Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

PUBLIC HOLIDAYS AMENDMENT BILL 2011
1688 COUNCIL Thursday, 2 June 2011
option of declaring Melbourne Cup Day a holiday or
declaring a day in lieu of Melbourne Cup Day a
holiday, but that did not always transpire.
In 2007, a year before the amendment of the legislation,
25 out of the 48 non-metropolitan municipalities
elected to declare Melbourne Cup Day or a day in lieu
of Melbourne Cup Day a public holiday. Just over
50 per cent of councils gave their ratepayers the
opportunity to have that public holiday. That means
23 of the 48 non-metropolitan councils were not
declaring Melbourne Cup Day or a day in lieu of it a
public holiday, so a little under 50 per cent of the
regional and rural Victorian population were not having
the same number of holidays as the rest of Victoria.
Clearly that was a travesty.
In view of the background information I have just
mentioned, I believe the bill is a sinister piece of
legislation aimed at duping rural and regional
communities into believing the coalition is standing up
for them. In reality all the bill does is erode their
holidays. Alternative public holiday arrangements
already exist in that non-metropolitan councils already
have the right to elect an alternative day in lieu of
Melbourne Cup Day. Furthermore, under section 7 of
the Public Holidays Act 1993 the minister has the
power to provide an extra half-day public holiday over
and above and in lieu of Melbourne Cup Day.
The minister’s second-reading speech, like Mr Philip
Davis’s contribution today, is littered with the word
‘flexibility’. It dismisses current arrangements as being
inflexible, yet as I mentioned earlier, section 7 gives the
minister all the flexibility she requires to award a public
holiday to regions or towns within non-metropolitan
municipalities that warrant a public holiday over and
above Melbourne Cup Day. This includes providing
more than one public holiday for any non-metropolitan
municipality.
It is amazing how quickly the government has changed
its tune in the short time since the Shop Trading
Reform Amendment (Easter Sunday) Bill 2011 was
debated in this Parliament earlier this year. During that
debate speaker after speaker from the government side
got up, both in this house and the other place, and
waxed lyrical about how messy and confusing the
Easter Sunday trading arrangements were because of a
lack of uniformity across the state. What I picked up
from Mr Philip Davis’s contribution to the debate on
this bill and from the bill’s second-reading speech is
that non-uniformity is now a good thing.
Non-uniformity and self-determination — these are
obviously post-modern things.
I quote from the second-reading speech of the Minister
for Innovation, Services and Small Business on the
Shop Trading Reform Amendment (Easter Sunday)
Bill 2011 — and members will notice that uniformity is
not considered a good thing in this speech:
As well as such inconsistencies, implementation of the Easter
Sunday trading restrictions became complex, unwieldy and
confusing.
Let us remember those words: ‘complex, unwieldy and
confusing’. The speech continued:
The 2003 restrictions became especially disruptive in regional
Victoria. A number of special exemptions from Easter
Sunday closing were granted by the former government for
different geographical areas of the state, creating an
environment that became extremely confusing for the
community.
Again I will repeat the final bit of that sentence:
‘creating an environment that became extremely
confusing for the community’. The speech continued:
These special exemptions meant that all shops in one
municipality, or part of it, could open on Easter Sunday but
not in other municipalities. For example, all shops could open
in Bendigo —
Bendigo happened to have a local community
celebration on that day —
but not in Ballarat or Geelong.
Obviously there was no local special day in those two
areas.
I now turn to the second-reading speech of the Minister
for Innovation, Services and Small Business on the
Public Holidays Amendment Bill 2011:
The restrictive requirement for whole day and whole shire
public holidays in lieu of Melbourne Cup Day ignores the fact
that some —
and members should listen to this —
country municipalities have two or more communities within
their municipality and that their communities have different
local show day and cup day arrangements.
There is a convenient change of attitude towards
flexibility. What hypocrisy! There is nothing more I can
say; the quotes are clear. Just because shops could open
in Bendigo on Easter Sunday due to a local Bendigo
community event but shops could not open in Ballarat
or Geelong, which I presume have no special local
event on Easter Sunday, the coalition argued against
Easter Sunday trading restrictions, saying it was all too
messy. I refer again to the quote that the restrictions
were ‘complex, unwieldy and confusing’ and created
‘an environment that became extremely confusing for