29 November 2010

Hulls refuses investigation of Workdirections Australia Pty Ltd

Victoria’s Minister for Industrial Relations Rob Hulls has refused to initiate an inquiry into industrial relations practices at WorkDirections Australia Pty Ltd.

Shadow Industrial Relations Minister Robert Clark said Mr Hulls’ response to recent allegations about companies owned by Therese Rein, wife of Kevin Rudd, proves Labor’s stance on industrial relations reform is purely a politically motivated and taxpayer-funded campaign against the Federal Government.

At Wednesday’s hearing of the Victorian Parliament’s all-party Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, Rob Hulls was confronted with media reports alleging that:

WorkDirections Australia Pty Ltd illegally stripped its Victorian workers of key award conditions, including removing penalty rates, overtime and allowances for an extra 45 cents an hour;
WorkDirections workers are required to work half an hour’s unpaid overtime each day, leaving them $1,200 worse off each year;
58 workers – more than one quarter of its Victorian workforce – were underpaid a total of $70,000; and
a Victorian worker was sacked after standing up to a bully boss over “disgusting and inhumane” treatment.
The contracts involved in this case were not Australian Workplace Agreements under the Howard Government’s reforms, but were common law contracts of the sort Federal Labor is advocating in their own industrial relations policy.

Instead of supporting an inquiry into the allegations by the Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate (WRA), Rob Hulls claimed it was nothing to do with him. Mr Hulls said that the WRA had not received a complaint and that the Commonwealth’s Office of Workplace Services was investigating.

However, the legislation establishing the WRA makes clear that one of the WRA’s functions is to investigate any “illegal, unfair or otherwise inappropriate” industrial relations practices in Victoria (Workplace Rights Advocate Act 2005, s.5(1)(d)).

The Act also makes clear that the WRA can undertake such investigations whether or not a complaint has been received, and can be requested to act by the Minister:

The WRA may carry out his or her functions and exercise his or her powers at the request of the Minister or of any other person or body or on his or her own motion. (Section 5(2))

Reluctance from the Minister and the WRA to investigate clearly demonstrates the Bracks Government is not genuinely concerned about workers but is purely driven by politics when it comes to industrial reform. This is why the Liberal Party opposed the creation of the WRA in the first place.

Then again, perhaps Rob Hulls thinks the Howard Government’s Office of Workplace Services is protecting workers the way it was designed to – fairly.

Labor states: all talk but no action on emissions trading

Hansard: 23 May 2007 ASSEMBLY

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — The decisions that need to be made about greenhouse gas emissions in this state, in this nation and around the world are some of the most important for the future that have ever had to be made by humanity. If the scientific predictions are accurate and we fail to adequately curb emissions, we face far-reaching and damaging climate change.

However, the actions that need to be taken to achieve the level of greenhouse gas reductions recommended by prevailing scientific advice will have enormous effects on our economy, our standard of living and our way of life.

Opposition members support a national emissions trading scheme, but we do not agree with trying to lock the Victorian community into the untested and flawed specifics proposed by the Premier. Once you accept the scientific predictions that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing unacceptable global warming, an emissions trading scheme is almost certainly the most effective way to achieve whatever reductions in emissions we decide upon as a community. However, the behaviour of the Labor Party around Australia in responding to the threat of global warming has been a disgrace, characterised by a failure of leadership, by duplicity and by the sacrifice of the public interest for political advantage.

Let us make the point absolutely clear: the primary constitutional responsibility for emissions control in Australia rests with the states, and even the Deputy Premier himself admitted that point earlier in this debate. There has been nothing whatever stopping the Bracks government from introducing controls on greenhouse gases in Victoria at any time since it came to office. Indeed, the Liberal Party has for some time been calling on the government to provide certainty to the Victorian power industry by actually spelling out an emissions policy. There has been nothing stopping the Bracks government and the other Labor states from doing the hard work of exercising their constitutional responsibilities and setting the reductions and then working with other states and territories to establish a national trading scheme.

If the Kennett government had refused to act on energy reform without commonwealth agreement in the same way that the Bracks government and other state governments are behaving on this issue, we would not today have the competitive and successful Victorian energy market that even the Minister for Energy and Resources has been boasting about in the estimates hearings and in the house this afternoon. But leadership is the last thing Victorians can expect from the Bracks government.

It must also be made clear that an emissions trading scheme is simply a means to an end. It is not an end in itself. It is a means to the end of reducing harmful emissions. Before you can have an emissions trading scheme you need policy decisions about what reductions in emissions are required, by when they will be required and to whom the restrictions are to apply.

Only once those decisions have been made can you have an emissions trading scheme that will allow the emissions reductions to be transferred to the parties that are able to make those reductions at the least cost to the economy. I repeat, there has been nothing whatever preventing the state and territory governments from choosing to set those emissions reduction requirements at any time.

Given these facts, the call by the Labor state and territory governments for a national emissions trading scheme to be set up by the commonwealth can be seen for what it is — an excuse for their own failure of leadership when it comes to making the truly hard decisions about what reductions to impose. The Labor states could not agree among themselves so they passed the buck to the commonwealth.

The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, made it clear in the middle of last year that he would not support the states going it alone because of the threat to Queensland interests, so the Labor states came up with the ingenious solution of saying that they all support an emissions trading scheme while avoiding having to actually do anything about it by saying that they are waiting for the commonwealth to act.

Labor in Victoria and around Australia has not done the hard work or shown the leadership that is necessary. The decisions that need to be made in relation to emissions reductions have very serious consequences in both directions: if you set the cap too high, you will cause unnecessary harm to the community; and if you do not set the cap high enough, you risk drastic climate change. The Prime Minister is absolutely right in insisting that before acting we have a much better idea of what we are actually going to do and what the consequences will be, rather than rushing in and seizing on a number pulled out of thin air, as the Labor Party has done.

The early cuts in emissions will be relatively easy, but the deeper you cut the more it is going to hurt. I quote from an article by Tim Colebatch on page 13 of the Age of 22 May:

First, fixing global warming will not be painless, and don’t believe anyone who tells you it will. Some would have us believe that all we need is to sign the Kyoto protocol and introduce a low-cost emissions trading scheme, and we’ll be right. Sorry, but no, we won’t.

The unpleasant truth is that, by and large, we change our behaviour when we find it hurts us. Good words and thoughts are not enough. We cannot tackle climate change seriously without raising energy prices — and, in Australia and the US, raising them a lot.

The extent of the changes needed to achieve the sorts of deep cuts required for a 60 per cent reduction by 2050 compared with 2000 will potentially have an enormous impact on standards of living and ways of life in Australia. I would expect that we would be looking at an impact at least several times greater than that of the oil price shocks of the 1970s. Potentially thousands of jobs will be displaced and replacement jobs will need to be created, with the risk of huge dislocation and transitional costs if the changes are not properly managed. If the science is right, we need to do it, but we should not be pretending it will be easy. It is going to get harder and harder as we go along.

Let us have a look at some of the specifics the Premier is asking us to commit to today. Paragraph (1) of his motion talks about collaboration between the state, territory and federal governments. However, we also have the Labor Party wanting a commitment to sign the Kyoto protocol.

If the federal government commits to signing the Kyoto protocol, that will dramatically constrain the scope for cooperative action between state, federal and territory governments, because implicitly the federal government will have been determining the solution by signing up to Kyoto, thereby constraining what is going on. The other point to make, of course, is that before agreeing to cooperate with the states and territories any federal government would want to see that the states and territories would not run spoiler tactics on any attempt at reform, as the Bracks government has been doing on water reform.

Let us look at the second paragraph about specifying a long-term cap to reduce emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 compared with 2000. Labor wants us to rush into this target without any justification. We have had no scientific basis for this figure demonstrated to the house today and very little set out in the discussion paper released by the state and territory governments. It may be too much, it may be too little.

As I recall, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was talking about a 60 per cent reduction compared with 1990, not compared with 2000.

Other scientists say that you need to be taking 70 or 80 per cent off 1990 emission levels. On the other hand you have some that are saying that the science of climate modelling is so dependent on complex variables that it is almost impossible to come up with reliable estimates. So rather than going headfirst into a number plucked out of thin air, the hard work needs to be done, which is exactly what the commonwealth is saying should be done, and exactly what the states have failed to do to date.

In paragraph (3) of the motion — talk about the epitome of hypocrisy — there are calls for setting firm emissions on caps and absolute reductions including, as we heard in earlier debate, in the short term. But what are the cap levels and reduction levels being proposed?

We have not heard it from any of the ministers. What impact is it reasonable to impose on the Victorian economy in the short term? State government is urging the federal government to act, but these basic questions have not been answered. Labor is pretending it has a model and a solution, but all it has got is a discussion paper and a number that is 43 years away. What we need to hear in this debate from Labor is not just talk about 2050. It should tell us what it proposes to do in 2010.

There are lots of other unanswered questions in this discussion paper, which is all that the states and territories have come up with. What sectors are going to be covered? Energy presumably, but what about transport? What about agriculture? If you are only going to cover energy, how are you going to achieve the overall target without cuts by other means in other areas? If you are not making those areas subject to trading, why not? If they are to be subject, how is it going to happen?

Next, who is going to get the permits? The discussion paper said the revenue is to go into state and territory treasuries. You could say that is just a grab for cash to prop up dodgy budgets. How many permits are going to be issued to existing emitters? For how long will they be issued and on what basis? Why not issue the permits to individual citizens so that they can sell those permits to help offset the massive increases in energy costs that are going to follow from this policy?

Paragraph (4) calls for the preservation of the VRET (Victorian renewable energy target) and shows just how tied up in knots the Labor Party is, because its own discussion paper, the National Generators Forum, the CSIRO forum and others are all saying not to go for technology-specific solutions. Yet Labor in paragraph (4) is going right across its own discussion paper proposals and wants to keep the specific solutions as well. Labor might want to grandfather things, but why is it trying to extend the enormously expensive VRET and the nebulous proto-policy of the Victorian energy efficiency target. I support the amendment moved by the member for Brighton.

Box Hill Hospital: Government failure to fund main redevelopment

Hansard: 22 May 2007 ASSEMBLY

Box Hill Hospital: redevelopment

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — I raise with the Minister for Health the government’s failure to provide funding in the state budget for the commencement of the main part of the long-awaited redevelopment of the Box Hill Hospital. I ask the minister to make clear to the community and to the hospital whether or not the government is still committed to proceeding with the redevelopment and to give a clear commitment to fund the redevelopment so that it can proceed without further delay.

Box Hill Hospital and the residents of the Box Hill electorate and beyond have already suffered badly from the government’s delays over this much-needed project. The current Box Hill Hospital was built largely in the 1950s with funds raised by the hard work of the local community.

Those facilities have served the community well, but they are now badly showing their age and are suffering from the steadily rising needs of the ageing part of the population and from a growing number of young families. That is starkly illustrated by the latest wait list figures for the hospital. I quote from a report in the Whitehorse Leader newspaper of 8 May under the heading ‘Hospital in wait list emergency’:

Patients are waiting longer for treatment and ambulances are increasingly being turned away by the Box Hill Hospital emergency department.
And the number of semi and non-urgent patients on elective surgery waiting lists at the hospital has increased substantially.
These findings from the Your Hospitals state government report released last Friday come days after Premier Steve Bracks overlooked any funding in his budget for the second stage of the Box Hill Hospital redevelopment.
The history of this matter goes back some time. In 2002 the hospital put a lot of effort into developing for the government detailed plans for a major redevelopment. Those plans were submitted to the government but were rejected. Instead the government gave the hospital a series of grants to go through the whole master planning exercise again. The hospital has now come up with a revised master plan, which went to the government.

In last year’s budget, the government committed to providing $38.2 million for the preliminary first stage of the redevelopment, which is the construction of a car park, an administration block and other facilities off the main site in order to free up space for the main redevelopment.

Construction of this preliminary work is now under way and is scheduled to be completed in mid-2008. Thus the hospital needs answers now about whether the next stage is to proceed rather than being forced to wait until next year’s budget, which would cause further delays and increased costs.

In the run-up to last year’s election the government led everyone to believe it was committed to the full redevelopment. Thus staff and the community were devastated by the government’s failure to commit to it in this year’s budget. That was added to by the reported remarks of a government spokesman in the local paper that further stages for the Box Hill Hospital’s redevelopment ‘would be considered’ in future budgets. The community has already suffered badly enough through the Bracks government’s procrastination. I ask the minister to get on with getting this redevelopment undertaken.

Equal Opportunity Bill: government plays politics with bad law

Hansard: 3 May 2007 ASSEMBLY

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AMENDMENT BILL

Second reading
Debate resumed from 19 April; motion of Mr HULLS (Attorney-General).

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — The opposition opposes this bill. It is yet another stunt from the Bracks government that is being introduced not to benefit Victorians but as a platform for spurious political attacks on the commonwealth government in the context of an impending federal election.

The bill purports to create a new prohibition on discrimination on the grounds of what it describes as ‘employment activity’, which it refers to as employees seeking information about or querying their employment conditions or entitlements.

It defines ‘employment activity’ as an employee making a reasonable request for information about employment entitlements or communicating concern that the employee has not or will not be given some or all of their entitlements. It defines ‘employment entitlements’ as an employee’s rights and entitlements under a contract of service, a contract for services or a Victorian or commonwealth act. It then includes employment activities as a new attribute on the basis of which discrimination is prohibited. Of course if there is prohibited discrimination, it can then trigger all the mechanisms in the Equal Opportunity Act, including compulsory conciliation and a hearing before VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal).

There is absolutely no debate about the fact that employers should not discriminate against employees who ask questions about their entitlements or even express concern about their entitlements. But then again no sensible employer would discriminate in that way.

For an employer, keeping the goodwill of their good employees is vital for the success of their business. That is particularly the case when, thanks to the Howard government, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates for decades and where every second shop down the high street has a ‘Help wanted’ sign in the window.

If you wanted to base antidiscrimination legislation on hypothetical grounds of discrimination, you would end up with a list as long as your arm. If you are going to include this as a ground of prohibited discrimination, why do you not prohibit discrimination on the grounds of an employee expressing concern about the purchasing policies of the business or about the sorts of jobs that the business tenders for, or even on the grounds of what football team the employee might barrack for?

You do not include that myriad of hypothetical grounds of discrimination in legislation, because there is no evidence that there is any serious level of problem that requires legislation — and that is exactly the case here. There has been no case made or evidence provided of any widespread problem about employees who might ask questions or express concern about their entitlements. No doubt if the government or the unions put enough effort into it, and if they look hard enough, they will be able to fine someone who claims such discrimination. You could probably do the same with all the other possible grounds of hypothetical discrimination that I have mentioned, but that does not mean there is a need to legislate in this case, just as there is not a need in those other cases.

I point out to the house in relation to this proposed head of discrimination that it is something that not even federal Labor, when it was in government, ever felt the need to cover when it had the capacity to determine the commonwealth’s IR (industrial relations) laws and set the IR agenda. The WorkChoices legislation specifically requires pay slips to be provided to employees within one day of each payment of wages.

This is a spurious problem of Labor’s invention for base political motives. It comes in the context of a wide range of other hysterical claims that have been made by Labor luminaries in the past, all of which have come to naught, just as this alleged claim of a serious problem amounts to naught.

Let us have a look at what these Labor luminaries were predicting was going to happen when the Howard government’s reforms started on 27 March last year.

We had Kim Beazley, the then Leader of the Opposition saying, ‘There will be more divorce’. We had Bill Shorten, that rising star of the Labor Party, saying it was going to be ‘a green light for mass sackings’. We had Kim Beazley again saying, ‘Democracy is threatened’. We had Tony Upton of the TWU (Transport Workers Union) saying, ‘This legislation is a direct threat to road safety in this country’. We had Sharan Burrow saying children will not see their parents for Christmas, and to cap it off we had Bill Ludwig, national president of the Australian Workers Union, saying our children would be going to school with bare feet because parents could not afford shoes.

These were the predictions that were coming out of the leading lights of the Labor Party when the Howard government’s reforms were introduced, but none of them has come to pass. Far from fulfilling any of these dire predictions, the Howard government’s reform agenda has brought remarkable benefits to Australian families and the Australian economy. Real wages have risen by 19.7 per cent under the Howard government compared with a 1.7 per cent fall under the Hawke and Keating governments. Unemployment nationally is the lowest it has been for years — 4.5 per cent now, compared with 8 per cent 10 years ago. Industrial disputes are at their lowest level since records began back in 1913. Long-term unemployment — the number of people having ongoing difficulties finding a job — has been reduced by 76 per cent from a peak of 329 800 in May 1993 to just 76 000 today.

Last but certainly not least for Victoria, the lawlessness and thuggery that prevailed in the Victorian building industry for decades has finally been curbed through the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which has removed an enormous cost penalty that the Victorian economy and Victorians generally have previously had to bear.

Despite all of this, despite the fact that more and more people are finding more and better paid jobs and that most employees are now in the box seat when it comes to negotiating with their employers, our Minister for Industrial Relations is making similar hysterical and politically motivated attacks on the Howard government’s reforms and coming into this house with these trumped-up allegations of widespread problems when no such problems exist.

If we are seriously going to talk about laws which need to be introduced to protect employers and employees, what about a law that protects employers and employees from discrimination by bullying industrial relations ministers, when employers seek to lawfully sit down and negotiate industrial agreements with their employees? Or what about a law that protects employers against discrimination by federal shadow industrial relations ministers who threaten that employers will be injured if they dare to point out the flaws in federal Labor’s proposed rigid, centralised and union-dominated 1950s-style industrial relations policy — a policy that would cause so much damage to the national productivity and the living standards of working Australians?

But the case against this bill is not just that it is unnecessary and based on spurious grounds; the case against this bill is that it would cause serious problems to Victorian employers, to the Victorian economy and to jobs and living standards.

To start off, this cuts right across the single system of commonwealth regulation of industrial relations, which the Bracks government purports to support, and which I understand is now supported also by the federal Labor side of politics.

This is a problem not just under the current employment regime, it is a problem under any future commonwealth employment regime. The reasons why people have now almost universally come to support a single system of commonwealth regulation of industrial relations is that it promotes the efficiency of the national economy, it removes duplication and it makes it a lot easier to have one set of laws applying across the whole nation, and of course that flows through to productivity and therefore to employment and living standards. This bill is yet another element in moves by state governments that are undermining this single system of commonwealth regulation.

This bill, as I mentioned earlier, creates a new prohibition that has never previously existed, including never previously existing under federal Labor industrial relations legislation. It is creating a new regulatory burden on employers who are going to face overlapping systems of industrial relations rules. Perhaps even worse, it reinstates by the back door a form of unfair dismissal claim that has been the bane of thousands of small businesses across the state. The removal of that by the Howard government has won almost universal applause from businesses and has made it so much easier and so much less stressful for small businesses to take a punt on putting someone else on the books, because it has reduced the risk that they are going to be hamstrung with an unfair dismissal claim.

However, this legislation in a sense goes even further than the so-called unfair dismissal regime because it creates an unfair treatment regime.

An employee can allege and can easily set up the circumstances in which they make a protest or ask a question or seek information from an employer about their employment entitlements. They can do that if they are expecting that they may face action from an employer because of poor work practices or any other failings, and they can then set themselves up for an unfair treatment claim as grounded by this bill.

It is an open-ended and vague definition. It is something that is easy to assert and something that is hard to rebut. There are also huge process costs inflicted on employers, because if a claim is lodged under the mechanism of this legislation, it can be taken into compulsory conciliation. The small business owner will be dragged out of his or her business to attend a session with the compulsory conciliator and has to produce whatever documents the conciliator demands. All of that has to be pored over in a conciliation session, and potentially the same process will be repeated at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. It is an enormous cost on an employer — and of course that is well known.

It is just like the ability to claim against small businesses for unfair dismissal, which thankfully has been removed under commonwealth legislation. This bill if enacted will see employers potentially blackmailed into paying go-away money to spurious claimants in order to simply settle a claim and enable them to get back to their business and create prosperity and employment.

On top of that, this measure is going to cut across existing dispute resolution procedures that are already included in many industrial agreements — in AWAs (Australian workplace agreements) and in collective agreements, including union collective agreements.

There will be a negotiated and agreed dispute resolution procedure which can be triggered, but on top of that there will be a potential for a left-field claim to be lodged on the basis of alleged discrimination, which is going to totally cut across that dispute resolution procedure which has been agreed to between parties.

This measure in the bill is the first head that has been included in the Equal Opportunity Act that goes to a core industrial relations matter. Discrimination is prohibited in the workplace on a whole range of criteria, but this is the first criterion that is being inserted into the act that relates specifically to an industrial relations matter. The only one that comes close at present is the prohibition of discrimination in relation to taking industrial activity, but that is a discrete area which is an adjunct to the prohibition of discrimination on political grounds.

This is the first measure that gets down to the nitty-gritty of day-to-day industrial relations-type matters and therefore creates a duplication of the federal regime which I have already referred to.

This legislation is not only going to apply to employees, it is going to apply to independent contractors. In that respect it is part of Labor’s ongoing agenda to try to undermine independent contractors, to force them into being treated as employees and pressure them into joining unions. If there is any dispute about that, you just have to look at the definitions of employee and employer in section 4 of the principal act. An employee includes a person engaged under a contract for services, and an employer includes a person who engages another person under a contract for services.

The definition of ‘employment entitlements’ being inserted by the bill says that in relation to an employee — which of course can, as I have already pointed out, include an independent contractor — it means the employee’s rights and entitlements under an applicable contract of service.

Thus this bill will not only deal with employment relationships but also apply to a whole range of independent contractors who provide services under contracts whenever there is a dispute about invoices or billing involved under that contract. This is an entirely open-ended and unnecessary imposition on existing relationships.

We have seen Labor’s form in the past in terms of these trumped-up allegations and its interventions into the industrial relations arena. We have seen how it uses them as a platform for politically motivated campaigns and as a justification for intrusion into workplaces.

The budget papers, which were released on Tuesday, show that this is yet again Labor’s intention in relation to this bill. Just like the misuse and abuse going on with the workplace rights advocate, if members look at page 313 of budget paper 3, they will see that $200 000 per annum has been allocated in additional funding to the Equal Opportunity Commission. Page 314 of budget paper 3 states explicitly that:

The Equal Opportunity Commission will also investigate and report on discrimination against workers.

It is clear that the government’s intention is to have additional staff at the Equal Opportunity Commission beating the political drum and drumming up allegations and reports which the government will use as part of a politically motivated campaign in the run-up to the federal election.

It is not just the Liberal Party that has made this point; it is something that is causing serious concern to employer organisations at the highest level. I refer to the lead article in the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Review of March 2007, which is entitled ‘State government responses to WorkChoices are damaging industry’. It says:

The High Court’s WorkChoices decision in November 2006 provided a real opportunity for all governments to put their energy into making a national industrial relations system a reality. So far, most state and territory governments have spurned that opportunity, and instead introduced new employment and workplace laws to try to counteract the reach of WorkChoices. Viewed as a whole, these piecemeal changes comprise a significant body of new employment regulation in Australia, on top of WorkChoices. While these state government initiatives have tended to pass ‘under the radar’, they deserve greater public scrutiny.

It is well understood that the Australian government WorkChoices workplace reforms are opposed by the labour movement, which has promised to ‘tear them up’.

However, what is not quite so visible are the regulatory, administrative and legal steps that state and territory governments are taking to wind back workplace reform and undermine WorkChoices. In doing so, they have spent millions of taxpayer dollars for little gain, and have weakened their position in Australia’s ongoing federalism debate. Employers are being caught in the middle of this political fight — with new and legally questionable state workplace regulation being imposed on industry.

The chamber of commerce went on to make this particularly telling point:

These state and territory government strategies do not appear to be random, or developed at low levels of government. The signs are that they are well coordinated and planned at ministerial or head of government level. At the February 2007 meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation (a body that excludes the commonwealth), state and territory premiers and chief ministers discussed a report on industrial relations strategy.

Although this was widely reported in the media before the meeting, the wide-ranging communique issued after the meeting made no reference to this agenda item.

And you wonder why not. You wonder what they were plotting behind closed doors, and you wonder what tick-tacking there has been to precipitate this legislation and a rash of similar legislation in other jurisdictions.

The article says under the heading ‘Retaliating with new workplace laws:

For employers and small business, the most concerning aspect of the state and territory response to WorkChoices has been complications created by a wave of new state workplace regulation …

It then canvasses the problems that are being caused in various jurisdictions.

It talks in particular about Victoria under the heading ‘Creating new bureaucracies’:

These new state laws are also accompanied by duplicate bureaucracies for their monitoring and enforcement.

Later it says:

In addition, some states have also established (or plan to establish) new stand-alone statutory bodies to monitor, investigate, comment upon and analyse the operations of WorkChoices, such as workplace rights advocates. These are contentious roles which inevitably draw public servants or publicly funded officials into the national policy debate.

In the past, public servants would provide advice to governments and ministers. These new bureaucracies see public officials themselves seeking and attracting attention as public commentators on contentious issues.

The ACCI (Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry) article makes the point with remarkable restraint. It is clearly saying that governments are politicising public sector employees and sending them out on political mischief on behalf of their governmental masters. That is not only bad in itself, it is compromising the practices of public service impartiality that have applied in Australia and have been generally a supported part of a capable and politically impartial public service. Of course we have seen it in particular with the abuse of the role of the workplace rights advocate here in Victoria, as has been raised in this place and elsewhere recently. We have every reason to expect that it is the intention of the minister to achieve a similar result with this legislation.

The ACCI article to which I have referred was issued in March and written prior to the current bill becoming public. But ACCI also specifically addressed this bill in a circular to employees dated 24 April 2007. In the summary box at the beginning the circular says:

There have been further measures taken by various state governments to legislate and create unnecessary duplication in industrial regulation for businesses where those businesses are already subject to WorkChoices.

It canvasses a number of such measures and refers in particular to the Victorian antidiscrimination amendments. It outlines the bill that we are currently debating and assesses it by saying:

The amendment to the antidiscrimination legislation is an example of creating unnecessary duplication in rights and responsibilities by exploiting section 16 of the WorkChoices.

Not only do we have the ACCI making clear the inherent problems for employers and therefore for employment, productivity and living standards in this state, but we also have the ACCI blowing the whistle on the fact that this legislation, and similar legislation in other states, is part of an orchestrated campaign across the Labor states that was cooked up at one of the Council for the Australian Federation meetings and is now being inflicted on Victorians at taxpayers expense. I would like to congratulate the ACCI and those other employer groups and individual employees who are standing up and making clear their position on state and federal Labor’s industrial relations agenda, despite the threats and bullying of federal shadow ministers and state industrial relations ministers.

The Liberal Party will strongly oppose this bill, because it undermines the single national system of industrial regulation, puts new and unnecessary regulatory burdens on all employers, and reimposes on small business a form of unfair dismissal claim by the back door, thus threatening the hard-won improvements in productivity, job creation and living standards that Australian families have enjoyed in recent years.

Labor's nuclear furphies distract from real issues

Hansard: 2 May 2007 ASSEMBLY

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — It is deplorable that the Bracks government is seeking to play political games with one of the most serious issues confronting humanity today, which is greenhouse gases and the threat of global warming. In some senses I have sympathy for the member for Seymour, because he gives every impression that he drew the short straw and was put forward to lead the government in the debate on this matter. He is a decent and well-meaning chap. It seemed to me that his heart was not in playing the political games that he was pushed to attempt to play.

It has to be asked: where are all the so-called big hitters of the government? Where is the Minister for Energy and Resources? Where is the Minister for Water, Environment and Climate Change? Why are they not in the chamber pushing this debate? I think it is because of the inherent contradictions in the government’s position on nuclear issues, which has credibility only if the government were to admit that its own research program is going to fail.

I am sure the government does not admit this and that causes its entire line of argument to fall into a heap.

There are three aspects to our response to global warming and greenhouse gases: the first is what we do about research; the second is the approach we take in regard to emission constraints; and the third is the extent to which governments try to impose particular technological solutions. Of those three aspects we, on this side of the house, are in agreement with the government on the broad thrust of trying to promote research into alternative ways of using brown coal, which we have in Victoria particularly, as well as research into other prospective forms of clean or much cleaner energy. However, we believe the government and the federal Labor Party have failed to do the hard work in relation to emissions policy and emissions constraints. We also think they have gone down the wrong path when trying to impose particular technological solutions on Victoria, like the ones we saw in the VRET (Victorian renewable energy target) scheme.

There has been a lot of scaremongering coming from the government, including the comments from the member for Seymour just a few minutes ago. This needs to be made clear. As far as we are aware, no-one is talking about imposing nuclear power plants on Victoria. Some government members have been absolutely hysterical about that point. They have been running around taking up petitions against nuclear power plants in electorates such as Forest Hill. The member for Seymour conceded in his remarks that that was a total impossibility given that nuclear plants need abundant water supplies — –

Mr Stensholt interjected.

Mr CLARK — Now the member for Burwood is getting passionate.

I look forward to seeing whether he will tell members how fearful he is about a nuclear power plant being built in Burwood — an area which is also well inland.

Let us look at the issue of research and let us try to take this subject seriously, because if we are not going to come up with serious solutions to greenhouse issues and we are not going to debate the issue constructively, then we are not doing any service to the people of Victoria, the nation or the world.

Part of the government’s strategy — and this is both a federal and state government strategy — is to put support and funding into programs that try to create clean coal. This point needs to be made for all those people who are trying to engage in scaremongering. The Prime Minister and the federal government have made it absolutely clear that they support clean coal research. It is obviously going to be the best solution for Victoria if it can be achieved.

The federal and state governments are putting their efforts into this, and the state opposition supports it. It is by far and away the best solution. If geosequestration, carbon capture and carbon storage can be shown to work, then we can harness the clean — what will become clean — abundant and cheap brown coal that we have in Victoria.

As I said earlier, I am surprised that government members are running with the line of argument that the member for Seymour has put forward, because if the research direction that the government is funding comes to pass in Victoria, then we will be able to go forward with the use of abundant and cheap brown coal. That is going to be the best available solution and one we should all be working towards.

You only need look at the literature that has been issued by a whole range of parties to see the extent of the commitment, both state and federal, towards this goal and how all these different efforts are seeking to intermesh with one another. I refer in particular to a media release of 30 October last year put out by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies, otherwise known as CO2CRC, in which it speaks about the research and development advice it has given to assist three companies in developing carbon capture and geological storage projects that are to receive federal low-emission technology development funds and state government grants totalling $205 million.

It then goes on to talk about the projects around Australia, including CS Energy’s oxyfuels, the Fairview coal-bed methane power generation project and the Hazelwood 2030 project of International Power.

It is a dispassionate and independent body, and it makes it clear that its work is being supported both by the commonwealth government and by state governments in various parts of Australia.

Next you can look at the executive summary of the discussion paper put out by the National Emissions Trading Taskforce in August last year. This is the task force that was set up by all the various state and territory governments. I may have a bit more to say about another aspect of its report later on, but in relation to clean coal technologies it says:

An effective research, development and demonstration (RD&D) program is necessary to support the early stages of innovation and help develop and demonstrate clean coal technologies.

Queensland has now committed over $300 million and Victoria around $80 million to technology-related RD&D. Both these programs dovetail with the commonwealth government’s $500 million low emissions technology demonstration fund (LETDF).
Even this state body is saying the commonwealth government and state governments are working together on research into clean coal.

Then we had the media release of April this year from the Minister for Energy and Resources, in which he talked about the potential for Victoria to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. He said geosequestration could enable Victoria to substantially reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere for more than 100 years and that it is estimated that in the Gippsland basin there is the capacity to store the emissions from the Latrobe Valley power stations for 120 years.

We also have the Energy Technology Innovation Strategy of the current government. That has committed funds alongside those from the commonwealth government into various clean coal technologies. There is general agreement on that approach. The Liberal Party in its policy of last year made clear its support for a range of measures to tackle greenhouse gas problems, including a research fund to build on the existing commonwealth and state government funding, additional specific funding for an energy efficiency program, funding for demand management programs, support for geothermal energy, support for solar energy, and a sensible policy on wind farms that would allow them to go ahead in appropriate places where they had community support while avoiding imposing them in inappropriate locations against the wishes of the local community and creating as much angst as the current government has created.
We should be in agreement on proceeding down a path of seeking to promote sensible research and the development of a whole range of clean technology for the production of energy.

As I said, that has the support of both sides of Parliament. However, there are other aspects about what the current government is doing and what the federal Labor Party is doing with which we would take great issue.

While there has been a lot of talk about emissions trading — a lot of hot air on the subject and a lot of big numbers put up as targets — the Labor side of politics has failed to do the hard work on how an emissions trading scheme would actually work and what its implications would be not only for the national economy but also for the standard of living of Australians and how carbon constraints should be best implemented in a way that minimises the adverse economic impact.

It is a case of the Labor Party giving you a lot of talk, but if you want a job done properly and practicably, you need the Liberal side of politics to do it.

That is the lead that the Prime Minister has been setting, instead of just rushing in without having done his homework in the same way the federal opposition leader, Mr Rudd, has done. Instead of huffing and puffing and looking for media grabs the way the state Labor governments have done, the Prime Minister has very sensibly said that we need to look at what is involved before we commit to a carbon trading scheme, and we need to look at the best way of doing it.

His approach is to be contrasted with the National Emissions Trading Taskforce, which is the body that was set up by the various state governments. It ended up last year with a discussion paper that in effect had a conceptual model for a carbon trading scheme, and it did a little bit of work on some of the implementation aspects, but it either ducked or did not address the crucial questions of where the burden would fall if a carbon trading scheme were implemented and assessing what the overall carbon emission reductions should be.

That has been the trouble all along. The burden of pollution control, including emissions control, in our federal system falls primarily on the states, but they have ducked that responsibility, and yet again the burden has fallen on the commonwealth to take the lead and get the job done.

What the Labor Party has failed to explain to the populace is the potentially very dramatic effect of emissions reductions on standards of living, if they are not handled appropriately. The possible range of impacts will vary drastically, depending on exactly what system of carbon constraints are imposed. I note that one of the aspects of the communique issued by the premiers and territory leaders back in February this year was to call for the auction of permits for carbon trading, with revenues to be divided amongst the states and territories in a way that produces equitable outcomes.

So we can see that behind all the grand appeals, the states are very much focused on how they are going to get a flow of revenue into state coffers as a result of the carbon trading schemes they want to see introduced.

Let me just say that all the expert evidence makes it clear that the best way of efficiently achieving emissions reductions is not to try to impose particular technological solutions, particularly at a state level, as the Victorian renewable energy target scheme has done, but for the government to set the policy parameters and then let the market find the best technological solutions within the policy parameters that the government has set. That has been borne out by studies undertaken by the National Generators Forum and others. Again that is a point which shows our side of politics is in sharp contrast with the other side. Overall we should be focusing on the reality of this debate and how to achieve the best solutions rather than scoring — –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER — Order! The member’s time has expired.

Nuclear plebiscite overturned

The Legislative Council has defeated the Bracks Government’s legislation on
a nuclear power plebiscite.

Liberal, Greens Party, National and DLP members all voted against the bill
after the Government opposed amendments moved by the Greens to try to make
the Bill more democratic.

All non-government parties in the Victorian Parliament – regardless of
their views on nuclear energy – have unanimously concluded that this Bill
is a political stunt, a waste of time and money, and a stacked abuse of
democracy.

This Bill would have given total power to a single Minister in the Bracks
Government to decide whether a plebiscite would be held, what the question
would be, and what the statements for and against the plebiscite would be.

However, the plebiscite would not have applied to uranium exploration and
mining because that is what Kevin Rudd wants for ALP policy.

Today’s vote is a victory for decency, fairness and democracy, and it
further exposes the hypocrisy and manipulation of the Bracks Government.

Nuclear Plebiscite Bill: Labor playing politics with a serious issue

Hansard: 14 March 2007 ASSEMBLY

NUCLEAR ACTIVITIES (PROHIBITIONS) AMENDMENT (PLEBISCITE) BILL

Second reading
Debate resumed from 28 February; motion of Mr BATCHELOR (Minister for Energy and Resources).

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — This bill and the plebiscite it proposes are a political stunt, a waste of time and money, and a stacked and manipulated abuse of the democratic process. The bill will be strongly opposed by the opposition. The bill is a political stunt because there is absolutely no suggestion that the commonwealth has any intention whatsoever of overriding existing legislated Victorian prohibitions on nuclear facilities.

It is a waste of time and money because it will cost millions of dollars to hold a plebiscite on what is likely to be a hypothetical question set by the government for partisan political purposes. It is a stacked and manipulated abuse of democracy because the bill gives complete control over the entire plebiscite process to a single minister in the Bracks government, the Minister for Energy and Resources. The minister can determine whether or not a plebiscite is called, what the timing of the plebiscite will be, what the wording of the question will be, what the method of voting will be and what the wording of the cases both for and against the plebiscite will be.

To add insult to injury, we must ask ourselves who is the minister who has been given such sweeping powers to manipulate this supposedly democratic process. It is a man whose greatest claim to fame as a champion of democracy was the Nunawading how-to-vote card scandal. The minister, when secretary of the Victorian division of the Australian Labor Party, deliberately designed — –

Mr Wynne — On a point of order, Speaker, clearly the honourable member is straying well outside the remit of this bill. I ask you to bring him back to the bill at hand.

The SPEAKER — Order! I do not uphold the point of order.

Mr CLARK — The point I was making, which the minister sought to stop me from making, was that the man who has been given these sweeping powers under this bill is the man who was secretary of the Victorian ALP. He instigated the designing of a how-to-vote card that was intended to mislead and deceive the voters — something that led to dramatic changes to the law to prevent any similar abuses in future — in circumstances that took the Premier of the day, John Cain, multiple attempts to get a legal opinion that finally said the secretary of the ALP should not be charged with a criminal offence.
This is the man to whom this bill proposes to give total authority to set every aspect of the plebiscite that is being proposed. On top of that, as the ultimate in hypocrisy, this bill proposes to require a plebiscite if the commonwealth government makes even a suggestion that there might be a nuclear facility in Victoria, whether or not it takes any steps to implement that facility.

In contrast, if the Bracks government were to decide to proceed to build a nuclear facility in Victoria, no plebiscite whatsoever would be required. If that is not enough to demonstrate the sham of this proposal, I do not know what is.

The Bracks government has demonstrated to date its ability to turn on a sixpence in terms of policy reversals. We recall before the 2006 election the ridiculing of proposals by the opposition for the speedy construction of a desalination plant in Victoria to meet our emerging water crisis. Subsequent to the election the Deputy Premier — –

The SPEAKER — Order! I bring the member back to the bill.

Mr CLARK — I will certainly direct my remarks to the bill.

The point I am making is that this is a government that is prepared to change its policies on various issues very quickly. It is therefore highly relevant that this government leaves open in this bill the ability itself to introduce a nuclear facility in Victoria without holding a plebiscite. I mentioned a desalination plant as one instance; I mention the no-tolls policy prior to the 2002 election as another example. So it is certainly not hypothetical that the Bracks government, which now claims to be opposed to a nuclear facility, could suddenly turn around and decide to construct a nuclear facility.

Should it do so, it puts itself or any other future Victorian government under no obligation whatsoever to conduct a plebiscite. This is a bill directed solely at the federal government in an election context. In essence, it is simply a giant taxpayer funded push-polling exercise designed to be held in the run-up to the federal election.

Let me put on record some of the mechanics of the bill. What the bill does is require the Minister for Energy and Resources to initiate a plebiscite of Victorian electors if the minister is satisfied the commonwealth government has taken, or is likely to take, any step supporting or allowing the construction of a prohibited facility in Victoria.

The bill amends the Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act 1983, which I point out to the house is one that contains a comprehensive range of prohibitions on nuclear activities in Victoria, including the construction of nuclear facilities.

The bill amends this 1983 act to apply the new provisions relating to a plebiscite if the minister is satisfied that the commonwealth has taken, or is likely to take, any steps supporting or allowing the construction of a prohibited nuclear facility in Victoria, including steps to make or amend the commonwealth law or exercise a power under commonwealth law to facilitate construction of such a facility, or has adopted a policy position supporting or allowing the construction of such a facility.

I make the point that this wording is so broad that simply a proposal by the commonwealth government to repeal the existing commonwealth-level prohibitions on nuclear facilities, which of course apply across Australia, could satisfy the trigger point in this bill for a plebiscite.

Even if the commonwealth did nothing and said nothing about either the Victorian legislation or a nuclear facility in Victoria and therefore was making no attempt whatsoever to override Victorian legislation, this bill is drawn so broadly that in those circumstances the minister would be entitled or, by the wording of the bill, required to hold a plebiscite of Victorians.

As I said earlier, the bill empowers the Minister for Energy and Resources to determine what question is going to be asked at the plebiscite. It requires the minister to conduct the plebiscite at the time the minister considers, as the bill puts it, to be the most advantageous to the health, welfare and safety of the people of Victoria, which in practical terms means whenever the minister feels like it.

The bill applies the provisions of the Electoral Act 2002 on constitutional amendment referenda to the plebiscite with various modifications and provides for the distribution of an argument of up to 2000 words against the proposal approved by the minister and a 2000-word argument in favour of the proposal approved by the minister after consultation with the commonwealth minister or, if the commonwealth minister declines to be consulted, after a reasonable opportunity.

As I said earlier, this means that the Minister for Energy and Resources will determine what the case on the one side is going to be and what the case on the other side is going to be. I also make the point in passing that, given the way the provision in the bill about the wording of the arguments for and against the proposal is phrased, it clearly considers that the question is going to be worded so that the affirmative is in favour of what is alleged to be the commonwealth-supported position while the negative will be against that position, which of course gives the minister enormous scope to set up a straw man for the purpose of conducting this charade, which the government is seeking authorisation to undertake.

The bill authorises the minister to decide that voting will be by postal voting, in which case the Local Government (Electoral) Regulations 2005 are applied with various modifications. The bill also allows the registered officers of registered political parties to appoint scrutineers.

As I said at the outset, this proposal is an abuse of democracy. If you are going to have a plebiscite, you should have it on a specific question which is openly debated and set by a public process, preferably by the Parliament. Under this bill one could imagine the sort of distorted questions and propositions that the minister could dream up for the question to go to voters which, he is going to allege, represents the commonwealth position, with no opportunity for anybody else to gainsay his assertions.

Again as I said, this is a man who has a past record of careful devising of electoral documentation in order to mislead and deceive voters, in this previous instance into misleading and deceiving them into thinking that a how-to-vote card issued by the Labor Party in fact was a how-to-vote card issued by another party giving preferences to Labor. This is a charade, and the view of the opposition is that if the Labor Party wants to spend millions of dollars campaigning against the Howard government, then it should do so using ALP funds, not taxpayer funds.

The government cites two prior votes which it claims as precedents for the measure that is currently before the house, the first being a referendum that was held on 1 June 1904 on the subject of scripture lessons in state schools, and the second being a referendum held on 24 March 1956 on hotel trading hours, and specifically on the question of 6 o’clock closing.

It might also be mentioned that there has been at least one other series of similar votes across Melbourne in the form of the so-called local options polls, as to whether or not various parts of the city should be declared dry areas, which was held in 1928. The minister at the table will know that that led to the then cities of Camberwell and Box Hill voting in favour.

But let us look at the two precedents that the minister cites, because they are illustrative of the flaws, abuses and potential consequences of the proposal in the way that the government is seeking authorisation. The first example, on scripture lessons in state schools, is one in respect of which I would refer interested members to the Hansard of 5 July 1904, at pages 39 and following, in which there is a speech by the Honourable J. Balfour, a member of the other place, which sets out an account of that referendum.

The referendum was held in conjunction with a general election, and Mr Balfour, who was a supporter of a referendum being held, outlines the history, which is that the referendum was offered by the Premier on condition that those who supported the introduction of the teaching of scripture in public schools would refrain from heckling candidates at public meetings. The deal was done and then Mr Balfour pointed out:

It is quite clear that a referendum should always be a very clear and distinct issue. This house has always objected to the referendum, and it has done so on the ground that it was afraid that the referendum would come to mean a referendum of legislation. I voted twice in favour of the referendum — once on the question of female suffrage, and next on this same question — to ascertain the views of the public on the introduction of the scriptures into the state schools.

But these two matters could be put in each instance as a simple yea or nay, and when the campaign council decided to accept a referendum, and to abstain from active interference with the election, it was on the promise that the question framed would be satisfactory to them.

Mr Balfour went on to outline that in fact three different questions were put to voters. They were put in a tortuous and complex way, and a whole series of disputes followed the referendum about what the vote meant, as the results were ambiguous because the questions were very poorly phrased. I think that is a striking example of the risks that we would run if the house were to support this legislation and give the Minister for Energy and Resources total power and entrust to him the setting of the question, with this house having no say whatsoever on the question.

The second referendum that the minister cites as a precedent was the 1956 vote on 6 o’clock closing of hotels. From the research that I have been able to do, this referendum took place in the run-up to the Melbourne Olympic Games of 1956, and it has been said that the referendum was conducted on the basis that there was a fear that Melbourne would look ridiculous to international visitors if it were not possible to get a beer or other drink in Melbourne after 6 o’clock, and accordingly the government put this referendum to the people. In this instance the question was framed in a clear, simple and straightforward way. It was:

Are you in favour of the extension of hotel trading hours on weekdays until 10 o’clock in the evening?
From the government’s point of view, the only trouble with that straightforward question was that members of the public were then in a position to express their views, and they did. From the report I have they voted down the referendum, with only 6 out of 66 Victorian electorates voting to move to 10 o’clock closing.

So on the one hand we can see the consequences of the 1904 referendum and on the other hand the consequences of the one conducted in 1956 — and both provide very useful lessons in relation to this bill and to the importance of making sure there is a clear and open question for voters rather than one that is manipulated by the government of the day, as happened in 1904 and as would happen under this legislation before the house. It also sends a timely reminder to the government that citizens can speak their minds very loudly and clearly when the result is not manipulated the way this bill seeks to do.

More broadly, on top of the flaws and abuses that I have referred to, there is the cost of conducting this plebiscite — a cost which as far as I am aware the government has not made public an estimate for, but which is sure to run to many millions of dollars.

Indeed my understanding is that the commonwealth republic referendum, which was conducted on a much larger scale and covered the whole of the nation, ran to tens of millions of dollars, so certainly a plebiscite as proposed under this bill would run into multiple millions of dollars. I would certainly challenge government speakers in this debate or the minister in closing the debate to put on the public record what it is expected any plebiscite under this legislation would cost. Whatever it is, it would be money being wasted and misused for partisan political purposes, for the reasons that I have stated.

That money would be better spent on directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the government would be much better off focusing on the critical greenhouse issues confronting Victoria and the world, rather than abusing the greenhouse issue for partisan political purposes. If the accepted bulk of scientific opinion is correct, Victoria and the rest of the world face one of the biggest environmental challenges ever faced by humanity.

We face, according to the scientific predictions, the potential transformation of many aspects of the world’s environment beyond what we have ever seen, beyond the range of human experience at least dating back many thousands of years, and likely to a point at which, if it gets to a certain level, it will be incapable of being restored.

This change, according to the bulk of scientific opinion, is likely to take place within the lifetimes of many of us here today and certainly within the lifetimes of our children. This scientific opinion is repeatedly and increasingly identifying the need for urgent and sustained action across the world to avert what scientists identify as a looming crisis. It is a crisis in terms of magnitude, according to that evidence, which the state government has failed to inform the community about. We hear the experts talking about reductions in the level of greenhouse gas emissions on a global basis of the order of 70 or 80 per cent compared with the level of emissions in 1990.

That is a global average, and for developed nations like Australia the reduction required to meet that target is likely to be even greater. On the one hand we are confronted with this task which the government talks about a lot, but at the same time as talking about it, it is on the other hand engaging in the hypocritical sham of calling for federal government action but failing to exercise its own responsibilities for emission control to actually specify emission reductions.

As we know, Victoria has vast deposits of brown coal. The best long-term outcome for Victoria will be if we can develop genuinely clean brown coal technology that results in emission levels that are vastly lower than they are at present and compatible with globally sustainable greenhouse emission level reductions of the sort I have referred to and of the sort identified as needing to be achieved.

There is bipartisan agreement on trying to achieve this sort of brown coal technology. Both state and federal governments are supporting carbon capture and storage (CCS), otherwise referred to as geosequestration, and supporting the trial that is currently being undertaken. The Liberal opposition is also strongly supporting research into CCS and other low-emission technologies, and indeed support for that research was one of the key aspects of our greenhouse reduction policy at the last election.

We all desperately hope that this technology and/or other technologies will be proven to work so that we can continue to make full use of our brown coal reserves while also pulling our weight in global greenhouse emission reductions. We should also continue to give our support to promising lines of research into other technologies — in particular into solar power, through projects such as solar concentrators or the design that I refer to as the tower of power, which relies on channelling rising air into a generator that would run possibly kilometres into the air. If we can achieve a breakthrough in research in those areas, we may solve all our greenhouse problems by combining these various lines of innovation.

That of course is not to disregard other potential sources of clean energy which at present seem to have a more limited role but which have the potential to be valuable if properly planned and implemented, such as wind power. It is important to keep those technology options as open as possible, and it is important to bear in mind and give full rein to the scope for human ingenuity to achieve results, particularly when that ingenuity is given liberation and the potential to achieve under a free market system.

Time and again humanity has shown itself able to come up with all sorts of unexpected solutions and to achieve remarkable progress. Although at a lower level than the current greenhouse challenge, we can look back to the situation in the United Kingdom, for example, with the notorious pea-soup fogs of London and the polluted Thames River. They were challenges which might have seemed insurmountable but which have been overcome. In Victoria we can look at the great successes achieved by the Environment Protection Authority, which was set up by the Hamer Liberal government.

We have to give free rein to technology possibilities. We need to keep the technology options as open as possible to support all promising lines of research in the hope that human ingenuity will come up with solutions to our current huge challenges, as it has to the challenges of previous generations.

The need to keep technology options open is something that has come through time and again from various studies. One that I have referred to previously in this house is the study by the National Generators Forum, but a similar conclusion was reached in a report of the energy futures forum of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation that is dated December 2006 and entitled The Heat is On — The Future of Energy in Australia. I will quote just one paragraph from page 8 of that report:

The cost of addressing climate change is lowest for Australia when it can choose from all available technologies, in partnership with energy efficiency improvements and demand management.
What flows from this is that we need to keep open considerations about whether or not nuclear power should be a future option for Australia.

We have had very strange arguments coming from the Premier which seem to me to be internally contradictory. We have had the Premier not directing himself to environmental issues but on the one hand maintaining simply that nuclear energy is too expensive and on the other hand saying that we have to put a price on carbon, which of course will increase the price of alternative sources of energy, in order to reduce greenhouse emissions and encourage renewable technologies. If you put that price on carbon, depending on where you put it, that will change the economics of nuclear as well. But it is not just up to us as a Parliament to try to second-guess what the most suitable form of technology should be. What we need to do is consider and have the discussion about the pros and cons of the potential use of nuclear energy in Australia. We need to keep our options open, and we need to carry the debate and the investigation much further forward.

It may well prove that nuclear technology is not a viable option for Australia, either because of the results of a more intensive investigation of the science relating to it and the environmental implications of it or because it may be superseded by the technology which is being supported by state and federal governments or by other technological breakthroughs. Certainly the nuclear industry argues strongly that, with current technology, the concerns about mining operational facilities and waste storage can be laid to rest. What we need to do is the research and an assessment of the facts and not get sidetracked into an argument that is based simply on hysterical assertions.

We may well conclude that there are problems with nuclear power, but we cannot reach that conclusion until we have done a thorough investigation in the first place. We may well find that technological solutions supersede any need for nuclear power while avoiding all possible concerns.

But we have not found that technology yet, notwithstanding all the efforts that we are all committed to putting into finding it.

In the meantime, as I said, we need to have a discussion about the nuclear option for Australia, free of the manipulation and the partisan-political distortions that Labor is trying to introduce into the debate at the same time as it is moving to amend its platform to support the mining and export of uranium. Only when this discussion has progressed and there is some form of concrete and specific proposition out there in the public arena that is relevant and applicable to Victoria can it even begin to be worthwhile considering holding a plebiscite. We are certainly nowhere near that position as yet.

As I said at the outset, this bill shows yet again that the Labor Party is not seriously interested in tackling greenhouse gas problems. It is interested only in political positioning and in using the greenhouse gas issue for partisan ends. This bill is a particularly blatant example of Labor’s willingness to distort and manipulate the forms of democracy, and it should be rejected by this house.

Victims of Crime Bill: victims deserve more support

Hansard: 13 March 2007 ASSEMBLY

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — This bill makes a limited specific change to the Victims of Crime Assistance Act 1996, namely to implement a series of increases in the amounts of payments that can be made under the act in the form of what is referred to as special financial assistance. The bill does this by replacing the existing table in subsection 8A(5) of the Victims of Crime Assistance Act 1996 with a new table that provides for a higher scale of payments.

The scheme of the 1996 act, as amended by the Labor government in 2000, provides for this category of special financial assistance payments to be made in addition to the far broader and larger amounts of payment that were and are available under the act in respect of matters such as expenses incurred or likely to be incurred for counselling services, for medical expenses, for loss of earnings, loss of or damage to clothing and possible other areas of expenses that have actually been incurred.

The legislation categorises acts of violence into four categories, which are lettered from A through to D, and the crimes that are assigned to each of these categories are as specified in the Victims of Crime Assistance (Special Financial Assistance) Regulations 2000.

The increases that are made by the bill are 33 per cent in respect of the minimum and maximum amounts of payment that are available in respect of category A acts of violence, and 30 per cent increases in respect of categories B, C and D. In numerical terms that means that the new maximum for category A becomes $10 000 compared with $7500 at present, and the scale is reduced progressively so that, for example, with category D acts of violence there is a minimum payment of $130 or the higher prescribed amount applicable in prescribed circumstances, and a maximum amount of $650 or the higher prescribed amount applicable in prescribed circumstances.

As is referred to by the wording of the categories, even though different criminal acts are assigned by the regulations to specific categories of acts of violence, there are provisions whereby a higher category payment level can apply to lower category acts of violence in some circumstances — for example, if the victim is aged under 18 years, is elderly or is impaired as defined in the regulations.

The bill does not alter the other specifications of the regime for special financial assistance as contained in the 1996 act as amended in 2000. So, for example, while the special financial assistance is available to primary victims, it is only available to primary victims of an act of violence if the primary victim experiences or suffers any significant adverse effect as a direct result of an act of violence committed against him or her.

It has been pointed out to me that this means, for example, that a person who is a primary victim in other contexts — because under section 7(2) they are defined as a primary victim because they were trying to arrest someone who they believed on reasonable grounds had committed an act of violence, because they were trying to prevent the commission of an act of violence or because they were trying to aid or rescue someone who they believed on reasonable grounds to be a victim of an act of violence — is unlikely to qualify for this special financial assistance because they may well not fit within the definition of experiencing a significant adverse effect as a direct result of an act of violence committed against that person.

In other words, and to sum it all up, someone who is injured trying to arrest someone, trying to prevent the commission of an offence or trying to rescue someone who they believe has been the victim of an act of violence may miss out on this special financial assistance, and that is an anomaly in the drafting of the existing act which, it has been pointed out to me, is not being addressed by the bill before the house.

In terms of the change that is being made and the context in which it is being made, the provisions being amended by the bill have an extensive history. They have their genesis in the attempt by the Labor Party on coming to office to do something to give effect to the very flamboyant criticisms its members made of the Kennett government when Labor was in opposition. They extensively criticised the regime of compensation and assistance to victims of crime that the Kennett government had put in place based on the allegation that it had failed to provide compensation for pain and suffering, which Labor pledged to restore.

However, that promise was a bit akin to their promise to restore common-law rights under WorkCover. When it came to the actuality they fell far short of their election promises. What they did was introduce this very limited regime of what are called special financial assistance payments.

The history leading up to the amendments in 2000 was covered very extensively in the second-reading debate at that time, and I particularly commend to honourable members and interested members of the public the speeches that were made by the then member for Berwick and by the Leader of The Nationals, both of whom covered the issue very comprehensively and, I also say with respect to them, very well.

If I may paraphrase the comments of the Leader of The Nationals, at that time he said that on the one hand it can be said that the special financial assistance amounts being provided for by this regime were symbolic or nominal, but on the other hand he felt — and I think with good cause — that by many victims they would be simply considered to be insulting, because particularly at the lower levels of the scale you can have someone who is a victim of a wide range of acts of violence in category D receiving a compensation payment ranging between $130 and $650, as it will be after this bill; or someone in category C, which could include death threats, robbery or inflicting serious injuries. Someone in that category will receive a payment ranging between $650 and $1300.

The amendments made by this bill provide for increases which in dollar terms are quite modest. Those modest increases are made by substituting a provision in the principal act, which in turn is a very modest addition to the far broader and more substantial awards to victims which are provided for in other parts of the legislation. These can include, for example, up to $60 000 to a primary victim in respect of the various expenses that I mentioned earlier.

Given that this is what the bill does, it is a bill that the opposition supports on the basis that it provides some small improvement for victims, albeit a small improvement indeed. However, what is striking about this bill is not so much what it does as what it leaves undone in terms of the most important and pressing issues for the victims that the Labor Party has failed to tackle. As usual, it is big on the rhetoric, big on the grand statement and big on spin, but when it comes to the reality it is starkly different. The services that are available to victims have deteriorated badly under the Bracks government.

Page 65 of the government’s justice statement of May 2004 contains many fine phrases.

It talks about the commitment of the Bracks government to give victims access to justice and fair treatment, to restitution, to compensation and to assistance. But when you go on to look at the specific actions that were referred to in the 2004 justice statement, you discover that they were very limited indeed. The first was to establish a new victims support agency that would:

… be responsible for integrating services to victims of crime.

The statement went on to promise that services would be better as a result of this agency. I will come later in my remarks to some of the reality about that.

The second promise that was made in the 2004 statement was that the government would:

… consider developing a victims charter that will clearly state the right of victims of crime …

Last year we had a so-called victims charter enacted in this Parliament, but that document is again like the justice statement itself: it is full of grand phrases but not all that many specific reforms. A number of the reforms that are contained in the victims charter picked up on policy positions that the Liberal Party had been advocating for some time.

If we look at the respective positions of the various parties in relation to support for victims of crime, as I have alluded to, we find that it has been the Liberal Party that has been making the running on this issue and the Labor Party that has been reacting tardily and in a very limited fashion.

Very early on the Liberal Party issued a policy document entitled Putting Victims First, which provided, amongst other things, that courts would be under a duty to consider compensation whether or not an application for compensation had been made by a victim and, where compensation was not ordered, a judge would be required to give reasons. We did that on the basis that the community wanted to see some form of direct compensation going from offenders to victims as a feature of the majority of sentences.

We also committed to set up a victims fund that would provide increased levels of funding to voluntary bodies that supported victims of crime. In addition we pledged to fund new victim liaison officers within the Office of Public Prosecutions, to provide 25 of those positions that would support victims through the court processes and to keep them informed of legal proceedings.

We also established as policy principles that there would be new rights provided for victims, including the right to be informed by the Office of Public Prosecutions when charges are dropped or substantially altered, with the OPP to meet victims to explain the reasons for this in serious cases, and also the right for victims of serious offences such as rape or serious assault to be notified and consulted about release arrangements for offenders.

I should say that the right of victims to have a say about the release arrangements for offenders is something that is now referred to in the victims charter, as is the right that we advocated for victims to be informed by the Office of Public Prosecutions when charges have been dropped or substantially altered.

However, there is an issue that needs attention in relation to victims being consulted on release arrangements for offenders.

I know of at least one case concerning a constituent in my electorate where there is a real fear that the victim could be subject to reprisals from the offender if the victim were to make a submission to the parole authorities opposing release and if the offender, seeking to exercise what they claim is a right to know who is making the case against them, were to gain access to the statement or were to find out that the victim had made a submission opposing release. This is a real dilemma, particularly if the offender is released.

In this particular case the victim was in real fear of what would happen and was caught on the horns of the dilemma. On the one hand the victim could have said nothing, in which case they increased the risk of this person being released, or they could have put in a submission opposing it, which hopefully would have been accepted by the parole authorities. On the other hand, if the submission had not been accepted, it would have created in them a real fear that they would suffer from the released offender.

The Liberal Party has been setting the pace in terms of the need to provide real services and support for victims. It has been doing that in opposition, and it has built on the record that it established when it was in government, when the reforms of 1996 put an emphasis on speed of response and access to services and support, on knowing what was available and on having it available quickly right from the time when a crime occurred.

That is a clear distinction from what is now being experienced, with growing delays and a lack of information in the system. As I said, the Labor Party has been very slow in picking up on changes to improve the situation for victims. Indeed in Labor’s election policy last year it made two commitments. The first was to make the increases that are now reflected in this bill. The second is:

Labor will also ensure that a judge sentencing an offender must consider compensating the victim of the crime as part of the sentencing process, removing the need for victims or the DPP to apply for compensation.
You can see that that is almost a complete lift from the Liberal Party policy that was released far earlier than the Labor Party’s — indeed months before the 2006 election — and of course we are still waiting to see exactly what the re-elected Labor government is going to do to implement the second of its two promises to victims.

I turn now to the reality of what is going on in terms of crime and victims and the assistance they receive. It hardly needs me to make the point that levels of violent crime and the number of violent crime offences in Victoria have been rising steadily under the Bracks government.

If you look at the police statistics on actual and provisional crime figures from 1999-2000 through to 2005-06, you will see that in 1999-2000 the total number of crimes against the person — being homicide, rape, non-rape sexual offences, robbery, assault, and abduction or kidnap — was 31 372. That figure has risen steadily during the term of the Bracks government, and in 2005-06 it stood at 40 421 offences. Of course these are not just statistics, they are individual cases — 40 421 individual cases — where a Victorian or a visitor to this state has been subjected to a violent crime against their person.

In my electorate of Box Hill, in 2005-06 the city of Whitehorse had an increase of 25.8 per cent in the number of assaults, a 23.6 per cent increase in the number of robberies, and total violent crime was up by 28.2 per cent; the city of Boroondara had a 16.7 per cent increase in the number of robberies and a 16.5 per cent increase in the number of assaults. This is a problem right across the state and affects all sorts of municipalities.

Of course rising crime levels mean an increasing number of victims and an increasing need to respond to and provide assistance to those victims.

We are also seeing increasing delays in our court system, which is putting further pressure on victims in terms of the likelihood that they may need to appear as witnesses, the suspense, uncertainty and anxiety that that creates, and the delay in seeing a resolution of legal proceedings relating to the offence committed against them. I have previously raised in this house the instance of a workplace death that has been drawn to my attention in which the prosecution took almost three and a half years to reach the point where the trial was to commence; but as there are insufficient judges available, the case has been adjourned for a further year. That has meant the family of the deceased worker and indeed the accused co-workers who are contesting the prosecution have all been left with dreadful uncertainty and a lack of resolution of the issue.

In the context of rising crime and delays in prosecution we are seeing increasing pressure on the support services that are available to victims, which is affecting the extent to which the system is able to respond to their needs. I refer to page 88 of the 2005-06 annual report of the Department of Justice, which sets out the targets and actual levels of victim support services provided. There were something like 45 000 calls received for assistance; however, there were 4600 instances of counselling provided and a further 5200 instances where the victims assistance program provided what is referred to as casework or practical assistance.

Just looking at those bare numbers we see that the number of counselling services and the assistance provided by the victims assistance program have fallen far short of the total number of victims of crimes against the person in Victoria, which, as I mentioned earlier, stood at 40 421 in 2005-06.

That indicates a very large number of people are not receiving help from this service. The number of calls for assistance received by the service approximates and indeed exceeds the number of reported crimes, but the amount of counselling and other assistance actually provided falls very far short of that number indeed.

One of the reasons for that may well be the delays in providing assistance. It has been said to me that it can take many weeks or even months for someone to be able to see a counsellor, even in the case of a very serious crime. One instance that was pointed out to me was where the family member of a murder victim had to wait three months to see what was described as an impact worker in order to receive some counselling service. If you are a family member of someone who has been murdered, having to wait three months to receive counselling is of minimal assistance, and indeed it may well be counterproductive.

On top of that, very serious concerns are being raised with me about the adequacy of the service provided by the victims assistance and counselling program. That is not to say that there is not goodwill on the part of the people operating that program, but it has been put to me that in many instances they are lacking either the qualifications or the experience needed in order to properly provide assistance to victims who are referred to them.

It is worth making the point that the victims assistance and counselling program is, as I understand it, virtually the sole program to which victims are referred when they contact the Victims Support Agency, which is operated by the Department of Justice. It has also been put to me that the victims assistance and counselling program is not properly geared up to provide effective and accurate legal advice to the victims who are referred to it, with the result that claims are not being properly prepared and presented. It has also been suggested that the program is providing poor counselling service and that it is failing to refer victims for appropriate psychological counselling or psychiatric assistance when it is needed, with the result that people are not being referred to a qualified practitioner until a long time has passed, with the result that their problems have become far worse and it is far more difficult to assist them when they are eventually referred.

I am aware of at least one instance where a victim has been undergoing two simultaneous courses of assistance — that is, counselling through the victims assistance and counselling program and separate counselling that has been financed by the tribunal, the service being provided by a qualified psychologist or psychiatrist. This duplication of assistance is a waste of taxpayers money and a failure in the delivery of services to provide victims with the speedy response they need.

That is the reality of what is going on at the moment as far as help for victims is concerned. The Labor Party has been full of fine phrases, grand rhetoric and big promises, but the reality, as in so many other areas, has been a failure to deliver. It has been the Liberal Party that has been setting the pace, identifying the real needs of victims, implementing substantial reforms when in government and identifying and putting forward policy proposals for substantial reforms when in opposition.

Even the government has recognised and taken up a small number of those reforms.

As I said at the outset, this bill makes modest increases in monetary terms to a component of the legislation, which is itself a very modest component of the regime that was primarily introduced under the previous Liberal government. The opposition supports the bill as far as it goes to provide at least a small improvement for victims, but the real issues lie elsewhere. Victims have many other crying needs that the Bracks government has failed to act on.

Middleborough Road grade separation footbridge needed

Hansard: 13 March 2007 ASSEMBLY

Middleborough Road, Box Hill: pedestrian footbridge

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — I raise with the Minister for Roads and Ports the Middleborough Road grade separation project. I ask the minister to take action to restore pedestrian access in the area by constructing a pedestrian footbridge across the railway line to Box Hill Cemetery and restoring a path along the north side of the railway line between Sagoe Lane and Middleborough Road. This is an issue that has been left with the new minister by the previous transport minister. It is due to the last-minute rush by the Bracks government to try to get moving on a promise it made in the 2002 election campaign to construct this grade separation project, but it failed to take any action until mid-2006; and because of the rush there was no public consultation and no opportunity for public input on the design, leaving a number of serious and ongoing problems.

There has long been pedestrian access across the railway line via a footpath that runs from Sagoe Lane on the north of the railway line to Box Hill cemetery on the south. This pedestrian access is important because there is a lack of car parking near the cemetery. Many people, particularly elderly people, who want to visit loved ones at the cemetery park their cars in Sagoe Lane or alongside Whitehorse Reserve, from where they used to walk across the railway line to the cemetery. Now the line has been lowered about 5 metres by a cutting that has cut off that access. A petition with many signatures was taken up on behalf of cemetery visitors, and copies were provided to the minister, to the Whitehorse council and to me.

I first raised this issue with the previous minister in July last year. The minister’s chief of staff replied in September, saying that the railway line would be lowered by 5 metres, that therefore an overpass could not be provided, that instead there would be a new access point at the north-east corner of the cemetery, that parking would be unaffected and that pedestrians could walk to the new access point. Now we see that you could virtually lay a plank across the cutting as it exists and that the reasons previously given for not being able to construct this overpass are unsubstantiated.

The government’s tune has now changed, with the new minister’s chief of staff replying in January by saying that there is now an 8-metre clearance required from the top of the walkway to the top of the railway lines and raising various other objections relating to land acquisition, design, tree loss and cost. Most of these objections seem to be spurious. You can just look at the site to see that it is perfectly feasible to create a footbridge across it.

To add insult to injury, when the government promised the alternative access point, it needed a path along the north side of the railway line, which VicRoads is now refusing to commit to restoring, meaning that the people who parked there previously will have to walk the long way around via Whitehorse Road and the Box Hill High School to reach the promised access point. In both respects the community has been badly let down. These are problems caused by the previous minister. I ask the new minister not to rely just on departmental or VicRoads advice but to look at the issue for himself.

National Generators Forum emissions study

Hansard: 28 February 2007 ASSEMBLY

Climate change: emission levels

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — I congratulate the National Generators Forum and CRA International on their recent publication of the document Analysis of Greenhouse Gas Policies for the Australian Electricity Sector. This study does some of the hard work necessary to assess what is required to achieve a large reduction in the level of greenhouse gases emitted by the Australian electricity industry. This willingness to do the hard work and to publish a thorough and detailed report is in stark contrast to the Bracks government, which is more interested in posturing and political stunts than in actually taking effective action on emission levels, despite emission controls being a state government responsibility.

The National Generators Forum has modelled a wide range of possible emission reductions from the electricity sector, including achieving a level of 96 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum by 2050, which is less than half of the approximately 210 million tonnes expected to be produced in 2010 and an 80 per cent reduction in the projected level of unconstrained 2050 emissions. Based on the assumptions made, the study concludes that a 96 million tonne emission level by 2050 could be achieved optimally at a resource cost 23 per cent higher than with unconstrained emissions, or 30 per cent higher without nuclear energy, and that similar emission levels could be achieved by 2050 with a CO2 price of $40 a tonne.

The study also found that policies that tried to impose particular technological solutions incurred incremental costs up to four times higher than achieving the same level of CO2 reduction without restricting technology choice.

The findings of the study are heavily dependent on its assumptions, especially that successful carbon capture and storage technology can be developed and deployed.