Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (11:03): I rise today to support the Emergency Powers Safeguards Legislation Amendment Bill 2021 moved by Mr Quilty. Victoria’s parliamentary democracy is underpinned by timeless principles, including the consent of the people through their representatives, scrutiny of executive government decisions, trust and ministerial accountability and responsibility. This bill enshrines all of those principles, and to oppose it is to oppose the very system which we serve. The first victim of democracy in a dictatorship is government abrogating responsibility and accountability.

It has now been 450 days since the first state of emergency was declared on 16 March last year by then Minister Mikakos. Over the past year we have seen extraordinary use of government power enabled by the state-of-emergency and state-of-disaster declarations. We have seen government trample over lives, livelihoods and liberties. Now, whether you think that these actions were justified or not, if you believe in the importance of the Parliament over unfettered executive governance, then you must support this legislation.

Clauses 3 and 5 of this bill will introduce the necessary parliamentary scrutiny of these declarations. The bill is aptly titled as a safeguard. That is exactly what this legislation serves to do: act as a safeguard, as Parliament is designed to be, against government overreach and action without the consent of the people. There are a number of important safeguards included in this bill. First is the increased threshold for state-of-emergency and state-of-disaster declarations to pertain only to circumstances in which extraordinary action is necessary to eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health.

This is a logical threshold to have for such extreme powers, and rightly acknowledges that the actions authorised by them are extraordinary. Second, the requirement of parliamentary consent through both houses as soon as practicable for the continuation of these declarations is appropriate. To oppose this requirement is to suggest that the many diverse voices in this chamber and the constituents groups who they represent ought to have no say on the use of these extreme powers. Third, there are penalties for ministers who knowingly or recklessly make invalid state-of-emergency or state-of-disaster declarations. Why shouldn’t those holding public office be held accountable for their actions? If ministers break the law, they should be liable, just as citizens are when they break the law. My colleague Mr Limbrick has demonstrated the examples of citizens who have broken the law and have been arrested for breaking the law in this pandemic. There is no serious argument against this provision. In essence it is nearly identical to the tort of misfeasance in public office, which has been part of common law for over 300 years. Those who suggest that this provision is inappropriate have seemingly never raised their concerns over this tort.

An important purpose of this bill is to restore the trust of the Victorian people in this Parliament and indeed in the democratic process of this state. It is about ensuring that this government or any that follows it can never again ride roughshod over the principle of accountability to Parliament as the representatives of the people. Throughout this pandemic we have seen, time and again, the disdain that this government has for accountability of any form. The cancellation and truncation of parliamentary sessions is the most obvious example. Sittings are already pathetically rare, but the last year has been deplorable. But it is not just that. The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) has been sidelined, cabinet government suspended. Instead we have had a Premier and his gang of eight, and look where that has got us. Even the concession to scrutiny by this government highlighted their pseudo-despotic tendencies. The neutered Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) COVID scrutiny inquiry, chaired by a Labor member, is an insult. In parliaments across Australia and the world, governments have acknowledged that scrutiny committees cannot be chaired by government members. But here? No. We have the government in control of everything. All of this matters because our system is based so fundamentally on trust. Yes, we have legislation, standing orders and procedures, but a significant amount depends on precedent.

The public are not fools. When they see the Premier cutting parliamentary sittings, refusing to answer legitimate questions from the opposition, introducing legislation with no time for scrutiny, refusing to release scientific evidence relied upon for lockdowns, ignoring SARC and neutering PAEC, how do we expect them to react? They become distrustful. Some of them go too far, of course, but those that decry the anti-vaxxer movement, the fringes of the anti-lockdown groups and the generalised mistrust of authority must realise that it stems directly from government, and this Premier in particular, acting in the way we have seen this last year.

It is a controlling mentality which we have seen outside the Parliament too. Every time ministers fail to release advice, to explain the curfew or the 5-kilometre radius, mistrust rises. But it is so much worse when we see the over-hyped sensationalism which has been used to justify the extraordinary degradation of civil liberties in our state. Even in the last few weeks we have heard about this ‘absolute beast’ of a viral strain. The Acting Premier doubled down, saying, ‘We’ve got to run this to the ground because if we don’t, people will die’. We have heard overstatements of transmissibility and scare stories about how much quicker symptoms develop, despite the consensus from epidemiologists and infectious disease experts that they can see no basis for them. What they, including infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon, can see is the use of language that is ‘inducing a level of fear that is not warranted’. The government are treating the Victorian public like children, trying to scare us to hide their own mistakes on hotel quarantine, on the efficiency of testing centres, on contact tracing. It is painfully transparent. People simply will not be taken for fools. They understand the story of the boy who cried wolf.

All of this matters because trust really matters when we talk about emergency powers. We all understand that there are limits on how quickly parliamentary government can operate and that in some circumstances it is essential for the executive to make decisions without reference to the legislature, hence the existence of state-of-emergency and state-of-disaster legislation which enables, to put it crudely, the suspension of democracy. Governments have this power and have always had this power, and we simply have to trust them. It is part of the democratic contract which exists between citizen and government, and abusing it is catastrophic for the health of our constitution.

I personally regret that this bill is necessary, but I cannot ignore the evidence of my eyes. This government cannot be trusted, and sadly we must therefore legislate to prevent any repetition of the incredibly arrogant, cavalier and ultimately damaging behaviour we have seen in the last 15 months. Frankly, the arguments against this legislation I have heard during this debate have been ludicrous. Members of the government have argued that we need mechanisms in place to allow the implementation of lockdowns to respond to COVID-19 and no doubt other future pandemics or health risks. This bill does not prohibit or prevent such measures. All this legislation does is require the consent of Parliament. If you oppose this bill on that basis, you believe that these measures are necessary but the people should get no say in their implementation. You believe that you know better than Victorians, that you know what is best for them and that they are ignorant and clueless. I do not subscribe to this condescending, big-government, appalling viewpoint. I believe that the people of this state do know what is best for them and their communities. I believe that individuals should be able to contact their parliamentary representatives and persuade them to vote in accordance with their beliefs.

The Labor government has said that emergency powers will be needed after December. I do not subscribe to that view either. We must vaccinate the population of this country and then return to normality. We cannot live under the heavy hand of government forever. I support this legislation and the crucial safeguards that it places on emergency powers, and I implore all those on the crossbench to support it too.