Thursday, 3 August 2023

Council swimming pools

Tim READ (Brunswick) (17:22): (277) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Climate Action, and the action I seek is for the state government to provide grants to councils to help them convert their swimming pools from gas to electric heating. As Brunswick residents will verify, I am often found at the Brunswick Baths, but as if seeing their local MP in his speedos is not bad enough, my pool-going constituents might soon be dealt another blow. There are reports that some pools around Victoria are turning down the temperature to cope with rising gas prices. I have heard from several councils that they want to change their public pools from gas heating to electric. They are committed to climate action, and heating public pools is one of the biggest contributors to their carbon footprint, but they just do not have the cash for that initial spend on heat pumps, especially as they are continually paying more for gas. Councils just need a bit of help to make that initial investment, after which their heating bills will fall.

I first asked the minister to act on this back in 2021, and since then the climate crisis has worsened. We saw the catastrophic flooding of Lismore and around Victoria last year, we have seen frequent wildfires around the world and just in the last few weeks the world experienced the hottest July since records began. But something good has happened too. The Victorian government has just banned gas connections in new homes and public buildings from 2024, a policy the Greens have been keen to see for a long time. This is a great start, and the government should continue this momentum. Last week UN Secretary-General António Guterres said – referring to the planet, not swimming pools – that:

The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.

It is long past time to do everything we can at all levels to decarbonise, so I ask the minister once again to help local councils tackle one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions and help them get their pools off gas.