The Victorian government’s controversial pandemic legislation now faces likely defeat in the state’s upper house after former Labor powerbroker Adem Somyurek advised that he will vote against it.
Somyurek became an independent MP in 2020 in the wake of a branch-stacking scandal; the former government minister says he would have opposed the bill if he had still been in the cabinet, arguing that it would give too much power to the government creating “essentially an elective dictatorship” and a government of “despots”.
He also contends that the bill lacks sufficient safeguards to prevent abuses of power:
