Wednesday, 25 May 2022

Environment and Planning Committee

Inquiry into Tackling Climate Change in Victorian Communities

Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (10:16): It is a pleasure to rise to make some comments on the inquiry into tackling climate change in Victorian communities. We have heard a few people today talk about this report, and I am pleased to be able to report on some of the local activity that has been happening in my electorate for a number of months—not just a number of months but a number of years. I am very, very happy to say that I have been working with my community on some of these things.

My interest in this area started some time ago. In fact in the last term of government our leader gave me the portfolio of renewables as a specific portfolio that no-one had actually had before. It got me the opportunity to talk with the likes of Kane Thornton from the Clean Energy Council to learn about some of the innovative projects that were happening overseas and also happening here in Victoria about tackling climate change and looking at real solutions, like adopting renewables and renewable hubs and being able to feed that through in a whole range of different ways—community solar, community input into ensuring both off-grid and microgrid supply. There are a whole range of opportunities in this space.

One of the things that this report talks about is ensuring that communities have real engagement in tackling climate change. That is actually twofold, and one of the things that I want to specifically highlight today is education. There is a really great bit of work that is being done activating a whole range of people to become aware and to ensure that they advocate for climate change targets, and we need to do more of that. But the flip side, where I think we can do a lot more work, is around educating people in what they do every day. That is something that I am really keen to do locally, and I would like to see the government do more in terms of some of those education programs, whether it be in schools or whether it be in community organisations.

I point to a local group, the JCN, the Jewish Climate Network. Eytan Lenko, Joel Lazar and Josh Blode have been working with me around some of the things that they have been doing locally in their community. Whether it be in the schools or whether it be in the community organisations, they have been looking at programs to create a zero-emissions community project. That is where the community comes together to see what they can practically do in reducing emissions, which is a fantastic initiative. They are getting out and about and educating people about this, and we need to do more of it.

But there are very basic things that we can do even in how we tackle our recycling and our rubbish. There is still that issue where so much recycling ends up in landfill because people do not know what they are putting in their bins. In our electorate we are going to a fourth bin. It is great that we are doing a lot of the separating and the hard work at the home, but it does not make a bit of difference if people actually do not know what they are putting in those bins.

Our landfills are starting to fill. One of the policies that we have been talking about on this side is zero waste to landfill and ensuring we look at turning that kind of stuff into energy, which is another really innovative way of being able to tackle the issues around not being able to rely on coal-fired power stations but to transition into other fuels and to other energies. So we need practical solutions and we need to advocate for those practical solutions, and I am certainly a strong believer in that.

Can I also give a big shout-out to PECAN, the Port Phillip Emergency Climate Action Network. Now, I have been working with PECAN for just on four years now on the Green Line project. This is creating a linear park around the likes of Balaclava and St Kilda, where you have got areas where you do not have the opportunity to do planting and you do not have the opportunity to be able to have the local community take more responsibility and pride in those areas at the moment. What we need the government to do is release some of that land and give the community access to that land, whether it be done through Metro or done through VicTrack, to ensure they can actually do some planting and ensure that they can use the land that at the moment is unsafe, unsightly and most importantly not able to be treasured, and harness the environmental opportunity around it. These are great local community groups taking real action on climate change. We need more education around this. We certainly need to get more people on board, and we need practical solutions like New South Wales have done and like Tasmania have done to ensure we lead the nation when it comes to climate change.