Tuesday, 23 May 2023

Bills

Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Lily D’Ambrosio:

That this bill be now read a second time.

David HODGETT (Croydon) (14:41): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023, and I will put on record at the outset that we are supporting this bill. Whilst I go into a bit of background about this bill – I will come back to the purpose of the bill – I would like to spend a little bit of time talking in particular about the storms of June and October 2021, just setting out the reasons and circumstances for which this bill came about. I look at some of the comments made in the Minister for Energy and Resources’ second-reading speech. Members will recall:

In June and October 2021, severe storms caused widespread and prolonged power outages across Victoria. Following the June storms, 68,000 customers were without power after 72 hours and 9,000 customers were still without power seven days after the event.

I will come back to speak about that, not just in some of the areas in and around Victoria – the Mornington Peninsula, the Dandenongs, Gippsland – but even around my electorate of Croydon, which was affected in suburban areas. The speech continued:

Additionally, following the October storms, nearly 24,000 customers remained off supply 72 hours after and just over 2,500 customers were still without power seven days after the event. In both instances, the power outages were more prolonged compared with previous storm events.

So these storms were severe, and I am going to come back to a few articles that were written around that time, just to show the extent of the damage, particularly in my area but also on the Mornington Peninsula. The minister in her second-reading speech also went on to say that:

The experience of these storms highlighted the limits to getting critical information from electricity distribution businesses to support relief activities and programs for customers. A subsequent external review was undertaken to identify priority reform measures and policies to enable distribution businesses to mitigate the risk of, and better respond to, prolonged power outages in the future.

That is a reasonable expectation from anyone in the community when their power goes out. Power is an essential service, a basic service, one expected in our state, and if it goes out you would be expecting it to come back on in a reasonable period of time. The minister continued:

In August 2021, the Victorian Government commissioned the Electricity Distribution Network Resilience Review in response to the devastating storms of June 2021. An Expert Panel was appointed to investigate how distribution businesses can improve their preparedness for, and response to, prolonged power outages caused by storms and other extreme weather events.

The Expert Panel found that the participation of distribution businesses in emergency response and recovery was not delivering positive outcomes for impacted customers. Victorian customers were provided with mixed messaging on power restoration times, insufficient relief measures, and were disregarded during emergency operations.

Therefore this bill is seeking to provide a range of solutions to better prepare and protect consumers in energy emergency situations.

Coming back to the comments I made before, I want to talk about the storms because what occurred at that time is important to how this bill came about. Generally speaking, in the state or in our own area and our electorates we know what causes power outages. A localised power outage can occur for a wide variety of reasons. Severe weather such as lightning, floods or heatwaves – or high winds as in the case of the June storms – is often the predominant cause. Trees interfering with power lines and bushfires we know cut power, as do unexpected technical faults and car accidents, and then there are planned outages for planned essential maintenance works and also to help balance supply and demand during peak periods, which is a topic of debate for another time.

We all know that experience when you are subject to an unplanned outage. You basically quickly check your phone as the first port of call just to check with the provider because you are trying to determine what the problem is and how long it will be out, because then that guides you in your decision-making of what you are going to do. As I said before, for most of us it is reasonable to expect that the power will come back on in a reasonable period of time. Reliable power is a basic service, so if it goes out, you pretty much expect it to come back on in a reasonably short period of time. You check with the provider if it is a major problem, but even then you would expect it to be coming back on in a fairly timely way. Certainly you would not expect to be without it for a long period of time. But depending on the information that is on your app or on the provider’s website or whatever information you have got access to, you start to make short-term or longer term decisions.

If the information you get suggests that the power is only going to be out for a short period of time, you might resort to the use of candles, for those that have still got them in their households. You might look at what are going to be your food and cooking arrangements for the next 12, 24 or 48 hours. Everyone starts to worry about the food in their freezer. Your immediate thought when you start to lose power is, ‘What have I got in there? How much have I got in there? How long is it going to be? Do I need to relocate it to family or a friend’s house or someone to save some of that food?’ All these things guide our decisions. If it is going to be longer term, again you would start to look at what is a reasonable period of time, what are you going to do for food, for cooking and for energy supply. If you have a fully electric house, it is no good. Some have access to gas, so they might not have any lighting but they can still cook. You might look at alternative power supplies. I spoke to many people that were able to get a battery and then connect it up to at least have some sort of lighting in their houses, as basic as that was, that allowed them to perform functions in their homes in the night hours. Some people got access to batteries and lighting. Some would look to hire generators or might already have a generator or an alternative supply. Depending on the information you get, you are going to make those short or longer term decisions. Many I spoke to went out during the day and only returned home at night to sleep because they could manage their day that way once they had made some of those other decisions.

You have to remember the times of year that these storms happen. The June storms happened in the winter, so freezing conditions, so things like heating, lighting, comfort and those sorts of things are going to be much different to the October ones. I think reading some of the articles, the October ones were close to Cup Day, and Cup Day that year was about 30 degrees, so it was a much different time of year for people to be planning and making those sorts of decisions.

The other thing that a lot of people spoke to me about during that period was cost-of-living issues back then. If power is going to be out for a number of weeks, people cannot afford to get takeaway every night. In the hills, in the Dandenongs, people might have gone to providers – their local cafes, shops and takeaways – but they might not have been able to provide food because they had also lost power and did not have the ability to open and serve food. Short term you might be able to go and buy a meal or you might be able to go to a friend’s or family member’s for a meal, but longer term that might become a bit of an issue.

Basically the point I am making is that people make those sorts of decisions, and when power is going to be out for a number of weeks that starts to put pressure across a whole range there. You cannot necessarily operate in that short-term time frame or environment if your power is going to be out for a number of weeks. I did refer back, in my research to speak on today’s bill, to a number of the articles that were written around the time. I am just going to quote from a couple of the articles from the time to remind people of the conditions back then, and then I will come to why we are supporting this bill and what it is trying to achieve. An article in the Australian on 17 June 2021 headlined ‘Storm-hit Victorians to go three weeks without power, ADF called in’ says:

Thousands of Victorians will endure freezing winter conditions for weeks without electricity in the wake of devastating storms.

About 7000 properties are without power more than a week after storms and flooding hit the state, and at least 3000 in the Dandenong Ranges … are expected to be without electricity until July 10.

The article in the Australian quoted a resident in the hills:

“We just huddled in the living room waiting for it to pass over because that’s all we could do,” he said. “Obviously in the pitch black because there was no power.”

He is one of the thousands of residents across Ferny Creek, Kalorama, Mount Dandenong, Olinda, Sassafras, Sherbrooke, The Basin, Tremont and Upwey who have been told power will not return for three weeks.

Again, these were near-freezing conditions in June, so you can imagine – no power, no heating, no cooking, and in some circumstances there were trees through houses, so they were exposed to elements and the wind. From a Herald Sun article from 19 June 2021 I am reminded that ADF support was called in to help. Again we thank the ADF, but it shows the seriousness of these storms and the length of time that power was going to be out. The article says:

The soldiers will assist in clearing roads, doorknocking affected households and providing general community assistance.

Electricity may not be restored to some locations for weeks.

More than 5000 houses in the area remain without power …

… thousands more will remain in the dark until at least July 10.

There is another article in the Herald Sun of 19 June by Kiel Egging. Kiel was a local out our way. I might take the opportunity to wish him well. He has just changed career; he is no longer reporting for the Maroondah Leader out our way, but Kiel was a very enthusiastic, well-renowned local journalist out our way. We wish him well in his new career. Kiel wrote this article, and I will just quote the first part of it, again to set the scene of these times:

Roxanne Horn surveys her property in the stricken Dandenongs town of Kalorama and says: “It’s like a bomb’s gone off.”

Ms Horn lives in Barbers Rd with her husband and their two sons, and said, “We’ve just been devastated. I’ve been crying most days.

“We know everyone else is in the same position, but we’ve felt stranded – and the only support we’ve been given has been from locals and charities.”

They and other families are bracing for the possibility of another three weeks without power after the June 9 storms. One tree that fell on their land narrowly missed their home.

“There’s not a single street that doesn’t have trees down, it’s like bombs have gone off. It resembles the end of the world,” Ms Horn said.

“You can’t go 5m without seeing some form of destruction … there’s so much more light coming in because of the trees that came down.”

She said she believed her family and about 600 other Kalorama residents were affected by the power outage.

The emergency response should have been similar to a bushfire in the Dandenongs, she said.

“We haven’t felt supported at all by the government, state or federal,” Ms Horn said.

“No one has come to our house or spoken to us, apart from locals to check on us.

“It’s been total isolation, we’ve have been forgotten about … it’s going to take months if not a year to recover without any help.”

Amber Williams, who lives on Panorama Rd with her young family, said there were trees down “absolutely everywhere” and also called for more aid.

“We needed the army to come in a week ago, the day after the storm,” Ms Williams said.

“I’m not angry, but I’m disappointed that nobody seemed to know what had happened.”

That nobody seemed to know what happened is a point that this bill is attempting to address, so that point will lead into that as I come back to talk about the main provisions and purposes of the bill and why we are supporting it.

Finally, I move to the October storms. There is an article in the Age – one of many – and this time I have just plucked out a couple of examples. On 30 October 2021 thousands were without power as the clean-up continued. Some segments of this article talk about how:

About 85,000 Victorians are still without power and could be waiting days for reconnection, as authorities warn wild weather could hit again next weekend … as the clean-up from Friday’s severe winds continues.

…

Around 5100 calls for assistance were made to the State Emergency Service … with assistance being rendered in Berwick and … the Mornington Peninsula.

Full credit to our SES. As I have said, I do not live in the Dandenongs. I live in Lilydale, which is close to the Dandenongs, and I often see the storms and the power outages in and around there and indeed have been affected myself. The SES out our way, and across the state for that matter, do a wonderful job, but to have 5100 calls for help in that period just shows the extent and severity of the storms. Full credit also to the network crews. The energy provider’s network crews endured challenging weather conditions, falling trees and access issues to repair critical infrastructure. I know at the time, with more storms on the way, assessments had to be made about what time they would go in to start to assess the damage and make the repairs, which of course just adds time to the whole thing. But full credit to the SES and the network crews, who did outstanding, amazing work during that time in the conditions that they were confronted with. The article also says:

Around 48,000 people connected to AusNet remained without supply on Saturday morning, while United Energy reported 22,889 properties were without power.

So that just sets the scene of what the storms were like at the time. As I said earlier in my contribution, the expectation of consumers is that their government is taking action to reduce the likelihood of blackouts in the future. I do this to remind people of the circumstances that brought about this bill and, again, why we are supporting it.

Turning to the bill, the main purpose of the bill is to amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000 to provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change with the power to direct distribution businesses to assist in emergency response and recovery, to mitigate the impacts of prolonged electricity outages and improve community outcomes, and to make technical changes to the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 and the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to ensure strong compliance and enforcement of the Victorian energy upgrades program.

The bill also amends the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 to enhance its operation and effectiveness by allowing the minister to directly set fees for the Victorian energy upgrades program instead of having those fees prescribed under regulations. The bill also amends the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to clarify the powers of the Essential Services Commission in relation to proceedings for civil penalty requirement breaches against the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007, including civil penalty requirement breaches in relation to the Victorian energy upgrades program.

They are the main purposes of the act, if you like. But if we look back in summary, we recall the storms of June and October 2021. What happened was that the government needed to do something, so as usual they set up a review in August 2021. The review came back, and essentially this bill was creating a directions power for the minister to direct retailers or energy providers on the provision of information, to direct relief activities – an example was given in the bill briefing of what a relief activity might be – and to direct relief payments.

Power companies, or certainly the good ones – most of them – are already doing those sorts of things, and I did seek clarification at the bill briefing on what the difference is, if they are already doing it, between ‘voluntary’ and ‘directed’. The response that was given, which was welcomed, was that this is a ‘just in case’ power. Whilst most of the companies do provide information, provide community meetings – I know from that article the Australian Defence Force was involved in some of those community activities – and provide relief payments, this gives the minister the directions powers in relation to those three things.

As I have said it does amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000. I will not go through that again. I have spoken about the energy efficiency target act and amending the Essential Services Commission Act. I have given the background to where we are. So I wanted to quickly touch on the main provisions. Fundamentally, as I have said, this bill creates a directions power – the bill amends the Electricity Industry Act 2000 to provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action with a new power to direct distribution businesses where there is an emergency power outage. So firstly, as I had said, there is a direction power in relation to provision of information; secondly, there is a direction power in relation to relief activities; and thirdly, there is a direction power in relation to the provision of relief payments. Failure to comply with a direction could attract a civil penalty of more than $200,000.

I do not intend to go back over the debate that was had last sitting week about the truncated process for this bill being six days instead of the normal 14, but in terms of trying to have that truncated process, we did go out and consult with stakeholders and certainly no areas of concern were raised or identified with the bill in the feedback that we sought. A couple of points were raised, which with time permitting, I might have time to actually talk about. But we always engage with stakeholders via mail, phone or email just to get their views, because that is an important part of the process. When governments introduce legislation, we want to have sufficient time to go out and seek the views of the community, because they might have some good ideas or allow us to come back in and present some ideas or some alternatives and some amendments. In this case no areas of concern were raised or identified with the bill, and hence that led me to a support position on the bill.

While I am at it, though, as is normally the case when I speak as the lead speaker on a bill, an important part in this process is the bill briefing, and I did want to put on record my thanks to Nick Parry from the minister’s office, just for coordinating that very efficiently – almost as efficiently as your office, Minister for Planning, but probably more so with the truncated process. Nick did very well. But I did want to place on record my thanks to Nick Parry and Holli Smith from the minister’s office. Members will be aware there were two bills introduced last week, so we did a concurrent bill briefing. So I will thank all these people: Samantha Mikus, Barbara Blake, Lisa Opray, Solly Marshall-Radcliffe and Nathan Crombie. I think, if I am not mistaken, the two main departmental officers in relation to this bill were Samantha and Nathan. The others – Barbara, Lisa and Solly – I will take the opportunity to thank next time because we do appreciate the bill briefings. It is often a tight time frame when legislation is put in. Members from different backgrounds on our side of the house are interested in the bill briefing and what is in there, and so it is always welcome in terms of getting that information. So Nick setting up that process and answering our questions and providing that bill briefing in a very timely manner was appreciated and allowed us to form a view and be here speaking on this today.

As I said, we are supporting the bill. In the time remaining, though, I might just touch on a couple of things. At the bill briefing I did ask about using the existing emergency services text messaging service, and again I will put on record that I got a good, detailed response about that. Certainly one of the department reps was able to provide information about mobile phone towers, backup power, batteries et cetera. So whilst that system is good, if you have got long-term power outages, you could lose that service.

I am certainly aware that Victorian emergency services have a very good system for texting every mobile phone in an area that the emergency services select on a map. Again, it could be considered a better and faster response for the energy minister to simply use that system rather than always getting customers’ phone numbers from distributors. It is horses for courses – I understand that. There might be a time when you need both, but in terms of trying to get information out quickly, generally speaking, when there is an emergency, hopefully people have got some sort of power in their phone. It is one of the first devices they turn to to try to get information. We see the emergency services text messaging service as playing a major role in terms of getting that information out. As I said at the beginning of my contribution, when power goes out and people are faced with trying to get information, they are making long-term decisions or short-term decisions, and these are all based on that information. What this bill is trying to do is, where that information might not be there, provide the minister with the power to make directions to get that information.

The other change which I thought was good was the power to direct community relief activities. I think the example that was given at the briefing was the power to conduct a community hub meeting. If there are people in the community, like some of the ones I have mentioned in the Dandenongs – in the hills – that need information, it might be best to have a community hub meeting or go knocking door to door. The power to direct relief activities is a good initiative where it may or may not be getting done or might need to be done more regularly. That is certainly something that we support.

This is not directly related to this bill but is just something that in my research came to mind: in looking at unplanned outages, I certainly think the government needs to do a bit more work. In particular, there was a case in New South Wales that was brought to my attention. Members might be aware of it, or certainly the minister’s office would be aware of it – not that it affected Victoria, but it was a serious matter in New South Wales. A life support patient died in New South Wales when the oxygen generator switched off in an unplanned blackout. In New South Wales, companies must inform registered life support patients of planned outages four days before by text message, but there is currently no requirement to alert them of unplanned outages. Whilst this is not the subject of this bill, it struck me as something that we could possibly do some work on, as it would anyone that took the time to read that article, ‘Grieving son calls for change after losing mum on life support during power outage’. The lady was on oxygen, from memory. Her son said:

She does have oxygen bottles in the home but at night you rely on the oxygen generator.

He said:

We could have assisted her, we could have got her oxygen bottles to her.

The article states:

The oxygen machine was rented and didn’t come fitted with a back-up battery.

If there is a planned energy outage, providers need to give customers using life support four days’ notice but in the case of an unexpected blackout –

they do not.

Instead, they urge vulnerable customers when they first sign up to have a back-up battery or generator and to call …

emergency. They were the details. I will not go into the full article, but it did strike me that in this tragic circumstance, where someone was relying on life support and power and an unplanned outage happened and they had the capacity to deal with it with back-up oxygen bottles, they could have supported that lady. One life lost is one too many. If we can do anything to improve the system, we should. As I said, it is not part of this bill but it is something that I think is certainly worth looking at.

In summary, we are supporting this bill, although, as I have said in my contribution, I firmly believe the power companies are generally doing the right thing. I am not hearing of any examples where they are not. You would expect that when there are long-term blackouts, whether that be in the Dandenongs, in the Mornington Peninsula, in Gippsland or wherever they are, you would be getting these things done – the provision of information on how long and when the power will be back on. You would expect ‘It’s extended; we’ll provide a relief payment’ or ‘You can go here’ and relief activities and certainly relief payments, although these often do not suffice for what people now buy and pack into their freezers – you lose a freezer for a week or so in the warmer months and that food goes off pretty quickly. You often have not got alternative storage. Even if you have family members near and you can take it across and put it in your mum’s or your sister’s or brother’s freezer, they have got food in the freezer as well, so you have not got a lot of space there. So we are all for the relief payments.

Regarding the companies – voluntary versus directed – that is probably a contentious point, a point of debate, but in this case the bill is supported, because we see no harm in essentially creating those direction powers for the minister.

The two other parts of the bill I have not gone to in great length – amending the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 and amending the Essential Services Commission Act 2001. The changes that are being made there we have no concerns with. I know there are a number of people on our side of the house, in particular ones whose electorates were severely affected by the storms, who are keen to make contributions on this and look at ways to improve emergency responses and information when power outages come along. They are bound to happen again. As I said, we live in a time when you would expect power to be a basic service and to be provided, so anything that can be done by the government for the security of supply or certainly to prevent the reoccurrence of blackouts is welcome in this house. I look forward to some of the contributions from people here that have firsthand experience of those severe storms. We are supporting the bill, and I again thank the department for the briefing.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (15:12): I also rise to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023, and I note that the previous opposition speaker that we have just heard at no time mentioned the P word – privatisation. This legislation really is a continuing requirement because of the privatisation of the power industry in Victoria, which in fact every single day since privatisation in the 1990s by the Liberal Kennett government of the time has had a detrimental effect on Victorians. This is something that we see and is why we need to continually pass further legislation to regulate.

I note also the previous speaker was obviously backing up their support for privatisation and was a bit of an apologist for the power companies in saying that they think they do the right thing. Also there was the complaint of course, in opposing this legislation being debated today, that the stakeholders – in other words, the power companies – may not have had enough time to consult with the Liberal opposition. But the fact is that, sadly, we need legislation like this today because electricity companies really have to be regulated to do the right thing. It does not come naturally for those businesses. They are guided by the profit motive, not by the people motive.

This legislation, as I have mentioned, along with earlier legislation that we had to pass to ensure that it is fairer for Victorians, is also something that has been required as a result of experience. A number of years ago this government introduced legislation and passed legislation to ensure that the power companies provided options and full information to consumers in order for them to select the best competitive rates and not have people on very expensive rates when there were alternative rates that they could be on for much less. We had to regulate to ensure that that happened – for them to provide the best offer.

Following the terrible experiences that people have had, whether it is with fire, floods or storms, where there is damage to power infrastructure this legislation – or at least one component of it – is to ensure that the electricity networks provide information to the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action to ensure that we can respond to those affected by those power outages in the best way. The requirement is that in emergencies there has to be full and frank disclosure of information, there has to be support and help with mitigating damage and the power companies have to take some responsibility and ensure that people get timely information so that they can plan what they need to do and they are not thinking, ‘The power will be on tomorrow, so I guess we’ll wait until then’ – and then it does not come on for six months.

This legislation is very important. It is a piece of legislation that really shows how this government, the Andrews Labor government, is always on the lookout for continuous improvement, to make sure that the legislation that is introduced to this house, debated and passed actually makes people’s lives better, whether it is in power and information after dealing with catastrophes and disasters or whether it is to give people a fair go and support them through cost of living or other services. That is one aspect of the legislation that we are debating today.

There are another two parts which I will not go into in as much detail, but one is to amend the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 to allow the minister to directly set fees for the Victorian energy upgrade program instead of having these fees prescribed under the regulation. There is often a need for a bit of flexibility, particularly, as we know, in terms of inflation that we have not seen for so many, many decades. Again this is legislation responding to what is going on in the world and making sure that we are continually improving and responding to any changes. This legislation will also amend the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to clarify the powers of the Essential Services Commission in relation to proceedings for civil penalty requirement breaches against the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act. This is more of a consequential amendment to bring things in line with legislation that we amended in an earlier term.

Sadly, extreme weather events – flood, fire, storm – are all effects of climate change, and they are not going to go away. In fact the advice is that these events are going to continue to increase and their severity may increase as well, so it is really timely that we ensure that we are bringing in legislation to make sure that when these events do occur – and this is only one aspect of the full response – the department responsible for overseeing the clean-up or the rectification of the damage is provided with the information by right, not because some power company thinks they might give it to them or might not or maybe will not give them everything but because by law it is a requirement and therefore there are no ifs or buts, it has to happen and there is no time lost in debating or negotiating what it is that should be provided and what is not. The bill also ensures that there are pretty specific obligations on power companies in what work they need to do to contribute to the clean-up and assist with the fallout from the outages and the damages to power infrastructure.

In the electorate of Thomastown we talk to the SES, and there are circumstances, even recently, when there have been quite extreme weather events – not to the extent that we have seen across various regional areas of Victoria, but still there has been damage from trees falling over powerlines and that sort of stuff. I would like to give a big shout-out to the SES for all the work they do. They tell us that these things are also happening in Thomastown. In fact I had a similar power outage in my own house due to storms, but luckily it was fairly quickly resolved and the power was up and running pretty quickly.

We need to make sure that legislation does ensure that power companies are doing what they should be doing, and that is servicing the people of Victoria, because when we look at the past history there have been some really frustrating examples of where this did not really occur, as I said, when it came to giving fair and competitive prices for electricity plans. I know of one example in the Thomastown electorate which seems quite crazy, where a number of small or medium-sized businesses had wanted to put solar panels on the roofs of their factories and warehouses and buildings in order to reduce the cost of their electricity by generating their own that they could use within their business, and that of course was going to save a lot of money for those businesses as well as being good for the environment by generating clean energy. However, they were unable to do it because the distribution company basically blocked it and would not allow them to put it into the grid. There had to be a number of negotiations with the state government in order for that to finally happen, and I am very glad to hear that it finally has happened. A big shout-out to those businesses that are doing the right thing by wanting to use clean energy, but it was not without a lot of heartache to them and a lot of frustration and a lot of time taken in trying to get through to these power companies. But it is very important that they allow that new energy into the grid. Thanks to the Andrews Labor government that has now happened, and I would like to hopefully see more clean, green energy within the Thomastown electorate as we continue with this government’s proud record of reducing emissions.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:22): I am pleased to rise to say a few words on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. I do so with a little bit of pride but also a little bit of disappointment in that this legislation is really a response to the very significant storms that we had in Victoria in June and October of 2021, and despite much of the conversation revolving around the Dandenongs and other parts of the state that were certainly very badly hit, very rarely is it acknowledged the damage that was done particularly in South Gippsland on the southern side of the Strzelecki Ranges.

I will say that I rise with a little bit of pride in that it was at the end of June 2021 that I stood here in this place and asked for the minister to undertake a review of the arrangements around distribution and transmission networks – particularly distribution – when it comes to power outages because we saw significant impacts on people throughout my electorate through the power outages that occurred as a result of those storms, and it was good that eventually the government did proceed with the electricity distribution network resilience review. That one had people turning the pages, I am sure. But I say I am a little bit disappointed because, while we support the legislation before us, I am not entirely sure that it is going to make that much difference if these instances happen again.

It was a significant event. I remember we were actually here in this Parliament on I think it was a Wednesday night, from memory, when this storm came through, and it was horrendous here in Melbourne. My colleagues and I did leave on the Thursday morning because flooding had begun throughout our electorates in Gippsland, and indeed the member for Gippsland East and I just got through Traralgon as the Traralgon Creek rose very considerably, and we managed to get home. I spent the next 24 to 36 hours waiting for the Thomson River at Sale to peak, and thankfully it peaked considerably lower than was expected at the time. It was a major flood but no significant damage was done, and the locals who have been around for a very long time will tell me that whilst there was a flood coming down the Latrobe and the Thomson there was not anything really in the Macalister, and that is usually what causes a big flood around Sale and the Sale wetlands. As I said, we dodged a bit of a bullet. There was significant flooding but not significant damage.

However, once the first part of the storm’s impact was over, I hit the road through South Gippsland to assess the damage, as I said, particularly on the southern side of the Strzelecki Ranges. What happened in this storm was that we got basically a south-easterly storm coming up from Bass Strait, which is highly unusual. Most of our weather in Gippsland comes from the south-west or the west and in summer from the north-west, and a south-easterly just caused havoc because, literally, the trees were not used to it. It caused extensive damage right across the region for several days afterwards. As I was driving around, seeing where I could help and assist, the sound of chainsaws was just constant wherever I went, even in some of the most remote parts of the Strzelecki Ranges. I remember on the Saturday afternoon I caught up with a local farmer at Dumbalk North and we drove on the Milford Road. Indeed I have got the video. I shot video of it on time lapse, so it is sort of sped up. It was just horrendous – the trees across this road. That was a day or two after it had happened, and the local farmers had actually gone through and cleared a path so you could drive through it. But there were still trees literally from one side of the hill across the road onto the other side of the hill, just dozens and dozens of them, and as I drove around that was the case in many, many places.

Of course the bigger issue in the days following that was the power outages. Again, in that area of the Strzelecki Ranges it was quite significant, and I had people at the time in the Mount Best area in particular, I am sure from my notes and memory, whose power was off for up to 12 days. In some cases they got power back on briefly, but not in others. This is a fairly remote area. Mount Best is north of Toora and Foster. There is quite a population up there, but they are fairly remote. There was certainly frustration from some constituents obviously about the time it took get power put back on but also about the fact that AusNet did not even know where their powerlines went and where to go and look for a fault. Certainly, there was also frustration from some that simple fuse remedies, which would normally have been undertaken by a local linesman who would know the area, did not occur because a local contractor had lost the contract some time earlier. There was that frustration about power – and the member for Croydon talked about the loss of freezers and of fridges full of food.

There were certainly people who lost contact. One of the frustrations of course is that much of the information about any emergency like this is provided online. After a couple of days people’s mobile service went, their power went and they could not check online, and it was very difficult and very frustrating for many of them. There were animal welfare issues, with a number of dairy farmers who did not have backup supplies. I suspect most of them do now. But I remember driving along a road at Devon North or Won Wron – in the Calrossie area, I guess – and meeting a lady who just said, ‘What do I do?’ She was out the front of her property and literally had cows needing to be milked that had gone at that stage about 36 hours without being milked. In the end she had to walk them to a neighbour’s, I think, and have it done.

As I said, I called for a review to be undertaken. I called for there to be better consultation with the community on the review. I must say, from the information that was provided back to me via the minister at the time, I do not know that there was significant engagement from people who were actually affected. There was a public information session or a public feedback session at Traralgon at one stage, and I think six people turned up, which suggests that this was way too quiet and that the people that were most dramatically affected really did not get listened to.

I am a bit perplexed by the legislation. I understand what it is trying to do, but the move for the secretary to compel electricity distribution businesses to provide them information to assist in emergency management operations – well, I am not entirely sure what information we are talking about. Certainly AusNet, which is both the transmission and the distribution provider in Gippsland, did its best. I gave them credit at the time for trying as fast as they could to get people back online. And there was frustration of course about the information provided at the time. In some cases they would say, ‘We’ll be back on midnight tomorrow night’, and then the next day it would be midnight the next night and in some cases days and weeks in advance.

It certainly was a frustration, but I am not sure how having legislation to direct businesses to provide this sort of information is going to make that much difference, because they are trying. They are clearly making an effort to provide information to customers, and in this circumstance June in particular was a pretty unprecedented storm, so it was very difficult for them to gauge exactly how long it would be in some circumstances. And of course being such a widespread event across the state meant that you just could not bring crews in from elsewhere instantly, and I know they were bringing in crews from interstate to try and do that.

The second part of the direction is to compel distribution businesses to support and administer relief programs and payments. Well, again, maybe that is a useful backup plan, but as I recall that is how relief was delivered at that time in 2021, so I am not sure that we are adding a lot of value in this legislation. It is certainly not something to be opposed. We support the attempt to do something better, but I think there are other recommendations in the report as well, though, that could be looked at, and that includes things like the payments for people who are off for seven days. There were many people who were off power for five, six and 6½ days who then did not qualify for those payments and, as I said, incurred significant costs.

Just briefly, there are other aspects of the legislation with relation to fees for the Victorian energy upgrades program and the civil penalties that can be applied that are giving some powers to both the minister and the Essential Services Commission, but I think we probably still could do better with respect to trying to be better prepared and better responding to future major outages events, because I know it did cause significant problems for my constituents in Gippsland South.

Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (15:32): It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on this bill this afternoon. This bill is about responding to the recommendations of the second phase of the electricity distribution network resilience review, which found that electricity distribution companies need to be doing more in mitigating the impacts and likelihood of prolonged power outages, including providing better information and providing consistent relief support to impacted customers.

What we do know is that when those opposite privatised Victoria’s energy system under the former Kennett government back in 1994, it had several devastating effects on the people of Victoria. It saw energy prices absolutely soar. It has seen consistently those assets that were purchased ageing without that infrastructure being properly upgraded as it should have been. What it also did was strip the Victorian people of a level of oversight that they had when power was in public hands. Now, that is one of the reasons or a large part of why this government is bringing back the SEC. We are bringing back the SEC to drive down power prices and to increase renewable energy in our energy mix but also to bring power back into Victorians’ hands, and that is a little bit of what this bill today does. It ensures that Victorians and an elected Victorian government have an appropriate level of oversight of privatised electrical distribution companies to make sure that they are serving the needs of every single Victorian.

This bill has two main components. The first provides a direction for the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action to allow them to direct electricity distribution businesses to provide information and contribute to relief efforts following a mass power outage. So when I speak about providing a level of oversight, that is exactly what I am speaking about.

Following a number of storms in 2021 – really devastating storms, I think some of the worst storms the state of Victoria had ever seen – it became evident that we needed better processes and powers to manage the impacts of electricity outages. After that, we had the network resilience review, which is where some of these recommendations came out of. This will mitigate the impact of prolonged power outages on both homes and businesses in the event of another devastating storm event. These storms, which were some of the worst in Victoria’s history, exposed the vulnerability of our electricity distribution network, with impacts exacerbated by the privatised electrical distribution businesses’ poor response, which was characterised by underpreparedness and inaccurate service restoration times. Indeed I note the member for Gippsland South’s contribution. He spoke about the fact that when AusNet, the distribution provider out in the south-east and the east, went to fix some of these faults, they were not even quite sure where or how to identify the faults that existed in their own infrastructure. The experience of these storms and the experience of the inadequate response were a crucial reminder of our electricity grid’s fragility in the face of extreme weather. With climate change ramping up and expected to intensify these events, which is obviously the reason that this government is so committed to a renewable energy future, this will further challenge our network, particularly if it remains underprepared, as we experienced under the privatised regime.

The second component of this bill will make technical amendments to confirm the Essential Services Commission’s enforcement and consumer protection powers in relation to the Victorian energy upgrades program. The energy upgrades program was originally introduced to help businesses and homes access energy-efficient products and services. It saved Victorian households thousands of dollars, reduced energy use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Ensuring consistency between the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 and the Essential Services Commission Act 2001, this bill reaffirms our commitment to delivering energy savings and reducing greenhouse emissions. Strong enforcement and consumer protection will ensure that the Victorian energy upgrades program continues to deliver its benefits effectively, driving down household power bills as well as helping our environment.

This bill has a number of key provisions. I will not go through every single one, but I will name a few important ones in the small amount of time that I have remaining. The bill will amend the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 to improve consumer protection and the functioning of the Victorian energy upgrades program. The VEU program aims to increase energy-saving targets from 6.7 million certificates in 2022 to 7.3 million in 2025, an incredibly important increase. The VEU has reduced Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by over 60 million tonnes since 2009, helping over 1.8 million households and 100,000 businesses upgrade appliances and equipment.

The Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Amendment Act 2022 ensures a robust compliance framework for the VEU program, monitored by the Essential Services Commission. Expected benefits of the VEU program between 2022 and 2025 include $1.3 billion in energy bill savings, 28 million tonnes of avoided greenhouse gas emissions and incentives for households to ensure energy-saving products and services.

This bill allows for full implementation of the 2022 reforms through minor technical amendments, but although those technical amendments are minor in nature, I would suggest that they are incredibly important for the future of Victoria. The bill allows the Minister for Energy and Resources to set fees for regulatory tasks performed by the ESC under the VEU program. Fees will be reviewed according to the Department of Treasury and Finance’s Pricing for Value guide for appropriate cost recovery. The Minister for Energy and Resources is currently consulting on setting new fees that will ensure full cost recovery for the ESC. The bill makes minor technical amendments to the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 for better implementation of these 2022 reforms. The proposed changes to 10D of the ESC act will ensure the ESC can apply their powers in part 7 and sections 60A and 60B to the VEU program. I commend the bill to the house.

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (15:42): I rise to make some comments on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023.

Tim Richardson interjected.

David SOUTHWICK: And I thank the member for Mordialloc, who gave me an extension of time before I started. He is expecting a big contribution here, so I better really put the shoulder into it.

I want to start my contribution by reflecting back to 20 June 2021. One of my residents has been on a journey for a number of years now. Benjy Orwin has been collecting socks to support those that are dealing with a whole range of different situations – emergency issues and homelessness. Benjy established Socks4Support, and over a number of years Benjy and I have been working together to deliver socks to a number of different communities who need them. I know a number of members in this house have spoken about the shocking outages in the Dandenong Ranges. On 20 June Benjy and I took a number of pairs of socks – 800 actually – to the Kallista centre, where a lot of people were getting support. It was a fantastic example of the community really leaning in and helping one another. We saw that this centre was run by volunteers and organised by volunteers, with food, a barbecue, showers and all kinds of things. We got to spend a fair bit of time talking to many of the locals that were really struggling during that period. At the outset I just want to really give another shout-out to Benjy for coming along with me, for dropping those socks off, for chatting to locals and for the continued work that he has done, which led only a week or so ago to him becoming the City of Glen Eira Young Citizen of the Year for the amount of work that he has done in terms of charity. He was 11 years of age at the time, so for somebody who is now at 13, 14 years of age, what he has been able to do is absolutely amazing. At that stage he had collected 15,000 pairs of socks. I am not sure what he is up to now, but it would be 20,000 or possibly 30,000 pairs of socks that Benjy has collected for those that need them. So a big shout-out to Benjy.

When I was up in the Dandenong Ranges talking to a lot of locals – and we have got family there as well, so I do spend a bit of time up in the Dandenongs – I was really taken by surprise, firstly, by the resilience of the locals. You always see during emergencies that the locals always pitch in – it is just amazing – supported ably by our emergency service workers, in this case the SES that do an amazing job and the CFA that also do an amazing job, all really leaning in to help one another. Also as I was travelling through in that particular time I spoke to the SES in Olinda. It was at the Olinda football ground actually. They were getting themselves ready, and there were a whole lot of generators that were being all set to be delivered out to many locals that needed them – because again, this bill does talk about being able to get better communication and to ensure that the onus is on companies themselves to do more. It is absolutely true – and that is why we are supporting this bill – that these companies need to do more to support many of their customers and many of these residents experiencing outages. You have heard already from our lead speaker the member for Croydon about so many issues, even for those people with health issues, and about how important power is and the uncertainty that that causes many of those communities.

But I have got to say: attending in Olinda at the footy ground to see many of these generators ready to be delivered, I went up to the local SES and I said, ‘That is fantastic. When are they being delivered? They are all lined up; they are all ready to go. When are they being delivered?’ The response by the SES volunteers was that ‘We’re waiting on the minister.’ I was quite taken aback by that. I am like, ‘Right, what do you mean?’ and he says, ‘Well, the minister needs to come up here for a bit of a photo op, and we can’t actually deliver the generators until we get the minister here.’ That was really surprising, and it did take some time before those generators got out. I think certainly everybody should have a collective responsibility to do more when it comes to an emergency, and in that particular instance that was not what you would have expected in terms of people who were experiencing blackouts. They were experiencing no power for days, literally – in the cold, in the wet – and literally had nothing but candles. It was absolutely imperative to get those generators, and it was really disappointing to hear that response that they had generators literally sitting in the footy ground car park not able to be got out into the homes because they were waiting for the minister to have a photo opportunity.

But moving on to this particular bill, some of the issues that this now deals with are to ensure that the direct distribution businesses are able to assist in the emergency response, to mitigate the impact of prolonged electricity outages, to improve community outcomes and to make technical changes to the Victorian energy efficiency target, which we have heard as well.

There are many cases like I have just mentioned in the Dandenongs where there are lengthy outages. Again, many of those residents when it came to the Dandenong Ranges power outages were told this would take days. It took weeks, and then it just got kicked down the road and it took further weeks. It did highlight, certainly while travelling up there, how you were getting one lot of information to say that we were only a week or so away before we would be able to get power restored, but the reality on the ground was very, very different. If you travelled through the Dandenong Ranges and you saw the power poles literally up-ended on the ground, if you saw the cables on the roads for miles – literally miles of it – you knew there was no way that we were going to have the power reconnected in days and have everybody up and running again. There was absolutely zero chance. If you were a betting person, you could have laid any odds; you could have laid literally a home on that not happening. It was never, ever, ever going to happen. So it is about getting communication and getting the right communication.

With these kinds of emergencies there are so many other flow-on effects in terms even of fresh water. I know that Melbourne Water and South East Water set up a number of different areas for people to be able to collect fresh water during that time as well. That was very important. As I said, there are food supplies and a whole range of things that need to be done where people need to kick into action. But you need to have the certainty, and where there was not the certainty certainly the community were the ones that were missing out.

We saw in October 2021 the Australian Energy Market Operator confirm that there were 446,000 Victorians without power due to severe rains and winds across the state, and that challenging weather situation also caused lots of issues. What we need when it comes to these emergencies is to ensure that we get the immediate power connected up and running again – but what happens beyond that? I know certainly, again, after the Dandenong Ranges emergency that 12 months on we still had issues with telecommunications. We had issues where there were literally only backup batteries to allow 4 hours, so we still did not have proper telecommunications with our SES volunteers to be able to have the proper response that they needed. We have got to ensure that we get everything fixed and everything right so that in a lot of those difficult to get to areas where they really had power cuts those emergency services workers have the support that is needed.

In terms of the last part of the bill, which – very, very briefly – is about energy upgrade agreements, it is very important for energy efficiency. It is something where we should always be looking for people to try and do more. Ultimately, if we have got energy efficiency, it is about reducing our carbon footprint but also reducing bills as well, something that we are all experiencing at the moment. With that, I will leave my contribution.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (15:51): I rise today to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. I welcome this piece of legislation because it is much needed, especially for the people of Monbulk. I will come to this later and speak to it in greater detail. But first, what will this legislation do? This bill will amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000. It provides the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, DEECA, with the directions and power to compel electricity distribution businesses to assist in response to emergency power outages and recovery, either through the provision of information from emergency operations and/or by assisting with relief programs to reduce the impacts on energy customers of prolonged power outages and to help improve community resilience. If the information that power companies are providing to either customers or the government is not adequate, particularly in relation to restoration times, the secretary can step in to improve the quality and flow of information. And if the distribution companies are required to attend community information sessions to provide information to locals, they can also be directed to do so by the secretary. The secretary, thirdly, can direct the power companies to administer relief payments on behalf of the government. This bill will also amend the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 and the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007. These are minor amendments which will support reforms to the Victorian energy upgrades program compliance and enforcement regime.

I would like to provide some context as to why this bill is so important for my district of Monbulk, which covers the entirety of the Dandenong Ranges, as well as for the rest of Victoria. All prior speakers have pretty much mentioned the Dandenong Ranges thus far, and that is because on the night of Wednesday 9 June 2021 – it is nearly two years ago – a storm like no other experienced in Victoria in our lifetimes wrought untold damage across the state. As the member for Monbulk, I speak today about its impact on my constituency of the Dandenong Ranges, and I acknowledge the severe impact it also had in other parts of the state and the two tragic deaths in Gippsland and Warrnambool. There were warnings of wind and rain, but no-one could have predicted – and in fact no-one did – the extent of the destruction that this highly unusual storm caused across Victoria. 271 millimetres of rain fell across the Dandenongs that night. That is a significant amount of water coming down. Although the wind gusts were high, they were not the highest ever recorded, but they did come from an unusual direction, and because apparently trees grow to buffer against the prevailing winds – they adapt to their surroundings – when the winds came from behind they effectively blindsided the trees, and it was a catastrophic result: 25,000 trees fell across my electorate that night across the Dandenong Ranges. They fell on roads, they fell on cars, they fell on houses – they smashed some into unrecognisable collections of timber and bricks and stone. They fell on Mount Dandenong Primary School and destroyed it.

Some people were trapped in their homes for days. One elderly woman was found after six days in her home. Another elderly resident was trapped under her house when a tree came down and sheared a hole into the floor – she slid in with her bed under her home. She described it as being ‘jettisoned’. She was there for 10 hours until emergency services came to rescue her in the morning after a neighbour had alerted them. When they arrived – I have spoken with them – they found her shivering, and she was buoyant. In their words, she was ‘chipper’. She kept their spirits high – can you believe it? They make them tough in the hills.

Others lost their homes entirely. Some are still waiting to rebuild. Some probably never will. Some have left the mountain and they will not return. The trauma stays with them to this day. There is not a day that goes by when I speak with anyone in my electorate where they do not mention the storm and the trauma. It lives with them every day.

The power outages that followed were unprecedented. That seems to be the word of the last three years, doesn’t it? It would be great if we never had to use it again. Some were without power for weeks. That means no heating, it means no lighting – and in the middle of the winter, can you imagine – until the generators turned up, and they were grateful for those. Some refused to leave their homes. They lit their candles and they shivered under blankets in the winter temperatures of single digits, and some were there unbeknownst to anyone else because when the power failed, so too did the telecommunications. Once the mobile towers’ battery backups ran dry, there was no way you could get a call out, not even to 000, because there was absolutely no signal.

My business and home lost power for three days, but in comparison to others we were absolutely the lucky ones. Many of my regular customers were noticeably absent from my store for several days. Slowly those who could leave their properties started arriving, and we asked them how they were. Some were stoic and resolute. Some were in shock. Some openly cried, and one customer – a mountain of a man, quietly spoken and with an absolutely wicked sense of humour, who made me laugh every time I saw him – told me that that night he and his partner lay in their bed hearing the trees fall like bombs being shelled from above. They held hands and they prayed that they would both be alive in the morning because nowhere was safe. When I said, ‘Gee, where do you go? Do you go into the toilet? Do you go under an archway like in an earthquake – where do you go?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘my neighbour’s toilet was smashed to smithereens, so that’s not even safe.’ Nowhere was safe, and the randomness of it was the most terrifying part, because over that night 15 of his mountain ash fell on his property in the course of a few hours. They could not even see the trees coming down. When the captain of the local CFA tells you that he found that storm event more terrifying than fighting in the Black Saturday bushfires, you know that it is something truly catastrophic.

Following the storm event came the darkness and the bitter cold, which extended for all those people without their power, and, as I have mentioned before, the complete absence of phone reception: 34 of my communities lost NBN internet services and were unable to call 000. As has been stated by others here today, many on the mountain lost power for weeks. More than 3000 homes were without power and internet for more than a month. Problematically, when you went to check on when the power would be connected, initially you were clicking onto the website and it said hours. Then you went back and you thought, ‘That can’t be right.’ Then it said days, and then it was weeks. That lack of accurate information coming from the energy companies made it difficult for people to plan where they would stay. Do you wait it out at home if it is only going to be a day or two, or do you go and seek accommodation because losing power does not just mean no light, heat or cooking – it means no hot shower if you do not have gas, and if you are on a septic sewerage system, think about this, everyone: you cannot flush your toilet. The extent of the damage to the electricity network across the Dandenongs was unbelievable. An almost entire rebuild of the network was required and across incredibly difficult, hard-to-reach areas. This is not a nice, flat place with easy access but steep mountainside and forested areas along difficult bush tracks and with huge trees on the way. All of that was not only hard to manage but dangerous as well.

Unfortunately I am going to run out of time here, but I do need to say that many residents expressed to me their thanks for the prolonged power outage payment of $1680 for those without power for longer than seven days, which they were able to renew for each additional seven days they were without power. I have had several come and say explicitly that they would like to thank the government for that directly, so I pass on their thoughts today. That payment was successfully administered by the power companies, but this bill will ensure that they must do these things, under the direction of the secretary, if ever this is required again.

I will say that unfortunately this is the face of climate change. It is here. It is real. Many have denied it for far too long. It is absolutely undeniable now. We know that we have to do everything we can to mitigate the effects of future catastrophic storms, and that is exactly what we are commencing doing as a government here. This bill is part of the solution going forward so that we can ensure that when this sort of event – hopefully never to this extent – or something similar occurs in the future, these power companies will do their part to ensure that our people are taken care of as quickly as possible. I commend the bill to the house.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (16:02:022:): The Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023 before us now has its origin in the storms that we experienced across the state in June 2021, and I think most of us will remember that time. Those who lived in and around that area experienced much of what happened. We have heard from the member for Monbulk, and Monbulk was one of the centres of the storm. There were parts of my electorate that were also hit quite badly.

The purpose of the bill that we have before us is to provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action with the power to direct distribution businesses to assist in emergency responses and recovery to mitigate the impact of prolonged electricity outage and improve community outcomes, and a few other things. It is important that those in the middle of outages – power outages, for example – have the most up-to-date information as possible because they will be making decisions. We saw through the storms in June 2021 that this did not exactly happen. There was a review following the storms, a review of the Victorian electricity distribution businesses’ network resilience obligations, which was conducted in August 2021. I am pleased that the Yarra Ranges Shire Council were able to feed into that, because they were very clear. They could see where the failures had been because things had not gone so smoothly. They were very keen to see that this was in the best interests of community and that any changes made would be in the best interests of the community. They were also mindful that there were agreed KPIs at the time and penalties that were in place that did not work hand in hand with good community outcomes. I think that is important to remember, because we need to stop and reflect on what did not go so well.

We have heard from most speakers about the absolutely catastrophic events that we had on the night of 9 June. We saw suburbs in the hills – Kalorama, Mount Dandenong and extending further out – that were terribly hard-hit: 122 properties were damaged, 72 of which were destroyed. 25,000 trees fell in a few short days, and many of these trees were enormous. Their girth was so large – we are talking about mountain ash trees that are big and heavy – if they land in your backyard, if they land on your house or your car, they do enormous damage. On top of that, we saw after the events that there was an urgent warning to people who lived or worked in the areas of Kallista, Sherbrooke and The Patch about drinking water because even if it was boiled it could still be contaminated.

So many things happened as a result of the storms. What people had to go through – the insurance hassles, relocation, their houses ruined. Some were displaced for long periods of time; some are still displaced. Some did leave the mountain. The mental toll it took on people was huge. There was no road access so people could be trapped in their houses; they could be trapped in their street and not be able to get out. Twelve months on there were still people living in emergency accommodation.

We saw massive infrastructure damage. It was not just powerlines down and it was a simple fix. It was power poles snapped in half for kilometres and kilometres. I visited the area on a couple of occasions. Cr Eastham escorted me through at one stage, and we went to the relief centres. I saw the work that was being done to help those that had been displaced or had suffered enormously. I looked at the damage and I knew it was a long-term rebuild. It was not going to happen very quickly. We saw parks ruined, with damage to many trails and paths and multiple bridges down.

Businesses that rely on tourists suffered greatly as well, so even if they did not have the storm damage, their livelihoods were impacted. And it is interesting to look at some of the statistics in the Yarra Ranges council’s municipal plan, because the businesses had already done it tough with two years of COVID – they had really struggled there – but in June 2021 expenditure within the Yarra Ranges was down by $13 million or by 8 per cent compared to the year prior. That was led by a significant drop in visitor spending of $10 million or 17 per cent, so everybody was impacted in different ways.

What is so important is that accurate information is made available, and it should be made available, because at the time, as others have mentioned, when you looked for information on the website about when things would be back open and what they expected, it just did not match with what you were seeing when you were out in those areas. When I saw power poles snapped in half with trees blocking roads, I knew that was not a quick fix. I knew that if it said they expected the power to be back on in another couple of weeks, that that just was impossible. This in turn impacts on the decisions that people make about how long they might stay. Will they relocate? What will they do immediately? Will they get a generator? They could live in their house, but if they have got a generator, can they get fuel? All of these sorts of things are what is required to make good decisions. When you are under stress, it is really difficult if information changes more and more every time you have a look at the internet to see what is going on. That is assuming that you had access to the internet, because we saw that the mobile communications were down as well.

There were a lot of issues because the recovery did not go smoothly. The government was exceptionally slow to release money to the council. The generators, as we heard the member for Caulfield say, could not be released until the minister had done the photo opportunity and they were there. That is just not on. That should not happen. But I look at the legislation that we have here about the provision of information and about the direction of energy companies in these instances, and when I have a look at some of the things that did happen and the processes that were required – the work that was required, for example, to get mobile communications back up and to get power back up – they were not simple tasks. Even during the thick of the storms and the first few days after, once the backup generators ran out of fuel, they were done. When they run out of fuel, they have to be refuelled. That is not an easy task.

A friend of mine was telling me about her son who worked with Telstra, I am pretty sure it was, and the mobile towers. Now, it was wet, it was dark, it was slippery and windy and it was dangerous, so you could not send people in to do some of the work to refill the generators, for example, because it was too dangerous –it was life-threatening. You can direct all you like, but you cannot send people into situations that could have pretty grave consequences for their health. So we need to think about that because we can direct, as I said, all we like, but if it cannot physically be done quickly, it cannot be done quickly. My friend was exceptionally worried about her son having to go out – he was 25, I think, at the time – and she said, ‘This is terribly dangerous for him.’ I think sometimes we forget that, when we are experiencing such things, it is not a quick fix. We all expect power to come back on. We all expect to have the internet straightaway, and there are times when that just cannot happen, because if the diesel generators need refuelling and it is dangerous, that just cannot happen.

The Yarra Ranges council had a huge task ahead of them, because the municipal-wide cost of the storms was expected at about $60 million and the Yarra Ranges had to stump up $20 million of that. They were exceptionally worried because they were not having money released from the government. As I understand it, the state government did not get the federal government to release a disaster response as quickly as they could have, and that was a big problem. I have letters that the council wrote to the Prime Minister at the time and to the government to say, ‘You have to release this money; you have to act quicker.’ We all thought at the time it was because the state government did not want to have to match that disaster response money. But the council total spend is $20 million, and now they have had floods on top of that. They have had continual, accumulative events, so they are trying to get one step ahead, but that just makes it very difficult. Their transition out of recovery keeps being delayed. They have received $17.5 million to date, so they have only really been out of pocket $2.5 million, but the other government departments have had an enormous amount of work with the trees over the roads. We had the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road. The Black Spur was closed, and the Maroondah Highway was closed as well.

On top of National Volunteer Week last week, we saw an extraordinary response from the CFA, the SES and of course the council’s own disaster response area. But the State Emergency Service had more than 5000 calls and only 1000 volunteers on the ground. We saw community members helping each other, and that was really uplifting, because there were so many people that needed support. We need to have learned from that, and I hope that this bill does make that a better process, a smoother process and a quicker process for everybody concerned.

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (16:12): It is great to rise and speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023 and to follow the second-reading workhorse, the member for Eildon – literally doing half of the work over there. It is good to see, though, when you give the opposition six days notice, they actually put their names to speak on the bill. They have got a massive list today; we might be going through till 8 pm at this rate. So I reckon next time we give them four days and we might actually get the whole crew in. You will not see the Greens rock up though. The Greens put the cue in the rack for a vote. By 2 pm they went off, and that was it.

Roma Britnell interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: The member for South-West Coast says it is sarcasm; there is no sarcasm here, it is absolutely fact. I am absolutely ribbing your crew for the lack of contribution you have made for the first six months. When you get elected to this place and you swear an oath or an affirmation, you should actually front up and do some work.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Through the Chair.

Tim RICHARDSON: This bill has gone through some important consultation, and it has been many months in its journey to this point, as the Leader of the House outlined in the debate around the adjournment. But I want to set the tone for what is a really important context on a few levels. There is the incredible emergency services response that our volunteers and emergency agencies go through in such significant disasters, and I will touch on that shortly. There is the extraordinary community outpouring of support, of care and of the true human instinct of looking after one another and that sense of community. One does not have to look very far to see the emotion and passion that were provided by the member from Monbulk, someone who has lived and breathed the Dandenong Ranges. When you see what representation of community means for someone, when you are overcome by that type of feeling for those people in your community that have been impacted – ongoing representation – it just shows. The member for Gippsland South was the same when he was talking about his community and how for 36 hours he was riding every wave of impact and issues. That is a great element of our Parliament we see: members of Parliament representing their communities and doing what they can to really support and be a source of information, of comfort and of stabilisation during really difficult times. That is the best part of our Parliament on display, when everyone comes together like that. The Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources’ contribution was 30 minutes; he put his back into it, it looked like. He had a good briefing, and I tell you what, it just kept going. It was good, but it was important in the context of the level of detail on this bill as well.

The SES are an incredible mob. My Chelsea SES unit was deployed during the floods. They were one of 147 units. Some 16,000 calls were answered during that time for assistance. We heard of the impacts across Victoria and through the north and the ongoing challenges. We saw 1.3 million sandbags put together by SES volunteers and communities coming together to try and do all they could to support and protect townships. But we also see those volunteers impacted for many months by what they see and their experience. I was at Greater Dandenong SES, which I share with the member for Dandenong, and heard of their experiences when they attend major events like this. Recently we were able to acknowledge emergency service medal recipients who had been deployed at Mallacoota. They had been on the front line during that time for many days as they were stranded and surrounded. We have heard some of the contributions today about residents being cut off from any sort of contact, or trapped for days, and having to survive as well. They do an extraordinary job, and to be deployed away from your family and community for that extended period of time – I give them a big shout-out during this time.

I touched on the fact that the bill had come through a consultation journey. The minister, in response to some of the challenges that were outlined during that flood period, established the electricity distribution network resilience review. This was an important, multifaceted review in community, and it was stood up by our department across those regional areas. The review, importantly, had two phases that underpinned the changes that we are detailing today. The first considered the immediate changes that would improve any response to mass outages in the short term, and the second considered medium- to long-term reforms. That is important in a number of aspects. It is a moment of absolute trauma and panic, and the changes that need to be made or envisaged during that time require a lot of flexibility, particularly when we are engaged with electricity distributors. Of course there are the emergency relief payments that come from state and federal governments as well. That is important in that activation and support to get people back on track.

That medium- to longer term range, particularly in the Dandenong Ranges context, is really important. We have got residents who might not ever be able to go back to where they lived – people who are still recovering from the impact and trauma of a major emergency incident. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, I am always briefed and aware of the impact of disasters and the effect of that on mental health and wellbeing years down the track. It can sneak up on you, that impact and trauma. It needs ongoing work and support locally, and then a statewide message for those communities as they get back on track or experience those challenges for years to come.

There is a multifaceted approach in phase 1, and the focus there is on improving the communications and critical infrastructure operators, just to get things functioning. The chaos that was described during the Dandenong Ranges storms – absolute carnage and noise – is a sensory experience that people will never forget. I experienced this in a previous life and have family that live up through the hills, all the way through to the Cardinia hills, and you always have that feeling of trepidation during storm events or major bushfire incidents, and seasons as well. That will stick with people forever. People have described the noise, the impact and the fear during that time. That is people’s place of living and of comfort and their sanctuary for many years. To have that impact, there is the need to get services back up and running, and public awareness and preparedness is really important as well. Getting people back connected to power as soon as possible and getting those emergency works done – if you have got trees down over lines, if you have got fire risk and if you have got ongoing storm risk, particularly around lightning strikes when we are seeing them in bushfire seasons, it is really critical that we act really quickly. That is what these powers and this intervention and support are all about. It is welcome that this is bipartisan. I wish I could say multipartisan, but I do not think I have heard from the Greens on this bill. Hopefully they will add their contributions or even bother to vote or turn up. But we know there is bipartisan support in principle in this chamber as well.

Phase 2 of that review ran between January and May in 2022 and was led by an expert panel. That panel engaged in a process of deep consultation with affected residents. I should note, though, an important point made by the member for Gippsland South about some changes to a bill that has gone through around changes to regulations that are coming up. It was discussed in the last sitting. I think by 2024 we will move regulations around. This might go to the heart of some of the challenges of engagement when people are under such duress and trying to get their lives back on track in that consultation phase.

I think it was an important point that we reflect on how we can more deeply engage with communities. But obviously the process included surveys of over 800 people affected by the storms, a series of stakeholder round tables and in-person sessions at seven locations, and we really appreciate the thought and contribution of those residents who had been affected but gave their time to this process to contribute and offer their thoughts and views on how reforms could be made into the future.

Sadly, though, this is a context of impact that we will experience, and with heightened concern, into the future. We have experienced three years of La Niña events. El Niño is a caution or a watch warning at the moment, and the likelihood is that we might experience two to three years of El Niño. We have communities at the moment that are flush in their impact with vegetation and growth. Everyone vividly remembers the few days leading up to Black Saturday. It only takes a few days to really dry everything out with heavy vegetation and that impact. We know that legislative reforms like this in the context of the impacts of climate change – the variability in storm events and their intensity and then bushfire seasons – are something that we are going to have to confront as a state. The risk to assets, to livelihoods, to homes and to lives is something that we need to be prepared for, and our emergency services, our communities and our local government sector play such a critical role in that phase as well. So this is an important bill and provides important context for those emergency relief efforts. It has gone through a significant phase of consultation. I welcome the bipartisan nature of the approach through this chamber and the engagement from the minister’s office, and I commend the bill to the house.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (16:22): I also stand up to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. I would like to thank the member for Croydon for, as was just previously said, his standing up and speaking on the bill for 30 minutes. He has done an amazing job. I can tell that you would like me to outline a couple of things again, Deputy Speaker, just so you can get your head around what the bill is trying to achieve. The main purposes of the bill are to amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000 to provide the Secretary to the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action with a power to direct distribution businesses to assist in emergency response and recovery to mitigate the impacts of prolonged electricity outages and improve community outcomes and to make technical changes to the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 and the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to ensure strong compliance and enforcement of the Victorian energy upgrades program.

As we have spoken about, this is going back to the storms of June 2021, so a while ago. But with the outages and people not having electricity in their homes and their businesses for such a long time, it is something that needs to be done so we can move more swiftly as it goes through. The bill amends the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 to enhance its operation and effectiveness by allowing for the minister to directly set fees for the Victorian energy upgrades program instead of having these fees prescribed under regulations. The bill also amends the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to clarify the powers of the Essential Services Commission in relation to proceedings for civil penalty requirement breaches against the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 – I can tell everyone is engrossed by this – including civil penalty requirement breaches in relation to the Victorian energy upgrades program.

In June and October 2021, severe storms caused widespread and prolonged power outages right across Victoria. I heard the member for Gippsland South speaking about how they were actually here in Parliament and they had to make the mad dash home too with the member for Gippsland East. They got to my electorate, the electorate of Morwell, where I was back then only a humble plumber trying to fix roof leaks because of all of the rain that we had had, and they had to get through to get home to Sale and Bairnsdale respectively.

Following the June storms 68,000 customers were without power after 72 hours and 9000 customers were still without power up to seven days after the event. Additionally, following the October storms nearly 24,000 customers remained off supply 72 hours after and just over 2500 customers were still without power seven days after the event. So this is why these are coming on so that we know that with our linesmen that go out and have to actually assess what is going on and actually carry out the works – one, we need to make sure their workspace is safe, but there need to be some more controls set in place so there can be some clear direction as to what has to happen.

I remember growing up, as a little kid, when we used to have storms and the power went out, the lights would flicker once, they would flicker twice, and if they flickered a third time, the power was out. That is when we would run to look for our torches and our candles, which we used to have back in the day. And it is still the same now: if you have a look when the power is going to go out, the lights will flicker a couple of times and if they go a third time, bang, it drops out. Normally it might be for 20 minutes to an hour. Everyone is on their apps and on their phones, and we get updated as to when the power is going to come back on. With a growing population, when this does happen, we have more and more people that it impacts, so this is why in major, significant events we need to make sure that it is smooth sailing as much as it can be to get the transmission lines back up and the power back on.

The cost to business and also the family, as I have heard spoken about in the chamber previously, is not only in a monetary sense. If you are a business and there is no power for a couple of days or, as we had back there, for a week, there is the impact and cost of not being able to have your workers come to work and carry out their day-to-day duties. If you have to stand them down, most of the time you are paying for them not to be at work, so it is really something that we need to have a look at, and that is why it is so timely that we are talking about this today.

When the storms of June 2021 came through, as I said before, the township of Traralgon was inundated and flooded, and we had a couple of days where the town was cut in two. We had a lot of homes that were impacted by water up to a metre deep going through their houses, so not only did we not have power, people were out of their homes because the water was so high, and the houses became full of mud and debris as it went through.

I was involved with the Traralgon Football Netball Club at this stage, and once again we had a hundred-year flood – which we have had about 10 times in the last hundred years – come through the club, but this one absolutely decimated the club, and today, a couple of years after this flood event, we still do not have any change rooms down there. Hopefully the build to redo that is coming up, but I did notice there was not all the funding in the budget today, which was a bit of a blow. The footy club and netball club will obviously continue on, but as we speak, as I stand here, the netballers and footballers both male and female get changed in portable rooms, and they do their best to make sure that we can continue on.

For the SES in incident control, the flood moved through that quick with the force of the storm – they had parked their cars at the butter factory down underneath the car park – that by the time they realised that the flood was actually coming through the town, their cars had been inundated with water. It was a week before they could get their cars out.

The experience of these storms absolutely highlighted the limits to getting critical information from electricity distribution businesses to support relief activity programs for customers. A subsequent external review was undertaken to identify priority reform measures and policies to enable distribution businesses – I cannot even get my words out now because it is so enthralling – to mitigate the risk of and better respond to prolonged power outages in the future.

In August 2021 the Victorian government commissioned the electricity distribution network resilience review in response to the devastating storms of June 2021. As we heard before, an expert panel was appointed to investigate how distribution businesses can improve their preparedness for and response to prolonged power outages caused by storms and other extreme weather events. What that is doing is getting all our ducks in a line so that works can proceed quickly and we can get the power back on. The expert panel found that the participation of distribution businesses in emergency response and recovery was not delivering positive outcomes for impacted customers. Victorian customers were provided with mixed messaging on power restoration times and insufficient relief measures and were disregarded during emergency operations.

The bill is seeking to provide a range of solutions to better prepare and protect customers in these emergency situations. Fundamentally, the bill creates direction powers. The bill amends the Electricity Industry Act 2000 to provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action with a new power to direct distribution businesses when there is an emergency power outage so that we get a process that comes through that we can follow in these emergency events. We do not know when they are going to happen and we need to make sure that, when they do, we take on board and put processes straightaway into action that will once again restore power to the community and to businesses. As we said, we will support this bill.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (16:32): So in thinking about this very important legislation, we can see that there are a number of problems that are seeking to be resolved. One of them is the increasing incidence of extreme weather and the responsiveness or the efficiency of the response to those extraordinary conditions, which unfortunately are not going to go away any time soon. I am speaking specifically to the triggers of the June and October 2021 extreme storm events, which caused unprecedented damage to our electricity network, and further to that, the inadequate response from privatised electricity distribution businesses responsible for the network. So we are really with this legislation seeking to address and mitigate the impact of any such events that may occur in the future.

Part of the solution is giving a directions power to the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action to allow them to direct electricity distribution businesses to provide information and contribute to relief efforts following a mass power outage event. It is obviously fundamental that that absolutely should occur. It is very important that the secretary is empowered in this way. In spite of the increasing incidence and pretty devastating impacts of climate change, it is not anticipated that this directions power would need to be used on a very frequent basis. However, it is critical that appropriate mechanisms are in place and ready to go. That is what is really fundamental about the changes that are being strengthened and supported here.

We have already had some very moving and emotional – and rightly so – reflections in the chamber on the devastating impacts of those storms, and I am really grateful that we have members who have had the courage to share those experiences. I think it is important for the members of the community who have been through those extraordinary weather impacts and had terrible damage to their local communities and homes et cetera that we do honour and reflect on these experiences but at the same time, in a very pragmatic way, address the problems that became exposed, so to speak, during those occurrences and mitigate the risk of those experiences for communities to an extent into the future.

I think it is a really important moment also to reflect on what we are doing in this state. I note that Victoria is very much doing the heavy lifting. We had nine years of a former Liberal–Nationals government essentially dragging the chain on anything to do with addressing the increasing weather instability and the need to really move forward in terms of reducing emissions into the future so that we mitigate the impacts and the risks of climate change on our communities.

On that note, I would like to say that our Andrews Labor government is a leader in climate action. While those opposite have voted against every major piece of climate and energy legislation we have introduced, we have been getting on with the job of delivering on climate action. We have more than tripled the share of renewables over the past eight years, after those opposite had effectively strangled the clean energy sector in the four years they had in power. I remember vividly the impact on the wind sector. It was basically reduced to nothing, and it was just such a relief when Labor came back in and gave the necessary boost and support to facilitate renewable energy to really go forward in our state.

We have now set the strongest emission reduction targets in the country, committing to reducing emissions by 75 to 80 per cent by 2035 and reaching net zero by 2045. I am really proud, because I know just how hard it is and how much significant work there is across our state. And we are absolutely backed by the Victorian people. Every day of the week, I have to say, people in my community share their concerns about the impact of climate change and about making sure that there is truly a viable future for their children, so that backs in the very necessary measures that our state is taking to mitigate the impacts of climate change. On that note, we have already reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than any other state since 2014, and we are backing those emissions targets with ambitious renewable energy, energy storage and offshore wind targets. So again Victoria is doing the heavy lifting, but we are happy to do so. I am happy to say we now have a federal government that actually believes in climate change and is also, I believe, doing their share as well.

By 2035 we will hit 95 per cent renewables supported by 6.3 gigawatts of energy storage and 4 gigawatts of offshore wind, because on the one hand, yes, you want to be able to generate this clean energy, but you also want to be able to have it there and viable when you need it. Therefore there is the necessity to invest in adequate storage – and we are. We are absolutely investing in adequate energy storage capacity to ensure that we are truly protecting the future of Victorians – futureproofing, you might say.

I was also really excited by some other aspects in terms of what we are doing to help with – coming back to perhaps some of the core elements of this bill – what happens in the event of future storms and unstable weather patterns. In direct response to the storms, we have provided $7.5 million for crucial backup power systems in 24 towns across the state. I think the member for Gippsland South was concerned about, ‘Oh, will these changes do anything?’ I would like to think those changes – they seem to be very pragmatic – will do a lot in terms of helping to futureproof our state.

Also there was significant consultation, to further allay some of the concerns that may have been raised in the chamber. Working with local councils we have identified communities most at risk of storm-related power outages and are funding systems comprised of batteries and rooftop solar for selected community buildings. Those buildings will act as relief hubs in the event of a prolonged power outage, providing a place for residents to heat food, charge devices and shower when their power is out. You can see that there are very specific and pragmatic solutions addressing many of the aspects that came to light – unfortunately, I have to say – as a result of those very significant and devastating storms that I spoke to earlier.

Of course we are bringing back the SEC, which will invest at least $1 billion in 4 gigawatts of renewable energy. This will help support 59,000 highly skilled and well-paid jobs across the state. There again you can see Labor. This is what we do; we always look holistically at these solutions. It is not just about talking about stuff and not just about putting it on social media, it is about actually investing in the state. Real buildings, real renewable energy, wind power, offshore wind, solar on roofs – you get the gist. We are actually doing it, but we are also making sure that these investments drive employment in our state, which ultimately is good for the economy. There will be many jobs that are generated through this, particularly for the regions. I know sometimes we hear concerns about how we can find a balance between metro and regional areas, and I am pleased to say that as a result of the SEC this will drive jobs in the regions that were, we could say, smashed by Kennett’s privatisations.

Our record on climate change is one to be proud of, and it is one we have achieved without an ounce of support from those opposite. It is also one that future generations will benefit from as we mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. In any case it is really important that we have significant work underway. We have been doing it for years because we could see, and our government truly has always believed, that climate change exists. Hence we have taken really pragmatic measures to ensure that we mitigate the impacts into the future and reduce emissions significantly but also provide a viable Victoria for future generations.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (16:41): I rise to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. As my capable shadow minister here at the table, the Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources, has already outlined in his long contribution on this very thorough and long bill, the main purpose of the bill is to amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000 and to provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action with a power to direct distribution businesses to assist in emergency response and recovery to mitigate the impacts of prolonged electricity outages and improve community outcomes and to make some technical changes to the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 and the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to ensure strong compliance and enforcement of the Victorian energy upgrades program. The bill amends the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 to enhance its operation and effectiveness by allowing the minister to directly set fees for the Victorian energy upgrades program instead of having these fees prescribed under regulation. The bill also amends the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 to clarify the powers of the Essential Services Commission in relation to proceedings for civil penalty requirement breaches against the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007, including civil penalty requirement breaches in relation to the Victorian energy upgrades program.

So what is the background, really, to this bill? Well, in June and October 2021 there were quite severe, widespread storms across parts of Victoria. The result of the June storm was that 68,000 customers were without power for 72 hours, and 9000 of those customers were still without power seven days after the event. Following the October storms we saw nearly 24,000 customers remain off supply for 72 hours after the event, and 2500 customers were still without power seven days after the event. In both instances the power outages were more prolonged compared with what we normally see, and the information that those people got was not always accurate. If they had had more accurate information, which clearly the energy companies did not quite have the capability in their formulas to produce, due to the severity of the storms, people would have been able to make better decisions. Some of them would have made the decision to go and buy a generator if they could afford it, because if you are told the power is coming back on in 48 hours, you would probably rely on that. When it is two weeks later, it is very difficult to manage that process.

The experience of these storms highlighted the limits to getting that critical information from electricity distribution businesses. A subsequent external review was undertaken, and that review identified that we needed to make sure that there was access to the data to be able to reach people and, basically, if it was needed, to be able to direct the companies to make contact with customers and make sure customers had a place to be able to get information from more centrally if they were without power and could not charge their mobile phones and the like.

This bill does seem like a very simple bill that is a result of a review which noted that the companies were actually already doing quite a good job of providing that information in times of energy outages, but we saw that those June and October storms were events that were not managed as well as they would have been normally. This does appear to me to be a bill that is pretty much ‘just in case’ rather than a bill that has been necessary and needed for a long time. It does seem to be a little bit hurriedly concocted, and that is what we would expect to see from a tired government that needs to have something to talk about. We know that what they will not talk about is the budget that we have had handed down today, which shows that Victoria will be paying more and getting less. We are going to start to see a lot more of that under this very tired government, which is making it harder to live in Victoria because we are paying more.

Why does it appear that we are voting on a bill that is so important that we were given just six days to think about what the necessary information was that we had to share with our community about this bill so that we could make sure it is well and truly debated thoroughly, with the experts who would be affected by it having been consulted properly? We have seen this a lot under Labor. We see the errors and we see the drafting mistakes in bills that require amendments to be presented. We do get unintended consequences, which you would hope, if they were doing their due diligence, we would not be seeing.

Electricity is a very important subject. It is important to all Victorians, and this is why it is important to get bills on electricity right. South-west Victoria specifically is critically reliant on substantial electricity supply. In the south-west we have many, many businesses and heavy industry that rely on power. These include Bega Cheese in Koroit, Saputo in Allansford, Midfield Meat in Warrnambool, Sun Pharma in Port Fairy, ProviCo in Dennington and the Port of Portland, Keppel Prince and Portland Aluminium in the great town of Portland. Portland Aluminium alone uses 10 per cent of Victoria’s electricity demand, demonstrating the importance of south-west Victoria to this bill and the key reason we need to have a say.

Not only is Portland Aluminium a heavy electricity user, it is also an important player in providing backup electricity, which many might be surprised to hear, for the Victorian energy network at times of high demand. It pretty much acts as a battery. How does this occur? One way is through the voltage regulation services. This is where AEMO, or the Australian Energy Market Operator, ensures that there is not an overload of power in a particular area. If you have ever seen a short circuit at home, you would know that the last thing you want in Victoria is for the electricity grid itself to short-circuit from unstable voltages. This ensures that when people in Nelson, Nullawarre, Noorat, Nirranda or Narrawong turn on the lights they know they will have a power supply. Portland Aluminium’s participation in reliability and reserve trader services also offers the Victorian community a significant backup electricity supply that can be turned to when the rest of Victoria is short of electricity. Without Portland Aluminium, on a hot day when the power grid is under severe pressure when everyone turns on their air conditioners, the authority that is in charge of the electricity network can turn off users’ power. With Portland Aluminium taking on that responsibility through load shedding, less Victorians have their power turned off. It plays an incredibly important part in assisting the grid to manage supply and demand.

We know from 2016 that many of those opposite in the Labor Party wanted to shut down Portland Aluminium, and do not get me started on the Greens. Let me remind you all, and I will make this very clear: aluminium – and it can be anything from a can of Coke to parts of your car, computer or iPhone, which most of us would not be without for too long, to parts of the bike you take a ride on on the weekend – is critical to many parts of our daily lives. If we get rid of Portland Aluminium and have a lack of reliable electricity in Victoria, we will see an end to Portland Aluminium, and where will we get our products from then? Overseas? Really, overseas? Where the environmental regulations are much lower, the labour standards are much worse and the rates of pollution are much higher? Every time a Labor government seeks to shut down an existing baseload power plant, it puts more pressure on the grid, and access to power is critically important to our businesses.

I want to bring to the house’s attention another amazing person from South-West Coast. A terrific guy from Tyrendarra has been campaigning for three-phase power in the Tyrendarra region for many years now. This small upgrade to the power network would significantly improve accessibility to power for the Tyrendarra residents, who are let down by insufficient power, which it is hoped this bill will avoid. These residents of Tyrendarra, including Bruce, are prevented from upgrading their dairies and their other businesses by not having a decent energy supply to provide milk products, which so many of you rely on. And there are engineers in that part of the world that are trying to produce work. They do not just turn up at the supermarkets after all, these products like milk, and reliable, consistent power is critical for ensuring that they are able to be produced. Once again we see a government that forgets or, dare I say, does not care about regional Victoria.

Victorians need reassurance that when they flick their switches the electricity is going to be there to power the lights. Under the Labor government there is no longer a guarantee – a sad reflection on a tired, disinterested government. Life is certainly harder under Labor, and we see this rising cost of electricity and more demand than supply. It feels like Victorians are being punished under Labor. Its inability to manage the state of Victoria is certainly evident from the uncertainty Victorians are facing in accessing electricity.

Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (16:51): I rise of course to make a contribution on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. I do so acknowledging that normally at this point in the debate there has been plenty of meat to grab hold of and plenty of great points that have been made that will just furnish heaps of rebuttal, but I am not sure we find ourselves in that position today, because it would appear that we seem to be in somewhat furious agreement across the chamber today, which is nice; it is refreshing. I want to thank the Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources for his very thorough contribution. I was having a little discussion with some of the people involved in the drafting of this bill, and they noted its thoroughness, to the point where I think we can safely say that we have canvassed the full parameters of this bill over the course of this debate. No doubt anyone suffering the misfortune of following along at home might find some of what is about to follow repetitious.

But can I draw the house’s attention to one thing that perhaps has not been canvassed, which is generally the government’s approach to resilience reforms. This has not been a government that has sat on its hands when it comes to making sure that network resilience is front and centre in our capital planning, in our response to events and in response to demand, however it is driven, across the business sector or residential sector, wherever those resilience pinch points are or wherever there are deficiencies identified. We have been proactive in going about it. The network resilience review is actually a cracking read. There are lots of anecdotes in there about the hardships that were suffered, particularly over the course of the storms in June and October of 2021, and also the responses to those hardships. Clearly the hardships were not just confined to ‘I had no electricity.’ As we heard most eloquently from the member for Monbulk earlier, they were really, really distressing stories in some cases, of people’s homes being destroyed, of people being injured and of people suffering the horror of sliding out of their house due to a tree spearing the floor. I mean, it was a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances.

I was – as I am sure you will recall, Deputy Speaker – the member for Burwood at the time of these storms. I was gobsmacked when driving down a side street in Burwood to see a car that had been completely crushed by an entire tree. It was not something I had seen before. I have seen plenty of car wrecks in my family’s previous life as auto auctioneers, but I had not seen in situ a car that had been actually flattened by a tree. The entire root ball was hanging out of the ground. The root ball itself was probably 2.5 metres high, and there it was. The tree had just come down on this car. I was there looking at it, trying to make a bit of an assessment of the parts of the tree that were contacting power lines at the time, and I was there for I think the distressing moment when the owner of the car surfaced from his house and realised what had happened. He had to quickly come to grips with the fact that he was going to be offline for a little while both whilst the tree damage was attended to and then ultimately whilst he processed the insurance claim, because the car was most definitely a write-off.

Part of that tree had collapsed into some powerlines. Those powerlines were sparking. Obviously, emergency services, SES, council and every arborist and tree pruner in Melbourne were absolutely run off their feet that day, so a bit of evasive action was taken. I will not go into any of the details, but there were some locals who were happy to get involved in making a couple of strategic cuts to that tree to ensure that the branches no longer were in contact with the powerlines and that the situation in that particular street in Glen Iris was made as safe as it could be – or perhaps the least unsafe it could be.

But I think it showed a couple of things: one, that the network resilience issues when storms are as broad and catastrophic as those ones are not confined necessarily to the Dandenongs and really heavily treed parts of Melbourne. They can actually really strike, and there were instances of power outages, right across the city, not confined to the leafier areas of the city. But also it showed that the default community response is one of proactivity in these circumstances. I want to thank all those volunteers, particularly, as it was in my patch then, the Boroondara Whitehorse and Monash SES brigades. They did amazing work then. I am sure, in the seat of Ringwood, Maroondah SES did similarly terrific work. It is the case that a very large chunk of the life of an SES volunteer is spent chopping branches, be it by saw or chainsaw or whatever, dealing with fallen trees. I suppose we are lucky as Melburnians to have so many trees around us, which might be in a position to fall, but lucky too that we have got SES volunteers who are on hand and appropriately resourced by this government to make sure that they can deal with those issues as and when they arise.

It is a fact of life particularly as we head out to the Dandenongs that there are some special risks that attach to that area. They are both derived from trees. They are of course power outages and bushfire, and over the course of the 59th Parliament we had significant bushfires in the state of Victoria as well as those significant power outages. What the power outages exposed was a need for government to have an intervention power – that is, a power to direct those businesses, because they are private businesses, to do certain things to assist the government in making sure that people’s basic welfare needs are met. That can extend to things like their degree of preparedness for power outages or the turnaround times they are sharing with consumers. In the case of the 2021 storms there was a sort of default initial text blast that went out to affected consumers saying it would be 48 hours, and clearly it was never, ever going to be 48 hours. But on the flip side, when they did provide revised advice, it was more like six weeks when in fact it turned out to be four. People make a whole lot of decisions about life and schooling and job commitments and accommodation and all that sort of stuff based on these estimates, and it is really, really important to make sure that that is in fact done accurately so that people can make good decisions about how to handle the effects of these natural disasters, which is ultimately what they are or certainly what sits at the core of these issues.

The bill itself creates this directions power. It is only going to be used rarely, but we simply cannot rely on a privatised business necessarily operating in a way that is perhaps not just for a profit motive, and if you are needing them to do things that are non-revenue generating, sometimes you are going to need to compel them to do those things rather than merely encourage them to do it. The directions power is so that if they are not providing adequate information, we can step in to improve that information. If the companies are needed at community information sessions we can direct them to be there, and also we can direct them to administer relief payments. The latter of course is really important. In the 2021 storms there was a $1680 payment made available to any household that was without power for more than seven days. Certainly one of my cousins – one of the dopey ones I have referred to in here previously – had a significant outage period and was very grateful for that payment, because he was just running on the light of candles and the warmth of fire for I think 11 or 12 days, and it made a big difference in terms of his ability to keep his family warm and safe and make sure that the basics were covered.

It will not surprise the house to learn that at the time every single generator that was available for hire at every single Bunnings in the totality of metropolitan Melbourne and in most of the non-metropolitan east of the state got deployed to these areas to allow people to have electricity in their homes and to avoid things like food spoilage and all that. It was quite a broad-based power crisis. Whilst it was terrific to see communities responding and helping one another out, there is always a need for government to stand ready to step in and to ensure that those companies that have the awesome responsibility of looking after these networks stand ready to step in as and when required. I do commend the bill to the house.

Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (17:01): I rise today to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023, something that I am happy to speak in support of. In its simplest form this bill is seeking to provide a range of solutions to better prepare and protect consumers in energy emergency situations, particularly after severe storms. These storms and subsequent power outages are something that are occurring regularly in the Euroa electorate. In June and October 2021 severe storms caused widespread and prolonged power outages across much of regional Victoria. In the impacted areas 68,000 customers were without power after 72 hours and 9000 customers were still without power seven days after the event. Nearly 24,000 customers remained off supply 72 hours after the storms and just 2500 customers were still without power seven days after the event. In both instances the power outages were more prolonged when compared with previous storm events. The experience of these storms highlighted the limits to getting critical information from electricity distribution businesses to support relief activities and programs for customers. Even in my own electorate we require regular contact with mobile service and power providers for updates to impacted members of the community.

Following these serious storms a subsequent external review was undertaken to identify priority reform measures and policies to enable distribution businesses to mitigate the risk of and better respond to prolonged power outages in the future. In August 2021 the Victorian government commissioned the electricity distribution network resilience reviewin response to the devastating storms of June 2021. An expert panel was appointed to investigate how distribution businesses can improve their preparedness for and response to prolonged power outages caused by storms and other extreme weather events. The expert panel found that participation of distribution businesses in emergency response and recovery was not delivering positive outcomes for impacted customers. Victorian customers were provided with mixed messaging on power restoration times and insufficient relief measures and were disregarded during emergency operations. In Pyalong, one of the most critically impacted areas of my electorate, the testimonies of these people really express how serious this matter is. One resident said:

We could not have hot meals or keep perishable food. Could not restock perishable food supplies as no way to keep cold. No supermarket in Pyalong, 50km round trip to Heathcote or Kilmore. Local store keeps some perishables but lost all their stock.

Residents said:

Local General Store/Australia Post was unable to process tracked package deliveries due to online system being down.

…

Difficult to circulate information to the community with no phones or internet, most had to drive or walk to find information. People had to drive to other side of town, high points on hills to get any phone service or receive and send SMS messages and phone calls.

…

Local hotel was closed as they had no ability to cook or provide food and EFTPOS/tills were out of action. Hotel lost significant perishable food stock.

…

A … (TAFE) Student was unable to complete online coursework or assessment, institution would not accept hand written work. Other local students were unable to complete any online work, during Covid and remote learning students and parents were reliant on online learning.

…

Some residents suffered significant damage to houses and outbuildings, not just power outage. Significant numbers of trees down on private land, fences destroyed.

From these testimonies it is clear the major issues raised were significant. These include communication issues. The lack of phones and internet meant it was difficult for residents to keep in contact with each other, let alone receive crucial emergency service information. Regarding food safety, there was no ability to keep food refrigerated and fit for consumption, yet the town was not able to provide this either. There were technology issues, with people unable to pay for items using EFTPOS and tills, something that impacted both consumers and businesses in the region. Our children were impacted because they were unable to communicate or complete schooling online. There was extensive infrastructure damage with buildings and homes destroyed, and hundreds and hundreds of trees were down. Our local residents responded with petitions calling for change, trying to resolve these serious issues, something that this legislation aims to assist with.

We saw similar issues like this regarding the poor warning systems in place for the October floods last year, something that majorly impacted our regional communities and the emergency response times. We are now seeing the inquiry into these floods trying to mitigate these issues, much like this legislation. Any reforms which reduce the impact of a natural disaster on our communities are ones that I will support. We saw significant losses suffered in the October floods, similar to the storms of 2021. In Seymour, Goulburn Options, a local disability provider, lost several cars, and police also lost vehicles and suffered extensive property damage. Farmers lost their homes, livestock and more, as did several residents of the impacted towns. But this does not even consider the emotional toll suffered by so many in our communities, and we continue to suffer to this day.

To add to this I want to say thank you for the amazing work of our emergency services, who did a fantastic job in trying to mitigate these issues and provide the best support available for our impacted communities. Their consistent and unwavering commitment to serving the needs of the community while in the face of danger is truly commendable.

I am just going to refer to something I prepared earlier. The reason for our wonderful Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources’ recommendations is that the storms in June and October 2021 resulted in prolonged power outages and severely impacted consumers. The bill is about providing information and assisting in relief efforts following energy emergencies and associated prolonged power outages. This bill is about getting critical information from electricity distribution businesses to support relief activities and programs for customers. As such, we are in support of this bill.

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (17:08): I rise to join my colleagues on this side of the chamber in speaking on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. As we have heard this afternoon, the purpose of this bill is to shield Victorian households and businesses against prolonged power outages. We have heard some incredible reflections here in the house this afternoon, particularly from the member for Monbulk about her reflections and the impact storms had on her community on the two occasions in June and then again in October 2021.

We have also heard reflections from members about power outages that they have personally experienced and that may have happened in their local communities. It reminded me of a power outage that we had recently. It was not because of a storm but just in our local street; I think Powercor were doing some works. The power was switched off, and we received notification it had gone off and were told that it would go back on at around 7:30 or 8 pm that night. The power went off at about 3 pm, and I had my parents in town visiting me on one of the very rare occasions that they had come to Melbourne from northern New South Wales. They had not experienced some of the colder weather that we have down here, and at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, when the lights went out and the power went off, they were quite comfortable. As the hours went by and the dark started to come on, I had to scramble around the house looking for some of the very few candles that we had, and we had to go out to the camper trailer and get our camping equipment with different lights and lanterns to put around the house. That was perhaps the smallest insight, even on the most minute scale, into what it would be like to be left without power – just for those couple of hours on that particular day – heating, and electricity for a very long time. The member for Monbulk talked about the impact that that had on her community, and it was quite an emotional contribution that she made, reflecting on the impact of that severe weather event that took place.

But we know that in 2021 we had, on those two occasions in June and October, that severe storm weather, and it quite frankly is not exaggerating to say it was the likes of which Victoria has not seen before. As someone who has spent a lot of time in Queensland, up there in Brisbane, when I was attending the University of Queensland, there were some huge, huge, huge weather and storm events that we saw take place. I particularly remember one occasion: my friends and I as young uni students were at the local pub and there was a huge, huge storm, and we walked home. I remember the trees had fallen all across the road and blocked roads. I could only liken it to what it would be like in some kind of war zone, with us trying to walk and get home. We were also in pitch black – in the dark – and this was long before mobile phones. It is not exaggerating to say that in the likes of Victoria, we had not seen a storm event like the one in 2021 before. Both of these events topped the charts with the highest number of electricity outages in our state’s history. In June over 250,000 households and businesses were left without power. The October storm even topped this one, more than doubling the number to 525,000 households – that is just over half a million households. Nearly a quarter of all Victorian households were without power. These power outages were unprecedented, and what it tells us is that the grid is unprepared for this kind of extreme weather.

But I want to make it clear that our government, the Andrews Labor government, has a proven record of strengthening our energy grid to go ahead and withstand the impacts of climate change and extreme weather. As of May this year, 44 rapid earth fault current limiters, which were a key recommendation of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, have been installed. The last one is set to be installed in November this year, just in time for summer. Indeed in working in my previous career before politics at AusNet Services, I do remember the project; we called it REFCL. I worked as part of their customer engagement team that was going out and talking to the community about the importance of REFCL and the impact it would have in local communities, as it came out of that bushfire royal commission in 2009. Up to 700 kilometres of wire and overhead powerlines have been put underground as part of the powerline bushfire safety program. And right in the aftermath of those storms, we then went ahead and funded $7.5 million towards backing up power systems across 24 towns in regional Victoria, protecting them against blackouts caused by floods or by bushfires.

Of course all of this really does build upon our commitment and investments into reducing our emissions and taking on and tackling climate change. Victorians know emphatically that the Andrews Labor government is turbocharging our emissions reduction targets of having 95 per cent renewables in our grid by 2035 and net zero by 2045. That is an 80 per cent cut to our carbon emissions, and as of last week, it is officially our new target. Now, this may be a shock to some, but these targets are some of the most ambitious emissions reduction targets in the world. Up until now we have been successful in reducing emissions by 32.3 per cent below 2005 levels, making us the fastest decarbonising state in the country – and with our government bringing back the SEC, we are going to get there that much faster, along with creating 59,000 new jobs. Victorians really can feel proud that we are a national leader when it comes to tackling climate change.

What does this bill actually go ahead and do to prevent further power outages? What it does is it gives the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action the power to direct private distribution businesses to provide necessary information, assist in relief efforts and administer government relief payments. That was a key recommendation of the distribution network reliance review that we conducted following the storms. Phase 1 of this review, which was conducted after the June storm, made eight recommendations, and all of those eight recommendations are now underway. The second phase was conducted last year, following the October storm, and the recommendations of this phase inform this change.

We know that we cannot always rely on private distributors to do the right thing all of the time. As I have said time and time again in this house, I spent 13 years working for transmission and distribution network service providers, or DNSPs and TNSPs – it is all a bit of a mouthful. What we know about monopoly businesses is that regulation is so very important. Whether it is through rules and regulations or whether it is through monetary fines, those sorts of regulatory arrangements are only needed when those businesses cannot be relied upon to do the right thing. We know that time and time again in this state that has, unfortunately, not always been the case. What we learned was that those storms in 2021 were actually made worse because the private distributors were unprepared for challenges of this scale, and their response was woefully inadequate. An example of that is where we had distributors provide inaccurate return-to-service times, which meant that residents could not actually go ahead and plan things like, importantly, the alternative accommodation that they needed for their families and nightly accommodation. They could not do that with any certainty. That was something that this government was out talking to people on the ground about, and we heard it time and time again. It was really unacceptable in this day and age for people who were already dealing with the loss of power. Power outages are never a pleasant experience, even in the best of times if they are relatively short or a couple of hours long, like I recently experienced – Powercor did a tremendous job in getting the power back on.

A bill like this makes small changes, but it is equally important to ensure that our grid is better protected against future power outages. We know that our grid is made vulnerable by extreme weather events, and this puts households, businesses and indeed communities at risk. Victorians know that when it comes to their electricity supply, this side of the house – the Andrews Labor government – has their back. Time and time again we have shown that, and this bill really does build upon that record. It is exactly why I stand here this evening and wholeheartedly commend the bill to the house.

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (17:18): I will say at the outset that the Greens will be supporting this bill. As other speakers have mentioned, it does two things: firstly, it makes it easier for the government to demand information and support from distribution companies during power outages; and secondly, it strengthens regulation of the Victorian energy upgrades (VEU) program, which is a program to try to encourage businesses and homes to become more energy efficient.

The June and October 2021 severe storms were quite unprecedented – I am sure that is a word that we are all going to get very sick of using as the climate crisis heats up. It caused widespread and prolonged power outages, and Victoria’s distribution companies were simply not set up to respond adequately. Distributors – in fact all energy companies – failed to keep residents properly informed about power outages. They significantly underestimated how long it would take to reconnect power, and people were left waiting for huge amounts of time with no idea and no information about when things would improve. So it was not good enough, and the bill recognises that responses to prolonged power outages caused by storm and other extreme weather events need to improve significantly.

The bill makes some good, if small, changes to the powers of the state government to require these energy companies to provide more information during a disaster like these storms. What we would really like to see and what we actually need is a much bigger conversation about how our infrastructure is going to cope with worsening climate change, because we know that we are going to get more frequent and intense extreme weather and disasters. We have already seen it over the last couple of years. We are going into a probable El Niño. Climate change is getting a lot worse. It is happening faster than we ever thought it would, and infrastructure is going to be severely under stress. Everything from our power network to our stormwater, drainage, transport, train lines, roads and housing is all coming under incredible pressure. It was not designed for the kinds of climate impacts that we are seeing and that we are about to see, and it means it actually puts people’s lives at risk and our day-to-day lives will become a lot harder.

I think we all remember how horrible it was in that summer of 2019, Black Summer, when the air, even in Melbourne, was choked with smoke. It was too hot to sleep. People could not breathe. People had to go out and buy air filters, wondering, ‘Is this the future that we’re walking into?’ People were – me included – lying awake at night. I had quite a newborn baby – he was about eight months at that time – sleeping next to me, and I was just thinking, ‘Is this the world that I’ve brought him into? Is this the world that we’re expecting for our kids?’ And to be honest it is pretty terrifying, but it does not actually seem like our governments at any level but particularly at a state level really understand the nature of the challenge that is facing us.

Adaptation, when it comes to climate change, used to be something that I did not even like to talk about, because sometimes when we talked about adaptation, we almost felt like we were giving up on mitigation. We wanted to talk about preventing the problem rather than just dealing with it when it hit, but we are at the point now that it is hitting, and we need to deal with it. We need to figure out how we protect lives, how we protect our way of life, how we protect our infrastructure but also how we actually live in this new world, how we actually preserve some semblance of the life that we want to live when we are facing these kinds of threats of disaster to people’s lives, threats of being, you know, locked in a flooded suburb, threats of not being able to breathe the air that is choked with smoke. These are things we do not like to talk about, and I think everyone here, even, is pretending that these things are not going to happen and maybe that I am overexaggerating or it is hyperbole – but it is not; it is what climate scientists say is happening. We have actually all experienced it. We put it to the back of our minds because we do not want to live in that world. I do not want to live in that world, but we have to face up to the fact that we are going into that world, and we are going to have to figure out what it means for governments to grapple with that: who pays and how do we pay to upgrade infrastructure to protect ourselves?

Local governments are already sounding the alarm on things like stormwater systems not being up to scratch and seeing flash flooding when we get just a single rain event. We have got roads falling into the ocean, literally. We have got beaches literally being washed away. We have got people dying because our housing stock simply was not built to suit extreme temperatures. We have got people with respiratory problems dying because of smoke. This is where we need a whole-of-government response – an emergency response to say this is literally the biggest threat to our lives and what we are going to do about it. Are we going to continue just to respond when a disaster hits by tinkering around the edges like this, like what is in this bill, or are we going to proactively look at it: yes, it is a big challenge, yes, it will cost a lot of money, but if we do not do it, what is the alternative? It just does not seem like we have a sense of urgency in a whole-of-government response to climate disasters, to preparing us and to making us resilient for what we are about to face.

So the other part of the bill concerns the Victorian energy upgrade scheme, which also needs some pretty serious reform. It was pretty comical reading about the fridges fiasco from last year where we had this system of poorly regulated, highly profitable carbon credits and we saw this quite ludicrous situation. This scheme was set up and because it was so profitable to get an energy-efficient fridge, which was supposed to replace an old fridge, there was this perverse incentive where businesses were just seeing dozens, 20 fridges dropped off at their front doorstep because the installers were getting a credit for that. And it did not actually reduce emissions; it probably increased emissions, I have to say. What an incredible waste to just be throwing away these unwanted fridges. Some of them were even just dumped on roadsides across the state. This bill makes some small changes so the minister can now set the fees in the system and try and prevent this pretty embarrassing situation from happening again.

It has got to be said that there is something in common about these two failures – the failures of the energy companies in the storm situation and the failures in this market-based energy efficiency system – and it is really the failure of the privatisation of the energy system in Victoria. Privatisation of our energy system means we are constantly needing to bring bills before this house to tinker with energy systems to make private companies do the right thing. We are constantly being told that privatising things makes them more efficient, but nothing could be actually further from the truth, and I think this bill is a clear demonstration of that. How much does it cost and how much time does it take for people to write these bills, to figure out how to fix the system and to bring that before Parliament? There is a huge amount of effort that goes into setting the regulations for the private businesses and then fixing them when they go wrong. It is inefficient and it is expensive, and the privatisation of the energy system is actually holding us back from making the transition to clean energy that we know we need to make. I cannot count the number of energy bills that have come before this place that I have spoken on or voted on that are tinkering with the regulations of the energy system – problems that have been created because we set up this private system. There would not necessarily have been those problems if we had not privatised the energy system in the first place. I think governments have really sold Victorians a pup when it comes to privatisation, telling us things would be better, cheaper and more efficient, when in so many cases, especially when it comes to energy, it has been the exact opposite. It makes no sense for transmission and distribution of our energy system especially to be in private hands. These in particular are often natural monopolies that need to be in public hands.

So rather than this kind of constant tinkering with the system of regulation, the Greens would love to see the SEC, which we very much support and very much commend the Minister for the State Electricity Commission for boldly bringing back, expanded to cover all facets of the energy system: generation, retail, transmission, distribution. That would allow us to slash emissions with renewables, sell cheap energy to consumers directly and maintain the system as a social good, because we know that power, electricity, is an essential service. We would not have to have these private companies getting in the way of that aim of providing power as an essential service. And ditto to the VEU system. We believe that this also should be reformed to provide energy-efficient products to Victorians directly instead of via third parties that are motivated by profit and that you have to regulate and that whole system that is creating all these perverse incentives.

We should really be setting rules that require homes to be energy-efficient in the first place. The government actually has the levers of power that it needs to do that. The Greens have had bills before this Parliament for a long time to introduce mandatory energy efficiency standards, particularly for rental properties, and mandatory disclosure or standards for homes at the point of sale. We have seen governments refuse to adopt those bills, but they are sensible reforms that, when we are looking at the scale of the climate challenge, make a lot of sense. I think they would be a lot more efficient and effective than the systems that we are seeing at the moment. Instead we just end up with this market-based system that gives credit for energy efficiency upgrades and is beset by problems and profiteering. We have seen countless rorts. Really, the confidence in that system has been undermined to the point that people think it is quite laughable. People come to your home and say they are going to give you free light bulbs, and people do not know if it is a scam or whether it is real. It is not even reducing emissions in a lot of cases, because the company is not actually replacing light bulbs, it is just giving away products for free.

We should be putting our efforts into government solutions that work rather than just constantly wishing and hoping and believing that market-based trading mechanisms work when it comes to climate change. Neoliberalism has really taken hold, even in the Labor Party, which is sad to see. We are seeing it also at a federal level now with the nature repair market and this hope that we can create biodiversity credits and that that is going to solve the biodiversity problem, when actually a lot of the time those kinds of credits just offset and allow other projects, other destructive projects, to go ahead. You either get no improvement or a net loss of biodiversity when it comes to those kinds of credits.

Members interjecting.

Ellen SANDELL: Those kinds of market-based mechanisms just have been shown not to work.

Michaela Settle interjected.

Ellen SANDELL: We can have people shouting across the chamber –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Jackson Taylor): Order!

Ellen SANDELL: trying to defend neoliberalism, like many Labor MPs are doing right now, or we can actually sit back and look at what we are trying to achieve. I think we actually have the same goal here. We are both trying to achieve the same thing, and we just need to look at what actually works rather than just crossing our fingers and hoping that the market will solve it and we will not have to pay. Somebody pays in the end. Consumers pay, the environment pays and the climate pays, which actually means all of us pay if we invest in ideologically based solutions that just do not work.

This is a bill that has come before this house in six days rather than the usual 14 days, so we hope that there will be a bit of a chance to do a little bit more consultation with stakeholders before it goes to the other place – and there might be some amendments that we want to look at. There might be some amendments in relation to preventing gas appliances being used in the Victorian energy upgrades program, because gas appliances, as we know, create carbon emissions, and they should not be used as part of this program even if they create slightly less emissions than old gas appliances. We should not be installing new gas appliances in Victoria, full stop. We know that we can be moving toward energy-efficient electric appliances powered by renewable energy. That is the way of the future, and that is the way we are going to become resilient against climate impacts and create fewer emissions. So we will have a look at those things, but overall, as I mentioned at the start, the Greens will be supporting this bill.

Darren CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (17:32): It is with some pleasure that I rise this evening to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. I do so as a proud member of the Andrews Labor government, which has a real history of responding to the challenges that we have inherited from a changing climate and the challenges that we have inherited effectively from the Kennett government, who went about destroying the State Electricity Commission and undermining the capacity of the Victorian government – it is over 25 years since the privatisation of our energy generation systems – to be able to regulate our energy markets and to respond to those great challenges of climate change.

I have just listened for, I think, 20 minutes or thereabouts to the Greens talking about doom and gloom and not acknowledging the very significant reform journey that the Andrews Labor government has been on with respect to responding to those challenges, those dual challenges of climate change and a privatised energy system. We need to decarbonise our economy. That is a significant thing. We are in effect in a global arms race against other modern economies with respect to our energy system, and if we make the bold reforms that are necessary, then we can expect to see our economy remaining globally competitive. The capacity of this state to be a proud manufacturing state is indeed very much underpinned by our capacity to decarbonise our economy and to generate the energy that our state needs, not just for manufacturing but also, importantly, to drive down the energy costs that the household budget is experiencing. If you look at the reform agenda, we have had a huge number of bills that have come to this chamber over the last eight years, more often than not opposed by the Liberal Party and cynically, as often as not, voted down by the Greens in the other place. In fact it has been a hallmark of the voting behaviour of both the Liberal Party and the Greens to oppose the amendments and the legislative reform agenda that we have brought to this place.

As I mentioned earlier, back in the mid-1990s the Kennett government went about privatising our energy networks and our energy generation system in Victoria, and not only was that terrible for consumers, it was also exceptionally poor for workers in this state. I would argue that if that had not happened we would have a lot more highly skilled, highly trained workers in this state that would be able to be thrown at the Big Build, which we have not had – because the State Electricity Commission and indeed the board of works and many other things that existed back then were huge and very significant drivers for skilling men and women in this state. So many people that I personally know were given that great opportunity of accessing an apprenticeship through those authorities. It has held back our economy significantly.

The Andrews Labor government took to the people of Victoria late last year a very bold and ambitious plan. That bold and ambitious plan saw us setting significant targets to decarbonise our economy and to lift renewable energy generation in this state, to harness those opportunities, to effectively win that global arms race with respect to generating energy and to make sure that our economy remains competitive in a global context for the foreseeable future. But what we have also seen – and it is the purpose really of this particular reform bill – is that in so many ways consumers, the community, have not necessarily been as well informed as they could be or indeed should be when we do have disaster in this state. What we certainly know is, particularly from the consequences of climate change, we are going to see more extreme storm events and we are going to see greater periods of dryness and drought and, as a consequence of that, more bushfires, more flooding and all of the other things that climate change will be responsible for and be driving.

What we have seen is that the private networks have not necessarily been upfront and clear with the Victorian community about how long post these events happening it will take for them to get their electricity networks back and functioning. Mums and dads and households have been left waiting, with unclear information about the steps that they might necessarily take, whether they book a hotel room for the night, whether they head off down to the servo to get an esky and a bag of ice to keep their frozen meat and vegetables cool so that they can consume them or whether they can sit it out for an hour or so until these energy networks are brought back online.

These reforms address a gap in the market where these energy networks have not responded as quickly as they might have, and that could be for a whole raft of reasons. It might be that it is on a weekend; it might be that it is on a public holiday and it could be that those energy companies are not necessarily particularly keen to pay penalty rates and other things, so they drag their heels on delivery of clear and precise information to consumers.

This reform is important. As a consequence of climate change we are going to see more circumstances where the arrangements we are seeking to legislate are used more often. I think that will be useful for consumers, and I commend this bill to the house. I hope to see it have a speedy passage through the Parliament.

Sam GROTH (Nepean) (17:43): I will warn you: this will be a very brief contribution on my part. I rise to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023, and I thank both those on the government side and the member for Croydon for his work in preparing us for the bill. As we have heard for the last couple of hours in the chamber, the main purposes of the bill are to amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000 and provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action with the power to direct distribution businesses to assist in emergency response and recovery to mitigate the impacts of prolonged electricity outages. That is what I want to speak on, because for my community down on the Mornington Peninsula, and I am sure for the member for Hastings, who is in the chamber, as well as for the member for Mornington, both in June and in October when those storms came through, our communities were affected quite badly by the power being out. I remember the situation along Point Nepean Road through Rosebud to Sorrento and my wife being at home with the twins and the power being out. When you have got newborn twins in a house during winter, it is not ideal when you cannot get power. But for those communities up through the hills, for example in Red Hill, when they are living on tank water and bores and such they need electricity just to have water, so they need power not just to keep them warm but for water as well. I know my community was deeply impacted by this.

I remember how bad it was and how long it took to clean up. When you look at what happened in June, and looking at the articles in front of me and the memories that they bring back – and I am sure when I raise this it will bring back memories for those in my community as well – some of these houses were out of power for weeks on end. While this bill will mean that the power companies need to get the distribution back, a lot of my community could not, even if that had happened, have gotten power back to their houses because the power meters on their properties had been damaged in the storms. They had to get private electricians out to fix those before they could get power back to their houses.

The Sorrento SES, along with the SES in Hastings and all the CFAs, spent hours and hours and hours on literally thousands of call-outs, calls and welfare checks on people to deliver generators but also water and those essential needs. While we will support this bill, and it is great that it is going to put the onus back onto the power companies to make sure the distribution side of things is taken care of, I more want to take this moment to reflect on what was a tough time for our communities, for those up in the hills as well, and just I guess remember, a couple of years on, the fantastic job that our SES and our CFAs did to get our communities up and running again.

We hope these storms never come along again, but we know that these sorts of things will. When you have areas of your community that are more remote than others you know there are going to be these types of events that will inevitably put our communities under the same pressure, so we will be supporting this bill. I just want to say that when that does happen we know we have some fantastic people on the peninsula, right from the top to the bottom, that will make sure that our communities are taken care of, and while we hope it does not happen again, we will always stand beside and do whatever we can to support our emergency crews and those people who are affected. I thank everyone in the house as well – well, almost everyone –

Members interjecting.

Sam GROTH: I was going to refer to the Greens, even though they are supporting it. It is great that we can all support and agree on a bill, and we will be supporting it. I just thank those emergency crews once again.

Steve McGHIE (Melton) (17:47): Today I rise to contribute to the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023 – the titles of our bills seem to be getting much longer. Time and time again our government has shown how important good energy policy is and how important it is to all Victorians, and I am pleased that those opposite – including the Greens, when they take the time to come into the house – are supportive of this bill. This amendment comes about because of failures of privatised electricity companies – and we know how that has been for the last 20-odd years since Kennett privatised them; it has just been a complete failure – coupled with the devastating storms that have been referred to in many members’ contributions. We know that these reforms we are making to this wider sector are going to make a hell of a difference. The disruption and devastating impacts of the storms, as I say, have been referred to in everyone’s speeches – about how devastating they were.

Last week the CSIRO handed down a report about the rising sea temperature and the impacts of the El Niño and La Niña effects. So we talk about these storms in the past, but I think we had better prepare ourselves for a lot more into the future, unfortunately. Of course the severe weather events that result in power outages are likely to increase in frequency, as I just said, as a result of climate change, and the increased likelihood of severe storms and resulting power outages makes getting on with this reform so critical. Power outages are not just about power. They are also about people’s lives, and I would like to make mention of the passionate contribution from the member for Monbulk and the story that she portrayed in regard to her local area, the residents in her area, and how they were desperately affected and how upsetting it was – her reciting what occurred out that way. It is not easy to get up and tell the stories. Again, as I say, the member for Monbulk did a fantastic job of that, telling us about her community. Ahead of the coming winter storm season 2023 this bill is timely and important. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this debate, and I want to thank the Minister for Energy and Resources and her staff for putting this bill forward.

We see privatised electricity distribution businesses, who are directly responsible for the electricity network, providing inadequate responses, incorrect responses and inaccurate information, which makes it harder for communities to get back on their feet, with constantly changing expected restoration times and unrealistic restoration times. Of course it is incredibly frustrating that we need to create legislation to make them do the right thing, to make them tell us the truth and provide accurate information, and unfortunately that is one of the things that comes with privatisation – we do not always get the facts and the real information in real time. So doing this might not be good for their bottom line or profit forecasting, but deliberately withholding information at best helps nobody at all, and at worst it endangers people’s lives, and we have heard some of those stories tonight. And we know we cannot rely on these companies to put our communities before their shareholders.

It was only a few days ago – it was in fact on Sunday – that I had the privilege to attend a book launch in Bacchus Marsh with the member for Eureka, who only hung around for about 1 minute after I arrived. She was there for a lot longer, but I arrived and I thought it was me that was the reason why she left – but anyway, no, she had other appointments.

Michaela Settle interjected.

Steve McGHIE: And she is in the house. Yes, she is in the house. I thought if I came into the house, she would get up and walk out, but she did not.

Anyway, there was a book launch on Sunday, and as I said, the member for Eureka and I were there. A woman by the name of Lyn Purcell wrote this book called Lost in the Gorge and Other Emergencies, and it is celebrating the incredible work the State Emergency Service teams do out at Bacchus Marsh. It was their 40th anniversary, and it is a fantastic book that includes many, many events that they have attended to over those 40 years. I want to congratulate them for their efforts over the 40 years – the past and the present members and hopefully the new members that they will get. The current members there just do an amazing job, and it was a great day – a great presentation by them and a fantastic book. They are out there protecting our communities when required.

This Saturday night coming is the 50th anniversary dinner for the Melton SES, and again I extend my thanks to both Melton and Bacchus Marsh SES for their great work, in particular last week when we were all aware of that bus crash out at Exford with the schoolkids. Both of the units attended that bus crash and obviously got a number of kids off the bus, so we thank them for their efforts again.

The importance that these volunteers play in our lives and in our communities cannot be overstated, and when the power goes out, they go to work. When it is raining, when it is snowing, if it is flooding, they go to work. They go the opposite way to what most of us would do in incredibly dangerous situations, life-threatening situations, doing dangerous work in dangerous situations time and time again to make it safer for all of us, and of course with these storms they did exactly that. And with the power outages, they are the first out there. So it is fantastic, and again, we cannot thank them enough. But they are not really greatly supported by the private energy companies, and that is unfortunate given the money that those private energy companies generate, and we would hope that they support our emergency services workers a lot better than what they do.

So immediately after the June 2021 storm – devastating for the localities that were affected – and before the October storms that hit western Victoria, eight recommendations were already implemented, and these included improvements to communications with critical infrastructure operators, enhanced public messaging to support community preparedness and faster and more streamlined support for power-dependent customers. These recommendations and important changes continue to be rolled out, because that is what this government does; it delivers on what we promise – recommendations such as participation in municipal and regional emergency management planning processes and putting companies at the table with the frontline workers that deal with the aftermath of these power failures. So the review that was done saw there were significant out-of-pocket expenses, exceeding $6000. Half a million homes were affected – a quarter of all Victorian properties – so the administration of a power outage payment to affected customers was one of the recommendations.

In the October storm event across western Victoria, the Mornington Peninsula and the Gippsland region, households and businesses experienced prolonged outages, and the impacts on residents and businesses were made substantially worse by the inadequate response of these privatised electricity companies. Damage to private property was immense, and many stories have been told today by many members in their contributions. We know how unprepared for the power outages the private companies were – the scale of things.

We have heard many experiences raised today. I am not sure how many of the numbers are out, but three days after they lost power in October it appears that there were just under 24,000 homes that still did not have power, and a week after losing power there were still 2500 homes without power. We never prepare ourselves well for power outages. If you think about not having power for a week – your life is turned upside down. I do not know what I would do without power for a week, let alone all the other damage that was outside and around some of these properties. It is pretty hard to think how people could survive in their daily lives. I know you do in hard times, but it would have been absolutely terrible to experience that. I have had power out at home for an hour, and I get a bit edgy, frustrated and concerned, thinking, ‘When is it going to come back on?’ I go out and get the generator and turn the generator on.

This is an important bill. There have been some fantastic contributions, and I commend the bill to the house.

Bridget VALLENCE (Evelyn) (17:57): I also rise to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. It was interesting to hear the member for Melton say he gets edgy when the power is out at his place for an hour. Well, during the June 2021 storms my place was out of power for three weeks, and we were all pretty edgy.

In this piece of legislation that has been brought before the house the main provision is really to enable a power to direct distribution businesses to assist in emergency response and recovery to mitigate the impacts of prolonged electricity outages and improve community outcomes, particularly during times of severe emergencies. As we know, we have talked a lot about this, and most members have referred to some of the severe storm activities that we have had – even bushfire activities – that impacted our essential services, particularly our power. That is precisely why we will be supporting this bill: to make it simpler. It is not doing too much, but it is one small step to help communities who experience devastation and frustration during times of emergencies.

On the 9 June 2021 storms, I would like to talk mostly about my community. The storms did ravage the Yarra Ranges community right across the Yarra Ranges, from Lilydale, Montrose and Kilsyth right up through the Yarra Valley and also into the hills, the Dandenong Ranges. It started out with floods in Yering, Coldstream and Yarra Glen earlier in the day. Our local Lilydale SES did an amazing job to respond to that, only then to be called across to the Dandenong Ranges, to places like Olinda, Mount Dandenong and Mount Evelyn, where there were cyclone-like winds ripping through those communities. I went up to Kalorama and Olinda and saw the magnitude of the devastation – these 70- to 100-metre trees clean ripped out of the ground, strewn all over the place in a completely random nature, cutting across roads and cutting across properties. It was completely stressful for those communities. This impacted particularly in my electorate the townships of Mooroolbark, Lilydale, Silvan, Mount Evelyn and Montrose. Those communities were without power – some for a couple of days but many, like my place in Wandin, for three, four or five weeks. Many of those people had a great deal of uncertainty as to when their power would come back on, because they were receiving mixed messages. This bill will go to supporting the government of the day to be able to call upon the power companies to help with that community response.

During the June 2021 storms the homes of around 80 families in the Yarra Ranges were utterly devastated that night. As I have mentioned, many people were without power. In fact tens of thousands of residents right across Victoria were cut off from power, and it was not just the lights. It was not just the electricity in the house but water as well. In my place I am fully on tank water, which only comes into the water through electric pumps. So when you are without electricity at places like mine you are also without water. That is a huge challenge right across the Yarra Ranges and particularly in the Dandenong Ranges. It was a complete disaster zone. This was at a time when our community was just emerging from one of the COVID lockdowns. There were lockdowns and businesses were closed during COVID. They were just coming out of that and a storm hit. So there was just that added stress and complexity in the lives of those families and those small businesses right through our community.

I want to take this opportunity, as others have, to thank the tremendous efforts of the emergency services who responded, including the volunteers of the Lilydale SES, the State Emergency Services; the Emerald SES; the Kalorama CFA – right when it happened, when it hit, no other emergency service vehicles could get up from the foot of the hills, and the Kalorama CFA did a tremendous job to look after the communities and those who had no communication off the hills; many of our other local CFA brigades; as well as the Yarra Ranges police; of course the Yarra Ranges council; and subsequently the Australian Defence Force. Thank you also to anyone in our community who contributed in any way in a volunteer capacity, who offered shelter, who contributed to the foodbank up in the hills; who donated food or blankets; or who just offered residents someone to talk to – someone to be there to listen or to have a cuddle – because there were a lot of tears at that time throughout our community.

The severe storms caused widespread and prolonged power outages right across Victoria, as I have said. I have talked about my community, but it was right across Victoria. Following those storms 68,000 customers were without power after 72 hours. Another 9000 customers were still without power for seven days after that event. Additionally, following a couple of months later, there was again a severe storm in October and nearly 24,000 customers remained off power supply for 72 hours after that storm, and 2500 customers were without power seven days after that storm. It just goes to show that when we have these severe events – and they are not going to go away; we are going to have more of them – we need to be able to provide that certainty. So many families, households and businesses had huge wastage. Small cafes, as an example, had to chuck out so much food. That adds to costs and is very stressful, so we really want to be able to support people the best we can, and this bill hopefully will go a little way in achieving that.

It is also about vulnerable people. You know, these storms happened during particularly cold weather, and there was no way to heat homes. It was a very, very slow response from the Andrews government at the time. I know the member for Monbulk at the time, the Deputy Premier at the time, was pretty much missing in action, and the communities through the Dandenong Ranges and through the electorate of Monbulk were completely astonished about the lack of response, the very slow response and the reluctance to call upon the ADF. The government will say that they came with generators. They came well after the fact. This was after the fact of many households having to go and find their own generators. The generators that came, came all too late. Pretty much most of the power was coming back online then.

Of course, whilst this bill will enable the power to require power companies to contribute to the effort, I do want to pay tribute to the power companies who put in a pretty remarkable effort. All of these workers in the power companies did everything that they could possibly do in what was pretty much a devastation zone. There were trees strewn everywhere, roads cut off and live powerlines across roads – an unsafe situation – and these workers for these power companies went into that disaster zone to do what they could, in the most timely fashion that they could, to get the power up and running and make it safe for the communities.

What I would also like to say is that obviously this bill goes to enabling a power to deal with power companies, but what it does not talk about is that there was no review of the State Emergency Service’s needs. Something that we committed to in the lead-up to the last election was – particularly as a response to the storms through the Yarra Ranges and the Dandenong Ranges in particular – to boost the capability and capacity of the State Emergency Service up in the Mount Dandenong–Olinda area. What we would like to see and what that community would like to see is a new SES unit in the Olinda area, to be able to respond from the hills. The Lilydale SES and the Emerald SES do an amazing job to respond, but they are still some way from getting up to the hill, and this bill and so far the bills that we have seen from the government have failed to address the specific need, as has the government’s funding for emergency response. The Yarra Ranges council were required to provide five business cases to prove they needed funding to help with the clean-up, and that is something the government should do much better on.

Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (18:07): I rise to speak on the Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Bill 2023. Power and electricity fuel the aspirations of modern-day life. From the moment we wake up in the morning to the sound of that iPhone alarm to when we make breakfast or when we go to the workplace or the classroom and turn on the respective tools we need to be productive, the correlation between energy and socio-economic progress has long been established and is now very much woven into virtually every aspect of our lives. However, before I turn to the substance of this bill, which will help improve energy certainty and security in times of need for Victorians, I think it is important to just provide some global context with the fact that as we stand in this chamber tonight, many across the globe still, sadly, do not have access to even the most basic energy and electricity supply.

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the lack of access to energy globally continues to be a major handbrake on economic and human development. Access to clean and affordable power is essential to the development of agriculture, business, communications, education, health care and transportation, with the UN highlighting that access to energy is fundamental to preventing diseases, supplying clean water and improving basic hygiene. However, as of 2020 it was estimated that 730 million people around the globe had no access to electricity, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa, with that number only anticipated to be reduced to 679 million by 2030. Across the Pacific, energy poverty has been identified predominantly across three countries, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, with around 7 million Pacific Islanders estimated to have essentially no access to electricity. So while we in this chamber may regularly disagree on many things, I think it is fair to say that we in Australia and Victoria have long been overwhelmingly the fortunate beneficiaries of the reliable and secure supply of energy to our homes and our communities that millions of others around the globe can only, sadly, remain envious of.

However, while Victorians have enjoyed extended phases of uninterrupted power supply over many respective periods, over the last 15 years there have indeed been many instances when we have had electricity supply seriously disrupted and community safety compromised, including through the tragic 2009 Black Saturday bushfires and the 2019–20 Victorian fire season. While these and other events were subject to respective post-event reviews and commissions instituted by the Commonwealth and Victorian governments, which put forward recommendations to build a better and more resilient, enhanced state power system, it was the more recent severe storms experienced by Victorians in June 2021 and October 2021 that led to the reforms set out in this bill.

The storms of June and October 2021 caused devastating impacts, as we have heard throughout the chamber and through the various contributions here today, with many, many left without power for prolonged periods. As outlined by the Electricity Distribution Network Resilience Review, which was prompted following the June 2021 storms:

At peak, more than 297,000 customers lost power

…

… 68,000 electricity customers remained off supply after 72 hours and 9,000 customers were still without power seven days after the event.

As identified by SES Victoria, the June storms of 2021 impacted many Victorian communities but in particular those in the Dandenong Ranges, as we heard from the member for Monbulk, the Macedon Ranges, the Latrobe Valley, Hepburn shire and many, many other parts of the state. The result was over 10,000 requests for assistance to Victoria SES, with widespread power outages of essential services. Following the October 2021 storms, at the peak over 526,000 customers lost power, 23,900 customers remained off supply 72 hours later and just over 2500 customers were still without power seven days after the event. The October storms also caused significant impacts across the state, including at Mount William in the Grampians, at Melbourne Airport and throughout Melbourne’s northern suburbs, as well as even in St Kilda.

The Electricity Distribution Network Resilience Review, page 6, which I would like to refer the house to, identifies a wide number of issues experienced by communities as a result of the storms. The review:

… heard from affected residents and whole communities that a key problem was the loss of all phone and internet communications due to these systems having limited redundancy to prolonged power outages. Many were unable to contact services or family and friends to check on welfare, request assistance or receive updates from distribution businesses … In cold winter conditions, prolonged loss of power affected people’s ability to heat homes and keep warm, prepare food, shower and wash clothes. Refrigerated food supplies were lost. For the elderly, those with disabilities and those with young families, these impacts were exacerbated. For businesses and those residents working from home (during COVID lockdown) the lack of access to the internet was a significant issue. Some residents and businesses also lost access to water and sewage services.

A significant frustration for many was receiving insufficient information from distribution businesses on which to base a decision about whether to stay or leave. Many said that information was only being provided via communication systems that had themselves been significantly disrupted. The updates that distribution businesses did provide were often inaccurate and unhelpful, with estimated time to restore power messages being clearly unrealistic and changing frequently through the duration of the outages. People understood that the extent of the damage meant it was a very difficult … situation for the distribution businesses and greatly appreciated the efforts of their field staff. However, there was a widespread sense of disappointment and even dismay about the poor quality of information provided by distribution business head offices and the dysfunctional internal systems they appeared to be employing … This resulted in the need for repeated reporting and further delays and inconvenience. Overall, the widespread experience of these communities, both during and outside of extreme events, in seeking to interact with their distribution businesses was opaque, unsatisfying, and disempowering.

The severe windstorms of June and October 2021 highlighted the vulnerability of our electricity distribution network and the impacts that such extreme weather impacts have on local communities and businesses. The review found that electricity distribution businesses failed to provide timely and fit-for-purpose information on request by the former Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Additionally, the review highlighted that electricity distribution businesses did not provide effective support in the delivery of relief activities for impacted communities.

The objective of this bill is to directly facilitate the implementation of a key reform recommended by the electricity distribution network resilience review. The bill will achieve this by amending the following acts: the Electricity Industry Act 2000, to provide the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) with a directions power to compel electricity distribution businesses to assist in emergency response and recovery, either through the provision of information for emergency operations and/or by assisting with relief programs to reduce the impacts on electricity customers of prolonged power outages caused by severe weather events and help improve community resilience; the Essential Services Commission Act 2001; and the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007 through minor amendments to support reforms to the Victorian energy upgrades program compliance and enforcement regime.

Providing the secretary of DEECA with a new power to direct electricity distribution businesses where there is an emergency power outage may compel electricity distribution businesses to provide information to the secretary to assist in emergency management operations. As part of this, a direction may compel electricity distribution businesses to support and administer relief programs and payments to their impacted customers during and following a prolonged power outage. Failure to comply with a direction could attract a civil penalty of more than $200,000, reflecting how serious the impacts of non-compliance can be for affected customers.

In amending the Victorian Energy Efficiency Act 2007 and the Essential Services Commission Act 2001, the Victorian energy upgrades program will be further strengthened to deliver cost-saving outcomes to Victorian customers and align the program’s effectiveness in lowering greenhouse gas emissions from continued use of legacy equipment in Victorian households and businesses.

While these reforms will go some way to improving the resilience of our state’s electricity network in the event of storms and emergencies, the reality is that combating climate change will remain crucial if we are to mitigate against the worst impacts and prevent more severe weather events. As stated by the Electricity Distribution Network Resilience Review, on page 21:

Historic planning practices have delivered networks that can withstand the typical historic climate conditions. However, climate change has increased the incidence, nature and severity of extreme weather events and natural hazards. We can expect climate change to make weather-driven events such as those experienced in the June and October 2021 storms more frequent and more severe …

…

At the heart of this urgency is a need to acknowledge the increased likelihood of extreme weather events …

The incidence of major wind and storm events, such as those that occurred in June and October 21, is expected to increase with climate change and therefore increase the likelihood of disruption to power/energy sources.

We agree –

that is, the review agrees –

that the frequency and severity of these events is expected to increase. Further, our collective dependency on our critical infrastructure has increased, with changes to how and where we work meaning we are more dependent on a safe and resilient power supply than ever before.

These are the views that were put forward to the review by key stakeholders, including the Australian Energy Regulator, the CSIRO, Yarra Ranges council, Ausgrid, CitiPower and many, many others.

That is why, along with the measures contained in this bill, the Andrews Labor government is committed – and I note the Minister for Climate Action is at the table here. We are taking real action on climate change to radically reduce our carbon emissions, which is fundamentally critical, including through bringing back the SEC, which will be a key driver to reducing emissions and bringing down power bills through the $1 billion initial investment into renewable, government-owned energy. Later this year the government will legislate these emissions targets of 75 to 80 per cent by 2035 and net zero by 2045. Working towards a target of 95 per cent renewable energy generation by 2035, a renewable energy storage target of 6.3 gigawatts by 2035 and offshore wind energy targets will also enable the state to make this historic transition. I commend this bill to the house. It is all about protecting communities and securing our energy supply and I look forward to its passage.

Pauline RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (18:17): I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.