Tuesday, 2 December 2025

 Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (17:20): It is something of a surprise to be on my feet already, but I am very happy to contribute – I presume on behalf of the entire house – to this really positive amendment to the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990. At its core I think it has a really simple principle, which is, in effect, to ensure that the individuals and entities that benefit from resource extraction in our state are those same individuals and entities that contribute to the rehabilitation of sites that are subject to mining in Victoria. Failure to properly align incentives to rehabilitate with the benefits of extractive industries would create a huge issue around moral hazard and would risk shunting the responsibility and the costs of those rehabilitative measures back onto the public. There ought to be a communal benefit from extractive industries, and in the presence of effective rent taxes and royalty schemes of course there is, but also in the context of some of the declared mines in the Latrobe Valley we will be talking about in the context of this debate, they have provided energy to our state since Sir John Monash instituted the state electricity scheme in the 1920s, after the First World War, and opened up the Latrobe Valley for extractive industries and the provision of energy through brown coal.

I want to emphasise my support for the principle that lies at the heart of this bill and the measures contained within it because I am really aware that the risk of mines not being rehabilitated properly is not an abstract one, it is absolutely real. You do not have to look too far to see examples of that. In a previous life I spent quite a lot of time on the west coast of Tasmania. Others in this place may have visited as well, and those who have visited Queenstown would be aware that there is, in effect, a zone that is ecologically dead as a consequence of mining activity at Mount Lyell in the 19th century, where tailings dams were not properly secured and chemicals such as cyanide cascaded down otherwise pristine rainforest rivers. There is still mining that takes place in that area, at Rosebery and Zeehan, where tin and other important resources are extracted, but the legacy of that mining activity in the 19th ‍century where there was not proper rehabilitation means that people in Queenstown, even today, play football on a gravel oval because grass simply will not grow in that soil. It has not seemingly been a tremendous deterrent to footballers from that community succeeding and thriving. I think of people like Daryn Cresswell and the current coach of the Brisbane Lions Chris Fagan, who, while not being an elite footballer, was an outstanding Tasmanian footballer in his time. I digress slightly, but the point is that the long-term effects of mining, if areas are not properly rehabilitated, have a real impact on communities.

Similarly, in Victoria – in the golden triangle, as it were, between Stawell and Bendigo and Ballarat – there are plenty of instances where the alluvial goldmining of the initial gold rushes has left real scarring of the landscape. Obviously in that era there were not the kinds of rehabilitation that we would expect now, and there is an interesting contrast in Stawell now where you have got the legacy of that alluvial goldmining from the 19th century and the scarring, as I say, that is still visible on the surface of the land, compared with the progressive rehabilitation that has been undertaken at a more recent goldmine at the Davis pit near Stawell, where instead of a pit it is now a rehabilitated box eucalypt forest. I think that is the kind of model that this bill is seeking to ensure takes place elsewhere in Victoria.

One of the other examples that is slightly further afield from Victoria or indeed Tasmania but not far from our own country is the rightly infamous, unfortunately, example of Ok Tedi in Papua New Guinea, where a mining disaster really has unfolded over the last three or four decades now since a tailings dam collapsed in 1984, unleashing huge volumes of toxic material into pristine river systems, which were relied upon by the Papua New Guinean people in the villages adjacent to the Ok Tedi mine. And having poisoned those rivers, it means it is really one of the most significant, crucially, man-made ecological disasters that our planet has witnessed.

Again, it is these kinds of examples that we are seeking to avoid through the measures contained within this bill. As I say, there are a couple of good examples which we can point to as instances where rehabilitation has been effectively undertaken by those who have benefited from the extractive industries and from the resources that rest beneath our feet or on the surface. And again, it is right that that should be the case. If organisations benefit in financial terms, they should be contributing to the cost or in fact bearing the cost of rehabilitation. I am well aware that while we all have the collective endowment of resources that rest beneath our feet in Victoria, it does take risk and capital for people involved in mining enterprises to extract those resources, and they do so because it creates a financial benefit for them. As such, they should be the ones who bear the cost of that rehabilitation.

We already have a robust system of mining rehabilitation in Victoria. Resources Victoria monitors and enforces this. I have spoken about progressive rehabilitation, which I think is a really important principle that underpins the response to mining activity so that there is not a vast cost left at the end of mining activity at a site, but rather once one particular pocket of a declared mining area has been fully realised or the value within it has been fully realised, the owners and operators of the mine then rehabilitate that area so that it does not leave a real sting in the tail, as it were, whereby all of the cost of rehabilitating the entire site is borne at the end. You can well imagine the risks that would be associated with not having a progressive rehabilitative model whereby there are clearly incentives for the operators of mines to phoenix, to dissolve, to declare bankruptcy and to never be seen again because the value has been extracted, and yet the cost has not been contributed and not borne in terms of the rehabilitation.

That is why it is important that this this bill implements a trailing liability scheme, specifying exactly who the minister can call back to rehabilitate or fund rehabilitation if a declared mine licensee cannot meet their rehabilitation obligation. Now, the current system addresses this risk in part, because we have a system of rehabilitation bonds in place. I think that is important to ensure that councils and even private landholders and other stakeholders, if it is on private land, and the state government, on behalf of the Victorian people, can have some surety that the operators of a mine actually have the bona fides and the wherewithal to bear the cost of rehabilitation. That needs, obviously, to be paid up-front. And it is not a static process; it is something of a dynamic thing that pays heed to the underlying risk and cost associated with rehabilitating a particular site.

This bill, I think, sensibly goes further in instituting that trailing liability scheme that I talked about. It is particularly important for the Latrobe Valley, which members in this house represent – the member for Morwell and perhaps the member for Narracan in part as well – where, as I said at the outset, Hazelwood, Loy Yang A and Yallourn are slated for closure, that the various private enterprises that now operate them, having acquired those rights from what was the SEC of Victoria, bear the cost of that rehabilitation. The people of Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley deserve to have land that is properly rehabilitated and accessible and does not have toxic and other consequences that mean they cannot use that land because it or the waterway or the water table is poisoned for generations to come. It is important that people who have had mining next to them, for generations in many instances, can then look forward to a time where, while the mining activity might stop, the legacy of that is not a toxic and corrosive one for those communities. I commend this bill to the house, and I hope it has a swift passage.

 Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (17:31): Thanks very much, Acting Speaker –

A member interjected.

Matthew GUY: Yes, welcome indeed to the chamber. It is funny, because I was sitting down with the member for Croydon today and we were working out who has been in the place the longest, and I was starting to feel quite elderly at age 51, but maybe it is my memory that is going.

When the chamber duties came around, energy is now with me of course, so here I am to make a contribution on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025, which I am very keen to do for a number of reasons. At the outset, of course, I advise the chamber that the coalition parties will not oppose this bill. In fact, I know particularly from feedback from the member for Morwell, particularly with the open-cut mines in Hazelwood, Yallourn and Loy Yang, any clean-up and rehabilitation needs to be put in place for the long-term benefit of those communities. We would indeed support that, and we would be very keen to ensure that there is appropriate clean-up put in place.

I have a long history with the Latrobe Valley and a long history with all three of those open-cut mines ‍– or my family does, I should say. When my mum’s family came to Australia, they originally went, like many migrant families, to Bonegilla. Work was being offered by the then Victorian government to new migrants to many parts of the state, and what they of course needed was instant labour for the big brown coal power facilities that were being constructed in the Latrobe Valley. At that stage I think the largest station would have been Yallourn A, which then became almost a semi-commercial premises for the power facilities later on. My grandfather was a fitter and turner at the Yallourn power station for many, many years. In that time there was the old town of Yallourn, which I remember from when my grandparents lived in Newborough, and my mum and her brothers lived in Newborough. As she married my father, who was then living in Warragul, they then moved to Melbourne. I do remember as a child being taken through the town of Yallourn. Yallourn of course does not exist as a township anymore. Yallourn has been dug up, and it is now part of the Yallourn open-cut mine.

Yallourn was one of only three towns in Australia that was designed by Walter Burley Griffin. From memory, one is of course Canberra, and I think the other is Cootamundra, or parts of Cootamundra. I might be corrected on that, but certainly the other was Yallourn. What I do remember of Yallourn is that it was very, very similar to old Canberra – 1920s buildings and little American picket fences. If you have seen the movie Back to the Future, you see the horseshoe shops, a very American design, with a community facility, a civic facility at one end, and it was very, very pretty. Ironically enough, my now father-in-law used to play cricket – he is from Sale – at the cricket ground, which was atop all of those, because it got the water coming off the hill and it had a beautiful white picket fence around it. Yallourn was a very, very pretty town.

Yallourn was built to service the workers, to service the then expanding coal facility at Yallourn A. What came of course in the 1960s was the then government’s plans to expand the open-cut facilities both in Yallourn and a new power station, which was to be built in Hazelwood around the corner to replace the then ageing Morwell facility. And of course the Morwell open-cut mine was expanded to be the new Hazelwood open-cut mine. The Yallourn open-cut was to be then expanded, and the residents of the township of Yallourn were to be moved. The town of what is now Yallourn North was then constructed, Newborough was expanded up towards John Field Drive, and Newborough, up towards where the northern part of the town is, was expanded, and that accommodated residents who would then be moved out into then SEC homes which came out of Yallourn.

I think it might be Heatherdale or Heathmont, one of the two, railway stations which is the old Yallourn station, which was relocated. There were a number of houses which were cut in half; I remember seeing them being taken out at the time. And it was a shame because it is a town that nowadays would be listed by the National Trust, no doubt, with the architectural significance of what was then the old township of Yallourn. I say this because this area, which was the old township, is now part of the open-cut mine that will one day be needed, as part of this bill, for the rehabilitation works on that site. As you go westward into Yallourn you actually go into a fair-sized hill. While the brown coal is quite pure as you go into the hill, it is quite a steep drop, so it will need to have substantial rehabilitation – one of the purposes of the bill. Hence we certainly do not oppose it.

I do remember as a as a young boy coming down into the open-cut mine. One of my two uncles worked in Yallourn. He then went to Loy Yang. The other worked in Hazelwood. My uncle, who was then a foreman in the open cut down in Yallourn, took me. I must have been all of six or seven years old, maybe a bit older, in the days when workplace – I should not say safety – regulations were not what they are now. We went into the open cut. It used to have its own railway network to move the coal from the facility back to where the boilers were. The coal would be pulverised and then fed into the boilers. There were four of them – still are – in Yallourn W, as it was when it was opened in the 1970s. I think it is 1600 megs. I was actually sitting in a dredge back in the early 80s – please no-one go and track it down – and I remember the dredge driver telling me I was digging up what was then Yallourn. Of course you can see the purity in the brown coal, which is nowadays the equivalent of about 5000 to 6000 years supply if we were going to burn brown coal. Of course we are not, but the point is that that is how it was seen at the time. That was the Yallourn open cut, which it is today.

Hazelwood was different. Hazelwood, as this bill stipulates in relation to rehabilitation, was the old Morwell mine, which has now moved into Hazelwood, and the Hazelwood power station came before Yallourn W. Hazelwood, from memory, was a similar size to Yallourn W, about 1600 megs originally. It had, again, four boilers, eight chimneys, fairly visible as you went down to the freeway, and you would see it on the south side. That mine was subject to a fire which was quite devastating probably about 10 years ago. I think it highlighted to everyone the fragility of that kind of facility in terms of the impact on the community and what it might mean if those mines are not being properly looked after or managed and, as this bill stipulates in terms of rehabilitation, what could be some of the issues for the community and particularly communities in the Latrobe Valley. Hazelwood is bordered by the township of what was then Hazelwood. But then there was a plebiscite about 30 years ago, and they renamed the town Churchill, after Winston Churchill. Churchill was originally the location of the town of Hazelwood, and that facility to the south of Morwell is now the obvious one, when we are talking about mine rehabilitation in the current climate and the immediacy of what needs to be done in the Latrobe Valley. Certainly at other, as I have said, examples around Australia and, as the previous speaker alluded to, even overseas there is the need to put in place a mechanism so that a mine operator cannot just up and walk away and not have a mechanism in place for the communities to make sure that some of those mines are indeed appropriately subject to clean-up and the mine operators are subject to an appropriate level of liability to make sure that what is left behind is of a decent order.

The third, Loy Yang, was much newer than Yallourn W and Hazelwood. Loy Yang came about in the 1980s, with Loy Yang A being much larger, 2200 megs, than Loy Yang B. At that stage the Cain government had negotiated its operation to feed the Portland aluminium smelter on the other side of the state, which is kind of odd as we think about it nowadays – 100 miles to the east of Melbourne compared to 200 miles to the south-west of Melbourne for the facility that it was feeding. Of course the overhead power poles were put in place by the government in the 80s to make that happen, as was seen at the time.

Loy Yang B was never built for baseload supply. It was built simply to manage the Portland aluminium smelter, which of course is a huge user of electricity and a huge draw on baseload supply. It was seen as a smaller facility that could be put in place next to Loy Yang A, which was quite a large facility, as I said – 2200 – Victoria’s largest or certainly the largest brown coal facility we have had to date, which was opened I think in about 1986 or 87. The original plans had brown coal. We had not realised the impacts of brown coal. There were plans to go further east, given the extent of the Latrobe Valley’s brown coal resource, and that was to go to a place called Flynn. If you go further east from Traralgon, you will go through the town of Flynn. That was all slated I think in the mid to late 1980s. Groundwork was done to look at whether another power station could be built east of Loy Yang A and B, which would be a similar size to Loy Yang A and which would replace Hazelwood. Of course that has not occurred, and thus there is no need for clean-up at that site, but that would have been the case had that facility progressed.

When most people talk about mining in Australia and they think of what the biggest mining operation is, the obvious is to look at the Pilbara or to look at Moranbah in central Queensland or whatever, but in fact my understanding is that more raw ore has been extracted from the Latrobe Valley than anywhere else in Australia, the difference being it has not been for export, it has been for domestic supply. It has been burnt for our power supply needs for decades and decades and decades, both as older power stations through, as I said, Morwell and Yallourn A and of course the current facilities that are there now. The history of raw ore extraction out of the Latrobe Valley is long and the open-cut facility – it has been a strip mining method; it has never been underground – is something that has been the historical situation in the Latrobe Valley. It is not unique. In the Hunter region in New South Wales strip mining open cut is quite substantial for the pure black coal. The seams up there in the Hunter Valley are very, very pure, which of course are now New South Wales’s largest export.

As you can see from the subject of environmental debate over the last few days, certainly the coal operations in the Hunter Valley are very substantial, and I might add, the purity of the black coal that is extracted out of the Hunter Valley is considered some of the best in the world. So is the purity of black coal out in central western Queensland. What was then the company Utah, which was an investment by the American company back in the 1970s, had a very easy operation, if you like, out of Moranbah. They built that town and they had strip mining, which is open cut. They had a very small amount of underground and made quite a lot of money out of that before the company was broken up and I think sold into part of General Electric and then part of BHP as well. Those areas will also one day need to look at the form of mine rehabilitation that we are doing today for the sake of those communities that are around them. Nothing obviously lasts forever, and those mines certainly will not, and thus the concept of saying that those private companies that either established them or the derivatives nowadays who established them or are a part of them or benefited from them do need to make sure that they are part of the clean-up for those operations.

Unfortunately, and it is a very sad circumstance to point out, other operations around Australia where there has been either underground or strip mining – in this case underground, which is Wittenoom – we all know have had the devastating impact of asbestos, and not just on the miners but also on the many people, the thousands of people, who have been horrendously affected by asbestosis and mesothelioma that came out of the asbestos mining operation that was in Wittenoom. That of course is subject to a whole town and a whole precinct clean-up, which is something that really cannot be done given the lightweight nature of the fibre and how it travels. It is airborne as well. That is not the case in what we are talking about here, and I do not want to mix one with the other, but it is worthwhile talking about that in the fact that Western Australia themselves are looking at the concept of that level of clean-up, which is quite extreme.

It is nothing like that here, of course – what we are dealing with in Victoria – thank goodness. But we do need to ensure that when mines are put in place – and Victoria does have huge opportunities for future mining, whether it might be for gold or it might be for raw minerals to the east of the state – we also look at that. As I said before, nothing lasts forever and we do need to look at what comes in terms of a clean-up once those mine sites do become redundant or surplus to a requirement.

I do remember back in the day, in the 1980s – and it just gives you an indication of how open-cut mining and strip mining methods of mining can certainly have more of an impact on residents – sometimes my grandmother used to have to wash her clothes two or three times. It depended which way the wind went, because the soot that would come out of Yallourn W would travel over and onto your washing. If you had whites out there in the 80s, I remember my grandmother, being an old European woman and very particular about this kind of stuff, would have to do the washing one or two extra times. It was very rare, but it was something that was just a feature that would be discussed at the time in the town.

As I said, we do not oppose the bill and we do not oppose the concept that the government is putting forward on this. I understand the bill enables a scheme for the minister to call back a party via a remedial direction and have that party pay or carry the costs of rehabilitation post-closure work where the minister is satisfied that it is able to be done. I think that is a reasonable provision given that many companies have made quite a lot of money out of that method of mining. It is also a reasonable precedent to say we are looking at this kind of mining operation which is close to population centres. When you look at the nature of brown coal in particular, it is wetter and it is not like a pure black coal, so it does not travel in that sense, but it can obviously when it is burnt, and the provision does need to be put in place.

A person or company subject to call back can only be called back if the minister is satisfied that it is reasonably appropriate to do so after considering whether they have or may have received a significant financial benefit for work authorised under a declared mine licence and whether they have a degree of influence or acted jointly with the mining licence. That is very straightforward and obviously that is saying those who have had an interest in mining – and in fact these three mines which have been privately run for some time now under multiple governments – and the operators of those mines, once they are considered redundant or surplus to assets, will then have the ability to be called back to make sure those works are put in place.

If you have a look at the Yallourn W mine, or the Yallourn mine as it is now in the works area, when you come off I think it is Coach Road from the cemetery running down the hill, you will see that that mine does come close to one of the roads. Just over the hill past the cemetery and what was then an old incinerator are homes at the top of Newborough. So it is actually not that far from homes in Newborough, the open-cut mine in Yallourn. The Loy Yang mine is a bit different. Loy Yang is set to the south of Traralgon, Traralgon being the largest population centre in the valley nowadays, with 27,000 to 28,000. That is set a little way back from the town, so it is not as pressing. I think we found from examples 10 or so years ago that Morwell and Hazelwood are the obvious cases in terms of seeking action for remedial work, and the community is rightly concerned. I know the member for Morwell, in advocating for his community, knows that we need to have a level of protection in place for people in Morwell and Churchill, and that is quite right. That mine is very close – reasonably close. In fact some people in parts of the old mines that have filled up nowadays with groundwater and with rainwater even waterski in it, but that is coming close to homes and that is something that will need to be worked through over time.

The intention of the provision I mentioned before is to capture parties who do have a significant relationship with the declared licensee, the obvious being a financial benefit, degree of influence or joint action for it to be reasonable for them to contribute to rehabilitation. That is not unreasonable. As I said before, that is not at all unreasonable. I think on this side of the house, while we are always cautious about the government looking at provisions such as this, the premise behind it is one where we certainly support communities feeling comfortable that there are provisions in place to make sure that any operation that is taking place around them in particular is appropriately cleaned up.

While I have been talking about communities, I think the previous member before me was quite right in saying it is not just about the community, it is also about the environmental aspect of it. I think that is important too. While that might be less directly significant in the Latrobe Valley context compared to, say, Ok Tedi and some of the others overseas, even in PNG, there are obvious environmental concerns and there are obvious concerns when it comes to groundwater, rivers and streams that might be nearby, grasslands that are close and, in a more direct economic case, farmland that might be close. Of course in Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley the soil is very strong and very solid black, it is very good quality and great for farming, and we want to make sure that if any rehabilitation work in future is not done, the remainder of redundant mines do not then compromise the farming aspects that will continue in the future, particularly dairy, which has been a feature of Gippsland.

The government does claim and does state in this legislation that it is modelled on Commonwealth legislation, specifically decommissioning facilities itself connected with the North West Shelf. And there is no doubt that the North West Shelf in Western Australia has had a long history behind it in terms of raw ore extraction operations, and I do not think this kind of legislation will be a one-off in Victoria. As I have said before, there are obvious examples around Australia, from uranium in South Australia to the obvious, as I said before, in Western Australia around the Pilbara; the Northern Territory, where I have been in the last week talking, of all things, about mining as well; and a few other states obviously on the east coast where we have had mining operations. The concept of the decommission of those nowadays says that governments do need to make sure that we have a legislative requirement in place to ensure that communities and the environment are protected from the decommissioning and the redundancy of those operations.

I think it is important that the communities, in this instance, in the Latrobe Valley are given a level of certainty to know that there are those safeguards in place for their future, for their health and for the sustainability of the Latrobe Valley. The Latrobe Valley – having had family down there for many, many decades – has gone through hard times. It has certainly been through a harder economic time since the late 1980s; there is no doubt about it. I know that from my own family, friends and others down in the Latrobe Valley, and it is connected with many aspects of it. But I see a great future for the Latrobe Valley. I see the Latrobe Valley having a renaissance when it comes to population growth. Its relationship with the east of Melbourne means opportunities in both farming and agriculture and for different forms of industry into the future for the Latrobe Valley. The towns down there are close-knit towns. I would never say this to the member for Narracan – I know he is not in the Latrobe Valley; they get very put out in West Gippsland if you say they are anywhere near the Latrobe Valley – but certainly the towns from Trafalgar to Moe, Newborough, Morwell, Churchill, even the community around Hernes Oak, where there are still a few houses, and Traralgon are towns which have a solid economic base and towns which have a good, solid future.

I think it is still worthwhile for all governments, not just in passing legislation like this, which this Parliament will do, to also look at the future of those towns beyond just the simple concept of government jobs. Because I think in those areas, once the rehabilitation of these mines takes place, it becomes a concept of a discussion as well with the council areas down there as to what we can do with these assets. What do we do with them? They are community assets; they will go back into community hands. And will they then be used in terms of the integration of those former mines into the towns? As I have said before, it has been just community behaviour that people have waterski’d down near Hazelwood. I am not suggesting that they all become waterskiing locations – not at all; that is just not feasible – but I am saying that the use of them, the rehabilitation of them, is important, and it is an important discussion for the communities of the Latrobe Valley. We have these very large open-cut strip mine facilities, which exist right between Moe and Morwell and to the south of Traralgon – yes, they will exist – but we do need to actually do something and have a strategy as to what comes next.

I think that is what is important and an important discussion for the valley: what does come next? And my view, of course, has always been, from when I was a minister, that in the Latrobe Valley, particularly Moe westbound, we should be looking to manage population growth, decentralising population, encouraging population accommodation. It has got good freeway links back to the east of Melbourne.

Particularly if we had a brand new hospital in Warragul in West Gippsland as well, we would have through Warragul, Drouin and Moe–Newborough population accommodation which could be helping with housing affordability issues towards the east of Melbourne, preventing the expansion of the growth boundary in Melbourne so that we preserve the farmland in between, noting, as I said before, that there is very, very good quality soil around those towns and very, very good quality farming, particularly on the flats around Yarragon and Trafalgar. So we do not oppose this bill, and we are very supportive of the concept of discussing what comes next and what comes next for the Latrobe Valley post the conclusion of the open-cut mining facilities that exist there at the moment.

Having said all of that – I appreciate the concept of 30 minutes; I am going to get to 26, but 30 minutes is not too bad – I will mention for my mother that my parents were married at the Yallourn Methodist Church. There you go. They loved Yallourn. I was christened at the Yallourn Methodist Church right there, which is now a part of the open cut. My parents’ wedding anniversary is at Kernot Hall in Yallourn.

A member interjected.

Matthew GUY: Nearly there. I do remember my mum in tears as we went around Yallourn and it was being demolished to be dug up. What a shame, because it was a wonderful town and it was a beautiful town. Thanks for the house’s indulgence.

 Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (17:56): What a beautiful contribution. We thank very much the member for Bulleen for that walk through the history of his family and through Victoria. I think we all benefited from his knowledge there.

I rise in support of this bill, and I cannot help but reflect on the change that we have seen in how we think about rehabilitation of mine sites. I am not intending to go into as much detail as the member for Bulleen on my family history. However, I am from a coalmining family. My ancestors were coalminers back in Germany and continued to mine coal when they came to Australia. Back in those days it was a very different sort of operation to get coal out from under the ground. They were active in Queensland. When I say how things used to be done, we know that coalmining around Ipswich was really important for powering Swanbank, the power station, and a lot of the coal that came out of the ground there went to powering Queensland. Swanbank is now gas fired of course. But Ipswich was an important coalmining area, and there was a lot of mining activity back in the day. The evidence of that mining activity is still all around Ipswich, where sinkholes continue to open up where there was little or no rehabilitation of the underground mines and where, I guess, the concept of rehabilitation in the way that we think about it simply did not exist. Communities back then did not benefit from the same understanding that we have today. Things have progressed a lot.

I think we could say the middle ground is Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu. The Mirarr people there have been very strong and were successful in ensuring that part of the approval for the mine’s operations included the need to return country to an equal sort of state to the rest of Kakadu National Park, which is of course the jewel in the crown of the Northern Territory. It is so important that the people who benefit from the profits of the mines need to be responsible for the rehabilitation. We have seen with Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu that what was initially thought to be a $900 million job is going to end up costing more like $2 billion to return it to an appropriate state.

The operations of Ranger uranium mine were not without difficulties. Certainly there were many, many instances of breaches of safety, with the uranium levels in the creeks surrounding the mine rising above acceptable levels and other environmental impacts that happened. It is just a bizarre coincidence that Vicky, our friend from Kakadu, contacted me today, after I guess three years, on the day that I am speaking on this bill, so we must be talking telepathically. The cost of that rehabilitation of Ranger uranium mine increased so much that a government panel ruled that Rio Tinto needed to be responsible ‍– taking over from Energy Resources of Australia – for making sure that they kept their word and that Kakadu was returned to its state. If we just left it in the hands of companies, we all know that companies do not necessarily have the incentive to do that, and so it is important that we have legislation and regulations which mean that companies must.

One of the things I particularly like about this bill is that there is an understanding that rehabilitation should be progressive, so that as the mining operations continue, the site is progressively rehabilitated. One of the reasons that is important is it will allow the companies and the government, who are monitoring compliance, to keep up-to-date and accurate information about what is required, and that will mean that the companies will be able to budget appropriately to have sufficient funds readily available for a quick rehabilitation rather than needing to raise capital, as we have seen in the Northern Territory, where they have been surprised by the cost of rehabilitating Ranger uranium mine.

Not subject to this bill but close to home for my electorate, Southern Cross Gold is doing work around the Sunday Creek–Wandong area with critical minerals. I am taking us now to the most up-to-date end of the continuum. In my meeting with Southern Cross Gold certainly it was evident to me how seriously they take ensuring that the environment is looked after and that they very much consider themselves a part of the community and accountable to the community. I think it is great that there is dual accountability there to the government – and we are making sure of that through legislation like this; although, as I said, it does not apply to Southern Cross Gold in this instance – but also to the community and that community expectations are met. Something that is important also to recognise is that having a strong focus on rehabilitation like this opens up economic opportunities in the local community, and I am thinking particularly of traditional owners and registered Aboriginal parties. We have seen examples of Indigenous nurseries working on rehabilitating sites and the like, so economic benefits will flow from this work as well, and it is right that the economic benefit here flows to local communities and traditional owners.

We need to make sure of course that operators are doing as we expect, and so there will be regular site inspections to check compliance with work plans and rehabilitation requirements. The operators of the declared mines will need to report to government six monthly on rehabilitation progress, and they will need to be transparent about any issues that are being faced with that rehabilitation so that there is quick and transparent accountability about those things. Most importantly, there are enforcement actions available to government: if noncompliance is found, there will be remedial notices in the first place for corrective actions, but where there is serious or repeated noncompliance, there will be the ability to pursue prosecution.

I am really happy to be standing here talking about mining, and I think it is going to be more and more the case that we talk about mining in this place. Last week in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee it was very exciting to hear from the department about the, I want to say, $200 billion in critical minerals that are expected to be in the ground here in Victoria. We have got the north-east of Victoria with known large deposits and deposits around where I live, around the Wallan–Wandong–Sunday Creek area, and then the other known areas where these critical and rare minerals exist. How fitting it is that the state that is so focused on moving to renewable energy, which relies on infrastructure that requires some of these minerals, is the state where there are such large deposits. What a happy coincidence that is, but what is not a coincidence is that simply through the hard graft of ministers like the minister at the table here, the Minister for Energy and Resources, we can see that the coordinated work, the overall critical minerals map or plan that is in place, means that our state is poised to take advantage of our natural resources, and how lucky we are to have a government in this state which is working to make sure that the benefit from that is shared around Victoria and that it is not just the people who can afford exploration licences and sites that will benefit but all Victorians from what we have in the ground here. I commend this bill to the house.

 Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (18:06): I rise today to talk on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025, and as I do rise, we are not opposing this bill. We need to have safeguards in place for my community in the Latrobe Valley so that at the end of the life of these mines they will be rehabilitated back to where they should be. What we do not want to be left with are three massive holes in the ground which cannot be used by my community. We do not want to be left with that. I talk about ‘I’ here, but it is ‘we’, as my community, do not want to be left with facilities that cannot be used by the public, that will look terrible and that will virtually just have a cyclone fence put around them with a ‘Keep out’ sign. So I thank the minister at the table, the Minister for Energy and Resources, for putting in this safeguard for the community. It is a safeguard for the whole of Victoria, because if the mine people walk away, it is going to be left to us to rehabilitate it, and we need to make sure that these safeguards are actually in place.

We are going through that stage at the moment with Hazelwood, which is actually shut, and shortly we will have Yallourn going through the process. And even though it is 2035 before the mine at Loy Yang A shuts, they are a long way down the track with getting all the infrastructure ready for the mine rehabilitation. I have sat down with ENGIE, EnergyAustralia and AGL and spoken at length about what that is going to look like, and I think the best part of it for Victoria, to explain it here, is that they are looking to make sure that the mines are full of water. I think that is the only sensible way forward that can happen. They have discussed many other ways of being able to do it, but I think everyone can see into the future that we are going to have these three big lakes, as such, covering up the coal and then whatever we use those facilities for after that. On average, I think it is going to take about 2350 ‍gigalitres of water, so putting that into terms that we can all deal with, it is over four times the size of Sydney Harbour at the moment – that is how much water it is going to take to fill these three mining pits up after use.

Obviously Hazelwood is well underway with its rehabilitation. At the heart of the mine, at the deepest point, I think it is over 50 or 60 metres deep with water there at the moment. On being able to fill it, relying on groundwater as such to be able to do that, we need to make sure that the process is there. I know we need the mine walls safeguarded, because if we just leave them as they are – and we have had it before; we have had a mine slip at Hazelwood once before when it shut down the Princes Highway for probably three or four or five months, I think was at the time, when we had –

Danny O’Brien interjected.

Martin CAMERON: Longer – 12 months – when we had to divert around it. We have got to make sure that what we do and what we are left with in the Latrobe Valley is safe and is going to keep our community safe, because as the member for Bulleen said before, these mines are very, very close to some of the towns, especially Yallourn and especially the Hazelwood mine, which has shut. You can drive past on the freeway heading east and you could throw a rock out your window and it would go into the mine – that is how close they are. We want to make sure, whatever happens, that these mines are rehabilitated properly. It cannot just be rehabilitated and left at that; we need a purpose for these mines. We talk about, with the renewable aspect, maybe having floating solar on parts of it and having a renewable precinct. I know Yallourn let out a paper the other day about their intentions and what they think would be best suited for the mine. Yallourn is another case where it is an ageing coal-fired power station. We need to make sure that the workers that are in there now are kept safe, but we also need to make sure that we are generating enough power to keep the lights on for Victoria and Victorians.

We talk about, here in this bill, making sure that these safeguards are in place, that we are left with a facility at Hazelwood, at Yallourn and at Loy Yang that the community can be proud of. We want to be enticing people to come down and use these facilities. If they are a body of water, we need to make sure that they are usable. We do not want a body of water there that nobody can go and swim in or nobody can put a boat on, if that is the way that it is going to go. We have been a very proud community for over a hundred years which has supplied power to every region in Victoria and into other states, and we will continue down there with transitioning out of fossil fuels. We will continue to be a hub to actually supply power for Victoria, I have got no doubt about that. We have a lot of people that think outside the box of what can be done down there to be a part of the change. We do have the power stations there, working power stations that other assets can be plugged into so we can continue to stand in places like this with the lights on and people can go about their daily lives.

The engagement that we get from the three entities that own the mines at the moment is really good. Loy Yang have probably done more in this space that we do not hear about because they have actually got longer before they need to close down. But Hazelwood have been very proactive in the community, bringing them along for the ride. And they are held accountable by parts of the community that want to make sure that when the mine is finished, like what Hazelwood have done, they can follow the journey right through until it is handed back to the community for us to use. Yallourn is going through it right now. In two years time Yallourn will be shut, they will not be producing any power at all, and then they will be on their journey to actually rehabilitating the mine. It is not just filling it with water. They are trialling, especially out at Loy Yang, different grasses to see how that all takes. There is a science to the method of what goes on. And there are some other places around the world which I know the member for Gippsland South has been to to actually see what a pit looks like once it has been rehabilitated and filled. So there are blueprints around the world of what we need to do. But at the end of the day, when it is all said and done, when it is rehabilitated and the power industry has left and the mine owners have done their job, and that is going to be a long way down the track, we need to make sure that we are left with a legacy for my generation, my kids’ generation and the generation after that.

One of the side things that we do have with the buffer zones coming out from the power industry is coal overlays, and we need to make sure that we can do some work in that area too. We have certain coal overlays, especially around the Loy Yang mine, which are impacting a housing development – 2000 houses or 2000 allotments – which is ready to go. There are always things that a lot of people do not see around the place that are involved in rehabilitating a mine. We can work together to actually remove these coal overlays, because at the moment we have got to wait until the Loy Yang mine is rehabilitated, which might be 40 or 50 years down the track, and we have not got that amount of time to wait for these houses to come online. And it is not that they are not ready to go – these allotments are there; they have been there for 10 years, ready to go, shovel-ready. So we need these allotments to be able to make sure that for the rest of the time our community will be safe.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (18:17): I am pleased to speak today and contribute to the debate on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025. Just having a good read through the bill, there has been a whole lot of hard work done by the Minister for Energy and Resources, who is at the table, and her team to bring this together. It is a very complicated part of our legislative framework when it comes to mining and holding mining companies to account, particularly as we transition away from coalmining and coal powering our state. It is an important evolution in our regulatory framework for the management, closure and rehabilitation of those declared mines, which we will speak to and which the member for Morwell spoke to quite passionately just then, and I recognise his work around this.

Mining is vital to our economy. I note the announcement last week of the exploration around Sunday Creek and the expansion there, with up to 7000 jobs in that one project alone in the coming decades involved in the exploration that they will be doing. While Sunday Creek is not necessarily part of this bill, I think the principles in this bill and what it goes to are particularly important as we see the shift in the economy of mining in this state. This state has been built on mining; we are standing and sitting in a place that was built by mining, and it is particularly important to acknowledge that mining is a significant part of the jobs in our community.

We know the critical minerals that have been spoken about. We used to call them rare earth minerals until, I do not know, we decided they were a little bit more rare and more critical, so we renamed them recently, especially out of the deal with the United States. We are seeing a transition in the type of mining that we will see across our landscape. I would like to recognise those workers and their unions who are working in this space as it evolves. There are some particularly interesting methods that are coming out of this that we need to make sure that we are meeting those future demands. We are also looking to that transition away from coal-fired power and at how we make sure that the environment ‍– not only the physical environment but the social environment as well, and I will turn to that in just a moment – is left in a good state, because mining in this state has been about people. The immense impact of the gold rush on this state is evident not only in this building but also throughout the structures and systems that we have here in Victoria. It caused a huge demographic shift in our population, so mining is critical to the story of Victoria.

But we have seen and we have learned over those different phases of mining. Whether it be the goldmining in the 1850s – we are now seeing some of the consequences of that in the Central Highlands and places like that around groundwater management issues; whether it is coal mining, which we are now seeing transitioned out in the Latrobe Valley; or whether it is this transition to mining different minerals in our environment, we are seeing a change, and it is good. We need to make sure that our regulatory framework meets those changes as we go, because in the end it is also about the place – that is something I will speak to in just a moment – but also the people and having safeguards. The community expects, especially in this modern era, when someone does take those resources from the ground – the land and underneath the land that belongs to every Victorian – that we make sure that not only are those companies paying their fair share in royalties towards the development of our state but also that they are held accountable for how they leave that place.

I note that in the Latrobe Valley Labor has made significant investments not only in the technical transition from coal but also in the social transition away from what was a huge industry in this area. We have seen in places like Morwell those new services that have gone down there, those new agencies and opportunities to help transition people from mining to other forms of manufacturing and even into professional work.

This bill introduces a trailing liabilities regime for declared mine licensees and makes a range of technical amendments, which I know the Minister for Energy and Resources will be much better at explaining than I. It is very, very important to acknowledge that a lot of this is about that transition from coal-fired energy. It could not have happened if it was not for this government taking those steps towards transitioning away from brown coal and other forms of fossil fuels. Declared mines such as the three large Latrobe Valley coalmines at Hazelwood, Yallourn and Loy Yang – and we heard a potted history of Yallourn just before from the member for that place in the north-east which I always forget –

A member interjected.

John LISTER: No, that is okay. I will remember soon. Matthew Guy – sorry, I did not say that, Acting Speaker.

Iwan Walters interjected.

John LISTER: Bulleen, thank you. Look, I am new to this. I am still trying to remember what everyone’s official names are. We got that potted history of Yallourn, which I did appreciate listening to. These sites have long been recognised as needing to have enhanced regulatory oversight due to those geotechnical and hydrological risks the member for Morwell mentioned before – I remember the landslip on the Princes Highway those years ago – and how those risks can impact public safety, environmental values and critical infrastructure.

The important thing, and something that we have all recognised, is that as we are transitioning away from coal and as we start to see these mines, whatever form of mining they are, shut down, we need to make sure that we do not see those liabilities for rehabilitating that place disappear with changes to corporate structure or ownership, which happens in this capitalist system of ours. We have seen examples from around the world – I again note the contribution from the member for Bulleen – particularly in Papua New Guinea, which is a topic close to my heart, and how those corporate shifts have meant that a lot of the liability for repairing those damaged landscapes has become a burden for the state rather than for the people who caused the damage in the first place. We have a longstanding position that mine rehabilitation remains the responsibility of the licence-holder.

The rehabilitation bonds, the work plans and progressive rehabilitation requirements will continue to operate as they do today. This liabilities provision simply provides additional safeguards that ensure rehabilitation responsibilities cannot be evaded as mines move through ownership changes, as I mentioned, or into closure. Communities across Victoria expect that as we transition, as I mentioned before, to different forms of mining these major industrial sites will be rehabilitated in a way that leaves land safe, stable and suitable for future use. They also expect that long-term liabilities will not fall to taxpayers.

In the end, we are giving these companies the privilege of using our resources. Obviously there are economic and social benefits to this, but at the same time, they are profiting off it, and we need to ensure that these companies are held to account. Effective rehabilitation contributes to environmental protection, public safety and confidence in future land use planning. We have seen some really positive examples across the state – I did a little bit of digging into this earlier. Works at places like Fosterville, Splitters Creek and the Davis Pit demonstrate what can be achieved when obligations are defined and robustly regulated. It was quite heartening to see when I was looking into the companies behind these particular sites that they have really strong rehabilitation plans; connections with First Nations communities as well around what the land should look like after that mining operation but also trying to look back to what that land was like and make sure that that is a consideration, which is particularly important; but to also look at how that rehabilitation can support local employment and future employment, particularly through the types of engineering required in those mine closures is particularly an interesting field to be in. That consultation has been undertaken around the development of this liabilities framework, including the engagement with licensees, community groups and environmental organisations. We will have further consultation as regulations and guidelines are developed. It strengthens our preparedness for the orderly and responsible closure of major mines now approaching their end of operational life. It aligns Victoria with best practice approaches at our Commonwealth level and other jurisdictions, and I commend this bill to the house.

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (18:27): It is with pleasure that I rise to speak on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025 and some financial assurance bits thrown in there in a somewhat lengthy title. I am rising to speak on this because I am quite invested in the resource sector historically and understand the need for mining. Mining has copped a bad whack over the years, but everything we rely on comes out of the ground. Our phones, our refrigerators, our light bulbs – you pick it, it is drilled out, dug out or grown. Everything comes out of the ground, and I think mining gets a bad rap for that. Coal has served us very well over the years. But as we know, moving away from coal and big fossil fuel means that the mines are closing down and they have to be rehabilitated appropriately. I think that it is perfectly appropriate, as with other mines in Victoria and Australia, that when they close down that appropriate rehabilitation does take place. I know there tends to often be controversy about what should happen, and different interest groups have different opinions about whether this should happen or that should happen. We have a bill before us that the government claim relates specifically to the three Latrobe Valley mines – ENGIE’s Hazelwood mine, EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn mine and AGL’s Loy Yang mine – but there are parts of the bill that suggest that this legislation could be used elsewhere. The government say that is not the case, but it is something that does bother me a little bit.

One of the purposes of this bill is to introduce a trailing liability scheme relating to the rehab of the declared mine. This scheme is actually quite interesting in what it means. Owners do have the responsibility as they close a mine to rehabilitate it appropriately and in line with community expectations. The provisions here will not change the existing rehabilitation obligations of the declared mine licences – because this is not something new, this is something that has been in place already – but what it will enable is the minister to call back a party via a remedial direction to carry out or pay the costs of rehabilitation and post-closure work where the minister is satisfied it is appropriate to do so. And this is where it gets a little bit murky, because how far can you go back? Often companies change ownership and those structures of ownership change. One company may no longer be in existence, and the government might be looking at that, but they might have changed the entity. Some of the global players that are in these markets, particularly Spanish companies, for example, have had some investment over here.

If they change, if they sell to a German company, at what point do you try and call back? How many years later do you try and call back? I am a little bit fuzzy around that. I think that that is possibly a risk in this situation. The opposition, though, is not opposing this bill. I do note that with the trailing liability provisions, the government, who have owned the mines that we are talking about at different points, have exempted themselves from that. They can be an irresponsible mine manager, but subsequent private sectors apparently cannot. I do not think that is quite apples and apples, but it does, I guess, take away the liability and the financial risk to the state.

Victoria, as we know, is home to more resources than we perhaps ever think about. In my area we have a couple of goldmines that have been around for a considerable time. We have got the Woods Point goldmine, Morning Star, which opens, closes, opens, closes. There is history there from the 1800s – the 1860s – when there was a gold rush. We have the A1 mine, just between Jamieson and Woods Point, and that halted production in September this year. Also I understand that the township of Reefton, which is way out the back of Warburton and sits now surrounded by national parks, was named because there is a big gold reef running through that national park. Russell from the Millgrove Residents Action Group tells me he has all of the plans that we need to know about this, and before he leaves this place he is going to drop them to my office. I do not know whether I will still be here at the time that he does that or not, but we do have strong deposits.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the rare earths, titanium and zirconium in particular, and rare earths are much more in the west of the state. This mineral production comes from the mineral sands, and they are used in things like fibre optics, pharmaceuticals and sporting goods. What sporting goods would be relying on titanium? Well, that would be my golf clubs and perhaps some tennis racquets – and also aircraft engines. In the middle we have got arsenic and antimony. Antimony is in batteries, fire retardant, cable sheathing, ammunition and paints – things that are pretty well part of our everyday life. Arsenic is in pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, semiconductors and glassmaking. Mining is so important to us, but as the mining finishes it is appropriate that the areas are rehabilitated particularly.

Prior to being elected I did quite a lot of work in the mining sector and was in mines up in north-east Arnhem Land at Nhulunbuy, Gove, with the bauxite mine. At the time I think it was Comalco, and it was a bauxite mine doing aluminium. I did some work in Tanami in the goldmine, in the middle of the Northern Territory, and a lot of work over in the west with those working in the iron ore sector. But I did see up at Nhulunbuy they would take off a few metres – they would mine a few metres of bauxite – and then they would rehabilitate it and plant trees, and then they would move on and do the next bit and the next bit, and there was quite a lot. It is quite interesting how things turn, because I did that work quite a number of years ago now, and then it was maybe 18 months, two years ago that my daughter went up there because Rio Tinto now own the mine and are moving out of mining in that town. It is a very vibrant Aboriginal community, and they have to work out how the town will survive, because they have had royalties from that mine. My daughter was involved in doing some of the strategic planning with the community about what that might look like going forward.

As we have got the closure of the mines in Gippsland, I just want to talk about how much thought must be given to the mining areas and the surrounds. I want to alert the house, because a lot of the newer members – I am looking around – were not here when there was a big barramundi release down at the Hazelwood Pondage. In April 2016 there were some 7000 barramundi that were released for $150,000. The state government stocked the tropical fish – they are normally a warm-water fish – thinking that this was going to drive tourism down there and be a great hotspot for people from around the country because the water was heated.

It was officially opened in December 2016, four months before the power station closed, and there was a ballot to see who could get in there. It was interesting to see what happened, because as the fishing continued, the hardworking minds of government were trying to predict how they would react when the generator was switched off, and they were not really sure what was going to happen. It was not good for the barramundi. They had a person stationed there to monitor for dead fish. There were growing concerns that the water temperature would drop, which is what happened. Hazelwood shut its doors, and the main supply of hot water actually was no longer there, and it ran cold. They were then also worried about any contamination into the fish at the time, so the locals were asked to eat less barramundi as a result.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Cindy McLEISH: This is very serious, what your government did with the pondage around the Hazelwood mine. The food source was dying out, and then they had to stun them and move them and had to then think, ‘What are we going to do now?’ They replaced it with trout, and could you believe what happened? The rainbow trout were introduced and suffered a similar fate. Fishing was opened again, after a bit of a hiatus, in January 2018. We had a few years of experimentation where they were not really sure of what the outcomes were going to be. So my words of advice to anybody who is undertaking mine rehabilitation are: make sure you do it well and you do all of the thinking beforehand rather than trying to do it on the fly.

 Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (18:37): That got to a weird place at the end, didn’t it? Save the barramundi. It does give me pleasure to rise this evening to make a contribution in this debate in favour of the legislation before the house currently. Declared mines are some of the most complex and risky things that we have to be able to rehabilitate, and they represent and present a significant challenge, one that government takes incredibly seriously, particularly when it comes to ensuring that they will be rehabilitated in full and without risk to the Victorian taxpayer. The Victorian economy, really since the industrial revolution in Australia, has been built on mining and the burning of that resource to create energy. The Victorian economy has been fundamentally built on that, because the energy created from what we have mined, traditionally out in the Latrobe Valley – although I do not discount there have been some other smaller mines around Victoria – has powered industry, has powered homes and has powered the agricultural industry and the manufacturing industry, principally two of Victoria’s largest exports. Traditionally it is what our gross state product was built on until more recent years.

But with that opportunity and what that has done for Victorians, but also particularly in more recent decades with the money and profit that has been generated for private companies, comes a responsibility. It comes with a responsibility that once that mine has closed and once the money has been made – and I do note that there are closure dates for several of those coalmines in the Latrobe Valley as we move away from coal-fired power as our principal source of electricity – there comes a responsibility to the Victorian community and particularly the local community to rehabilitate these mines to make sure that they are environmentally safe and that they are not going to create an environmental hazard, but also to make sure that they can be, as much as possible, utilised for community use.

These mines are massive. They take up an enormous amount of space, so we are making sure that they can also be used for community use into the future. The member for Morwell made a contribution about housing needs down there in the Latrobe Valley. We are making sure that in the future these mines are rehabilitated so they do not cause a risk or pose a danger, but also so things like housing and community assets can be built around them.

There are several examples of successfully rehabilitated mines here in Victoria, which I will go to at some point in the contribution, but we also have several examples around Australia of what happens when these mines are not rehabilitated properly. Unfortunately there are some 80,000 inactive mine sites around Australia that pose a risk to community and that have not been rehabilitated. Do not get me wrong, some of these sites were being utilised for mining some time ago before governments were really turning their minds to legislation such as this to make sure that environmental hazards are not created. But there are some 80,000 inactive mines across Australia that potentially pose a risk to community. We obviously in Victoria need to make sure that we are pulling every lever available to us to make sure that these mines, which have contributed successfully to Victoria and the Victorian economy over a number of years, are rehabilitated properly.

Of these 80,000 inactive mines, there are some that come to mind. One is in Queensland, the Mount Mulligan disaster, where there was a large explosion down a mine in the 1920s. The mine was reopened after that, but once it was inevitably closed, no rehabilitation work was done. It still sits there inactive, posing a risk to community, and we need to make sure in modern times that as a government we are far better than that and we are making sure that we are holding these companies accountable once they leave these communities.

There is also the question, which I know this legislation does not necessarily deal with but which speakers before me have spoken about, of the emerging critical mineral industry here in Victoria. Firstly, the opportunity that this presents to Victoria is enormous. It is really the first time since the gold rush that Victoria has had the opportunity to be front and centre in a resource boom. We have some of the largest deposits of some of these critical minerals anywhere in the world – a couple of them are the largest deposits anywhere outside of China. The recent agreement between the federal government and the United States I think is a fantastic step forward in that. I do note that the Donald project has been given major project status, which is amazing as well. The potential of this industry obviously could have economic benefits for Victoria through royalties and different things of that nature, but also there is the skills development that comes with it. We are incredibly well placed as a state to be front and centre in this industry. We have four ports and have a long manufacturing history, so there is an opportunity not just in the mining sector but also in the downstream processing and manufacturing jobs and the development of those skills. I do not know if you can hear it in my voice ‍– I am pretty tired – but I am actually quite excited by the possibility and the prospects that this industry has here in Victoria. Like I said, I think it is the first time since the gold rush that we have had the opportunity to be front and centre in a resource boom. We have been a net exporter of gas over a period of time. I think that given what we are seeing is changing and has changed, to be front and centre in this critical minerals resource industry is incredibly, incredibly exciting.

Like I said, mining has a long, long history here in Victoria. We can go all the way back to the gold rush where the demographics of Victoria fundamentally changed for the better. We can talk about coalmining in particular but also gas exploration, but coal mining in particular in decades and decades gone past. We were not an exporter of coal, I think as the member for Bulleen said. It is brown coal in Victoria. The water content in brown coal is far too high to export. But that has formed the backbone of not the industrial revolution but of successful industry here in Victoria for some time. We know that we are moving away from coal as an energy source. We have some of the highest renewable energy targets anywhere in the world – 95 per cent by 2035. But you cannot stand here and discount what coal as an energy source has done here in Victoria but also all around Australia.

But I will repeat, there is a fundamental responsibility for the private companies that are now operating those mines and those power plants to do the right thing by the community when they leave. They have made enormous profits out of this industry, and making sure that communities around those mines are safe but also that those very large areas can be turned into community assets is fundamentally important. I commend this bill to the house.

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (18:47): I also rise to speak on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025. The Greens will of course be supporting this bill, which will introduce a trailing liability scheme for Victoria’s three declared mines, namely the three coalmines in the Latrobe Valley – the Hazelwood mine, EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn mine and AGL’s Loy Yang mine.

This bill creates a failsafe against those fossil fuel giants skirting their obligations to clean up those sites simply by selling them off to some other company. Trailing liability schemes mean the minister has the power to call back relevant parties, like previous licence-holders or body corporates, to cover the costs of rehabilitation. That sends a good message to these multibillion-dollar mining companies that if you are going to rip up the earth to mine something, at the very least you need to be able to afford to clean it up at the end.

As outlined by the minister, the model is similar to the Commonwealth’s provisions for decommissioning offshore infrastructure. But let us remember that was only put in place after the Northern Endeavour debacle where a billion-dollar mining company sold off ageing, rust-riddled oil vessels anchored in the Timor Sea to a newly formed company and coincidentally that new company could not pay for the clean-up, leaving everyday Australian taxpayers to pay for their clean-up costs – just another example of big fossil fuel companies leaving all of us to pay to clean up their mess. Whether it comes to climate change or whether it comes to decommissioning, it seems like a pretty common story.

Here in Victoria we have more than 400 old leaky wells in Bass Strait alone and more than 23,000 ‍kilometres of rusty pipelines all across the state, and we are certainly not immune to corporate greed or to poor regulation. The Greens will be supporting this bill because it does go some way to reducing the risk to all of us, and it is very welcome if overdue action.

We also think, though, that the Victorian government should expand the trailing liability scheme to all mining operations within the state rather than just the declared mines. By their nature declared mines present the greatest rehabilitation risks. Under Victorian law a declared mine is a mine that has geotechnical, hydrogeological water quality or hydrological factors that may be deemed to pose significant risk of harm to the community, environment and infrastructure. But we have a Labor government here that is still committed to new offshore oil and gas projects and with several critical minerals projects in the works as well. Particularly now with this new supposed deal with the US and Donald Trump, we need to make sure that companies pay to fix up whatever damage they cause, whether they are at a declared mine site or not.

Victorians should not have to cop the cost of cleaning up after giant fossil fuel corporations after they are done digging up our land or drilling in our oceans. Around one in four wells experience integrity issues, so if we have got 400 wells in Bass Strait we can expect around 100 of those wells to leak or fail entirely over the course of their lifetimes. That is a pretty scary thought, a hundred wells leaking into our oceans. That might be Beach Energy. What happens if they decide to cut and run on the Twelve Apostles drilling site which Labor has allowed to be drilled right next to one of our most iconic sites, next to a marine national park? We are already in a climate crisis because of the insatiable greed of fossil fuel giants and the governments, Labor and Liberal, who give them special treatment and let them get away with not only destroying our climate but not cleaning up after themselves. Taxpayers should not have to foot the clean-up bill too.

We cannot, unfortunately, rely on the Commonwealth government to do anything to help Victoria. Just this year we learned that Australians could be forking out $500 million to clean up Chevron’s oil wells in Western Australia, and that is because of a truly idiotic deal that the Australian government made in the 1980s, which refunds about half of what the multibillion-dollar American fossil fuel giant paid in royalties to help it clean up the oil wells on Barrow Island – just mind-blowing. The Albanese Labor government also just approved the North West Shelf expansion in WA despite the damage it will do not just to our climate and environment but to the sacred Murujuga rock art, the oldest rock art in the world; the damage it will do to our precious sea life on Scott Reef; and the 88 million tonnes of CO₂ it will spew out every year until 2070, destroying our kids’ future. We are already in a climate crisis because the Labor and Liberal parties give special treatment to fossil fuel giants and their insatiable need to profit. Taxpayers should not have to foot the clean-up bill too.

Victoria needs to lead the way and make all fossil fuel companies clean up after themselves, and we need to fight to make the big polluters pay. The Greens will be introducing amendments in the upper house to extend this trailing liability scheme to all mining licences, because why should any mining company be able to get away with not cleaning up their mess, selling on their liabilities to another company that goes bust and then making taxpayers pay to clean it up? It is I think a commonsense change and one that we hope all parties will support, something that is good for the government, for the taxpayer and for the environment. It is also worth noting that the Commonwealth model for trailing liabilities is new and is yet to be tested, and it may become difficult to implement when companies are based offshore and no longer operating in Australia. That is not to say that a state scheme is not necessary, just to recognise that trailing liabilities are not necessarily a silver bullet.

That is why the Greens initiated the inquiry into decommissioning oil and gas infrastructure, which will start soon in Victoria, because we need an expansive, robust rehabilitation bond scheme, which Victoria has for onshore pipelines but not for offshore infrastructure. We also need to ensure that offshore infrastructure especially is being removed entirely, cleaned up and recycled on land in environmentally safe locations. We cannot just have companies hold onto their wells in perpetuity, pretend they are going to use them perhaps to capture carbon emissions – that old furphy that never seems to stack up – or just break off the top half of their rigs, call it a day and leave everything else in the ocean. We need genuine transparency with all of these decommissioning works, and right now it is incredibly hard to figure out just what kinds of projects we have in Victoria’s lands and oceans, let alone who owns them, what rules apply to them and what kind of state they are in. The sector is incredibly opaque, almost as if it was designed not to be understood by the average person.

Yet governments cannot trust fossil fuel giants to keep themselves in check. Just last year we saw not one but two spills from offshore rigs owned by ExxonMobil in Gippsland. We even saw Woodside flub its decommissioning of a gas well and pipeline this year, releasing 200 kilograms of hard plastic waste into the ocean off Port Campbell in western Victoria. Woodside only reported that accident to the national regulator weeks later. It took volunteer beach cleaners finding chunks of plastic on Logans Beach for Victorians to know that something had gone wrong with the decommissioning of that project.

Victorians should not have had to find bits of pipeline on their beach to learn that Woodside was in the middle of decommissioning a site and was doing a really bad job of it. Proper transparency in the sector would mean working with the federal government to develop a public register of all oil and gas infrastructure, one that is simple, updated regularly and shows Victorians exactly what kind of mining operations are being done and who owns them.

Victoria also needs a plan to retire our ageing, leaky gas distribution system. We all know we need to get off expensive, dangerous fossil gas as an urgent priority, but right now the government has no plan to retire the network of 23,000 kilometres of rusty pipeline all across the state. It is bad for communities, and it is bad for the environment, because we know big fossil fuel companies only care about the bottom line. This year Solstice Energy announced that they will permanently cut gas supply to 10 regional Victorian towns by the end of 2026. That left the government scrambling and left customers in Robinvale, Marong, Maldon and Kerang in the lurch. Victorians need confidence that when it comes to the clean-up of old mines and infrastructure the costs will be borne by the multimillion-dollar coal and gas giants which have profited from these projects and that they will clean them up properly, because mining companies will always put profits above nature, above climate, above health and above the community. That is just by their nature. You cannot open new fossil fuel mines in 2025 and still pretend to care about nature, the climate or the community. That means that if these big fossil fuel giants could find a way to pay less for clean-up costs, my word they would.

We hope that the government will support our amendments to this bill and whatever solutions we get from the Greens inquiry into gas decommissioning. We also know that gas decommissioning will create a lot of jobs. The Maritime Union of Australia was out here just last week talking about just that and how they support more investment in gas decommissioning.

Finally, the Greens are calling for a polluter-pays mechanism to fund permanent climate adaptation in Victoria, because the damage that coal and gas companies do to this incredible world does not stop at the immediate environment. The climate crisis is being caused by fossil fuel giants and corporations. It is only fair that those same companies pay for the solutions that communities need to adapt to the climate crisis, whether that is energy-efficient homes, droughtproofing on farms or cleaning up the incredible cost of the natural disasters – the floods, the fires, the storms – that we are all experiencing and will experience more into the future due to the burning of fossil fuels. In short, we need to ensure coal and gas giants pay to clean up their mess. This is a small step in the right direction, and I hope we go further.

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (18:58): I rise for a very short contribution, by the looks of it, today on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the Minister for Energy and Resources, who is at the table, and her office for their great work and thank them for the fantastic work on this bill. The Allan Labor government is phasing out the use of fossil fuels, with our great state well on the way to meet our ambitious legislated target of net zero by 2045. The point that I really wanted to make was that this bill will help protect Victorian taxpayers from a worst-case scenario where a declared mine licensee fails to or is unable to meet its rehabilitation obligations. The new provisions will reduce the likelihood that rehabilitation costs are passed on to Victorians and provide the government with a new tool to require those who derive greatest financial benefit from mining projects to be responsible for remediating the rehabilitation risks and liabilities caused by those projects.

This bill amends the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990 to introduce a trailing liability scheme in relation to the three declared mines, which are the coalmines in the Latrobe Valley ‍– namely, ENGIE’s Hazelwood mine, which closed in 2017; EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn mine, which is scheduled to close in 2028; and AGL’s Loy Yang mine. In addition, it will make technical changes to the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment Act 2023. I want to commend the member for Morwell’s contribution on the rehabilitation of the mines in his electorate, which are the three mines I just referred to, which will obviously make a better outcome for his constituents.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.