Motion: Government Business Program

MOTION:

‘GOVERNMENT BUSINESS PROGRAM’.

Tuesday, 5 June 2026.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (15:51):

I will start where the Leader of the House ended when he spoke about a robust and transparent donation system in Victoria and the proposed Amendments reflected in the Government Business Program.

‘Robust’ and ‘transparent’ – well, this Government Business Program deals with a Bill that has not yet been tabled. We on this side of the Chamber, the non Government Members, have before us a proposed Government Business Program with electoral reform that has not yet been released to the Victorian community or to the Parliament, so when it comes to a transparent and robust donation system, how can this Government possibly claim to use terms of that nature?

We have a Government Business Program that will force a guillotine on that Bill on Thursday afternoon. One can only presume, as the Government advised that the Bill would be debated in the House today with a guillotine today and moved into the other place today, that the Government have not been able to do their numbers and get a deal on their Bill. So widely did they talk about the deal that they had supposedly done, they committed to dealing with that Bill within one afternoon through both Chambers. I say to the crossbench and the other minor parties that they did the right thing by not rolling over on an important Bill.

As the Leader of the House said, this Bill – whatever the Government is proposing – does deal with an important reform following the High Court’s knocking out of an important part of our donation and electoral system, and it is important that this week the House be afforded the time to consider that. We need to ensure that we have laws in place that deal with the matters that were knocked out by the High Court. But while doing so, we need to think through what we are proposing to replace them with, because if the High Court has intervened once to say this Government got it wrong, I think that we should be starting from a place of wanting to make sure that does not happen twice. Even the Government, I am sure, does not want to be a two-time loser when it comes to these electoral laws.

Sadly, from what I have seen and from what others have expressed publicly over the last number of days, there is a very, very strong concern that what the government is proposing will see the Government a two-time loser when it comes to these reforms, and so we have said what this Government needs to do is consult on a Bill and consider a Bill that is constitutional. You would think that that is a first-past-the-post requirement for Bills they bring into this Chamber. As it was knocked out once, there is serious concern about the same thing happening again. I am very concerned and the Coalition is concerned that what we are seeing and hearing is not constitutional.

We have said work with us as an Opposition, and instead what has the Government done? We see a Government Business Program that lists a Bill for guillotine on Thursday that has not even been tabled. The Bill is not there. The Bill has not been released. The only reason you could hide the release of the Bill is if you did not have confidence in it and you did not want people looking at it closely. Well, people will be looking at it closely, and I suspect in a couple of months the High Court will be looking at it closely, because I suspect the Bill will be knocked out again. We say to the Government: while you continue to play these games, we cannot support it, just like we will not support this Government Business Program that tries to ram those laws through.

We will not be supporting the Government Business Program.