Hansard debates

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (10:04): As the 60th Parliament draws to a close, I want to reflect on what has been an extraordinary privilege representing the community I love as the member for Prahran. When I was elected in February last year I became the first Liberal elected to Prahran since 2010, only the second woman to represent the seat in its long history and the first Victorian parliamentarian of Thai heritage. I came to this place determined to give a strong voice and to focus on the issues that matter to our community, and since then I have fought for safer streets and stations, supported our traders and small businesses, advocated for residents in public and social housing, stood up for sensible planning and worked to protect the institutions that make Prahran special.

I am proud that we have now committed to protect Prahran market, advocate for clubrooms for Orrong Romanis Reserve, fund the St Kilda Primary School community hall, deliver more police and protective services officers and help make our community even safer. But there is more to come. We will see Chapel Street revitalised, remove the overlay on Punt Road, improve roads and transport in our area and better support our most vulnerable residents. We will not tear down the over-55s public housing if it is not needed.

I hope to return to this place in the 61st Parliament as part of the government that is led by Jess Wilson, with the opportunity to turn those plans into reality. I thank the people of Prahran for placing their trust in me. I thank my electorate staff for their extraordinary work: my first office manager Peter Katsambanis, who we miss; Matt Hobbs; Jo Graham; Ben Greenwood; Danah Akritidis; Susanna Louie, Edward Bourke, Max Boden and Miles Pappas.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (14:36): (1842) My constituency question is to the Minister for Environment. Why is the Carroll Labor government forcing Stonington ratepayers to pay for the rollout of a mandatory fourth glass recycling bin by 1 July 2027? The City of Stonington has joined councils across Victoria in raising concerns about Labor’s mandatory purple bin roll out and the additional costs it is going to impose, despite continuing uncertainty about the final requirements that they will be expected to meet. Councillors have also questioned whether expanding Victoria’s container deposit scheme and other alternatives could deliver comparable environmental benefits at a substantially lower cost. The Liberals and Nationals have committed to scrapping Labor’s mandatory fourth bin. Like many local families, my husband Simon, my children Scarlet, Fletcher and Jasmine are committed to being environmentally responsible, but household budgets already are under pressure. We all deserve to know why we should be forced to pay for another bin.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (14:36): (1816) My constituency question is for the Minister for Housing, Building and Precincts. How much is being spent to accommodate 30 public housing residents at the 5-star Kinson hotel on St Kilda Road? I understand that approximately 30 rooms at the Kinson are being subleased for short-term accommodation for housing tenants. Local residents have raised serious concerns with me about ongoing antisocial and threatening behaviour associated with some of these individuals staying at the hotel, and the owners corporation have confirmed that since February of this year there have been 31 breach notices issued in relation to noise disturbances, threats, intimidating behaviour, damage to common property, rubbish dumping and illicit activity. Locals allege that an Uber driver had a knife pulled on him and that an individual reportedly on bail returned to the hotel with a machete and threatened staff. Just yesterday another person wrote to me saying that their luggage was stolen from across the road, and despite repeated reports to police that their AirTag showed the luggage to be in the hotel, it still has not been retrieved. Locals are afraid to walk on that side of the street.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (12:59): I rise with great sadness to reflect on the passing of my dear friend, local Prahran resident and political icon Peter Katsambanis at age 60. He leaves behind his beautiful wife Karalee and five wonderful children and his mum, their yiayia. My family and I were so grateful to have known Peter for many years on many levels: as a 20-year colleague on and off in Commonwealth tribunals, through our extensive family ties with our children attending school together and through a love of the Liberal Party. My leader Jess Wilson, along with former Labor ministers, provided respectful commentary, demonstrating a bipartisan tribute to this great Greek Australian.

Peter was a fierce political fighter, an advocate for Hellenism, a wonderful husband and father and – his only vice – a one-eyed Collingwood supporter. He was and always will be quintessentially Prahran. Schooled at Windsor Primary, Prahran High, then Melbourne High, he had a sharp intellect and a degree in commerce and law from Melbourne Uni. He was one of only two people ever elected to two Australian state parliaments.

He became my inaugural chief of staff, setting both me and my office up before tackling his health issues. He was my friend, my confidant, who encouraged me to run for Prahran. He and his family helped me win the seat at the 2025 by-election. I am grateful to Karalee and his children for affording me the chance on his last day to say, ‘Thank you. I love you, and I am so grateful for everything.’ He said back to me, ‘I love you. Just win.’ Prahran was part of his world.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (14:44): (1784) My constituency question is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. Each school day hundreds of children from Wesley College Junior School cross Punt Road at Union Street. I met the head of the junior school and parents onsite recently. Punt Road is the council boundary. Port Phillip City Council funds a crossing supervisor on the western side; Stonnington has none on the eastern side. The pedestrian phase is too short for children to cross in one signal. The eastern crossing sits on an angle, so drivers turning right out of Union Street cannot see pedestrians, especially children, until they are already turning, and there is no school crossing sign and no variable 40-kilometre-an-hour zone, unlike the one on Dandenong Road outside St Mary’s. The question I ask is: what is the government doing to improve pedestrian safety at this intersection for parents and for children?

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (13:14): Recently I joined residents of the Horace Petty estate in South Yarra, my very special public housing estate, to host a barbecue. I would like to make a special mention to Ana Rufatt-Ruiz, a long-term resident of my estate and tenant representative, who assisted me in putting this barbecue on. We had a community room full of my local constituents. Across the Prahran electorate we have seven public housing towers, but they are now all slated for retirement or redevelopment. I have got 1 Surrey Road, 2 Simmons Street, 259 Malvern Road in South Yarra, 25 and 27 King Street, 150 Inkerman Street in St Kilda and 49 Union Street. But for many of the residents that are living here, particularly those that are over the age of 55, the prospect of moving is deeply distressing. Many of these people are vulnerable. They are really happy in their homes and they simply do not want to move. They do not want to move, and they have not been given transparency from this government to explain to them the reasons why, their right to return or where they will go in the interim. I have worked with these communities. These are my communities and I absolutely adore them. I will stand by them. I am absolutely appalled by the fact that Labor and the Greens say they represent the most vulnerable in the community. My community is hurting. They need a voice and they need to have people listen to them. They do not want to move, and I will back them.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (15:10): To refer to what the member for Albert Park was talking about in regard to apartments, people over on this side love apartments – no issues whatsoever. We love living in apartments – I live in a townhouse now – and living in the city it is really important. But what we are speaking today about is the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Stronger Communities) Bill 2026. Let me begin where there is common ground. Local government is the tier that is absolutely closest to the people that we serve. It collects the bins, it maintains the parks and it runs the libraries and the maternal and child health services that families in Prahran, in Windsor, in South Yarra, in St Kilda East and in parts of Southbank that I look after rely upon every single day. When integrity fails in local government, public confidence in every level of government is damaged. The Liberals and Nationals do not come to this debate opposed to reform. In fact we absolutely embrace reform. We support proportionate measures that strengthen integrity, transparency and good governance, and we accept that Operation Sandon and the Whittlesea commission of inquiry identified real failings that require a legislative response. Some of what is in this bill is sensible, and frankly it is overdue, but that is not the whole of this bill and that is why we cannot support the bill in its current form.

I want to deal first with the amendments circulated by the government overnight, because they absolutely matter. They do two things. They ensure a councillor who has been stood down is not disqualified from office simply because the standdown kept them from meetings for four consecutive months. More significantly, they remove private prosecutions as a standdown trigger retrospectively so that a councillor stood down because of a vexatious private charge is taken not to have been stood down and is entitled to the allowance withheld from them. The opposition support those amendments, and we welcome them because they are almost word for word the position we have been putting to this government for weeks. We said the prospective operation of this provision was a drafting flaw and that there is no statutory or common-law barrier to Parliament applying it retrospectively to the start of the current council term. The presumption against retrospectivity is a rule of interpretation, not a constitutional limitation. We were told it could not be done. Now it has been done overnight, and I am pleased, but it does rather illustrate that this bill has come to the house before it was ready – no surprise when it comes to my colleagues on the other side.

Hepburn shire was not a hypothetical problem. Five of its seven councillors were stood down on private charges. The council could not function, and the minister was preparing to appoint an administrator. The Director of Public Prosecutions struck those charges out on 5 August but the loophole survived. The same tactics have reportedly been threatened at Latrobe City Council and the Rural City of Ararat. Until this bill passes a person can be removed from an office they are elected to hold by anybody that is willing to file a charge.

That brings me to the heart of our objection. The bill establishes a local government fair jobs code and a fair jobs code regulator. It does not tell this house what the code says. It cannot, because the code has not been written. Members are being asked to legislate a compliance regime, an annual assessment obligation and a public naming power and to take the regulations entirely on trust. We know three things about this code. It received $5.4 million in the 2026–27 budget, without notice to the sector beyond the Australian Services Union. The minister’s own evidence to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee suggested the sector had not been consulted and the code was yet to be developed. Days later the ASU stated publicly that the code would target outsourcing, labour hire and casualisation. That is not a governance reform, that is an industrial relations intervention designed elsewhere and delivered through a bill about council integrity.

The evidence base does not support it. Municipal Association of Victoria survey data across 54 ‍councils shows permanent ongoing staff average 75 per cent of the workforce, and 92 per cent of councils exceed national benchmarks for long-serving employees. Commonwealth Fair Work protections already cover job security and casual employment arrangements, and the people who will pay are the ratepayers. That is you and I. That is the people of Prahran. If contracted services in waste collection, leisure centres and maintenance are forced back in-house and costs rise, under rate capping, when costs rise and revenue does not, services will be cut. Regional and rural councils already carrying the sharpest workforce pressures will feel it first and worst, and the small family businesses holding those contracts may simply lose their work. Meanwhile the person carrying personal responsibility for compliance is the council CEO, who cannot delegate it and who cannot be publicly named for failing a standard that has not yet been written. The fair jobs code is the most egregious example. It is not the only one. The mandatory model governance rules were developed under non-disclosure agreements and have not been released to the sector or the public at this point in time. One set of rules is to apply to 79 councils, from the City of Melbourne to Buloke shire.

The CEO employment framework is the same story. Greater consistency is broadly supported, but the technical working group has not yet been formed. On conflict of interest, a CEO must report on apparent councillor breaches to the chief municipal inspector, with no requirement to investigate first and no guidance on vexatious reports. That places a matter of political judgement on the administrator and blurs the very lines this bill is trying to sharpen. And ‘council’s premises’ is not defined – not here and not in the principal act – so a council candidate on leave could be caught by an offence carrying 120 penalty units for taking their child to a council library.

The candidate leave provisions go directly to my electorate. The principle is sound – once a person is formally nominated for Parliament, they should not simultaneously exercise public office, draw the allowance that comes with it and campaign for another job. The minister has described that separation as essential and as longstanding best practice. I absolutely agree with him. What I cannot reconcile is why a safeguard the minister calls essential does not apply to the very next election, at which it could absolutely operate. These provisions apply only when election day falls on or after 1 January 2027, that is, after the next state election. In Prahran the Labor candidate is Meghan Hopper, presently the Como ward councillor at the City of Stonnington. Labor has promoted her in both capacities, and she is serving as a councillor and a candidate for Parliament at exactly the same time, which is precisely the arrangement this bill says must end. Labor have brought this forward, and yet they are not prepared to do it until after the election.

This makes no criticism of Meghan Hopper personally. That is from me. I do not criticise her personally. She is doing nothing the law prohibits. That is exactly my point. The government has written the rule, declared it essential and then set a commencement date so that it does not bind the government’s own candidates at an election in front of us. It has left the people of Prahran in an absolutely precarious position. Here we have a local Labor councillor in Stonnington City Council voting on the Labor congestion levy to increase parking fees, implement a paid parking permit system in the City of Stonnington and fund the Labor government’s congestion levy. It is extraordinary – and she stays silent on inappropriate development that the Carroll government’s activity centres are having on our local area. Furthermore, where is her opposition to the unregulated tobacco shops absolutely littered along Chapel Street? That regulation is the responsibility of the Carroll Labor government, and unfortunately while you have got a Labor councillor that is currently also a Labor candidate it is hugely problematic.

We have not simply come here to criticise. The Shadow Minister for Local Government has introduced the Local Government Amendment (Stability of Councils) Bill 2026, and that bill keeps what the sector supports: the improved process for declaring the office of mayor or deputy mayor vacant, the technical corrections to the standdown framework, the continuity of arbiters and conduct panel members whose appointments expire mid-proceeding and the increased differential ratio for the City of Melbourne so it can act on derelict properties. That is a better bill, and it is before Parliament today.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (09:43): Prahran is home to people who turn ideas into enterprise. Noah Hunter Dorsey is a perfect example. Noah co-founded Future Fulfilment, a Melbourne logistics business built to solve the problems brands face in warehousing, dispatch and delivery. From modest beginnings, Future Fulfilment has expanded its network across Australia and internationally. Noah’s ambition, energy and willingness to back an idea are exactly the qualities that make our local community so successful.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (09:44): I also want to recognise Harry Sanders, founder of StudioHawk, who have their Melbourne headquarters in Prahran. Harry taught himself search engine optimisation as a teenager and founded StudioHawk at the age of 17. He has built it into a specialist SEO agency, with teams in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Harry’s story is one of resilience as well as success, and his advocacy for young people experiencing homelessness reflects his genuine commitment to people.

Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (09:44): Kate Quirke is an outstanding local business leader. As group managing director and chief executive officer of South Yarra–based Alcidion, Kate leads an Australian healthcare technology company delivering digital solutions for clinicians and hospitals across several international markets. Before joining Alcidion she led MKM Health and oversaw its successful sale to the company in 2018. Her career demonstrates the values of deep expertise, leadership and innovation, and she is inspiring.