Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Environment and Planning Committee

Inquiry into Climate Resilience

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (13:13): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table a report on the inquiry into climate resilience, including an appendix, extracts of proceedings and minority reports, from the Environment and Planning Committee and present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Ryan BATCHELOR: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

The Environment and Planning Committee has completed its significant report into climate resilience. The terms of reference prepared gave us a very wide scope to investigate this particularly critical issue. Obviously the committee first and foremost acknowledged the reality of Victoria’s changing climate and the severity of those impacts. The committee focused our inquiry on the way that climate change is impacting on Victoria’s built environment and the infrastructure associated with it. We did some in-depth examinations of how our planning and building systems are responding to the risks posed by climate change and also how good governance of climate issues can help ensure that the community is well prepared for climate-related events.

We heard evidence from right across the state of the increasing frequency and severity of natural disaster events. We had evidence from a witness in Mount Macedon that they were responding to a bushfire event and a flooding event on the same day. The committee obviously in its prior inquiry into the 2022 flood event is familiar with many of the matters raised in this area.

This report advocates that we need to not only respond well to disasters when they occur but also ensure that in the response and the follow-up to those disasters we are building resilience into our built environment, doing more to ensure preparedness for future disasters and putting in place mitigation measures to reduce the impact of climate change.

The committee received 285 submissions from a range of stakeholders, including from local governments from across the state, from various advocacy bodies, from members of the community and from experts in climate science. I particularly want to thank those scientific experts who gave us a very honest and stark appraisal of the way that Victoria’s climate is changing and the impacts therein. We held eight days of public hearings and heard from over 130 witnesses from places as far afield as Traralgon and Aireys Inlet. We went to Mount Macedon, we went out to Emerald and we held some hearings here in Melbourne.

The committee heard and research shows that existing climate zones and weather patterns in Victoria are changing, with extreme weather events such as heatwaves, bushfires, droughts, storms and flooding events becoming more common because of climate change. Average temperatures are rising. We have more hot days over 35 degrees than ever before. Our bushfire seasons are longer and hotter. Sea levels are rising, we are seeing increased coastal erosion and our storm events are intensifying because of the way that our average temperatures are rising and their associated changes.

The report also builds on the work we did during our inquiry into the 2022 flooding event. It makes 82 recommendations and 93 findings across a range of interconnected legislative policy issues and details how we can deal with these climate risks. During the course of the committee’s inquiry there was some significant legislation passed by the Parliament to ensure that climate risk was included as an issue that needs to be taken into account by Victoria’s planning system, and we also obviously drew on the work of the previous select committee into the changes to the planning scheme.

I want to thank the committee secretariat, led by senior committee manager Lilian Topic, research assistant Alyssa Topy, inquiry officer Caitlin Connally and communications adviser Bill Bainbridge, with administrative support from Monique Riordan-Hill and Sylvette Bassy. Niamh McEvoy, a colleague on secondment from the UK House of Commons, also contributed to the report. We express, as ever, our thanks to the Hansard and broadcasting teams, who were able to beam our efforts to the world when we had our hearings in Melbourne and regionally. This was a significant and complex topic that the committee had to digest, and I particularly want to thank all members of the committee for the collegiate way in which we went about this investigation. I commend the report to the house.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (13:18): I would like to make a brief comment on the climate resilience Environment and Planning Committee report and indeed thank the secretariat and the wonderful Lilian Topic and her fabulous team for managing what could only be called a ‘short history of the world’ compendium, which really scratches the surface but also does not go far enough.

Victoria is certainly navigating a complex climate landscape with growing risks calling for proactive planning, but meeting those challenges requires far more than rhetoric. It demands leadership, transparency and respect for local communities. The climate resilience final report lays out the risks, but the Liberals and Nationals minority report exposes the failures on its delivery. As the president of the Inverloch Surf Life Saving Club Glenn Arnold said:

The layers of bureaucracy are ultimately just crippling any decision-making and paralysing any action moving forward.

Coastal communities are watching their infrastructure and public assets erode and have concern around their private assets as well. On planning and building, the government’s layered red and green tape is stalling housing, inflating costs and pushing home ownership out of reach. Indeed Master Builders Australia said construction costs have increased by 40 per cent in the past five years, while productivity has declined by 18 per cent. We heard from councils that the cost of rebuilding infrastructure has doubled in the last five years without factoring in climate change, yet disaster funding still forces them to rebuild to outdated standards. In agriculture we see the push for renewables is steamrolling farmers, and legislation now before us allows forced entry into private land.

Finally, we see that this report, which is a decent look into these issues, became weaponised through the emergency services tax, which should never have been in this report at all. The Liberals and Nationals certainly fundamentally support the strengthening of Victoria’s resilience, but it should not be cost shifting dressed up as reform. Please, I ask the committee to read the minority report.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (13:20): I would like to start by thanking the secretariat, who worked incredibly hard on what was a very broad inquiry where there were mountains of evidence. I would also like to thank the chair, my fellow committee members and the hundreds of people who made submissions or appeared as witnesses. This was a really important inquiry, a really useful one, but it should serve as a wake-up call for the government: it was clear that we are not prepared. We have some great strategies and great ideas about what needs to happen but a clear lack of action. In fact not only are we not prepared, we are well behind, something many communities know all too well because they are already living it. They are experiencing rolling climate disasters and experiencing coastal erosion and inundation, and it is forcing impossible decisions for them.

Communities also have many of the answers, but they lack the systems and support required to empower them. We really welcome the report, in particular the calls to embed climate resilience across all parts of government and require leadership from the top, not just siloing it within the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. We also support the recommendations to overhaul the planning system, lift energy efficiency standards of buildings, including new builds and retrofits, and ensure that home owners and renters know what energy efficiency standards are for properties they may be moving into.

Importantly, the committee recommended establishing a climate adaptation fund to support resilience measures by local governments and communities as well as a resilient home scheme similar to those in New South Wales and Queensland that enables homes in high-risk areas to be retrofitted or moved. However, despite a third of submissions calling for polluters to pay for adaptation, this was not supported in the majority report. The financial burden on citizens as a result of climate change impacts is substantial and growing, yet most polluting industries reap immense profits, pay little or no tax and take no responsibility for the consequences of their business. It is completely unjust, and that is why I have recommended a polluter-pays levy in my minority report.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (13:22): I also rise to join in this debate on the tabling of the report on the climate resilience inquiry. I would like to start out by thanking Lilian Topic and her team for the assistance that they provided to the committee and for the wonderful job they have done in presenting the report of what was a very long and very detailed inquiry. I would also like to thank all those members of the public who put in submissions and gave evidence to our inquiry, because it was enlightening to hear from so many people on the different issues that are facing Victoria and there is no doubt that we are facing a period of climate change and we need to be more resilient.

Mr Batchelor mentioned the collegiate way that the committee went about the inquiry, and yes, there was a collegiate response to the inquiry and the way that we conducted the inquiry. However, I was extremely disappointed when we received the chair’s draft, which was quite delayed from when we should have received that chair’s draft, to find the politicisation of the report, with the inclusion of a section on the Emergency Services and Volunteer Fund – a fund that we heard nothing about while we were gathering evidence to our inquiry or taking submissions. We did not receive a briefing from the government, and yet that was included in the report. During the deliberations the section that was put in there was watered down.

Jaclyn Symes: On a point of order, President, I will take your guidance. I am not a member of this committee and it has been some time since I was on an upper house committee, but I am fairly confident that detailing deliberations of parliamentary committees, even with parliamentary privilege, is unparliamentary and actually could see you referred to privileges.

The PRESIDENT: I will take your point of order into consideration. Just maybe, members, heed the minister’s point of order in contributions.

Wendy LOVELL: I would like to highlight the very good minority report put forward by the Liberals and Nationals, and in particular I would like to draw attention to the fact that we have recommended that any recommendations that are adopted from this should be subject to a regulatory impact statement, because whilst we hear evidence and we make recommendations, we are not the experts on the cost to the community of these recommendations.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (13:25): I am pleased to speak briefly about the Environment and Planning Committee’s report on the inquiry into climate resilience. I do want to thank the chair, the members of the committee and also the secretariat who worked on this inquiry. We visited Wangaratta and Mount Macedon, we went to Emerald and we went to Aireys Inlet, and there were many people that made submissions to this inquiry as well.

Climate resilience is not easy to define. It is very hard, certainly, to achieve – we know we can work towards it, but to achieve it is another thing. We heard about disasters and the impact of natural disasters. Certainly in the face of natural disasters it is important to build back better, and we heard many talk about that and echo many of the calls that we heard during the flood inquiry. We heard about levees and the Victorian government. We have put forward the need to ensure that levees on Crown land are immediately restored to their original integrity and maintained through a legislated inspection and maintenance program.

We heard a lot about some of these renewable-energy projects – about wind turbines and solar panels. We know Colbinabbin has a project that is over 700,000 panels, and we heard about the impact of that heat island effect and the need to look into that and also to look into recycling, because we have hundreds of wind turbines going out into regional areas and solar panels – many, many thousands of them. They have very short life spans of 25 to 30 years, we heard, and at this point there is no plan as to what happens next. We also heard about the significant increase in the cost of building and bushfire overlays adding about 40 per cent to the cost of building. The challenge is always, when you look to ideals to improve things, to balance that with the cost, because we do not want to end up with less houses in Victoria. We need to think long term, and I encourage people to look at the minority report at the back of this inquiry.

Motion agreed to.