Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Energy policy

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (00:02): (1507) My matter is for the Minister for Energy and Resources in the other place, and it concerns the extraordinary announcements that we have just seen come through in the Australian now. This is about the extension of the Yallourn power station, and the action I seek here is for the government to belatedly release the documents ordered by this chamber, which are the agreements and arrangements struck between the government and Yallourn some time ago.

There was a documents motion passed in this chamber which the government has flouted. It has filibustered and blocked the release of those documents. But now the government has struck a four-year deal with the operators, and what we are seeing with Lily D’Ambrosio is the biggest climbdown we have seen in decades. There was the anti-coal ‘I am the great caped crusader against coal.’ But actually the truth is she has completely and utterly botched energy policy in this state. By not managing energy policy properly she is actually now going to have to step back from her long opposition to coal. She has done this agreement – a secret agreement, unlike New South Wales. The New South Wales extension on coal was done openly, and the numbers and the details of the deal were released publicly. But in Victoria, with the secret government that we have, the government that is determined to block the release of open information, now Lily D’Ambrosio has had to do the biggest climbdown in decades and sign a deal with the big bad brown coal station, as she would see it. She thinks that this coal is terrible. She has bagged it up hill and down dale for years, and now the Allan Labor government, through Lily D’Ambrosio, has done a deal with Yallourn. They are going to keep it going for four years.

Many would say it is a terrible deal, but the deal has been forced on the government because of their own incompetence. They are well into their 11th year in power, and they have had all the time in the world to plan and all the time in the world to get this right. This is a marker of the incompetence of this minister and the incompetence of this government. They have not been able to achieve their own stated policies and in fact now what they have done is go back on those policies. I think the community is entitled to see how much taxpayers money is being spent and precisely the nature of the deal. The government ought to, tomorrow, release those documents for the Victorian community.