Wednesday, 15 May 2024

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2024–25

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:40): I am wanting to make a statement today about the budget and particularly the energy output within the budget, which has fallen by 31 per cent in its funding this year and by 10 per cent on a budget-to-budget linkage. But clearly there is a serious problem in the approach that the current government is adopting with respect to its budgeting in the energy portfolio, and that is not all. I should say that this week we have seen Victoria increasingly pointed to as the outlier in the national approach that is being adopted by the Commonwealth government. The Future Gas Strategy dated May 2024, released in recent days, makes it very clear that Victoria is at odds with the Commonwealth. It makes it clear that Victoria, with its harsh ideological war on so-called fossil gas and its direct attempt to ban gas in Victoria, is completely and utterly out of step with the Commonwealth. Victoria has already banned gas connections on new estates. It has already banned any rebates on appliances. It has made those steps as part of its plan to block and unwind gas connections in this state.

Gas of course has a very important role not just in this state with respect to the importance of homes and businesses, and in so many businesses gas is not just a feedstock. It is an energy source, and we are about to lose a very important manufacturing group like Qenos. We have lost Seeley. All of those firms are now being hit because the government has not understood that we need gas both as a feedstock and, importantly, as an energy source. But this government in Victoria under Lily D’Ambrosio’s leadership in the energy portfolio is wanting to go much further, and the gas plan put out by the federal government is flawed in certain respects but hitting very many key points that need to be considered. It admits that we need an import terminal or import terminals. It means that there is not enough gas. The amount of run-down from Bass Strait is significant, and we need not just an import terminal but, importantly, gas exploration and onshore conventional gas drilling to actually augment our supplies urgently. The government has banned access to this for 10 years. It is now in a scramble to try and deal with this.

But it is when it comes to homes that the difference is most sharp. It is in the case of homes where the difference is most clear, and the hardline, almost Stalinist approach adopted by Ms D’Ambrosio – no gas connections on new estates, no new appliances – is completely at odds with principle 4 in the Commonwealth document, which says:

Households will continue to have a choice over how their energy needs are met.

There is a clear recognition in the Commonwealth document that removing gas may not be possible in certain circumstances and that some houses will not easily be converted to electricity. Also this state government has completely lost the plot when it comes to the costs. We have seen costs surge up and up and up for both gas and electricity in this state, 28 per cent up in terms of electricity last year according to St Vincent de Paul, and the same survey shows a 22 per cent increase in gas prices for households and similar large increases for small businesses.

All of these increases are completely hurting families very significantly at a time of a cost-of-living crisis. Families, often those with the least capacity to pay, are being hit very hard and very harshly. We know the government’s approach is in chaos. We know the minister has lost control of the portfolio with the approach she has adopted with offshore wind, and she is now desperately calling for new Commonwealth money because she knows she is not going to be able to easily backfill on offshore wind. It is worse than that, though, isn’t it, when you understand what is going on here? There is a group of those quangos, national bodies, that have got enormous power and enormous control. They are out of control, and they do not have the interests of Victorians and Australians at heart. They are actually not accountable to a Parliament. They are not accountable to the people. Cost, reliability and environmental outcomes have got to be a key focus, and I have to say that cost, accountability and outcomes have not been the focus of this government. (Time expired)