Wednesday, 4 August 2021

Environment and Planning Committee

Inquiry into Tackling Climate Change in Victorian Communities

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (10:22): I rise to speak today on the Legislative Assembly Environment and Planning Committee Inquiry into Tackling Climate Change in Victorian Communities report, and I do so in the context that this report speaks about the Western Victoria Transmission Network Project and also talks about how that project can be a lever, if you like, to some other projects.

Last week the member for Murray Plains, the Leader of The Nationals, and I met with a number of stakeholders along the western transmission project, including Emma Muir, who is from Stop AusNet’s Towers; Katherine Myers, who is the horticulture vice-president of the Victorian Farmers Federation and a Tourello farmer in Ripon; and Chris Stephens, who is the president of the McCain’s potato growers and is also a farmer in Ripon. What they told me—and I have met with them all before in various contexts—is that they are not getting what they want in terms of the consultation and response from the government on this project. The government continues to put this project back to Australian Energy Market Operator, and then through AEMO to AusNet, and AusNet is clearly not consulting properly with people affected along the lines. We have had many examples of people receiving a first consultation from AusNet being told that they are directly in the line of this project. This project has enormous community opposition all the way through the Buninyong electorate and then through Ripon, and yet we do not see this government coming to the table to fix it, because it is clearly not viable to rip into communities in the way that this project is going to.

And what we see from this report that I am speaking on today is not only does it talk about this project but it then talks about a number of additional projects that rely on the terminal station being built north of Ballarat. Now, the terminal station is a massive industrial complex that will be built in the middle of a valley that is currently used for potato growing. And this report makes clear that the government’s plan is to use that terminal station as an interconnector to a number of other projects, including linking Wagga Wagga to there. We are being told that both of the options go from Wagga Wagga to North Ballarat; they just go different ways. So clearly that terminal station is part of a grand plan that this government has to transition the grid, and yet the communities there are being faced with a set of regulations that are wholly unfit for purpose. There just are not the right structures for communities to have input into what is really ripping apart decades—in fact hundreds of years—of potato growing and hundreds of years of community building in those areas. And yet this report again gives us an answer to what can be done here. It says:

Under amendments to the National Electricity (Victoria) Act 2005 … the Act now enables the Minister to specify an alternative regulatory test that considers a broader range of criteria than market cost and benefit alone.

Well, the government needs to come in and use those powers it has given itself. It has got the powers. The Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change has the power to fix this project, yet all we are hearing is government members, including the member for Buninyong, going out and saying it is about AEMO. Well, it is about this government. AEMO is the grid operator because the government, the Andrews Labor government, appointed it as the grid operator. They could appoint somebody else. There is no reason for this false idea, other than of course political cowardice to actually stand up to your own government and say they are doing the wrong thing in the face of monumental community opposition. But that is what is needed here, not the cowardice we are seeing from the member for Buninyong and the member for Melton. This project is unloved. They need to fix it.