Wednesday, 4 October 2023

Committees

Environment and Planning Committee

Reference

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (14:02): I move, by leave, in an amended form:

That this house:

(1) notes that:

(a) the impacts of climate change are intensifying;

(b) the impacts on Victoria include an increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather and climate-related disaster events which will present significant challenges for Victoria’s built environment, including private buildings as well as public infrastructure;

(2) requires the Environment and Planning Committee to inquire into, consider and report, by 30 June 2025, on:

(a) the main risks facing Victoria’s built environment and infrastructure from climate change and the impact these will have on the people of Victoria;

(b) how the Victorian government is preparing for and mitigating the impacts of climate change on our built environment and infrastructure;

(c) the barriers facing Victoria in upgrading infrastructure to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, including barriers in rebuilding or retrofitting infrastructure, including but not limited to issues relating to insurance and barriers faced by local government;

(d) the adequacy of the current Victorian planning system as it relates to its adaptation to, preparation for and mitigation of climate change impacts;

(e) what more could be done to better prepare Victoria’s built environment and infrastructure, and therefore the community, for future climate disaster events; and

(f) whether further inquiries or investigation may be needed into other aspects of climate change adaptation and climate disaster preparedness in Victoria, noting that climate change will have far-reaching impacts on all aspects of Victorian life, including but not limited to biodiversity, human health, primary production, industry, emergency services and more, and that while these areas may overlap with the matters covered in this inquiry, they may also warrant further investigation in their own inquiries.

2023 has been the hottest year in recorded history. We have seen headlines around the world of extreme weather events wreaking havoc on human life, people’s homes and farms, critical infrastructure, communities and livelihoods. The climate crisis is here now. It is our reality. Droughts, fires, floods and storms are becoming increasingly more severe and frequent, and communities are being left to clean up the damage and rebuild if they can, most of them uncertain if their homes, farms, businesses and mental health will survive another damaging climate event.

If you need evidence that being prepared for the future means building resilience for what we know is coming and not making our future problems worse, then you have it in abundance. Here is a recap of what we have seen in 2023 alone. In February New Zealand, Vanuatu and parts of Australia were hit by Cyclone Gabrielle. The cyclone was the worst storm to hit New Zealand in a century, and following weeks of flooding it displaced an estimated 10,000 people and affected one-third of the country’s 5 million. The New Zealand government estimates it has cost $14.5 billion, the country’s costliest disaster since the Canterbury earthquakes. Also in February and March Tropical Cyclone Freddy, one of the longest lasting cyclones in human history, travelled the entire Indian Ocean, devastating southern Africa. At the end of March a deadly storm tore through America and the mid-Atlantic, bringing with it tornadoes that left at least 32 people dead. July also marked a new milestone. It was the hottest month that has ever been recorded on earth, so it should come as no surprise that in August wildfires ripped through Lahaina in Hawaii, killing at least 115 people, and that also in August wildfires burning in Greece destroyed an area larger than New York City, laying waste to the natural environment and people’s homes and lives. In the first 11 days of last month four continents experienced catastrophic floods, devastating Libya, Greece, Türkiye, Spain, China, the USA, Brazil and Hong Kong, and the year is not over yet.

My heart goes out to the communities in eastern Victoria and New South Wales who in the last couple of days have experienced fires and now flooding. The memories of the Black Summer bushfires and catastrophic floods from last year are still too fresh. It is scary, and I thank our emergency services for the incredible work they are doing to protect those communities. We know it is not a case of if, but when, we will be adding more unprecedented weather events to this list. The experts are saying that Australia is primed to burn this summer. For the past three years we have experienced wetter-than-average conditions, with record-breaking rainfall and floods across almost all of our states. This has been followed by the driest September on record, and it is this wetter-than-average build-up to a hot, dry summer that makes experts nervous. The increase in vegetation means that there is simply more fuel to burn, and it is drying out fast.

We have been warned about what is coming for us this summer, just as the world had more than enough warning that the events we have seen this year were coming. We are no stranger to climate destruction here in Victoria, having lived through some of the most extreme weather events in history in the past decade. In Victoria there are communities still traumatised and recovering from what they witnessed and experienced during the floods last year. We heard it during the flood inquiry hearings in the retelling of heartbreak and trauma from those who have lost everything. One of those communities struggling to get back on their feet is Rochester, a small town between Bendigo and Echuca. A large portion of their community are still living in caravans and poor conditions. Residents have spoken publicly about feeling abandoned and the lack of support in the immediate aftermath of the floods. Their town is now scarred and scared for the future.

Make no mistake, there will be more towns and more communities like Rochester if we do not make the changes necessary to prepare our built environment and infrastructure for climate change. And as we have seen, as well as costing the government billions of dollars, it is those people and families who are already up against it that are hit the hardest by the destruction of extreme weather events – those who do not have savings, who cannot afford insurance, who cannot afford to relocate, who are already struggling to pay rent and mortgages, who are working day and night to keep a small business or a farm from going under. They deserve better. They deserve a government that learns from their devastation so it is not in vain, recognises that it is just a taste of what is coming and acts.

To its credit the Victorian Labor government has started addressing the enormous existential climate change crisis. Last year we saw the official start of seven adaptation action plans, or AAPs, for climate resilience. AAPs focus on the built environment, education and training, health and human services, natural environment, primary production, transport and the water cycle. These plans have been designed to run across five-yearly schedules, so 2022 to 2026 to begin with, and identify existing and key priority plans. AAPs are also complemented by regional climate change adaptation strategies for Victoria’s six regions, which crucially have been developed with communities in those six regions.

Despite what are genuinely solid plans and strategies, in the hottest year on record there are legitimate questions about which climate resilience policies have actually been acted upon by both this government and previous governments and how effectively. Namely, while the built environment adaptation action plan prioritises updating building standards to better account for climate emergencies, Victoria has never had a climate trigger in its planning laws. Historically, Victoria’s lack of any requirement to consider climate impacts when making planning decisions means we have seen too many developments that are either not fit for purpose in a hotter world, built in areas that are prone to impacts of weather events or actually making the climate crisis worse. This is how we ended up with a racecourse on a flood plain protected by a flood wall which protected the racecourse but directed floodwaters straight into people’s homes and businesses. People needed to be rescued in rubber dinghies while the racetrack stayed pristine and green. As reported in the Age in October last year:

… the head of Racing Victoria, Andrew Jones, said the Victorian Racing Club had been “entitled” to build a flood wall around Flemington Racecourse … to protect the Spring Carnival and the Melbourne Cup Carnival …

Now, let that sink in. Imagine hearing that if you were one of the hundreds of people whose lives were turned upside down as their homes and possessions were destroyed in October last year. Imagine living through the devastation of a climate change weather event and learning that there is currently no intersection between planning and climate at all in Victoria and discovering that while we have select environmental protections in this state, we have no requirement for major road building or infrastructure projects to consider their impacts or adaptability to climate change events.

We have also heard from countless rural councils about their frustration that they only receive funding to replace like with like after a natural disaster – for example, when roads need rebuilding after floods. While there has been some recent limited recognition of the need to fund betterment, this needs to become the norm, otherwise we will get stuck in an expensive cycle of continually replacing infrastructure that might be in the wrong place or that will need significant improvement to withstand future disasters. We can and must do better. That is why we are pushing for this inquiry today – to know how fast and how far this government is acting on adapting our built environment and how much further it still has to go. Without factoring climate change into our existing planning laws, everything else this government is doing, whether it be gradually implementing those adaptation action plans or the day-to-day building of roads, could be folly.

It is not just the fires and floods we need to prepare for; it is prolonged periods of heat, which can be mitigated through measures to prevent urban heat islands by creating tree canopies and making sure our transport infrastructure is heat-resilient. The adaptation action plans acknowledge solutions like these, but to what extent are they being acted upon? Is the government quietly implementing the whole-of-society adaptation this climate requires, or is it just planting a few dozen trees in the CBD? We know this government is making progress, but we can and must do more to ensure Victorians are protected from the devastating impacts of climate change.

There are questions we hope that this inquiry will help us answer. Would a climate trigger in our planning laws ensure multimillion-dollar developers consider the climate consequences of projects? Can we and should we legislate to ensure projects do not contribute unnecessarily to climate change through excess pollution, reduction in open spaces or reduction in green spaces? Can we and should we ensure that projects are climate-sensitive, that they can be assessed against disaster risk and cannot exacerbate the impacts of events on surrounding areas? How do coastal planning regulations allow for expected impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels, storm surges and extreme weather events? What is the insurance sector’s response to climate change driven catastrophe, and what role does the state government need to play?

Whatever this inquiry determines, it is clear that climate change must be at the heart of our decisions and planning if we want our state not just to survive in a changing climate but to continue to thrive. That is why we are calling for this inquiry and why we urge you all to support it. As we have seen, business as usual will no longer cut it. It is time to get prepared.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (14:15): I rise to support the motion put forward by Dr Mansfield. I appreciate both the words in this motion and the words Dr Mansfield spoke, which I will turn to as I go through my speech. I want to pick up the first two points that are in this motion:

That this house:

(1) notes that:

(a) the impacts of climate change are intensifying …

That is undeniable, and that is obvious to any of us that are watching what is going on around the world. Year on year the trends that we are seeing in weather patterns – whether that be heat, whether that be extreme cold or whether that be floods – occurring in the world are intensifying and giving us more extreme outcomes which impact on us in so many, many ways.

I think it is very, very important that we are clear on, if you like, the purpose of action on climate change. It is absolutely critical no matter what way you look at it that we not only here in Victoria but nationally in Australia and globally act on climate change, whether it be for the purpose of our species that inhabit this planet – animals and plants; whether you look at the extreme weather impacts on our most vulnerable people, whether that be in cities or regions; or whether you are looking at food security, what this means for farmers and in turn what it means for people who consume the goods those farmers put out. When we look historically at issues that have impacted politics, nations, geopolitics and war, a lot of the drivers are famine, drought causing famine and all these sorts of things. We need to be very, very clear at the very top why it is so crucially important that all of us are on the same page about acting on this issue.

I have spoken before about how this should be an issue that is above politics. Sadly, it has not been. I have spoken to that at length in this place, so I will not go into that today. But it is critical, for in our lifetimes, as Dr Mansfield said, we are already seeing the effects. For those of us that have children or have extended family, in their lifetimes the impacts are going to go further and further, and they are very serious. As important as the environment is, for those that do not appreciate the environmental impact as much as others, if you feel that you are not connected to plants or animals, that is okay, but you have to acknowledge this has a very, very direct human impact, economic and health. I often talk about sustainability, whether it is economic, health or environment, and under the circumstance of climate change they are all intrinsically linked. As I said, Dr Mansfield stated:

(a) the impacts of climate change are intensifying;

(b) the impacts on Victoria include increases in frequency and severity of extreme weather and climate-related disaster events which present significant challenges for Victoria’s built environment, including private buildings and public infrastructure …

I do not think we need a better example than the last 24 hours, where in my region of Eastern Victoria we had fires raging across South Gippsland and into East Gippsland and then – I was talking about this in my members statement yesterday – within hours of that we were in a flooding situation. It is true, as some people point out, that we have always had natural disasters. That is absolutely true, but the significance of those impacts is growing year on year. I think when you try and have a bit of a good look at El Niño and La Niña, these changes, you start to get your head around the idea that global air temperature or water temperature changes change what is happening a continent away, on the other side of a massive, massive ocean, half a world away. When you start to think about that – that every three, four or five years an entire weather system can be affected by something that is happening off the west coast of South America, that our farmers can be put into peril, that our citizens in our cities can be put under severe heat stress, that natural disasters can occur – then you start to think, ‘All right, if that’s possible, what happens when we start turning the dial a bit, when we add 1 degree, 2 degrees, when we look at El Niño being so connected to humidity and how those slight changes in temperature can absolutely change that?’ We need to think about changes of 1 to 2 degrees. When we put in ice caps, when we put in permafrost release, when we start weighing all these things in, we have to be very, very careful, as a people on this planet, about what these changes will do.

We have got scientists who have given us the best information possible, and there has been a concerted effort by a small number of people for probably four to five decades now to discredit and smear that information, but the majority have acknowledged that information. The majority of scientists have acknowledged that information, and every decade we have seen those scientific predictions play out, and what we have to be very, very clear on is that we need to act to get our emissions down as quickly as possible. And I am very, very proud this government here in Victoria – in a very, very difficult political space around climate action here in Australia in the last decade – has led and that we have reduced our emissions faster than any other state in Australia, that our actions have helped shape the political narrative in Australia for this action and that we have done it in a way where we have brought the majority of the community. It disappoints me that some try to find any measure possible to slow or deter or muddy the waters on climate action, because again, it should be beyond the political ideology of ‘I sit on this side of politics, so therefore I’m going to try and slow down or disagree with or dislike climate action because of some political win in it’ – because as I said earlier, the consequences are far too great.

I spoke to the ambitious targets that we have and those targets we are beating. It is one thing to identify the purpose or the reason or what you will why we must be absolutely focused on an issue. The next step is to set our goals: 2045, zero emissions; 2035, 85 per cent renewable energy targets. These are goals that meet our purpose. The next critical, important thing, which is what I think this government has done well, is to set the actions that take us to those goals to achieve the outcomes that we want. I think it is the fact that we have beaten our goals – our renewable energy generation was 36 per cent in the last financial year. Our emission reductions have surpassed the goals that we set for the years 2020 to 2022 – significantly surpassed them. And as I said before, this state is reducing emissions quicker than any other state.

I think it is a fact that we are bringing the majority of the community along with us and that we are ensuring there is an economic benefit as we transition our energy industry. As we look to deal with industries – whether it be agriculture, whether it be transport, whether it be manufacturing – we identify the opportunities that are going to open up, and even more news came out today about tariffs and taxes that will be imposed by the EU around carbon. We are identifying those opportunities and being at the front to be world leaders, which we should be; we are an advanced economy. But also by doing the right thing, by setting ourselves up for success and investing in this infrastructure that reduces our emissions, by investing in the science that reduces our emissions and by investing in the people skills that help us reduce our emissions we are at the forward end of that curve to have an economy that is a zero-emission economy.

We are setting ourselves up, as others around the world, in the Middle East and other places, are doing, to ensure the economic prosperity that we have had for the last 100 years – which we have got to acknowledge and value, because that prosperity out of past forms of energy generation and export and everything have been important – is economic prosperity going forward, whilst ensuring we have a sustainable climate, a sustainable economy and a sustainable method for us all to go forward.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (14:25): I am pleased to rise and make a contribution to motion 187, as amended, moved by Dr Mansfield. It does raise a series of very important issues. As Dr Mansfield did lay out correctly, though, much of the adaptation work is already being undertaken. The adaptation action plans are proceeding in a number of key sectors; the regional plans are also proceeding in a number of sectors. This inquiry would deliver some value; there is no question about that. The question is whether this is the most important inquiry at the moment. There is no question that it does cover some important areas. I do agree that matters around tree canopies and energy efficiency and some of the points of intersection with the Planning and Environment Act 1987 are worthy of consideration.

The cost of adaptation is also an important issue. Where the coalition is concerned is that this inquiry could see further burdens foisted upon the building sector in particular. The building sector has done it very, very tough in the recent period. People will be aware of the number of building groups that have gone out of business. They will be aware of the shortage of housing, and they will be aware of the very significant issues around the cost of building and the cost of supply. We are very conscious that we do not want to do anything that will add unreasonably to the cost of building or anything that will make housing less affordable and less available to the many, particularly young, people who would seek to have access to housing. Many in our party are concerned that additional costs will be loaded into housing, and that will be on top of the very tough period that the building and construction sector has experienced recently.

It is also true that this government in particular has loaded a series of taxes, charges and regulations onto the building and construction sector – more than 50 new taxes over the period of this government. Even in the last two days we have heard of new taxes coming almost daily from the government. All of these taxes will make it more costly and more difficult to build and to construct what is necessary in our community in terms of new housing, given the enormous undersupply.

It is all very well for the government to lay out grandiose targets – 80,000 new dwellings – but in no year in the state’s history have we even got to 40,000, and there is no –

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: I am talking about the potential costs that are loaded onto the construction sector and the concerns that a number of people in the building and construction sector have about those additional costs. In the abstract you may well think that some additional controls are a good idea, but there are consequences, and we do need to deal with a number of those consequences.

As I say, I think there is significant merit in the motion, but in the circumstances we are concerned about the additional costs, charges and impacts on building and construction in particular. We think that much of this can be done in any event. Some of the adaptation action plans are occurring now. We are concerned, particularly in the city, about the loss of tree canopy, but we think that that can be dealt with in a more efficient way through the planning system. Yes, there are concerns about the loss of tree canopy, which is happening at a very fast rate, and whatever modest plantings the government does in the city are being overwhelmed by the massive removals that are going on at a huge pace. Controlling the loss of trees is important, but we think it can be done in other ways. So there is certainly merit in the motion, as I say, but in this circumstance we think that the risks that the inquiry will recommend a raft of new costs and charges and taxes onto building and construction, at a time when housing affordability is such a concern, are too great.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:31): I also rise to speak on the motion put forward by Dr Mansfield today – a motion that is on, of course, climate change. I am not sure that the previous contribution was entirely relevant to what we are discussing today. Mr Davis is correct that housing and building is a very important issue, but so too is climate change. It is something that I was reflecting on as my colleague Mr McIntosh was referring to it in his speech. I realise that he was saying everything that I was about to say as well, but it does bear repeating – it was a good speech. To think of the fact that we are here in what are the first few days of October, and from the last weekend in September to have had bushfires raging across Gippsland in two locations to us now having – it was pouring rain on the way over here. I had to come the longer way out from the annexe to avoid the rain because it was pouring down. It is quite fine for us to be a little bit wet in Spring Street – that is no big deal – but when that rain is pouring down in Gippsland, thankfully helping the fire efforts but causing another issue of flooding, that is just remarkable.

As Mr McIntosh said, these events have always happened. We are a continent of droughts, flooding rains and bushfires, but the absolute severity and the frequency with which these events are happening ‍– 12 months ago large parts of the east coast of Australia were completely flooded. Of course we have a committee – I think it is the Environment and Planning Committee – doing an extensive inquiry at the moment into the northern Victoria floods of last year, and I am very much looking forward to our regional sitting of the house in Echuca next year, when we will be able to spend some more quality time with those flood-affected communities. At the same time, there was extensive and very, very damaging flooding across parts of New South Wales and Queensland as well. This is of course a couple of years after some the most ecologically devastating bushfires in our history in the Black Summer fires. We are of course now entering a confirmed El Niño season, having had unseasonably wet conditions over the last few years, and as we do so we have such a foreboding sense of what is to come with the bushfire threat.

As I said, I was concerned about the season this year but perhaps not as concerned as to think that we would be dealing with it in the first week of October. I distinctly remember, having grown up in a bushfire-affected community – fortunately, in my area, well before I was born – with those Black Saturday fires just how much everything changed back in 2009 as well. We were out for the day. At the very last minute, with the conditions changing, my stepfather decided to stay home. We were going in to see what we thought were the Shaolin monks in the city. It turned out to be a ballet performance inspired by the Shaolin monks – I was a bit disappointed by that, I have got to say. But coming into the air-conditioned comfort of the Arts Centre in Melbourne, it was quite a relief from the weather. Then coming outside afterwards and seeing this city blanketed in red sky, red smog and smoke, and driving back home down the Monash Freeway and having at least a dozen fire trucks from the CFA and the MFB overtaking at great speed towards Gippsland in front of us and passing us and seeing that absolutely apocalyptic red sky – that is a day that I know I and many, many Victorians will never forget.

Thankfully, though we were safe on that day and our property was unaffected, it changed how we thought about fire, and for a lot of people too, the mantra prior to Black Saturday was: ‘You stay and fight; you stay and defend.’ People lost their lives who had done everything right. They had done all the preparation. They had got themselves absolutely ready, and it still was not enough. That day changed a lot, and I know that Black Summer changed a lot for a lot of people as well.

It is a sad fact that we are seeing these events happen more and more and more often. And again we have already spoken about – and it feels almost trite to say, standing here in Spring Street – the people who are going through unimaginable difficulties with loss of property at the moment this week. Fortunately, I do not believe there has been any loss of life, but it feels like it could be a little bit trite for us to be standing here and saying that. But I think it really is important to note that for so many of us from all different parties, from all different parts of the chamber, this is a real, sincere concern that we have both for of course the events of this week but also for the factors that are driving this to be more frequent and more severe what feels like each and every single year.

We have had disturbing reports from here and around the world of record temperatures just this year alone and record heatwaves once again in Europe and North America. As we brace for what is expected to be a very hot season this year, we have to be prepared and we have to be conscious, and I think this referral is a sensible way of making sure that we as a state are as prepared as we can be for the changing climate and what is to come. There are a litany of efforts that have been made, particularly by this government, by the Andrews–Allan government, as well as other governments around Australia, although I do note, as other speakers no doubt will from this side, that this government has been at the forefront of those efforts and, as some interjections recently mentioned in a previous contribution, not just setting ambitious targets but exceeding them. That is a wonderful thing for us to celebrate, but the climate is changing.

We had a discussion yesterday. I forget whether it was during question time or another time, but it was around controlled burns. There was an interjection from a member opposite who said, ‘Well, why haven’t you done enough controlled burns this year?’ saying that that was the problem. Controlled burns are a very important thing to manage the landscape, to manage the fire risk that we face, but we cannot actually –

David Davis: You actually stepped back from the royal commission’s targets.

Michael GALEA: And if you listen to what I am saying, Mr Davis, we actually cannot do them if the conditions do not allow. It would be reckless to do so, and the conditions are becoming harder and harder and harder each year, which makes it harder to do those controlled burns that are so essential to saving life. You sit in here talking about these targets and saying, ‘Well, you’ve got these targets.’ We also have to live in the real world, and the reason that you do that is because we have to adapt to the situation that we are in. We cannot just say, ‘Oh, let’s go this week, in October, and do some controlled burns,’ because there are bushfires raging in early October. You have to take a commonsense approach to it, and this is exactly the sort of thing that I think an inquiry along this side ‍–

Members interjecting.

Michael GALEA: And they are still not listening. They are still saying we should have the same targets, but they are not listening. The climate is changing, and if you want to talk about targets, we will absolutely talk about emissions targets, all that we are doing with the SEC and how we are absolutely setting higher targets and smashing them. But if you are talking about controlled burns, this is exactly part of the reason why this is so critical. It is getting harder and harder to do that work each and every year, harder and harder, which makes it more difficult for us to protect ourselves and our communities. That is exactly the sort of thing that we need to be doing. This is exactly the sort of inquiry that we need to be holding. This is just one example of course by the way; there are many, many others as well that I am sure other colleagues will touch on. It is a very important thing that, as our climate is changing, we adapt and we learn the lessons that need to be learned, just as this very committee in fact, the Environment and Planning Committee, is currently undertaking an inquiry into the floods of last year and how we can do better. This is a very important subject for bushfires, and for urban areas too, quite frankly.

David Davis: Did you watch the Today show this morning?

Michael GALEA: I did not watch the Today show this morning, Mr Davis. I am not sure what relevance that has. We have gone from talking about building regulations and building targets to morning television.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Mr McIntosh and Mr Berger, I remind you that you cannot interject when you are not in your seats.

Tom McIntosh interjected.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I am sorry, Mr McIntosh. You might laugh, but it is in the standing orders that if you want to speak you need to be in your seat. Mr Galea to continue, without assistance.

Michael GALEA: Thank you, Deputy Premier – sorry, Deputy President. I think that is the second time that has been said to the Chair this week. Thank you, Deputy President.

With the limited time I have remaining, I just reiterate the reasons I have already gone over: we do live in a changing world – the climate is changing. We have a government that is doing huge amounts to change that and to do our very best to reduce our emissions. We are meeting and exceeding those targets, but inescapably we have to acknowledge what is happening. That is why I think this referral is a sensible proposal, and I do commend it to the house.

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (14:41): I rise to speak in absolute support of the motion put before the chamber today by Dr Mansfield. It goes without saying that the impacts of climate change not only are happening but are happening at a much faster rate than any of us had anticipated even with our deepest fears in hand. We are seeing more flood, fire and catastrophic weather events not just in Victoria but right across the world, and it is incumbent on decision-makers at every level of government and in any government across the world to heed the warnings that we have been given for a number of years now and protect our community as much as possible from the worst impacts of climate change. We have been trying for years to prevent the worst impacts of climate change by reducing emissions so that the world’s population does not have to contend with the most disastrous impacts. We still have time to act to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, but climate change is happening and it is all around us.

You just have to look at what is happening in Victoria this week, in the first week of October. To be hit with fires in Gippsland is something that not many people in this place would have anticipated, but that is the future that is bearing down upon us right now. It is in that context that the Greens are moving this motion before us today. It is an opportunity for us to work across the aisle to think about how we best prepare for the impacts of climate change and how we continue to try and prevent the worst impacts of climate change as much as possible but also help us prepare, ultimately, to protect our community from the worst and most disastrous impacts. That is what this motion sets out to do. It is a forward-looking piece to inquire into what can be done in our built environment specifically and our planning provisions in this state to better protect us and our infrastructure from the impacts of climate change.

I note as well that this debate is occurring in the context of the debate that has happened in this chamber over the last couple of years. Those who were here in the last term of Parliament would remember that there was a similar debate when colleagues in this chamber on the crossbench, led by Mr Hayes and supported by the Greens and others, tried to move changes to the Planning and Environment Act 1987 to better account for the impacts of climate change.

While we have the Climate Change Act 2017 in Victoria, there is a potential conflict between the Climate Change Act and the Planning and Environment Act. The Planning and Environment Act, for example, has not been updated significantly for decades despite our modern world changing around it and our environment and climate demanding that the major piece of legislation that governs our built environment better respond to the changing needs of our environment and our climate. Through that legislation a set of objectives were set to be introduced that would have better aligned the Environment and Planning Act with the Climate Change Act so that in all our planning decisions we can think about the potential impacts of climate change – both how we mitigate them but also adapt to the changing nature of our climate. That was a very lively debate not supported by the major parties in this chamber at that time, but let us hope that today we are able to get on with this next bit of progress, which is a parliamentary inquiry that looks at our built environment across the board and specifically also looks at our Planning and Environment Act and how that can be updated to better address the impacts of climate change.

This inquiry reference also happens in the context of another inquiry that is currently occurring that was spearheaded by a number of people in this chamber on the back of and as a result of the major flooding event that occurred in Victoria in 2022. There was agreement in this chamber that that flooding event really highlighted some of the gaps in our responses both from our service system and our emergency services to the infrastructure and the systems that we have to better support communities and our built environment in the face of such disasters.

While that inquiry is still underway, I think it is worth the chamber noting that we are hearing extraordinary evidence about how communities felt ill equipped, not just in infrastructure and systems but also mentally, for the impact of these climate change disasters. We have been travelling through northern Victoria, and I can tell you one consistent theme that is emerging is that people understand that climate change is here. They get it, and they are very, very scared. They are looking to the decision-makers to support them and protect them, and this is what this inquiry is intended to do: to think about how we better protect our communities from those kinds of events happening in future more frequently. This inquiry reference does not cut across that flooding inquiry that is currently occurring, but what we hope it will do is complement the findings that will come out of that inquiry to think specifically about the built environment, because we are certainly hearing a lot of evidence about significant gaps in that space.

On that note I want to respond to some of the criticism of this referral by those opposite who outlined their opposition. Firstly, I have to say it is hard to understand how the opposition would oppose an inquiry of this nature – forward looking, intent on protecting our communities from the worst impacts of climate change going into the future. How could you not support something that is about protecting our future communities from the disasters that are coming our way? In fact it feels like it is a de facto referendum on whether you believe climate change is happening or not. I mean, the only reason you would block this inquiry is you do not actually accept that climate change is happening. We have heard from those opposite for months if not years on end that they want to deny climate change is happening ‍– not all of them, but a lot of them, enough to block this inquiry today. They do not want to accept that climate change is happening, so when you talk about the most significant bushfires this state has ever seen occurring in the last couple of years, they will say, ‘Oh, it was all about the back-burning. We just need to burn more forests down, and that will stop these major bushfires from happening in the future.’

What do you say to the flood events that keep happening right across the world? You cannot say that these unprecedented floods that are happening in New York are because we did not back-burn enough. That is climate change. You have to accept that we are seeing more frequent catastrophic events right across the globe because of climate change. Scientists have been warning us about this for over a decade. They told us that the weather system’s equilibrium will hit tipping points to the point that we will not be able to rein them back and that we are going to see more and more disasters at greater frequency and with greater devastation than we have ever seen before. That future is now our present, and we have to face up to it because those in power failed to act.

In terms of whether this is going to add costs and impost onto the building and construction industry, as outlined by the opposition, I fail to understand how an inquiry that looks at our built infrastructure and our environment and whether our government decision-making in terms of our legislation and other systems is as equipped as possible to deal with prospective climate change events will add costs to the building and construction industry. In fact the greatest cost comes from not acting. We are already seeing – and we are seeing this through the current inquiry – homes that have to be rebuilt every few years because the adequacy of the build cannot withstand the increasing strength of the climate events. You build a house only to be flooded in two years time. You are just saying, ‘Well, the user should pay. That’s on the individual. Let those communities suffer. Let’s not do anything to protect them and prevent them. Let’s just let them pay, because we don’t want our industry mates to pay.’ I cannot see how your industry mates are going to pay more.

In fact it is going to be insurers who have to keep paying out people for more and more claims. They are only able to pay out for like-for-like builds, and what we are hearing is if you have a like-for-like build despite being in a flood plain, despite knowing that you are at a bushfire risk, you are going to be building more frequently. How is that going to cost anyone more than it costs the insurers who are going to be paying out more?

Your arguments do not stack up, and ultimately it looks like denial of the impacts of climate change and what communities are going through right now. I do not think Victorians are going to like to hear their politicians and some of their representatives denying the reality they are facing right now. Tell that to the people in Gippsland right now. Tell that to the people in northern Victoria, who have just been through a catastrophic flooding event and are on the edge of their seats when any rain falls upon them. They are worried that their dams are going to overflow, their rivers are going to overflow and they are going to be flooded once again. Tell it to them, and ask them whether they believe your rationale – or lack of rationale – for blocking this inquiry.

I want to thank everyone in this chamber who has spoken already today in favour of this inquiry. It is forward facing with an underpinning motivation to support our community and better protect our community from what we know is coming, and it is the sad truth: it is coming. It is here because our leaders have failed to act for years to bring down emissions. Climate change is happening. We must protect our community from the worst impacts, and this is what this inquiry intends to do.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (14:50): I am very pleased to rise and speak on the motion referring an important inquiry on climate resilience to the Environment and Planning Committee. As a member of the Environment and Planning Committee I very much look forward, should the motion be successful in the house today, to participating in that inquiry over the course of 2024 and 2025.

It is undeniable that our climate is changing. The effects that sustained carbon emissions have had on our environment are clear on a daily basis to people right across the globe. It is not something that we can suggest is momentary or temporary. All of the science that exists tells us that there is sustained change that has occurred to our climate, and the speed of that change is increasing. It is something that governments have sought to take action on, and I think no government in Victoria’s history has sought to take action more than this Labor government. We understand the need for climate action, and Victoria is clearly Australia’s climate leader. We have exceedingly ambitious emissions reduction targets because those are the targets and that is the course required to ensure that our community and our economy are able to continue as they are whilst we decarbonise particularly the most significant sources of emissions in our economy.

Not only do we have the nation’s most ambitious climate action targets, but our first target of 15 to 20 per cent emissions reduction by 2020 we absolutely smashed with a nearly 30 per cent emissions reduction. In the latest data available – for 2021 – we have cut emissions against previous levels by about 32 per cent, so we can clearly demonstrate that this Labor government is one that takes action to reduce emissions in our economy. It is taking action to make sure that the effects of climate change are not accelerated and that we do our bit as a government to ensure that the emissions-intensive sectors of our economy here in Victoria that we are able to control are definitely making their contribution to our emissions reduction targets, because we know that the effects of climate change are felt right across our communities.

One of the things that we have been doing in another inquiry is – we had a public hearing of the Legal and Social Issues Committee last week I think where we had a discussion with some architects about the impacts of housing and why we need to think about and treat housing through the lens and through the focus of important places where people have to live rather than just through an economic framework. In the course of that discussion the public evidence we heard from the architects did quite clearly paint in pretty stark terms the importance of making sure that our built environment and the houses that we live in are capable of withstanding the changes that are being made to our climate by the extensive carbon emissions right across our economy. I think their evidence should give us a taste of what it is that we are going to be able to further uncover and further learn over the course of this inquiry, should the committee referral motion before the chamber today be successful, because we do need to be thinking about the effects of climate change on our everyday lives. We do need to be taking policy action that both encompasses the mitigation aspects of dealing with climate change, like our emissions reduction activities, but also helps communities adapt to the realities of climate change and helps them adapt to the unfortunate realities that confront us now that we are seeing our planet warming and our local and global environment changing.

One of the things that this committee referral motion seeks to get into is to look at some of the barriers that Victoria currently faces in upgrading our infrastructure to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change. And it strikes me that one of the things that we as members of Parliament who aspire to create better communities need to think about is how those on the lowest incomes are able to adapt to the changing climate; how their circumstances can be affected by a changing climate, by extreme heat and extreme cold; and what we as policymakers and as members of Parliament can do to try and help them.

One of the issues that we face is that much of the housing stock that the lowest income members of our community, the most disadvantaged members of our community, are living in is decades old and no longer fit for purpose in many respects but especially in the context of being appropriate, energy efficient, well insulated and in places that we can expect those on the lowest of incomes to live in a rapidly changing climate. That is why the government’s program of renewing our social housing is such an important part of addressing the inequalities that climate change brings to our community through our program of demolishing and rebuilding social housing, currently with walk-up social housing, in many of the communities across Melbourne but particularly in the Southern Metropolitan Region and soon, as the recent housing statement says, expanding that program to include some of the larger public housing towers that we have in our community, buildings that are in no way fit to deal with the changes in our environment and changes in our climate.

Many of the old homes that the most vulnerable in our community currently live in are not energy efficient in the least. They are hot in summer. They are cold in winter. They are largely free of insulation. They do not have the sorts of heating and cooling that most would expect to have, let alone what we think we need in our homes to be of a sufficient quality to meet energy efficiency and environmental standards and ensure that they are places where people can comfortably live as our climate changes. I have spoken with residents who have moved back into some of the new social housing that we have been building across southern metropolitan Melbourne, where we have gone from having homes that would have had an energy rating of about 2½ stars and they are moving now into homes which are 7-star energy efficiency rated, and what that means is that they have got proper insulation. They have got double-glazed windows. They have got heating and cooling that is both efficient and more affordable so that at an environmental level they are not suffering from the extremes that they were of being too hot in summer and too cold in winter and that the mechanisms that we have got in place to help them heat and cool their homes are now much more energy efficient and much more affordable for them to use.

When this chamber is thinking about ‘Should this referral get up?’ and this committee is thinking about the barriers that Victoria is facing to upgrading its infrastructure to make sure it is more climate ready and capable of withstanding the effects of climate change, we have got to have a focus on the impacts on our most vulnerable in the community, on our social housing and on our public housing.

I absolutely hope that over the course of this inquiry the committee is able to get into these details, because people on the lowest of incomes deserve to have their representatives supporting them to move into and live in energy-efficient accommodation instead of campaigning against energy-efficient, climate-adapted accommodation for those on the lowest incomes. This is an exceptionally important issue. It is one that is affecting all of us in our community, but those on the lowest incomes the most. I look forward to being part of this inquiry should this motion pass today.

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (15:01): I do want to rise and make a contribution on this important motion brought forward by Dr Mansfield. The government will be supporting this motion and its referral of yet another inquiry to the relevant policy committee. I think that it is timely because, as a number of speakers have highlighted, we are seeing the impacts of climate change and the impacts of a more extreme weather pattern in our state right now, and this is something that the science has been pointing to for quite some time.

Having recently had the very great honour of being the state’s environment minister and working very closely with our Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) teams in our state forests and across the public land estate – those that are responsible for keeping communities safe right across the state in those areas that often butt up right against communities in regional and rural Victoria – I know that their job is getting harder because the window available to them to do the fire preparedness work is becoming narrower and narrower, more disrupted and less predictable. For example, that has limited the number of planned burns that have been able to be undertaken. They have done a significant amount of planned burns, but they have not been able to deliver all they had planned for because of that narrowing of those opportunities and the unpredictable weather patterns.

I also know that a very wet couple of years have meant that our crews have just not been able to get their heavy equipment into those harder to access parts of our state forests because the ground has been so waterlogged. There have been record rainfalls as well as record temperatures across the last couple of years. We have to adapt to these circumstances, and our government is continuing to very strongly support our emergency services right across the state, whether that is FFMVic or whether that is the CFA or other emergency response agencies.

But responding to emergencies is one thing; preparing for and avoiding those emergencies is also very important work. The government understands this, and that is why we are taking such strong action as a government on climate change, both to cut emissions and to increase our climate resilience. Our targets to reduce emissions by up to 80 per cent by 2035 and to net zero by 2045 align Victoria with the Paris goals of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. We know that there is absolutely no time to waste in that regard, so we have been continuing to drive those targets in a whole-of-government way – not just looking at the important portfolio of climate change but looking at where we can drive those emissions reductions right across all of the government’s work. We have seen our emissions reduce rapidly. Not only have we been ambitious but we have been achieving those targets.

We also know that driving the work in the climate change space is going to mean that we can create the jobs of the future. I just look at some of the changes that have taken place in the jobs market just in the last few years – the change is incredible. We are creating more jobs in not only renewable energy but also areas like waste and recycling, because in everything we do now we have to have that frame of tackling climate change, building our resilience as a community and looking at ways that we can really change behaviour right across the board.

In terms of the climate, as I have said, we are experiencing extreme weather patterns. We are seeing an increased level of emergencies, such as bushfires and floods. They will become unfortunately more frequent and severe. Since 1910 in our state we have seen temperatures increase by around 1.2 degrees Celsius, and the risk of fire in spring has certainly increased.

In terms of some of the significant investments that our government is making in these areas, we have invested $10 million over three years for protecting waterways, including rehabilitation and revegetation of our wildlife so that our wildlife in our waterways can thrive. Something I am fairly familiar with from the environment portfolio is our $13.7 million investment in our VicCoasts initiative, building a safer, healthier and more resilient marine and coastal environment. We know that coastal erosion, storm surges and sea level rises are all issues that we have to grapple with. We have a very long coastline in Victoria, and we have to not only act on that to protect our precious environment, our marine and coastal assets and the precious animals that live in that environment but also plan better. We have to make sure that our planning scheme takes account of the best science and the best modelling when it comes to planning for sea level rise.

We have also invested over $670 million to meet the emergency response and recovery needs of flood-affected communities. That effort is ongoing. It takes an enormous amount of work for flood-affected communities to recover. It is not quick work; it is difficult work, but our government is committed to working with those communities to make sure that they can not only build back better but build resilience as well for the future. We have committed over $40 million to bolster our forest firefighting workforce with an additional 50 forest firefighters brought on from the seasonal pool into the permanent workforce, which is very important. I know that Minister Symes in her capacity as Minister for Emergency Services has been very busy working with the CFA to upgrade emergency service facilities, including stations and VICSES facilities as well. These are all important investments. We are going to continue to have to invest in these services as we deal with the continued threat of emergencies as a result of climate change and extreme weather.

I do thank the Greens for bringing this motion forward, although I do understand that the committee secretariat are a bit under pressure, but this is important work, and I think it will complement a lot of the work that the government is already looking at doing. The housing statement that has been put out most recently has climate adaptation at the heart of a lot of that work, including making sure that when we are rebuilding social housing and public housing and developing new housing stock across the state we are thinking very carefully about making sure that those assets – the most important form of infrastructure we can deliver, a roof over people’s heads – are climate resilient, energy efficient and of course built in the right places.

This is all really important work, and I think it will be terrific to see what recommendations this inquiry comes up with. But notwithstanding that it is very important work, the government will absolutely continue to make sure that not only are we responding to emergencies that are the result of climate change but we are actually driving down those emissions and tackling climate change at the outset, at the forefront, to make sure that generations to come in Victoria can be safe and healthy and happy.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (15:11): It is with great enthusiasm that I join my colleagues today to speak on the motion before us on climate action. And as the freshly minted Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Action I will start this role as I intend to continue, highlighting the incredible record that we hold here as an Andrews, now Allan, Labor government on climate action, because Victoria is without any doubt the undisputed leader on climate action, with an ambitious reductions target of net zero by 2045. We have smashed our targets to date and we are well on our way to our net zero target, with the latest statistics showing that we have cut emissions by 32.3 per cent in 2021. Now, that is the latest. I wonder how much further we have progressed since then. You see, this is a government that does not just talk about climate action, we are delivering on it, and that is why we are voting today to support the amended motion of the committee referral before us.

Our targets of a 75 to 80 per cent reduction by 2035 and net zero by 2045 align Victoria with the Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and I must say we are delivering on the most ambitious decarbonisation agenda in the nation. Victorians know that we will deliver our agenda, because our record speaks for itself, with the biggest cutting of emissions of any state since 2014. What an incredible target we have held now for all these years. We have become the first state or territory in the nation to set a 2035 target, and our new net zero target of 2045 is one of the earliest anywhere in the world. We will soon enshrine these targets in legislation, and I will be back here reminding this chamber that it is the members on this side that stand for climate action, with ambitious targets and smashed records. We stand on the side of the planet, with our history of delivering real action.

The speakers before me have mentioned at length the reduction of emissions and the renewables revolution happening right here, but I want to remind the good folks here in this chamber of the rooftop solar and to think about the community batteries and the offshore wind in the eastern region. But let us not forget that for every one of these incredible projects there are jobs – real jobs in the new economy, jobs that come on a scale that we are yet to I think fully grasp. These are regional jobs, these are city jobs, these are apprenticeships – and gosh, I do like talking about apprenticeships – but they are also jobs for reskilled workers. And that is before I come to the enormous employment opportunities presented by the SEC. Now, I might come back to the SEC, because it is so critical to Victoria’s path for climate action.

But I want to take this opportunity to speak about planning, because for a bright climate future we need to have reformed the planning processes that continually improve how we plan for and adapt to climate-related hazards. That is captured in the Victorian planning policy framework, which contains policy to plan for environmental risks by considering climate change impacts – bushfires, flood plains, soil degradation and more. You see, Victoria’s existing metropolitan strategy, Plan Melbourne 2017–‍2050, recognises the importance of improving the resilience of the built environment to create more sustainable and livable cities.

The Minister for Planning, Sonya Kilkenny in the other place, recently announced an update to Plan Melbourne. In this new plan we will be planning for all Victorians and we will set into action what our state might look like in the coming decades. It will focus on delivering more homes near transport, job opportunities and the essential services that are so needed for a vibrant, livable and sustainable neighbourhood. This will include a renewed focus on climate change and resilience. We cannot do this alone, so industry engagement will begin on that work in 2024. Alongside this work, the non-stop Minister for Planning will also continue to implement an ambitious planning reform agenda. Action across the building and planning systems is underway to support adaptation to climate change and reduce Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In February last year the Built Environment Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan 2022–2026 was released. That plan provides a template for current and future actions to improve the resilience of our cities and our towns. It includes strategic land use actions to support settlement scale responses to natural hazards, and planning and building system measures have already commenced to support implementation.

It is important no doubt to speak to a number of recent planning initiatives which have demonstrated that the Victorian government’s track record on climate action cannot be in doubt. In July 2023 the Victorian government announced that from 1 January 2024 new homes requiring a planning permit will be required to be all electric. This change follows the removal of mandatory requirements for new gas connections to allow for all-electric developments in 2022, and I will say that in my community of Brunswick they are taking off.

In 2022 the government also introduced new planning exemptions to enable timely installation of neighbourhood batteries to support the integration of renewable energy into the electricity grid and help Victorians generate and consume more renewable energy locally. If you want to see what these things look like, head to Fitzroy North. They are great. This complements other planning scheme amendments which seek to encourage renewable energy, including revised permit requirements for solar panels in heritage areas to support solar rooftop uptake.

In the building space significant reform has been delivered, including adoption of the 7-star residential energy efficiency standards in the National Construction Code. Let us stay with that for a moment. That is 7-star residential energy efficiency standards in the National Construction Code. What an incredible difference that will make. These changes will come into effect not too long from now, on 1 May 2024, and will introduce a whole-of-home appliance performance metric to improve energy performance and apply electric vehicle readiness standards for apartment developments. How exciting is that? Improvements to the energy performance standard for commercial buildings are also being prepared for the scheduled 2025 update of the National Construction Code, which will examine how to support electric vehicle charging and battery storage for these building types. I know, having visited a large number of apartments with the Minister for Planning, that she is indeed very enthusiastic about electric vehicle uptake in our apartment complexes in the inner north.

The Minister for Planning is now actively working on these reforms – there is no doubt about it; we spoke about it on Tuesday morning in fact – in conjunction with the Commonwealth government. This work is supporting implementation of other government legislation and policies, including the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021; Recycling Victoria: A New Economy; one that I particularly enjoyed being a part of the launch of, the Gas Substitution Roadmap; the Victorian climate change strategy; Renewable Energy Action Plan; and the air quality strategy. But to my mind all this action requires a workforce of the future, and it is to the SEC that those workforces will come, because we are bringing back the SEC. We are bringing it back and we are not wasting a single day. It is publicly owned renewable energy, putting power back in the hands of the Victorian people. Through the publicly owned SEC we will be delivering 4.5 gigawatts of renewable energy, which is the equivalent of replacing the capacity of Loy Yang A.

What I would like to talk about now is the new SEC centre of training excellence and the 6000 positions for apprentices and trainees. I have got to say it is an exciting time. As a member of the Environment and Planning Committee, if ultimately this motion is successful, I look forward to receiving and hearing evidence from stakeholders about how far we have come and all the steps the Allan Labor government have taken to date, as contained in various forward-facing reforms, knowing of course that innovation and adaptation are developing around us every single day.

I think too of the Living Future Institute – I proudly served on their board before coming to this place ‍– an organisation that looks to reform the use of building materials in line with the incredible innovations around us like recycling of and replacements for PVC piping in our modern builds. There are examples like that all around, and I know that the members of the committee can look forward to hearing more about how industry and innovation are at the forefront, with government, in securing our climate future. You see, this government does not just talk about climate action, we are getting on with it with the most ambitious decarbonisation agenda in the country.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:21): I rise to make a contribution on motion 187 moved by Dr Mansfield. It is seeking to make a referral to the Environment and Planning Committee to inquire into, consider and report by 30 June 2025 on the impacts of climate change but also specifically in regard to any risks facing Victoria’s built environment and infrastructure from climate change. Effectively: what are the risks that climate change might pose to our built environment and how is the government preparing for that?

I have to say I had the benefit of listening to Ms Watt’s contribution. She very eloquently laid out all of the things that this government is doing in ensuring that we are preparing for climate change and are able to adapt to the risks that are posed by climate change. We have done a lot of work on this. I am the chair of the Environment and Planning Committee, and what I find often is that these committee referrals really are about policy development for the opposition or crossbenchers. We are already doing a lot of work in this space, but really it is about them trying to get policy development for their particular areas of interest where we have already done a lot of the work.

I can say this was exactly the case when we did the renewables inquiry. We had already done all of the work, and it is just about perhaps opposition or crossbenchers relitigating things that they think we should do differently, but there has been a lot of work done in this space. I was just listening to Ms Watt’s contribution and Mr Galea’s and of course those of others in the chamber, but I can say this: it is no secret, and it is not lost on anyone in this chamber, that the Victorian Allan Labor government is getting on and doing a power of work in regard to reducing our carbon footprint. There is so much work we have done, whether it is solar on rooftops, bringing back the SEC, so many things that I know Ms Watt and others touched on earlier, but I want to specifically go to the issue around resilience and the built environment.

We are doing an inquiry into the October 2022 flood event at the moment, for example. What we know and what we all understand is that when we have temperature increases due to climate change, these bring on extreme weather events. There are opportunities to make sure that in our built environment we manage those risks that might be posed by those events. We are already doing a whole load of that, so let me just go through some things here.

In the 2023–24 state budget we made significant investments in climate resilience and emergency management, including $10 million over three years for protecting waterways, including the rehabilitation and revegetation of those waterways so wildlife can thrive. We know that making sure that our waterways can be revegetated has knock-on effects for climate change and resilience, so we have invested $10 million over three years for that. There is almost $13.8 million for VicCoasts to build a safe, healthier and more resilient marine and coastal environment for the community by addressing critical erosion and flood risks, protecting marine and coastal assets and supporting the adaptation and resilience of coastal communities. It is not necessarily a built environment, but our marine and coastal environments are very important parts of our environment, and we are making sure that they are protected from risks.

There is $677 million to meet the emergency response and recovery needs of flood-affected communities, and $40 million over four years to bolster the forest firefighting workforce and maintain strategic fuel breaks so that we can better prepare for and respond to fire emergencies. Again, doing work on those strategic fuel breaks means that we can hopefully protect homes, which are part of the built environment. There is $34 million for upgrades to emergency services facilities, including CFA stations and VICSES facilities, making sure that our emergency responders and first responders have the modern, fit-for-purpose facilities that they need to enable them to do the work that they need to do in responding to natural disasters brought about as a consequence of climate change.

We are embedding our adaptation policies across government through our adaptation action plans for seven statewide systems. This was released on 9 February 2022, so again, we are already well down the path of making sure that we are adapting and protecting our built and natural environments – not just our built environment but our natural environment as well. In short, these plans cover Victoria’s built and natural environments, the education and training system, health and human services, primary production, transport and water cycle systems. They contain 127 actions that will improve public assets and services such as schools, health and transport so they are able to withstand and bounce back from extreme weather events. I know, for example, schools in my local area have put plans in place. If they are in areas that are going to be affected by fire and the like, they have action plans in place to enable them to respond appropriately.

The actions also include adjusting government policies, operations and decisions to reflect the latest climate science and prepare for climate impacts and opportunities; fostering genuine partnerships with traditional owners and Aboriginal communities to embed cultural knowledge in adaptation and support self-determination; and helping partners, industries and communities to access high-quality, evidence-based climate information and guidance to inform their decisions, because what we know is that often in these events things can change pretty quickly and pretty radically.

The clock is going to beat me on this. There is so much more that I could say on this particular matter, but I hope that I have got through some of the main points of what we are doing in terms of adaptation around these matters. Again, I have a personal view about further referrals along this line to the committee, but I understand the government is supporting this – there has been a negotiated outcome in regard to this. Obviously as chair of the committee I look forward to being part of this inquiry and chairing the inquiry, because I know there is lots I will be looking forward to hearing from the government about the many, many things we are doing in order to manage risks from climate change in our built environment.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) incorporated the following:

I rise to make a brief contribution to this important motion on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. This is a much-needed inquiry.

The impacts of climate change are indeed intensifying. Victoria is experiencing hotter days, more intense storms and flooding. Sea levels are rising. We currently average 11 days of above 35-degree heat. By 2050 that will be an average of 16 days. We have longer, more intense bushfire seasons. In 2020 smoke haze from bushfires hundreds of kilometres away choked the streets of our inner city, making Melbourne’s air quality the worst in the world. Once-in-a-century weather events are becoming more and more frequent.

The impacts of climate change will affect every aspect of society in Victoria. We have already seen the health and social impacts wrought by floods, bushfires, extreme heat and storms.

These impacts especially affect the most vulnerable members of our community: the elderly, the very young, people with existing health conditions, those who can’t access air conditioning, Victoria’s homeless.

We need to examine the risks Victoria will continue to face because of climate change and do all we can to mitigate against them – for ourselves and for future generations of Victorians.

A focus of the terms of reference is our built environment and the barriers facing Victoria in upgrading infrastructure to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Going forward we will need to apply some revolutionary thinking to the construction and operation of our buildings. It will require innovation in building design, smart technology and more appropriate building materials.

The construction industry itself is a major producer of carbon emissions and responsible for some 40 per cent of the state’s energy use. Concrete is a highly carbon intensive building material and is the most widely used material in the construction industry.

An ideal alternative to concrete is hemp concrete. Hempcrete is a biocomposite material that can be utilised as an alternative to concrete and standard insulation in building.

Anyone paying attention to my contribution to our industrial hemp inquiry motion will know that as a phytoremediation material, the hemp plant sequesters carbon at twice the rate of trees. So it’s already a climate-positive material.

What you may not know is that hempcrete is one of the few materials that can continue to absorb carbon after being used in construction as it pulls more carbon from the atmosphere over the building’s lifetime than was emitted during construction. This makes hempcrete a carbon-negative or better-than-zero-carbon building material. Hempcrete also has extraordinary thermal properties; an amazing capacity to regulate heat, moisture, and relative humidity; and fantastic fire-resistant qualities.

The process for producing hempcrete uses about half the energy to produce than concrete. It is extremely durable and is also recyclable at the end of the building’s lifespan.

I could go on, but will leave hemp there for the moment.

I am hopeful that the committee will, as part of the inquiry process, obtain some figures from the Parliamentary Budget Office so we can start to quantify the financial realities of climate adaptation and building resilience.

There’s no way around it – an increase of 1.5 to 2 degrees in temperature is inevitable, whether we like it or not. Climate change is now locked in, and we must prepare for a reality where Melbourne’s climate is like Mildura and Mildura’s climate is like Broken Hill – but with far more volatile patterns of drought and flood.

We will be culpable if we are not working towards and regularly reviewing our response to climate change.

So we commend this motion to the house.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (15:28): I would just like to thank all of my colleagues in the chamber who have contributed to this debate. I particularly want to thank the government for their support of this important inquiry. I think it shows that these sorts of things, when it comes to preparing for the impacts of climate change, need to be above politics, and it is really disappointing that the opposition have not been able to get behind this inquiry. I think a lot of the challenges we are facing when it comes to climate change have largely been a result of a lack of unified support and a lack of ability to put climate change as a challenge above politics and get agreement from all different political parties. However, once again I am grateful to the government for recognising the value of this and how important it is to do everything we can and to do it as well as we can when it comes to preparing our built environment for the impacts of climate change. I look forward to hopefully getting support for this inquiry to take place and seeing the outcomes of the inquiry.

Council divided on motion:

Ayes (19): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Jacinta Ermacora, Michael Galea, Shaun Leane, David Limbrick, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Samantha Ratnam, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Gayle Tierney

Noes (14): Matthew Bach, Jeff Bourman, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Moira Deeming, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Bev McArthur, Joe McCracken, Evan Mulholland, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell

Motion agreed to.