Tuesday, 30 August 2022

Transmission easement tax

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (20:26): (2094) My adjournment matter is for the Treasurer. In 2005 the government introduced the high-voltage transmission line easement tax. This is a tax that all Victorians pay, but most do not know that it exists. Victoria’s taxation system is a case of death by 1000 cuts—1000 small taxes. This tax costs each Victorian about $30 a year, and it is paid as part of your electricity bill. The tax was introduced to subsidise the Alcoa aluminium smelter in Portland. The goal was to take money away from working people and to give it to a corporation. The subsidy provided to Alcoa has decreased, but the tax has increased. As the saying goes, nothing is more permanent than a temporary tax. Both Liberal and Labor governments have maintained the tax, and though the tax is paid by electricity consumers, it is charged against AusNet Services based on easements for their transmission lines. Essentially the government will forcibly acquire an easement on farmland and then charge the public a tax for using the government’s new easement. That is where the recent AusNet towers issue comes in. AusNet is trying to get a new set of easements to build overhead high-voltage transmission lines on farmland to bring renewable energy to Melbourne. Again, the regions suffer for the benefit of Melbourne—Melburnians and their clean energy fever dreams. The communities are fiercely opposed to the plan, so AusNet will likely resort to colluding with government to forcibly acquire the easements.

Regardless of how this issue is resolved, we are left with the issue of the transmission easement tax. The tax should be scrapped. I would prefer to see Victoria free of all these petty taxes and nonsense levies. It is my belief we should not be forcing people to support corporations through tax subsidy schemes and we should not let governments entrench temporary levies into permanent taxes. However, the other option would be to use this tax to compensate farmers for the use of their land. Easements are an ongoing frustration for landholders, and it makes sense that electricity consumers would compensate landholders for the use of their land. And the problem about where to put the easement lines might just disappear if the farmers were getting fair compensation. I call on the minister to either scrap the transmission easement tax or pay it out as ongoing compensation for those whose property rights have been forcibly acquired to create these transmission easements.