Wednesday, 2 August 2023

Energy policy

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:07): (352) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy and Resources and concerns the recently announced ban on gas connections to new homes and government buildings due to start next year. I have a huge number of questions on this, so in no particular order, here we go.

How will the ban reduce emissions when the majority of electricity is still generated by burning Victorian brown coal? Using electricity in Victoria is currently five times more carbon intensive than using gas in our homes. Now, you need to listen to this, you Greens over there. Reducing energy supply options will increase prices. How will those on low incomes – these are your people – cope with higher prices? Were the economics surrounding the claim it will bring lower prices produced by the same consultants who costed the Commonwealth Games fiasco? I bet they were. Residential electricity in Victoria is currently more than two times as expensive as gas on a per unit of energy basis. Do you get that? Why are we happy to export natural gas for others to use but deny it to ourselves? Talk about punishing our own people. Finally – and the main focus of my request this evening – what will be the impact on commercial and industrial gas users? If you give them an inch, they will take a mile, these people.

Despite the fraction of overall Victorian CO₂ emissions arising from domestic gas heating, the government has seen fit to ban it. What does this say to our businesses, I ask you, to manufacturing and to agriculture, which rely for essential processes on gas and simply cannot begin to viably replace it with electrical energy? I know you do not like milk, you people over there – oh, no, Georgie is not here – but we need the gas to process the milk powder, team. If you want more houses, we need the gas to kiln-dry the timber – even the farmed timber, not even old-growth forest. How long until a further expansion is banned? First, I am sure it will be new connections for industrial and commercial users – they will be stopped – and how long after that will the replacement be curtailed? Then an ultimate moratorium; these people love moratoriums. It might seem fanciful, but I can tell you it is not to businesses who are considering investing considerable capital. They need absolute guarantees. So, Minister, the action I seek is an absolute guarantee that you will not at any stage in the future ban the industrial and commercial use of gas. Nothing else will so quickly stop investment drying up and Victoria becoming an agricultural and manufacturing wilderness.