Wednesday, 31 July 2024

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:26): I want to point to a particular report today and that is the state budget and particularly the energy outputs in that state budget, which lay out the government’s plans for new energy infrastructure – perhaps in a shabby way and an inadequate way, but there is some attempt. In recent weeks we have seen the release of the Draft Victorian Transmission Plan Guidelines. There is a short document and then a longer document which seek community input. I hasten to add that nobody thinks this is a genuine attempt at consultation by the state government. Nobody believes that is what is going on here. This is the next step in the government imposing its will on the Victorian community – the AEMO-inspired and VicGrid-inspired plans to cover vast areas of country Victoria with a range of renewables.

I make the point very clearly and very strongly that our renewables sector is an important sector. There will be more renewables. We support more renewables and we support more solar and wind as part of the options going forward. But the plans need to operate in a way that does not destroy prime agricultural land and does not destroy communities through unsophisticated plans to roll out these massive transmission systems.

The government has not got the consultation right, and this is a further step in that failure to get the consultation right. It is clear that the government’s decision is to cover 70 per cent of agricultural land in Victoria – that is what the document on the website said. That document has now disappeared, but that is clearly where the government is going. The vast swathes of territory that have been laid out for renewable energy zones I think will worry many in the community. They have certainly worried people like Emma Germano at the Victorian Farmers Federation, and I invite people to look at the statement on the VFF website. It is clear that there is vast and strong concern across farmers and many in country communities about how these massive transmission lines will operate and how the renewable energy zones will impact on our prime agricultural land.

There is a balance that has got to be struck. It is a balance that has got to be struck sensibly and it has got to involve proper communication with local communities. At the moment the communities that I talk to in the country and the people who I talk to indicate that there is no proper balancing of these decisions. The state government is very much focused on just imposing its version into the future, making sure that it just rolls over country communities in a way that is fundamentally undemocratic. We know the problems that have been pointed to with the integrated plan that has been laid out by AEMO. We know the understandings that have been put into that that have perhaps been best laid out by the Centre for Independent Studies and in particular in the work of Aidan Morrison, which lays out many of the presumptions that are behind the document.

Again, this is another step. This document, this transmission document or plan, whatever you want to call it – guidelines, plan – lays out large swathes of country Victoria that are actually going to be covered with renewables. There is not local community support for these changes in that way. I am not, as I say, a person who quibbles about our climate objectives, but I do think that you have got to do this in a sophisticated way. Even in the last few days we have seen Bob Brown down in Tasmania pointing to problems with some of the wind farms and the impact on birdlife. You do actually have to have a proper process here, and this process is shoddy. It is not up to scratch. It is not the process that I think the community believes is sufficient, and I say the state government, and in particular the Minister for Energy and Resources Lily Ambrosio, needs to go back to basics.

AEMO is a deeply unaccountable and distant body. It is a body that does not listen to the community. VicGrid is showing all the signs of repeating the mistakes of AEMO in the way that it has outlined these things. I say people need to look at this very closely and sceptically, because this is not about community consultation, this is about overriding communities.