Tuesday, 30 May 2023

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (12:41): (159) My question is to the Minister for Environment. The Victorian Labor Party in government has long understood that waste to energy plays an important role in reducing the environmental waste and damage of landfill. Your department describes it as ‘the final opportunity to get value from material that would otherwise go to landfill’ and your landmark Victorian Waste to Energy Framework is subtitled ‘Supporting sustainable and appropriate investment’. Yet investors are put off by the continuing wait for details on licence regulation from Recycling Victoria. Minister, given the arrival of your new Greens colleagues in this chamber, is it the government’s policy to still support energy from waste?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister for Environment) (12:41): I thank Mrs McArthur for her question. As outlined in the Recycling Victoria policy and the waste-to-energy framework, our government is indeed supporting investment in appropriate waste-to-energy facilities where they specifically reduce landfill, they meet best practice environmental procedures, which is incredibly important, and they support waste avoidance and recycling.

Our government has already invested $13 million in waste-to-energy infrastructure projects since 2016. I think that fact does not really accord with the assertion contained in your question. Ten million dollars of this is via our waste-to-energy bioenergy fund, which will fund projects to create electricity, heat, gas or liquid fuel from organic waste and avoid waste otherwise going to landfill. We have awarded $737,000 to four projects via our Bioenergy Infrastructure Fund, which is all about making sure that we are reprocessing organic waste, and $2.38 million to five projects via our Waste to Energy Infrastructure Fund.

I think those figures demonstrate our government’s commitment to this area. We want to make sure that waste to energy is done in an environmentally sustainable and responsible way. That is why we have committed to regulations being developed, and we will have more to say about those regulations in due course.

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (12:44): Thank you, Minister, for that glowing endorsement of waste to energy. I hope the Greens were listening given their absolute opposition to energy from waste. Investors in Victoria – and gosh, there still are some apparently – are getting nervous. In my electorate the Prospect Hill project at Lara, designed to remove over 400,000 tonnes of landfill waste per year, generate power for over 50,000 homes and create hundreds of construction jobs and a minimum $600 million investment to Victoria, is still in limbo. Why has it taken more than two years for your EPA to grant a works approval application for that facility?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister for Environment) (12:44): I thank Mrs McArthur for her supplementary question. Of course the framework associated with these projects does place a 1 million tonne cap on waste-to-energy amounts that can be treated, because we want to make sure that in introducing this relatively new technology we are not compromising our environment and our air quality. That is why there is an appropriate framework in place to ensure that these projects have got the highest environmental standards. I make no apology for the EPA, as the responsible agency, taking the time that is needed to assess these applications responsibly. As I have already indicated, this forms part of our overarching waste strategy, which is investing more than $500 million to transform our waste and recycling industry in Victoria.