Tuesday, 15 August 2023

Adjournment

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister for Environment) (16:03): I move:

That the house do now adjourn.

Electricity infrastructure

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (16:03): (376) I asked the Minister for Energy and Resources a constituency question in June about the proposed VNI West project, which was the subject of a protest out the front today. I asked the minister if she would come and meet with the locals on the ground and hear their concerns. The response I received was like something out of Utopia or Yes Minister. In relation to the Victorian transmission investment framework that was released, she said that it would provide:

Place-based approaches to engagement and benefits for impacted Traditional Owners, local communities, and landowners. The focus is on collaborative, long-term approaches to build thriving communities delivered in a defined geographical location.

Is that like some sort of joke? Collaboration? Long-term approaches? Thriving communities? That does not describe the Victorian government’s approach to this at all. But I guess that is the same approach that has been taken for the Western Renewables Link, and many communities that were out the front today have experienced that as well.

It was actually so bad that the Labor member for Ripon Martha Haylett was quoted on 20 June this year in the Ballarat Courier as saying that the Australian Energy Market Operator and AusNet:

… had failed to “bring communities along for the journey” and did not represent “what the Labor movement is all about”.

The member for Ripon then went on to say:

Transmission line projects need a social licence to be delivered …

I am here to tell you that it simply does not have one in my community.

She then added:

I have sat in the homes of so many people who have cried as they’ve told me about how they fear losing their family homes and livelihoods …

So the action that I seek from the minister is this: provide a guarantee to local communities along the route of the VNI West that you will not treat them the same as you did the communities you engaged with for the Western Renewables Link. I urge the minister to have genuine conversations instead of sending her Melbourne-based bureaucrats out to have these consultations done. It is just not good enough. And my offer still stands to the minister too: I will come with you and meet with the communities. I have met with them already. I welcome you to come out to communities like St Arnaud, Marnoo and many along the line of the VNI West all the way from Bulgana, because they have been greatly impacted, and they have hated the way that they have been treated by this government. I would love for the minister to actually show genuine concern and listen.