Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:18): I rise to speak on the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020 and to express my complete opposition to this appalling legislation. But I want to thank the thousands of Victorians who have written to me about this bill. I do not recall any abusive language actually, so I do not know who wrote to other people. I have written back to the 11 000 who wrote in the 72 hours they had to provide a submission to the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee when we managed to get it on the website that they could make a contribution. However, I am appalled that their contributions were not able to be seen by members of SARC until half past 10 yesterday morning when we had to put a minority report in by 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon, so we could not access all of their contributions—and they wanted the public to know what they had written as well. This was a complete disgrace, I think, on the part of SARC, and I am ashamed almost to be on that committee.

Regional Victoria now has six active coronavirus cases, and metropolitan Melbourne has 140. You would think that under these circumstances the government, which has wielded historically unparalleled power and control over Victorians lives, would be now willing to relinquish that power and control. Instead this government thinks the priority should be to amass more power instead of less. This Premier and his government—I do not know whether they are all on board with what he is doing—have abused these extraordinary powers that they have been granted, and I for one do not think they should be given more power. In fact the Premier’s powers should be well and truly lessened.

This government, and particularly this Premier, have been given unprecedented powers—not only in this country but unprecedented in the world. While I am glad to see that Minister Symes will be circulating amendments which remove substantial subclauses of the bill, it is my strong view that the legislation should be rejected in its entirety. The government’s intentions were to allow authorised officers to detain Victorians on the mere suspicion that they were likely to breach health directions. If they had had their way, authorised officers would have been able to detain Victorians for suspected thought crimes—not just police officers but anyone that the chief health officer saw fit, and not for crimes, not even for ill speech or ill thoughts, which would be reprehensible enough, but for suspected ill thoughts. Fortunately enough pressure has been exerted, and that horror aspect of the legislation has been removed. But still this legislation tramples over the rights and liberties of all Victorians.

As for the Attorney-General’s statement of compatibility with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, we should be taking her and her officers’ supposed legal expertise with a grain of salt. The advice they are providing or receiving on legislation is predicated on partisan politics and the desires of this socialist Labor government.

Already we have seen several class actions mounted against the government for its restrictions on life and liberty. This week it was announced that prominent hospitality figure Julian Gerner will mount a High Court challenge to the legality of the 5-kilometre rule and essential worker permits, based on their clear disproportionality and infringement on the implied constitutional right of freedom of movement. Mr Gerner said:

This is not what we signed up for and is inconsistent with a free society, representative democratic government and civilised living …

Aggressive and heavy-handed enforcement of these restrictions has also alarmed most fair-minded people.

The Attorney-General has disgraced herself by tabling the statement of compatibility in the other place, contending that:

In my opinion, the Bill, as introduced to the Legislative Assembly, is compatible with human rights as set out in the Charter.

Does the Attorney-General consider herself as having greater legal expertise than the 12 senior barristers that my colleague Mr O’Donohue has referred to, who wrote a submission to the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee in the 72 hours that they were allowed, even though they were not part of the hand-picked group of five that were asked by SARC to make a contribution? Those people, like Ross Gillies, QC; the Honourable Dr Chris Jessup, QC; Jack Rush, QC; David Shavin, QC; Pat Tehan, QC; Chris Blanden, QC; Peter Chadwick, QC; Gavin Silbert, QC; Áine Magee, QC; Paul Hayes, QC; Michael Gronow, QC; and Matthew Harvey, SC, wrote to SARC and stated that the bill:

(a) is incompatible with the human rights set out in the Charter;

(b) unduly trespasses upon rights and freedoms of Victorians (and visitors to Victoria); and

(c) makes rights, freedoms or obligations dependent on insufficiently defined administrative powers.

Even with the amendments that Minister Symes is circulating, the bill is comprised of concerning provisions that will not make Victorians’ lives better or return them to normality. And I do not want to see anybody in this house come into this chamber and argue for the downtrodden, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, about their rights and freedoms and liberties, because by voting for this legislation they are expunging the rights and freedoms of those people in particular and it would be hypocritical of them to argue otherwise.

Police officers and PSOs will have the power to enter premises without a search warrant conferred upon them, which were previously only available under the state-of-disaster powers. This is of significant concern not only due to the longstanding Western tradition of requiring police to obtain a warrant to enter private premises but also because the shifting of powers from the state-of-disaster powers into the state-of-emergency powers indicates that the Premier has no intention of limiting unprecedented police powers as the risk to public health subsides. As I previously stated, the risk to public health is alleviating. The government should be relinquishing its powers, not obtaining more.

WorkSafe Victoria inspectors will be allowed to exercise numerous public health risk powers in the act, more than police officers. They will be able to:

direct any other person to take any other action that the authorised officer considers is necessary to eliminate or reduce the risk to public health …

under section 190. Not even the police have this power. Why is this government so determined to confer such extraordinary powers on WorkSafe inspectors, whose primary responsibility is to enforce OH&S laws in workplaces? They already have innumerable powers. Is it because under the circumstances anyone’s home will be considered a workplace if they are working from it, enabling inspectors to enter people’s homes without a warrant and enforce the arbitrary dicta of this government?

Similar powers, as others have mentioned, will be conferred on a litany of other public servants such as health service providers and public sector employees from interstate. These powers are extremely concerning to many Victorians, and in their thousands they have tried to communicate with us. Somebody just emailed me today in response to my letter to the 11 500 or whatever it was, saying that they can never get an answer from members of the government when they write to them about their concerns, and they feel threatened. They are worried for their family and their children’s future and about the fact that they have got a job which they might not have for much longer, but nobody seems to care—from the government.

This government has instilled fear in the people they are supposed to represent and serve. Everybody has done the right thing. We have worked assiduously to ensure that we sneeze into our elbows, we sanitise our hands and we keep social distancing. Very few have not complied with what we are meant to do, and we did it in the beginning so that we could ensure that the hospital system could cope. Well, all those tens of thousands of people we were assured were going to flood the hospitals of course never eventuated, and if after seven months we have not got enough hospital beds or ventilators or PPE then that is an indictment on this government and those responsible for ensuring that the health system can adequately cope with any crisis. And it is appalling that health workers themselves are the ones most affected these days with the virus. If you cannot keep health workers and even patients in hospital free of this virus, then you ought to admit failure and people should resign and should have their jobs taken away from them because they are clearly incompetent. Mind you, health facilities in rural and regional Victoria have coped very well. It does seem to be a problem for Melbourne.

I would like to refer to a constituent in Melton, Sharyn Mctaggart, who wrote to me and said:

I’m extremely fearful for the outcomes … should this bill pass, as we the people have nowhere to run to. I can’t protect my child from our Government, I can’t leave the state, I can’t even leave my area and the Government is expecting the people to trust they won’t abuse these powers when their track record speaks volumes.

I concur with Ms Mctaggart. The government’s track record provides Victorians with no confidence that these extraordinary powers will not be abused. The government can say all they like about how these powers are necessary to fight the pandemic and keep people safe, but when Victorians see pregnant mothers arrested in their homes for Facebook posts and people brutally tackled to the ground by police on Melbourne’s foreshores for protesting, while a blind eye is turned to Black Lives Matter protests, they have absolutely no reason to believe them. Another constituent wrote to me, from Belmont:

I am terrified of what it will mean to the people of Victoria if this bill passes. I am terrified for the state of being for mothers, children and our partners. I am terrified for the elderly left to die alone. I am heartbroken for those that need their support system, like myself, because they have nobody else. We are alone, we are not okay and we need your vote—your vote to support your constituents—Not this dictatorship. Not Dan Andrews. Not for this bill to pass.

This government has terrified its own citizens. Another constituent, from East Geelong, wrote:

I’m a single woman and a small business owner in Geelong. The stress, anxiety, and loneliness of this never ending cycle of restrictions has taken a huge toll on my welfare. We are in a position here in regional Victoria where our numbers are so low, that it makes no sense for us to be under such barbaric measures.

Ms Reynolds is quite right. There are more active cases in New South Wales where the state is open and the people are free, but on this side of the Murray River the authoritarian Labor government in this state want to legislate more powers for their political foot soldiers rather than winding their powers back. The important provisions of the bill that do not relate to expanding emergency powers should be stripped out of it, as Ms Maxwell said, rather than disingenuously forcing members who oppose the government’s authoritarianism to vote against them. No member can vote for this bill with a clear conscience. I certainly cannot. The opposition cannot here on this side of the house. I think it is appalling. We should all vote against this bill, and I am sorry that those on the opposite side are going to support it.

Sitting suspended 6.34 pm until 7.39 pm.