Tuesday, 5 March 2024

State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Lily D’Ambrosio:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (17:08): It feels like a really monumental thing to be here in the chamber to be making sure that the SEC is part of the constitution and never taken away by those opposite. Our targets, as I mentioned before, are delivering the most rapid reduction in emissions in Australia, unlocking billions of dollars in investment and creating thousands of jobs – thousands of green jobs and thousands of public jobs as well – under the SEC. We have a massively ambitious offshore wind target of at least 2 gigawatts by 2032 and energy storage targets. We are decarbonising through new renewable energy across the state – wind, solar and batteries – and of course our nation-leading plan for offshore wind generation in Australia. In 2022 over 35 per cent of our energy came from renewables, more than three times the 10 per cent we inherited from those opposite. Since 2014, 59 ‍projects have come on line. There are nine projects currently under construction, and we have created over 5100 jobs in large-scale renewable energy since we were elected.

This agenda is saving households money at bill time, and in the 2022 calendar year more than 510,000 ‍households and 49,000 businesses received discounted energy-efficient products and services through the Victorian energy upgrades program. On average, households and businesses that undertake energy efficiency upgrades under the program save $110 and $3700 respectively on their annual energy bills. Even those who do not participate will save on their bills, with households saving $150 and businesses saving $870 over the next 10 years due to lower network rates. Of course this Minister for Climate Action has worked so tirelessly to deliver cost-of-living savings for Victorians, and I reflect on the default offer that we introduced in our last term and the power saving bonus, which my electorate office has helped thousands of local residents apply for.

This is a transformative change. It is only going to be possible from a Labor government. Only Labor can deliver. We do not commentate on these issues; we actually deliver on them. Those opposite are in absolute chaos over this, but one thing I reflect on is that occasionally from time to time when they do have the great gift of being in government they are just the worst wreckers, the biggest climate deniers, and we have to protect Victoria and our decarbonisation, our green energy future, from their reckless and chaotic actions. The SEC of course will create 59,000 jobs, making power cheaper and making it better for the planet.

We believe in science on this side of the chamber. We believe in the science that climate change is real. We are not people who will sit by coming up with ideas like, ‘Oh, maybe we could put some nuclear reactors around Victoria,’ the uncertainty around whether climate change is real and of course this absolute desperation to privatise anything they can get their hands on. We know that that has led to terrible outcomes – higher costs and a worse outcome for the environment. Over on that side of the chamber they are probably thinking, ‘Well, the environment has had it too good for too long.’ But we know that taking real and decisive action by putting the SEC in the constitution, bringing in publicly owned power again, is something that was wholeheartedly endorsed at the last election and voted for, and I am so proud to be part of a government that is delivering it.

Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (17:13): I also rise to address the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. Although I do have respect for the member for Footscray and in fact regard for her as well, she has been telling a few porky pies to the chamber, which I would like to clarify. I refer the chamber to –

Katie Hall interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: Well, it is about to hurt, member for Footscray, so stand by. A media release from the office of the Premier on 11 June 1992 clarifies for the member for Footscray and other Labor members in the chamber, many of whom have smiles on their faces at the moment – we will just wait; it will not be much longer – that:

Legislation paving the way –

this is from the office of the Premier –

for an historic partnership between the Victorian Government and U.S. power company Mission Energy passed through State Parliament late last night.

I put to the house that if it looks like privatisation, if it smells like privatisation, chances are it is privatisation – at the hands of the former Labor government. I quote from the media release:

The Victorian Government’s decision to involve private investment in this new project is essential to our energy future.

That side of the chamber time and time and time again, even though they have been in government for, this year, 10 years – 10 years in government – had an opportunity to deliver for Victorians cheaper renewable, efficient, reliable energy. No, no, they have not delivered that whatsoever, as witnessed recently, with half a million Victorians out of power and without power for a ridiculous amount of time.

A couple of things: the Andrews and now Allan Labor government need to take responsibility for their actions over the last decade. For every year that Minister D’Ambrosio has been in the role of energy minister she has promised the Victorian people lower power prices. In every year that Minister D’Ambrosio has been in the role of energy minister, energy prices in this state have risen – in the last 12 months alone, 25 per cent for households and 26 per cent for businesses. That is having an impact on Victorian families like we have never seen before, because in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis it is not just power bills that are keeping families awake at night, it is the rising cost of education, as the member for Kew and Shadow Minister for Early Childhood and Education articulated in question time today, it is the cost of grocery bills, it is the cost of mortgages. There are families, there are singles and there are businesses right around this state at the moment that are being pushed and pulled, shoved in every which way, to try and make ends meet, and a large part of the cost pressures on those Victorians at the moment is the cost of power. The Allan Labor government, formerly the Andrews Labor government, have had a decade to get it right, and they simply have not – and Victorians know the truth of that, because they are paying the price. Victorians are paying the price for the decisions of the Labor government.

The way in which the Labor government have gone about bringing this bill to the chamber can only be described as an absolute and utter disgrace. They arguably have been seeking to avoid scrutiny on this bill. Just yesterday a briefing was held. The expectation of the opposition was that the briefing would include departmental officials, supposed experts in the field. No. The only person on the call was from the minister’s office. Only after further pressure from the opposition was a formal briefing held with the opposition on this bill earlier today. That tells you everything you need to know about this government. Members of the government will claim today that this is a great victory, that this is a great piece of legislation. If they have nothing to hide, if it is so great, why hide from scrutiny? Why hide from the established practice of this place – and that is to provide a full and wholesome briefing including departmental officials and, sure, ministerial office staff to the opposition without the pressure that they have had to be put under in order to deliver that.

With this promise of the SEC, the government will have the Victorian people believe that 59,000 jobs will be created. That is their figure: 59,000 jobs will be created. How on earth, frankly, do the Labor government expect to deliver those 59,000 jobs when at the moment – after the last decade of Labor in this state – we have a very well-known skills shortage? Where is the plan to actually solve that skills crisis? I tell you what, if there is one thing that keeps me up at night in my role as Shadow Treasurer, it is not having the workforce in this state to grow our state’s economy to a degree that will actually make a substantial difference to meeting our debt that has been delivered to us under the hands of the Labor government. Where will those 59,000 jobs come from? When will those 59,000 jobs come online? Not just when, but where will those jobs come online? Will the Allan Labor government be frank with the Victorian people and actually demonstrate to them a plan for the creation of these 59,000 ‍jobs? If there is one thing we have learned about this government over the last –

Natalie Hutchins interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: Minister at the table, I would be delighted to receive a briefing from you, your staff and your department on that, and I am hoping that there might be an opportunity – through you of course, Acting Speaker – to learn more about the government’s skills plan, which to my knowledge at this point in time is severely lacking.

In relation to those 59,000 jobs that the Labor government say will be created, if there is one thing we have learned about this Labor government it is that they are all headline and no detail; they are all headline and no delivery. There is the housing statement, a pledge of 80,000 homes to be delivered year on year on year for the next 10 years. When we have got industry heads and think tanks and experts in the field saying it is a near impossibility for that to be delivered and when we have got housing approvals which are down and not up, it is an impossibility for those 80,000 homes to be delivered. Again the Allan Labor government wants Victorians to be stuck on the headlines and not –

Natalie Hutchins: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, I am not sure that the member is actually referring to the bill.

Brad ROWSWELL: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, I was using my opportunity to debate to demonstrate the point that the Allan Labor government is more about headlines and not details, and I think that there is an opportunity in this wideranging debate for me to draw upon examples.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Edbrooke): Indeed it has been a wideranging debate, but I would draw the member back to the bill.

Brad ROWSWELL: Again, all headline, no delivery – and that is exactly what the Allan Labor government is becoming known for within the Victorian community. The Victorian people know it, and they are sick of being sold on great promises.

Finally, in the time that I have remaining I just want to address the furphy I have heard from members of the government, who have time and time again said that members on this side of the chamber do not believe in climate change and do not believe in a renewable future. That could not be further from the truth. Does climate change exist? Yes, absolutely it does. We believe that; they believe that. That is not a point of contention, that is not a point of argument; that is a point of fact. I would encourage those government members yet to speak on this bill not to tell those – I am trying to think of a word other than ‘lies’ because I know that is unparliamentary, but the sentiment is still there –

Jess Wilson interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: ‘Mistruth’ – thank you, member for Kew. It is just simply a mistruth that the Labor government members should stop peddling. We do believe in climate change, but what we also believe in is a responsible transition from our current energy generation to future energy generation that delivers reliable, affordable and renewable energy. At the moment under the leadership of Minister D’Ambrosio we have got anything but that. We oppose this bill. We oppose this bill because it is not the right thing for Victorians and will not deliver them the affordable renewable power that they need.

Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (17:23): It gives me great pleasure this afternoon to rise and speak on the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. Before we get into the crux of this debate I think it is important to correct some inaccuracies by the previous speaker, the member for Sandringham. At no point did the government refuse to give the opposition a briefing on this bill. In fact what the government did was tell the opposition that they would brief them closer to the debate, which is exactly what we tried to do this week, and then the opposition refused because they said that the briefing would be biased. So for them to sit there and say that we refused to brief the opposition on the bill is completely disingenuous. But we should not be surprised, because this opposition is always completely disingenuous. It is no surprise to any of us.

To talk about the bill and to talk about the SEC more broadly, I think we have to begin by looking at what we once had. Over a hundred years ago the famous World War I general John Monash agreed to head up the SEC. At the time he wrote to a friend about his new role and stated that it might just be the most important job in Australia. A lot of people were surprised at the time that such an eminent figure as Monash, at the height of his powers and of his fame, would dedicate over a decade of his life to the SEC. But Monash knew how important cheap and reliable electricity was to Victoria and to Victorians, and he knew what was good for Victoria was indeed good for the nation. He knew that his new job was highly political. The McPherson Nationalist ministry of 1928 and 1929 was one conservative government who tried to undermine the SEC. Menzies was a junior minister of that government at the time and later recalled Monash invading the cabinet room. ‘I gather the cabinet has rejected my proposal,’ Monash said. The Premier confirmed this, and Monash said it could only be because they had utterly failed to understand it. Monash patiently explained the proposal to cabinet, convinced them, presented them with an order in council, had it signed and left.

So from the early days there was the vision and leadership required to make the SEC the rarest of beasts: a state instrumentality that engendered public pride. One of the reasons for that pride was the pivotal role that the SEC played in skills development. If we take one snapshot from 1959, we can see that the SEC provided leadership training for gifted apprentices, they provided a correspondence course for 700 staff members and they awarded 17 scholarships for engineering degrees and for diploma courses. The impact of that investment is felt even now. Visiting factories and worksites over the last decade, I have lost count of the number of tradespeople who I met that did their apprenticeship with the SEC – not just sparkies but all of the maintenance trades as well – and a significant portion of them are in my community of Hoppers Crossing. So that is a brief look at what we had.

Then what happened? Political vandalism. Let us be clear: the axing of the SEC was not an act of political conservatism. In fact it was the exact opposite. This was an example of aggressive and radical market economics. A conservative would have looked at the SEC, seen what needed to be protected and preserved, and identified that which needed to be reformed and improved.

The decision to sell the SEC to private multinational interests will go down as one of the greatest policy disasters in Victorian history and one that we continue to pay for. The reasons why this was such a bad decision have been widely canvassed. The $23 billion in profits that have gone to overseas private interests rather than being reinvested in Victoria are probably at the top of that list.

There are two more impacts that I would like to mention. With regard to skills development, it was reprehensible to abolish the SEC without putting in place appropriate alternative strategies for skills development. The SEC’s legacy of training such a skilled workforce was not properly understood and has never been fully replaced. It was left to the market to train the apprentices and engineers that the Victorian economy needs, but somebody forgot to tell the market.

The other factor is climate change. In circumstances where we were going to have to question everything about our economy and infrastructure, decision-makers needed the broadest possible scope to respond to the incredibly difficult challenge. Paul Keating referred to this as having as many levers as possible to pull. But instead of having the SEC in public hands and being able to make monumental and life-changing decisions for the public good, the assets were now in private hands, and every decision needed to be considered solely in the context of shareholder profit. From a strategic perspective, it was the worst possible decision at the worst possible time. Victorians not only are still paying the price in higher electricity bills but are also bearing the cost of all of those lost opportunities. The Kennett government drove us straight into a policy cul-de-sac.

The bill before us is part of the road map out. It is not about going back to the past of brown coal and briquette plants, but it is about learning from the past, from times when public institutions served the public and the collective good, when we invested in skills development for the future. The public good today requires that we take real impactful steps to combat climate change – action, not words. The new, modern SEC is doing exactly that, accelerating our transition to a more affordable, reliable, renewable energy future. In Melton, not far from my electorate of Tarneit, construction has begun on a 1.6-gigawatt battery with Equis Australia. It will power over 200,000 homes, and with over 100 companies lining up to partner with the SEC, there is plenty more to come.

There are still voices out there – so-called economic rationalists – who want to argue that the government should not be leading in this space, that we should wait for the market. There are a few things I would like to say to that. Firstly, we did that; we waited for the market. We have been waiting for the market for decades, and not enough has happened. Secondly, it is vital that profits that may be able to be achieved by the new SEC are available for the government to reinvest to accelerate the decarbonisation of our economy and to bring down energy prices. Thirdly, we need to recognise that government is a major user of electricity. We want our schools – 14 of which we have opened this year, by the way – we want our hospitals and we want our trains to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Let us be clear: in 1994 Jeff Kennett sold the SEC after putting it in front of a privatisation firing squad during the 1992 election, and since then energy prices have gone up. At the time he falsely claimed that the SEC was laden with debt and needed to be sold. This was despite the fact that in the last year of its operation it paid $995 million in interest and a $191 million dividend to the state government and also had a profit of $207 million. But it is not just financial; we also lost the capacity to develop the skills of Victorians and the next generation of Victoria’s energy workers.

In my first speech in this place I said two things which I want to restate today. First, I said voters like governments who say what they mean and mean what they say. We promised to re-establish the SEC and we promised to enshrine it in the constitution, and I am proud that that is what we are doing here today. The second thing I said was that I was excited about the rebirth of the SEC because of what the policy says about the apparatus of government. It says that we can all come together under this umbrella called government to make things right. That is exactly what we are doing here today, passing this legislation. That is exactly what we are doing by re-establishing the SEC, and I absolutely stand by that. I commend the bill to the house.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (17:33): I rise to speak on the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. To pick up on the member for Tarneit’s comments regarding the fact that the market has no role to play here, I look back at what the minister said last year to industry, when she in fact called on industry to do the heavy lifting when it comes to meeting the state’s renewable energy targets. In fact she told them that the SEC will actually only meet less than a quarter of the amount of renewable energy needed when it comes to meeting our renewable energy targets and that the market and industry would need to come to the table to provide the 20.5 gigawatts that are needed beyond the SEC’s commitment. Those on the other side like to demonise the market and demonise the industry that has put billions of dollars of investment into renewable energy in this country over the past few decades – in fact Australia has led in the development of renewable energy thanks to the amount of money that industry has put in place – but when it comes down to it, they are happy to go to industry and say, ‘But we actually need you guys to do the lion’s share.’

Today, now, we are looking at one part of this bill, given that before we had to guillotine debate to have an urgent division despite the fact that we have had these bills listed for over 100 days – on the paper for 100 days, yet we only had 2 hours of debate on putting the State Electricity Commission into our constitution. Those on the other side do not want to have the opportunity to actually debate the merits of putting this policy into our constitution and are seeking to put in place a policy of today into a document that should be for the long term and should be able to be flexible when it comes to our governance structure. Yet here we are putting a partisan policy from this government into our constitution and rushing that process, despite the fact that we could not do it before now. It was pulled from debate previously, and then suddenly there are 2 hours of debate allowed today.

We on this side of the house understand the importance of transitioning to a clean energy future. We understand the importance of putting in place ambitious emissions targets, and we have taken those policies to previous elections. But we also understand the importance of having reliable and affordable energy, and the SEC does nothing to actually make sure that power prices will be brought down. Victorians are struggling under a cost-of-living crisis, and at this time we have seen electricity prices go up by more than 25 per cent for individuals, families, households and Victorian businesses. Yet from this government, talking about their signature back-to-the-future SEC policy, there is no sense of detail as to how this policy will actually bring down energy prices. It simply defies belief that we would seek to enshrine the SEC into the constitution of this state when there is no detailed plan as to how it will deliver affordable and reliable energy. In fact what we have seen so far from the SEC is one investment, $245 million of taxpayers money here in Victoria, go into a project that was at final investment decision – that was already going to be paid for and invested in by the private sector. This is a piece of legislation that seeks to enshrine that into the constitution at a time when it is spending taxpayers money on projects that were going to be funded by the private sector. We hear from those opposite that it is going to create 59,000 jobs, but that project alone was going to create 155 jobs just during the construction phase.

As I said, the good news is that in Australia via the market we are actually installing renewable energy more than at any time in history, and that is without the help of the SEC. We must continue this momentum, and we must continue it to be able to meet our net zero targets. But the investment to be able to meet those targets and achieve net zero will need to be maintained every year to 2030, and then we are going to need to double that again to get to 2040 and then double that again to get to 2050. The risk here with the SEC is that it will crowd out this private investment, and if we look at crowding out that private investment – as we have heard from the minister herself, calling on industry at an industry event to meet the lion’s share of this renewable energy commitment with 20.5 gigawatts of energy investment – we are putting at risk those investments being made. The transition to net zero is not going to be easy. We need to be able to balance reliability and affordability with the installation of green, clean energy. It will a be bumpy road if we do not get this right, and as we are seeing right now, Victorians are experiencing power prices increasing by more than 25 per cent.

We just have to look to the experts in the electricity space. Tony Wood, who is known for his understanding of the electricity market, when he talks about the SEC has pointed out that the outcomes hoped to be achieved from the SEC would not be delivered through the current market with this policy. If we look at the government’s own appointment to the SEC board, Dr Alan Finkel, this concern was echoed by him when he was sitting on the SEC’s advisory panel. He is no longer sitting on the advisory panel, but he shared his own concerns:

You don’t want to crowd out private sector funding as we make this important but complex transition …

The Grattan Institute has joined in calls pointing out the risk when it comes to the installation of the SEC here in Victoria and this government enshrining that in the constitution for decades to come. The Grattan Institute has pointed out that no sane investor, industry super fund or otherwise, is going to go into partnership with an organisation whose decisions are made on a political whim. We just have to look at the first SEC investment, into a battery project – a $245 million project – that was already going to go ahead. It is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars on a project that industry was fully prepared to fund and get underway.

We have heard a lot throughout this debate about privatisation and the blame from those opposite pointed at the Kennett government. But as the member for Sandringham pointed out, we do have a press release here from 11 June 1992 about the legislation passed by the Parliament:

Legislation paving the way for an historic partnership between the Victorian Government and U.S. power company Mission Energy passed through State Parliament late last night.

…

The Premier, Ms. Joan Kirner, said the successful passage of the Bill provided the framework for an exciting future in Victoria’s power generation industry.

And here is the kicker:

The Victorian Government’s decision to involve private investment in this new project is essential to our energy future.

The privatisation of energy in this state was started by the Kirner government. In fact it was the Kirner government that sold 51 per cent of Loy Yang B in 1992. At the very time that this happened, the then SECV chairman Mr Jim Smith said:

… the rapid introduction of competition is the best way to quickly reform the electricity supply industry …

… That is a key reason why SECV board and general management want to sell Loy Yang B power station and have it privately operated …

Now, I know this is an inconvenient truth for those opposite – they like to place the blame all the way over here – but just as they have managed the state of our finances, they are managing our investment in electricity into the ground. Victorians are paying the price.

I will finish on a quote from the Grattan Institute about the SEC. Those opposite like to paint a very nostalgic picture of the SEC, but in the words of the Grattan Institute:

Just booting up the old SEC will be about as successful as trying to use Tik-Tok on a Nokia.

And we have just put that into the constitution.

Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (17:43): I would also like to make a small contribution to our State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. I have been listening to what is a wideranging debate. If I go back to 1989 – I probably was not paying a power bill back in 1989, but I was using it – I can understand the argument from the other side that the government of the day started to sell part of the power industry. Yes, yes, okay – fair enough. But I think it is still fair that there is a difference between having a private–public partnership in power – where the government of the day can effect, for the betterment of the people of Victoria, prices, management, regulation et cetera, et cetera – and selling it all off. It is not the same. In my mind there is no huge point in trying to rewrite history one way or the other – we are where we are. But when we went to the people in Ashwood 18 months ago now, or thereabouts, and said to them that our intention was to reimagine, reinvent, publicly owned power – and it is not 100 per cent, but publicly owned power – this was overwhelmingly supported.

If the argument that I have heard seems to be that a government 30-odd years ago was putting forward the argument that 50 per cent of power was okay, and we are now putting forward the argument that 50 per cent of government-owned power is okay, that is the same. So, fair cop, that is what we took to the people. I would say, for the most part, of those people that I have spoken to in the Ashwood district, they are supporters. They are not so much supporters of nuclear energy.

Again, to be fair, I know there are many members on the other side as well as on this side – for all I know, they might be exclusively on the other side – who do not like the idea of nuclear energy and nuclear power stations in Victoria. Certainly on this side, under our watch, I am pretty safe to say that is not going to happen. But there has been some noise in the federal sphere that this is something that is on the table from some. I would question the wisdom of that, but when your opponent is making a mistake, do not interrupt them. The idea that someone is going to spend a bucketload of money over decades on something that people do not want, which will require storage of nuclear waste that will drive through suburbs – and which suburbs and where – it boggles the mind that this is in the media and in the conversation, but, sure. We are here to debate these things. I would argue most people do not think that is the way to go.

They do think that the SEC and having 51 per cent ownership of projects is a good way to go. Now, I admit that the first project, obviously, is not quite 51 per cent, and I take on board some of the arguments from the other side that us investing in a project that was already going ahead – let us just take that, okay, sure, I will take your word for it – that somehow this is a bad thing, that the state, the SEC, would somehow invest in a worthwhile project is a bad thing. I am not sure if that means the opposite of that is that we should be investing in projects that are not a working thing; that would not make any sense. I think we have to be prudent with people’s money, and the fact that this was a project that was going ahead and was worth money seems like a good investment to me, on the face of it, so I commend the minister on that and look forward to it. And there will be many more projects as we move to establishing the new SEC.

I go back to – and I have mentioned this story before in this house – a cousin’s husband who used to work for the SEC when it was publicly owned, then still worked with whoever the private company was that took over. I cannot remember the name, but it does not really matter. He was working for them and his first job as one of the electrical operators for that company was to remove all the redundancies from poles and wires and substations and put them in a storage cupboard or a warehouse, whatever it was, because they were going to be replacement parts for the next decade or so. Because one of the first decisions that that private company made was how to cut costs. Fair enough, they are a private company, they have got duties to their shareholders. The Victorian people are not their shareholders; they do not have a duty to the Victorian people. So AGL, Origin, it does not really matter who, they do not have a duty to the Victorian people as shareholders – we are clients. Now, good business should look after clients, you would hope.

I think, credit where it is due, over the last couple of weeks we have seen huge outages in our electrical network because of the winds and the storms, and to go from the amount of outages we had to a very small number within a week was amazing. Credit to those companies – United Energy around my patch, AusNet and whoever else it is. Yes, they did their job and they got things back up and running as quickly as they could. That is good. But none of the investment that we are making – or that clients, as we are, are making – necessarily comes back to the state or necessarily gets used to make the system better or cheaper in the long run. As we reinvent our SEC I would expect that that is the difference here: you know, we went from a period of post-war Victoria where we had public assets that – I get it ‍– multiple sides of governments over the last 30–40 years have privatised, have sold off. It was a good day in this house last term when we brought the Mildura hospital back into public hands.

A member interjected.

Matt FREGON: Well, it is debatable, and we are here to debate – there you go.

It was a good day, because it brought something that had been private back into public hands, where in my opinion health should be. So it is good to know that we are working towards the SEC for Victorians, not necessarily to make the highest return on investment for shareholders. There is nothing wrong with that. I got rid of all my shares, but, you know, if they kick me out of this place, sure, I will go back in and invest in them. That is how you do it. You take capital and you make more capital. But we need to bring Victoria with us. So when we took this idea to the people of Victoria 18 months ago they said yes, and they did not say yes because, in my mind, ‘Oh, we all hate the big private energy companies.’ Whether it be AGL or whether it be Coles or Woolies, companies are companies; they do what they do. But the idea that we could own some of the investment in our own power – that is an essential service; everything we use these days runs on energy – and the fact that we can stipulate by that ownership that the investment has to be renewable and has to help our future generations with climate action are why Victorians voted overwhelmingly to bring back the SEC. This is why I commend this bill.

Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (17:53): I rise today to make a contribution and speak on the Constitution Amendment (SEC) Bill 2023. This bill aims to amend the Constitution Act 1975 and is for other purposes. However, the primary purposes of this bill are to require that the state has a controlling interest in the SEC, to provide for the objects of the SEC and to constrain the power of the Parliament to make laws repealing, altering or varying the provisions of the Constitution Act 1975. As has been mentioned, the government failed to provide a briefing until today – today, the day we are about to debate the bill – which is appalling. Why are they ramming this bill through this place, cutting short the time allowed to enable members to make a contribution?

The cost of living is having a significant impact on people’s lives. Victorian families are facing another tough year, all because Labor does not have a plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. There has been a 25 per cent increase in power costs this last year. Prices are not going down, as has been suggested – down, down, down. Ask anyone who has had a recent power bill. Perhaps look at your own bill. We hear stories of where people choose to have their air conditioners on or put food on their table. My office is inundated with people needing assistance, whether it be for food relief or financial assistance, as they are not keeping up with paying their bills. I feel we are going backwards fast.

As Victorians struggled to pay record power bills the Allan government wasted nearly $400,000 on SEC-branded merchandise. There is no justification for this frivolous spending when the state has a skyrocketing record debt. It just shows how out of touch this government is when it comes to responsible spending rather than putting that money where it actually helps the people of this state.

Businesses are paying the price of Labor’s soaring energy prices, with thousands of businesses fleeing the state. Industry representatives have voiced concern over the impact of increasing energy prices as well as the state taxes and the impact the state taxes are having on the viability of starting or operating a business in Victoria. The main promise of the SEC is that the SEC will drive down power prices. This promise has already been exposed as false after its former CEO confirmed prices would in fact rise. Restricting Victorian households’ use of gas for cooking, heating and hot water will only drive up demand for electricity at a time when Labor has failed to shore up the state’s generation capacity.

We have also witnessed wild weather battering all parts of the state which left more than 500,000 ‍homes and businesses without power, some of them for days with no power. We need reliable, affordable and dependable energy. Victorians are already enduring a cost-of-living crisis under this government and their refusal to support Victorians. The cost of energy bills, as I have mentioned, has soared by 25 per cent, even though the other side of the house campaigned on and continue to spruik that the SEC will drive down Victorians’ energy bills. The simple answer is that Labor are wrong and Victorians are paying the price. This side of the house supports a sensible, considered transition to renewables, but Labor’s plan is neither sensible nor considered. The fact is shutting down coal-fired power stations without a plan to keep the lights on is a recipe for disaster. Enshrining the State Electricity Commission into the constitution should be of major concern to all Victorians. This is not just another change of law – this is something that will effectively change things for years and years to come. Policies should not be included in our state constitution. To rush this through in this manner and not provide the detail only strengthens the concerns around this bill, and I oppose this bill before the house.

Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (17:57): I am so pleased to rise and speak about the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. I certainly speak strongly in favour of this work because it is part of bringing back a publicly owned SEC as we move towards our renewable energy target, which we discussed last time we were here. It is going to increase energy production and competition in investment in renewable energy, working towards that 95 per cent renewable energy target by 2035.

I have been listening to the debate on the other side, and I have to say I think that they are short-sighted. I think that all that they are targeting is 2026. All that is really renewable about them is their leader – their leader position. I think some of those opposite actually have set a target to replace a renewed leader – before 2025 is my guess.

Roma Britnell: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I think the member knows that she has strayed from the bill, and it is not her position to make comments about the opposition, please.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Edbrooke): I draw the member back to the bill.

Lauren KATHAGE: Thank you, Acting Speaker Edbrooke. It always seems to be you for some reason, so I thank you for your guidance. Yes, I know I should not speak so much about the opposition, and to be honest, I do not want to. But as we are moving towards the new future of renewable energy in this state, we are being hampered by those opposite who are seeking to put out the scares, to put out the fears and to make our progress hampered. But the fact is that we are moving towards a clean and green future, and I hope that they will get on board, because at the moment they are really missing the target. This is really what the Victorian people want. They have shown us that this is what they want, and it is what we are delivering for them.

So 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035 under our target through the SEC – and I think about my daughter who is in year 1 now, and by the time we get to 2035 what a different world it will be for her. She will be around 18 years old. She is at school learning about biomes and climate change, but when I was her age at school, we were taken to a production of magic minerals, which was put on by the mineral council. We watched somebody dressed up as coal dancing. They were teaching us all about the wonders of coal. My how the world has changed between my childhood and my daughter’s. Dancing coal is great, but renewable energy is better. We heard from a member opposite that they do not believe that the SEC is real, but we can definitely say what is real are the jobs that are going to be created. My daughter could have a job that we do not even know exists yet in this new world we are living in, where there are whole new professions to come about.

We see that with this transition we also have opportunities. I think about the students at Mernda Central College who study environmental science and what they could end up doing. So it is only right that we have invested in the business case for the SEC centre of training excellence, because we need to understand what we should be training people to do in this renewable energy future. I do have an inkling that it will be a more female-friendly profession potentially or attract more women to the profession than other energy production sectors have, and that is where our eyes are. That is where the eyes of this government are; they are on the horizon. We are looking far into the future and we are shaping the future of this state. We are not just looking at 2026, we are not obsessed with 2026; we are obsessed with making Victoria the best place in the world, and we are certainly getting there.

Those opposite, as I said, when my children get to that point, will be derided for their lack of action on climate change, for their fearmongering, for their short-sightedness and for their foray or folly into nuclear it seems. Nuclear seems to have become the de rigueur energy source for those opposite. To be honest it scares me, and I will tell you why it scares me that we are hearing that they want nuclear reactors in Victoria. I lived in Kakadu National Park, which has the Ranger uranium mine, which I am sure you would remember was very strongly and actively opposed by the Mirarr people and by many environmentalists who joined them to protest that mine. The assurances were that it was safe, that it was fine, that it was good – a uranium mine in Kakadu National Park. Well, what the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation and the Mirarr people have experienced over the period of the mine’s operation is more than 200 leaks, spills and other incidents documented.

Sometimes when we think about the risk of nuclear, we think about grainy black-and-white images of Chernobyl, and we assume that our science and our technology has advanced so much that that risk does not really exist anymore, that we are much smarter than that now. I can tell you for a fact that in 2013 we were so smart that at the uranium mine the acid leach tank collapsed and 1 million litres of radioactive ore slurry spilled. This is within Kakadu National Park, and they had to evacuate the area. In 2004 somehow the process water was connected to drinking water, leading to water uranium levels 400 times Australian standards. When those opposite talk about a nuclear future for Victoria, I am scared, because I know that even with just uranium mines in Kakadu we have uranium and radioactive ore leaking into the park. So if there are those opposite who want to put up their hand for their community to host such dangerous technology, I think they should definitely discuss it with their community members first, because I think that they would be shocked and horrified at the prospect of a nuclear reactor in their area.

When we hear from those opposite, sometimes it is a bit confusing to follow the argument. We heard from the member for Kew that the SEC is tiny and is not going to do anything – it is not going to have any real impact. Then we heard from her that it is too big and it is going to crowd out the market. Well, I suggest that they figure out which line they are going to stick with and follow it. We heard from the member for Shepparton that in this move to renewable energy we are driving up the cost of energy bills, but we know that the most expensive energy to produce is nuclear because of the establishment cost, and we have seen over the last year that renewable energy has produced the cheapest power in Australia.

A member interjected.

Lauren KATHAGE: Yes, absolutely. When you are seeking to move away from a societal change as important as this, which is so comprehensively supported by the Victorian people, which has been so thoroughly thought through by an excellent minister and her team, and when business is on board, when the people are on board and when environmentalists are on board, if you want to be opposing that, you need to be very sure that you are clear on the facts.

We are marching towards a renewable energy future so that my daughter in her future job, in her future life and with her future power bills will be benefiting from the decisions that we make here today. Our decisions here today will be improving the lives of generations of Victorians to come, and so I commend this bill to the house.

Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (18:06): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023 – that is a mouthful – and to be able to speak on a bill that will have such a wide range of effects on our state and community. I rise to oppose in the strongest possible fashion the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. This bill aims to overhaul the existing framework established by the State Electricity Commission Act 1958. Its primary objectives include the transfer of its functions and powers to the minister and the renaming of the act to the Former SEC (Residual Provisions) Act 1958, among other consequential amendments. In essence it takes the longstanding structure of the SEC and shifts its responsibilities to different entities.

The significance of the bill lies not only in its technical amendments but also in its symbolic implications. It represents a pivotal moment in the history of energy regulation in Victoria, signifying a departure from the established SEC framework to newer structures introduced by its counterpart bill. While those opposite argue for the necessity of this transition, it cannot be denied that the bill carries a weight of irrelevance in light of its pairing with the Constitution Amendment (SEC) Bill 2023. But far be it for me to be surprised at the Labor Party’s bureaucratic reshuffling. As this is the pair bill of the Constitution Amendment (SEC) Bill 2023, I will speak more broadly about the issues facing the SEC.

According to RedBridge, Victorians are not confident about their state’s energy grid. Thirty-two per cent think it is very likely that the state will experience blackouts from energy shortages in the next five to 10 years, while another 38 per cent say it is somewhat likely. Just 5 per cent think it is very unlikely this will occur. When told that recently Australia’s energy market operator has reported that Victoria faces an increased risk of rolling blackouts this summer and its electricity grid will breach the interim reliability measure for the next decade, 33 per cent of Victorians reported being very concerned, with another 47 per cent somewhat concerned – and didn’t we get a taste of that recently? Just a few weeks ago one in five Victorian homes were left without electricity while the main transmission system came close to collapse. To quote one of the people who suffered from this outage:

A couple of days is alright … but after 17 days it really gets to you. If we had to go another week, I probably would have snapped.

Despite having installed rooftop solar panels, they do not work during outages when his home is disconnected from the grid.

To quote AEMO, what are the reasons these blackouts are more likely? Firstly, more than 4 gigawatts of coal and gas generation – about a seventh of typical demand – has been withdrawn from the national electricity market in the past seven years. Secondly, increased adoption of electric vehicles by 8 per cent to 21 per cent and the electrification of gas households in Victoria are sufficient to drive winter peak demand above summer peaks – and who was it that told us to get rid of our gas stoves? That is right, Minister for Energy and Resources D’Ambrosio, who wants all new developments to be banned from connecting to gas.

It is coming up to International Women’s Day on Friday, and I had the privilege with the member for Mulgrave to sit in this place as part of a panel speaking to 90 students from 17 different schools across Victoria, where I was able to tell them that I am the first Asian woman elected to the Legislative Assembly in the state Parliament of Victoria. That is a great thing to be able to say, and I think it is great for our representation and diversity, and I say this to say that when we speak about the lack of gas, when we speak about gas stoves, the impact on my community, the Chinese community, to be able to cook with woks – that is genuinely a concern. I have heard from our people. I have heard from our community. I am putting it on the record today that you cannot cook with a wok without gas. Anyway, that aside, under their plan –

Juliana Addison: I think you can.

Nicole WERNER: Well, okay – apparently. Under their plan new dwellings will have to be fitted with electric or induction stovetops instead of gas stoves. I appreciate the member for Wendouree’s interjections. I share a committee where she is the chair, and I would like to take note that it is wonderful to hear that she is the authority on woks over the people in the Chinese community that have been complaining about it to me. Wonderful.

Under their plan – back to the matters at hand – new dwellings will have to be fitted with electric or induction stovetops instead of gas stoves. Truly Minister D’Ambrosio’s climate revenge on Victorians was a dish best served cold.

The surge in electricity prices for households and small businesses increasing by 25 per cent in the last year stands as a stark contradiction to the government’s promises to reduce electricity costs. Despite these pledges, no clear mechanism has been provided to demonstrate how the establishment of a publicly owned and entrenched SEC will alleviate these escalating costs or enhance the security and reliability of the electricity supply. The argument that those opposite like to make, that privatisation increases electricity bills, is simply not true. To quote the ABC Fact Check, their favourite news outlet, the claim that electricity privatisation pushes up power prices is, according to them, ‘spin’:

Tony Wood, energy director at the Grattan Institute, said the AER sets network prices regardless of whether they are publicly or privately owned, and doesn’t take into consideration how much a company paid for the business.

When comparing the power prices of South Australia and Victoria, Mr Wood said:

Victoria’s electricity comes from brown coal, which generally speaking is the cheapest, whereas South Australia has a lot more of its electricity coming from gas and wind, so South Australia has always had slightly higher prices on that basis.

Reports from the Australian Energy Regulator have shown no consistent correlation between higher bills and privatisation. Experts say that the biggest influence on what people pay for electricity is cost of transmission and distribution. They say these costs have risen in recent years irrespective of whether the owners of the transmission and distribution networks are privatised or publicly owned.

Moreover, I have concerns regarding the SEC’s adherence to competitive neutrality policies outlined by the Victorian government. The SEC’s strategic plan indicates its compliance with these policies. The plan’s transition road map suggests the SEC’s monopolisation as the supplier of electricity to state government and its agencies, thereby undermining the Labor government’s competitive neutrality claims. Additionally, the government’s pursuit of higher renewable energy targets is overshadowed by doubts about its ability to ensure reliability and affordability of electricity. The Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, expressed their apprehension regarding potential electricity shortages in Victoria, especially during periods of high demand coinciding with reduced power generation from wind farms. The proposed structure of the SEC as a company limited by guarantee gives me further concerns surrounding its transparency and accountability. With the registration of two shell companies, I fear that the SEC may operate beyond the scrutiny of the Victorian people or Parliament.

Furthermore, stakeholders in the renewable sector have expressed reservations about the SEC’s potential to stall the energy market and impede the growth of renewable energy sources. These concerns, although voiced cautiously, underscore the need for careful consideration of the SEC’s operational framework to ensure fair competition and market integrity. Transparent governance, adherence to competitive neutrality principles and strategic planning to ensure reliable and affordable electricity supply are paramount to instilling confidence in Victoria’s energy landscape.

In conclusion, the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023 represents a pivotal moment in our Parliament’s decision on energy regulation which will implement drastic changes to the existing framework. However, the objectives of the bill before us today remain obscured by a lack of clarity on how it will address pressing issues such as the risk of blackouts and rising electricity prices. While those opposite have enjoyed speaking about privatisation’s correlation with higher prices, the facts simply do not show this. We on this side of the house have serious questions regarding the SEC’s adherence to competitive neutrality policies and its potential to distort the energy market, particularly in the context of renewable energy growth. The uncertainty surrounding the SEC’s operational framework and governance structure underscores the need for a thorough and deliberative approach to policymaking, prioritising transparency, accountability and long-term sustainability of Victoria’s energy landscape. Only through careful consideration and robust policymaking can we achieve a sustainable and resilient energy future for all Victorians, ensuring fairness, reliability and affordability in our local energy sector.

Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (18:17): My, oh my, oh my, what a contribution to follow there. There is so much to pick up on. The member for Warrandyte commenced with quoting polling from RedBridge – a very credible polling organisation of course – but on this side of the house it is not polling that we are worried about; it is actually election results. I refer the member not to RedBridge’s polling but to the result in Dunkley on the weekend. They did not vote for a nuclear reactor by Peter Dutton in Dunkley, and they did not vote for a non-existent opposition leader in John Pesutto not showing up in Dunkley. They voted for an Albanese Labor government, which is taking real action on climate change.

Roma Britnell: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I think the member knows without me saying that he has crossed the line.

The ACTING SPEAKER (John Mullahy): I will bring the member back to the bill before the house.

Anthony CIANFLONE: I meant to refer to the member for Hawthorn; my apologies. To quote somebody here – I mean, we have really seen it all now, to be honest – Frank Costanza: ‘serenity now’. We have seen the show about nothing. We have got the opposition about nothing when it comes to climate change, we really do – an opposition about nothing; an opposition about nuclear reactors; Tony Abbott standing on what he stands against, not for, repealing the CPRS; Kennett selling the SEC; and Prime Minister Scott Morrison walking with the lump of coal into the federal Parliament, mind you. They frankly do not believe in climate change.

Roma Britnell: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I think he is defying your ruling.

The ACTING SPEAKER (John Mullahy): I will bring the member for Pascoe Vale back to the bill, please.

Anthony CIANFLONE: In that respect I do rise to speak in support of the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023, and I am proud to support and acknowledge the passage earlier on in this chamber of the Constitution Amendment (SEC) Bill 2023, which this chamber considered earlier this evening. When combined, these two bills help give effect to the Victorian Labor government’s election commitments to revive the State Electricity Commission, the SEC, and to enshrine the new SEC into the Victorian constitution so we can ensure that this important institution is protected into the future and, importantly, protected from the Liberals wanting to sell it off again. Alongside the provision of good jobs, kinder, schools, transport infrastructure, health and community services and keeping downward pressures on the cost of living, there is, frankly, no more important issue for government than taking real action on climate change to protect our environment, because without a sustainable, hospitable and livable environment, life on earth, frankly, would be very, very different.

I want to take a bit of a different route here, but it is very much relevant. Nearly 10 years ago NASA launched the Kepler space telescope on a revolutionary mission to expand our scientific understanding of the cosmos. Over its time it observed 530,000 stars and confirmed the existence of at least 2600 ‍new planets. However, Kepler, combined with the myriad of other land and space-based telescopes, radio antennas and people with tinfoil hats – even on the other side of the chamber – around the globe, is yet to find any sign of another habitable planet like Earth that is capable of hosting any form of life, let alone intelligent life. If we need a demonstration of why our planet is so precious and why we all have a duty as lawmakers to protect it, to reduce our emissions and to move towards a renewable and more sustainable future, I just ask members to reflect on our planet’s place in the vastness of the universe. Situated as we are here on Earth in the Goldilocks zone in our solar system – that is, not too close and not too far from the sun, accompanied by a rich and dense atmosphere – life has been able to evolve over many millions of years due to the general stable nature of our environment.

However, this is something we cannot simply take for granted, because as scientists have been telling us, human-induced activity, particularly following the Industrial Revolution – the proliferation of fossil fuel use, deforestation and pollution – has been impacting the state of our climate and environment for many years. As stated by the United Nations – the opposition might want to learn this definition – climate change refers to:

… a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

As set out in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021, each of the last four decades has been warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850. The IPCC’s report states:

… human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in … 2,000 years.

The IPCC has stated that:

The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010–2019 is 0.8°C to 1.3°C …

According to the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, Australia’s climate has also warmed by an average of 1.47 degrees Celsius since national records began in 1910, with a decline of rainfall between 15 per cent and 19 per cent since 1970 in the south-west area of Australia. The fact is that these temperature rises have correlated with significant increases of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions over these periods around the world, with some of the highest carbon dioxide levels on earth having been recently recorded in the atmosphere for at least 2 million years. In Victoria, for example, the electricity sector currently generates around 50 per cent of our state’s total carbon emissions, and we have a responsibility and a duty to reduce these, to play our role in global efforts to combat climate change. As stated by the World Economic Forum – if the opposition will not listen to the scientists, they can listen to the economists – the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow was the first time the international community agreed explicitly to mention the burning of fossil fuels as the primary cause of climate change, with the IPCC report published recently explicitly highlighting the need to rapidly phase out fossil fuel supply and demand, including coal by 95 per cent, oil by 60 per cent and gas by 45 per cent by 2050. Furthermore, the 2021 IPCC report shows that we must be collectively working to keep warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and ideally below 1.5 degrees to avoid and mitigate the worst economic environmental extreme weather events and societal degeneration impacts that are associated with rising emissions and the changing of our climate.

That is why I am so proud to be part of a Victorian Labor government which is very much leading the nation – indeed many jurisdictions around the world – when it comes to taking that real action to combat climate change. Last sitting week we passed the bill that would legislate the most ambitious and realistic carbon emissions and renewable energy targets in the world. We have legislated interim emission targets of 28 to 33 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025, 45 to 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and 75 to 80 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035. Of course we are working and striving towards that net zero by 2045. Along with $3 billion invested into renewable energy infrastructure, we have also amended the Renewable Energy (Jobs and Investment) Act 2017 to set forward some of the most ambitious renewable energy targets, including 65 per cent renewable electricity by 2030. We have set a new target of 95 per cent renewable electricity by 2035, and we have set new energy storage targets of at least 2.6 gigawatts of energy storage capacity by 2030 and at least 6.3 gigawatts by 2035. We have set new offshore wind energy targets of at least 2 gigawatts by 2032, 4 gigawatts by 2035 and 9 gigawatts by 2040. Additionally, we have embedded our climate goals as part of the state’s planning framework to ensure councils take into consideration the impacts of climate change.

This bill builds on that work that we have been doing, amending the constitution to embed the SEC so it cannot be sold off again. But we are also abolishing the pre-existing State Electricity Commission, SECV, which is constituted under the State Electricity Commission Act 1958, to avoid confusion with the new SEC entity. These measures do help build on the previous actions we have been taking. Between 2005 and 2021, our nation-leading climate agenda has helped drive a 32.3 per cent reduction in statewide emissions. Over this time our economy has grown – it has grown, I repeat – 42.8 per cent.

These bills, the bill before us and the one earlier, do build on so many of the other landmark initiatives we have continued to pursue: bringing back the SEC, ending old-growth forest logging, ending native forest logging, the roll-out of rooftop solar electrification on homes, the introduction of the Gas Substitution Roadmap and the roll-out of the container deposit scheme – which the opposition criticised only a few weeks ago, but it is as of the other day 250 million containers. They cannot be wrong. Victorians have called for it, it is rolling out and it is working. There is our record investment in local parks, creeks, waterways and biodiversity, and all of these things mean jobs. The SEC training centre of excellence is a key component of that to help us reach the target of 59,000 new jobs. We are undertaking a business case to pursue that, which my community is very, very interested in.

There is the container deposit scheme. In my local community we have got four vending machine sites and 12 over-the-counter sites. The vending machine sites are at 10 Moreland Road, Brunswick; 59 ‍Sydney Road, Coburg; and 801 Sydney Road, Brunswick. I had the pleasure on 12 February 2024 of opening at Dairy Drive in Coburg North a facility which is operated by Green Collect, recognised as the Australian social enterprise of the year in 2019. The depot is employing dozens of disadvantaged jobseekers from the north-west, and it has already received 90,000 containers and counting as of December. I commend Tony Circelli from Tomra, Tony Catania from Recycling Victoria and Sally Quinn and Darren Andrews, who are the co-founders of Green Collect.

It is also in our creeks that we are making record investments to take action on climate, biodiversity and recreational outcomes. We have invested $10 million to upgrade the Moonee Ponds Creek corridor, to renaturalise the corridor. Just last week I announced a record $605,000 more for our local creeks, including $460,000 for Merri Creek to create biodiversity and refuge habitats, with the members for Preston and Northcote; $115,900 for the Edgars Creek corridor, to revegetate that; and $25,400 further for the Moonee Ponds Creek. In that respect I commend this bill.

Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (18:27): It is a pleasure to rise today to finally have the opportunity to speak on these bills, including the Constitution Amendment (SEC) Bill 2023.

The ACTING SPEAKER (John Mullahy): I will just remind members that we are only debating the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023.

Annabelle CLEELAND: Yes, that is exactly what I was meant to refer to. I will continue on, referring to the correct bill. While Labor continues to fumble its SEC roll-out, energy prices, reliability and security are all going backwards at a time when Victorians can least afford it. Victoria is the worst state in Australia for energy security, and Labor’s revival of the State Electricity Commission is not a viable solution. Nearly 18 months since the government announced it would revive the SEC it has done next to nothing to shore up our energy supply. At the same time we have seen the energy upgrades program, central to Victoria’s net zero emissions ambitions, fail as well.

The Victorian energy upgrade scheme and green schemes have been a widely publicised disaster. Fridges dumped on doorsteps, underperformance on carbon credit targets, poor quality installations and inappropriate marketing have all been associated with this program. Not only that but we are also seeing the green schemes have a disproportionate impact on the regional communities that are already struggling with massive energy concerns. Green schemes are allocated on cost per megawatt, meaning they are entirely consumption based. Regional communities like those in my electorate of Euroa do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to this, due to a lack of alternatives. While high-consumption households will pay more for the green schemes, these households also typically have more options and incentives to alter usage. Low-consumption households on the other hand typically have fewer appliances to start with and are likely to have smaller dwellings with limited improvement options. These households simply have to pay for the additional charges without being able to reduce their costs. At the same time these households’ contribution to the emissions released by household energy consumption is lower. Our regional households are having to pay more while having less reliable supply and an array of other disadvantages compared to city-based households.

For almost a decade now Labor has mismanaged nearly every aspect of our energy supply and failed to ensure the resilience of our network. It is unfortunate that everyday Victorians are quite literally paying the price for this mismanagement. From June 2022 to June 2023 electricity prices increased by 28 per cent in Victoria, more than the rest of the country. There also remains a significant disparity between the cost, reliability and resilience of energy supply between regional and metro areas.

Total energy cost increases for dual-fuel households in my region have amounted to $70 for average consumption levels, with the average annual combined energy bills in the area currently close to $4200. In comparison, metro regions and inner-city Melbourne saw rises of just $15 or $20, with total bills around $3600. This is enormous pressure during a cost-of-living crisis. It simply is not fair when residents in some of the worst-hit towns in my region say they experience up to 80 hours of power outages in January and December, with cuts ranging from hours to several days. It is clear that many of the issues in my region are due to there being a single line of supply running from Benalla to Violet Town through to Euroa and spreading out across the surrounding localities. Even though this supply line has been known as the most problematic in the state since the 1970s, nothing has been done to correct the problem. What is known for sure is the SEC will not fix this problem.

Many constituents in my electorate continue to suffer. I have received countless stories of how their lives continue to be inadvertently interrupted by this government’s failing power grid. I have some of these stories here with me today to share with you. Melisa told me:

We rely on power to keep our young kids and older generations safe and well in hot weather … So much wasted food due to power outages and most families cannot afford the extra cost of losing food.

Simon said to the government:

This is not a high socio economic area. People cannot afford to throw whole fridges of food away. They cannot afford batteries, solar and generators. They need a functioning grid, and it’s their right to have one. In the heat people will die because of the outages. Fix it.

Valentine said:

My partner lives in Euroa and was in an online job interview for a serious position that could now be jeopardised due to the power going out mid interview leaving her with no way to contact her interviewers.

Another respondent said, with comments from the Euroa chamber of commerce, representing so many businesses:

Businesses cannot trade efficiently, we often cannot take Eftpos payments due to reception being lost … We cannot close powered roller doors to our warehouse full of stock, turn on business alarms at the close of businesses, security systems don’t work, tills don’t open, atm machine does not work … businesses cannot even ask customers to pay in cash. Food cannot be kept cool or warm or be made … Due to a number of these factors occurring with an outage, we and other businesses have stay and watch the business or warehouse until we can securely lock up. We have seen at least a dozen customers over the last 2 months in store who have had to replace appliances due to the power going … off so suddenly and frequently. But also appliances that have been newly purchased are coming back to store faulty or with error codes because of the power outages. This has a huge impact on our business, dealing with frustrated customers and the time it takes to claim products and process service calls. For a small business these factors take a huge toll on staff and owners, something needs to be done now we have been dealing with this for too long!

Another respondent said:

The multiple power outages have delayed works on several property builds. Therefore putting us behind on our building schedule which effects other trades, materials delivers, bank finance staging.

After power outages around Christmas last year left 13,000 customers off supply in the north-east of the state, which covers most of my electorate, AusNet decided to do some research. From 500 people surveyed, 70 per cent said that energy reliability will become more important in the future, with only 1 per cent saying it will become less important. The research found some significant differences between the costs that customers experienced, depending on whether they had an all-electric connection or were using both electricity and gas connections. You might see where these comments are going now. Electricity-only customers spent on average $1100 to respond to that outage, whereas if they had a gas connection too that amount was reduced to just $360. This includes replacing foods, repairing damaged items and more ways in which these outages have impacted my community. As the electrification of our state continues, more customers are expected to use a network and test the bounds of our current supply levels. How is it going to get better? Rushing to get Victorians off gas when 60 per cent of households are reliant on it will only drive up demand for electricity at a time when Labor has failed to shore up the state’s generation capacity. We know that many regional communities are only fitted with gas options for heating, cooking and their water.

The lack of gas options in these houses will only put further pressure on our electricity supply that has already crumbled under the slightest bit of pressure over summer. Without a reliable electricity supply, removing these options is going to hurt our regional households. As gas appliances and connections continue to be removed from regional homes, more costs will be transferred onto residents. I am all for the responsible transition to renewables, but how are our already struggling communities meant to survive when there are no alternatives? The energy costs are astronomical and rising at a concerning rate. The reality is that people are having to choose between feeding their families or powering their homes, and that is a decision no-one should have to make. With rising interest rates and rental costs and the cost of keeping cars on the road and kids in school, it is clear that the Labor government is not doing enough to provide real relief for everyday Victorians. I have listened to the distress of my community and many more regional communities just like it, and the answer is not performances and stunts like adding the SEC to our constitution.

Paul EDBROOKE (Frankston) (18:36): Thank you, Acting Speaker Mullahy. It is great to see you in the chair. Unlike quite a few people in this chamber, I actually grew up in the valley. My family worked in the coal mines – very proudly too. I think my first billycart was built by a sheet metal trades assistant at Hazelwood power station, which –

A member interjected.

Paul EDBROOKE: It was a cracker. It was bloody fast, let me tell you. It had SEC bearings in it, I think. But I am also at the epicentre of Liberal–National power policy as well, being the member for Frankston. In a state election not so long ago we had the former candidate Michael Lamb telling us about coal-fired power and how it can be privatised and how we could use coal – which is great for the future, isn’t it – and we could make prices cheaper. It was only on Saturday that I was just stunned to find another candidate in the beautiful seat of Dunkley telling people that he could not rule out –

Vicki Ward interjected.

Paul EDBROOKE: Why don’t I like fish with three eyes, Minister? Because I just do not. He could not rule out nuclear reactors and energy in Dunkley. I am not sure he consulted with anybody. He has gone back to being the mayor today. I am sure there are some big questions about whether, as I heard on the radio today, people are not sure it is the truth that people sleep with baseball bats under their pillows. But I am not sure that the consultation has been done in my community for nuclear energy. I think there was about as much consultation done there for this by-election as there was in a previous state election around coal. I am not going to give a commentary on the Sky News David Speers YouTube clip, but if you have not seen it, they are using it right now to show what not to do and how not to act arrogant with David Speers before he totally eviscerates you on TV.

As I said, I grew up with the SEC. I was actually given by my father the other day a little key ring that says ‘SECV HPS’, Hazelwood power station. Those guys were given that somewhere along the line. It was a trinket that he found in his drawer. I was the poor kid that went to school with the green furry jacket with the yellow sunrise on it with an SEC logo that I picked off, but you could still see the glue on there. Apparently that is trendy now with the kids at Trades Hall, so I need to find mine. But my point is that I think there have been some mischaracterisations and some mistruths – or maybe even misunderstandings, if I can be so lenient – about what the SEC means for Victorians.

We obviously put this up at an election. It was voted on, and people wanted to see this change. They wanted to see people with a vision for the future, and that vision involves renewables. Again, going back to the failed Liberal candidate for Dunkley, he said that 100 per cent renewables is a joke. I will say that again: 100 per cent renewables, kids – it is a joke. Your future is on the line with people like this.

Members interjecting.

Paul EDBROOKE: Well, if you go to Europe or if you look at Scotland, they are actually exporting their renewable energy. Even in South Australia at the moment there are days when they are fully 100 per cent renewable. We can actually do that. It involves different types of renewables. It involves storage systems like the Big Battery, which we are a bit jealous of in Frankston. The member for Tarneit, I think, has got it. We would love that.

But I think the people in our communities, in our electorates, see that this government actually has a vision for the future, and that is why we here today – we are putting the power back in the hands of Victorians. My SEC jacket will be trendy again. Construction has already begun on the SEC’s first project, a 1.6-gigawatt-hour battery in Melton – sorry, it was Melton; we are jealous of you, Mr McGhie – that will power over 200,000 homes. That is storing energy that is produced at a time when I guess you could say nature is off peak, and we can use that at night or when that energy is not running or the sun is down.

We are seeing what the people across the aisle are saying. I am not going to get into an argument about people not believing in climate change and flat-earthers. I mean, you have still got some, that is for sure, but I am not going to get into that argument. What I will say is that I think if you went overseas and you talked to most progressive governments and most governments, especially in Europe, that have already made the change from coal and dirty fuels, they would laugh in the face of anyone that said ‘Renewables aren’t the way of the future’ and ‘Renewables aren’t what we’re using now’.

The bigger issue I take with bringing media releases and whatnot into the Parliament and quoting from them is context. Yes, for sure, it looks like there is a media release that members of the opposite side of the chamber have been quoting, and that is great, but it was my lived experience – in my anecdotal experience, you could say – that in 1994 Kennett was actually the Premier that dissolved the SEC, which led to essentially –

Members interjecting.

Paul EDBROOKE: I am not saying no-one started privatising or putting things up for sale, if you want to use that word; what I am saying is Kennett went the whole hog, and the effect on that community was felt overnight.

The member for Tarneit raised some really good points about the fact that the SEC was – and will be once again – a breeding ground for trades. Whether that be trade assistants that built really fast go-karts or whatever or sparkies, linesmen or firefighters and rescuers, they had the skills to pay the bills, let us say. I remember driving into Hazelwood, Loy Yang B, Loy Yang A and Yallourn when I was a kid, and they were hives of activity – and they needed to be, because they were producing the majority of the power for Victoria and other parts of the nation as well. But those hives of activity were a lot of kids getting skills that they would use in their job at the SEC and that they would propagate out to other areas of our nation as well.

I have heard many folks on the other side of the chamber talking about the fact that they are afraid that we will not have people with the skills to keep our economy moving forward.

Vicki Ward: That’s because they want to close our TAFEs.

Paul EDBROOKE: And that is, I guess, a fair assessment of their past. Indeed, member for Eltham, closing down TAFEs certainly did not help that. But, as I said, the SEC was a hotbed of people learning skills and people becoming engineers and all sorts of things with skills that they could carry on. What we are seeing now, though, is a centre of excellence being developed for the SEC, where once again we will actually have young people who will be able to learn new skills. It might not be sheet metal, it might not be boilermaking or it might not be as a sparky or a turner and fitter; it might be creating fixtures for renewables, it might be in battery production, it might be in wind or it might be in solar.

You can just see in any community in Victoria the amount of interest there is in solar at the moment. I do not have the figures on me and I would not go so far as to say my memory is amazing these days, but the uptake of solar in my community has been massive – not as massive as the Liberal candidate for Dunkley’s announcement that he cannot guarantee that we will not have nuclear in Dunkley. But almost every house in some suburbs of Frankston and in Dunkley has solar on its roof. Some of these people have not been able to apply for the government rebate. They might simply earn more than $180,000 a year together in their household income, but they have gone ahead and have actually fitted them and paid for them themselves, and from what I hear, these set-ups, even without the government subsidy, are paying for themselves every time.

Again one thing I think people on this side of the chamber can see that resonates in their communities is a bunch of people in a government that have a vision for the future, a vision that is embraced by people in other nations and has been for years. An example of that would be the rhetoric that we closed down Hazelwood power station. Nothing could be further from the truth: the multinational company Engie, a French company, or one that is based in France, decided that they were getting out of coal. You know why they were getting out of coal? Because most banks and most funding resources that they would get do not actually buy into oil or coal anymore, and we need to move forward. Engie pulled the pin on Hazelwood because of that. They were moving into clean energy and they have done that in Europe for a long, long time. It is time for some people to pull their heads out of the sand and realise that we might live on an island, but we do not live in a galaxy far, far away. We do not have to reinvent the wheel – there are people doing this worldwide. What we are doing might be revolutionary for us, but it is not internationally. We need to get on with it. The SEC is the way we will do that.

Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (18:46): At this point of the evening, having listened to this debate for the past few hours, I find myself befuddled once again – befuddled, bemused, perplexed. As the member for Frankston stated before, there have been some mistruths and misconceptions about all sorts of things, including the fact – and we have been thrown this all day – that we are climate deniers, that we are anti-renewables, which is simply not true.

Members interjecting.

Jade BENHAM: Two ears, one mouth, use them in that order. That is what I was taught as a kid. When we say we are pragmatists and we are all for renewable, clean energy, we just need to have a bit of common sense and be a bit pragmatic about it. We need to be technologically agnostic, because we know that the technology of 2024 is not going to be the technology of 2050, probably not even 2030. We have seen how far we have come even in the last five years, the last 10 years. I have got a solar system on my roof in fact that is 10 years old. Could we upgrade that now and do all sorts of things? Well, yes, we could, but this is what I mean: we are not anti-renewables, we are actually part of that process. For context, 11 June 1992 is when that media release went out, where:

The Premier, Ms. Joan Kirner, said the successful passage of the Bill provided the framework for an exciting future in Victoria’s power generation industry.

“Loy Yang B will be a state-of-the-art power station … It is required for the energy requirements of Victoria in 1993.”

So, it is there in black and white, and yet we get called climate deniers who take things out of context. It is there in black and white. It is readily available.

Then when we talk about – I mean, how dare we, the only G20 country that has a moratorium on nuclear energy. How can that not be – if we are going to talk about common sense and pragmatism in moving forward with clean energy, how can that not be simply a part of the conversation rather than just based in ideology that goes, ‘The sun and the wind will do it all.’ It will not. It will not keep our coolrooms on –

Michaela Settle interjected.

The ACTING SPEAKER (John Mullahy): There is too much volume or noise.

Jade BENHAM: It will not keep our manufacturing going, with wind and sun. I live in a part of the world that has more sunshine than Queensland, more sunny days per year than the Gold Coast, and we cannot generate enough as yet with just that solar power. If we are going to talk about a clean energy future and energy reliability, it has to be part of the conversation, rather than – and I know that those on the other side have a habit of putting blinkers on and just saying, ‘We’re going this way because that’s what we are told to do,’ putting the blinkers on and saying we cannot even have a conversation about nuclear –

Members interjecting.

Jade BENHAM: Well, okay, so what do we do, then? In 20 years we will still be having this conversation, when we know, like I said, if we are technologically agnostic, that there is at least the basis here to have a sensible conversation about small, modular nuclear reactors – not the big old ones that they scaremonger about, about Chernobyl and Japan.

We are the only G20 country that does have a moratorium on nuclear. We just go, ‘Nup, we’re not doing that. We’re not doing that at all.’ We look at the rest of the world and go, ‘You’re all doing it wrong. We’ll survive with offshore wind and we’ll survive with sun.’ Well then, how are we going to produce food? How are we going to keep it cold? The simple processes that are involved, which we need energy reliability for, mean that we actually need to make it part of the conversation. That is all we are saying. We are not saying go and put a nuclear reactor in Dunkley. No-one is saying that. What we are saying is it just needs to be part of the conversation – simple common sense.

A member interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Happy to have one in Mildura. We have got loads of solar farms already. For small, modular nuclear reactors, who knows? We do not know what the future holds. It needs to be part of the conversation. We are not talking about running out and building them now. We are talking about including it as part of an energy reliability conversation and not shutting the door on other alternatives. It is simple as that. And that is all I am going to say about that. Well, maybe it is not; I am not going to make any promises, because who knows?

I have sat here all afternoon and listened to how – and I mentioned the former Premier in Ms Kirner and the media release of June 1992. We are always demonised for privatising things. Let us have a look at a few other things that Labor have privatised, just quickly. There is a long list.

A member interjected.

Jade BENHAM: No, no. It is okay when Labor does it, but when we do it, we are all about looking ‍–

So what else have they privatised? There is the State Bank; they sold it to Keating then flogged it off as the Commonwealth Bank. Gillard sold the last of Telstra. And recently there has been VicRoads – here, very recently, the partial sell-off and privatisation of VicRoads. There is the port of Melbourne. So, again, it is one of those things that those on the other side like to have a dig at us about, but there is a long list that seems to be conveniently ignored every time we have this conversation.

We could talk about that again, but what I am saying is when we talk about nuclear, when we talk about the SEC – and I said it before – two ears, one mouth, use them in that order. We need to be listening to the people who actually know, not listening to mates you want to give jobs to. The member for Narracan sat here earlier today and he explained how in 1989 he became an apprentice of the SEC as a fitter and turner. Did he finish that apprenticeship? No, he did not. He transferred out of the SEC to become a builder because he knew that he was not going to have a job; he had been told.

The member for Morwell, again, had valid arguments about the SEC, and the people in Narracan and Morwell have voted; we have members for Morwell and Narracan on this side of the chamber. So what I am saying is that we need to listen to the people with experience, and this goes for everything. Start listening to the right people, start talking to the right people and start having a commonsense approach to this rather than just a virtue-signalling, ideological solution to moving forward and bringing back the SEC.

Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (18:54): I too rise to make a contribution to the State Electricity Commission Amendment Bill 2023. When I think about ideology and I think of a woman who knows ideology, I think of the late, great Joan Kirner. Joan was a Labor icon who understood what it meant to get clever people into Parliament, to get clever women into Parliament, and she used her legacy to ensure that there were women on this side of the chamber. I can see, as most of the women in the chamber at the moment are in fact from the opposition, that you could certainly take a leaf out of her book in the sort of advocacy that she did.

I am really happy to hear that the member for Mildura also has gone nuclear by drinking the radioactive Kool Aid. Today I read on ABC online –

A member interjected.

Gary MAAS: Well, it was interesting actually. There was some fellow by the name of Mr Dutton who was speaking on Channel 7. Peter Dutton, the leader of the federal opposition, confirmed that:

… the party was “interested” in replacing retiring coal plants with nuclear because the sites came ready with poles and wires to distribute power.

In looking at those sites around the country, yes, there are a couple in New South Wales, there are a couple in Queensland and there are a couple in Western Australia, but of course, as we all know, the coal plant in Yallourn is being retired in 2028. I just wonder how the member for Morwell in this place will go with constituents in his electorate to say that nuclear power is going to be a real option.

When they lost the Dunkley election over the weekend – a greater celebration I have never seen by the opposition in fact; it was an extraordinarily happy time, for losing an election – the political commentators at the election coverage from both sides of the political fence were saying, ‘You know what, the federal opposition really needs to go back to the policy drawing board. They really need to go back to the policy drawing board and have something that they can market to their electorate – something they can market electorally and something that their state compatriots will be able to market as well.’ And what do we get some three days later? We get nuclear as an option. This is something which will not go down with the Victorian people, and we know it will not go down with the Victorian people. It does not constitute the energy mix that is being put together by this government.

This government understands that at the root of it this is a cost-of-living issue, an issue where members of my electorate – and I know for every other member on this side of the chamber as well – are experiencing difficulties with paying their bills. That is what is at the nub of it. This government has been helping – we know it has been helping – with many different initiatives, including the power saving bonus, to get money into the hands of people to be able to pay their bills. But it has also been doing it by looking at the mix of energy that will be needed in this state to get us through to the future, whether it is batteries out in the seat of Sydenham, I think, where we are starting, and then moving that through some 19 other electorates as well, and of course a mix of solar and wind energy.

I am wholly supportive of this because the SEC, to quote Frank Costanza, is back, baby, and the Labor government is following through.

Members interjecting.

Gary MAAS: Hey, come on, Frank Costanza has already been mentioned once before. Thank you, member for Pascoe Vale.

This Labor government is following through on its commitment to reviving the SEC as a publicly owned, 100 per cent renewable, active energy market participant as pledged at the 2022 election. It is not about a crowded energy market. What it is is actually having a government player in that market to be able to influence how quickly we move to renewables. This bill helps to achieve that end. Power is truly being put back in the hands of Victorians, by freeing Victoria from its reliance on emissions-intensive coal and accelerating the delivery of affordable, reliable, renewable energy. I commend this bill to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.