Well, I cannot tell you – I am so excited to get up and talk about the Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I have been thinking about this bill all week, because we sort of had –
[Interjection]
No. I have been so excited and I have had a really good sleep, so I am totally pumped to speak about this. Those opposite struggled, I think it was at question time – it feels like a long week – on Tuesday, when the Minister for Consumer Affairs got up to talk about the fair fuel plan and he got up to talk about the Servo Saver app. I know exactly what he got up to talk about in his ministers statement, but those opposite jumped in to interrupt him because they actually did not know about the Servo Saver announcement that was recently made and about the fair fuel plan that came through as part of that – which I thought was amazing, because I have a story to tell. This actually happened, and I think I need to tell it here in this place. And I am going to look into the camera, because the guy at the service station at about 7:30 in the morning last Thursday –
[Interjection]
This one is for you. I do not know his name, but for the sake of this story I am going to call him Joe. Now, it is 7:30 in the morning and I am dressed in a fluoro yellow jacket on my way to a press conference with the Premier at the Joan Kirner hospital. As happens to me on a regular basis, I do not fill up till the car is on empty and I probably have 200 metres left of fuel. So I turned up to a service station because it was the closest to my house, sweating heavily, thinking I would not make it. And at $1.59 I thought, ‘Jeez, I haven’t seen petrol this cheap for ages.’
Literally, I am thinking this as I have plugged in and I am filling up the car. I thought, ‘Oh, I probably need to do some social media around this Servo Saver announcement we’ve done that’s on the Service Victoria app.’ And as I was thinking this, I could see this bloke staring at me, and I instantly thought, ‘Well, it must be the yellow high-vis jacket that looks totally crazy at 7:30 in the morning, or he’s recognised something. He’s seen something on social media.’ And I thought, ‘Here we go.’ I am just waiting for it. Anyway, I finish filling up, I go to pay and Joe finishes filling up and he goes, ‘Oh my God, are you Sarah?’ And I said yes. And he said, ‘Are you Sarah Connolly?’ And I said yes, I am. And he goes to me, ‘Oh my God; I literally was at home this morning and I saw you on my Facebook page and I saw’ – get ready for this – ‘your announcement about the Servo Saver.’ I am literally in the service station at 7:30 in the morning going, ‘That was a bad post. That was a bad graphic, and you saw that?’ And he goes to me, ‘I have come here to this service station to fill up my car because it is the cheapest in the area,’ and I am standing there going, ‘Oh my God,’ and he says to me, ‘Thank you so much for putting up that announcement on your Facebook page, and thank you so much and your government for all the work that it does. This has saved me money this morning.’
Isn’t that a great story? I really hope the Premier and the minister are listening to this. This is a great story. This actually happened. I am calling this guy Joe, because there will be plenty of Joes out there that get onto the Servo Saver, their car empty, and they will save some money that day. $1.59 was really cheap to fill up on. That was a great start to the day, and I headed off to join the Premier at the Joan Kirner hospital in Sunshine. So when the member for Polwarth stands here and says, ‘No-one uses this; this is rubbish,’ that is completely untrue. This is a real story. So I will look in the camera and say to Joe: ‘You are welcome; you are very much welcome, and you should use that Servo Saver every time you go to fill up and you should tell your family and tell your friends because it will save you money.’
That is what we are talking about here in this bill. That is real life. That is real-life politics. That is about doing what is right and what is fair and tackling what we know is a huge contribution to the cost of living for regular folks like Joe. So I am particularly proud about that. God, that puts me in a good mood even thinking about it. That is all I want to say on this bill in relation to the fair fuel plan. It works. Victorians use it and they love it, and I would encourage those opposite that think it is nonsense to get on there and have a play around. Have a look. It works.
I do want to talk about the rental reforms, because I know those opposite struggle with the rental reforms that we have put through this house. We have done reforms for renters. We have done them for landlords. It is about protections. It is about a fairer, more equitable Victoria for all Victorians even if you are a renter – and I have spoken in this house a lot about spending years here in Melbourne renting. It is really tough, and I do think there was a gross inequality between the landlord and the renter. I think the rental reforms we have put through this place in the time that we have been in government have been really important. They have been productive, and it is totally about fairness and equality. To our renters out there who have benefited from these rental reforms, including the rental reform that is part of this bill: you are welcome, because you deserve to have the roof over your head and have the same protected rights that any one of us has.
The amount of work that has gone into rental reforms over the past couple of years in designing the government’s housing statement – that was back in 2023. I was here in this place when we rolled it out.
There is a huge power of work that has gone into that and a huge amount of consultation with renters, with landlords and everyone in between about what we needed to do to afford better protection, better rights for everyone – every single person involved. One of the big issues we know about is that for a lot of households, including my household – this was a real-life experience for me – you need to pay a new bond. When you have to move house, you have got the bond that is held up in your current property and you need to then put in another bond. That actually ends up being a lot of money. Often the bond for where you currently are has not been returned when you are paying the bond for the house you need to move into. It takes a while, and that creates a very real financial barrier. The average cost of a bond – and our bond was a lot more than this – is about 2360 bucks, we know that. So if you already have that tied up and then you need to pay another $2360, that is a lot of money to be putting down on a new rental before you even get the bond back from your previous one. That is something that we have tried to fix in this house, and this change also goes to making it fairer for folks who are renting and having to undergo this. That is why we have introduced the new portable bond scheme. It is just making things a bit easier and a bit fairer for everyone – not just for renters but everyone involved – when it comes to renters or landlords involved in this type of contractual arrangement. That is what the portable bond scheme is about. It is going to allow the government to act as a guarantor for all transferred bonds as well as any claims made against bonds that end up happening. We know it is not just going to benefit renters but also going to benefit landlords, because they also deserve protection afforded to them. They will also benefit from it.
I think it is really important to remember why this government introduces bills like this. This is not a frivolous, ridiculous bill. There is great stuff in this. This is the kind of stuff that matters to Victorians. This is what they tell us; this is what we hear on the streets. I heard it last Thursday in my fluoro yellow jacket with Joe. This is what he told me: this stuff matters to people. It helps with the cost of living. It makes these cost-of-living arrangements and daily transactions, like rental transactions, fairer and more equitable for everyone involved. I am really proud of this bill. I think it is tremendous work from the minister. He should feel really proud and know that Joe in Melbourne’s west is so happy with his Servo Saver. I commend the bill to the house.
