick would take the moral high ground. He put the origami set away, the papier-mâché of the weird car thing with Nine News. Remember when the member for Hawthorn was on an absolute tear and he had the doorstop ready to go. He had the government on the ropes on that particular day. And the member for Berwick was down in McCrae or down in – I do not know if he talked to the member for Nepean about this, but he was down the road with a papier-mâché display and a laser pointer-clicker going through some really strange conspiracy theory. He had not talked about it for a number of weeks, and when asked went, ‘Oh, actually, I’ll go back there again. I’ll go back again.’ And that goes to the problem of whether the modern Liberal Party is more about populist policies or a populist approach or power and structure, hunting itself rather than focusing on Victorians.

I go back to that again. We are seeing this time and time again in policies. They are opposed to school builds – no new school built when we came into government, more than 100 on the way. They have no infrastructure build agenda – literally we came from a standing start when we started. We then saw during the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System a levy that was recommended that was opposed by those opposite, politicising that important royal commission that funded outcomes to make sure that we lower the toll of mental health trauma. We saw the prevention of family violence that I talked about before, with 227 recommendations that were put forward that were so critical in keeping women and children safe and holding perpetrators to account. That work, billions of dollars done, was described by those opposite as a lawyers picnic – a lawyers picnic for people who were not safe and were vulnerable in our local community. And time and time again we saw during the pandemic the undermining of our health workers, our nurses and our midwives, out on the steps of Parliament undermining messages, undermining Victoria Police. That is not what modern governments strive to do.

We have got another example in New South Wales. What did the former premier of New South Wales say, Dom Perrottet? This was a goodie. The member for Sandringham had the former premier out for that little fundraising powwow chat. Dom Perrottet, one of the heroes of the modern Liberal Party, said cost escalations on projects are a necessary part of doing business on the eastern seaboard. That is what the member said. You have got to keep going and deliver them.

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Speaker, I take personal offence to what the member is saying. The former Premier of New South Wales had so much more to say than just that, and I think that if the member on his feet –

The SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

Tim RICHARDSON: I have him on the hook down the road at Sandy and Mordy, and he is on the hook again, the member for Sandringham. Well, he said it was. We have got to keep going, said Dom Perrottet, the former Premier. Then what happened in New South Wales? The greatest bipartisan moment: Premier Chris Minns, former Premier Dom Perrottet, arm in arm opening up a tunnel. Imagine that. Imagine if you stepped up into a bipartisan approach thinking about the interests of Victorians not those opposite thinking of themselves, not backgrounding on themselves or undermining the new opposition leader with leaks out of shadow cabinet, trying to destroy another leader for the member for Nepean to step up very soon.

Question agreed to.

The SPEAKER: I would like to acknowledge in the gallery former members for Prahran Leonie Hemingway and Clem Newton-Brown, who I believe has been acknowledged already, former member for Monash Province Peter Katsambanis and former senator Helen Kroger.