Thursday, 2 May 2019

Western Victoria Region

In reply to Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (21 March 2019)

Ms D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park—Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Minister for Solar Homes):

Ensuring the safety of Victorians is our highest priority.

I recently visited Mortlake to meet with community members and discuss their concerns about the safety of power poles in South-West Victoria. I have assured the community that I will continue to look into these matters as a priority.

I have met with Powercor, the distributor that operates throughout western Victoria, and with Energy Safe Victoria (ESV), the state’s energy safety regulator, regularly to ascertain the extent of any potential issue and will seek rectifying actions in order to protect the community.

In January and February 2019, Powercor inspected almost 20,000 power poles in the area. From these inspections, Powercor has concluded that the electricity network in this area is in safe working condition.

ESV is undertaking its own program of work to verify Powercor’s results and report on power pole safety across the state. ESV also continues its legal investigation into the Terang and Garvoc fires that occurred in March 2018.

ESV has recently concluded the successful prosecution of Powercor on 51 charges relating to the January 2018 fires in Rochester, Port Campbell and Strathmerton. The details were released on 10 April 2019 and involved charges for 189 powerline clearance breaches and three fires, resulting in a $374,000 fine for Powercor.

Additionally, the Andrews Labor Government commissioned the independent Review of Victoria’s Electricity and Gas Network Safety Framework, also known as the Grimes Review. The Review found that while Victoria has many of the key elements of a leading network safety framework, there are also areas for improvement. The government supported 42 of the Review’s 43 recommendations and is already taking steps to progress these and improve safety for Victorians (by reducing risks such as bushfires ignited by electrical infrastructure).

Over the last 10 years, the Victorian Government has made significant investments in reducing the risk of catastrophic bushfires. This includes improvements to the electrical network by installing electrical safety technologies to improve powerline fault detection on over 30,000 km of high voltage powerlines in hazardous bushfire areas.

I thank the Member for her question.