This was when the institute was first established as part of the Coroners Act, which outlined its purpose – to provide forensic pathology and scientific services to the Victorian Coroners Court. It is a duty that it still performs today; however, today it does so much more than that, and the importance of the VIFM has only increased.

In 1989 the institute set up the Donor Tissue Bank of Victoria. It was the first multi-tissue bank in the entire Australasia region, providing life-saving health care and skin grafts. In 1995 it began partnering with Victoria Police through the incorporation of clinical forensic medicine, allowing victims of crime, importantly, to be examined. I can only imagine the impact this has had on our ability to fight crime by examining victims’ bodies and their work with our coroners. It also provides vital assistance in working carefully and considerately with sexual assault victim-survivors. At the Monash Medical Centre they can even provide a just-in-case examination if a victim-survivor does not wish to notify police at that point in time. That is a service that is respectful and considerate of the person’s needs and wants in what can only be described as a truly horrendous situation.

All of this demonstrates, I think, just how important the work of the VIFM really is not just for survivors or tissue donors but for the broader community’s safety as well. Their work is not just limited to this or just to our state. VIFM partners with the Australian Sports Brain Bank to investigate CTE head injuries by conducting post-mortem examinations of people who suffered sports injuries and concussions.

It is quite an interesting, timely moment for me to talk about those concussions and the importance of having them investigated, having had to pick up my 11-year-old son last Monday – well, it was really the early hours of Tuesday morning. At about 2 am my husband had to go down and pick him up from school camp. Apparently this is a very regular thing that happens with kids mucking around on school camp. He had a head knock twice actually. The first time he did not report it because he was doing something he should not be with the other boys, and then the second time it hurt, I think. He let the school know, and then later that night he had a headache. The school did a great job in being responsible and doing the right thing. They called us at about 11 pm. They had given him Panadol and then took him to the local hospital – or the virtual ED there at Rosebud – and they confirmed that he probably had a concussion so my husband drove down at 2 on Tuesday morning to pick him up and bring him home.

But one of the things that the hospital did offer – and I actually did not know this – is the suggestion that we do not see a GP, that we need to actually go and see a concussion specialist. I am surprised it took Leo 11 years for me to work this out. The concussion specialist said, ‘No, it is not a GP that you go to. They don’t specialise in concussions and head knocks.’ It was incredible, because we spent – and I am not kidding – over an hour with the concussion specialist, who conducted all kinds of tests on my son, including a pre-test the night before. He had a little computer game to play on the phone, which identified his responsiveness and if he was slow or fast in playing the computer game. They found out that indeed he did have a concussion and his responsiveness was slower than it should be.

So I would say to anyone listening out there: if your child or someone in your family does have a knock on the head and you are concerned, sometimes it pays not just to go to your local GP but you can book into a concussion specialist. We did not actually need a referral. It was very much like booking in to see a physio. It was a very thorough investigation into Leo indeed. They then provided a report on brain injury but also brain rest. So over the past week I have been learning a lot about the brain and the importance of taking these sorts of knocks seriously.

It is a pretty scary situation to be in as a parent when you think about concussions and injuries that players and family members can get on the sporting field. Parents whose children might participate in sports like AFL or rugby – and believe me, I have met quite a lot of those parents standing alongside them watching their kids play the many footy and rugby games that take place in my electorate of Laverton – worry about the impacts of sports injuries on their kids and head injuries that could very much impact their long-term cognitive development or leave them impaired for the rest of their lives. We can hope that the research conducted by the Australian Sports Brain Bank will be instrumental in preventing these long-term physical head injuries and ultimately keeping our kids and the broader Victorian community safe.

That is just some of the valuable work that this institute is involved in. And that work is not simply confined to this state or indeed Australia; it has also helped build capability for coronal activity and mortuary services in Bhutan and it has assisted the Red Cross with the mercy work in Ukraine, in Lebanon and Armenia, changing lives at the flashpoints of international conflicts. This is the stuff that matters. It is not always on the front page of the paper as something that the community might find to be salacious and other things as points of interest to read, but this stuff actually does matter. And the work that they do and continue to do is what this bill is actually all about when you have a read.

As for what this bill is going to do, it is going to establish a new enabling act for the VIFM. There are a number of changes that are designed to improve the governance and, importantly, the operation of the institute. It does this by introducing a new skills-based framework for its governing board. It creates two new leadership roles: a CEO and, importantly, a director of forensic medicine. Under the current framework, the leadership of the institute is governed by a council of 13 members, and that includes judges, professors, doctors and police, all of whom collectively answer to the Attorney-General and the Department of Justice and Community Safety – and that consists of another four advisory committees that answer to them. It seems like a lot, right? This bill will also allow for these roles to be held concurrently, importantly, by the same person to ensure that knowledge and expertise of forensic medicine and science not only is held by the leadership of the institute but is at the forefront of its decision-making. The council itself is going to be replaced by a new skills-based governing board, and these external representatives will retain their ability to influence decision-making through a stakeholder advisory group, which the bill requires to be established.

I am just watching the time that I have got left. It is a great bill before the house. I know there have been lots of contributions; some of them have been quite emotional contributions indeed. And it is no surprise, because the work of the VIFM does provide community safety across the broader Victorian community, whether it is identifying perpetrators involved in matters of sexual assault or indeed making sure that our kids playing sport on a Saturday or Sunday that have received a knock are safe and will be okay. I think it also can help drive towards finding ways in which to ensure that our sports are played more safely, whether that involves having one knock and coming off the field and not going back on at half-time because ‘You’ll be right’. A concussion specialist said to me that is real no-no; one knock is serious enough to be knocked out.

This is a really great bill. I do thank all members of the house for making such good and powerful and respectful contributions to this bill. Since its inception 40 years ago the institute – what can we say – has done an incredible job of advancing forensic medicine not just in Victoria but indeed around the world, and we want to make sure that it can keep doing this. That is why this bill is really important, and that is why I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the house.