Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Motion 1142 by Ms Payne
13 November 2025
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):
I rise to speak on the motion moved by my colleague Ms Payne. As the motion notes, this government has an aversion to supporting private members bills. In the last 20-odd years non-government members have introduced over 200 private members bills into the Victorian Parliament, and the government has supported exactly none.
They are not averse, however, to opportunistically cannibalising private members bills when they see a good idea. They are happy enough to repackage and regurgitate other members’ work. Indeed, may I go so far as to say that, given the government’s new direction in waste management and the number of waste-to-energy incinerators they have approved, recycling private members bills might be the only recycling this government does.
Unfortunately, it is the type of recycling that results in more, not less, waste, as it wastes the Parliament’s time and it wastes the Parliament’s resources. Victoria, as all speakers have noted, is the only jurisdiction that has an ironclad rule. Every other jurisdiction has passed private members bills except this one. In that same 20-odd years during which the Victorian government disdained to support any non-government members bills, New South Wales passed 35 private members bills, including the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019, which removed abortion from the Crimes Act 1900, and the Modern Slavery Bill 2018 to combat modern slavery and human trafficking.
Ms Payne spoke of some of the bills introduced into Victoria by non-government members that were then adopted as government policy and introduced as government bills – which, of course, entailed all the drafting, the printing and the circulation of substantially the same bill. Does the Parliament really have the resources and the time to waste on such an exercise?
In that context, I think it is worth noting, in terms of potholes in the road to democracy and in terms of the roadblocks that we face, that we have a situation now where, if we want to put up one of those private members bills, we are being told that the earliest the OCPC, the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, can respond to that request is February of next year. If I may paraphrase an old saying, democracy that is delayed is democracy that is spoilt, and that is what we are facing at the moment.
Aside from undermining democratic parliamentary processes and preventing non-government members – who are, after all, representatives of their communities – from fulfilling their duties, it is staggeringly arrogant of any government to dismiss legislation simply because they did not think of it first. Wouldn’t it be so much more effective and efficient to support a bill and, if need be, move amendments to it? That is what the rest of us do.
Why would you dismiss good ideas out of hand? It seems needlessly defensive to me. We are all here, after all, to get the best outcomes for the people who elected us. If members are passionate about a policy and do the necessary research, engagement and drafting to get a bill to Parliament, they deserve the consideration of the government. Imagine the range of legislation we could pass in this place – laws that would benefit our communities. Because that is why we are all here – to improve the lives of Victorians.
The government needs to get over this frankly absurd and arrogant stance of ‘we do not support private members bills’. That is so black and white and so wrapped in hubris that it is depressing, to put it bluntly. It is outdated and it does not serve the best interests of the people of Victoria. They deserve better from this government.
[Motion passed without dissent]
