Wednesday, 9 September 2026

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:20): I rise to speak briefly on the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Stronger Communities) Bill 2026. There are two elements, broadly, to this bill. The first deals with governance and integrity reforms for local government. The second creates a Local Government Fair Jobs Code Regulator and the regulatory framework to enforce it. Frankly, we are profoundly ambivalent about this bill. We have concerns about the tepid implementation of the recommendation from IBAC’s Operation Sandon investigation into alleged corruption in local government planning and property development decisions. We feel these amendments do not address many of the real issues that were identified by IBAC.

If we are really to tackle corruption in local government, we need to prioritise donation reform. We need a cap on donations. Certain groups such as property developers should be banned from making donations, given the high risk of corruption that comes with a large donation with donors from certain interests. I think we have seen that play out in a number of our largest councils, where many councils have been forced to abstain from critical planning decisions because they have been compromised through those donations. These reforms have also already been introduced into other jurisdictions, such as New South Wales. We also need real-time disclosure of donations. I believe Dr Mansfield will be elaborating on these concerns, and when we see them we will I think almost undoubtedly be supporting the Greens amendments.

We also have concerns about the development of the fair jobs code and the creation of a new body to regulate it. There is no question that we all seek job security and decent working conditions for all workers, no less council workers, and we absolutely understand the desire of the Australian Services Union and its members to maximise secure employment in the local government sector. It goes without saying. But as it stands in this regulation, the package is a black box. Once again we are seeing the government relying on regulations rather than legislation and being asked to vote on legislation that has insufficient details. It is lazy governing. We saw it repeatedly with the planning legislation, which directly impacted local government, and it was, ‘Trust us. You’ll see the rest later.’ My God, wasn’t that a terrible outcome for local government, and now we are seeing it here. We were asked to vote on that bill with the caveat that details would be sorted out in the regs, but stuff that came out of, for example, the inquiry into planning amendments has simply been ignored by the government, and in fact the government has declined to even respond to the findings from that inquiry.

I am very cognisant that in driving those reforms in the context of planning the government showed scant regard for local government’s input or their responsibilities in that area, and similarly, we are aware that there has been very limited consultation with local governments on this bill and particularly the jobs code and its implementation. That said, I understand that Minister Richardson is new to the job. He has only been there for four weeks, and he has inherited a bill and I guess a concept that has already been through two sets of ministerial hands, with limited consultation with local government. As we know from the parliamentary inquiry into government consultation, a briefing is not a consultation and an indication of future regulation is not an acceptable way to do reform. I would also like to note, though, that I am very appreciative of the time that Minister Richardson has spent personally trying to work through these issues over the last couple of weeks. I would, however, say that ideally if you are going to reform something, put it in legislation and let the whole thing be subject to scrutiny and review. I must admit, whilst I might have had a limited civics background, I thought that is pretty much why we are here: to review legislation. But I might be naive. We understand from discussions with Minister Richardson that there will now be an extensive consultation with multiple stakeholders, and that is very welcome. But there remain a range of concerns by local government as to what the jobs code will be and how it might work.

Councils have been subject to successive governments effectively starving their funding through rate capping and bad policies, and at the same time increasing their responsibilities, including some of the more onerous ones like, for example, being the debt collector on the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund. Local government workers have borne the brunt of that fiscal starvation. If you look at what they have achieved through improvements in wages and conditions, it has been very, very poor. That is no criticism of the ASU. There are good folks there. It is simply the capacity of council to pay given those constraints.

Earlier when this bill or this package was floated, and that is close to two years ago I think now that it has been bounced from one part of government to the other, there was discussion about whether the code would have specific cost imposts and whether this would provide an opportunity to reopen the question of the application of rate capping. If there were to be a significant cost impost associated with a job code change, there would be the capacity to offset that through amendments to the rate cap. However, that seems to have largely fallen off the table, and I guess there is a sense of confusion as to what and how this will actually work in real life, particularly if there are cost imposts associated with the changes.

We note that local government requested an exposure draft from the government and that that was not forthcoming. They then requested to see a sort of set of principles that could sit behind the code, and this was not forthcoming. Again, these all predate Minister Richardson’s involvement here. So now we come to a certain point where the legislation is before us. We understand that the ASU do not necessarily share the same concerns as the Municipal Association of Victoria and the local councils. That is perfectly normal and understandable, but clearly it does provide a certain tension for those in this place who have close relationships in both camps.

At this point I will finish my contribution. There are, however, a number of questions that strike to the purpose and the application of the code, and we will be pursuing those vigorously in the committee of the whole. At this point we will reserve our position until the committee stage and see what the government puts forward before we determine where we stand on this bill.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:29): I would also like to say a few words on the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Stronger Communities) Bill 2026. This bill does a few things, but I will start with the first thing which concerns me most and that is what the government is calling the fair jobs code. I am always sceptical when the government calls something ‘fair’ because it is rarely true, and when they talk about jobs, it rarely creates more jobs as well. But the intention with this apparently is to remove as far as possible from councils what they term insecure work. I would like to push back on that idea for a moment. The Municipal Association of Victoria recently did a survey of 54 councils on their labour resourcing. Seventy-five per cent of their staff were permanent ongoing staff, and 92 per cent were above the national tenure benchmark, so as far as I can tell there is no imminent or current insecure work crisis within councils. In fact the majority of their staff are permanent staff.

So what really is the motivation here? It seems that the government wants councils to have permanent staff at the request of the CPSU, because it is easier to sign people up as members, I guess. If they are not contractors and they are not casuals or that sort of thing, it is much easier to sign them up. But this is going to cause all sorts of problems. Regional councils especially often have trouble finding permanent staff. They might have long-term relationships with contracting companies and those sorts of things, and this may interfere with that. I say ‘may’ because, as has been pointed out, we do not actually know how this is going to work, because the government is just asking this chamber to trust it because they are going to put all the details in the regulations later, which I think is just unacceptable here. They are saying basically that they want to consult with people after the bill has passed to come up with these regulations. I think that that is a terrible idea. If the intention is to increase the number of full-time staff at councils, then whatever consultation they are going to do can only end in disaster, I think, because a lot of people and a lot of councils I have spoken to hate this idea. They think it is a terrible idea. In fact many of them are very happy with the arrangements that they have, both with their permanent staff and suppliers. So that is one reason to oppose it.

Another thing that really concerns me is that there are some changes around governance. Some of these things I note are recommendations of IBAC reports, and I do not necessarily oppose many of them. But there is one in particular which I actually think is dangerous in certain situations, and that is making it possible to remove the mayor or deputy mayor with a simple motion through council. In some councils the mayor position is held by a single vote on the council – a single-vote majority – and you could imagine situations where all sorts of shenanigans might go on and the mayor might no longer be the mayor if someone does something for someone. It sets up incentives for corruption, and I do not think that is a good idea at all. In fact in some councils I think that would result in disaster, so I think that is a terrible idea as well.

I am also disappointed that the government has not put something in this bill which the Libertarian Party has been pushing for, and that is to clarify the councillor code of conduct around what is robust public debate. We passed a motion in this chamber that was brought forward by me, and many people seem to be concerned with what is happening, with councillors feeling scared to talk or speak out about things. But if you are concerned about stopping corruption, that is exactly what you want. You want people to speak out about things when they see something is wrong, not to be scared of getting dragged before some arbiter and getting suspended from council over minor things like, as I brought up, when Cr Barker questioned the number of people at an event. Another person questioned the quality of roadworks that the council was doing. These are all the sorts of minor things that I think constituents of councils expect their councillors to actually raise and bring up in public debate, and we have not done anything to rectify that. I think that it does provide some protection against corruption when you have councillors that are able to speak out on things and not get slapped on the wrist and suspended by the arbiters, but unfortunately this does not really do anything around that.

The bill does some the things around conflict-of-interest rules and these sorts of things. I am supportive of that. But ultimately, overall, I think with what we are doing with the fair jobs code and some of the governance issues here, it is just too big an ask to ask this chamber to give the government total control over this through the regulations at some future date. We are setting up a system for how councils are meant to employ staff without actually knowing how that is going to work, and for that reason the Libertarian Party will not be supporting it.

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:35): I rise to oppose Labor’s so-called stronger communities bill because this bill does not make communities stronger; it makes the state government stronger and everyone else weaker, which is absolutely typical of most laws that come through here. Yet again we have got this concentration of power, these unaccountable bureaucracies, removing agency from the people that are closest to the ground that have to deliver the services or receive them. And of course it is anti-democracy, as my colleague Mr Limbrick pointed out – the removal of a mayor with a single vote from their position. Again, it is just something that seems to me is going to entrench the culture that is already rampant across Victorian councils, where if there is anybody on that council who does not follow the Labor Party line, they have the code of conduct used against them and they face arbitrary decisions from the government-selected arbiters.

Many councillors across Victoria have pretty much had their lives ruined when all they wanted to do was serve their local community as councillors. They did not really break any rules – the rules were vague anyway – but the whole entire system was turned against them in these kangaroo courts with no standards of evidence. Not only do the taxpayers and the ratepayers deserve better, but people who put their hands up to represent the interests of those people deserve to have better protections. As Mr Limbrick said, that is just not in the law. This is the second time we have had an opportunity to fix that problem.

People want to know who makes decisions that impact them, where their rates have gone and who they can vote out if nobody fixes a problem. They do not want to be sent around in circles between a minister, a regulator, a CEO and a council, where everyone is just going to say, ‘It’s somebody else’s fault. It’s not my responsibility. I cannot recall.’ But that is exactly what this bill creates – or recreates – just another version of the same failed, broken system that we have already got. A state-appointed regulator is apparently going to be able to enforce more of these rules that get written. But how many regulators have we criticised in the last four years because they do not enforce the regulations that were already made? What we do know is that councils and ratepayers are definitely going to be funding them. Yet the blame, when it all goes wrong yet again, is going to fall on the individual councillors because they are the ones who have to front up and meet face to face with actual community members.

I really do think this is just political cowardice written into law. There are all these lovely terms that get thrown around. Of course everybody wants workers to be treated well. Of course everybody wants them to be paid well, to work in safe environments and to have protection from exploitation. And again, just because something is called a fair jobs code does not mean that it is actually going to deliver a fair jobs code, similar to how the Safe Schools program did not deliver safer schools. We have not even seen this code. I find it ridiculous that they can bring law after law to this Parliament and say, ‘Oh, we’ll fill in the details later. Just give us the power and the money. Just give us the power and the money, and we’ll fill in the details later.’ Nobody deserves that trust. A trustworthy authority would never ask people to do that.

But nothing is going to stand in the way of this government building another big enforcement machine. This bill requires every single council CEO to comply with these future codes and report on their compliance every year. The regulator can act on complaints, demand information, make findings and publish reports. We have already got systems like this, and they do not seem to have any impact. Parliament is not a blank cheque for Labor. It is also not supposed to be a membership and money funnel for their preferred unions. We should not have to stand here and approve an empty legislative shell so ministers and bureaucrats can fill it in later. Laws should be made so that they are accessible, clear and predictable. You should be able to know and reasonably predict what the rules are going to be before the government accuses somebody of breaking them. It is a bit of a disgrace that this needs to be explained to a government that is writing legislation.

Labor has not even established the supposed crisis that this bill is apparently fixing. The Municipal Association of Victoria has reported great outcomes. Permanent ongoing employees averaged 75 per cent of the workforce across 54 responding councils. It also reported that 92 per cent exceeded the benchmark it used for long-serving employees. When I was a councillor I was amazed; I thought no-one would ever, ever leave local government if they could just get a job there. They were the best conditions I had seen, and honestly, after reading report after report, I thought perhaps some of them were actually overpaid or the actual positions were not necessary. We have got a massive financial crisis in this state. This is a bill that is going to cost everybody more money so that councils can be less responsive to their individual community needs and waste resources. People get minced up in the middle of bad laws all the time, and that is what I think is going to happen.

A rural council cannot permanently employ every specialist it occasionally needs. Coastal councils need extra workers over summer. Growing municipalities need contractors to build roads, drainage and community infrastructure from time to time. Needs change. We have got workers and small business owners who train apprentices, take risks and keep communities functioning. But you do not need them all at once. You do not need them all permanently; you need them for time-specific projects. If compliance costs force those smaller contractors and businesses out, of course you are going to end up with larger firms swallowing up the contracts, and I bet you they will be aligned to some union that is aligned to Labor. Then I predict that Labor will hold another inquiry into disappearing small businesses, scratching their heads – ‘Where did they all go?’ – without ever admitting that the regulations and the laws that they put in are the very reason that they were driven out of this state in the first place.

Then there is the money. All these assessments, complaints, document demands, legal opinions and workforce reviews are going to consume staff time and public funds, which we have precious little of to waste. The state is going to establish a regulator, but all 79 councils are going to have to feed that beast. Nobody can spend the same dollar twice. The money feeding this bureaucracy cannot also repair roads, clear drains, maintain sporting grounds, collect rubbish or actually do anything that local councils were set up to deliver. Ratepayers of course are going to pay through higher charges, delayed maintenance or disappearing services, but they always pay in the end.

Of course this is just socialism, and socialism always ends in tears. Central government cannot know every community’s needs or the labour market or the financial circumstances. It replaces local knowledge with uniform rules and local judgement with compliance that is centralised and unresponsive, and it replaces responsibility with bureaucracy. Strong communities are not built by centralised authorities. That disenfranchises them, removes their agency and just rips their money out of their pockets. It makes everything harder; it is so illogical. Strong communities are built by free citizens accepting responsibility for their own lives, workers and businesses serving one another and elected representatives answering directly to the people, not to these little political games once they are inside the building. And they are not built by ministers dragging power all the way back to Spring Street and hiding the real rules in regulations written after we have all voted on it.

I do not think this is the way that laws should be made. I think it is dishonest; I think it is dishonourable. I think it is leaving everything – all the money, power and authority that we are supposed to wield wisely – open to misuse. It does not serve communities, and all of these local government councillors who try and do something about it are definitely going to be the ones that cop the blame. I oppose it.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (17:45): I move:

That debate on this matter be adjourned until later this day.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until later this day.

Sitting suspended 5:45 pm until 6:15 pm