Thursday, 30 July 2026

 Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (17:19): (1754) I wish to raise a matter for the Minister for Energy and Resources. I acknowledge the former minister for energy Lily D’Ambrosio, who today announced her retirement from the ministry and Parliament. I wish her well and thank her for her strong advocacy and implementation of policies to support working people with energy bills, and also for all of us, because she took strong action on climate change. I am also going to miss her as my neighbour, as our electorates are side by side.

The action I seek is that the minister commence a full investigation into the power distributor AusNet regarding its policies and customer service systems and the speed with which it responds to customers it has failed. There was a power outage affecting 100 homes in Thomastown two weekends ago. The outage left homes without power for almost 24 hours and caused extensive damage to residents’ power boards, appliances and heating units. The outage occurred because a pole-mounted transformer on the street blew up, causing a massive surge of power that homes could not cope with. I was told by one resident that the charge measured by an electrician in their house was over 400 volts, when the standard to the home is 230 volts. I have also been doorknocking and talking with many people. Some are elderly on the aged pension, and some are young families with mortgages. They cannot afford to have long delays to be reimbursed for the cost of replacing items – up to thousands of dollars in some cases. Similarly, they cannot afford to get less than the full replacement cost for items like heaters. A heater is essential in winter. It might be old, but it still works. They are offering $200 for a central heating system that has been destroyed, when a replacement one is thousands of dollars or more. This is just not good enough.