I rise to make a contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Supporting Victims and Other Matters) Bill 2020. This legislation is making changes to a number of acts of Parliament. It introduces measures to include reforms to further the rights of victims and their ability to speak of their experiences. It really strengthens victims of crime legislation as well. In addition to this, it amends the Defamation Act 2005 and the Limitation of Actions Act 1958 in relation to the implementation of the model national code. There are amendments to the Corrections Act 1986, the Forest Acts 1958 and various workplace legislation. A significant part of the bill does go to the issue of supporting victims of crime. More particularly it relates to those victims of sexual assault crimes and their ability to tell of their experiences should they wish to do so.

We have been told by the Attorney-General in her second-reading speech that the government heard from many victim-survivors and their advocates as well as other stakeholders. This is a particularly sensitive area and difficult for many to speak of. There are many victim-survivors who are adamant that they want to speak of their experiences, and similarly there are others who fiercely want to protect their right to privacy. Sexual assault victims have suffered extreme trauma, and so often they are haunted by the experiences that come with them for the rest of their lives. I pay my respects to all of those who have suffered in this way and acknowledge their right to speak. It is an important part of their journey, but it also contributes to society’s better understanding of what is so often gender-based violent crime.

I am advised that further work will be conducted in terms of wider consultations in the months ahead, recognising that this can be such a complex area to legislate in. There are many differing views, and we have heard a lot of those this week. I think it is really important that we take into account the range of views, and I understand that the government is going to move on with even further consultation because it is so important that we get this right. I would say to the Attorney-General: in doing this please remember our regional areas. We too have all these issues. We have a centre against sexual assault in Shepparton which does important work along with our courts, lawyers, legal aid—all these organisations often work with and are very close to victims of crime as they go through their processes.

I have noted the reasoned amendment and the house amendments put forward by the member for Caulfield, and I will not be supporting those. I think it is important that we get on with it, even though there is more to be done. While this process perhaps could have been better managed—it seems to have hit some hurdles this week and caused some upset and controversy generally in the community—I do trust that moving forward we can come to a solution that will give people some better ways of resolving these issues.

One of the complaints I have heard just on radio is that the need to go to court can be prohibitive in terms of the costs of lawyering up, in a sense. I do think that this is an area where a victim’s right to go to court should be publicly funded. Now, we do have legal aid and we do have victims of crime services. If that is not the case, I think it is one area where this is not a case of means-testing people. It is a case of people who have suffered greatly who are going to have to go through the trauma and who need support and assistance—and often legal assistance—to do that. I think we should look hard at providing a fund to enable that to happen as part of any further amendments going forward.

I want to make a few comments in relation to the Forests Act 1958. This current bill will enable the secretary to enter into agreements with Fire Rescue Victoria relating to land which falls within the zones that the fire services will manage. Risks of bushfires remain with us and will always be us. The devastating bushfires of the last Christmas period are still really fresh in our memories even though they have been overtaken by so many other things during the course of the year. I want to raise concerns about areas between Shepparton and Mooroopna that are currently at high fire risk. We have had a wonderful season in terms of rainfall across northern Victoria in many parts. We have got fabulous crops growing. The fruit season is looking promising despite the fact that we are struggling to find the workers we will need to pick those crops. But there are many areas—roadsides, public lands, even private properties—that have incredibly tall grass that is currently drying off. It will not be long until we have over 40-degree days in our region, and it will be too late then to do anything about removing, slashing, doing safe burning—these sorts of things.

Now, in between Shepparton and Mooroopna we have part of the Lower Goulburn National Park. It is forest land. I walk there with my dogs on a very regular basis—and very carefully these days because of the risk of snakes. But I have observed for myself and just last year took a trip with some of our CFA officers to observe what was happening there. The tracks need to be looked at—they need to be in a good state of repair so that fire trucks can get in—but more importantly there is a window now to do something about clearing away tall grass.

There are huge areas of young saplings that should not be there anyway, because they impede the natural side of the forest, so there is work that needs to be done, and I would ask the government to, in considering this, put in their minds future works that are needed near regional areas. We only have to see what happened in California—town after town after town burnt to the ground—and even here in Victoria and New South Wales with towns and many houses in towns decimated. We are having fires like never before, and we need to be prepared for them. Along the Goulburn River there are houses and suburbs effectively just on the other side of the river where there is very overgrown forest. Gemmill Swamp backs onto—about from here to that wall, say 50 metres—a whole row of houses. It would just go up like a bomb. It is so overgrown and so in need of some form of forest management.

We have just seen the release yesterday of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements. The report was presented to the Governor-General just yesterday. It is otherwise known as the bushfires royal commission—the one conducted by the federal government. I do hope we will see the results of that soon, because one of the big issues where there is contention is about this issue of slow burning, whether it be Indigenous burns or by forest or fire services. There needs to be clarity about that. We do not need to just continue to have arguments about it and do nothing. There needs to be a resolution.

Another issue I would just like to mention is that at the moment the Shepparton police station is completely being rebuilt. It has relocated; it is a new fire station. Shepparton’s is one of the few stations that has had an integrated capacity between CFA and Fire Services Victoria, and they will soon be moving into the new fire station. But people have contacted me about the fact that it was intended always that the CFA volunteers would have a four-berth shed built on that same property where the new fire station is currently being built. This has not happened. It is getting near completion, and I am hearing from members of our community who have shown a lot of good faith in coming together to give us an integrated fire service that they are worried it will not happen. And so I raise that just as something that does need to be looked at. Somewhere in head office someone is not paying attention. It needs to be attended to, and I would ask that the goodwill of people who have come together in the Shepparton region to provide our fire services is taken into account. Issues of trust are very important, and I regard that as being a very important issue in our community as well. So on that note I would say that I support the bill.

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I rise to make a contribution on this no-confidence motion brought by the Leader of the Opposition. I would like to say that I am very pleased that we are back in Parliament and in a somewhat normal sense in that we are here for three days and that we seem to be resuming a timetable that was upset during the course of the year. It is so important that we sit safely and that we obey a whole lot of rules, but it is a hallmark of our democracy that our Parliament should sit and should do so regularly. Another hallmark of our democracy is the fact that we have elections every four years, and at those elections the people of Victoria decide who will be the government. Just less than two years ago we had a state election, and the government today was overwhelmingly elected to govern this state. I see no reason at this time to support any motion that would upset that.

We are in the middle of the worst disaster, the worst emergency, in over 100 years, and this is not a
time for upset or disruption; this is a time for standing together as Victorians and trying to get the
results that the member for Melbourne has so well put: we all want to get back to some sort of normal.
This is not a time that you would wish on any government, whether it be a state, territory or federal
government, and it has been very pleasing to see the way that governments generally have stood up to
what they have been faced with during this year. But they do have to be accountable, and there are a
couple of things I would like to point out that I feel pretty disappointed in relation to the government.

The first goes back to late March, early April, when many offers were made for a joint parliamentary
COVID committee—to come together, to work together in a sense of cooperation so that we could
advise, we could assist, we could help the state work together and bring more information to the
government about what was happening. I think the denigration of that idea and the fact that it was not
taken up has partly contributed to what has been and what has become a very hostile political
environment. The federal government allowed the Senate to do it, New Zealand have such a
committee. Other governments instigated those sorts of committees where Parliament was not going
to sit for some time, as a safety measure. So I think that was a mistake.

Here in Victoria our crossbenchers and Independents were very loud in calling for that to happen. In
the early weeks and months that followed the pandemic many extraordinary things happened, things that we never thought we would see—the closing of international borders, the lockdowns, the
quarantines—nothing that we had really contemplated in our lifetimes. We were surprised that even
these powers actually existed, and in those early months there was a lot of praise for the way leaders
stood up and took to the helm and instigated at very short notice a whole lot of processes that made
people feel to some extent confident that they were in good hands. In my community there were many
people who in the same breath were lauding the Prime Minister and our Premier. It was extraordinary
in a fairly conservative electorate that that might have been taking place, but people had a level of
confidence that I had not seen before and that was very much needed at that time.

So the months have marched on, and through April, May and June the hotel quarantine system was
set up and failed. We have seen the results of that. It has brought about a whole lot more community
illness. It has brought about many deaths that we may have avoided had that not happened. One of the
other mistakes that I think was made very early on, and this came out during the hotel quarantine
inquiry, is that the chief health officer was sidelined. He, under the Victorian emergency health plan,
should have been the state controller. He should have been in charge. It should have been a health
response, not a logistics response. I think we are still seeing the consequences of that, and it is very
disappointing. I do wonder even now why the chief health officer is not in charge, because this is a
health pandemic. There are social and economic consequences for sure, but I think that the Department
of Health and Human Services really made a mistake in putting those things first rather than the health
consequences.

Out there in that evidence that we have heard over recent times there is an acknowledgement that
within our department of health there is a serious lack of qualified people to deal with infection control,
to deal with pandemics—to deal with these sorts of health issues. It was admitted in the evidence that
the department is short on those sorts of skills. Now, that must in itself have contributed to the lack of
skill and capacity when it came to contact tracing—again a very serious consequence and one we are
still hearing instances of as we go forward. I have little doubt that if a full health response had been in
place early on, the situation in hotel quarantine may have been different because the chief health officer
would have been looking at infection control, not logistics. And it probably would not have mattered
whether there were security guards or police or ADF members at that time, because infection control
and the health issues would have been paramount and that would in itself have taken care of so many
of the problems that then took place.

There are many learnings that we will take away this year from what has happened, and some of those
are very much about this place: about how Parliament should be able to meet in times of crisis, about
attending Parliament remotely and about being allowed to vote even if you cannot come in. For many
of us regional members this is the first sitting of Parliament that many of us have come to since June,
and that is very disenfranchising not only for the members but for our communities.

There are those people who feel that maybe herd immunity is the way to go, that it is just survival of
the fittest, but I have to say that I am very grateful that we live in a country where every government in
the country has taken the view that everyone should be protected and that the goal has been to look after
our community and protect them. Even though by far the majority of the deaths we have seen from this
virus in Sydney and Melbourne and across the country have been in our more vulnerable communities,
their lives do matter; their lives have mattered. I would like to take this opportunity just to extend my
condolences to every family who has been affected by the loss of someone from coronavirus, and I
extend that to members of my extended family who in aged care have suffered that result.

This crisis has exposed some very deep and serious vulnerabilities within our community, and I believe
that it is time to bring on a review of our health department and our aged-care services. And it is very
disappointing, I have to say, that in the federal government’s budget just passed the opportunity was
not taken to do something about aged care. During the early stage of the pandemic, during July and
August when cases of coronavirus were ramping up in Shepparton, I rang every aged-care facility in
my city.

They were anxious. They were short-staffed. They had people calling in, with insufficient staff to even
meet the day’s requirements. There was no plan for backup staff at a federal level should the numbers
escalate in aged care, and there were many, many of those institutions that had workers working across
two or three places, including the local hospital. We know that these are the really fundamental
problems in aged care. And what has been done to address them?

I think that that is an opportunity in a budget where it is argued that women have been left out. There
is no doubt that when it comes to the care of children and the aged women are the predominant carers
in our communities. They are quick to do it and they do an incredible job, and to all of those carers out
there I just say thank you so much for the work that you do in all those areas in our community. It falls
to women to do those jobs, and women need to be sufficiently paid. They need to have job security.
They need to have full-time work when they need it and not be forced to work across multiple
institutions.

I have been gutted tonight to have a briefing from the Minister for Health to say that in Shepparton we
have just had two active cases. We had a big run of cases in July. We got on top of it, suppressed it,
and we have been clear for many weeks. To find out that just tonight there are two active cases,
possibly with many contacts for our community, is extremely upsetting. It comes at a time when for
all of us—in regional Victoria but especially here in Melbourne; I just see it driving in—life has been
sucked out of this place, and it is a truly tragic thing to see. I am not here to blame people for that,
because it is the virus that is doing it. It is absolutely running rampant across the world, as we know.
But we had a moment of hope, I think, that in regional Victoria we might have been able to have a
much better result—to be able to be more isolated and to be able to free up even more. I am obviously
grateful that we are in a better position than Melbourne, but news like that can just really be so
devastating in our communities where we feel like we were really getting on top of it.

I think to bring a no-confidence motion is a very serious thing, and to do it at a time like this is
disingenuous, really. People in my community are not calling on me to vote no confidence in the
government. Of all the emails that have landed in my email in the last three or four days, five of them
are from my constituents. The rest are from God knows who. They do not put their name and address
on them, most of them. I do not know where they are even generated from, quite frankly, and I am
very suspicious of it. There will be people in my community who have lost confidence in the
government, but I am put here as an Independent. People have to rely on me to make a decision on
this—me alone. I do not get told how to vote, and I feel quite confident in voting against this motion
of no confidence that people really are looking for something different at the moment. They are not
looking for this sort of extraordinary ill will, this building up of a feeling of divisiveness. They want
us to get out of this. They want to find solutions. They want us to be the ones to lead them through it,
and that is a great responsibility.

People who are vulnerable in our community in particular deserve to be looked after, and we must do
everything that we can to do that. I have to say, and this is on a gloomy note, I do not consider that we
are in a second wave. We are just in a second lockdown. We only have to look at what is happening
in the rest of the world to see that the second wave is yet to come, and that will come next March and
April as we go into winter. Now, as far as I can see, on this side there is no road map for that. On that
side there is a bit of a road map. There is a road map that we can look forward to, there is a bit of
experience and there are some learnings from mistakes. But here—what are we doing? The road map
that the Leader of the Opposition has asked for is: ‘Let’s lift the 5-kilometre rule’. Well, how good is that? We have had that lifted. We are lucky in regional Victoria because we have had some of that happen. But we need a road map because we have got a lot more coming. I am not seeing a road map on this side of the house, and that is something that needs to be addressed. We need to be together on this.

I think I have said enough really. I think it is pretty clear that I will not be voting for this because in
this time we need to be working together, not dividing communities the way that this motion of no
confidence does.

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Constituency question – My question is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change. I ask the Minister why the Solar Homes battery rebate scheme excludes Shepparton District postcodes 3629 Mooroopna, 3616 Tatura and 3610 Murchison.

The Solar Homes Program was established to support eligible Victorian households to install a solar battery, by providing a point of sale discount up to a maximum of $4,838. In March 2020 the Solar Homes battery rebate was expanded to 247 eligible postcodes, with some additional postcodes located Goulburn Valley.

A constituent from the Shepparton District who is building in a new home in Taura has contacted my office in frustration after finding out that Tatura, ever though it is so near to Shepparton, which is included in the eligible postcodes, is not eligible for the rebate.

Despite meeting the criteria of high PV penetration, it seems the criteria ‘high growth suburb’ makes it an area not considered a designated postcode. It seems the eligibility for the scheme needs to be reviewed to ensure our regional residents are not disadvantaged and locked out from the Solar Homes battery rebate

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Minister response:

The Victorian Government’s landmark $1.3 billion Solar Homes Program is helping Victorians take control of their energy bills, creating jobs, and tackling climate. Distributed energy resources, like rooftop solar and battery storage will play a critical part in our transition to a renewable energy future. As part of this commitment, the Solar Homes battery program launched on 1 July 2019 and has been designed to deliver on the Premier’s commitment to support households in targeted growth areas with a high number of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems.

For an area to be considered a designated postcode within the Solar Homes battery program, it must not only have significant population growth, it must also have a high level of rooftop solar PV penetration. This term accounts for the number of existing solar PV systems already installed within the postcode against its population size.

Unfortunately, 3616 (Tatura) does not currently have sufficient PV penetration or population growth and is therefore not included in the list of eligible postcodes at this time.

While I acknowledge that it is disappointing for your constituents in 3616 to not be able to access a solar battery rebate at this time, we are continuing to investigate future options to help expand our reach and deliver benefits for more Victorian homes.

The Solar Homes program will continue to make sure that households in the Shepparton district and across the state are able to get the benefits of solar.

Hon Lily D’Ambrosio MP
Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change
Minister for Solar Homes

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Members Statement – We’ve had our fair share of challenges in the Shepparton district in recent months especially with the spike in local COVID-19 cases.