Wednesday, 28 August 2024

Energy policy

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (18:22): (1096) My matter is for the Minister for Energy and Resources in the other place, and it concerns the recently released so-called Cheaper, Cleaner, Renewable: Our Plan for Victoria’s Electricity Future document released just about a week or so ago. Of course the plan is nothing of the sort. The plan is a thin, vacuous document that cobbles together aspects from previous announcements, but there is no coherent plan here for the future. In fact there is no sense of urgency in it, given the state faces a really very challenging future which may see our gas supplies run out and our gas supplies short as early as next year. The minister does not appear to have understood that she has got to get off her tail and get moving. We actually need exploration to bring forward gas to make sure that our industries are not clobbered. We need to make sure that choice remains a significant part of our system. Even the federal Labor government admits that choice should be a critical aspect of people’s energy choices and businesses’ energy choices as well, but none of this comes through in the document.

What I am seeking for the minister to do today is to revisit all of this, look at the federal government’s documents and understand the urgency of the position the state is in. We have already seen businesses start to leave the state. The prices of gas have surged. The prices of electricity have surged. The government promised and the federal government also promised lower electricity prices, yet we have got a government that has allowed these huge surges in price to occur. One of the reasons gas prices have gone up is because there has been no new supply. There has not been a single permit given to a company to explore in Victoria since 2013. That is 11 years ago, a drought of exploration. We know there is gas onshore, conventional gas that is available to be got, and they have got to get on and get it. So we need the minister for energy, who is also the minister for resources, to convene some sort of high-level taskforce that brings in the gas industry, brings in the energy industry more broadly and actually starts to find some solutions. She is on her ideological frolic over here with the war on gas and closing off gas but at the same time not bringing forward the supply and actually pushing people to use more brown coal generated electricity, which is high in emissions. So take urgent action, convene a taskforce, reverse the pattern that she has got in place – (Time expired)