Wednesday, 3 December 2025

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (12:44): I will just resume from yesterday’s contribution. As I explained yesterday, this bill amends the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990 to introduce a trailing liabilities scheme in relation to the rehabilitation of the land of the three declared mines, being Engie’s Hazelwood mine, EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn mine and of course AGL’s Loy Yang mine. It will clarify the operation of rehabilitation plans and declared mine rehabilitation plans. It provides additional mechanisms for the variation of rehabilitation plans and declared mine rehabilitation plans, and it requires notice of any change in control of corporate declared mine licensees.

In addition, it will make technical changes to the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment Act 2023. As Victoria transitions away from dirty, coal-fired energy, it is important that the mining industry remains responsible for the rehabilitation and the closure of the declared mines in the Latrobe Valley. I did make reference to the contribution from the member for Morwell yesterday in regard to what his constituents want to see in regard to the rehabilitation of the mines down in the Morwell area. In this bill we are making it clear what the mining industry is required to do as part of this rehabilitation process, and we are protecting Victorian taxpayers on the off-chance that a mine licensee fails to meet its rehabilitation obligations or is otherwise unable to meet these obligations. We are protecting Victorians so that it is not coming out of their pockets.

The rehabilitation process takes a lot of planning, and it is a dynamic process. It is a process that commences even before mining starts, and it continues over the operational life of the mine and through the final rehabilitation efforts after the closure of the mine. This process primarily involves making the site safe and stable, but it can also include thinking towards the future uses for the site, whether it can be used in some sort of recreational capacity or public capacity once it is rehabilitated.

We know that mines are inherently risky landscapes and that the Latrobe Valley coalmines are especially complex. They are unstable and they are fire prone. They are large voids close to the towns, close to Morwell. You can see them as you are driving down the freeway there. There are waterways involved within that infrastructure. These mines will require fairly extensive rehabilitation due to their exceptionally large and complex nature and the risk they pose to the surrounding landscape, to the community and to the community infrastructure. The example of that is the Hazelwood mine site, being 4000 hectares. It sits, as I said, right along the side of the freeway and very close to the township of Morwell. It is an interesting location, so close to such a township. Of course we all remember the terrible fires down in Hazelwood back in 2014 and how that affected the local communities, causing mass evacuations and road closures, including closing the freeway, or closing the highway, and covering the surrounding area in toxic smoke. It goes without saying that we cannot have an incident like that again, and again, that is what this rehabilitation process is all about.

Progressive rehabilitation involves restoring parts of the mine site during the operations instead of waiting for the mines to close, so rehabilitation can occur while the mine is still active. That approach reduces environmental disruption caused by the mine during its lifetime, and it lessens the load of rehabilitation at the end of the mine’s life. You can progressively rehabilitate even though it can be still operational. That is an important part, I think, and reduces the risk and also the cost at the end and the time delay in rehabilitating. That can be an ongoing, active and progressive process.

Of course it would be pretty naive to talk about the huge process of rehabilitation without talking about money – the cost. People that have profited from operating these mines, the companies themselves, should be the ones to follow through on the rehabilitation efforts, and it should not be left to Victorian taxpayers to pick up the bill. We referred to that earlier in the contribution. Operators must lodge a rehabilitation bond with the government before work begins, and those bonds guarantee that funds will be available for rehabilitation even if the operator defaults. Rehabilitation bonds are returned only when Resources Victoria are satisfied that the rehabilitation meets legal and environmental standards. If the work is on private land, the landholder must be consulted about the completed works.

It is sort of a surety that a bond is paid up-front to account for rehabilitation. Resources Victoria will assess whether the rehabilitation meets the standard before any bonds are returned. Local councils will also be consulted before any bonds are returned, because it is important within the local area that councils may be involved, so they will be consulted to make sure that they are satisfied with the rehabilitation process before that bond is returned.

The process and the consultation, the working with the organisation or the company that runs the mine, the consultation with the local council and with the community about the rehabilitation process is all quite important before any bonds are returned. The model that is introduced in this bill is modelled broadly on the Commonwealth offshore petroleum industry trailing liabilities regime, and that was introduced back in March 2022. The Commonwealth trailing liabilities scheme was introduced in response to a major rehabilitation failure in the offshore petroleum industry in 2015 where Northern Oil & Gas Australia acquired the Laminaria and Corallina oil fields in the Northern Endeavour floating production, storage and offtake facility in offshore Commonwealth waters. NOGA was liquidated in 2020, and the Commonwealth government was left with the substantial cost of decommissioning those operations. As a result, the Commonwealth government introduced a trailing liabilities scheme on the basis of the polluter-pays principle. That is exactly what this bond scheme is in regard to the polluter paying or rehabilitating the site. This is a really important bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (12:52): I am pleased to rise on the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment (Financial Assurance) Bill 2025. This is an issue of considerable interest and concern in my electorate of Gippsland South but particularly to my neighbouring colleague in the seat of Morwell because it predominantly relates to the rehabilitation of the three Latrobe Valley coalmines. While there are potential other aspects to it, this is about the declared mines, and this has been an issue of discussion in the Latrobe Valley for decades, frankly.

I grew up in Traralgon. I had two sisters work at the SEC. I have got family still working in the power industry now, and from the time we were kids we were all talking about what would happen to the mines when they were finished. What is not commonly understood is the stability issue with respect to the mines. People say things like, ‘We could use it for a car rally. We could turn it into a giant garden. We could fill it up with rubbish from Melbourne’ – one of the ones that I personally detest. But none of those things are doable because the mines have a unique geological situation where groundwater presses up from below the mines and from the sides of the mines on what are called the batters, and at the conclusion of mining, if there is not a counterweight put on top of the mine, then there is a very real risk of what they call floor heave in which the bottom would come up through the groundwater pressure, collapsing the sides, or indeed direct pressure from the sides on the batters that would collapse the side of the mine.

As the member for Melton just indicated, and others have spoken about before, these mines are very close. In the case of the Hazelwood mine – or the Morwell mine, as it should be more appropriately referred to – it is right next to the freeway passing through Morwell. As the member for Morwell said yesterday, you can literally throw a rock into the mine from the freeway. In fact if you are on the other side of the freeway, you can throw a rock into houses in Morwell – that is how close it is. As a result, it is important that we get this process right.

I must begin with an apology to the member for Bulleen. When he had the half-hour slot as a new shadow minister responsible in this place for this legislation, I thought, ‘Oh, he will struggle to do enough on this particular technical issue.’

But he proved his Latrobe Valley bona fides with his contribution last night, going into great detail. I knew his family had connections to Newborough in particular, but he did a very good job explaining some of the history.

The issues are important. There is a debate in the valley or in Gippsland more broadly that I do find tiresome sometimes. There are some groups, non-government organisations, that are constantly agitating against the companies that have purchased these mines and the associated power stations and now have the responsibility for rehabilitation of the mines. There is a whole lot of discussion, and I think most of it is driven by green NGOs who just want to attack fossil fuel companies. What they are attacking them on is the use of water and the environmental impacts, and they are all legitimate questions absolutely, but it is frustrating to hear some people criticising the use of pit lakes as a cheap solution by these horrible, nasty fossil fuel companies, when in fact the reality is that there is not much of an alternative. If you wanted to fill these mines with soil, you would be literally moving mountains, and that is not going to be feasible or environmentally feasible either.

But it is an issue that the mines are to be filled with water, because that water has got to come from somewhere, and it does have an impact, or can potentially have an impact, on Gippsland South, because the mines run within the Latrobe River system, with the Morwell River flowing next to Hazelwood and through the Yallourn mine and the Traralgon Creek flowing around the Loy Yang mine and eventually into the Latrobe, therefore having an impact on my area downstream, where I have irrigators – farmers – who are very keen to further develop their properties with water and do not want to see too much water going into a mine.

Indeed an issue that I have been working on for a number of years is the bench 3-4 water. In the 1990s there was water put aside, about 25,000 megalitres, for a potential bench 3-4 as it was known, for an additional Loy Yang power station. Of course that station never went ahead, so that water has been sitting there for some time. I ran a campaign with local farmers to get that water allocated for productive use. The government finally agreed to do that a couple of years ago through the sustainable water strategy, but they decided to share 16 gigalitres of that water and set aside 9 for future industrial use, which I actually think is probably quite a smart decision, with the remaining 16 gigalitres to be shared between the environment, traditional owners and irrigators. The government, for whatever reason, instead of just saying ‘We’ll share it three ways: a third, a third and a third’ – we all would have been a bit cranky, but we all would have got on with it – the government took two years to make a decision on how to share that water, and finally it is now proceeding. But it was a case of the bureaucracy and the red tape that I think hampers this government in particular that meant that decision could not have been made quicker.

I do have a concern. Absolutely the owners of the mines need to be responsible for the rehabilitation. I find some aspects of this legislation troubling: the retrospective nature and the potential for the minister to decide that someone who owned the mine 20 years ago should be called in to make a contribution. That seems strange, particularly in the circumstance where the SEC or the Victorian government is expressly not able to be part of that process. That is, I think, a little silly in that the Victorian people and the Victorian government benefited from the SEC mining those coal pits for decades, literally around 80 years in some cases, and there is potentially, certainly by principle, an argument that the state should make some contribution. That is long gone. The decisions have been made that those who own the mines are responsible for their rehabilitation, and I absolutely agree with that because it needs to be done properly.

I have got a very short amount of time left. I have in fact travelled to Germany, the old East Germany, and looked at some of their lignite mines – lignite being brown coal as well – to see what can be done with rehabilitation. I went to one in particular where there was a beautiful lake, wineries on the banks, housing developments and a marina. I remember a few years ago we did see the Lake Como comparison on the front page of the Herald Sun. But I think it is true that we can do this properly, and I hope that it can be done properly for the people of Latrobe Valley and Gippsland.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.

The SPEAKER: I would like to acknowledge in the gallery the Honourable Jinson Charls, Minister for People, Sport and Culture, Minister for Disability, Minister for Arts, Minister for Youth, Seniors and Equality, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Veterans in the Northern Territory.