I do want to start my contribution by giving a big shout-out to the very hardworking staff who spend hours and hours and hours when it comes to legislative reform in this state. Writing and amending legislation takes true skill and expertise and a lot of patience, and as someone who went on and did a law degree, graduated from law and spent a lot of time actually amending and redrafting the National Electricity Rules, which is a really big piece of Commonwealth legislation, it is a real skill. It is an art to be able to reform legislation, and yes, time and time again, usually on a yearly basis, or every two years, we need to go through legislation and make changes. I would not call that sloppy drafting. I would call it just a need to clean up some of these bills and legislation. It is just part of the job.

This bill is not monumental in scope. We have had quite a few before the house in the almost seven years since I have been here. They do come through and they need to be done; they need to be passed here in this place. This bill does not make the kind of profound legislative changes that make members in this place want to get up in this chamber and scream from the rooftops about them. But we are here, nonetheless, on this side of the house, and we will debate this bill and pass this bill through the house, because they are important, because our legislation is always in need of constant improvement. That is really important. That is what governments should be doing – looking for ways in which to constantly improve and make things fairer, to make Victoria a fairer state and a more equitable state for everyone in it.

Definitions that no longer fit need to be updated and must be updated, and this is the way we have to do it. Provisions dependent on a section of another act that has been repealed need to be updated. This is the kind of work that goes into regulatory reform bills like this one, and I certainly will not be talking down this bill and the work that lawyers have done in this space. I do want to acknowledge their work. I know it takes hours and hours in the office in front of a computer and probably with a red pen and a highlighter, redrafting and fixing up this kind of legislation within the departments, and yes, within the minister’s office. The work is dry, and it is thankless, but I do say to the staff: you deserve recognition, and I thank you, not only for writing these bills but for all of the time you have spent poring over legislation to find those that are outdated. Overall, this bill amends a total of 14 acts of Parliament, providing simple, straightforward and uncontroversial improvements to these acts that I am sure we can all accept are needed. We need to do it.

When it comes to regulatory reform, our government has delivered in spades over the last decade. We have reviewed and we have improved regulations in liquor, environmental protection, essential services, electricity, building and construction, health, planning, consumer affairs, fee pricing, owners corps and so much more. On top of this, we have legislated regulatory improvements to things like cladding safety – remember that? – wage theft, gender equality, casino and gambling laws, worker screening processes and so much more. We have done all of this whilst actually reducing the state’s regulatory burden by about 25 per cent. And we know that businesses have benefited immeasurably from these regulatory changes. Those opposite go around constantly claiming that regulations are killing small businesses in Victoria. I might direct them to look at the Business Acceleration Fund, which previously featured in different iterations. It has funded projects that have collectively grown the Victorian economy by about $450 million each and every single year, saving Victorians about 330,000 days a year in saved time. We have saved businesses about 40,000 days per year in preparing and managing food safety programs by simplifying the state’s food safety requirements. We have streamlined Heritage Victoria permits for low- and no-harm applications, saving about 6000 businesses about 91,000 days a year. This has also had the effect of getting houses built quicker and boosting supply.

These are just some of the ways in which regulatory reform is delivering for Victorians, including importantly, small businesses. And we will not be stopping there. We are currently working on and examining unnecessary red tape. We are looking at ways we can simplify and streamline things to make things more effective and efficient so that Victoria can remain a state where it is easy to do business and where businesses want to come and do business. This includes goals like halving the number of business regulators from 37 to 18 by 2030; speeding up environment effects statements processes by giving answers in 18 months or less, making the system faster, cheaper and more predictable; and driving up investment in things like wind farms, water projects and road and rail infrastructure projects, which we all know are so vital to our state’s economy and our environment. It includes new priority assessment teams –

[Point of Order Debate]

Sarah CONNOLLY: It includes new priority assessment teams within key regulators to fast-track the assessment of priority projects and streamlining liquor and planning approvals for hospitality businesses so that they only need a liquor licence to go ahead and serve alcohol – to do business – saving businesses up to $7000 and allowing them to open up six months earlier.

Overall, we are hoping that by 2030 the regulatory burden for businesses in Victoria can be reduced by about $500 million through streamlining regulations and reducing duplication and digitisation where we can. That is what our economic statement is all about, supporting local and small businesses and the incredible people who work within them, because when they succeed we know that Victoria succeeds.

As I have looked through this bill and taken a quick look at some of the minor technical changes in here, there are actually some really interesting and positive changes that this bill makes through regulatory amendment. A good example is the amendments to the Adoption Act 1984 to remove barriers to help families who have experienced forced adoption to reunite. The work that that parliamentary committee did a couple of years ago in relation to forced adoptions was absolutely incredible. It was a really difficult inquiry, and having spoken to the members, the stories that came through that were absolutely heartbreaking. But we know from the work that this government has done in looking at this issue just how traumatic and impactful this practice was for the Victorian women who suffered under these forced adoptions. It is exactly why we set up a redress scheme in late 2023 to support the mothers who live with the consequences of these forced adoptions each and every single day. This is a small legislative change in this bill, but what it will mean is a world of difference for the mums and their children who are out there in the world seeking to reunite with them. The bill does this by allowing natural relatives to access identifying information about the adopted person to allow for those reunions to go ahead and happen. I for one certainly hope that this change leads to some very positive outcomes for those families affected by forced adoptions.

Another really important change here is to the Domestic Animals Act 1994, which will be amended to ensure that we can empower councils with better data on the location of dangerous dogs, a small change that will keep our community and especially our children safe from dog attacks. We see in the newspaper – I read those articles – that there have been the most terrible attacks from dogs that are unsafe and have likely attacked before and that end in tragedy. A child or someone walking by is attacked and ends up in hospital from that dog attack. We know that that does happen, and that is why we are doing this here in this bill.

I will not have time to go through the rest of the changes in this bill. The bill is not a milestone piece of legislation, but it makes a number of serious small, minor and technical changes to a bunch of different pieces of legislation, and I commend it wholeheartedly to the house.