Annual Statement of Government Intentions

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — The honourable member for Bundoora complained about opposition criticisms of the statement of government intentions, but yet by his own remarks he demonstrates some of its deficiencies. He referred to what he considered to be the situation: that a bill on which the second-reading speech was delivered yesterday, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Sex Offences Procedure) Bill, was in fact the bill referred to in the statement of government intentions as the serious sex offenders (detention and supervision) bill. The member is entitled to be confused about this, because the bill on which the second-reading speech was made yesterday, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Sex Offences Procedure) Bill, is not in fact in the statement of government intentions, albeit we are just a few weeks away from when the statement was delivered in the Parliament.

The covering message from the Deputy Premier in this glossy booklet has the disclaimers that it is not an exhaustive list and that other emerging matters may be brought before the Parliament throughout the year.

One could certainly understand new legislation coming before the house if other matters arose down the track that had not been anticipated at the time of the making of the statement of government intentions. But when you find, only a few weeks away from when the statement itself was delivered with such fanfare, that a bill such as the Justice Legislation Amendment (Sex Offences Procedure) Bill is not even included in the statement of government intentions you have to ask yourself: what worth exactly does that statement have as an indication to the Victorian community and to the Parliament as to what the government intends to do?

When we look at other aspects of the government’s disclosure in the statement, we see that there has been what can only be described as glacial progress in the Attorney-General’s portfolio in terms of some very important legislation for the community. On page 24 of the 2008 statement the Attorney-General tries to boost his credentials to demonstrate that he is doing something.

He includes legislation — namely, the Criminal Investigation Powers Bill — that it seems on closer examination will not to make it to the Parliament until 2009. The document says the bill will create:

… a stand-alone act consolidating the main criminal investigation powers into the one act.
It talks about advancements in technology and says:

A bill is likely to be introduced in 2008 or 2009.
How is that for giving a concrete indication to the community about what the government is going to do? What does that say about how far the work is advanced to date given the open-endedness of the government’s statement?

Immediately following the reference to that bill on page 24, there is reference to the proposed Criminal Offences Bill. This bill would overhaul Victoria’s major criminal legislation. There is an outline of a three-stage process. The document says:

This three-stage approach is likely to take longer than 12 months.
Again, this is not something that is scheduled for 2008.

On page 27 there is reference to the government’s proposed family violence legislation. Family violence is certainly a very important issue. It is deplorable that women and children, in particular, and a elderly people are subject to violence by other family members in a family context. Despite the claims of the Brumby government that it is going to be decisive, it is guilty of chronic delay and inaction.

The government has further delayed acting on the December 2005 recommendations of the Victorian Law Reform Commission. The Attorney-General received a report in 2005, and you would have expected him to have considered it, addressed it and put forward legislation by now, but last year he proposed issues for further community consultation. We will not see relevant legislation until an unspecified time this year.

What is particularly deplorable about this delay is that a measure that the government is picking up — namely, to allow police issued interim intervention orders to apply for up to 72 hours — was put forward by the Liberal Party back in 2003. That seemed a sensible, straightforward and relatively confined measure in terms of its implementation. It could have been put in place a long time ago.

However, not only did it take the government until last year to actually pick up on this initiative, which was put forward by the Liberal Party in 2003, but it will not introduce these safety notices until the middle of this year, and then that will only be under a trial program.

I think that is regrettably indicative of the slow and unhastened pace of the Attorney-General in regard to important law reform issues of real substance. He is very good at introducing grand gestures, but when it comes to legislation that counts or makes a positive difference to the community, tomorrow is always good enough for the Attorney-General. I am surprised that the Attorney-General has introduced no legislative measures to tackle delays in Victoria’s courts, which have blown out extensively under his government, save, I fear, for the legislation with possible adverse effects currently before the Parliament. That legislation is the subject of debate in the other place at this moment in an attempt by the opposition parties to forestall those potential adverse effects.
In relation to the industrial relations portfolio, there is no legislation foreshadowed in the government’s statement. Given the sort of legislation that the minister has brought before the house in recent times, we can probably be thankful for that, although I am surprised that there are no measures to reflect the federal Labor Party policy of uniform national industrial relations legislation. For example, there is no legislation to repeal the Equal Opportunity Amendment (Family Responsibilities) Act, which is at odds with federal government policy.

In relation to energy and resources, on page 43 the statement foreshadows legislation in relation to carbon capture and storage (CCS). From what I can see this is a mechanical and legal piece of legislation to ensure that the legal formalities of the rights, responsibilities and positions of various parties have been considered and addressed in order to allow CCS to proceed. This seems a necessary piece of legislation — although obviously I have not seen the content of it — because carbon capture and storage is vital for the future of Victoria’s brown coal resources. That has been a consistent position of this side of the house. It was also the consistent position of the previous federal government, which made a substantial contribution to the research of CCS. We certainly hope that CCS proves to be successful.

More broadly, this comes at a time when we have had the Garnaut interim report released just recently, which made a number of very significant contributions to the debate in Australia and indeed around the world, indicating that the latest projections for the rate of growth of greenhouse emissions were even higher than previously thought; re-emphasising the need for interim targets; putting forward some very constructive arguments about the per capita allocation of global emissions entitlement; making the point, which we have made previously, that the state-based renewable energy target schemes are going to need to be subsumed into a national scheme; making very complimentary and positive remarks about a number of findings of the Howard government’s task force; and providing some real food for thought for Labor governments, both state and federal, which to date have failed to actually act, despite a lot of talk on climate change.

Title ANNUAL STATEMENT OF GOVERNMENT INTENTIONS
House ASSEMBLY
Activity
Members CLARK
Date 13 March 2008