Tuesday, 20 February 2024

Ministers statements: fire and storm events

Lily D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park – Minister for Climate Action, Minister for Energy and Resources, Minister for the State Electricity Commission) (14:17): I rise to provide an update to the house on how our government is responding to the massive power outages caused by last week’s catastrophic storm event. Last week extreme weather caused severe damage to our power network, resulting in 530,000 ‍Victorians losing power. Crews worked around the clock, reconnecting 95 per cent of people within the first 48 hours. I think they did a fantastic job, but we still have around 3600 people offline this morning, and that is why we have our prolonged power outage program for small businesses and for those residents that are still without power, to enable them to apply for that support for hardship.

Nearly all of the outages have been due to fallen powerlines on the low-voltage distribution network ‍– that is, the poles and lines down people’s streets. Any expert will tell you that that was caused by that massive catastrophic wind, tornado-like event that ripped through most parts of our state last Tuesday. More than 12,000 kilometres of powerlines and wires were impacted, brought down or damaged during that massive event – more than 12,000 kilometres.

I understand the community have a lot of questions that they want answered. I heard that clearly, as have other ministers and of course primarily the Premier, who has been out there almost incessantly since the event. We want the answers too, and that is why we have set up an independent expert-led review into this event that will focus on the operational arrangements and preparedness of energy distribution and transmission businesses. We have heard from communities about lack of communications, late communications, inadequate communications, websites crashing and text messages sent without links – all of these practical, immediate supports that communities went without. We are going to get answers, we are going to deliver, we are going to get recommendations and we are going to act on those.