Greg Barber in Parliament

Accident Compensation Amendment Bill

 Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I do not get to watch much TV these days, but when I see those WorkCover ads they are all about Jacko or Mary who has been injured and who we are giving the opportunity to go back to work. Jacko is coming back with his arm in a sling: 'It's all right; it's great to have you back. We're going to put you in the tool shop for a while'.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is for the Minister for Environment and Climate Change. It relates to a number of programs that the minister's various departments would be pushing for, including rebates around water tanks, solar hot water, solar PV (photovoltaic cells), even insulation, and in this case even window shadings.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- Before Christmas the 2009 Victoria Summit was hosted by the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The partnership opportunities document can still be seen on the VECCI website, where it is suggested to their partners that:

 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.

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) -- 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.

 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 -- It is extremely germane to the issue that we are going to be talking about because it is yet another example of the government not knowing where its community is at and where it is heading. The original version of that bill would have restricted people getting access to the feed-in tariff for only their principal place of residence.

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) -- 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.

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) -- 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.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- It would be tempting to use the opportunity of this bill to go into another exposition on everything that is wrong with transport in Victoria, but there has been no shortage of those in the last three years. It would be tempting, and it appears Mr Koch can resist everything except for temptation. However, on this occasion I am going to address the bill a bit differently. Since this bill is a serious attempt to build integration into transport planning, I am going to address the bill simply in terms of what it is aiming to do and give my view on whether it is achieving those aims.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I would like to welcome the fact that the government has made a move on the issue of licence conditions for live music venues. I understand these conditions have arisen over the last five years and even longer. They are the specific conditions that have led to the death, for the time being, of The Tote as a venue. Worse than that, there are many tiny venues out there and many up-and-coming bands that would like to be able to play a gig, sometimes even just for their friends and family, but who are told by publicans, 'I'm sorry. We can't actually have you here because we need two security guards'. Literally the wording of these conditions is that by the time the guitarist has strummed the first note, if the only person he is playing to is his mum, there would have to be two security guards there to make sure that things did not get out of control.

Renewable energy certificates
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- The Minister for Energy and Resources is out there bleating, saying that a badly designed mandatory renewable energy target has caused the price of renewable energy certificates to plummet, but this is the same minister who shortly before Christmas brought into this Parliament a bill which got rid of the Victorian target and rolled it into the federal target. At the time he did it he knew that the Greens had already tried to amend the federal scheme to fix exactly the problems that he is now pointing to.

Public transport: myki ticketing system

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Public Transport, who happens to be here in the chamber -- and that is great. Of all the lurks and perks around this place, the one that I actually endorse is the pass that provides free public transport for politicians, and that is because, if it encourages politicians to use public transport, that can only be for the good.

Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project: planning permit

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is for the Minister for Planning, Justin Madden. The minister issued a planning permit to the Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project. Has he been monitoring compliance with that planning permit, and can he assure us that the project is in compliance?

Hon. J. M. MADDEN (Minister for Planning) -- I welcome Mr Barber's interest in these matters.

WATER AMENDMENT (ENTITLEMENTS) BILL
Committee

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I am not proposing to add further to the debate, but I simply make the point for the record and for any government members who are interested that we are open to further discussions about how this particular clause of the bill could be improved to achieve the sorts of objectives that the Greens are interested in.

Desalination plant: financial interests

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is for the Treasurer. Now that we have had the release of the desalination contract and a project summary prepared by the Department of Treasury and Finance, it is clear that the Victorian people have an ongoing financial interest in that plant -- not least of which is that we will inherit ownership of the facility 20-something years from now. Can the Treasurer detail for me what those financial interests are and, importantly, tell me which of them will be subject to scrutiny by the Auditor-General?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT: METROPOLITAN AND REGIONAL SERVICES

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- Mr Koch's motion tells members what any commuter can tell members -- the public transport system is fairly stuffed. But he does not really tell us why; he just blames the government.

WATER AMENDMENT (ENTITLEMENTS) BILL
Second reading

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- Like Ms Lovell I have my own particular critique of water management in this state. Initially, at least, this is a fairly simple bill making a number of administrative changes, but there is one particular clause of the bill that gives me some difficulty -- that is, clause 6 of the bill which relates to temporary qualifications of water.

Public transport: patronage

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- My question is to the Minister for Public Transport. In the minister's earlier description of his little tour of public transport, he did not mention whether he might have looked at any buses in the Altona electorate.  I would like to give a bit of information about this issue and then ask a very specific question.

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I move:

That the debate be adjourned for one week.
This bill is being rushed through the house in an unusual procedure. It has been introduced and now brought on for debate in the same week. The government has pulled this trick before, and sought our cooperation to do so, when matters were urgent -- or at least when it was making a case for them being urgent.

There was the purported killer cabbie bill that had to be passed immediately, even though the individual whose actions had led to the headlines that were worrying the government would not be subject to the legislation.

 PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT AMENDMENT (GROWTH AREAS INFRASTRUCTURE CONTRIBUTION) BILL - Second reading

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I move:  That the debate be adjourned for one week.

I will use the few minutes available to me to speak specifically on the procedural motion. It is not normally my job to organise the government's business program and make sure that the government's bills are passed at the right time, but on this occasion I will speak briefly on why I believe that in terms of both time and process we should not be in a rush to vote down this bill right now.