Most politicians are good people. I hope I was one of those

Most newbie MPs take a while to work out where they are and more importantly, who they are in their new environment. If you’re a government or opposition backbencher things are pretty much set for you by the big party structures. But if you’re a crossbencher, you need to work out how to get your agenda up against a government that has the numbers to stop you at every step of the way.

Because I had been a lobbyist for the adult goods and services industry for two decades, I was used to knocking on politicians’ doors, asking the impossible and working out ways to get them on board with my goals, or at least some of them. As it turned out, I couldn’t have had a better apprenticeship.

Many years of lobbying politicians proved to be a good apprenticeship for Fiona Patten, who eventual became an MP.Credit: Eddie Jim

New crossbenchers need a plan and they need to make relationships with government, the opposition and the crossbench, and that will mean not allowing the perfect get in the way of the good.

While cleaning out my parliamentary office the other day, I was amazed at the number of reports that I had been involved in and the number of submissions from so many amazing individuals and organisations I have had the privilege to work with. It reminded me of just how much Victoria’s social agenda has changed in only eight years.

In the 2010-2014 parliament, the Liberal government had the numbers in the Upper House to crush any moves from the Labor opposition or the Greens. From 2014 to 2022, Victoria saw the largest and most diverse cross bench that the Legislative Council had ever had, and the strange “ch-ch-changes” that David Bowie sang about started take place – changes that many said would not happen.

There was a newness and an originality to debate. We hosted three all-night sittings (a law which guarantees presumptive rights for firefighters diagnosed with cancer, Safe Access Zones and Voluntary Assisted Dying) where MPs tried to sleep between bells and watched the dawn on Spring Street. The VAD debate was long and intense, and while no success is achieved by any one individual, I was very happy to have initiated these new laws through lobbying other MPs and a committee referral that was taken up by government leader Gavin Jennings.

Representatives of Victoria’s Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh communities gathered outside parliament to oppose the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill in 2017.Credit: Joe Armao

The Reason Party led the nation in assisted dying legislation, but our laws are now due to be reviewed. We need to fix access and stop publicly funded health facilities refusing access to patients who qualify.

While Tasmania was the first to implement safe access zones around abortion clinics, it was Victoria that led the change on the mainland. But abortion is still difficult to access here, especially in regional areas. We need urgent changes to a system that allows publicly funded hospitals to refuse abortion or contraception. Objection should be on the basis of an individual doctor’s viewpoint, not because a hospital objects.

Over the last eight years, the Andrews government has done a lot that is good and inclusive. In offering me the chair of the Legal and Social Issues Committee for the past four years, they signalled a willingness, for the first time, to allow an independent MP to head a parliamentary committee. It would say a lot to the electorate if they were to do that with a range of committees.

The new parliament should push the government to account and respond to three landmark inquiries held by my committee from 2018-2022 and which attracted significant community interest. They are required to do so by law but just haven’t.

The Inquiry into Victoria’s Criminal Justice System was almost unanimous that bail laws must change and that we must raise the age of criminal responsibility. With the coroner’s report into the death of Veronica Nelson, an Aboriginal woman who died in prison, due for release soon, the government could get ahead of this issue.

The Inquiry into the Use of Cannabis in Victoria is crammed full of evidence from legal and health experts as well as voices from a diverse cross-section of our community, including many younger people. It made a number of recommendations about the next steps for cannabis law reform. But the very first change that needs to happen is reforms for medicinal cannabis patients. They should not be prohibited from driving when they are not impaired, and should be treated equally to patients receiving any other prescription medicine.

In my opinion, this is low-hanging fruit and would help patients enormously.

The government also made a number of commitments to me that I would like to see them keep. They committed to change the recital of the Lord’s Prayer at the opening of parliament with a more secular and inclusive approach. They committed to review caps on electoral expenditure and to establish a portfolio to end loneliness.

As a former MP for and resident in Northern Metro I am of course disappointed that Adem Somyurek has been elected. An anti-abortionist who is also opposed to voluntary assisted dying and drug law reform, and a supporter of branch stacking, he will be largely irrelevant in the 60th parliament anyway.

Politicians get a bad rap, but it’s my observation that they pretty much reflect an average slice of society. Sure, there are a couple of cookers in there but on the whole most of them are decent people trying to do their best. I hope I was one of those.

Fiona Patten was a Member of the Legislative Council from 2014, representing the Northern Metropolitan Region. She lost her seat at last month’s state election.