Thread by @Voice4Victoria

Pandemic bill debate to kick off, watch live here (select Legislative Council): parliament.vic.gov.au/video-and-audi…

AG Symes kicks with "the bill has been available for 20 days" (like this is something to be proud of & not a violation of process) & questions why the Opp want an extra few days for debate. Says she 'wants to get on with debating it'. Mm not really how democracy is meant to work.

Oh dear. The govt is trying to invoke an 'urgent bill' clause.
It's only been used 9 times in history in the Upper House since 1996. This would assist them to gag debate and ram the bill through.

Ping @yourLIV , @VictorianBar , @VicOmbudsman .

All have made comments with concern as to why this is being so rushed through Parliament.

MP Cumming points out that the blatant disrespect that's been demonstrated by the govt to all of the crossbench makes it a bit rich to ask now to rush it through, especially after they also already used their majority in the lower house to gag debate there.

MP Cumming accusing MP Leane of only making abusive comments towards female MPs, as herself and Crozier have copped. Yikes.

We're 15 minutes in & everything is already turning to *chaos*. 🙃

We're on a half hour break for lunch. Load up on caffeine everyone this is going to be a long and chaotic afternoon. Debate resumes at 2pm and honestly anyone who is free to watch this should be doing so.

We've just had a debate on if the bill should be treated as urgent. Basic common sense points made by everyone that isn't the govt:
- SOE doesn't expire for a month yet, there's not that big a rush.
- this is an abuse of normal Parl processes/what urgency is meant to be used for.

The motion to treat the bill as urgent has been passed with the support of the 3x crossbenchers. Historically, this will be looked upon as a disgrace.

David Davis kicks off the pandemic bill debate by quoting many of the professional legal bodies' concerns that they've laid out in detail.

Can't imagine sitting there & being confident in just ignoring this unprecedented level of subject expert professional concern.

Terps accusing David Davis of "aggressive finger pointing in the chamber"/"aggressive and hostile finger pointing towards her".
She's being serious with this.

Umm. Leane is saying there's 730+ legal books that reference 'classes of persons'. Yeah. Your laws specifically listed classes as identified by attributes listed in the Equal Opp Act. None of the others have EVER used that description. Did Labor MPs seriously not read the bill?

Davis once again calls for a Royal Commission into the state covid response. Brings up the fact no health advice, still to this day, has been provided about the curfew.

Says it was cooked up in the bunker. Dan's office is apparently called 'the bunker'.

Leane has taken this round as being the govts interjectory attackdog during opposing speeches.

Davis called him a clown & was instructed to withdraw the comment, which he did.

Grimley opens his speech on the bill by quoting Patten's 3AW interview comments about "the devil being in the details".
Says the other crossbenchers claims it isn't like the SOE is false.

"This bill is absolutely abother version of the SOE and the crossbench pretending otherwise is wrong".
Say its like putting lipstick on a pig.

Goes straight into a 🔥 breakdown of how other members of the crossbench have once again been treated in contempt.
"How can other crossbenchers engage constructively when they aren't engaged at all".
Credits The Age for leaking it he can read it at the same time as others. Savage

Grimley points out that Parl has plenty of air purifiers where most schools have little to none. Says he's thought of putting some in his car to take to schools.

HAHA Grimley saying it's nice that the govt has finally realised that people want to see the reasons behind the decisions that are affecting their lives.
"How are we to trust that the future advice that will be provided will actually be the full advice?"

Grimley says this is one of the greatest bills that has been presented in the last few decades. Says his office has been inundated with emails, that are not corporate spam, but truly concerned citizens.

THERE'S 90 AMENDMENTS to go through. Bloody yikes.

Oh here we go. Shing is up.
One of the govts fav extreme waffle speakers. Brace your patience for listening to this one.

Yep. The old standard line of thanking workers for getting vxd like they didn't pass 'get it or you're fired' rules. There's something that's just truly disturbing about the thanking part of that.

OMG WE'RE BACK TO THEM COMPARING WITH THE BUSHFIRES. This is always SO disgraceful. They've done this many times in the past. Merlino did it in PAEC. Absolutely foul to compare bushfires to pandemics.

When you start a sentence about the importance of protesting then back it up with a big fat 'but' it's not exactly genuine.
Reminder this govt happily condemned the woman who attempted to hold a sign against the govt during her masked 1hr of exercise & said she can't do that.

HAHA bragging that ALL members received the amendments late last night. Yeh the debate is today. Can you get a lower bar 😂

Oh jesus christ she's directly implying their 11th hour amendments are 'democracy working' & how much they support the right to protest.

Shing "this has become personal".
It's been personal for every single persons life who has been affected for the last 18 months, no matter who they are.

Ohh here we go. She's going for David Davis.

Hahahaha fuck you just can't take her seriously sometimes with what comes out of her mouth with such confidence.

Crozier hits back at Shing for "tarring everyone with the same brush" about protestors, saying that many are out there that have very valid concerns about the bill.

Now she's reading out the email that was sent to her by complete accident, it was meant to go to Andy's COS with the same name. When Crozier replied saying she'd want to attend they told her 'oh don't worry'.

Reads out that the govt has put in writing that they won't work with anyone who has voted against them having the SOE powers in the past.

Equal parts mature & democratic 🙄

They all got the proposed amendments to the bill at 10.30pm last night. The upper house was sitting from 11.30am. Yeah wow how democratic 🙄

OHHH. Patten is up. 👀

Oh for fucks sake.
Kicks off with hyperbole about people dying gasping for air if they 'did nothing'. Once again making infantile, extreme arguments that literally nobody has ever said in order to attempt to justify passing SOE & this bill.

Wow her attitude is foul today.

Patten "we can support this legislation or pass the SOE again".

Once again, reductionary & infantile arguments that are intended to ignore the valid concerns with this legislation. Just disgusting.

She just quoted a list of groups who all called for specific legislation.
In blinding irony half these groups are the ones whose public concerns she's currently intentionally ignoring. You couldn't write this.

Holy, Patten has now accused Grimley of spreading 'politically motivated misinformation'.
@HumanHeadline

ONCE. AGAIN. Oversimplifying.
"If you won't vote for this or SOE, what will you do. People will die".
You can't be that dumb.
Just don't make such BAD laws to be proposed, work with your colleagues, so they can be easily voted for? Christ almighty.

OMFG. Patten says it's 'disengenous' for Davis to have mentioned that the bill allowed targeting by attributes which were enshrined protections. IT DID?! WHAT. This is mindblowing.

Brings up a terrorism bill that got passed. Funny maybe people aren't as concerned about powers that are meant to only be used on terrorists as opposed the entire state at the drop of a hat.

Patten closes with "I'm grateful to the minority who support me".

We now get a brief break.

We're back with Bernie.
This will be wild lol
Drags Patten by quoting her previous SOE support speech that passing it "wasn't about lockdowns". Then points out that enabled us to become the most locked down city in the world.

Says most of the rest of the state will not cop these kinds of powers getting used to repeat the last 18 months.

Finn is made to withdraw a comment calling the Premier a megalomaniac.

Finn "one day I'll introduce this bloke (Dan) to the truth and they'll both get a shock". He's nothing if not known for embellishment.

Turns out Dr Hobart is one of Finn's constituents in the West. He's bringing up the raid on the doctors surgery to obtain patient files by 'authorised officers'.

Finn "how the hell does anyone get 60 QCs to agree on anything, it's extraordinary".

He's really got a point there.

Bernie says the majority of protesters aren't an extreme faction of anything & that many on Saturday said they'd never been to a protest.

Closes with "I will vote to kill the bill".

Nina Taylor is up. Wondering if we can get through this without her having a meltdown.

Taylor "it would be nice to see a more cohesive approach on this issue".
That's not satire.

Oop. We nearly had a snap.
(If you've watched previous Parl you'd know what's being referenced).
Listening to her recite, Nina has a future career if voted out from Parl as a kindy teacher reading like that.

Barton is up.
Wastes literally no time.
"I will not be supporting this bill".

Barton "I say to the govt, again, you don't have to listen to me but you should give me the professional courtesy to allow me to represent my stakeholders & constituents".

Makes a good point that there is absolutely no clear timeframe on what 'a period of time' means in the bill for how long can pass without a disease being in VIC but allowing for a pandemic can still be called.

Barton "the public are not stupid & should not be treated as such".

Says what are the real statistical odds that the govt-controlled committee will vote against the govt. That the crossbench know this.

Barton closes with "I know what it's like to feel like your voice isn't being heard I will not be supporting this bill".

We're onto Bach, the new shadow AG and one of the most entertaining speakers to listen to in Parl "this is a dangerous and anti-democratic measure".

Calls out Patten for accusing others of being politically manipulative while using insanely hyperbolic examples like mass graves, people gasping for air etc.

Bach calls the govt out, that look at what they've done when given powers so far, why is there any logical reason to think they'd use these differently.

"Dan Andrews has never seen a lockdown power he hasn't liked the look of or wanted to use"

Quotes the govt saying "we won't spend 2021 bouncing in and out of lockdowns" and points out how well that worked out in reality.

Bach "governments don't give themselves powers they don't intend to use".

Bach, and Ondarchie next to him, vehemently condemn any threats to MPs which he says members of his own party have been subject to in the past but says it must by acknowledged that the concern about this bill is mainstream.

Bach says it can't be allowed that the govt attempt to divert serious concerns about this bill by capitalising on a widely-condemned minority behaviour.

Bach ends on: "it must be asked if the govt has no intention of using these powers, why are they ramming them through parl?"

We're onto Limbrick.
"Even after our office was destroyed and we were banned from parliament, we never stopped listening to people. Something the government refuses to do."

Says protesters are people who can think for themselves & not just believe what is fed to them at pressers.
Limbrick "maybe the govt will win the vote but do they seriously think the 50k people on the st will just let this go?". Says that they've awakened the sleeping giant now.

"Nobody forgets being bullied" 🔥

Ideally that gets posted properly haha @_davidlimbrick.

Oh this is some spice 👀
Lovell, off some Jewish-heritage constituent comments, looked into & is bringing up the original legislation passed in Germany that triggered the very, very beginning of human rights abuses there & while is not comparing to this current govt (cont'd)

"we must learn from history and while the govt says they won't use these powers and that's fine, we do not know who will hold them in future or how they will be used".

Hayes MP compares this legislation to "firing a nuclear missile to kill a cockroach".

Hayes coming in with the basic common sense, once again pointing out that Fiona knows that the govt-controlled SARC is not proper oversight of their decisions.

Hayes, addressing the crossbenchers and govt ends on urging them to redo the bill "those who support this bill are recklessly putting Victorian civil liberties in danger".

There are notably remarkably few govt speakers for this so far.

Bev makes some great points that the govt tries to give the Libs grief that their MPs sometimes go off script & vote against the party line. Says she's proud that they can offer the ability to vote independently, something that's foreign to Labor.

Oh, what's happening 👀
Rich-Phillips has broken debate to request an adjournment (delay) to allow SARC to fully do its job and take public submissions. Unsure what's going to come of this.

Wants govt officials to be able to questioned on the bill, use of the powers etc in SARC. Says this will go a way to better transparency & assuaging some of the public concern. There's now a vote on the motion. Division called is the vote. Yes the bells are annoying as hell 😂

MPs heading back into chamber. Unsure if this has legs to get up or if the Libs are giving the govt an exercise in sweating..

A motion (vote) was just put to the upper house to allow SARC to conduct a full & proper public feedback process on the pandemic powers bill.
The govt & 3x crossbenchers all just publicly voted NO.
This from the side saying the bill is about TrAnSpArEnCy & AcCoUnTaBiLiTy 🙄

Make no mistake, they could just delay this a week or two, engage SARC etc, do more work on the bill, then come back on an urgent sitting to vote. The emergency powers don't expire for a full month yet. They have the time lol they're just lying pretending they can't do any of it.

We're back from the dinner break and straight into Ratnam.

Omg she is talking about the impact in diverse communities and the loss of work impacting health too. Lol are we getting pranked?

Sam "we are still in the middle of a global health crisis. Thousands of people are still sick in hospital".

I... what. In the middle? When does this technically end for these people?

"We have been extremely fortunate in Victoria to have a wonderful CHO like Brett Sutton".
Not even touching that one.

Oh here we go 🙄
"I want to make some comments on the compaign against this bill"

Ratnam just claimed almost every single message and comment she received contained misinfo and conspiracy theories. "As each one was dealt with it seemed three more popped up".

Ok now not everyone attending protests is a RW/Trumpist, but apparently every organiser is? Wtf.

Says the Libs have no hope to offer, only fear. You couldn't make this up.

"Any elected representative that sees these acts and fails to condemn the violence doesn't deserve to hold office"

*insert batshit stunts like setting cardboard figures on fire and hung babies from protest organisers that the Greens regularly speak at*

Case in point:

She's done. No shortage of DMs coming in now asking if she's insane 🙃

Hearing from Ed now, this is likely one of his last Parliamentary bill contributions before leaving the politics life.

Ed "there is no reason this can't be managed normally. It could be debated later this week and then a vote held off until the next sitting week".

He's right. The next sitting is 30th Nov-2nd Dec. Still 2 weeks prior to the SOE ending. They have the time, they're choosing not to.

Quilty is up & savaging the govt for how many times they said they needed time to draft specific powers, then producing this pile of dog💩

"Like a uni student who got multiple extensions on their assignment then failed to do it, what it reveals is they're just not competent".

Quilty "the entire powers is in one sentence, that the Health Minister can make 'any pandemic order necessary'. That didn't take 6 months to write".

Accuses the Green of defaming ordinary citizens in calling them all extremists.

Quilty said in the beginning he trusted the govt & has had "many months to regret that decision"

Quilty "the govt has included mock transparency measures to make it more media friendly. If the govt really wanted to be transparent they wouldn't have spent the last 12 months fighting to not provide any info to the public on their decisions".
This entire speech is 🔥😂

Ooft. Quilty savages the Greens saying he has never liked them but at least thought they held the values of upholding human rights & respecting Parl process. Then "yeah, nah".

"The Greens only stand for the interests for their inner city, middle class voting base".

"The gross misinformation right now is coming from the Greens and their friends".

Savage speech. Quilty is always entertaining when he's unhappy.

Bath MP uses her speech to advocate for rural. Takes the opportunity to have a stab at Meddick/Animal Justice when condemning threats, saying that farmers are included in the group that have a right to be safe on their properties.

In Feb 2020 there was a full Parl Committee Inquiry by the VIC Upper House into the impact of animal rights activism on VIC agriculture, the issues were so severe with farmers getting intimidated, livestock stolen etc parliament.vic.gov.au/file_uploads/L…

We're onto Bourman. He's usually a pragmatic delight.
Straight into he won't support it.

"I guess the govt needed to do something, but this isn't it & I'd say a fair chunk of the population agree that this isn't it".

"This could be polishing something but I'm not sure how that's going to work" 🤣

Bourman says the guts of his amendment is about community consultation, which obviously hasn't happened and even he hasn't been consulted.

Ondarchie is up. Off the bat points out that NSW has just dumped the bill proposal to extend the SOE and will instead rework it over summer. Urges the VIC govt to delay and work on the bill more until the Dec sitting.

We tried to delay debate again. Didn't pass again. 🙄

Ondarchie back on. Accuses the govt of having a "dog ate my homework" excuse for trying to ram it through as a 'rushed bill'.

"If we're in govt we shouldn't have this level of power either"

Omfg. Ondarchie brings up Ratnam's comments about "those people who support extreme demonstrations shouldn't be in Parl" & references Bandt speaking at the protest where they literally burned a cutout of a specific Federal Minister at the time.

"The bill that was apparently fantastic in the lower house but getting urgently amended now". Lol

Atkinson is up. Asks how we can be making new powers to deal with pandemics when there's been no enquiry/ review into what we've even done right or wrong throughout this period, so how can we say what's really needed?

References Ratnam's comments that we have a great CHO, says how could he possibly agree with that when he has never seen any of the advice provided to him & how he used that to make decisions? How does anyone know if he's actually done a good job?

"Patten & Meddick are both transactional politicians. They'll help the govt get things through in return for quid pro quo & looking after their own interests".
Says he's mostly disappointed in Ratnam. How many key issues that Greens claim to care about that she's not supporting.

"These measures are as bad for those minority groups as they are for everyone else. When the Ombudsman and community legal groups speak out, there is reason for concern."

Says the penalties under this are higher than if someone held up a 711 with a gun. Yikes.

As Somyurek indicated in IBAC last week, the CHO is only there because of patronage and knows that if the Premier doesn't want him there he'll be removed". Savage.

"We saw in IBAC 'if we get criticism of what we're doing, play the racism card', now it's become 'if we get criticism, play the right wing card', it's ridiculous".

"Backroom deals do not deliver good government."

What a speech.

Cumming is up. Said if she listed every issue she had with the bill it would take a lot longer than her allocated time & reveals the pollies haven't actually had proper briefings on the health advice since July.

Heartfelt listing of everything that the govt took away as part of the mandates using the power they had.

Cumming says that the govt response has left taxpayers open to corruption & misuse of funds & there's nothing in this bill that stops that happening again. This is in reference to how many things they've been caught spending money on that were faulty/ not delivered.

Catherine to Labor "go step outside then" (not said menacingly, only to make the point they won't)

Says they all got sent amendments at 9.30pm last night, then got an email at 9.30am offering a briefing on them. Parl started at 11.30am. Just unbelievable and undemocratic nonsense.

Catherine says she takes great offence to certain MPs calling protesters neo-nazis given she has German heritage & her family helped to hide jews to save them. Accuses Meddick of calling her a neo-nazi today. There's some debate we can't hear properly from him.

Accuses the govt & their buddy MPs as constantly name-calling other MPs in the chamber with cheap propaganda labels: tin foil hats, conspiracy theorists etc when all they tried to do is advocate for concerns in their community.

Meddick is up. Oh here we go 🙄

He claims thousands of people wrote him letters of support on the bill 🙃

"I will address the behaviour of some in detail shortly." So much for Labor MPs interjecting saying speakers need to speak to talking only about the bill. Andy hasn't mentioned it once yet.
"It would be remiss of me to not address why we're here at all." Yes when you're ready 🙃

"We're in this predicament because of a zoonodic disease. We're here because we exploit animals".

Sweet baby marsupials this man is using a parliamentary debate on the pandemic bill to blame people eating animals for the entire global pandemic.

He has just asked every member of Parliament to consider that every time they take a bite of meat consider that, in essence, doing so is exploitation which means people will die from the onflowing effects as it causes pandemics.

This is getting very close to unhinged..

None of that was an exaggeration:

Oh my god, he's having a full blown rant. 😐

Absolute bloody meltdown:

We just extended debate by an hour 🥲

Well, we've hit fully unhinged.

Finn "this quote has literally nothing to do with the bill".

Catherine "is the point being made that vaccines are tested on animals?" She just trolled him hard.

Chaos 😐 Meddick is still yet to talk about the actual bill..

That has to be one of the most singularly unhinged speeches I have witnessed to date 😐 we went from screaming about nazis to calm peaceful tones talking about doing things with love in the space of about 30 seconds. Peak yikes.

Tania Maxwell providing refreshing emotional stability. Says that even though the health advice previously didn't need to be published, it should have been, it shouldn't have ever been a secret.

Excellent point made that there's no provisions to protect people getting locked away from their homes again & doesn't offer them the right to independent appeal.

"SARC doesn't require represenation from small business, education, or the difference in needs between regional and metro".

The AG Symes now up.
Starts her comments quoting other speeches knowing that people knew legislation was going to happen.
Er that's not really the point.

"These powers are in use in NSW without the transparency".
They still can't seem to decide if it's the same or not.

Symes basically just quoting the same arguments from SOE extension about why they need the powers. Apparently it's 'implied' that the pandemic does exist.
Um. She's the AG. Not how laws work, it needs to be specified.

The lack of limits on the bill are apparently important for govt being able to be secure their response as being for as long as they think they need it.

Symes treating her speech like a verbal race, whew. Funny how notably different her speaking style is when it's normal Labor style stuff vs utterly outrageous garbage like this. She's a qualified lawyer. She knows just how bad this thing is.

So apparently the reason they went for attributes is so they don't make 'blanket rules' for the entire community.
"We've heard concerns that these powers made be misused in the future" speaking like that's a far away future & not December lol

Says it's about making rules based on attributes related to the public health risk. Then why the hell would you pick the entire list of attributes when 99% have no relevance whatsoever to 'health'. Bizarre.

We're at the "it's past 10pm dogfight" level now 😂🙃

Govt now admitting all they wanted with the attributes was to be able target people who aren't vaccinated. Yeah because that's not a slippery vertical slope to human rights abuses at all.

Libs once again trying to delay the vote & have the bill appropriately reviewed by SARC, it's at a vote.

For context on the targeting unvaxd, they said it was about aged care etc 🙄 it's fine that's just a vertical slope greased up with oil & butter. The biggest concern with this would likely be the booster mandate threats possibly putting VIC back at 0% within 6 months.

Govt & their crossbench 3 have ONCE AGAIN voted against the pandemic bill going to SARC for comprehensive review & community consultation.

We've adjourned the debate. That's it for tonight. We'll be back for more of this on Thursday.