Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Electricity infrastructure

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:42): (180) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy and Resources and concerns the Australian Energy Market Operator’s, AEMO, report on the Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector West (VNI West) route options. I have always argued that the basic poles and wires regulatory investment test for transmission methodology used in earlier assessments was woefully inadequate. Successive energy ministers have claimed that the environmental and social cost of proposals could always be considered later in the environment effects statement process. This was and is ridiculous. It is completely backwards. It means thought is given to the potentially catastrophic impact only after an economic decision has been made to proceed with the project. This matters particularly given the inherent, if difficult to avoid, unfairness at the heart of the argument. The impact of transmission is felt, sometimes catastrophically, in rural communities, yet the benefits are shared across the state and the country, and the idea that compensation purely of landowners on the route itself is adequate is offensive. No money can ever provide truly sufficient redress, but at an absolute minimum it should be provided to entire affected communities.

I cautiously welcome AEMO’s use in the VNI West document of multicriteria analysis (MCA), which considers each option against broader criteria, including land use, social and cultural environmental impacts, and not just the technical and cost-benefit considerations. It is a small step in the right direction and has caused AEMO to recommend an alignment which connects to the Western Renewables Link at Bulgana, thus removing the need for the new Western Renewables Link terminal station at North Ballarat. This development, however, raises two vital points, which the minister would be shamefully negligent to ignore. Firstly, if the North Ballarat link is no longer required, the entire route must be reassessed. Why should the Western Renewables Link need to route north of Ballarat to Sydenham through prime agricultural land and the residential growth corridor of the Moorabool and Melton shires? This is a vast project with a life span of decades, a cost of billions and a vast environmental and social impact, and this is just the latest of a number of material changes, any single one of which should have required recalculation from the start. Secondly, it is illogically and patently unfair to treat neighbouring communities differently, and the minister’s own order of 20 February earlier this year means it is eminently possible for her to cause the review to happen.

So the action I seek, Minister, is application of an MCA review to the Western Renewables Link in conjunction with a thorough reassessment of the statewide possibilities for renewables generation, including the existing infrastructure linked to the Gippsland renewable zone.