Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Adjournment

Electricity infrastructure

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (19:00): (821) My adjournment item tonight is for the Premier. I would like the Premier to please intervene and extend the public consultation time for Transmission Company Victoria, or TCV as it is known, for their application to the Essential Services Commission to get an electricity transmission licence. The reason I want that extension is that the public consultation period ends on 21 October. As you would be well aware, councils are now going into caretaker mode and the council elections will not be held and final results announced before 21 ‍October, so councillors cannot be part of any submissions to the Essential Services Commission around that granting or not granting of a licence to TCV. Given that VNI West is such a contentious project that runs through my electorate, through the electorate of Mildura, down through Ripon and through some of the electorate of Lowan, we are speaking on behalf of the councillors that are going to be elected and that after the election will want to have a say on that particular submission. So I would ask the Premier to please intervene and extend that consultation period, I would suggest for a month, so that the councillors can be elected, can be sworn in and can actually have an opportunity to put a submission in to the Essential Services Commission.

I do not know if the media that you get in the city covers much on VNI West, but for those of us that live in that area it is probably the hottest issue in town and has been for quite a while now. It is running through farmland, and most of the farmers there are violently opposed to having this huge transmission line going through their properties. Their local councils and their elected representatives have the resources to put submissions in. We have encouraged all the people that are along this route to put submissions in, but I think it is very, very important that the shires put submissions in as well, because we do not want to see good, productive farmland taken up with these powerlines. We do not want to see it forced onto people. There are multigenerational farms there where farmers are going to be looking out their kitchen windows in the future at a huge 500 kilovolt-amp powerline running through their property. They are extremely stressed about this. That is the least I can say. They are angry. They are just really, really peed off with the current government and what is going on there. They want to make sure they have their say and they want to make sure their local councils have their say as well, so I would ask the Premier to please intervene and extend that consultation time so that councils can put a submission in about Transmission Company Victoria’s application to the Essential Services Commission to become an electricity transmission licence holder.