I rise today to speak on the Cemeteries and Crematoria Amendment Bill 2021 before us. The bill primarily provides the Secretary of the Department of Health with the power to direct the surrender or variation of a right of interment and ensures that the rights of all victims and other persons directly and adversely affected by serious crimes are given appropriate
respect and a say in what happens to the remains and resting places of their loved ones. The bill also makes a number of other minor and technical amendments.

I was listening to the member for Lowan, and she outlined the Ristevski case in quite some detail, and so I do not intend to go into that again. But I would say that my heart also goes out to the family who had to go through and endure such horrendous circumstances for such a long time. There was a great deal of media coverage of the crime, and we all recall it well. There were some extraordinary facts involved in that case, but ultimately what I can say is that it was clear that there was a tragic loss of life of Karen. She was a woman in her own right who did not belong to anyone. She may have been a wife and a mother and a sister, but she was an individual who should not have had her life taken from her.

The statistics for family violence are stark, and we regularly revisit them, but I think we just have to. We have to keep on repeating them until something changes, until they start going down, and hopefully one day they will have disappeared. Approximately one-quarter of women in Australia have experienced at least one incident of violence by an intimate partner. On average one woman a week in Australia is killed by her intimate partner. Most victim-survivors of intimate partner violence are women. Approximately one in five Australian women—18 per cent, or 1.7 million—has experienced sexual violence. Partner violence often occurs when women are pregnant. Intimate partner violence is the greatest health risk factor—greater than smoking, alcohol and obesity—for women in their reproductive years. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience high rates of violence, with significant health impacts. An estimated three in five Indigenous women have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15. Over one-third of women with disabilities experience some form of intimate partner violence. Children often see the violence between their families. Family violence is a factor in so many of the child protection cases that we see.

Many women do not seek help about their experience of violence. Of women who have experienced violence by a current partner, just over 54 per cent had sought advice or support about the violence they had experienced. They say that 82 per cent never even contact the police. As someone who spent 35 years in legal practice as a family lawyer before I came into this place, I can say that representing women and children in these violent situations always left me shocked and distressed when I heard their stories. As a matter of course with every woman that came in I would ask her whether she had been hit, whether she had been the victim of finally violence. In the early days I used to be surprised when someone would say, ‘Oh, not really. Just a smack or a bit of a hit’ or, ‘Pushed me up against the wall’ or did this—like that was not family violence.

There is such an expectation among so many women that they just seem to accept so much of this. It is not acceptable, and often it takes a great deal of time for women to get to the point where they feel empowered enough to do it. There is no doubt that the additional services, all the things that have been put in place in providing resources for women, do make a difference, but when you see these numbers, they are so great. It is like you feel like you may never be able to provide the level of service that is truly needed.

In Shepparton in my early years in family law practice Sergeant Ken Patterson was the only policeman who dealt with family violence. There was probably a notion that it did not happen very much anyway and only one policeman might be required, and it was only part of his job. Today we have a family violence unit with I think at least six men and women operating in it, and they are busy all the time. And of course the reporting rate has gone up, so there are many more cases. Our local Magistrates Court has family violence days now where that is basically all the cases that are being heard for the morning or the afternoon, just depending on how many are listed.

There is no doubt that there has been a real shift in the way people think over all those years, that there is much more of an intolerance and that the police have become more involved. I remember the days when you would ring up the police and say, ‘There’s something going on next door’ or, ‘There’s a fight going on down the street’, and they would say, ‘Is it just a domestic?’. That was just a classic statement that so many people used to report. Even on attendance at a house sometimes in the old days that was the sort of response the police had.

A lot of things have changed, and they have been really welcome changes. There is no doubt that the Royal Commission into Family Violence has highlighted the issues surrounding it. I was here in the Parliament when Rosie Batty addressed us during the last term of Parliament, and the work that she has done has been truly outstanding to raise the profile and get a better understanding of what family violence is, because it is not just being hit or killed or thrashed in some way, it is also all of that controlling behaviour that so often exists in relationships and that can in itself be just incredibly damaging to women.

During the course of last year there was much talk about the likely increase in family violence as a result of the lockdowns and people being at home and the very significantly changed circumstances as a result of the pandemic. There was a recent Monash University paper that affirmed that indeed the figures had gone up and that the complexity and level of violence was greater in so many cases. This legislation has just highlighted a case of terrible family violence where a woman’s life has been taken. It is making provision for some justice for families, those left behind, the loved ones, to be able to deal with the remains of their family member in a way that is respectful and appropriate and at a time when people are just so distressed and vulnerable in themselves. So I certainly welcome this change.

I think probably many people did not even realise that the law was as it was, and there would be very few who would disagree that this is appropriate. The March 4 Justice that we saw earlier this week is something that is, I think, a response to so many things that are happening in our society at the moment, including workplace harassment. We have seen the Brittany Higgins exposure, telling her story alleging that she was raped in federal Parliament. We are seeing how federal Parliament is dealing with, or in some cases not dealing with, the issues. We have heard Grace Tame speak very eloquently not only at the National Press Club but in the speech at the March 4 Justice in Hobart on Monday. These are outstanding young women who are now coming forward, and many of them will become leaders as people like me stop being leaders, in a sense. It is very heartening to see that there is a real passion and desire in the next generation of young women to do something about this.

I have a daughter. So many of us do. We do not want this sort of life for our children. We want our daughters to be safe in their relationships and to know that they can stay well and enjoy good health and a good relationship. Until we address these issues that are just around us every day, that have been exposed continually in recent weeks at various levels, we will not achieve much. But we are talking about them. I have been around since the women’s movement of the 1970s and have seen a great deal of change in what has happened with the women’s movement. I feel quite strongly that we are at a point now where we are not going to go back. This is just another monumental step that means we are demanding that things change, that violence against women must stop and that women will no longer tolerate this sort of treatment that they have been subjected to for so long.

Question without notice: My question is for the Minister for Energy, Climate Change and Environment. Minister, access to firewood from our forests in northern Victoria is now largely prohibited. There is now no local access to firewood for people in the communities of Barmah, Picola or Nathalia in my electorate, or indeed across most of northern Victoria. Barmah and Picola have no access to natural gas, and many people in these communities rely entirely on firewood gathered by them during the firewood collection season to heat their homes. Many are on low incomes and pensions and do not have the capacity to switch to the split systems or solar, despite the rebates that may be offered. It seems very harsh to impose a change like this at a time like this. Minister, will you reconsider the imposition of this ban and allow people to collect firewood for their own personal needs within their local communities in northern Victoria this winter?

Ms D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park—Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Minister for Solar Homes) (11:32): Can I thank the member for Shepparton for her question. Obviously this is a very serious matter and one that is very important for the member for Shepparton’s local community. We know that domestic firewood—availability of domestic firewood, opportunities for collection of it, especially during the winter periods for the purposes of heating and in some instances for cooking—
is very challenging and is becoming more challenging of course—

A member: What are you going to do about it?

Ms D’AMBROSIO: I am going to answer the question for a start, so thank you very much.
Members interjecting.

Ms D’AMBROSIO: That is right.

The SPEAKER: Order! Through the Chair.

Ms D’AMBROSIO: We know of course that domestic firewood on public land is a very limited resource, and we know that the availability on top of that is very unpredictable. It can be subject of course to floods, it can be subject to bushfires and the like and it can be subject to illegal take of firewood from some of these areas. There is no easy answer to this, and I imagine that the member for—

Ms Vallence: On a point of order, Speaker, just on relevance. In fact I have just been up to the Barmah Forest, and I concur wholeheartedly with this member that there are actually piles, massive
piles—

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Evelyn! The member for Evelyn will resume her seat—Ms Vallence: waiting to be burned—

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Evelyn—

Ms Vallence: and they could be collected by these people that need this firewood to keep warm in
the winter.

The SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.

Ms D’AMBROSIO: Just on that matter, because I think it should not go uncommented on, is that this so-called availability of piles of wood in the Barmah National Park is actually flood debris and is not suitable as domestic firewood. I think we need to be factual about what is available in our forests. Going back to the important question from the member for Shepparton—

The SPEAKER: Order! Members on my left!
Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

Ms D’AMBROSIO: Going back to the member for Shepparton’s very important question, these matters are not easy matters to resolve—absolutely—and bans are not matters that we can easily say
we need to lift or otherwise, because it would be wrong for me to pretend that we could simply do that. Availability of supply is very much dependent on weather conditions, bushfire-affected areas and the like. Now, that will not give a lot of comfort to the member for Shepparton, but what I will say to the member for Shepparton is that we are absolutely committed as a government to doing all we can to assist those who are most vulnerable in terms of being able to get access to the necessary heating for them, especially in the coming winter. That is why, in the shorter term, we are making available support services in terms of energy payment bonuses for families. Of course I understand the rebate for air conditioning that can replace woodfired heating is an important and a very helpful one that will go some way to supporting a lot of people in her community to be able to seek heat as an alternative to firewood. There is a lot more to be done, and I am absolutely very prepared to sit down with the member for Shepparton to work through alternative options to help her community.

Supplementary Question: Minister, in my discussions with many people across the community who rely on firewood collection, they call for the return of a permit system. They are aware
of illegal removal of wood from the forests on a regular basis and they believe that the permit system would enable Parks Victoria to be able to enforce the law and thereby leave more wood for these vulnerable families in our community. So, Minister, will you reintroduce a permit system for firewood collection across Victoria?

Ms D’AMBROSIO: I thank the member for her supplementary question. This is an important and very sore point amongst a lot of local communities right across regional Victoria. Can I remind
everyone that we did have a very well functioning domestic firewood permit system on public lands up until about September 2011 when it was removed by those opposite. That caused a lot of illegal take and an even greater diminution of firewood collection from these areas right across the state. I am absolutely committed to working through this issue. My department is developing options for this very matter, and I will be very happy to have an offline conversation with the member for Shepparton— always happy to have these matters discussed in Parliament of course, but offline to go further into what is possible for us in terms of the reintroduction of a permit system.

Question without notice: My question is for the Minister for Mental Health. Minister, during the consultations conducted by the royal commission into mental health we heard many stories of the shocking lack of services available for those seeking help. This was particularly the case for those living in regional areas and was highlighted by the two speakers yesterday sharing their lived experience, both of whom had attended regional hospitals and not received the help that they needed. One of the most critical problems facing regional health services is their ability to attract the professional mental health workers required, such as psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurses. Minister, how do you propose this long-term entrenched workforce problem can be addressed to ensure that regional people can get access to appropriate mental health services when and where they need them and from appropriately trained people?

Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health): I thank the member for Shepparton for her very important question and her ongoing passion for improving mental health not only in her electorate of Shepparton but across rural and regional Victoria. As we know, the final report of the royal commission recommends a complete rebuilding of our mental health system with the fundamental aim of helping people in their community early rather than too late in hospitals. The member is absolutely right to refer to both Al and Amelia’s contributions yesterday. That reform will take time, and we know that having a strong and sufficient workforce will be absolutely crucial in realising the commission’s vision for reform. The commission’s final report recognises that the workforce is the beating heart of the Victorian mental health system. We know that mental health shortages are particularly pronounced in rural and regional areas, and I will just give you one stat, member for Shepparton, out of the royal commission final report. It states that in 2017–18 there were 15.6 psychiatrists per 1000 people in metropolitan Melbourne in contrast to 8.4 in periurban and regional areas and 5.6 in rural areas.

Reflecting the importance of the workforce, the royal commission set out a number of recommendations that go directly to the member’s question about promoting a strong and sustainable future workforce. They include a recommendation around a new workforce strategy and implementation plan to be in place by the end of this year, so there is immediate work that will happen; developing a Victorian mental health and wellbeing workforce capability framework as a matter of urgency; and using the new Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing to coordinate learning and professional development activities across the whole mental and wellbeing workforce. This will build on the interim report and its recommendations and what the government has done, including around a peer workforce, new scholarship placements and training places for nurses, allied health professionals and junior doctors. In last year’s budget $870 million was in large part responding to the interim report. We have already created 29 junior medical officer psychiatry rotations, 80 new mental health nursing graduate roles. In July we will open 140 new nurse scholarships and create 20 lived experience cadetships. Most critically, recommendation 40 in the report talks about the need to create a new mental health workforce rural incentive scheme, and the Premier and I both talked about this yesterday and in other parts of government, whether it is in education, in early childhood, having those incentive schemes to ensure we have the workforce that we need. The final thing I will say is the Premier observed yesterday that it is very hard to attract and retain staff in a system that is in crisis, in a system that is broken. Accepting all the recommendations, investing in mental health will deliver career pathways for people in Victoria.

Supplementary Question without notice:  Minister, the Rural Workforce Agency Victoria is a commonwealth-funded body that operates in Victoria to assist in attracting workforce to regional areas in Victoria. Can you explain how your government works with this agency to ensure that that funding is actually directed into getting specialists into our regional areas?

Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health): I thank the member for her supplementary question. The Rural Workforce Agency Victoria works directly
with rural and regional health services and community GPs to support recruitment of locums, including GPs, who provide services in public health services. My department has contracted Rural Workforce Agency Victoria to administer a range of programs—in fact the department has done that since about 2001—to ensure a pipeline of qualified medical staff throughout the regions.
Victoria also contributes to this body, so in the last budget $887 000. It collaborates with the department on workforce issues by participating in two advisory committees: the medical workforce planning advisory group, which provides advice to the department on specific matters affecting Victoria’s medical workforce, including opportunities to expand medical training in rural and regional locations; and the statewide reference committee, which oversees and monitors the establishment of the Victorian rural generalists. I will work with this body, raise the issues, raise the findings and recommendations out of the royal commission. They will be part of responding to the royal commission’s recommendations.

I rise to make a contribution on the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (State of Emergency Extension) Bill 2021. The main purposes of the bill are to amend the principal act to lengthen the total period for which a state-of-emergency declaration may be in force in respect of the COVID-19 pandemic from 12 months to 21 months and to extend the period of operation of the temporary measures under part 13 until 16 December this year. It is just over 12 months, really, since we found ourselves with such an outbreak of a worldwide pandemic and the closure of Australia’s borders. So much has occurred since then. The feelings throughout our community in those early months when we realised what was happening I think were really very extraordinary for everyone in our community, and as the year went on, the realisation of what was happening really started to sink in. The lockdowns were very harsh and difficult for people to deal with, but they did.

We now find ourselves in a situation where the first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine has arrived. We are hopeful that it will be successfully rolled out, and the most vulnerable in the community will be vaccinated, we hope, within the weeks and months ahead. The AstraZeneca vaccine has now been approved by the TGA, and that is really good news as well. So we are in a situation now where there does seem to be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

We watched in horror last year as we saw what was happening overseas. We feared for ourselves and we feared for what could happen here, but to look at the United States and to look at the United Kingdom and the European Union, these places were in such disarray and so quickly, and often because they did not have the measures in place to do what needed to be done to protect their communities. The nature of their governments, the nature of their populations was such that they did not act quickly in so many cases—and the rest is, in some ways, history because for those countries the virus has run rampant through them, with millions of cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Sitting suspended 1.00 pm until 2.02 pm.

Ms SHEED: Just before we adjourned for lunch I was talking about the horror of what we saw overseas during the course of last year and into this year. It has certainly been instructive to see the change that has occurred in the United States since the newly elected President has mandated the wearing of masks and many other measures that ameliorate the impact of the virus. Numbers have started to drop significantly; just since January they took about a 50 per cent drop. It looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we are ever hopeful, bearing in mind that there are mutations that are happening and there could be more to come. But at the moment things are looking a bit brighter. The virus is still here, and every international flight that comes in seems to bring more people infected with the virus, sometimes with new strains of it. It is for this reason that I ask the Victorian government to suspend international flights into Melbourne until its current hotel quarantine system is changed to put in place alternative secure arrangements, preferably outside major metropolitan areas such as Melbourne.

Victoria has truly done it hard. Were it not for JobKeeper and the increases in JobSeeker and many business grants and other funding that have been made available, by both the state and federal governments during the course of last year, it would be hard to imagine how much worse things could have been. Early on, the national cabinet worked well. Governments were convening, they were meeting, they were talking things over and coming away with a level of agreement. The second wave in Victoria last year with its consequent lockdown was especially hard for Victoria. It has impacted on the mental health and wellbeing of most of us. Critical life and family events were missed. Our offices were flooded with requests from people needing some sort of compassionate consideration to be able to move about and attend events—family funerals and the like.

Victorians have been resilient and strong in many ways, but they are wearing out. They no longer want to consider the possibility of another year where their children miss out on schooling opportunities with that face-to-face socialisation that really is required. While many are working from home, there is a significant need for people to go back to work. The CBD is a prime example of the isolation and loneliness that appears when you walk down city streets.

Every year in Shepparton for many, many years we have held a business awards dinner. Last year that could not go ahead; it may not go ahead this year. But businesses are identified as doing well and as investing in themselves, and then of course there are always the new businesses. Many of these are very young people who have started new businesses, whether they are in beauty therapy, webpage development—a range of things that are just ways for them to have the opportunity to get into business on their own account.

Unfortunately during the last 12 months we really have seen those new businesses struggle, and others as well. The short, sharp, five-day lockdown that we have just had is the sort of thing that makes it so hard for businesses in Shepparton. With Valentine’s Day coming up, the Woolshed, for instance, a function centre, was hosting a very large ladies luncheon, a fundraiser for Valentine’s Day. Our restaurants were all booked out for couples to have romantic dinners. Our florists had so much stock. All of this had to be cancelled. Many people, realising the hardships these businesses face, bought flowers. Many people went out and ordered takeaway from the restaurants just to try and relieve the pain that they were suffering. Parents spoke of how emotional they felt at the thought of their children not going to school and of being away from school earlier this week.

The regions were included in this lockdown, and it was poorly communicated as to why that happened. It seemed to be suggested that the ring of steel could not be brought down quickly enough, and that may well have been the case. But it failed to recognise the fact that hundreds of people had gone through terminal 4 and dispersed into regional Victoria. My sister was one of them. She received a phone call just a few days later to test and isolate. I think it was overlooked that so many people had already gone into the regions and that there was a need to shut them down. But there is the possibility—and I have talked about this before in this place—of looking at more geographical shutdowns than what we have seen, and this is something that really does need to be taken into account.

But I do not want to see any more shutdowns; neither does anyone else. The way we stop it is to stop bringing the virus in on flights at the moment into Victoria. It is just something that is absolutely ridden with risk, and we are seeing the outcome of that play out continually. Everywhere has had hotel quarantine outbreaks. It is really tricky to get right. There is a lot of talk about how well the Howard Springs model has worked, how having those separate cabins, people being separate and separate air conditioning—all the things that seem to be creating problems, they seem to have in place—seems to be working. I would very much like to see the federal government step into this space and create more of those sorts of regional opportunities, but not in closely populated areas, I might say.

I think it needs to be drawn to everyone’s attention that every state has very harsh laws to put in place during a pandemic. Victoria is probably the only state as far as I can see that needs to bring it back to Parliament at regular intervals. The others just have it. A lot of it is just plain ministerial power. They have it, it is in their hands and they do not need to really account for it—other than that we all are held accountable at election time, and that is something that we need to remember. This is not the United States, where they had someone trying to suggest that an election was stolen, that an election was not valid. Here in Australia we have elections where we have 49 to 51 per cent. We all accept that the winner is the winner. Democracy actually prevails here, and I would be very disappointed to see a situation where we try and suggest that that is otherwise. We have a strong democracy, and we need to make sure that that continues.

I think nine months is too long to extend the powers for under this proposed legislation. I would like to see it be six months again. Coming back every six months is a realistic way of keeping an eye on things, in a sense. It is important that we learn so much more as we go forward, and one of the disappointing features about what has happened has been the lack of bipartisanship. The government should have set up a committee early on that included representatives from the various parties and Independents and the crossbench for them to be kept informed, to be brought into the tent, in a sense. I think that would have had a much better result than allowing this incredibly hostile sort of circumstance to develop as it has.