Portfolio — 12 July 2026

The dominant discourse arc for the Ashwood district across the window's sitting days runs on two separate tracks that rarely intersect: the Member for Ashwood's own substantive legislative contributions across education, workplace safety, dental health, and social housing; and a sustained Opposition campaign, prosecuted entirely without the Member's participation, that made his conduct on policing the focal point of third-party attack in the Assembly.

On the Member's own record, his contributions spanned four themes across two sitting days. In the education debate, he supported legislation strengthening Aboriginal recognition and self-determination, arguing that expanded Indigenous curriculum content corrects the historical gaps he experienced in his own schooling [TA-260616-vichns-9dec69d94dd9:s188]. He grounded that support in a local example — Pinewood Primary School within the district, which has renamed its house groups to Indigenous names as part of embedding Indigenous knowledge into school culture.

He also affirmed the government's policy restricting student mobile device use during school hours, drawing on his personal experience managing his 16-year-old son's device dependency and noting that independent schools initially resisted the measure until the government backed it with legislative weight.

On dangerous goods regulation, the Member spoke to both the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026 [TA-260616-vichns-9dec69d94dd9:s198]. He distinguished his position from a constituent expert who had proposed amendments to strengthen knowledge requirements in the legislation, arguing that such requirements were already implied through the bill's existing duty to ensure safe transport and the defined due diligence obligations for corporate officers — making explicit wording unnecessary.

He directed industry stakeholders to engage in the regulatory development process, positioning their technical knowledge as essential to WorkSafe's implementation work.

The two adjournment requests on 18 June brought constituent-level concerns directly into view. The Member asked the Minister for Health in the other place how many Smile Squad visits have been made in the Ashwood district since the program's inception, citing potential savings to families and expressing concern about the program's continuity under a change of government [TA-260618-vichns-682983134932:s275].

He also sought the Minister for Housing and Building to visit Power Avenue in Ashwood to consider renewal and expansion of social and affordable housing, pointing to recent government investments at Markham Estate and Syndal as precedent and calling for protection of the Power Neighbourhood House alongside any housing redevelopment [TA-260618-vichns-682983134932:s353].

Both requests followed the same structural logic as his legislative contributions: connecting government programs to direct and specific benefit within the district.

The third-party lane tells a sharply different story. The Member for Ashwood became the named subject of Opposition criticism across multiple sittings, with the Member for Malvern — Mr David Davis — charging that the Member for Ashwood had failed to publicly demand restoration of Protective Services Officers stripped from nine stations on the Glen Waverley line [TA-260616-vichns-db6eb221750c:s156].

The Opposition Leader moved a motion condemning the Member's failure to contact constituents on the PSO issue, though leave was refused [TA-260617-vichns-9fa22f0e851d:s093]. The Government's response was to defend both the Member's engagement and the underlying policing strategy: the Member for Southern Metropolitan Region, Mr Ryan Batchelor, acknowledged attending a Boroondara neighbourhood policing forum with the Member for Ashwood, where both heard intelligence-led and patrol-led policing responses from local police — and cited crime reductions of 1.3 to 7.4 per cent across Glen Eira, Bayside and Kingston in 2025 as evidence that the deployment model was working.

Policing also drew in members from beyond the immediate district. The Member for Berwick, Mr Brad Battin, raised an adjournment seeking urgent action on policing services at Clyde North police station, citing an 83 per cent increase in crime since 2023 and vacancies at Narre Warren and Cranbourne stations [TA-260618-vichns-682983134932:s352]. The Minister for Police responded by highlighting a $78 million investment in Clyde North and Narre Warren police stations, describing them as recently opened facilities providing highway patrol and specialist services [TA-260618-vichns-682983134932:s362].

That exchange, while not directly about Ashwood, framed the broader PSO and station-resourcing contest within which the Opposition's criticism of the Member for Ashwood sits.

The two tracks create a notable disjunction in the window's record: the Member's own Assembly contributions are entirely absent from the policing debate that consumed Opposition attention directed at him, while his substantive contributions across education, workplace safety, dental health, and housing carried no third-party engagement or opposition response in the records supplied.