Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2021‒22 and 2022‒23 Financial and Performance Outcomes

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (10:52): I would like to say a few words on the 2021–22 and 2022–23 financial and performance outcomes report of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, in particular as it relates to the energy mess that we are finding ourselves in in this state under the Labor government. We heard in various hearings both last year in the outcomes hearings and again this year in the budget estimates process about the government’s commitment to the State Electricity Commission. ‘Bringing back the SEC,’ said the former Premier Daniel Andrews, and at the time they promised a massive injection. They are promising 59,000 jobs by 2035 and the Premier at the time said that there would be an SEC office in Morwell, and Morwell was really excited about that. I can tell you they were so excited they chose to elect a Nationals MP, because they did not buy it, and not without good reason, because we discovered in the hearings that the SEC office in Morwell is in fact one person – one staff member – and not actually in an office in Morwell but in the GovHub office in Morwell. I wonder whether they are having staff meetings in the office in Morwell, whether they have got a HR team looking after the one person in the office in Morwell and indeed what they are doing, because this is part of a wider malaise within the government’s energy program. They make all sorts of promises, and you never actually know what the government is going to deliver or what their policy is indeed.

This week on gas we have seen some significant attempts at backsliding. The front page of the Herald Sun on Monday suggested the government was going back on its commitment to banning gas in new homes, but lo and behold, if you listened to the Premier on 3AW that morning – no, no such change at all of course; the government is still banning gas in new homes. We have had the Minister for Energy and Resources talking about always being opposed to gas and always being opposed to carbon capture and storage. Yet she has just introduced legislation – and we will see the detail of it tomorrow ‍– which from the announcements the government has already made this week seems to be allowing the production and then reinjection of gas into storage wells.

I fail to understand how the minister could support putting natural gas, or methane if you like, back into a storage well and taking it out but does not support exactly the same process when it comes to carbon capture and storage, which is an industry that, if it was developed, in conjunction with the hydrogen energy supply chain project in Gippsland could create jobs in our region. Maybe there could actually be some jobs there in Morwell to add to the one SEC job that the government has created. That would be good. But not only that, we would actually establish a process in the hydrogen space allowing us to take advantage of potential green hydrogen opportunities in the future with what would currently be a blue hydrogen project.

I mentioned VicGrid as well. The current REZ – renewable energy zone – engagement process that VicGrid are undertaking would be fine if it was limited to transmission, but they have bizarrely gone out to try and identify good spots for new renewable energy developments when the private sector is already doing that. Just like the SEC is unnecessary because the private sector is doing it, this process is unnecessary, and I have already called on the minister to withdraw that.

I want to touch briefly on the storms we had last week and the significant outages we again had in my electorate in particular but indeed right across southern Victoria. There was a massive amount of outages – 180,000 in the AusNet zone last Monday. Once again most people could put up with those power outages for a day or two, but once we got two, three or four days, and in some cases in my electorate five or six days, then that stretched the friendship quite considerably. I was dealing with angry people on Saturday still waiting for their power to be connected. I raise this in a government context because the minister in 2021 announced a review of those outages that we had in the big storm of 2021, and that came up with a number of recommendations, two of which were implemented this year in legislation. They were simply that the transmission companies must provide certain info to the government and that they must agree to be the conduit for power outage payments. They were already doing that, so the government has completely failed when it comes to power outages. There was nothing in those recommendations and the legislation that went through this week. The government needs to do better, particularly with relation to vegetation offsets.