Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Energy policy

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (18:23): (624) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Energy and Resources, and it relates to the government’s push to ban gas connections to new dwellings from next year onwards. The action that I seek is simply this: reverse it; stop it; do not do it. Over the weekend in Ballarat we had power outages – yes, power outages. Everyone will get used to these in the future. You know, you cannot use a microwave, you cannot use any appliance, but at least you can use a gas appliance to cook or to heat water or something simple like that. It diversifies your risk. So it was actually very handy to have it there, because I could at least stay at home; I did not have to go out and do anything else. But I think for all those other people in the future that do not or will not have that option: what are they going to do? What are they actually going to do? Nothing.

Bev McArthur interjected.

Joe McCRACKEN: Open fires will be banned. It was really interesting, because my office is being refurbished at the moment and I found a document in there from way back – 1999, actually. I am going to read from this document. It is from Karen Overington, who stood for Ballarat West and who was a lovely lady. I met her a couple of times. I had a look at the manifesto that was being pushed at that particular time, and it said back then that a Bracks Labor government would ‘guarantee reliable supplies of gas, water, and electricity through an Essential Services Commission’. I thought to myself how far things have strayed from those times. At one point in time we were guaranteeing essential services, and now we are ripping them up and banning them completely. I will also note that another part of this was to abolish a tax. That has clearly gone out the window as well. Just for a bit of comical fun, another of the points is to ‘provide a budget surplus every year’. That has clearly never happened either.

It is a brilliant document, and it just goes to show how far the drift has been from one side to the other. But I seriously do hope that the energy minister does seriously consider this, because the transition to this system of banning gas in homes is going to have a catastrophic impact on people that just want to get on with their lives and be able to boil an egg, for goodness sake – something simple like that. But no, if the power goes out, they literally will not be able to do a thing. Please, Minister, reconsider it. Take the ideology out of it and look at it in a practical way.