Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Committees

Environment and Planning Committee

Reference

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (14:14): I move:

That this house:

(1) notes that:

(a) Victorians expect a high standard of community consultation on matters that affect them;

(b) Victorians also have an expectation that community consultations will be conducted in a way that is accessible, meaningful, and allows all participants to express their views without fear or favour;

(c) the Allan Labor government states in its own public engagement framework that it commits to meaningful, principled and inclusive public engagement, yet not all Victorians who participate in consultations have a satisfactory experience;

(d) community members are often left out of consultation processes due to location, timing, notification and the extent of consultation processes;

(e) Victorians who genuinely engage in consultation processes have the right to expect those conducting the consultations are prepared, across the details, and fully equipped to answer questions;

(2) requires the Environment and Planning Committee to inquire into, consider and report, by 28 February 2026, on:

(a) community consultation practices done by, and on behalf of, state and local government and statutory authorities, and providers of essential services such as utilities, in Victoria;

(b) the use of non-government providers to do consultations on behalf of government agencies;

(c) standards of conduct, including preparedness, to be expected in community consultations;

(d) groups or regions who are under-represented by existing consultation practices, and options to improve their engagement;

(e) the Engage Victoria platform, its use and effectiveness, and areas for improvement; and

(f) best practice community consultation in other jurisdictions in Australia and other comparable countries.

For months now my constituents have been reaching out to my office with complaints and concerns surrounding the lack of community consultation involving proposed major projects, changes and plans for their community. The definition of ‘public engagement’ in the government’s Public Engagement Framework 2021–2025 states it is:

… a planned process to support decision making. It encourages people to get involved in decisions that are of interest to them. Engagement refers to a range of opportunities including:

• Educating people about a topic …

• Obtaining feedback on a project … and

• Working with stakeholders to address local issues …

This may include some of the following activities, according to the framework:

• Workshops, forums, reference groups or consultative committees

…

• Online discussion forums, surveys, mapping tools or social media commentary

• Submissions, feedback forms or questionnaires

• Communications materials like fact sheets, newsletters, displays …

or written correspondence, and:

• Focus groups, interviews, phone surveys or door-knocks.

The government’s Public Engagement Framework 2021–2025 also states that:

The Victorian Government commits to meaningful, principled and inclusive public engagement.

But this is not what my constituents are reporting to me. How can the government disregard their own framework for community engagement and allow big corporations to do the same? If and when community meetings take place, they are often held at inconvenient times and/or places. Communities are given very short notice of these meetings being held, and they are often held at times of day which mean many people are unable to attend. The representatives sent to these meetings are often ill equipped to answer the questions of the community. My constituents often feel bullied, intimidated and threatened by the representatives, who use these meetings as just another box-ticking exercise. I have been told by one community that they were told to accept a proposed battery storage facility or end up with a nuclear reactor. How can this be an acceptable statement during a meeting with concerned residents?

My constituents feel as though their concerns are not being listened to, as they are generally brushed off and not taken into consideration during the planning process. I have heard stories over and over again of communities being told they are being difficult, overdramatic and unreasonable, a classic gaslighting situation inflicted by the developers. Most of the time these constituents have genuine concerns around the projects or changes being made to their communities. I myself have attended numerous public consultation meetings to simply observe the process and listen to the concerns of my constituents. I have no doubt about the authenticity of my constituents’ reports on the statements made, the lack of information provided and the dismissal of concerns in regard to public consultation meetings.

Every week we see rallies in many regional communities asking for the government to listen to them. There are numerous issues my communities are trying to be heard on, be it solar and wind power generation facilities, the amalgamation of their hospitals or the reclassification and closure of state parks and forests. These issues cause a huge amount of fear and angst amongst the communities in my Northern Victoria electorate. These communities just want to be heard and have their concerns addressed. As it stands they feel ignored, disregarded and dismissed. I am certain that I am not the only member in this place that has heard these concerns from their constituents, as it is happening all over this state. From the inner city, with rail and road projects, to rural communities, with solar and wind energy projects, Victorians’ voices are being ignored. Members of this place need to remember that it is our constituents that elect us and that we are the voices of our communities in this place. It is an honour and a privilege to stand here and represent communities who have put their faith in us, their elected members. Therefore we need to stand up and represent the needs of those who elect us. Steamrolling projects through communities with genuine concerns is not representing our electorates to the best of our abilities. The concerns of the Victorian public should always be taken into consideration when proposing projects that could affect their lives and livelihoods.

Although the government has established a public consultation framework, I feel that it is not meeting the expectations of the people we represent. It is vital that we ensure thorough public engagement so that we do not make mistakes that will impact the lives, homes, environments and societies of the people who rely on us to provide a better future for them. Giving our constituents an opportunity to contribute to an inquiry into the public consultation process will allow their voices to be heard and allow them to work with us to shape a stronger process of community consultation. I call on the government to launch an inquiry into the practices of community engagement at both a government and private level.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (14:20): I am delighted to speak on this referral motion. I thank my parliamentary colleague Mrs Tyrrell for giving us the opportunity to speak about community consultation and engagement today. She is right that community consultation is critically important and also that consultation in regional communities is not always the same as in urban communities. Community engagement is indicative of the maturity of our democratic society and how decisions are made. Community engagement and consultation also encourage robust civic participation and promote inclusive decision-making with diverse communities, who may otherwise feel marginalised or unheard. It allows us to govern in an inclusive and accountable way. Community discourse strengthens social cohesion in our communities by helping bridge divides and by fostering dialogue and mutual understanding. Ultimately, when communities are involved in the planning and implementation stages of projects or programs, there is often a greater local support and a better adherence to initiatives – a sense of ownership, so to speak.

There is a best practice framework for the planning and conduct of community consultation. The International Association for Public Participation, or the IAP2, have developed a matrix table – it is universally known – that describes the principles, the purpose and the circumstances in which various different scenarios of engagement can best occur. The IAP2 spectrum community engagement matrix refers to five types of engagement: inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower. ‘Inform’ could be ‘This is how you drive on this road safely’ – they are not asking, they are informing us how to do something – or ‘This is how to take a medication safely,’ something like that. ‘Consult’ is taking feedback from the community but still in a hands-off kind of way. ‘Involve’ means involving the community in some of the decision-making. And ‘collaborate’ is an even deeper level of involvement of community. And of course ‘empower’ means handing the decision over to the community to make their own decision.

How these different levels of consultation are used is dependent on what level of consultation is appropriate and the different types of decisions that are being made. With ‘inform’, as I said, it is about how to do something safely and that kind of thing. But also, at the other end of the spectrum – whilst a slightly different scenario – voice, truth and treaty and self-determination could be seen as an empowerment model. We are handing power back to our Indigenous communities, which of course is not only a policy of this government, but you can see the structures that we have put in place to enable that: first through voices, then we have got the Yoorrook Justice Commission and then we have got the treaty process. It is quite a spectrum of possibilities. For example, community members might be impacted by something, whereas stakeholders might be technical experts – it depends on who you want to hear from – or peak bodies might represent technical experts. It would be inappropriate to conduct a consultation on how to remove an appendix in hospital, for instance, but it would be very appropriate to ask a patient their preferences in post-operative care

The biggest, broadest and most universal form of community consultation is of course the election. I must say that the fact that we have compulsory voting in Australia ensures that the issues that come before the community in an election affect the whole of the community rather than, say, in the USA, where the electoral campaign issues reflect the drivers that encourage people to come out to vote – so it is actually a narrow range of issues. But essentially the best form of feedback, and the biggest and broadest one, is the result of any election.

Engagement and consultation inform decision-making, and engaging with communities provides governments with a better understanding of the needs, preferences and concerns of the people they represent. Good community consultation should inform decision-making, but when we hear diverse and even conflicting community views, we see it is inevitable that we cannot please everybody. But that is not the point. Everybody deserves to be heard, respected and understood, even if the listener does not agree with them or if what they are asking for is not possible. Listening to people you disagree with, I think, is very important and a skill. It often results in better decisions, even if everybody is not happy. When governments actively involve communities in decision-making processes, they also demonstrate transparency and accountability, which again inevitably results in better decisions. Community input can and often does reveal potential issues and unintended consequences that might not be apparent to policymakers. A powerful example of this is exemplified at the moment in the gender space. The fact that this government listened to women is the reason why there are pads and tampons in the toilets in this place and also in other public places.

We are currently running, I am very proud to say, the women’s pain inquiry, which concludes today. I am proud to say that I have conducted a number of women’s pain round tables in the south-west, and I have been deeply moved and honoured that so many women have been willing to share their stories of pain. In fact more than 12,000 women have completed the pain survey or participated in round tables and forums across the state. This is a fantastic form of community consultation, and it is an example where government is forming policy and responses, in this case for women, directly from the voices of the voters, so to speak. The stories of medical gaslighting of women are shocking and appear to uncover significant dismissal and minimisation of women’s experiences. Whilst the data and stories collected will need to be analysed and understood, and that has not been completed yet, it appears to me that gender discrimination, lack of understanding of women and unconscious bias underpin many of the stories I have listened to. Again, we have new information and new perspectives on perhaps what is for my grandmother an old issue. It is clear to me that our government is listening to women and as a result changing their lives and opportunities for the better.

There are so many great examples of community consultation. Just yesterday I was updated on the progress of the West Gate Tunnel. You might not think that has got anything to do with community engagement, but it does. I can confirm that the West Gate Tunnel will open next year, and it will impact regional communities, particularly my community in the south-west. Product from that region, one of the biggest producing regions in the nation, needs to be transported as freight to the Port of Melbourne very efficiently. I can report that transport stakeholders, regional drivers and local West Gate neighbourhood communities will be consulted and informed about how to navigate the new road system when that tunnel opens.

We have a whole range of examples that I have not referred to. I think if we had 40 speeches, we could have 400 different examples of engagement. My real position on this is that consultation is a very, very important thing to do, and I believe that community consultation is a powerful tool for good governance. I thank Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this matter forward. As a government and as human beings we are always ready to learn and improve what we do. Referring this topic to the Environment and Planning Committee is a good initiative and an opportunity to continue to improve our government’s consultative strengths. Consultation, I have to say, and engagement with communities is the bedrock of what we do in the Allan Labor government.

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:29): I am pleased to be able to rise and speak to Mrs Tyrrell’s motion, because it is an important motion. It is talking about what is happening in our community and how government need to be speaking to the community. I was very interested in listening to Ms Ermacora’s contribution around the importance of consultation with the community, and I agree with her, but I could not believe what she was saying in relation to what is actually happening within her own government – and I will come back to that point – because we know that that community consultation is not taking place.

Mrs Tyrrell highlighted some very relevant examples of her experience in her communities and in her electorate, and I want to commend her for taking the initiative and for highlighting this, because it is important. You talked about the parks issue, you talked about a number of other issues and you importantly talked about health – and that is where I want to come to, because it actually affects Ms Ermacora’s area significantly. This is one area that has been very problematic for the entire Victorian community, but very much so in rural and regional communities where the government plans to amalgamate our health services. And what will that mean? It will mean a loss of services, a loss of jobs and a loss of a local voice – whether that is on the board. What we are seeing is a lot of uncertainty. We have seen the government not come forth. They have not actually done the work in this very area and consulted with their communities.

There are numerous articles talking about this very issue and talking about some of the magnificent hospitals and health services we have in our regions. I was up at the Mansfield rally, ‘Hands off our hospital’ in Mansfield some weeks ago now, and that was attended by thousands of people. They came out in support of their community, and what they were so angry about was the lack of consultation by the government. That was a community-led rally. The minister was just way off the beam and kept criticising the Libs and the Nationals for whipping up the storm, but it was a community-led revolt against the government because they had not been consulted and did not know what the plans were. What they knew was that they were going to lose their magnificent health service.

I want to read a little bit from the local Mansfield Courier, which was reporting on this issue at the time. A very recognised member of the board, who has got a strong background in respiratory medicine, Professor Irving, spoke about the strong issues around public health and how it is important to the communities, and went on to say that:

I am concerned the new structure proposed by the Department of Health will weaken leadership and we will lose some very talented people, resulting in a reduction in quality of care, potentially impacting the safety and health outcomes of patients.

The article continues:

And despite hoping the government has completed all due diligence in regards to policy development, Prof Irving said the fact that there has been no local consultation highlights the weakness of the plan.

That is backed up by Professor Stephen Duckett. He is a big supporter of the government, and in fact he has very strong views on reform and he is very well regarded in that – I think we can all acknowledge that. But he is also very scathing about the government’s approach in this area. He has said publicly that the consultation undertaken by the government has been a disaster. Now, it is somewhat concerning that you have that. There was a review after the initial mergers of Grampians Health. It was undertaken by a number of executives, and as I said, Professor Stephen Duckett said the process itself was a disaster. He talked about the structured approach to planning in the first months and almost no time to engage with either staff or communities in his report. That goes to the point of what I think Mrs Tyrrell was getting to: the communities are not being heard. They are not getting that proper consultation when government decisions will have a major impact on their communities. When you have got Professor Duckett talking about what a disaster it has been and when you have got other very eminent people in their areas speaking out on the government’s process, you know there is a problem.

But it is not only that area of health which I am obviously very concerned about. I think the government has failed in this regard. They have not been up-front. The first draft of the health services plan was out in December 2022. That was just after the last state election. They had been working on that for many, many months. It was a secret plan to amalgamate health services, which is going to impact on our communities. We are seeing it play out in the metropolitan hospitals too. The Royal Children’s Hospital should be a standalone hospital. It is iconic. It is absolutely regarded and recognised around the world for the clinical expertise that it has and the wonderful care that it provides to Victorian children and their families. It does not need to be amalgamated with the Royal Melbourne and the Royal Women’s.

I want to go to some other areas where there has been a lack of consultation. I have been contacted by concerned people around proposed changes to the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority. Again, the government has not consulted properly on this really important issue, and there are so many concerns. As I said, I have an email from a constituent who mentioned:

… the apparent lack of transparency in the consultation process regarding those changes.

They are talking about that lack of transparency. Ms Ermacora talked about accountability. What did she say? She said ‘in an inclusive and accountable way’ and that there is good consultation that should allow communities to have that, but it is actually not what the government that she is a member of represents. And that is the thing: we do not have the accountability, we do not have the transparency and we certainly do not have the community consultation that should be taking place, whether it is with hospital mergers or with the VARTA or with the Suburban Rail Loop – so many communities had no idea how that was going to impact them. The government again have been incredibly secretive on that issue and have not provided the community with proper details about what their plans are; they just give out a headline. They do not talk about what it is going to mean to their local communities, and Mr Welch knows this. He knows very well, from his communities that have been directly affected by this, that those communities had no idea –

Richard Welch interjected.

Georgie CROZIER: and still do not. They still do not know. They have not been consulted properly about it. All they hear about is hundreds of billions of dollars in the Suburban Rail Loop. Communities around the state are paying the price for that, because that is what the Premier is solely focused on. It is her pet project with her CFMEU mates, who are solely focused on delivering that project at the expense of the rest of the community. That is why I am saying there is no accountability and no transparency with this government, because they are not doing the proper due diligence and the consultative process that is required when they are making these decisions. That is the problem here. Mrs Tyrrell’s motion is an important one so that we can actually see what should be done and whether we are talking about good governance.

The administration by Labor in this state is appalling. There is no accountability. We saw it in the last term through COVID with the faux Coate inquiry and the spin that went on for years and the cover-ups and the mismanagement of hotel quarantine and so many other issues, and we are seeing it now. We are seeing it now with the CFMEU. There is no transparency. There is no accountability for the corruption that has gone on for 10 years under the administration of the Premier. She was the minister responsible for infrastructure projects. She is the Premier. She is responsible for turning a blind eye to the corruption of the CFMEU, and that in itself is a disgrace. No accountability, no transparency – (Time expired)

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:40): I am also pleased to rise today to speak to the motion which has been put forward to us by Mrs Tyrrell. I am very pleased to be speaking on this motion today. Reflecting on what this motion outlines, what it critiques and also what it proposes through its referral to the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee has given me pause for thought to reflect on where we are as a Parliament and as a government and, really critically, what we can do better. I reflected as well on some words I shared in my inaugural speech, where I mentioned that when communities speak up, Labor governments listen and Labor governments deliver. I still very much hold that to be true. Holding that as truth, though, does not preclude us from looking at how we can do things better, and I think that is the crux of what this motion gets to.

I appreciate Mrs Tyrrell’s passion and her representation of her community, and whilst I do not have the facts to debate some of the assertions which were put forward in her speech here today, I note that the passion of this motion certainly comes through from her – and the idea which we are now debating, which is to see what we can actually do better. I note that this is a motion that is quite broadly structured to cover government consultation but also the private sector. I note that was a particular interest of Mrs Tyrrell’s in putting it forward – whether it is the government directly, a department, a statutory authority or a private company which acts as a public service operator, be it in energy or public transport; we could think of numerous examples, or the broader space as well. It is an opportune time for us to look at how we go about consulting and making sure that the consultation that is done by government is genuine, is considered, is well resourced and is reflective to ensure that the community’s mood can be captured.

I think that is a really critical point, noting that those of us on this side of the chamber do very proudly stand on the legacy of what has been an almost 10-year government but also one which under the leadership of Jacinta Allan and Ben Carroll is in many ways a fresh government, a new government – one of renewal. And in that spirit of renewal I think it is especially important that we take opportunities such as this to take a wideranging look at government and at how we go about this consultation work with the community, because of course the best way to govern – in fact the only real way to govern – is to do that with community in mind. Now, that does not mean the decisions we arrive at are always going to be agreed on by every single person. Indeed the implicit nature of consultation is that you will have people with varying and different views approaching you, but it is absolutely paramount that those views are taken into account and that government then responds in whichever way it deems appropriate – and that it can also justify the response, too, having taken all of those views into account.

Whilst in some ways these are very esoteric topics, they are also very hands on, very practical and very important, as I say. I look at the various things which have been discussed, and I note we have already had a number of examples put to this place today by my colleague Ms Ermacora – and some forcefully by Ms Crozier just now. I noticed in our constituency questions today as well this very topic was raised by at least two members of the opposition. Mr Mulholland and Mrs McArthur both raised consultation – or as they saw it, apparent issues in that process – as something worthy of discussion. So those contributions in our constituency questions I think underline the importance of doing this maybe not so much periodically but taking a step back to look at the way in which that should be done.

I think the Environment and Planning Committee is a very good forum for this to be done, as it is one of the three core standing committees of this chamber.

A member interjected.

Michael GALEA: Very hardworking, and I think, as we can see from the voluminous report yesterday from that committee, they certainly have been hard at work. I commend all those members from across the chamber on that report. I am sure they will be absolutely ably tasked with taking up this particular line of inquiry as well. Taking into account that this is an inquiry that will seek to look at consultation from across the whole of government but also various different levels of government, I am sure, even though this will be done with recommendations specific to the state government and the state Parliament, it will have lessons of interest to other levels of government and indeed some private operators as well. They would be well advised to pay close attention to what comes out of it.

I note that planning is a significant area of consultation at the moment. Last year we released a housing statement, a landmark report into the housing reforms that we need to make as a state to make sure that Victorians can have homes that are safe, secure and close to where people need to be. There are a number of aspects to that, and we have discussed them many times in this place. They range from dramatically increasing numbers of social housing homes, which many on this side in particular are very passionate about, and giving people in social housing dignified, habitable housing as well, which is really important, through to providing granny flats but also ranging through to broader discussions around density.

I know the minister in the other place Ms Kilkenny is a passionate advocate for the new plan for Victoria, and she is absolutely excited by the work that we are doing in this space. I am very excited to see her leading that work because the new plan for Victoria will not just be for Melbourne, as previous planning strategies have been. It will be for the centre of Melbourne, for the outer suburbs – some of which I represent – for the big regional cities and the small rural communities. It is for every piece of Victoria, making sure that they have a seat at the table with our new planning framework moving forwards. That is exactly why those consultations, which have already commenced, have been going on across the state. Again, I note that Minister Kilkenny has been very active herself in really diving into and engaging in these forums that have been held, including in my electorate. For that reason, although this is an inquiry which will look at broader, whole-of-government consultation, that planning focus is going to be a really neat match for the EPC space.

It is important to note that how we engage with people is really important, and it is changing. MPs ourselves know that whether it is from traditional media such as mail-outs to social media, we have seen dramatic changes. We engage with social media now in ways that we might not have previously. Ten years ago it was all about Facebook. Today MPs are engaging with constituents on Instagram, on YouTube and on TikTok – not on their parliamentary devices of course, but on other devices. Some are even using that forum too. It is really important that government agencies, whatever the answers might be – that is what the committee will look at – are reaching out. It is no good having consultation if the only people that turn up are the same people and the broader community is not interested, is not invited or, more importantly, is not aware. By extending that proactive awareness out there we can get a much better range of views. As passionate as these same people are and as wonderful as it is to have their input, we do want a genuine cross-section of the community to engage. Whether it is on a bus route realignment in Clarinda, whether it is on a major project or whether it is in these ongoing conversations that we are having as a state about density and about housing people in the best way possible, these are the consultations that are really important.

Again, I draw that comparison to the housing space. We have seen quite a strong movement over the years from a group that you would probably describe as NIMBYs. They frequently attend council meetings and vehemently oppose any new development in their LGAs. The problem is that the people that would most benefit from those developments are either too busy to attend or they do not live in that city council. I see Mr Mulholland in the chamber. I am sure he agrees with me on this point that the people that would most benefit from better density often do not get the chance to have their say at these forums where those NIMBYs go and put those arguments that they do not want more development in their areas because they have their houses there, while other people are missing out. Those are the sorts of examples that show why we need to look at ways in which we can do better with community consultation and bring all those voices in. For those reasons I do commend this motion to the house.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (14:50): I am very pleased to speak about this motion put forward by Mrs Tyrrell. It is an excellent and very important topic to talk about – community consultation. It proposes to refer to the Environment and Planning Committee an inquiry into this issue, looking at community consultation practices done by and on behalf of state and local government and statutory authorities and providers of essential services, such as utilities, in Victoria.

I guess as a new, if I can still say that, member of Parliament – I have been in now for just over 18 months, just like Mrs Tyrrell, thank you – it has been interesting to observe consultation or the lack thereof under this government, because right across the board in lots of different areas what I am seeing is very poor consultation indeed. I have actually attended community forums about transmission lines – VNI West. I went to one in Charlton where I asked several times to actually be permitted to go into a room where people had been put in a separate group to hear about the project, and I was excluded from that. I have spoken with farmers who have been on the same land for generations that were told by the consultants that approached them, in front of their children, that their land could be compulsorily acquired. Now, VNI West – there have been numerous different routes released and reports by the Australian Energy Market Operator and Transgrid, and they have caught local communities off guard, but the minister has issued ministerial orders allowing the project to be fast-tracked. We have had farmers here on the steps of Parliament bringing their tractors to protest, because they do not feel that they are being heard.

Then you consider the timber industry. The government rolled out plans, then without any consultation suddenly announced an end to an industry within six months, more than six years earlier than expected, and that left businesses with costly equipment, unable to fulfil contracts, facing big bills and with no income, so there was certainly no time for them to transition. There was a clear lack of proper consultation in that process. Then there was WorkCover. I was on the committee that looked into the WorkCover bill, and I heard from unions that were witnesses during that inquiry and other key stakeholders, and they said that they were consultold by the government – consultold, not consulted.

Then, wild dogs – let us look at that. In recent times the Allan Labor government opened a livestock survey looking to collect data about wild dog and dingo incidents and the impacts on farmers and communities. How long is the survey open for? Two weeks – great consultation there. It comes after the government revoked an unprotection order on wild dogs in the north-west of the state in March without consultation and with only a few hours notice. I have also spoken with farmers in the north-east that have been seeking a meeting with the minister on this very issue, and they are very concerned at the lack of consultation.

Then you look at housing – the Big Housing Build in Bendigo. I have had constituents come to raise concerns about the process that has been followed there, and again, lack of consultation and proper process. They are in the process of building what will be the tallest building in Bendigo, higher than what was permitted under the planning scheme with council. But the project actually avoided council scrutiny. It was delegated by the minister to the department to fast-track the approval process. So again, where is the community consultation?

Then we look at renewables. I spoke with local residents around Meadow Creek and Colbinabbin, both subject to proposed renewable energy developments that will transform the local landscape. Residents who have lived in the region for generations and have contributed to the local community feel powerless. I know in Dederang my colleague Tim McCurdy, the Nationals member, has tabled a petition with over 1300 signatures opposing the Dederang battery energy storage system, and this is how the local community are trying to be heard. My parliamentary intern Henry Nind has done some fantastic work on this very issue about community engagement this year. He did a report, Unlocking the Grid: The Potential of Community Engagement and Benefit-Sharing for Renewable Energy and Transmission Infrastructure Developments in Regional Victoria, and that report was just recently presented. It talks about the definition of what community engagement is, and it says that most cite what was established in the United Nations Brisbane Declaration on Community Engagement, which defines ‘community engagement’ as a two-way process incorporating the aspirations, concerns, needs and values of citizens and communities at all levels and in all sectors of policy development, planning, decision-making, service delivery and assessment. It is a two-way process, and that is something that we rarely, rarely see under this government.

The report also mentions consultation fatigue, because energy developments can take years. They can take a very long time and be very complex, with legal and technical issues, and landowners often feel overwhelmed and exhausted through the process. What we have seen under this government is the removal of local council authority input into planning processes. The removal of third-party appeal rights to VCAT has continued, and that causes concerns. To quote from this report, it says:

The removal of local council authority has also contributed to the growing sense of alienation and ostracization currently felt across much of regional Victoria, with many local landowners nurturing the view that the Victorian Government is actively seeking to circumvent local communities in order to meet established renewable energy targets. This rhetoric, and the mistrust it betrays, is a particularly worrying development, and may further hamper efforts to decarbonise the Victorian energy system.

Henry Nind’s paper does outline potential solutions for community engagement with respect to renewable energy and transmission infrastructure, and I encourage the minister to read this report and consider the recommendations that are in it. It also mentions – I think that this is important to report to the house too, and I will read again from the report – when it talks about inadequate community engagement practices:

Some developers completely avoid consulting with local communities altogether, and instead resort to ‘divide-and-conquer’ tactics to prevent coordinated community action and compel local landowners into selling their land at discounted prices. These tactics most commonly involve developers ambushing local landowners, arriving at their properties without prior notice and discouraging them from attaining independent legal counsel, all in an attempt to pressure them into signing a deal on disadvantageous terms.

These are very concerning statements indeed and ones that are worth considering, and they certainly would need to come to the attention of the inquiry. But under this Labor government we continue to see additional powers granted to ministers, not through the open doors of Parliament but through a secret back door without any public scrutiny. I know Ms Crozier, my colleague, also spoke in her time just earlier about the lack of community consultation when it comes to health services, and I can certainly attest to hearing very similar reports when speaking with locals.

Community engagement is important, and it could be done so much better in Victoria. The Labor state government has written standards, but they certainly do not seem to apply them. They prefer the consultold approach rather than consultation. An inquiry will be able to review the process of community engagement across different sectors in Victoria and identify ways to improve it. Ms Ermacora said in her contribution that consultation with communities is the bedrock of what they do, but I think the people that I speak to in regional communities would say, ‘It’s not the bedrock. You’ve got rocks in your head if you think that this government is consulting with local communities.’ The Nationals are pleased to support this motion.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:59): I also rise to make a contribution on this motion brought by Mrs Tyrrell to the house. I want to commend Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this motion forward. It is a very important motion, and I am pleased to say that it is one that the government will support. It is a very thoughtful motion. There are many things that this government does where we recognise the need to consult people. Many of the pieces of legislation, law or projects that this government undertakes do affect people.

One of the ones that I will just mention right off the bat, for example, is our women’s pain inquiry. That is really good example of consultation. We are asking women to tell us their stories about what they have experienced in dealing with the medical profession or our hospital system, even our pathology system – within our healthcare system – and what their experiences have been in terms of whether they have been taken seriously or not taken seriously when they have reported pain. About 12,000 I think it was at last look – there are probably more now – submissions have been made to our women’s pain inquiry. That just goes to show that we can get the message out to communities no matter who they are, far and wide, and that people are willing to engage and make submissions. Submissions do not have to be lengthy – they can be a paragraph, they can be a couple of lines. However people feel they wish to make their submission, that can happen.

I note that in the motion, and I like this myself, (d) and (e) talk about groups or regions who are under-represented by existing consultation practices and options to improve their engagement, and I will mention the Engage Victoria platform in a minute. It gives an opportunity to look at people who may have difficulty engaging with technology – they might be vision impaired, hearing impaired, people with a disability – and how we can better include those sorts of groups in engagement. I am sure that there are IT boffins everywhere who make sure that any digital platform has the capabilities for people who are vision or hearing impaired to be able to engage with those platforms.

Certainly the Engage Victoria platform is a major platform that we use to ensure that we consult – these days everything is online; it just is – looking at whether it is effective and what areas we can use for improvement. Our government does not shy away from the fact we can always improve, learn and grow from what we do. I also note the last paragraph, (f), refers to:

best practice community consultation in other jurisdictions in Australia and other comparable countries.

That is fantastic. I think that once this inquiry does get underway, I would be pretty comfortable in saying that what we do is probably up there with best practice. I know there will always be people saying that they are not happy with what happens, and I will get to that in a second, but it is also incumbent upon all of us to make sure that our communities are aware of the sorts of community engagement opportunities that are available when the government is doing something. Whether it is through sharing of links on Instagram, Facebook and the like, we can all share those sorts of opportunities within our own communities for people to make contributions.

I will just talk about what consultation is. I heard the Nationals’ contribution on this motion. They loved using the word ‘consultold’, which is something that the Victorian Trades Hall talked about during the WorkSafe inquiry. It is just quite ridiculous to have them keep parroting that back at us, because this goes to the example of what I am going to talk about with consultation. Consultation does not mean if there is a disagreement about a signature thing that the government is doing – whether it be a policy on something, which you might disagree with – that you get your way. That is not consultation. Consultation means that we talk to everybody and gather up things like opposing points of view or concerns they might have with the proposal, and all of that gets put through the sausage machine, for want of a better term, and we look at that and we see whether we can make changes to those sorts of things. Sometimes people might have strongly held views about things, but it does not mean that it is right either. It just goes to show there is some ignorance there from some on the opposition benches about what consultation actually means.

As someone who worked in the trade union movement for many, many years, I can tell you that I have been through many processes where governments proposed changes to laws, and the union movement, as an important stakeholder in many ways, was consulted. We know that it is something that you get to make your views known on, but if you have got an opposing view, consultation does not mean that the government is going to change its view. Consultation means you are asked for your opinions, and meaningful consultation also means you get an opportunity to put forward opposing views or alternative propositions. All of those things can be put forward, but again it does not mean that you win the argument. That is not what consultation is. It means you are asked about your views. Those opposite seem to not understand and are confused about what that actually means.

I have mentioned the women’s pain inquiry as one example, but there are some other things where we have not only used the Engage platform but conducted many other means of consultation. The statewide alcohol and drug strategy is coming up for consultation. That will obviously involve the Engage platform, but we also have things like round tables and stakeholder discussions. It is not just a digital platform. The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System was a massive exercise in community engagement because we asked people to make submissions to the royal commission into mental health about their experiences. Also our anti-vilification laws – we put that bill out for public consultation. And our Best Start, Best Life reforms – again, any of those bills are put out for public consultation. When it is a bill, they involve, as I said, stakeholder meetings and discussions and round tables as well.

As you can see, there are many, many ways that consultation takes place. I cannot say it more times than I have. I need to keep repeating myself when I say it: consultation does not mean that if you disagree with the government, you get your way. That is not consultation. Consultation is when we say, ‘Hey, what are your views or concerns about the proposal we’re putting forward? Do you have any suggestions? What do you think?’ We take all of that feedback on board. We may change our minds about our proposal, but we also may not. That is what consultation is. It does not mean that people with opposing views get to win at the end of the day.

Another example is the North East Link Program, which is a very large project in my region. There are many in my local community who think that it is a vitally important project. The North East Link environment effects statement process was Victoria’s most comprehensive project and took an extremely wide range of feedback from the community and independent experts. A 1.9-kilometre, longer tunnel that provided more connected communities at the surface – that came through community consultation and feedback. That final design was significantly improved as a result of community consultation. Smarter, smaller interchanges to avoid needing to acquire more homes and businesses – that is a win for the community. Again that was something that was talked about in community consultation. More and better community open space with new and upgraded walking and cycling connections along the corridor and a massive package of community sporting upgrades to keep people playing while we build – there were absolutely massive improvements and gains made as a consequence of that community consultation process. What it shows is that where the government can improve things and upgrade things, we absolutely will. As I said, that came from a very, very detailed process. With that EES process there were over 3400 responses to the draft precinct visions. It just goes to show that we can maximise the ability to get our process out there and make sure that people can engage with it.

But as I said earlier, there is always an opportunity to improve and develop things and make sure that we can get perhaps under-represented or marginalised communities involved. I often think to myself that people who are well resourced and have the ability to engage in these processes will, but there are certainly people who are too busy working, are too busy with families or just do not have access to the internet for whatever reason. Perhaps we can do more to engage those people, because they are under-represented, and perhaps vulnerable groups as well. I would just like to thank Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this motion to the house. It will be a very interesting inquiry, and I look forward to its result.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:09): Acting President Galea, it seems like every time I get to speak you are in the chair. That is a very good thing, I am sure. The Nationals, as you have heard from my dear colleague Mrs Broad, will be supporting this referral. It is actually a referral to a committee that both Mrs Broad and I are members of. I am a long-term member of the Environment and Planning Committee. It is some very interesting and important work this committee does – just a shout-out to the secretariat, who has only this week been party to handing down a very comprehensive report on the flood inquiry which saw 73 recommendations. We are happy to receive another important piece of work.

I want to go into some of the points that Mrs Tyrrell put in her motion today in relation to community consultation. The first point – and it is a very real and relevant point – is that Victorians do expect a high standard of community consultation on matters that affect them, and it goes forth from there. Victorians who genuinely engage in a consultation process have the right to expect that those conducting the consultations are prepared, across the detail and fully equipped to answer questions – another fair and reasonable point.

What I want to bring to this discussion today is about what the government often brings to the table in terms of consultation. Indeed what is the purpose of consultation? We have heard some contributions this afternoon, but what is it for? What is consultation for? Does the government regularly and often have its mind made up, as we have just heard from the former speaker? The community can bring their issues to the consultation table, but it is not all about winning, because the government may already have its mind made up. You can bring your conversation and your consultation, but you do not necessarily get to win. Well, I find that a very abstract and odd form of consultation, because consultation from the very outset should be about thoroughly examining an issue, an object, an understanding, a proposition or a policy from all sides – a multifaceted discussion around consultation – not that the government has already made its mind up and will just let the plebs go out and have a bit of a conversation about it and say that it has actually consulted. But what about the holistic sense of consultation?

We have heard from my colleague Mrs Broad about the duration of engagement. I regularly hear from people in my electorate, from frustrated constituents, that a consultation process is open for only a very short period of time. People have lives – they work to put food on the table and they have busy lives – and sometimes they see that a consultation process can be a month to a couple of weeks. That is not a fair and reasonable proposition for people. Sometimes we see – and I will give some examples shortly – a very targeted approach about consultation, and the government cherrypicks who it wants to come. It sends out some letters. We even just heard before that sometimes members of Parliament come and in good faith want to understand the issue and they are locked out of the consultation. Apparently, even though we have been elected to Parliament, even though we are part of this whole conversation, we are told, ‘No, sorry, you’re not permitted to be part of a consultation.’ It actually shows quite a level of disrespect to people who have been elected into this place to be leaders and to understand.

What are the government’s objectives about consultation? Is it to be able to come in here later on and say when we ask questions at question time, ‘No, no, no, you don’t get to challenge that because we have consulted.’ Sometimes that consultation, as I have said, is very, very limited and with a private agenda previously ordained by a minister or a policy that it then requests, demands and asks the department to fulfil. I do not blame departments. They are often made up of quite often very reasonable bureaucrats implementing a minister’s policy and decisions. Is there that sharing of information? Is it a two-way street? Does our community actually get to have those conversations? We know in regional Victoria there are some classic examples. The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action has 60 per cent of the whole department’s employee list, of the whole staff, operating out of metropolitan Melbourne. Well, how much do they know about rural and regional Victoria? Then when I speak to some very good people who work in the department, on anonymity grounds, they are saying, ‘Look, we can’t do anything. We’re being hamstrung.’

Let me give you some examples. Currently we have a very important discussion going on – some would say consultation – about the future of our forests. The Minister for Environment has got this Great Outdoors Taskforce going on. There are five people on that taskforce: first of all, a former minister for environment the Honourable Lisa Neville; a former history teacher, and I am sure a very good local person, Karen Cain; Melissa Wood, who is a Victorian Environmental Assessment Council member – she crosses over with Ms Cain as being on the eminent panel, and there is great contradiction and overlap there that I probably do not have time to go into – and a couple of very good people from Gippsland Mr Dear and Mr Terry Robinson.

This consultation process happened, and it happened a little while ago in various spots, and people flooded a Drouin meeting and they were given sticky notes. I do not know about you, but they could record their information on a sticky note and hand it in. There was no formal way of recording that information and providing the level and depth of understanding of that community – and there were a variety of people there with a variety of interests and stakes in the future of our state forests and what should happen to them. They gave sticky notes. Given the seriousness and breadth of discussion, I do not believe that sticky notes are a fair and reasonable level of consultation, and then there was no feedback to those people. They did not record their emails. How are they going to receive that two-way information? Incidentally, when the question went out by one of those local persons there, who said, ‘Do we want any more new national parks?’, universally that group of 250 people said, ‘No, no new national parks. We need to look after the ones we’ve got, and we need to continue with public access to public land.’ I am fully in endorsement of that, and I thank the 17,000 people who have already signed the petition in this vein that I am sponsoring in this house.

Let me go to some other points that are very important as well. We see wind and solar companies setting up and establishing in order to roll out the government’s agenda, and I am all for a mixed energy market providing a whole range of energy solutions. But when you have got a government that takes the right of consultation away by removing the opportunity of locals to go to VCAT and appeal to VCAT when decisions are being made about these wind installations and also solar factories on good farming land – the government has removed that right of appeal – you can consult as much as you like, but basically the government has removed your right.

We also understand in terms of other issues, and there was one that came to my mind the other day from a constituent in Lang Lang – again, the development facilitation program. One of its first rulings was taking out the ability of the Lang Lang community to debate, to argue, the issue in relation to quarries. We all need quarries, but that whole environmental issue and the community engagement factor has been overruled in this government development facilitation program.

Finally, the Nationals certainly do not have a problem with this inquiry. We acknowledge the need for it, but we also acknowledge that this government needs to do better in terms of consultation. I would finish on the issue around consultold. There are many, many of my constituents that feel the government has consultold them what the outcome would be, and they have not been respected in their views in the process.

Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (15:19): I also rise to speak in favour of this absolutely wonderful motion by my colleague here. As many members have debated today, consultation is important, but what exactly is it? We have been told that perhaps you are just ignorant if you think that taking part in a consultation in a democracy means that you are going to get your own way, and I could not agree more. But consultation is also not just pretending to care about what people think and paying money to put on a show to gather the opinions of the people who already agree with you to then justify your preprepared position on an issue and how you are going to spend the money. That is also not consultation.

I have so much experience in this one particular area from my time as a councillor, so I am very much looking forward to going through a few of my examples. Consultation, I discovered as a councillor, means a very different set of conditions than ordinary people would presume. For example, one of the first things that happened when I was a councillor was we took part in our overall strategy and vision-making consultation session. We were given little sticky dots to go and put up on posters about what we thought was important, and we went around and we did all that kind of thing. Then when the actual proposal came back to us, we could barely recognise what we were reading. It was just preprepared Labor Party government narratives. I asked a few questions about how they came up with the information and the positions, and they said, ‘We did consultation with the community as well as just you councillors.’

When I read about their policies for toilets and change rooms, for example, I said, ‘How did you define the word “woman”?’ The lady in charge looked me straight in the face and said, ‘Anyone who identifies as a woman.’ And I said, ‘Well, did you think to inform all the people in Melton about this new definition of “woman”? Because I don’t think they would have agreed with your policies if they had discovered that you’d changed the definition to include men.’ She did not like that. They had three different terms – they had Indigenous, First Nations people and Aboriginals. And I said, ‘Are these terms referring to the same group or different groups?’ They did not know. So this consultation is very much impacted by consultation design.

Another thing that I noticed was when it came to saying that they had consulted with stakeholders, ‘stakeholders’ never seemed to mean actual individual residents and citizens of the state. ‘Stakeholders’ kept on meaning organisations whose very existence depended upon state government funding. Were they likely to say that they disagreed with whatever the government was proposing? No, they were not likely. I will give you an example.

Enver Erdogan interjected.

Moira DEEMING: You like robust debate? Excellent – when it is your turn.

Enver Erdogan interjected.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Order! I will ask that interjections come from the correct seats.

Moira DEEMING: If at all. Now, as I was saying, when consultation opened up to the public and to councils about the rezoning of sex work so that you can solicit on public streets and open up brothels in homes and basically do it wherever you like and have children on the premises, obviously as a mother and a teacher and an ordinary human being I thought, ‘That’s a terrible idea; what about child safeguarding?’ And I thought to myself, ‘You know what, I don’t think the community will think that this is a great idea either.’ So I and all the other councillors agreed to have a community survey designed and put out. We made sure specifically that you had to live in the area or own a business or a property in the area and that you had to say whether you were a parent or a grandparent or a young person or a sex worker. And we made sure that nobody could use the survey to start attacking actual sex workers. It was about the rezoning. And lo and behold the results we got back from our community survey totally contradicted the results that the government consultation process got back – just startlingly different. People in Melton apparently are very different to everybody else everywhere. We are not okay with children being inside brothels. I would put to you that your consultation process was deeply flawed.

Also, we put in a submission as a group of councillors, and do you know what happened? After we came to a unanimous resolution on our position, which was against the changes for a variety of reasons, the staff at that council drafted a letter and submitted it to this government consultation process, which said the exact opposite of what we had agreed as a council – outrageous. I thought to myself, ‘This looks a lot like corruption.’ We were the only council, as far as I know, in all of Victoria who got to resubmit. We do not know what went wrong – just an amazing amount of typos – but every single one of our positions was reversed. We rewrote our submission and put it in to this government so that it was actually what we wanted to say and what we had agreed on instead of paraphrasing back what the government wanted, which was the government’s own position. Absolutely outrageous – I am surprised no enterprising little journalist ever picked up on that either.

When it comes to the publishing of the results of surveys, I found out that this government, through lots of councils, does its own survey work, which I was not aware of. I do not know how they got permission to take results and data from local government councils and feed them back into the government for their use. We had two surveys that were seemingly suggested or requested by this government. One of them was a road survey which happened to ask minors what their sexuality was and what their gender was. I thought, ‘That’s an odd thing to be in a road quality survey.’ I said, ‘Did you get permission from the parents to ask children about their sexuality and gender?’ They could not answer me. I said, ‘Who wrote these questions?’ They said, ‘The government.’ I said, ‘The Labor Party government?’ They said yes. And I said, ‘What are you going to do with these results?’ She said, ‘Oh, we’re going to give them to the government.’ And I said, ‘The Labor Party government?’ She said yes. And I said, ‘Who asked you to do this survey?’ They said, ‘The government.’ And I said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be directed by councillors?’ So there is also another kind of consultation which is going on which is not even supposed to be happening.

Also it turned out Monash University was doing a survey in my area about how women felt, safe or unsafe, in public areas and spaces. I was delighted to hear that that survey was going on, and you can bet I sent it around to everybody that I knew. I said, ‘Look, guys, somebody cares! Let’s answer this survey.’ We all answered it, and the results just never came back. We wrote as a council to Monash and said, ‘Where are the results, which you asked us if you could access our constituents to get?’, which apparently we had already agreed to. We sent out their survey. They got their results. And they replied to us that they were never going to publish the results of that survey – something about the public interest or something or other. What kind of consultation is that? I said, ‘I don’t see how you own the results of that survey. We didn’t sign any kind of privacy agreement.’ But it does not matter; I did not have any power to do anything about that. So there is a lot of sham consultation going on in this state, lots of it.

Let us think about the consultation that this government has had from their own internal experts – for example, the West Gate distributor spoil. The project in general was basically slammed by your own internal people, and in terms of the distributor spoil, I mean, our council had to take this government to the High Court just to block them from dumping that in our municipality. The poor people of Bulla had to take it.

What about the Department of Education, my favourite department. What is going on in the Department of Education, where parents are being denied access to information about their own children? They have had to get FOIs to access the footage and information about their own children when their own children are assaulted on school grounds. That is outrageous. So do not sweet-talk us over here and condescend to us about consultation. That is not what is going on in this state.

The fact that your contracts are not just public by default and that we even have to jump through the hoops of an FOI as members of the public to find out how our money is spent – I mean, it is ridiculous. It is absolutely the opposite of consultation; it is all about burying the facts. If you think about solar panels, battery storage – we had the Western Renewables Link out in my area. No council agreed to that transmission line project, none of us out there. And then we heard reports that the company contracted by the government had been trespassing on property and threatening property owners, and the very next day in our council meeting a new company had taken over – a new name.

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (15:29): I would like to thank all of my colleagues for their contributions today. This inquiry is not targeted at one specific industry, organisation or project in particular. This is an inquiry into the practice of public consultation as a whole so we can understand better where the people of Victoria think the process is succeeding or failing. I wholeheartedly believe that the community should be at the very heart of the decision-making process, especially when those decisions could impact their lives significantly. Victorians want to feel like their opinions matter. They want to know that the people making the decisions are actually listening to them and are actually taking their concerns seriously. We, as the elective representatives, are entrusted to do the right thing by the Victorian people. By not listening to their questions and concerns we are failing them. Supporting this motion for an inquiry into our Victorian public consultation standards is an important step in the right direction to ensuring we do better for the future development of Victoria. I urge members of the house to support this motion.

Motion agreed to.