Motion - 13 Day Adjournment

MOTION

‘13 DAY ADJOURNMENT’.

Wednesday, 3 May 2023.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (10:37):

The Minister has just sought to adjourn the debate on the new tax that the Government intends to bring into this place for 13 days.

What a surprise, and what a concerning step the Government has taken that every Victorian should be worried about. We know – this chamber knows – that any Government and Governments for the best part of 100 years have given Victorians time to consider new bills they bring into this place, and to hear that a minister would stand at the table and seek to ram a new tax through this place –

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY:

It is no wonder that the Government protest that they want to bring in their 44th new tax – their 44th new tax, a $125 million new tax – and ram it through this place. What an outrage.

Every Victorian should be distressed by what this Government is doing, and I hope that every Victorian hears the debate that is taking place today.

For 100 years Westminster Parliaments have allowed Victorians and Australians the opportunity to consider Bills that are brought in to the Parliament, and that should be the way that it is. It should be the way that a Government brings in a new proposal, so that the community has the opportunity to think about what is being proposed. A Government should want to do that. It should not just be because the community wants to spend time considering it.

A good Government, a Government with integrity, should want to bring Bills into the community and have them consider those Bills. The Government should be happy to bring those bills into the community, to talk to stakeholders, to talk to the community about what they are proposing to do – but not this Government. This Government’s natural inclination is not to bring in a Bill and allow the community the opportunity to consider it. What this Government is doing is pushing through a Bill in this chamber, this Bill that relates to gambling regulation.

But it is not a surprise, because no Government with integrity would want to do that, and yet that is what they are doing – because they lack integrity. When something like that happens probably the first reaction of the community would be, especially considering what we have seen in this Chamber recently, ‘poor management of this place’, and we have seen that numerous times across
numerous issues. We have seen a lack of capacity to properly manage this place and filibustering through motions because there is a lack of an agenda – there is no agenda.

So you would look at this Bill being pushed forward and you could be mistaken for believing that there is a lack of capacity, a lack of foresight in this Government in managing this place, but no, no, no, no. In this case it is not because of a lack of capacity, a lack of preparedness or a lack of planning. This is sneaky. This is very, very sneaky by this Government. That is what this Government is doing, and we are going to see it more.

We are going to see this every week, where the government tries to push through their sneaky agenda and take up the time of this place – because they have run out of an agenda. That is what we are seeing with this. So, I oppose, and the Opposition absolutely opposes, this dangerous step that this Government is proposing to make.