Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Committees

Select committee

Establishment

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (15:35): I move:

That:

(1) a select committee of six members be appointed to inquire into, consider and report on Victoria’s energy transmission, including but not limited to:

(a) the reliability and stability of Victoria’s energy transmission and distribution networks;

(b) the electricity supply outages that occurred on Tuesday 13 February 2024 and subsequent days and their impact on Victorian households and businesses;

(c) the cost of developing, maintaining and enhancing the reliable distribution networks necessary to support Victoria’s increasing reliance on renewable energy and the affordability of such networks;

(d) the role of local energy generation and networks and storage, including batteries, in supporting the reliability and stability of Victoria’s energy distribution networks;

(2) the committee may provide an interim report and will provide a final report by 30 June 2025;

(3) the committee will consist of two members from the government nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Council, two members from the opposition nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Council and two members from among the remaining members in the Council;

(4) the members will be appointed by lodgement of the names with the President within seven calendar days of the Council agreeing to this resolution;

(5) a member of the committee may appoint a substitute to act in their place (for nominated meetings or for a defined period of time) by that member, or the leader of that member’s party, writing to the chair advising of the member who will act as their substitute;

(6) a member who has been substituted off the committee must not participate in any proceedings of the committee for the nominated meetings or defined period of time that they have been substituted off for;

(7) substitute members will have all the rights of a member of the committee and shall be taken to be a member of the committee for the purpose of forming a quorum;

(8) the first meeting of the committee will be held within one week of members’ names being lodged with the President; and

(9) the committee may proceed to the despatch of business notwithstanding that all members have not been appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy.

Last Tuesday we suffered a very significant setback in Victoria with an enormous impact on our electricity system.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: You may well laugh and make funny jokes, but it is a very serious point after what occurred last week. Victorians are still without power, and you think it is a matter of jocularity. We do not think it is a matter of jocularity that tens of thousands of Victorians –

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): Order! Mr McIntosh, you are not in your place.

David DAVIS: Tens of thousands of Victorians are still without power. This is a very serious matter. 530,000 people had their power knocked out – or connections were knocked out. It is much more people than that, probably north of a million Victorians indicated and businesses – families and businesses.

I doorknocked families, I doorknocked businesses and I spoke to people across my electorate in Clayton and Oakleigh and other areas. I went into businesses –

Members interjecting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): Order! I think Mr Davis should be heard in silence.

David DAVIS: Others in the chamber may not care, but I do care about those in Victoria who lost power. I do care about those businesses in Eaton Mall, Oakleigh. I went and spoke to a number of the business owners in Eaton Mall who lost power in the afternoon on Tuesday and did not have their power restored until early on Wednesday morning. Thousands and thousands of dollars of business was lost, thousands and thousands of dollars of stock was lost and preprepared foods were lost. There were all sorts of impacts through that area of my electorate, the Southern Metropolitan Region. Let us be very clear: this was metropolitan-wide but it was also into country areas in Victoria, and on that day we also saw the terrible fires occurring up into the north-west of the state, in the Grampians and elsewhere. So really it was a very significant day for Victoria. The impact on Victoria was very significant. Families were hit quite hard.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: I have never argued against climate change. I challenge you, on a single occasion, to find where I have said, ‘I do not believe in climate change.’ I actually understand what is happening with climate change. Let me say, despite the interjection that is coming from over there, the reality is it may not be convenient for government members to face up to what happened last Tuesday and into subsequent days, but it actually has had a tremendous impact on many families and many businesses. I think most sensible people in the chamber would admit that. There may be some who will not, but most will. Most understand what has happened, including the significant impact on businesses. It is for that reason that we bring this motion. Aside from the machinery and the reporting, which I am not going to dwell upon – I am going to focus on what we have said here – we have talked about the need to look at the reliability and stability of Victoria’s energy transmission networks.

We know that at Anakie a series of large towers were knocked out. Those large towers were knocked out essentially because of downdrafts and because of the very significant winds in that area. They are old towers, built around 1980 to 83 – that time period. They are older towers and towers that have got significant problems. We know from the government’s own analysis in 2020 that those towers have clear and serious deficiencies. That is the reality. The government’s own review showed in 2020 –

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Your government’s review showed the serious deficiency there. They said the towers were not designed for these downdrafts. They said the towers went down at Cressy in 2020 because of inadequate design in the days they were put there, between 1980 and 1983, by the old SEC. So let us be quite clear what has gone on on a number of these points.

Elsewhere trees and a whole range of other issues have intervened right across parts of the metropolitan area, the east and south-east of Melbourne, parts of the northern suburbs of Melbourne and in the country. My colleagues at Mirboo and so forth have certainly taken an absolute pounding. I put on record our concern at the tragic losses that have occurred in that area, but I also put on record our concern about the tragic impact on families and businesses. There are many thousands of people still without connection after that time period, and I have to say we need to get to the bottom of what has gone on here. There have been a series of incidents that have occurred in recent years which have not been properly responded to by government. Government has actually not been able to deal with a number of these key points. We know the government did not accept all of the recommendations of the resilience review, so there are real problems with that resilience review; there are real problems with the government’s implementation of it. There is the 2020 incident which I have pointed to, and there are a number of other recent incidents that have occurred. Those incidents have shown real fragility, real weaknesses and real concerns about our electricity distribution network, and that is before we start with the challenge –

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Climate change is part of it. I am not in any way denying that, and I am quite open about that.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: No, but you have got to have a response. You have been in government for 20 of the last 24 years, and you have not dealt with it.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: So what are you talking about?

Michael Galea interjected.

David DAVIS: I do not have to answer for every person on our side of the Parliament. But let us be quite clear, you do have to answer for the performance of government on this. For 20 of the last 24 years your party has been in power, and your party has been in power when the network has declined. That is actually what has happened. The last 10 years –

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): Mr Davis, please speak through the Chair.

David DAVIS: Acting President, of course I will. I was provoked, and I responded. I will in future try not to respond when I am provoked so relentlessly.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): I will not provide a feminist analysis of that.

David DAVIS: Pardon? Anyway, I was provoked, Acting President, and I will seek to avoid such provocations in the future.

Let me just say the motion is actually targeted to the reliability and stability of our energy transmission and distribution systems, and I think we all want to see that dealt with. In point (d) we talk about the role of local energy generation and networks and storage, including batteries, in supporting the reliability and stability of Victoria’s energy distribution networks. They can actually add part of the mix. They can add part of the challenge that we have got into the future. There is no question that that is an important part of the challenge, and that is why that dot point is there.

The cost of developing, maintaining and enhancing the reliable distribution networks necessary to support Victoria’s increasing reliance on renewable energy and the affordability of such networks – we are going to see more renewables in the system. The government does want more renewables; we all want more renewables. But they have got to be backed up by the reliability and the security that people need in the supply. You actually need a reliable system. You need a secure system. You need a system that is not repeatedly going down. You need a system that does not leave half a million households without electricity.

Members interjecting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): I think there is quite a bit of disorder in the chamber, and I think the debate should continue calmly.

David DAVIS: I will seek to resist the interjections in future. As I say, we do need to have a system that is reliable and secure. We need to make sure that our system has networks that are able to deal with renewable energy coming on. It is clear that a number of the old lines do not have the capacity and reliability for –

Tom McIntosh interjected.

David DAVIS: Acting President, I think the member over there is defying your rulings and suggestions. I am trying to say that we actually do need a reliable and secure system. We do need a system that is actually able to provide electricity to families, to businesses. One business I went into in Eaton Mall – and I am just going to use a number of small examples here – had had to destroy all of the food that had been prepared, all of the food in its fridges, extensive fridges. All of that had to be thrown out – many, many tens of thousands of dollars of prepared food, a huge waste. Those who saw the pictures of the –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

David DAVIS: Middle Camberwell supermarket, right near Ms Crozier’s office – basically that supermarket went down its shelves and it threw out everything because it had lost the energy supply. Its backup did not cut in in the right way, and it was forced to throw out enormous quantities of food, enormous quantities of produce, that should have been able to be securely dealt with. So these are key points, and when we go further into the east and south-east of Melbourne there are massive impacts and still, as I say today, thousands and thousands of households and businesses without the connection that they require.

The cost of developing the maintenance – as I have said, we need to have a reliable system where renewable energy is able to be brought into the system. Now, we will not be able to do that if we do not have a reliable distribution and transmission system, and that is what this is focused on, the outages on Tuesday 13 February and subsequent days and the impacts on Victorian households and businesses.

I have moved this motion today because it needs a proper independent examination. The government on Monday when we announced this inquiry was stung. They were stung and they did not know how to respond, and they had a whole series of stupid and irrelevant conversations about why we could not have an inquiry and why we did not need an inquiry. They rejected the idea of an inquiry.

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: No, but you did not on Monday. You did not want an inquiry on Monday. It was later, on Tuesday, that you went, ‘Oh dear, we actually need to do something here.’ So then they started to cobble together – and there was Lily D’Ambrosio’s extraordinary news release, which laid out the fact they were going to have an inquiry but she did not know by whom, did not quite know what. It was a shambles. It was an absolute shambles. The minister did not know who was going to do the inquiry or how it was going to be done. She did not even know the terms of reference.

But let me just say the fix is in. What the minister is trying to do is put in some tame cats to do a quiet inquiry – to do an inquiry that ticks the work for her. She does not want an independent inquiry. She does not want independent scrutiny of her performance, which has been tardy and hopeless. We have seen her failures with offshore wind. We have seen her failures on a wide front – an incompetent minister, a minister who is struggling to get anywhere with her portfolio, a minister who has not signed off key issues of the backstop, a minister who has not been able to arrange to have the response that is required to many of the issues of reliability and security.

We have seen prices surge. Prices have surged upwards on electricity and gas, and even though the minister cannot guarantee electricity supply and cannot guarantee affordable electricity, she wants, over on the other side of the equation, to turn off the gas. She wants to turn off the gas. She wants to ramp up the price of electricity. It is already up 27 per cent, and small businesses have been clobbered hard with increases in electricity prices. You go and do a walk-through on some of your small businesses, those on the other side of the chamber, and ask them whether their electricity prices have gone up, ask them whether their gas prices have gone up, ask them whether that is feeding through into inflation and ask families: are they paying more for their electricity? Are they paying more for their gas? Well, I tell you what: they absolutely are. They absolutely are paying more for their electricity. They are paying more for their gas. They are paying more on every turn.

Let me try and be economical here in what I want to say.

Tom McIntosh: Have you got a plan to reduce prices? Have you got a plan to supply Victoria?

David DAVIS: We sure do. We sure do have plans. One of them is to maintain the gas system in order so that there is actually an opportunity to put hydrogen down it. There are a number of different ways that we can broaden the spread of power supply into the state. There are a number of ways that we can actually ensure that there is a better outcome in terms of renewables too.

I hasten to add none of us want to be lectured by a minister who could not get the offshore electricity industry running. We could not get offshore electricity going, could we? We could not get offshore wind going. We could not get the offshore electricity coming through. We could not get the offshore wind going. We actually decided we would put it at Hastings. We went to Hastings, we got the Port of Hastings to put a submission into the federal minister and what did Tanya Plibersek say?

Tom McIntosh: Are you saying offshore wind’s not going ahead?

David DAVIS: I am saying offshore wind has got a significant role. I have always supported offshore wind. But what I say is you cannot have an incompetent minister who cannot get these programs going. She cannot get the programs going, because she is an incompetent minister. She went to the federal minister through the Port of Hastings and said she wanted –

Michael Galea: On a point of order, Acting President, Mr Davis is making unfair allegations against the minister. I ask that he does that through a proper motion if he wishes to do so.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): I dismiss the point of order.

David DAVIS: The minister is not up to it. The minister went to the federal minister via the Port of Hastings to get a tick and did not seem to understand that there is a Ramsar wetland in the area. She did not seem to understand that actually you need approvals from the federal minister, and Tanya Plibersek, who I personally do not think is a great minister – I will put that on record – sent her packing. She sent the state government packing. She said, ‘No, this is actually hopeless. It’s a hopeless submission, and we won’t approve it.’ There you are. But we do need offshore wind, so the state government has got to go back to the drawing board, back to square one. They have actually got to start and work their way to bring offshore wind forward. I know the federal government is pushing for offshore wind.

Tom McIntosh: Are you talking about offshore wind or assembly?

David DAVIS: I am talking about offshore wind, of which assembly is a key part. I will give you a tip: you cannot put up a big wind farm offshore without assembly. You cannot actually put it in place. You have actually got to assemble the thing. You cannot send it out there unassembled, mate, I have got to say.

Let us just be clear: you have got a hopeless minister who is unable to get these processes in order, who is unable to bring stuff forward in a proper way, who is unable to manage all of this. This is a key reason why we need this inquiry. We actually need to get a grip on what is happening. Victorians deserve secure, reliable electricity. We recognise that there are going to be much more renewables, and we need to make sure that renewables are part of the system. I know there is another inquiry that is looking at a much broader examination of things, and we were prepared to remove the bottom two dot points of this motion in the circumstance, after discussions with some of the crossbench. It appears that the crossbench at this point are not going to support the motion –

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: Some of the crossbench – so there seemed little point in amending the motion in line with their requests. In that sense we will push forward with the motion as it is. We understand that some of the crossbench will not support it. That is their entitlement, of course it is, but at the same time I do think that is a pity because I do not believe the state government’s proposals are up to scratch. I think this would have been independent, and their processes are not independent.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:55): We have just seen a 20-minute demonstration from Mr Davis as to why this motion should not be supported. For the Liberal Party this is, has been and always will be about base politics, not actually about addressing the issues that are important to Victorians. Mr Davis well knows this, and this is why he went off on all of those tangents that he did in his contribution. This is just yet another political vehicle for him, turning a genuine issue into another vehicle to try and attack the government with. Obviously his other ones have not worked. His other inquiries that he has got have not been going as well as he had hoped, so this is what he is trying to do here today – absolute same old typical Liberal politicking.

This is a very serious issue, and this is where I agree with you, Mr Davis. Last week an unprecedented storm came across Victoria and did untold damage. I reported in my members statement yesterday that the Monash SES alone, which covers both our regions, as you know, Mr Davis, dealt with over a thousand cases, and I thanked them for it. We have had extended electricity outages. You might not have had any in your region, but I do in mine, Mr Davis, and I have been talking with those residents and with those business owners. I was out in my community last week. I was not holding press conferences at their venues; I was out there meeting them, talking to them, hearing what they had to say and finding out what we can do to support them. This is such an important issue, the resilience of our electricity networks but also our communications networks, and I spoke about this in my members statement yesterday as well. It is simply not good enough that if the power goes out, people do not know what is going on. It is simply not good enough for the mobile phone networks to collapse as well. We have seen this on multiple occasions, and I really urgently call on Telstra, Vodafone, Optus and all the providers to actually make their mobile phone towers resilient. We have a fantastic resource in the VicEmergency app, but it is completely unusable if you do not have a phone signal at times like that.

I understand the genuine concern from your small business owners, Mr Davis, and your residents, as I have had from mine. I know Mr McIntosh to my left here has been out all week in Mirboo North talking with people on the ground going through the most difficult situation imaginable and hearing firsthand from them as well. We get it. We are not denying any of what happened last week, and we are not denying any of the seriousness of it. That is exactly why Minister D’Ambrosio, who you are so quick to arrogantly dismiss, has been out there day in, day out. She has been meeting and talking with every one of the power distributors.

David Davis: Where was she?

Michael GALEA: She has been taking the case forward, and she has been in the community. She has been in Emerald, she has been in Cockatoo, she has been in Mirboo North – she has been out there actually talking to people and hearing, not just waffling on and writing up motions like you have been doing. She has been getting on with the job of actually fixing this issue. She cannot control the distributors. As you well know – as we have told you many times this last year – we have a privatised energy distribution network. She has been working tirelessly to hold them to account and to make them do their jobs for my communities and for Mr McIntosh’s communities in particular.

I have to say I am so disappointed that when AusNet’s grid went down we saw, not for the first time, their outage tracker website go down as well. Again, that is not good enough. I commend them for their efforts in getting something up – their frankly barely readable spreadsheet is better than nothing – but they need to do better as well.

As I say, Mr Davis, we are actually listening and we are delivering that support. Anyone who is still affected by the power outages – anyone who has had seven days or longer without power – qualifies for the power outage payments of $1920 per week per household or $2927 per week per small business. This is meaningful support for those customers. Now, this is being administered by the power companies, and I have to say it is very disappointing to see again this fantastic minister having to call out AusNet for failing to actually deliver those payments as they are obliged to do. They need to get their act together. They need to not sit around waiting; they need to actually get these payments out to people. These people need their payments now. I really support the minister in putting as much pressure on them as possible to actually deliver that meaningful relief. People need that relief now. They do not need it in three weeks; they need it now. I know it has been a difficult week for AusNet, and I do want to acknowledge this is nothing against their amazing line workers. I have seen them out in my community. I have also seen the line workers from other distributors coming to help over the weekend across my region, and I thank them all for the amazing work that they do, as I know many of my constituents do as well. This is not against them, but AusNet need to lift their game.

This motion today, as I have said, flies in the face that we already have an independent inquiry that has been announced. This obviously is on top of various other reviews and inquiries launched by AEMO too, last week I believe. But we do have a genuine independent inquiry that is going to forensically look at this issue to see what we need to do to make energy networks more resilient and have the resilience that we need. We know these sorts of freak storms are going to, regrettably, happen more and more often, because we are undeniably experiencing climate change. This is a government that is doing everything in its power to bring down our emissions, despite the nine or 10 different policies that your federal counterparts had. We know what you guys would do if you were in government.

Tom McIntosh: More like 16.

Michael GALEA: Sixteen, was it? However many policies that you had – God knows if you were in charge of the state of Victoria how many policies you would have here. I am sure getting some of your other backbenchers to support you on even the most modest of changes would be all we would ever be reading about in the papers. We know that for sure.

This is a government that does believe in tackling head-on the challenges of climate change, but undeniably this is a risk. We do have an inquiry that has been set up in the Environment and Planning Committee which is looking at climate resilience as a specific issue. I do have it on good authority from the minister’s office that, specifically pertaining to this storm event, any information that that committee seeks to have from government will be provided without incident. I understand and I note the minister’s absolute genuine willingness to engage as much as she is asked to. Furthermore, as I have mentioned, we do have this independent review which has been announced. I also understand and can report to the house that it will provide its interim report in June this year.

David Davis: Who’s going to do it? You don’t even know who it is.

Michael GALEA: What I care about, Mr Davis, is getting answers. You seem to care about the who is who, who is what, getting the politics out of it. It just underscores the fact that this is all you do: you politicise, you politicise, you politicise.

I do want to make the point that this is a genuine inquiry. It is going to look into the issue as long as it needs to, but it is going to provide an interim report, which will be publicly available, in June this year. I would also like to take this opportunity to note –

David Davis interjected.

Harriet Shing: On a point of order, Acting President, I always do like listening to Mr Davis’s dulcet tones, but perhaps if he could issue them forth from his seat, we might all be able to enjoy them similarly.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): You are cutting it real fine there, but you are technically correct. Interject from your own seat, and also I might bring up that it is unparliamentary to point, Mr Davis.

Michael GALEA: I do also note that this is a genuine issue. I want to acknowledge the participation and the work, the genuine engagement we have had – not from your party; sorry, Mr Davis – from others. I do wish to acknowledge Dr Mansfield in the chamber. I do wish to acknowledge the genuine, cooperative nature of the Greens and also the Legalise Cannabis Party in getting the best outcome possible. People do deserve answers as to what happened and how we stop issues like last week’s from happening again, where a freak event, though it may be, could cause such havoc on our network. It is a big, big problem. It is a wicked problem in fact, and that is what I look forward to seeing this inquiry address, which I am confident it will. Again, there are thousands and thousands of people who have been affected. I have had the honour to speak with them, and I know how frustrating it is for them, some of whom, as Mr Davis says, are still without power. Some are in my communities. There are still people in parts of Upper Beaconsfield, Knoxfield, Lysterfield, Narre Warren North and Harkaway who are severely affected, which is to say nothing of the large areas in Mr McIntosh’s and Minister Shing’s region as well, which I know has been very severely affected.

I do also wish to acknowledge the comments made just yesterday in the other place by the member for Monbulk, who spoke so passionately about her community and what her community has been going through and so passionately about why this is such an important issue and why we should not be allowing misinformation or disinformation. The absolute rubbish that we hear from some people, like ‘Coal keeps the lights on’ – they are in your party; you know they are. You just let them get away with it. You have not called it out. It is absolute rubbish. Misinformation and disinformation do not help anyone in this debate. Call it out. If you genuinely care about this issue, call it out and stand with us for a proper outcome.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (16:06): I would like to thank the Liberals and Nationals for putting forward this motion today. It deals with some really important issues that certainly warrant scrutiny. Our government does need to address many of the issues that have been raised here today, so I really genuinely thank you for putting this out there and bringing this issue to the chamber. I would also like to at the outset acknowledge all of those who have been affected by the extreme weather events that occurred last week and thank all the organisations and community members who are rallying behind those who have been affected and who are still being affected.

There are many aspects to this motion that we actually support. We think everyone in this chamber would agree that it is incredibly important that we have a stable and reliable energy grid. I do not think there is any argument about that. However, there were a couple of aspects that we could not get behind, particularly those that had the potential to shift the focus away from the need for a rapid transition to renewable energy. That is the reason we will not be voting in favour of the motion before us today, but as I said, we saw a lot of merit in aspects of the motion.

We agree that the events of last week warrant a thorough investigation, and the Greens are pleased that the government announced an independent inquiry into the electricity grid and how it can be made more reliable and stable, particularly as we move away from coal to renewables. We thank the government for their constructive collaboration on this. Victorians do deserve answers, and we really hope this inquiry does its job. If it does not, this chamber should revisit these issues, and we would certainly be supportive of any moves to do so if the inquiry does not live up to expectations.

It is also worth noting that last year the Greens in this chamber secured an inquiry into climate resilience, as has already been mentioned – it is the climate resilience of our built infrastructure. That will be a further opportunity to look at the ability of our energy grid, including transmission infrastructure, to withstand extreme weather events, which we are unfortunately going to see many more of due to climate change. We thank the minister for agreeing to make the findings of the independent inquiry available to that committee so it can I think do a more thorough job and take into consideration events that we know have already happened and learn from the mistakes that potentially occurred in the past.

The events of last week really should serve as a wake-up call regarding the need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and move more rapidly to 100 per cent renewables. We know that coal and gas companies are causing climate change. They make our energy systems more unstable and more unreliable. Victoria’s old, unreliable power stations and the ageing grid were built for the coal era. They are failing Victorians, and it is well past time that we got on with upgrading our energy systems to be more climate friendly and resilient, and we will continue to push the government to do this.

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:09): I rise to speak on motion 315. Obviously, energy transmission is fundamental infrastructure. It is as fundamental as roads and it is as fundamental as hospitals, and we should be as concerned about it as we should be about any other fundamental element, whether it is in private hands or public hands. The consequences, as we all know, have been severe. They have been severe for families, they have been severe for businesses and they have been severe for our emergency services. Whilst I commend anyone who has gone out to the communities to show support to them, they are all things taking place after the event, after the fact. The issue that is most pertinent here is that the transmission system is an essential service, so dealing with it after the fact is actually completely inappropriate. You need to deal with it before the fact.

It comes down to competence. The role of government is to ensure our essential services are reliable and resilient, not after the fact. Commiserations after the fact are fine, but in inventory management of our transmission system, each one of these power pylons et cetera are numbered. They are assessed, there are audits done, there are risk assessments. This is basic competence.

As we all know, as we diversify our energy supplies and as we transition to renewables one of the defining features of renewables is that transmission is the greater part of the effort. It is very, very cheap to get the energy; it is very, very difficult to transmit it. Therefore the competency of managing these specific assets is critical to all of our aspirations to decarbonise the electricity grid. If we do not have competence in transmission, we cannot have competence in renewables. Therefore a specific committee to look specifically at that is in all our interests, and it should reveal the most explicit and interesting things that we can learn that are going to aid the transition to renewables.

I am disappointed that the Greens are not supporting this, because there are really explicit things we should be learning from this. We talk about whether this is politics. Well, the politics was ‘We’re not having a committee inquiry – oh, now we are.’ We should be actually going to what is most important to the people of Victoria, and that is reliable transmission of energy.

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, when we had blackouts. In the 1970s they were not uncommon – two or three times a year we would have them – and we fought tooth and nail as a society to get to a point where we did not have blackouts anymore. That was considered a great achievement. And now we are in a position again where we are having blackouts, and it is because we are not maintaining the inventory, the assets. That comes down to competence. You can only deal with that before the event, and your job in government is to assess, manage risk and deliver it.

Again, I am disappointed that we are not having this select committee, and yet again it comes down to competence. The minister clearly, in a series of mistakes all around renewables, all around transmission, not just this event, is not delivering for us.

So the question remains: how many more assets are subpar? How many other weak points exist in the transmission chain? How many more times, and will any other inquiry get to this point? I really honestly doubt it. I would have enjoyed getting down to this because we would have learned something. We are not going to learn anything now, and this government has no record of transparency – none. So not only will we not learn anything, we will not learn what we did not learn. Again, I commend this motion, and I wish it was going forward.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (16:14): I rise today to speak on Mr Davis’s motion. I acknowledge that that was the first contribution to a bill or motion from our new member, Mr Welch. Thank you for putting yourself out there so early on in your term here in this place. I in my remarks would like to reaffirm the Allan Labor government’s position that an expert-led review will be conducted into the energy sector following the power outages faced by Victorians over the last week.

First and foremost, my thoughts are with every Victorian who has been affected by this week’s unprecedented and catastrophic weather event. To all those Victorians who are first responders in emergency situations: we pay tribute to you for your ongoing efforts and thank you for all that you do, but also I want to acknowledge your families during this time. Mr Davis, I think you could not be more wrong about the outstanding leadership of the Minister for Energy and Resources, and I know just how hard she has been working with the regulators and the companies and others to make sure that we see the improvements that are just so necessary in our system.

This motion really in its essence is another way for those opposite to politicise what really is a catastrophic weather event – to undercut, demean and bog down the government’s nation-leading renewable energy agenda; to undercut the Victorian people once again; to feed into their own climate scepticism and anti-renewable crusade that goes on and on, both in and out of the party room; and to perpetrate their own cycle of baseless, ignorant fearmongering against renewable energy.

I have spoken on a great number of occasions about renewable energy and my fierce support for it. Those opposite had their chance to create a robust energy network but instead chose to sell off the network, because privatisation first and foremost is in their DNA.

We agree that there is a legitimate conversation to be had about power outages following the extreme event last week, one of the largest outages in our state’s history, and we are not hiding away from that. That is why the Allan Labor government announced that we are commissioning a supplementary independent review into the distribution system responses to the February storms.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet AusNet CEO Tony Narvaez, and can I say I highlighted the distress that so many Victorians are under due to supply outages this last week and that the community expects baseline needs to be met, especially during emergencies such as the catastrophic weather conditions like those that affected Victorians last week. Mr Narvaez assured me that AusNet is doing all it can to restore power to those still affected by the outages and expressed the importance of clear communication between the government, energy providers and consumers as well as providing up-to-date information as soon as it is available, and I will join with my colleague Mr Galea in saying that website is, well, not up to scratch and needs a certain amount of work. But it is true that we can work together to manage and work through crisis events such as last week to make the experience as smooth as possible for the consumer.

We understand the frustration that is being felt by those affected. We are working with the industry providers on rebates for affected customers and will continue to hold our providers accountable for the delivery of those rebates. Any delay in these rebates is simply unacceptable.

The bulk of the outages come from fallen powerlines on the low-voltage distribution network caused by extreme wind and lightning. These extreme winds also caused the collapse of six of the transmission towers near Anakie. This caused the immediate shutdown of the high-voltage 500-kilowatt line between Moorabool and Sydenham, which in turn tripped Loy Yang A, the state’s largest power station. Despite enough generation being available to meet demand, the sudden loss of a major transmission line and the largest generator created some system instability, albeit temporarily. To manage this AEMO directed AusNet to shed about 90,000 homes for a period of less than an hour in western Melbourne. This is an unprecedented event, and there are hundreds of faults across the network caused by these storms. AusNet and the other distributors have all available crews working. Thank you to the many doing 16- to 18-hour shifts – let us acknowledge those workers – to assess and repair faults as quickly and as safely as possible. There were more than 12,000 kilometres of low-voltage line damaged in this event. We are committed to bringing back power to Victorians still affected. This government is committed to learning from these past events and adapting solutions to hazardous weather.

You will recall that after June 2021 we initiated the electricity distribution network resilience review, which was an expert-led panel – that is right, an expert-led panel – that sought recommendations on improving Victoria’s energy network and the state’s response to extreme weather events. The government’s response was released late last year, and all but two of those recommendations were supported and adopted. This government took the review recommendations and invested $7.5 million into crucial backup power systems in 24 towns hit by major storms in 2021, including batteries and rooftop solar on community buildings, which have continued to provide relief in the event of prolonged power outages. Eighteen of these hubs are complete and are operational. These energy systems provide power to community hubs when damage to the network causes a widespread outage, allowing crucial essentials to continue to be delivered to affected Victorians. That is what this government is continuing to do – deliver a sustainable energy grid built on renewables.

Those opposite continue to spout that this is what the future will look like under a renewable energy system, and I have got to say that that is dangerous. This could not be further from the truth. The renewable energy system that this government has invested in, frankly, was the hero of last week. When the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station tripped, it was the renewable energy systems set up by this government that bore the brunt by supplying more than 50 per cent of power during Wednesday’s peak period. It was because of renewables that we were able to keep more Victorians’ lights on. I think that needs to be heard time and time and time again, because it was renewables that kept Victoria’s lights on.

I want to reaffirm absolutely that the government understands and sympathises with the households and the businesses that these power outages affected, whether they be energy dependent for health reasons, whether they have lost whole fridges worth of food or whether they have suffered inventory losses as a result. It is absolutely critical that we ensure that our future electricity grid is as resilient as possible, with extra precautions taken by government and the community in some high-risk regions, and we know where they are. This is precisely the action the government is taking as we prioritise our goals to deliver energy affordability, reliability, security and sustainability.

However, this inquiry needs to be led by a panel of industry experts, absolutely not politicians, which is why the Allan Labor government will commission a supplementary independent review into the energy distribution network in direct response to last week’s storm, led by this panel, as I have said. This panel will focus on the operational arrangements and preparedness of the distribution companies to respond to these extreme weather events, including the distribution businesses’ management of the incident, as well as the timely and effective restoration of supply. It will also compare the operating models of the different energy network companies. It will investigate if there are any material opportunities that could enable a more rapid reconnection for customers, such as the availability of field crews and technical expertise through the use of mutual aid agreements and resource sharing within our state or indeed from interstate resources, which could certainly be considered. The panel will investigate communications with customers, the effectiveness of information platforms and services such as outage trackers – I am very excited to see that one be added, as I know so many others are – and preparedness to administer relief to impacted communities.

The Victorian government will also be seeking assistance from the Australian Energy Regulator for information regarding the energy resilience requirements of energy infrastructure companies. The final scope of the independent review will be given detailed consideration, and it will build on the work of the energy distribution network resilience review, which I mentioned, which followed the storm events of 2021 and focused on the resilience of the physical grid infrastructure.

There is more that I could say on this. We absolutely understand and acknowledge that the review is needed. It is standard protocol, frankly, following a weather event like we saw last week, but it needs to be independent and led by industry experts. Let us not politicise something that is very much right now affecting Victorians every moment of this last week or so. I thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (16:23): I would like to firstly thank Mr Davis and the opposition for bringing this motion before the chamber. I would also like to at the outset acknowledge the more than 500,000 Victorians who were affected by the power outages and also the amazing first responders who stepped up as always to support their communities. I am sure everyone in this place has a similar high regard for the work that those people undertake for little or no pay and under the most difficult and challenging circumstances.

Mr Davis in his motion has raised some important issues with regard to the rights of Victorians to have confidence that they have a secure, reliable energy system. I do not think anyone in this place would deny that that is a critical consideration. It is a part of our lives. We take it for granted, and when incidents like this occur it shakes us all, doesn’t it, because suddenly it is not there. If there is this event that has occurred, there is a major question as to why and how the system failed and adversely affected so many Victorians. There is also a second question of at least the same or greater importance, and that is how this is to be avoided in the future. Mr Davis’s motion – and excuse me for paraphrasing here, Mr Davis – has broadly four elements: how reliable the system is, what happened on 13 February, the cost of developing a more sustainable electricity system and the role of new technologies and evolving power generation and maintenance systems into the future. The proposal is that this inquiry that is being put forward by the opposition would occur over the period to June 2025, about 16 months away.

These are all important questions, there are no two ways about it, but the issue that we on the crossbench have been considering is how these and also important broader questions are best addressed, and addressed in a timely manner. I would like to personally express my appreciation to Mr Davis and also to Ms Crozier for the very courteous and professional discussion that we had in considering this very question. The question we ask ourselves then as crossbenchers is: is this actually the best way to deal with the issues facing the Victorian community?

Juxtaposed to those conversations we have also had discussions with the government, and I would like to express our appreciation to Minister D’Ambrosio and her staff for their likewise courteous and professional approach to addressing these issues. Arising from those discussions with the government we effectively have a two-staged approach, and this has been canvassed by Mr Galea and Ms Watt. Firstly, there will be an independent expert inquiry, with agreed terms of reference and agreed membership, into what actually happened and why, because I think that is a really big question that every Victorian would like answered, and they would like it answered not by people like us. They want it answered by people who know what it means, who are steeped in the industry, who understand the engineering and who understand the realities of the generation system and the distribution system. From our discussions with the minister there is a recognition that this report will take quite a long time to do. It will take at least 12 months I believe, but – and I think this is really important – the government has committed to the production of an interim report that addresses those most urgent questions within six months. And that six months is very important for those of us who are committed to another process that is underway, and that is, as Dr Mansfield alluded to, the inquiry into climate change resilience and adaptation.

All Victorians I think know the climate is changing, yes? We are beyond the point where we ask: is it going to happen? The question is: how much of it is going to happen, what is it going to mean and how are we going to respond to it? Mr Galea referred to the events that happened at places like Anakie, and I am sure anyone who saw those six high-tension towers that were snapped as though by an act of God thought this was the product of a freak meteorological event. It was a freak event, but it was also a freak event that is going to become more and more common. We are also going to have a whole lot of other things to deal with, like increasing temperatures, increasingly unreliable precipitation and rising flood levels. So if as a state we are to respond strategically and responsibly to those changes, then we also need to have an inquiry that does not simply focus on the events and the outworkings and specifically the power industry, because the power industry is one subset industry within a broader context that all Victorians want to know about. How are we going to adapt to climate change? How are we going to make our state more resilient? How do we keep the lights on? How do we feed our community? These are big issues, and it requires a broad perspective for them to be addressed.

In that sense the inquiry into resilience and adaptation that will be commencing in a few months time, in the middle of the year, will be informed by other works. The first one I have already alluded to, which is the independent expert panel looking at the causes of and the response to the power outages. The second one is the Council Environment and Planning Committee, which has spent a long time looking at the response to and the causes of the 2022 flood event, which affected Victorians across the state. That committee has heard really heart-rending stories of disadvantage arising from those floods. We need to, as a Parliament and as a community, be thinking through these big issues. The inquiry that will kick off in June into resilience and adaptation will be informed by the technical analysis of the power industry and it will also be informed by the findings of the flood inquiry, and it will hope to engage a broad cross-section of the community to consider these issues. I guess the other thing that is really critical is that it will do it in roughly the same time frame as the proposal from the opposition.

We would like a more comprehensive and a bigger picture that meets the needs of all Victorians to be our focus. So in that context and after a lot of discussion and careful deliberation, Legalise Cannabis Victoria will not be supporting the opposition’s motion.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (16:32): I am pleased to speak to this motion. The Liberals and Nationals are putting this forward – and I thank David Davis for his work on this – to have a committee inquiry into Victoria’s energy transmission and particularly the reliability and stability of Victoria’s distribution network. That is what a committee inquiry is all about. We talk to experts. I have been involved with committees now with members across this chamber, and it is important, as it states in this motion, that the committee would comprise two members from the government nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Council, two members from the opposition and two members from amongst the remaining members in the Council. The aim of a committee inquiry is to have transparency, to invite experts in to hear their information and the facts and then to be able to report back on that and have recommendations in that transparent way. We know that we do need independent scrutiny and transparency on this issue, so I certainly support this motion as a way of doing that.

The reliability of our electricity network in Victoria is essential. Communities rely on it. We saw the impact of the recent storms. We had half a million homes without power, and according to reports today there are still 3000 homes that do not have power reconnected. I attended a briefing today with the emergency management commissioner Rick Nugent. It was very informative, and just the extent of the damage that these storms caused is quite incredible.

After the events last week I was contacted by a constituent, Larry, who lives near Warburton. He sent me a message, and he said:

More than 500,000 homes including businesses had their power cut off due to the storms yesterday in Victoria. Today, more than 200,000 homes & businesses still awaiting for their power to be restored. If extreme weather events are going to occur more often resulting in widespread power outages, we may have to revert to stone age living!

We know that they had a huge impact. We saw supermarkets closed, we saw surgeries deferred, we saw traffic lights down for extended periods. But the issues that we saw last week – the power outages – have been happening for some time. This was well before last week. In Northern Victoria towns like Euroa, Violet Town, Longwood, Strathbogie and Benalla have also had issues, but not as frequently. Euroa has experienced 17 unplanned power outages in two months. While wild weather may explain the causes of some, many have gone unexplained. My Nationals colleague Annabelle Cleeland has held community meetings in Euroa, Longwood, Nagambie and Violet Town and had over 300 people attend, because she wanted to hear the stories of those that had been impacted. We know that power outages do have a significant impact. They cause a loss of income for businesses and households – people throw out food and are unable to communicate or stay cool in the hot weather – and they have an impact on people trying to work and certainly cause challenges in emergency situations. It does cause distress. We are aware of residents with a disability being stuck in their electric wheelchairs; people unable to get their cars out of the garage during a crisis; pensioners with expensive medication unable to be refrigerated; people with sleep apnoea tormented at night, unable to sleep without a working machine; and businesses going broke because they cannot operate. I was in Mount Alexander recently and I heard similar stories of problems that had been going on for some time with power outages. There is no ability to do your payWave, very few people carry cash and it has a big impact on business.

I know Annabelle Cleeland has received feedback from many constituents, and I thought that I would share some of these comments with you. Renee wrote:

Other than loosing food, having to find and refill generator, no power has meant no internet and no mobile phone but also no landline because the power tripped the local phone exchange each time. We’ve been unable to operate some of the day to day business activities that rely on phone internet and power. We had to prioritise which items we put the extension lead to … run.

This is from Damian:

I think … we need to be looking at clearing some of the high Tree from a falling distance from the lines so … the power dos not get damaged when we have wind

With the large Trees close to Power lines is a danger for Power outage and also bushfire

Erik said:

We pay too much as it is for … power, it’s not reasonable to shut it down in rural areas to keep the city grid with thier aircon and elec car charging going. If this is indeed the case, rural residents should receive cheaper rates.

Judy said:

Outages have impacted access, costs increased due to food spoilage, health and wellbeing impacted due to non-operational cooling, toilets, showers and drinking water.

This message is from Gay:

I am emotionally disturbed for the elderly in our community, their health can be adversely be affected during power outages. Especially those on sleep apnea machinery. Also it is impossible to call 000 in an emergency as our phones go down as well … they say if you have issues email us, that’s a joke … it does not work with power outages!!!

Anne, who is in business, wrote:

Financially disruptive to my homebased business. Also financially & phsically disruptive to my residential situation in that large amounts of food have had to be discarded when the freezers thawed due to electrricity outages.

Margaret wrote:

I have a c-pap machine to help me breathe. It has … to be reset each time and is not working properly yet.

Finally, Rachael stated:

I’ve had to throw food out of the fridge and freezer due to the long outages. I no longer have much perishable food stocked up due to the uncertainty of the power outages and basically buy for a few days only.

My husband had his work emergency phone when the mobile phones went down and the call centre was unable to make any contact with him and therefore clearing roads of trees etc was unable to be reported and actioned.

These are the stories of real people, people living in regional areas that are tired of the ongoing power outages. The government has been aware of these issues for years, but these outages continue to occur. We rely on electricity, and we need reliable transmission networks. I know that concerns have been raised over the VNI West, which is a single line of huge towers that are as high as the MCG lights, and I have been to community meetings where people are very concerned. But Professor Bruce Mountain has developed an alternate plan to upgrade existing powerlines and still manage to connect the state.

I am not surprised, a day after the coalition pushed for an inquiry, that the Labor government has jumped to do an inquiry, because this government certainly love to give jobs to their mates and mark their own homework. The government has announced an independent review, but as David Davis has asked, who is the mystery person? We need further detail. The government has indicated that power prices are going down, down, down, but ask any family, any business owner – electricity prices are going up, up, up. The Nationals are pleased to support this motion.

Harriet Shing: Wireless technology.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (16:40): Wireless technology – there are all sorts of things that we can use to transmit our views in the context of this debate, and I will be more than delighted to make a contribution, as many on this side and on the other side have, on Mr Davis’s motion. Obviously, the motion is in response to what was absolutely a catastrophic day in Victoria. We know that it was a catastrophic day in Victoria not only because of what we witnessed happen but also because we were warned by emergency services prior to the day that things were going to be bad. I think it is a credit to our emergency services framework, our staff, that they prepare us and themselves for days like this. But obviously, as the events of Tuesday demonstrated, there are some things, some catastrophic weather events, that are very, very difficult to absolutely prepare for. We saw that on Tuesday.

I think it is worth just spending a little bit of time, as I begin my contribution, talking through some of what actually happened on the day, because unfortunately in this debate, for whatever reason, there is a bit of conflation I think that occurs between the events that occurred and what led to power outages. And in what might only be described as an attempt to either whip up a furore or score political points I think some of that conflation is being done disingenuously to generate outrage.

What we saw on the Tuesday was an absolutely catastrophic weather event, with winds that we had never seen before sweeping through different parts of the state, almost in a band from parts of western Victoria going through places like Anakie in Geelong, really in a band that stretched east. We saw from Anakie pictures that are ingrained in our minds of those six transmission towers that looked like they had been stepped on by a giant. The consequence of having that significant transmission line go down was the tripping of the significant power station at Loy Yang A, not because the power station itself was in any way faulty or affected by the weather event but because the power that it was generating as per its operational requirements could not be distributed anywhere because of the freak event. And so the safety mechanism kicked in and the generation was shut down for a short period of time for safety reasons, which then led to some load shedding in western Victoria – about 90,000 homes for about an hour.

The bulk of Victorians who lost power that day did not lose it as a result of the crushing of the Anakie towers and the problems at Loy Yang A. They were the result of localised poles and wires either being ripped out of the ground themselves by the wind or having trees fall on them. And we have all seen the video of the winds howling through the suburbs and the towns on that day. We have seen quite remarkable vision and footage and photos of huge gum trees lying horizontal on the ground with their root balls exposed to the elements.

Never before had we seen such widespread felling of such huge trees in such widespread parts of Melbourne. We know that this happened, because people were posting videos about it in the aftermath showing us just how terrible it was. We saw a great response from members of the community and their elected representatives out there showing us exactly what had happened. We saw our colleagues Mr Galea and others in the Dandenongs and the south-east of Melbourne showing us exactly what was happening. We had our colleagues and comrades out in Gippsland showing us there. We even had Mr Davis standing valiantly on the street in Clayton next to a bin that had fallen over and a powerline that was down.

Members interjecting.

Ryan BATCHELOR: It was very compelling vision; you should go and have a look at the footage. But what it demonstrates to us is right across Melbourne localised transmission was down, and that was the big cause of the power outages to so many homes. What we saw on that day was also a remarkable effort to aid recovery – the line workers and SES out taking down the fallen trees, clearing the roads and putting the powerlines back up again. They did a remarkable job. Just in my local area in Moorabbin, the Moorabbin SES unit responded to 172 requests for assistance in 48 hours, and they were not the worst hit in metropolitan Melbourne or in regional Victoria by any stretch of the imagination. But they were out there – 172 requests to the Moorabbin SES in 48 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday – catastrophic day, catastrophic events.

So the question we have got to ask now is: what should we do about it? Because after all serious disasters we should have a look at what happened and why, what the response was like and what it is that we can do to learn from this for the future. I think we have had in the contributions to this debate some questions raised. Were we well enough equipped? Is the transmission infrastructure that we have in this state being kept up to the standards that we need in order to meet and withstand the effects of climate change in our community? These are really important and valuable questions and ones that we need to ask, obviously. I think the inquiries that we have on foot will get to them, particularly in answering the question: has privatisation of these assets been good for them and been good for Victorians? I look forward to those matters being canvassed in the inquiries that we have got ahead of us.

David Davis interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: I will come to that, Mr Davis. I will absolutely come to that, because what has come about in this debate is a question of competence.

Members interjecting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Order! We are getting towards the end. If we could bring this home without too much furore, that would be awesome. Mr Batchelor to continue without help.

Ryan BATCHELOR: I have absolute confidence in Minister D’Ambrosio as the state’s energy minister, who I am the first to say I think is the best energy minister this state has had at least for the last 20 years and possibly longer, because she is absolutely committed to not only transforming our energy system from where we were in the Dark Ages to where we need to be with renewables but also ensuring that we have got the transmission networks, that they are reliable and that we have the power coming to us when we need it.

We are going to learn from what happened last week, but we are going to get the advice on that from an independent review led by experts, not a political theatre. But also, because it is important for members of Parliament to be able to consider these matters, as Mr Ettershank and Dr Mansfield said, this chamber has already asked the Environment and Planning Committee to do an inquiry into how well our built infrastructure is going to adapt to climate change. We supported that. I am pleased to be chairing that inquiry. Submissions to that inquiry are open right now, and I would encourage everyone who has an interest in this topic to put a submission through to that inquiry. Submissions are open, there will be public hearings later in the year and we will report. These matters are being looked into. They were catastrophic, they warrant further work and that is exactly what we are going to do.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (16:50): I do speak on this motion to have an inquiry into the energy sector. Of course the energy sector being one of the priority areas for reform for the Allan Labor government, you can be assured that there are inquiries occurring all the time – critical-thinking inquiries around the reform process that is underway, in addition to the inquiry that we have initiated in response to the events last week, mentioned in particular by my colleague Mr Batchelor.

We know now that the catastrophic weather events like what happened on Tuesday were predicted. On Monday they were predicted to be catastrophic in the Wimmera region. It showed that the new national system was very effective and accurate. I want to acknowledge, before I mention the electricity side of things in the central and eastern parts of the state, that there is a community of people in Pomonal who are really hurting right now. There were around about 100 houses in Pomonal, and we are pretty sure that about 45 of them have gone. I acknowledge what those people are going through and that the Allan government is completely behind them.

I want to thank the firefighters and volunteers, 000 responders and local governments – the Northern Grampians Shire Council in particular as well as Ararat city – who responded so beautifully and so in coordination, together, very, very quickly. That is what you get with the all the preparation that goes on for these kinds of events, right down to the precontracted mental health services that are provided, already in place for such an event. There is no need to ask for these things; they are automatically contracted, priced and provided. That is what I saw on Wednesday, the day after the event, when I visited the Stawell emergency relief centre, where between 40 and 50 residents of Pomonal were seeking refuge from the incident that had occurred. I saw with my own eyes the mental health support that was being provided by those organisations that are contracted to do so. As I said, the Victorian government has a funding agreement in place with the Australian Red Cross and the Victorian Council of Churches, which supports them to provide psychosocial supports in the immediate aftermath of emergency events or disasters. These organisations have been providing mental health support on the ground to the communities impacted in Pomonal from 14 February, which is the day that I visited the Stawell emergency relief centre.

I am very much thinking of the communities of Pomonal but also thinking of and thanking the volunteers and the responders in the emergency services that worked so hard that day and have continued to work hard as we transition from the response phase of the emergency through to the recovery phase. I want to express my appreciation and respect for the skills, experience and technical expertise of the people that did respond during that emergency. When it comes to technical expertise, I think mental health support is very much one of those spaces where it is absolutely clear that confidentiality, respect and courtesy are very, very important. It is not a space that we can talk a lot about in particular examples, and it is not a space that we can talk about publicly. I think it is certainly not a space to be exploited. I might leave my contribution there because I believe in sharing, and that is what I wanted to say about the services that were provided in Pomonal and how much I support that community.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (16:56): I am glad to stand and talk in opposition to this motion. I do so for exactly what we see up there today: the future of Victoria. Those opposite, both state and federally, seem to have taken no consideration of the future of our state or our nation in the last 10, 20, 30 years on this issue. Last week’s storms were catastrophic events. We lost a life in Mirboo North. We lost homes across the state. There has been immense damage to community assets. Homes are still without power. Whilst emergency workers have been on the ground, communities have been pulling together and volunteers have been fighting fires, clearing driveways and caring for fellow Victorians, what have the opposition been doing? Cheap political pointscoring. They have been raising nuclear power. That is straightaway what we heard from Canberra from the Nats: false cries about restrictions to gas, fearmongering and scaring Victorians in a time when we need to be out there supporting them, getting power back on, getting them access to their driveways, making sure there is food in the fridge and looking after them. But there is no surprise. I have said it before in this place: you have no plan. It is only cheap political pointscoring.

On a plan, Mallacoota’s power went out last night, and the battery backup powered by renewable energy came straight back on and the town had power. But of course you guys do not care about that, because you are not actually interested in the reality of what is going on on the ground. You are technological dinosaurs. I cannot for the life of me understand why you are stuck in this climate-denying, renewable-hating mindset. I do not know where it is driven from and whether there are vested interests elsewhere in the nation that have set the position of your party that you cannot break out of. Mr Davis has said 10 to 12 times today that we have been in power 20 of the last 23 years. Mr Davis, thank you for highlighting that for the Victorian people. There is a reason why that is the case. They know you cannot be trusted on climate change and you cannot be trusted on energy. Kennett sold things off. Nap Time and Dolittle came in and did nothing. They gutted the state’s capacity to deal with climate –

Members interjecting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Order! Mr McIntosh without assistance, please.

Tom McINTOSH: Since coming back to power after those four years of not only inaction but taking this state backwards, this side has got on with building our energy system, putting in the renewables and setting us up to go into the future. It is very clear you will never come to this place with a plan. You will never come with a proposal; you are too busy fighting amongst yourselves. With all due respect to the new member, Dr Bach, probably one of your most talented people, looked around in your leadership group and said, ‘I don’t want to be here; I want to go to the other side of the world.’

David Davis: On a point of order, Acting President, I think the member is straying from the motion in talking about Dr Bach and others. He has gone on a long, long time.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Mr McIntosh to maybe not comment on the recently departed Libs.

Tom McINTOSH: Yes, thank you. To those of you that are still here, I say: we must act on climate change. We must set up our energy generators, our transmission and our distribution network to go through this century.

Members interjecting.

Tom McINTOSH: And it is not cheap political pointscoring; it is getting on with the real work. It is easy for you lot to sit there and take cheap shots, because we are getting on with delivering on a massive, massive task and a massive challenge, and you are not up to it. Victorians know you are not up to it, and you know you are not up to it, so do not pretend, Davis. Sit in your chair and do not pretend. We all know you have got nothing to offer Victorians, and you will be sitting on that side for a very long time to come.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Order! Enough. It is getting out of hand, and your time is up also.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:01): I am pleased to rise and make a contribution here. We have seen strange and wacky contributions from some on the other side, but leaving all that to one side, the reality is that this is a sensible, grounded motion to deal with an event that actually has done tremendous damage to the Victorian community. It is an event that has seen more than 530,000 households locked out. It has seen businesses hurt, and those business are owed a proper explanation.

I notice the government members and crossbench members are talking about the government undertaking an inquiry. Well, the truth is the government was shamed into that inquiry because we announced this on Monday. They had no intention of doing any such inquiry. They have been shamed into it. Do we know who is going to do this independent inquiry? Which person? It is time the government came clean. This is, as I say, a very sensible motion. It looks to the future. It deals with the incident, it deals with the past and it looks to the future with renewables playing a greater role.

Council divided on motion:

Ayes (17): Melina Bath, Jeff Bourman, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, David Limbrick, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Joe McCracken, Nick McGowan, Evan Mulholland, Georgie Purcell, Adem Somyurek, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, Richard Welch

Motion negatived.