I rise to support the amendment. I think these are very dark days, that we are living through a time that none of us have lived through before. We started the year in shocking drought. We started the year with terrible bushfires. Our communities have been plunged into the worst crisis they have ever experienced, and that has had an amazing impact on our communities. I come to Melbourne and I look at the streets of Melbourne and they are pretty empty. I thought it might have just been Shepparton. I thought it might just have been Nathalia and Numurkah and my communities, but our towns are really suffering and so clearly is Melbourne, but I can only speak for my community.

We have so many people out of work at the moment, and companies are coming to me talking about the loss of further jobs and what that will mean for some of these big companies. It is very distressing to hear what is going on out there. We also have a whole lot of people in our community, older people, people over 65 and 70, who are very afraid. They are afraid of the disease, they are afraid of the opening up, they are afraid of many of the changes that are coming, and they are afraid that they may have to stay locked up for a very long time. They are starting to feel like they are the forgotten people. They are the ones who will have to stay behind closed doors and have deliveries come to them, for how long?

Now, there are a lot of other people in the community who are desperate to keep going, and they need to get going. They need their businesses to open, they need to re-employ people. Everyone has that fear of JobKeeper and JobSeeker finishing in a few months time. What will that mean? They have been incredible buffers to the reality of this absolute crisis and pandemic that we are in at the moment.

For us to now leave this place and not come back until August, to stick to a timetable that was set in different times is to me a failure on all of us. I am not here to talk about the politics of it; I am talking about what our community would expect. They are all out there trying to cope, trying to live on what is a lot less money. We are so privileged that we are in this place and that we are fully employed and that we have the privilege of looking after our communities and our electorates.

I think we should be coming back. I think for those of us in the community who are in regional areas it is sometimes very hard to get the connectivity that you need with government. Coming into Parliament, seeing ministers around, being able to catch them in a corridor, have a cup of coffee, have a meeting, these are really important aspects of being a local member of Parliament. It is really I think compelling that we should be sitting more during the course of this year, during a year like that we have never, ever seen before and may never see again. Let us hope we never see it again.

I support the amendment for the very reason that I think we should be in this place. I think the community expects us to be in this place and to be not only seen to be working hard but to actually be working hard, because nobody else is taking holidays. We cannot go overseas, we cannot do the things that normal life would have led us to so in a time like this we need to be at work, so I support the amendment.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Racing has moved the sitting of the house motion. The Leader of the Opposition has moved an amendment to it to omit words and insert an alternative return date. The question is:

That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Therefore members supporting the Leader of the Opposition’s amendment should vote no.

House divided on question:

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Question without notice – My question is to the Minister for Mental Health. Minister, will the government commit to supporting evidence-based alcohol health warning labelling recommended by Food Standards Australia New Zealand at the next meeting of the forum on food regulation to be attended by ministers of government in July 2020? Alcohol is the leading cause of preventable, non-genetic neurodevelopmental disability in Australia. Children born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD, will experience challenges in their daily living and need support with motor skills, physical health, learning emotional regulation and much more. There is a prevalence of FASD in my community but still there is no requirement for alcohol containers to carry an effective warning about the cause of harm and the harm that alcohol actually inflicts on the foetus. Much work has been done to address this issue, and recommendations have been made. Read more

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment (Regulation of Student Accommodation) Bill 2020. Might I say that on a day like this when there is politics rife and there are all sorts of things happening it is incredible to see how politicians and how this house particularly can come together and in a bipartisan way agree on a piece of really important legislation. Today is only a reflection of what has gone on for a very long time, and I came into this place in 2014, after the Betrayal of Trust report, when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was still underway. I have learnt a great deal about the institutional abuse of children during that time. And I would like to acknowledge the member for Broadmeadows, who is just about to leave. I have seen his passion on this topic many times in this place and it is an absolute credit to him and so many others who took up the cause and who ensured that this went to a parliamentary committee, that the investigations were done, that the evidence was heard and that people’s voices were heard. The outcomes of that I have seen on many occasions in this place by way of what are just little bits of legislation. They are just amendments here, amendments there, but they are part of an overall package that is bringing together a framework which we hope will provide a level of protection to children throughout every aspect of their lives.

We have an absolute duty of care to protect children, and I think we all know that. I personally stand here very passionate about trying to achieve some labelling on alcohol so that pregnant women can understand the impact of what alcohol might do to their children. So it is from conception to adulthood that we have to address the issues of child abuse and their protection. I have been around a lot longer than many people in this place, and my husband has been the forensic paediatrician for northern Victoria for probably 20 years, back in the 1980s and 90s, so conversations at our dinner table were so often around his distress, their distress, the hospital’s distress, families’ distress—all the horror that goes with child abuse that is just continuing today in so many environments.

But this piece of legislation, as I say, is part of a story. It is part of a recognition and a really important step along the way. I recall watching the film Spotlight just a few years ago. Sometimes you will watch a film like that and you will be so shocked and so affected by it even though you know it has been happening, even though all that knowledge is in your head. It can be so very, very shocking to think of the level of cover-up, the power, the manipulation that has occurred in our institutions over so many years. In my family, I went to boarding school. I had five siblings and we all went to boarding school because we lived out in western New South Wales. There was no school, so homeschooling, to me, which people have been going through for the last three months, is no big deal at all. My sister was homeschooled until year 8, when she was sent to boarding school, and my brother until grade 5. We moved closer to a town when I was in about grade 3, so I only had those very early years of homeschooling. But boarding school for us was a given because there were no secondary schools close by, and we were a farming family and that is just what happened. How you got to go where you went or how it all came about is a mystery still to me, but parents make these decisions for you.

I was sent to Kilbreda College in Mentone as a border for five years from the age of 11. I cannot say it was an experience I liked, because I was homesick the whole time, but I made some great friends. I often reflect upon the fact that while the nuns, the Brigidine Sisters, who ran that institution could get pretty cranky with us at times, I never detected any sense of real abuse, so I was very lucky. On the other hand, so many of my friends had brothers at some of the other Catholic boarding schools, and nothing was ever said during those years—no indication that abuse might have happened to them. But what I have found out since is just horrendous. To think that I was in what seemed to be a safe environment, as far as I know—that was my experience—but for a number of people I know the experiences of their brothers in other institutions was truly horrendous.

One of the things I can say about being in a boarding school environment and being away from your family and that protection and that confidence you have when you are in a family situation, is that you are really vulnerable, and so you do not really have anyone to complain to. You do not go home after school. You cannot talk about what has happened in a way where you might feel confident that you will be heard. People have told me that they were not boarders, they were abused, they went home and their parents did not believe them. They just could not believe that a priest or a brother would do such a thing, so they were effectively shut down and had to live with that misery for quite a while—for a long time. Some of those are people who have subsequently come forward and given evidence and shared their pain. For those people that must be the hardest, most amazing thing to do because of all that repressed guilt, anger, and shame that they were made to feel—that they were the ones who were responsible. It has been a wonderful journey just in recent years to see that we have been able to give voice to people through the royal commission in particular. I just want to read what the letters patent tasked the royal commission with, because it just bears having it in Hansard. That was to:

inquire into institutional responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse and related matters …

and in carrying out that task it was directed to focus on the systemic issues, be informed by an understanding of individual cases and make findings and recommendations to better protect children against sexual abuse and alleviate the impact of abuse on children where it occurs. This legislation is about paragraph 13.3 of the royal commission, and that recommendation says that:

School registration authorities should place particular emphasis on monitoring government and non-government boarding schools to ensure they meet the Child Safe Standards. Policy guidance and practical support should be provided to those institutions.

That is what this bill does. I certainly support it, as does everyone else I have heard speak here today. I do not think we can ever give up on this, because as I say, child abuse is rampant. Child abuse is happening every day in our communities. It is happening in homes; it is happening in foster homes. Deputy Speaker, I sat with you on the Family and Community Development Committee when we looked into abuse in disability services. I think we all took away from that the horror of people who prey on vulnerable people and how important it is that we give those people protection, and children and people with disability fall into that very vulnerable category.

Again, it is important that recommendations from these committees are adhered to, are taken up, and this is what we are doing here today. I commend the bill to the house.

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Constituency Question – My question is for the Minister for Education, who I see is in the house. I would like to just acknowledge the fact that Greater Shepparton Secondary College has recently been funded to the sum of $119 million for the build of a new school—greatly welcomed. It has been widely reported to me directly by families and by teachers and in newspaper articles that there are some students who have benefited significantly in their learning through the use of remote teaching techniques which have been required to be adopted throughout this crisis.

Would the minister facilitate Greater Shepparton Secondary College conducting a pilot program whereby a class is established to enable a mixture of remote and face-to-face learning environments, to be evaluated as to its efficacy and benefit, so as to ensure that all students at the college are provided with the learning options that best suit them?

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I rise to make a contribution in relation to the Wage Theft Bill 2020, which seeks to introduce criminal penalties for wage theft. At the heart of this issue, it seems to me, is power imbalance when it comes to wage theft, and I think that is something really important to consider. Recent cases brought to light by the media overwhelmingly showed so-called underpayments occurring at the low annual income end of the spectrum, impacting workers in construction, health care, retail, food services and notably—even in my own electorate, in the Shepparton district—in the fruit-picking industry, something that none of us can be proud of and that we have seen quite regularly across the horticulture industry across northern Victoria. Fortunately it is not widespread, but it does happen from time to time. I think it is something that does need to be stamped out because it impacts on our ability to attract workers to jobs that are often very hard. Working out in the hot sun all day long, picking fruit and vegetables is something that is physically very arduous. We have seen cases where people have been really significantly underpaid.

The 2019 KPMG report estimated that the annual rate of wage theft in Australia is a staggering $1.35 billion, impacting 13 per cent of the total workforce and 21 per cent of those in vulnerable industries. To put that in perspective, one in five low-income workers in vulnerable industries have reportedly had part of their wages misappropriated by employers. Tellingly, none of the recent prominent wage theft cases featured any high-wage earners. Doctors, lawyers and politicians need not fear wage theft. For shop assistants, however, and for waiters and fruit pickers it is a real concern. Repeatedly, those affected are those least able to afford that sort of theft. Recent notable cases that prompted the formulation of this legislation include $20 million at Coles; $315 million at Woolworths; $7.8 million at George Calombaris’s group of restaurants; Qantas, $7.1 million; the Commonwealth Bank, $53 million; and Wesfarmers, $30.1 million.

In 2018 the Age reported on the case of 50 Vanuatu fruit pickers near Shepparton being paid less than $9 an hour—less than half of what they should have been paid. In 2019 the labour hire company who employed these workers was forced to pay more than $50 000 after the company admitted no records were made or kept of the hours that were worked by these individuals over a four-month period. And this is just one of those rare cases where we did see a prosecution. So often there has not been adequate enforcement of laws and people have got away with it, and that does create an environment where it happens more regularly.

There can be little doubt that wage theft is an issue in our community and even more so now with more than 1 million people who are newly unemployed and the threat of more to come if the federal government’s JobKeeper program winds up in September. It is a fear that so many people that I speak to have—that once JobKeeper does finish many more people will be made redundant from their jobs. Just this week we have seen the Grattan report on Shepparton showing that our region has the third-highest rate of unemployment across the whole of Australia. Now, these figures are always troubling. Whether we are third or fourth or fifth does not really matter—what does matter is that so many people have lost their jobs, so many people are unemployed.

One of the things I have noticed, talking to people about all of this recently, is how invisible people are, and at the moment they are invisible because they are at home. They are not actually out on the streets. They are not out looking for work in the way they normally would be, and it is almost as if they are a hidden group of people. So this is something we really need to think about as we continue to be somewhat restricted in our behaviours and remember that all of those people are out there in our communities. They are without work, and it is really important that their needs are taken into account and, for those who do have work and are coming back into work in many low-paid jobs, that they are still properly paid, just as we are.

There have been those who have argued that this bill and the measures in it go too far, that mistakes happen and that criminalising wage theft will punish employers for accounting errors, but the bill attempts to address those concerns. At the heart of the bill is the concept of dishonest behaviour, where it can be demonstrated that an employer deliberately and wilfully stole wages owed to an employee or employees.

Falsifying records is also targeted. As someone who ran a business for many years before coming into politics, there is no doubt that mistakes can be made, that there is a lot of red tape and that you need to be right across these things in your business. But there is an obligation to do that. To see an outcome whereby people are working an honest day’s work but are not being honestly paid for that labour is something that does warrant being looked at and does warrant, ultimately, punishment, especially if it is done in any form where an element of dishonesty comes into it.

I am informed that the burden of proof will be high in these offences and prosecutions difficult to achieve. Five years imprisonment is the maximum penalty for the worst cases of offending that can actually be imposed under this bill. The term matches the federal government’s proposed response. It is a fact that the federal government is proposing to legislate in this area, as are other states that are looking at the problem that exists. People might say, ‘Why are we bothering to do this when in fact the commonwealth will step into the breach and enact laws to deal with wage theft?’. One of the reasons is that it has been happening for a long time. There has been very little done about it. It is still happening, and nothing is being done about it at the commonwealth level. Until such time as it is, we actually have a deficit, we have a gap, and something needs to be done.

So should the time come that the commonwealth pass laws that we can be satisfied with as Victorians, maybe we will be here one day repealing legislation—and there is a good argument for doing that on a more regular basis—but I think in this case to put in the protections that this bill seeks to do is important, and it is important to do it now. Perhaps it is even more important when the vulnerability of so many out there in our community is so much greater, when their fear is so much greater. It perhaps sends a message to those people that there is a level of concern for them, that we do understand their vulnerabilities and that this is a protection that will be there for them.

On the duplication of laws that is perhaps argued, I think while on a practical level it exists, I am quite content that we go ahead and see a bill like this become law in Victoria until such time as it is no longer needed. As I said, other states are supporting it. Again, we do see the incidence of this too regularly to ignore it. I have mentioned all of those outstanding big cases where millions and millions of dollars have been held back over the years. I recall when my daughter was working in a dress shop as a university student and she was contacted some months after finishing that work only to be told that that employer had short-changed quite a number of workers and she was to receive some compensation for it. She was lucky in the sense that someone found out about it, someone did something about it and there was a level of compensation for those young workers who worked part time in that sort of employment. But many miss out completely. Many contractors or employers disappear and they are simply not there to pay the compensation that they ought to pay—the wages that have been lost by people who have not been rightfully paid. It is an important piece of legislation, and I would like to indicate that I do support this bill.

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