Rail: station information

 Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My local railway station is Brunswick station, where there are a whole bunch of those perspex noticeboards; there are probably five or six of about A1 size. When I went down there the other day all of the material that was on those noticeboards had been taken away, and signs had been put up saying, 'myki is coming', 'myki is here', 'This is how to use your myki card', blah, blah, blah. One of things that was taken off the boards was the train timetable. A map of the network, which I am familiar with, had also been removed.

 Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- This ain't the curiosity show, this ain't where we pull out our chemistry set and run a few little experiments on the table, and this is not where we get excited about just-over-the-horizon, gee whiz technologies! This is where we deal with political and economic reality, and what this bill represents is techno-optimism breaking out into complete techno-arrogance.

We previously had a bill for the land-based regulation of carbon capture and storage. Now we have got another one that deals with the ocean-based storage, at least for the 3 miles between the coast and where Australia's waters become the commonwealth's responsibility.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- In discussing this matter which, looked at narrowly, appears to just be a statement of one person in relation to one planning permit, it is essential to understand the whole context around the matter. The first bit of context is that the house, with the support of the Greens, previously moved a motion of no confidence in Minister Madden.

WATER: BULK ENTITLEMENTS
Mr BARBER -- The Greens will be supporting this motion at this time.

However, we remain hopeful that the government is interested in having a further discussion about the particular ways that water will be treated through and after the completion of this project and its assessment to ensure that there is a genuine net gain for the environment.

 Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is for the Minister for Environment and Climate Change. It relates to the temporary qualification of water rights for the Yarra River. When we debated a recent bill on temporary qualifications the minister gave advised us of a number of different qualifications that were in place, including those for the Yarra and Thomson rivers.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- The Greens will support these motions. I think Mr Viney, having gone a little wider than the contents of the motions, has given me licence to pick up on the issue that he has chosen to bring to debate -- that is, the powers of the Auditor-General. In my view the government has been working to nobble the Auditor-General by its continuous use of public-private partnerships to the extent that billions of dollars worth of public assets or liabilities have been moved off the balance sheet to a place where the Auditor-General is not in a position to specifically audit them.

Here I refer to the desalination plant, the EastLink freeway, the Spencer Street Station Authority, the Southern Cross Station Authority and even the Melbourne Convention Centre.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- It seems the Labor and Liberal parties again agree on something -- that the terms of this debate are simply over the mechanisms and structures and perhaps gaps in powers of various anticorruption bodies. If that is merely the debate that we are having here today -- your model of how to do it versus my model -- then I suggest there is an elephant that is not in the room.

The Greens, as Mr O'Donohue kindly noted, first raised a virtually identical motion, with an exception, on 22 August 2007.

Bushfires: prevention
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is to the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Mr Jennings. In November I asked the minister about his response to a number of fires that had been inadvertently lit in VicForests logging operations in the Murrindindi area. It seems that the fire last summer that had the most impact in terms of area and threat to humans may have been the Cann River fire. Touch wood that it will be the last one and we will not see anything like that for the remainder of the season. Can the minister confirm that that fire was ignited at a VicForests logging site and can he tell me whether they were operating at the time within the undertaking that he described in his earlier answer in November?

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I move:
That, in accordance with sessional order 21, there be tabled in the Council by 12 noon on 9 March 2010 a copy of the register of the exercise of delegated powers, discretions and functions between the Minister for Planning and departmental staff within the Department of Planning and Community Development as described at point 5, page 52, of the instrument of delegation of minister's powers, discretions and functions previously provided to the Legislative Council for each of the years 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Between representatives of the live music industry and the State Government of Victoria

The live music industry is represented by FairGo4LiveMusic, Save Live Australia’s Music and the newly established Music Victoria.
The parties agree that: