Wednesday, 15 November 2023

Production of documents

Energy supply

The PRESIDENT: We will move to item 4 on today’s business program, and that is the short-form documents motions. To reclarify to the house, under new sessional order 6 up to two short-form production of documents motions may be debated today. I remind the house that the mover of the motion has 6 minutes and other speakers have 5 minutes, with a maximum time of 20 minutes. After that 20 minutes, whether it is with me or an Acting President, the question must be put forthwith.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:02): I move:

That this house:

(1) notes:

(a) recent announcements by the government in the Victorian energy sector, including the new contractual arrangements entered into or announced with Latrobe Valley based electricity generators since 2021 and the gas industry supply changes announced by the Labor government;

(b) the agreements reached by the Andrews Labor government with coal-fired electricity generators in the Latrobe Valley, the details and costs of which have never been publicly revealed;

(c) Victoria’s Gas Substitution Roadmap;

(2) requires the Leader of the Government, in accordance with standing order 10.01, to table in the Council, within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution, copies of:

(a) agreements reached with the owners of coal-fired electricity generators in the Latrobe Valley, Loy Yang A, Loy Yang B and Yallourn, to continue generating electricity, including details of the payments made to each generator and details of payments to be made until the scheduled closure of the generators;

(b) documents relating to Victoria’s Gas Substitution Roadmap, specifically any modelling, assessments or examinations, including consultancies, on:

(i) the impact of Victoria’s Gas Substitution Roadmap, including any modelling or assessment of its transitional impacts on current electrical and gas infrastructure;

(ii) the impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and energy affordability for consumers and businesses; and

(iii) gas supply reform advice provided to the minister for energy, including any modelling or assessments, including consultation, on the impact of implementation of the road map on current electrical and gas infrastructure.

I will be succinct, and these documents motions can be managed succinctly. This motion has effectively two sets of documents that are being sought under standing order 10.01. One relates to the agreements and the payments made to each generator in the Latrobe Valley. We know of at least two that have been made by government and potentially a third. It seeks that the details of those agreements, including the actual contractual arrangements, will be made available to the house. The government will no doubt seek to argue that these are commercial in confidence. I remind the government that commercial-in-confidence agreements are not necessarily protected from documents orders in the chamber. Given the scale of these payments – hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, by report – the full details of these also should be available. This is taxpayers money, after all, and the idea that the government would sign secret, dirty deals and not reveal the scale and the matters around the contracts to the public is absolutely shameful.

The second part seeks the documents relating to Victoria’s Gas Substitution Roadmap, specifically the modelling, assessments and examinations, including consultancies, on the impact of the Gas Substitution Roadmap, including modelling or assessment on its transitional impacts and greenhouse gas emissions. We want to see what the government has based its decisions on, the full details of that and what close modelling it had on how these plans that have been announced would be impacted. I would also include in that the government’s current proposal to ban gas rebates: what modelling have they done on that, how are they implementing that, what will be the effect on greenhouse gas emissions, on what do they base these decisions and have they got the proper modelling that should have been done to inform these decisions?

The purpose of documents motions like this – I remind newer members of the house that the powers of the house are the powers of the House of Commons from 1856 to call for documents and papers. They should, if they wish, go and read the legal opinions that were obtained by the house from Bret Walker QC, as he was then – I think he is probably a KC now or an SC – one of our pre-eminent constitutional lawyers, who laid down the powers of the chamber to obtain documents of this type. I would be very disappointed if the government was to claim executive privilege over any of these matters. I think it is entirely within order to understand the bases on which government decisions are made and to see how taxpayers money is being spent. The idea that you would sign deals that would push forward the use of coal energy much longer than some people certainly had anticipated – it may be that the decision is justified. Well, let us see the basis of the contracts, let us see the details and let us see the scope of the payments. That is what we are entitled to see as a community, given it is taxpayers money and decisions to which we are all bound.

I can also make the point here that the government is struggling with some of its greenhouse approaches. It is causing enormous difficulty in the community. They are not implemented well, some of the gas matters, because there are real transitional issues. Even if you agree entirely with their direction – some do and some do not; I personally have some really significant reservations – this is not a motion about the overall policy. It is a motion about getting hold of the documents to examine that policy and to put us in a better position to debate that with all of the material the government has at its disposal on these matters. As I say, this is a straightforward set of documents that we are seeking here. It is a matter that the government should come to the party with, and it is clearly in the public interest that these documents be provided. That is all I need to say, I think.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:07): I am pleased to rise to speak on the first of these short-form documents motions that have been presented. I will need to be brief because the way the sessional orders are structured means that debate on these matters has been curtailed. The ability of members to make contributions has been, by the way that the terms of these motions have been put in place, limited in terms of both the number of speakers from across the chamber who may seek to make contributions on any such motions but also the amount of time that we have got to do so.

Mr Davis’s motion relates to some documents he is seeking for the transition agreements that have been put in place with both the Yallourn and Loy Yang power stations, arrangements that have been put in place to minimise adverse impacts to the energy system, the workers in those stations, the regions and consumers that may arise as a result of the transition that we are making across our energy sector. The government has a very significant agenda to transition Victoria’s energy sector towards renewables as our existing energy generation assets reach the end of their life. We want that process to be done as smoothly as possible to avoid some of the ways in which the closure of Hazelwood was managed, so it is designed to create that orderly transition. The agreements that are being sought will ensure that these generation facilities will continue to provide energy generation at Yallourn until 2028 and Loy Yang A until 2035, which will enable the state to continue to keep the lights on whilst we transition to renewable energy. They help remove the uncertainty that we saw previously with Hazelwood but that we also see in other states, where the plans of private power companies who own our electricity assets as a result of decisions taken by previous Liberal governments impact on power prices, and seek to provide a bit more certainty to Victorians about how that energy transition will be done. It will also, we hope and we think, absolutely make the transition easier for the local communities in the Latrobe Valley, their workers and their families.

It is important that we do talk about these issues. Mr Davis in his contribution seemed to spend more of his time critiquing and seeking to pre-empt the decisions that the government will have to take than justifying his reasons for seeking the production of documents. He did make an important contribution about the powers of the Parliament and the seriousness with which we all should take the powers that this Parliament has to compel the production of documents. The critique that I have, that we have, is that these new sessional orders have the potential to undermine the seriousness of that endeavour by limiting the ability of members to contribute to debates on these matters. I think it is important as we embark upon this process to reflect on and contrast the way the chamber in the past has treated the seriousness of an inability to comply with requests that have been passed and the consequences – and sanctions in fact – that the chamber in previous iterations has sought to put in place in those circumstances.

In doing so I think the process of using these motions sets us on a path that we will need to tread carefully, because there is a lot that is being sought in this motion – two quite separate requests for documents about two separate issues, put together in the one motion and given a three-week timetable for the government’s consideration. We know there are serious consequences when governments do not or are unable to comply with the time frames that the Council has set out. There are important matters that we all should think about in doing that. I would be able to elaborate my views on that a little further given their seriousness and importance, but unfortunately due to the sessional orders I am being prevented from doing so.

Motion agreed to.