Thursday, 28 August 2025

Bills

National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Lizzie Blandthorn:

That the bill be now read a second time.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (14:07): I rise to make a contribution to the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. The purpose of this bill is to consolidate entirely within VicGrid transmission planning and jurisdiction on transmission planning functions that were previously shared with AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator. The bill also establishes a compliance and enforcement regime, providing power of entry for VicGrid to access land and a wide variety of other powers. It amends the National Electricity (Victoria) Act 2005, the national electricity regulations, the Electricity Industry Act 2000 and the Electricity Industry (Residual Provisions) Act 1993. It grants right-of-entry powers to introduce extraordinary new offences and massively increase penalties for obstructing VicGrid and its contractors. It transfers the powers and functions of the CEO of VicGrid under the National Electricity (Victoria) Act to the statutory body corporate, VicGrid. It transfers certain property rights and liabilities of the state relating to the CEO of VicGrid, AEMO and its subsidiary, Transmission Company Victoria, to the statutory body corporate, VicGrid. It establishes a new physical access arrangement in the state to control access to the declared shared network, and it establishes a framework for the funding and payment of benefits to landholders, local communities and traditional owners impacted by new transmission, renewable generation and battery storage infrastructure. It exempts the body corporate, VicGrid, from the requirement to hold a licence to transmit under the Electricity Industry Act 2000.

It is important to explain that we have no objection in principle and in fact we support the concept of moving as much away from AEMO to Victorian authorities – that is a reasonable principle. We do not think that AEMO is transparent. We do not think that it helps Victoria to have control shifted to a distant body that is controlled by a whole series of ministers and a whole series of bureaucrats that are not responsive to the state Parliament, not responsive to Victorian citizens and not responsive to the decisions that Victoria would seek to make.

That principle is fine, but the rest of the bill we think has deep and fundamental flaws. The decision to increase the powers in the way that has been proposed is wrong and it is draconian. It lays out a new set of penalties and powers. It is not as though government authorities do not have a wide sweep of powers already. Government bodies and government agencies have massive powers, and their ability to do a range of things on land, public and private, is considerable. But this adds a whole range of new powers and creates new offences.

I am going to put some of these on the record so that people understand what we are talking about. New section 68B, providing false or misleading information to VicGrid in purported compliance with a market information instrument – that is 60 penalty units, or $12,210.60, for natural persons; and 240 penalty units, or $48,842, for body corporates. Obscuring, damaging or destroying a notice of proposed entry affixed under section 93BD attracts 60 penalty units, or $12,210. Section 93BH(6) has obscuring, damaging or destroying a notice of application for entry affixed under section 93B also at 60 penalty units, more than $12,000. Section 93BM(5) is about obscuring, damaging or destroying a copy of an order – and on it goes. Failure to provide identification: 20 penalty units, or $4,070.20. Section 93BQ(3), providing false identification or a false address, is also 20 penalty units. Section 93BQ(5), failure to comply with a direction to produce identification, is 20 penalty units. Section 93BS(2), hindering, obstructing or delaying authorised authority – and this sets up a regime for authorised officers – is also 60 penalty units, or $12,210. Further penalties may be served on any person that an authorised officer has reason to believe has committed any of the following offences: obscuring, damaging or destroying a notice, $1221.06; obscuring, damaging or destroying a notice of application or order affixed, $1221; obscuring, damaging or destroying a copy of an order, $1221; failure to provide identification, another $407 fine; failure to comply with directions to produce, $407; hindering, obstructing or delaying authorised activity, $1221.

These are the sorts of new penalties that we have got in this act, and you have got to ask why on earth the government has put these draconian penalties in there. This is Jacinta Allan, and it is overreach. It is a nasty draconian twist, and you have got to ask why. The answer is, sadly, that this is a long-term government. It has been in power almost 11 years. They feel they own everything. They feel that they can do what they want. They do not feel they are bound by the normal democratic institutions and arrangements. They feel they want more power. They use the lower house to stamp that through, and they expect their friends in some of the other parties here to do that, as they often do – stamp through draconian and unnecessary overreach by this government. I hope that is not the occasion here. I hope that the crossbench are prepared to support the Liberals and Nationals in opposing this bill, in amending this bill and in taking the nasty, extraordinary teeth from this bill. We will seek to do that. I am happy to circulate the amendments, if that is in order now. And I am also happy to make available, if any member of the chamber wants a copy, the list of penalties. I think it might be the only one that I have seen where it has been tabulated in a handy list for people to see the new set of penalties. Bear in mind the government has enormous powers. There are lots and lots of abilities to enter properties and to acquire properties, and lots of other powers and legal processes. But these are actually like another additional new layer on top, to clobber farmers, to clobber communities and to go in and use this as a big stick inside local communities in country Victoria.

We think it is wrong, we think it is draconian and we think it just simply goes too far. You can be a person who is a huge supporter of renewables, a huge supporter of low-emission technology –

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: I am a supporter of low-emission technologies, and I always have been. However, that does not mean that is a free-for-all for any new power, any new draconian stick to clobber people with that the government is taking. I think people need to think about and separate what is important with renewables and low-emission technologies of various types and what is important with our basic democracy and an understanding of how we might best proceed.

Our amendments have been circulated. They do a number of things. They remove a lot of the additional powers that have been sought from the bill. I am probably jumping ahead here, and Mrs Tyrrell will have a bit to say about that, but there is overlap, I am flagging for people, between her amendments and our amendments. I will let her talk to hers, but one of the key aspects of our amendments is the removal of some of those powers. We also want greater transparency. Let us understand what is going on here. The government is pushing forward with this set of proposals. What is the cost of these proposals going to be? It is going to be astronomical.

There is the issue of the costing of many of these long-distance wires, the renewable energy zones and the various connections. The best known example now comes out of AEMO’s calculations itself. VNI West was initially around $3.2 billion to $3.4 billion. The latest AEMO publication puts it between $7 billion and $7.6 billion but with a 50 per cent range, which pushes the top end of the estimate up to $11.4 billion. This is a gigantic amount of money, and who will pay? I will tell you who will pay: every person who is connected to electricity in Victoria – everyone; every business, every household. It is likely to push the costs up for businesses massively, and it is likely to push the costs up for the average householder who is doing it tough at the moment. I want to just put this in context too and pay tribute to the work that Bruce Mountain has done in recent times. He has done quite a lot of work calculating the figures from AEMO’s work, and AEMO has treated a number of the calculations less than transparently. But Bruce makes it clear that the true cost of the lot of the new infrastructure is likely in aggregate to exceed $28 billion – $28,000 million. All of that is to be paid for by households and businesses – all of it.

When the government says that low-emission technologies and renewables are the cheapest, they might be cheap at the point of consumption. If you have got solar on your roof and you have got your solar there, it might be cheap at that point, and there is no great distribution and transmission cost in that. But if you count all of these transmission and distribution costs in, it quickly becomes a different issue. Then there is the storage that has got to be associated with it. So you have got the inherent intermittent nature of a lot of the low-emission technologies and there has obviously got to be matched storage or some other source that has got to come in. Inevitably, as low-emission technologies grow, there will be more, in my view, gas – the only technology that is going to be able to provide the peaking power that is needed to assist the grid and make sure that the grid is able to proceed in a way that is stable, secure and affordable.

The first thing I think we need is more transparency on the costs. There are two new funds established here – the community benefit fund and the traditional owner fund – as well as the cost of the various infrastructure. The infrastructure cost is pushed through to consumers and businesses, and the cost of these two new funds, the community benefit fund and the traditional owner fund, is pushed through to consumers as well, to businesses and households. But the businesses and the households do not know how much they are paying. They do not currently know how much they are paying, and it is not transparent, but it is a significant component on the supply bill of every business and every household in the state.

Victoria pays the most for so-called green schemes of any jurisdiction in the country, and we are about to pay a lot more. It is the state government’s plan that everyone will pay a lot more. They will pay more for the infrastructure, they will pay more for the community benefit fund and they will pay more for the traditional owner fund. All of that will be sheeted home to average families who are struggling and sheeted home to average businesses that are struggling too. They will all pay, and they will pay through the nose. These costs are added on top for every single electricity consumer in the state.

Let us understand what is going on here. The state government is bringing back more powers. We are not opposed to more being done in Victoria – it is more transparent, it is more clear and it is more controllable ultimately by the Victorian Parliament and people, so that is a reasonable principle – but we do not accept that the state government needs this huge suite of new sticks to beat farmers and local communities who are opposed to some of these developments and want to have their democratic say. State government wants to override them, and that is why it is taking a greater amount of powers. I think that the community is entitled to be very sceptical of this overreach, this grab for new powers, by this government.

I want to say something about some other points too. We think with the community benefit fund it is a good idea, where there is new infrastructure in a community and there are impacts on the community, that there be some financial support for those directly affected and those more peripherally affected. That is a good idea. The various bodies that are wanting to put in these projects are less than happy, I put on record, about the issues around the community benefit fund and the traditional owner fund. They say that they would be better placed to do this, and I reckon they are probably right. I am not going to name the various groups, but there are low-emission technology groups, renewable groups, that want to roll stuff out, and they say that they would be better placed to communicate and to work with communities than bogus committees set up by the minister based in Melbourne that will actually have hand-picked, cherrypicked people put on as so-called representatives of the community who will in fact be controlled by the department and the minister. That is what people are worried about. They are worried that they will not be genuine local community committees, that the community committees will actually have their strings pulled – let us be quite clear what is going on here out of the building just up the road here – by the minister and her minions. She will stack these committees with all her mates, and they will not represent the local communities. So that is a problem in itself.

Again, I would say the money that comes into those committees will be paid for by consumers. But there is actually a clause in this bill which enables the Treasurer to reach in and take that money and put it into consolidated revenue. I am worried about that clause; we will seek to delete that clause, because stripping that money out from the community benefit fund and taking it back into consolidated revenue is the wrong approach in our view. We think that this is actually just a mechanism to create a whole big new tax. You pay through your bills, small businesses pay through their bills, it goes on to this community benefit fund but that fund can be raided at will by the Treasurer. So understand what is going on here: this is again another grab for money by this government, a desperate government that has got itself in deep debt. It has found another source to tear back money out of the community. All of that money will come from those bills that Victorians pay, the electricity bills of Victorians, which are already up, up, up, up, up, up. The minister says, ‘They’re going down.’ She parrots the Coles ads and says, ‘Down, down’ – no, they are going up, up, up. I invite people, if you doubt that, to just go and do a survey down the nearest main street and ask people whether they think their electricity bills and their gas bills are going up or down.

Tom McIntosh interjected.

David DAVIS: Well, just go and do a poll down your street. You do not live in your electorate, so it would take you a while to get there to do the poll down in the main street in your electorate. That is a reasonable point. But what I am saying is –

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Acting President, I wonder if it might be possible to speak with relative silence. I do not mind the occasional interjection, but a barrage is a bit difficult.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Gaelle Broad): Thank you. Yes, it is good to be on your best behaviour.

David DAVIS: I need to also point out that there are a number of other aspects of this that we are troubled about. I really want to just return to some of the points that Bruce Mountain made so helpfully about a week ago in the Herald Sun. Bruce Mountain, an electricity industry expert, a thoughtful person, a person who has been prepared to do these calculations, went through the AEMO figures. He pointed to the weaknesses in the AEMO figures; he pointed to the fact that the AEMO figures make assumptions on the positive side when they could make assumptions on a different side. The figure he comes up with is that the cost of the infrastructure that has been identified for Victoria is likely to exceed $28,000 million over the period ahead. That is a gigantic amount of money that will be put onto the bills of Victorians. He says at least a 50 per cent increase, and I think he is roughly right. You may want to quibble on the edges about the calculation, you might want to engage on those. I would encourage people to read the Mountain argument and to look at that closely, and if you think he is wrong, well, let us hear why he is wrong and what your alternative calculations are. I think he is right, and I think AEMO is wrong.

I think what is clear here is the state government has sort of a plan, but it is actually a plan that is years and years behind. If you think of the VNI West, which we were just referring to before, that is two or three years behind at this point, and likely to be four or five or six years behind before anything happens meaningfully. The costs have gone up – as I have already outlined – massively. The state government’s plan is in tatters. Then if you look at the other part of the state government’s plan, in 2028 the brown coal at Yallourn is coming off. We have not seen the documents. The state government will not give us the documents in this chamber. It is a set of documents that we want to see, because it would actually inform policy for us and it would inform policy for the broader community. Those agreements in Victoria – the chamber has asked for those documents. They have been refused, they have not been sent to the arbiter, unlike in New South Wales at Eraring, where a similar situation was in the offing and a lot of the documents were made public. I say those Yallourn and Loy Yang documents should be made public, because they would inform market participants and they would inform the opposition and other parties. People say to me, ‘What would you do with this contract?’ And I say, ‘Well, an agreement has been signed, a contract has been signed.’ But I confess I have not seen the contract, and nor have you, Mr McIntosh, and nor has anyone else in the community. No-one beyond the cabinet has seen that document. I say let us make those documents public. Let us see what Victoria has been signed up to at Yallourn –

Tom McIntosh interjected.

David DAVIS: It is in your electorate. You should go and ask for those documents so that you know what is planned in your electorate and for the whole state.

Tom McIntosh interjected.

David DAVIS: I have been to Yallourn. Yes, I have. I have indeed. And I thank them for the opportunity to see the facility and to learn.

It is clear that there is there is certainly a run down going on there, and I understand that. I might make another point, a very up-to-the-minute point: I am informed that one of the generators is down at Yallourn now.

Tom McIntosh interjected.

David DAVIS: Yesterday – that is right – and it is still down, I am told, as of about an hour ago. I stand to be corrected if that information has shifted in the last hour, but actually you have got a generator down, and you can go onto PocketNEM and see that. People could go and check that now for me. But let me be clear –

Jacinta Ermacora: It’s out of date.

David DAVIS: The PocketNEM, is it?

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Well, you are going to close it. But let me just make a point here.

Jacinta Ermacora: You privatised it.

David DAVIS: Actually, much of the privatisation was started by the Kirner government. Let me be quite clear about that. I want to be very clear here. In Victoria there are a set of renewable energy targets that have been laid down by the government, including offshore wind targets. Offshore wind is now in deep trouble, as we know. The time delays are very significant, and I say the government needs to come forward with some information about the offshore wind delays and tell us what is going to happen there. They still do not have an assembly position for it. The Hastings option is now in deep trouble, and it is clear that the offshore wind time cycle is now very, very likely not to match the government’s objectives and so forth. I say that that is going to cause significant trouble for Victoria. Offshore wind is important. We encourage offshore wind. We are quite happy to work with firms to support offshore wind. But actually the state government has not even been able to get –

Bev McArthur interjected.

David DAVIS: The truth is that one of the generators is still off at Yallourn.

Bev McArthur interjected.

David DAVIS: There you are – totally off. It is clear that there is an issue with 2028. The offshore wind is not coming in time for that. The offshore wind is not coming in for the time –

Tom McIntosh interjected.

David DAVIS: I have actually read the plan. I have actually FOI-ed a great deal around this, and I am also waiting on some further material from Hastings, which actually –

Tom McIntosh: 2032 is the plan, Mr Davis.

David DAVIS: I have got to say, nobody believes that the state government is on track with its offshore wind plan. Nobody I have met in the industry or in the broad sector actually believes that they are on track – or on the right tram, as it were – with their offshore wind.

We say the state government has got to come clean with the true costs of these energy projects. I think Bruce Mountain is much closer than the government and AEMO with his $28 billion estimate. I say we need to push forward with a lot of these challenges to drag information out of the government, to get the truth out of the government and to actually –

Bev McArthur interjected.

David DAVIS: It is a secret society. It is a society that actually does not want to come to the party when it comes to various points.

I want to say something about the renewable energy zones. It is also clear that the renewable energy zones are being imposed on many communities. If I pick up an example, near Shepparton there are areas that have really been clobbered with renewable energy zones that were not in the initial discussions and areas that are being pressured to have the renewable energy zones without being consulted at all. It is being foisted on them. I say that the government, again, have not got the right process. Let us be clear here. The government is now going to use its new powers to go in with its jackboots and its truncheons to work its way through a lot of these areas where there are renewable energy zones and large connections. They are going to –

Tom McIntosh: On a point of order, Acting President, to say there has been no consultation is misleading. There has been extensive consultation around the zones.

David DAVIS: On the point of order, Acting President, it is clear that there was consultation in a broad, but other areas have been added in.

Jacinta Ermacora: On the point of order, Acting President –

David DAVIS: Other areas have been added in, Acting President. You will have to wait a second – I have not finished mine. You can have your point of order in a moment. My point is very clearly –

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Gaelle Broad): I think your point of order is more a point of debate.

David DAVIS: It is a point of debate.

Jacinta Ermacora: Acting President, my point of order was that the matter was being debated.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Gaelle Broad): Good point of order, thank you. I will ask Mr Davis to continue.

David DAVIS: I notice that I only have a small amount of time here, but we will seek to amend this bill in the ways I have outlined. We oppose the bill overall though, because of the draconian and unreasonable matters in there. We have a much better future plan for Victoria, a set of options for Victoria which are grounded on actual costs and actual facts, unlike this government, which has more and more been drifting into an untruthful zone where the minister likes to lay out numbers and so forth that are very removed from reality.

Every Victorian knows that their cost of living has gone up. Every Victorian knows they are paying more tax. Every Victorian knows that their electricity costs have gone up. Every Victorian knows that their gas costs have gone up, and those costs are going up, up, up and up. Unlike what the minister says – she says they are going down, but they are not going down, they are going up. Those in this chamber who doubt that should go and survey their local community. Nobody believes their bills are going down. They are going up, and that is because the state government has botched its energy policy. It has no real plan going forward. Its only plan is to go and belt local communities. Instead of that, they should be listening and working with local communities.

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (14:37): I rise to express my strong opposition to the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. At its heart, this bill strips away one of the most fundamental rights we have: the right to decide who enters our property and what is built upon it. It hands over extraordinary powers to VicGrid and transmission companies, powers that allow them to walk onto our land without our consent. If we say no, if we push back, we face fines of over $12,000. And for what? For protecting our homes, our livelihoods and our families’ futures. This is not cooperation; it is coercion. Yes, the government promises compensation, and yes, they promise annual payments, but no dollar amount replaces a lifetime of work stewarding a piece of land. No payment undoes the damage to trust and the sense that overnight our voices can be pushed aside in the name of the greater good. This bill sets a dangerous precedent that at any time this government can and will introduce legislation to interfere in the lives of Victorians.

We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic – government overstepping boundaries, disregarding the human rights charter and introducing draconian restrictions on the lives of Victorians. These farms are people’s homes, not just empty pieces of land prime for the taking. In some cases this land holds generations of families’ blood, sweat, tears and memories and countless hours of missed dinners and events because farming does not stop. The land, crops and livestock need to be tended to, and no-one knows how to do that quite like a farmer.

Let me be clear: we are not anti-progress. We are anti being ignored. We are anti-communism. Rural Victorians have always done their part. We feed the state, we manage the land, and we have already hosted more than our fair share of energy infrastructure. But we expect respect, transparency and the right to be consulted, not overridden. Renewable energy is turning out to be one of the most unreliable and expensive forms of energy since electricity was invented. The Australian newspaper reported on 31 July this year that the Australian Energy Market Operator has released a report stating the cost of the VNI West interconnector will likely be upwards of $11.4 billion. This increase in costs will be passed on to consumers, so much for lower power bills.

This bill turns landholders into obstacles instead of partners. It pushes development through without fair process. It ignores biosecurity measures put in place to protect our precious productive agricultural land. It defecates all over the Victorian human rights charter, and it leaves communities divided and disillusioned. If we want a fair energy transition, it must be built with communities, not on top of them. I would like to circulate my amendments now.

My amendments seek to protect the rights of landowners when it comes to who is allowed onto their properties and what their land is used for. These landholders are not being deliberately difficult when it comes to these proposed new laws. They are simply trying to protect their rights. They want to decide their future and the future of the land they have worked so long and hard on. My amendments seek to remove the power of VicGrid officers to force their way onto people’s properties and into their homes and to fine them for simply saying no. Without these amendments, a dangerous precedent is set. What if the government’s next bright idea is taking over farmland for fracking or oil exploration? Because, let us be honest, Victoria is broke and these are very real possibilities, as I have already been approached by lobbyists in these areas. Almost anything the government desires is on the table with the precedent this bill seeks to set.

I urge this house to reject this bill, stand up for the rights of landholders for fair process and for a future where energy justice includes everyone, not just those holding the levers of power.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (14:42): I rise today in the strongest possible support of the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. This is not just a technical bill. It is not a matter of shifting functions from one body to another. It is a landmark reform, a reform that will determine how Victoria builds the infrastructure required to deliver a future powered by renewable energy, a future where every household and every business has access to clean, affordable and reliable power. This bill is about ensuring public accountability in energy planning and restoring power to the Victorian people through their government. It is about fairness and making sure that communities, landholders and traditional owners are not left behind but instead are active participants and beneficiaries in the renewable energy transformation. Above all, it is about security, the security of keeping the lights on, of lowering bills and of guaranteeing that, as we leave behind polluting coal, Victoria remains a leader in clean energy.

Victoria is experiencing one of the fastest energy transitions in the world. Since 2014 our renewable share has quadrupled, and by the end of this year we will meet our 2025 target of 40 per cent renewables. We are on track to achieve 65 per cent by 2030 and a remarkable 95 per cent by 2035. This is extraordinary progress, but it also brings extraordinary challenges. To reach those targets, Victoria must unlock around 27 gigawatts of new capacity, nearly double the generation currently available on our grid. At the same time we face the retirement of almost 5 gigawatts of coal-fired generation before 2035 and a forecast 40 per cent increase in electricity demand as homes, cars, buses, trains and indeed entire industries electrify. This is the single biggest technological and industrial transformation of our lifetimes.

But the system we inherited from privatisation, simply put, was not built for it. The last major transmission line built in Victoria was more than 30 years ago, before the Liberal Party sold off our energy systems to private corporations. That privatisation left our communities with soaring prices, fewer protections and a system where transmission planning was outsourced to a market operator rather than a government body accountable to Victorians.

That old framework is not fit for purpose. It does not allow for necessary planning and it does not properly account for land use and community consent. It does not hold private transmission companies accountable. This bill fixes that. It gives VicGrid the tools it needs to ensure that we build the right lines in the right places at the right time. It transfers transmission planning from the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, to VicGrid. It establishes the Victorian access scheme, a new framework for connecting renewable energy and storage to the grid in an orderly way. And I have got to say it creates a community and traditional owner benefits framework, including new funds, to ensure fairness. Furthermore, the bill introduces a respectful, enforceable land access framework with clear safeguards and accountability. It enables VicGrid to conduct early works and streamlined procurement to speed up delivery of critical projects.

For decades planning Victoria’s transmission system was outsourced, and that meant decisions were made without proper accountability to Victorian communities. By giving VicGrid this responsibility, we are bringing accountability back to government. VicGrid is a public body. It is answerable to this Parliament and to the people of Victoria. VicGrid is already active. It is administering the $480 million renewable energy zone (REZ) fund. It is supporting 12 projects that modernise the grid. It is engaged in planning for offshore wind connections, and it is working on major interconnectors, such as Western Renewables Link and the Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector West. This bill formalises VicGrid’s role and ensures that as we electrify our state the planning is led by Victorians for Victorians, importantly.

Right now the national grid operates under what is known as open access. That means that anyone can connect, regardless of whether they cause congestion or further challenges on the grid. The result has caused uncertainty and indeed wasted investment. This bill replaces that failed model with the Victorian access regime. Under the changes in this bill VicGrid will set a cap on the generation that can be developed within each renewable energy zone. Generators will have the certainty that if they are approved their power can reach the market, and communities will have the confidence about the scale of development in their area. This is about better coordination, more certainty and less disruption. It will deliver renewable projects in a way that is planned, not piecemeal. For too long communities and landholders have been treated as obstacles to be overcome rather than as partners in the energy transition. This bill changes that. Landholders hosting transmission lines will receive payments of around $200,000 per kilometre paid over a period of 25 years indexed to inflation. This is in recognition of the role they play in hosting infrastructure critical to the future of our state. This is in addition to the compensation package they negotiate with the transmission company that will cover any loss of land value, and it will provide many landowners with the reassurance that they are seeking.

You see, communities are going to benefit from the new REZ community energy fund investing in local projects that improve affordability and improve reliability. Traditional owners will for the first time share directly in the benefits through a traditional owners fund, supporting self-determination. These funds will be paid for by the developers and operators of renewable projects. That means the benefits of the transition will not only be shared broadly across the state but also flow directly to those regions that host vital state infrastructure.

Let me be clear: this government’s preference is always negotiation, always cooperation. But at times critical infrastructure can be held hostage by an individual’s refusal. We know it to be the case. Under current law the only option for enforcing land access is for the transmission company to seek an injunction from the Supreme Court. This is an expensive, slow and really inaccessible tool. The bill before us introduces a balanced enforcement framework. Companies must first negotiate in good faith. Under the Land Access Code of Practice, written notice must be given 30 business days in advance and again 48 hours before entry. If negotiations fail, only as a last resort – only as a last resort – an authorised officer appointed by the minister may apply to the Magistrates’ Court for an order.

There are strict safeguards: no entry to homes, identification requirements, limits on powers and accountability to VicGrid. This ensures that landholders are respected while guaranteeing the infrastructure Victoria needs can actually be delivered.

Transmission projects are complex. They are often delayed by process, and this bill enables VicGrid to take on a streamlined procurement role, including with the power to conduct early works. It modernises contestability rules, ensuring procurement can be fast and efficient, while still maintaining competition and value for money. It allows Victoria to cut through the red tape and deliver critical projects when they are needed, not years too late. These reforms are not abstract. They translate directly into benefits for Victorians. You see, by 2040 our renewables transition will create 67,000 jobs. Billions of dollars will flow into regional communities, revitalising towns across the state. Households will benefit from some of the cheapest wholesale power in the world, building on the fact that today Victoria already has the lowest wholesale prices in the nation. Just as importantly, these reforms ensure that the benefits are shared fairly and that the families hosting transmission lines, the traditional owners caring for country and the communities living alongside infrastructure see tangible outcomes.

Those opposite and their record – I have got to talk about it and their so-called plan B, because Victorians know the record of those opposite. When they were last in government electricity prices soared by 34 per cent over four years, disconnections doubled and their planning restrictions killed off 14 wind farms, costing our state an extraordinary $4 billion in investment. They gutted renewables jobs, slashed confidence and set our state back. Now, all these years later, what is their offer? What is their so-called plan B? Let me be clear: there is no plan B. Two independent reviews, one by AEMO and one commissioned by VicGrid, found that to have no plan B would deliver less renewable energy, more disruption and even force the acquisition of people’s homes. It does not stand up to scrutiny. Those opposite love the distractions and talking up nuclear reactors and all sorts of rubbish ideas. They have called batteries renewable rubbish and dismissed solar and wind as insane beliefs. Victorians deserve better than denial, delay and division.

This bill is more than poles and wires. It is about a vision for Victoria – a state that leads the nation on climate action; a state where public accountability guides planning, not private profit; a state where communities and traditional owners are recognised, respected and fairly compensated; and a state that delivers jobs, investment and fairness in the clean energy future. Victoria is once again showing what leadership looks like. While others hesitate, we act. While others seek division, we are on the side of Victorians. We are building the infrastructure that will power our homes, drive our industries and create regional jobs for Victorians.

I must say the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025 is not just legislation; it is a firm commitment to fairness, accountability and leadership in the greatest energy transformation of our lifetimes. It ensures that Victoria’s energy future is clean, reliable, affordable and fair; it restores accountability through VicGrid; it ensures that communities and traditional owners share in the benefits; and it builds the infrastructure we need to meet our ambitious climate targets. It rejects the failed anti-renewables approach of those opposite and it rejects the division those opposite seek to create in our communities and our industries and our future. For all those reasons and so much more I am very proud to stand here today and commend to the chamber the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (14:54): This has to be the most cruel, callous and calculated piece of legislation that punches down on country communities. I actually cannot believe that we are here today debating this legislation that impacts on farmers given all the platitudes that we hear from the Premier. Need I remind everyone the Premier is supposed to be a regional Victorian, yet she continually turns her back on the very people that got her elected. The establishment of this compliance and enforcement regime in this legislation is nothing short of an absolute disgrace. This bill attempts to bring many powers under the remit of VicGrid that were formerly with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and Transmission Company Victoria, but in doing so it ignores the very same people that give legitimacy and power to the government to act in a fair and reasonable way.

This bill may be about power – taking away power from regional and rural communities that have already been clobbered and beaten by this Labor government. Need I mention the drought that many regional Victorians have gone through? Need I mention the emergency services tax, which is forcing farming families to consider whether they remain farming families or not? Here is a newsflash: no farmers, no food. If those opposite continue to support policies that destroy regional and rural communities, we will all be buying food from overseas in just a few short years. Is that what those opposite really want – to destroy the agricultural sector in this state? That is exactly what is happening. Now there is another kick in the guts – the VicGrid legislation before us today. Why does the government hate farmers so much? Why do they hate rural and regional Victorians? Are they seriously that repulsive that the government does this sort of thing to them through legislation?

You even want to financially penalise them as well. These are some of the penalties that are contained in this very legislation. In new section 68B the penalty for providing false or misleading information to VicGrid in purported compliance with a market information instrument is $12,210.60 for an individual and for a corporation $48,842.40 – for a company. That is a hell of a lot of money. In new section 93BQ(2) the penalty for failure to provide identification is $407.02; new section 93BQ(5), failure to comply with a direction to produce evidence of identification, $407.02. I mean, do farmers need to carry around a passport just to get on their own land? Is that seriously what this government thinks? That is what your fines say. The third one, new section 93BS(2), for hindering, obstructing or delaying authorised activity the penalty is $12,210.60. I can understand why a farmer would not want someone from outside the farm to come on their land – it is called biosecurity. I do not know if the government has heard of that let alone understands how a farm actually runs. To put that at risk is really quite despicable.

The irony here is that you all want farmers to pay much, much more despite the fact that the government cannot even manage the cost of transmission infrastructure in this state. Just in July this year the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) issued a warning to the government in their press release dated 31 July.

I am very happy to read it to the house:

The Victorian Farmers Federation … says the Victorian Government must rethink the viability of the VNI West Transmission Project after the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) revealed huge cost blowouts to the project in a report released overnight.

AEMO’s 2025 Electricity Network Options Report estimated the project’s cost had more than doubled from estimates in May –

just May –

of $3.6bn to $7.6bn in their latest report. The report warns that number may climb as high as $11.4bn, prompting warnings from AEMO that it may need to reconsider its support for some projects.

Even they are saying some of these reports are just complete rubbish.

VFF President Brett Hosking said the estimated cost blowout adds further weight to calls for the project to be scrapped.

“We know this is a failed project and this report only adds to calls for the government to scrap it entirely.”

“To date the energy transition has been a failure and the Victorian Government is risking smooth and reliable energy transmission by continuing to force the VNI West project through,” Mr Hosking said.

Mr Hosking said the Victorian Government’s handling of the energy transition has been incredibly clumsy, particularly in how they engage and partner with rural communities along both VNI West and WRL projects and it was time for an urgent rethink and change of approach.

“Owning their mistakes and starting again with landholders and community as partners is the only way to deliver a smooth and timely transition.”

That is what he said. But yet again, we hear nothing from those opposite – just ignoring it.

“Farmers know we need deep, economy wide cuts to emissions.

That is not in question.

We know the world is changing and we’re part of that change, but we won’t cop being steamrolled in the process.”

That comes from the VFF. But why does the government choose to ignore that? The government continues to punch down on rural and regional communities. There is no integrity. There is no principle behind this. It is mean, nasty and cruel. The party that supposedly puts people first actually throws them under the bus. They do not care about people, they only care about power.

In a recent survey conducted by the VFF, released only a few days ago on 25 August, it was found that farmers are frustrated and finding they continually have no voice in this Labor government. This is the press release that they sent out:

Nine in ten farmers don’t believe the Victorian Government understands local issues or has a positive plan to grow the industry …

nine out of 10 farmers.

Farmers have outlined increases to the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund –

well, we all know that is going to be a complete disaster –

… the state of regional roads –

the government know that too, but they do not care –

… maintaining our biosecurity safety net –

they would not even know what that was –

and steamrolling of renewable energy infrastructure developments as the top issues across the state.

VFF president Bruce Hosking once again said:

Farmers and our regional communities have sent a blunt message that they aren’t being listened to and have lost faith that our Victorian Government has their back.

From massive increases to the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund, roads literally falling apart and communities being steamrolled in the face of renewable energy infrastructure, farmers have a lot to worry about.

More than 92 per cent of farmers don’t believe the Victorian Government understands or is even listening to the concerns of farming communities. That’s a massive indictment and it must change, because they’ve lost the trust of these farming communities …

That is what the VFF are saying. It is not us, it is the VFF. How can the government live with themselves knowing they are crucifying regional communities? How can they honestly look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘We’re doing what matters most’? Doing what matters most – dot, dot dot – except for everyone outside of Melbourne, except for anyone who stands against the government or might even disagree with them. The government’s approach to consultation is: government talks, you listen.

The VFF sent us all a letter yesterday pleading for the government to come to their senses. This is the letter that they sent, which says:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Good morning.

On behalf of the Victorian Farmers Federation I am writing to raise serious concerns about the proposed VicGrid bill and the flawed transmission projects it seeks to enable, most notably the Western Renewables Link and the Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector West (VNI West).

The VFF strongly supports serious economy wide reduction in emissions, but this must be delivered with fairness, transparency and community consent. Instead, these projects have been defined by poor planning, inadequate consultation and coercive powers that erode trust, inflame opposition and result in delay after delay.

We urge you to: oppose the coercive elements of the VicGrid bill, call for the Western Renewables Link and the VNI West to be scrapped, demand that transmission planning be restarted with genuine consultation and transparent processes –

obviously that is not happening at the moment –

and advocate for fair and consistent compensation frameworks and community benefit schemes that deliver lasting improvements for regional Victorians.

That is not what we have got in front of us today.

I do not know how anyone could not get the message. The whole process of VNI West and the Western Renewables Link has been a complete and utter failure, a disaster in genuine engagement where the community should have been brought along but instead they have been left behind in the dust. We have people like the member for Ripon in the other place. She attends public meetings and she says she is fighting for farmers and fighting for rural communities. When it comes time to make a difference, when it comes time to put your hand up and vote, she votes for this sort of legislation in the other place, just like she voted for the emergency services tax. Nobody can trust a government that is so blatantly two-faced.

And then there is the Premier, somebody who claims to be a regional Victorian and someone who says she understands regional communities. But time after time the Premier continues to throw regional communities under the bus. To this Labor government regional Victorians are completely and utterly irrelevant. On this side of the chamber we will never, ever apologise for standing with regional communities. We will never ever, apologise for standing with farmers, and you should be apologising for doing this to farmers. It is just despicable. We will never, ever abandon our communities, who produce some of the best food and fibre on the planet. The government should hang their heads in shame for even bringing this legislation to the chamber, because it is a total disgrace.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:07): Libertarians have an interesting knack of being able to predict the future, so I will predict a bit of the future here. When this project gets rolled out, some of the farmers will cooperate, as the government hopes. Some of the communities will be convinced through these community funds – effectively the government is buying social licence. But there will be some that will hold out, and the ones that will hold out are exactly who the coercive powers contained in this bill are for – the ones that hold out and resist. They will say they do not want people coming onto their property, and what will happen is they will get the support of other locals, because other people will be upset about the idea of people being forced to let people come onto their properties.

I note that one of the things I thought was interesting when I spoke to many of these farmers, when they were out in front of Parliament not long ago, is that many of them see this as part of a wider campaign against their property rights. In fact one of the things they are concerned about is mining in the area. I know that they feel that they will see the sort of coercion we are seeing for the electricity transmission infrastructure if they do not want mines on their property, or exploration and that sort of thing. They will see this as an issue they can join together on and resist, and they will get the support of lots of Victorians I think because Victorians tend to like farmers. They like visiting farms. Whenever anyone goes on holiday and they go past one of those farmers markets or something, they always think it is wonderful buying fresh produce and food and this sort of thing. My family does the same thing. They like farmers and they will resist, and this will be an absolute optics nightmare for the government. And then people will ask, as many are starting to ask, why we are doing this in the first place. Why are we doing this?

The government and many of the people that promote renewables say that they are cheap, that we have to lower our carbon emissions and we have to go towards net zero, as if Victoria and Australia are anything more than a rounding error in the global scheme of things, as if Victoria is going to change the weather and make the weather better. The fact of the matter is we are not. India does not care about net zero, China does not care about net zero, the United States does not care about net zero – in fact most of the world’s population does not care about it.

Victoria and Australia are going and doing this on their own. What we are really doing is we are tying our hands behind our back for no particular benefit that is measurable by science. It is to please international pressure from the UN and from other countries. The United States is not pressuring us anymore. In fact they are looking at us and scratching their heads and wondering what we are doing. The United States has actually done something quite interesting recently. They have ramped up their energy production because they have realised that the country that is going to lead the world is the country that controls AI, and the limiting factor for AI is energy. So the United States – and Argentina, for that matter – is ramping up their nuclear programs to run AI server farms. Australia will never do this, because server farms require really, really reliable energy 24/7, and large amounts of it, which is why they are all using nuclear. I do not see any solar farms powering data centres any time soon – not the type that you would need for this type of large-scale infrastructure.

The government here and the federal government – and even in the Liberal Party, I think – think they are on safe ground with this net zero because they see the polling and the polling says most people support net zero. The polls may as well ask them, ‘Do you like nice things?’ and everyone would say, ‘Well, yes, I like nice things.’ What the polls should ask is: do you like net zero and at what price would you like it at? They do not know the price yet. Once they find out the price, maybe those polls will change a lot. When they start seeing the prices change and when they start seeing the farmer who is resisting, making a lot of noise, being upset and not allowing people onto his property, who gets a lot of sympathy from Australians, because Australians like farmers – any patriotic Australian likes farmers – it is going to be a big problem for the government.

This government, the federal government and the entire renewables industry that has captured these governments say that it is cheap. One of the things that they rely on is the GenCost report. Everyone talks about the GenCost report. The CSIRO are really keen not to intervene in this debate and not actually point out the ways that the GenCost report is misused. The GenCost report is for a specific purpose, and it is around the costing of new electricity capacity. It assumes that all of the infrastructure is already built. It assumes that the costs are free. No-one actually knows what the infrastructure costs are going to be, but the bill that we are debating today is part of that cost. The costs are not just financial; the costs are people’s rights, the costs are trampling on farmers’ property rights. These are the costs that we are talking about. Again I ask: why are we paying these costs? Well, for net zero, because we want to say that we are nice people and we want to send a signal to the world, even though it is totally pointless and Victoria is not going to change the weather.

If you look at the GenCost report – this analysis was actually done by the Centre for Independent Studies – and if you take into account system infrastructure costs and then look at what is the cheapest, guess what it is? It is the one thing that we have got lots of in Victoria: it is coal. Coal is actually the cheapest, but no-one wants to build coal because we have developed this religious belief that we should not burn coal, even though India is burning coal, America is burning coal and China is burning crazy amounts of coal. Everyone is burning coal except for us. We do not want to burn coal because, rather than think about what is best for Victoria or what is best for Australia, we think about what is best for everyone else. We say that rather than burn the coal that we have got here – we have got a lot; it is no good for exporting, because brown coal has got such a low energy content and it does not make sense to transport much – what we have decided to do is make ourselves perpetually dependent on China, because this renewable energy infrastructure has to be replaced every 15 to 30 years, depending on what it is.

What we are signing up for is not a transition to a new energy system. What we are signing up for is a perpetual transition forever. That is what we are signing up for. The Libertarians say that is a bad idea.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:15): I am pleased to rise to speak on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. Listening to Mr Limbrick’s contribution and those of Mr McCracken and others in the debate, we have really got two issues that confront us. One is that we have a changing climate. We know that a huge driver of climate change is the amount of carbon pollution that we push into our atmosphere and that our energy sector is a big driver of that pollution. And climate change, as the recent report that the Environment and Planning Committee of the Legislative Council produced and tabled in this Parliament shows, is having significant and serious effects on the way we live as Victorians. The second big motivating factor about needing to do something in this policy area is that the sources of energy that we have as a state relied upon for many years, our coal fired power stations, are ageing and failing, which means that we need to replace them – not because of an ideological agenda but for technical reasons.

Bev McArthur interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Sometimes, Mrs McArthur, things get too old and you have got to replace them because they do not function anymore – not all things, but some things, and sometimes we need to.

Bev McArthur: Keep going, Mr Batchelor; you might dig your hole deeper.

Ryan BATCHELOR: No, I am fine. We have a choice before us, and that is essentially at the heart of what this bill is about. It is about providing an opportunity to answer both of those policy questions and to resolve both of those policy issues that our state faces – that of dealing with the reality of climate change and doing our part to deal with the reality of climate change, and that of making sure that we have got an energy generation sector for when the coal-fired power stations reach the end of their life, which they are rapidly approaching.

Victoria has made a commitment, to the Victorian people but also in legislation, that we want to achieve net zero emissions by 2045, a target that we have legislated. We are a leader on climate action, and that is something that we should be proud of and something that we should celebrate. Certainly the Labor government celebrates the fact that Victoria is a leader on acting on climate change. We are doing our bit too. Not only do we have ambition, we have got results. Since 2014 Victoria has cut emissions by more than any other state in the country. With our emissions reduction targets, not only did we hit our 2020 target, which was a 15 to 20 per cent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels, we absolutely smashed it, with a 30 per cent reduction in our emissions in 2020 compared to 2005. We are doing that by making significant investments in renewable energy, because renewable energy is cheaper, is cleaner and is delivering on our commitment to reducing carbon emissions, to decarbonising our electricity generation sector and to bringing all of the benefits for both households and for our climate.

We have also, as part of our energy transition, as part of our push to make renewables the centrepiece of our energy transition, brought back the SEC, returning Victoria’s electricity back into the hands of Victorians to power our schools and our hospitals, our zoos, museums and the trains running on the Metro Tunnel when it opens later this year. To support that shift from failing and ageing coal-fired power stations to modern, cleaner, renewable energy, we have got to make sure we have got the transmission infrastructure in place so that we can get the energy from where it is generated to where it is consumed, the same way that we have had to get the energy from where it has been generated to where it is consumed since we started with an electricity network in this state. There is nothing fundamentally different or new about what we are trying to do, which is get electricity from where it is generated to where it is used. That is what these changes to the legislative framework that supports the transmission network in this state do.

To put the needs of our energy generation into context, we need to not only meet the additional demand that we are likely to see through the growing economy that we have here in Victoria, the growing population that we have here in Victoria, but also to offset the losses that we are going to have from the retirement of the ageing fossil fuel generation here in Victoria. We are going to need to unlock additional electricity – we think about 27 gigawatts, and we have currently got about 15 gigawatts of capacity. As those coal-fired power stations go offline, we are going to need to replace them alongside the additional demand.

What the transition does is not only meet our current and future demand but also create economic opportunity, which is what we are seeing. We are seeing the jobs that are being driven by the investment in renewable technologies in this state. We are seeing the jobs that are being created, the training opportunities that are being created, the apprentices that are being put on, the jobs that are being created through the entirety of the renewables sector. What that is doing is locking in the next wave of employment that we want to see across this state and that the energy transition can do.

What we do not have, and what this bill is seeking to address, is a legislative framework that surrounds these issues that is modern and fit for purpose, because we need to have a legislative framework to support the energy transition, particularly to support the transmission infrastructure to connect the generation to where it is needed to be consumed. The problem that we have with the current system is that it is not fit for purpose, it is not meeting the needs of our energy generation and transmission network and it is not going to help effectively facilitate the transition that is underway and we need to continue to make.

The bill is going to address those issues by implementing the Victorian transmission investment framework, the second stage of an entirely new way to plan and to develop transmission and renewable energy zones here in Victoria. The framework will be implemented by VicGrid, which will be a new governing body that will be more accountable and more responsive to the needs of Victorians and the wishes of the community. Under the current framework, which has its flaws, we have assessments made by AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator, deciding whether or not it wants to upgrade a network. They conduct a financial assessment and procurement processes, and then and only then do they do a full environmental assessment and the community starts to be fully engaged in the process. We think that is the wrong way around. It does not meet modern standards for community engagement and consultation. The new framework seeks to address this by completely reforming the way that we plan and develop transmission infrastructure here in Victoria.

The new framework sets out an approach that creates investment certainty, fosters renewable energy investment and ensures a coordinated development of electricity transmission and renewable energy generation infrastructure to deliver energy affordability, reliability and security for Victorians. It puts community engagement and traditional owner engagement at the very beginning of the process, before major decisions or arrangements are made, and provides for the creation of the economic opportunities that we have before us. It will help us seize the economic opportunities that the renewable energy transition will create. The bill will transfer the existing transmission planning functions from the Australian Energy Market Operator to VicGrid, increasing accountability for our electricity assets. AEMO was created and given functions following the privatisation of our electricity infrastructure.

We saw the problems that we had with retailers running riot and regulation which was bad for consumers and bad for communities and had a significant effect on increasing retail electricity prices. As a response this government has unashamedly been taking action to make sure that we clean up this mess. We have increased the utility relief grants and made it easier to apply. We have forced retailers to let customers know if they can get a better deal. We have introduced the Victorian default offer to provide clear, easy-to-understand benchmark prices to ensure that retailers can change prices only once a year. We have banned sneaky marketing tactics like bait-and-switch offers, cold calling and door-to-door sales. And we have had multiple rounds of the power saving bonus. The latest round of the power saving bonus, for those who need it most, opened on Monday and has already been exceptionally popular.

This bill tackles the transmission issues by bringing the planning function into VicGrid, the body that this government has created. It is accountable to this government and accountable to the people of Victoria, unlike the current arrangements. The legislation also introduces a new access regime. Under the model VicGrid will provide certainty to both investors and communities by setting a cap on renewable energy within a particular renewable energy zone, based on the amount of capacity that is available on the network. It allows local communities to know how much new capacity will be built in their zone, it gives certainty to generators by understanding their ability to deliver power to the network in their zone and it provides stability for the market in allowing consumers and businesses the confidence to operate in the state – a new approach, improving coordination, reducing social and environmental impacts and giving investors certainty to support investment in the renewables we need for Victoria’s energy future.

As part of each of the zones we will have community energy funds. This bill establishes the framework for those funds to operate. Community energy funds will be funded by fees paid by generation developers who develop projects within the renewable energy zones and contributions from transmission companies. These funds will be directly invested into local energy projects to help improve energy infrastructure in the regions that host this infrastructure. That will ensure communities benefit in a meaningful and lasting way, based on their vision of energy priorities for their region. There are also supports for traditional owners. This bill will provide Victorians with economic opportunities to take advantage of the transition that is occurring in the renewable energy sector, provide certainty to the market and give consumers and investors confidence in our renewable energy system. It gets the planning process the right way around from the way it has operated in the past, it provides accountability and allows a smooth transition to renewables, helping to create jobs, drive investment and bring much-needed reliability to our energy supply. It will help us meet our renewable energy targets, providing a cleaner energy system for Victoria’s future. It is going to help solve the problems with the need to find alternatives to the ageing and polluting coal-fired power stations that are reaching the end of their life. It provides a certain framework for the electricity age-old principle of needing to get power from where it is generated to where it is consumed, and makes sure that that framework is fundamentally and fully in the hands of Victorians through the Victoria’s new entity VicGrid. It is an important bill, and I commend it to the house.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:30): I am rising today to speak on behalf of the Nationals on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. This bill is anything but reform. This bill is once again reform in the form of regression, reform in the form of suppression of people’s rights and reform in the form of running roughshod over farmers, our farming communities and regional communities. Some of the loudest people to spruik this reform are of course people living in metropolitan Melbourne.

Bev McArthur interjected.

Melina BATH: Inside the tram tracks indeed. We saw people on our steps of Parliament only a few weeks ago. We have seen people rallying out of pure frustration at the lack of respect that this government has displayed to our farmers, to our regional people, for the past decade. They have rallied in Bendigo, they have rallied in your patch and they have rallied all over. Their frustration is palpable.

You have to respect these people. These are the people that get up early. They have got rough hands. They get up in the middle of the night quite often. They get up early, and they produce some of the best food and fibre in the world. We are blessed to have them in our communities, and we are blessed to have their productivity bump up our gross state product. They produce around $20 billion worth of value annually, and they produce around 27 per cent of our total productivity in the agricultural and horticultural sector. And what does this government do? It slaps them over the face. It is going to give them $12,000 fines if they want to try and protect their castle, if they want to try and put a padlock on their farm, their property that they own, and say ‘No’. They can be put under huge stress. We have seen it in the lines on their faces.

The Victorian Farmers Federation is a fantastic organisation. It has been going for around the same length of time as the Nationals; I think it is over 100 years in a different incarnation. They have been interviewing their farmers only recently, and here are the top one, two, three, four, five, six things. Let me read them out, because they have relevance to this bill. The new emergency services levy is the new tax on this Victorian population – everybody who owns a home or a business; rents out a home, because it will be on the top of their rental value; owns an industry; or owns a farming property – a primary producer. They will be slapped with this tax. And it is so much around propping up the bottom line for this government, who are tired, who can just rip their hands into Victorians’ pockets and take money out to prop up their ever-widening black hole. On the emergency services levy, over 95 per cent of farmers said that they are highly concerned or concerned. New taxes and regulations: well, we have seen 60-odd new and increased taxes in the last 11 years. On enhancing Victoria’s road and freight network, you only need to go out into the country to see how poor our roads are. On maintaining Victoria’s biosecurity, this bill, if it is passed today with the help of some of the crossbench, will actually compromise that further. I have been in this place where we have had inquiries that the Nationals and Liberals have led on protecting farmers and enabling them to say ‘Stop’. You cannot have these activists come onto your property to wilfully destroy property, to steal goats, to kill various livestock. They are concerned about that. Farmers are still concerned. It is the fourth-top issue that is uppermost in their concern. This bill is only going to add to that concern, because they have got people who can come onto their property, cut the bolts and give them a $12,000 fine for their trouble.

The next part that they are concerned about is a transition to renewable energy. They want to see this Victorian government get it right. Indeed we know that the farmers federation has written to all members of Parliament – so it should not be a shock to people – stating very clearly, ‘You must vote no to this bill.’

We are faced with a wicked problem. We have got a growing population, we have got growing energy needs and in my time in this Parliament we saw the trebling of the coal royalties tax when the Andrews government came in, which forced, I would say, an early closure of Hazelwood. There was a lot of hoo-ha about what they would do for people, but as things stand now, Morwell has got one of the highest unemployment rates in this state and probably in the nation. That community is still in a state of flux, and there are still no accurate answers. From across the benches on the other side, the government benches, we hear them rave about the SEC. What an indictment it is. If you were around at the time just after the election or around the election, you could have got a tote bag with the SEC, you could have got a cap and you could have got some cookies with the SEC. This is the sort of gimmick that goes with that gimmick. The Premier at the time talked about 59,000 jobs that would be created. Last time I looked, there was a handful, and they are working from home somewhere, because they are certainly not hanging out in the Morwell office very often. They are right to work, there is no doubt about that, but this is not the silver bullet that we were once led to believe. We also know that this bill concentrates power. It concentrates power with the government, it strips rights away and it entrenches secrecy and undermines democracy in this energy transition.

I have been around a little while, and back when my kids were little there was a thing called the Toora wind farm. It was developed almost 25 years ago, and people would go and have a look. They were only about 70 metres tall, and they were a fascination. They were actually a bit of a tourist destination. They are still going. They are ageing, but they are going. We also have Bald Hills down near Tarwin Lower, and past the desal plant in Bass Coast we have wind turbines. They are chugging along when there is wind, but there is not too much of it. We also have a significant amount of solar, and we see solar developments and where they are going to be put. There is a great one being put right near the substation below Morwell, an excellent place for it. It is not highly exotic agricultural land, it has gone through hundreds of hoops and regulations and it has got the green light. This is private investment – how fantastic is that? It is right near the substation, which can therefore be used.

Then we talk about offshore wind. We are not opposed to offshore wind at all. The likelihood of it occurring seems to be getting more and more constrained. There are issues around Hastings. There was this fight once upon a time between the minister at the time, Minister Plibersek, and Minister D’Ambrosio. You would think they would have a conversation about this, but where and how that is going to happen is more and more concerning. Then into the bargain we have these renewable energy zones for the transmission, and this is what this bill really speaks to today – those transmission zones. Certainly I have one in Gippsland, and I have got many farmers who have written to me highlighting their concerns. It hands power to this VicGrid, or it hands power again to the minister. It grants the minister sweeping powers to use special orders without consultation or explanation. It is not governance; it is rule by decree. It erodes our property rights and authorises forced entry onto private land without consent and allows for reasonable force. I have said this – $12,000 if you defend your own property. It strips regional Victorians’ right to appeal at VCAT on renewable and transmission projects. Let me provide an example of one that has happened.

The fact is that people power from our communities actually found the flaws with the then Andrews government, the Labor government’s own minister, and the proponent. This will strip this away further. In South Gippsland back in 2017–18 there was a location down near the Alberton wind farm, and a great deal of people were very concerned. It was going to have 34 turbines, 200-metres tall, at a project cost of around $450 million and covering over 3000 hectares. At the time the Minister for Planning Richard Wynne issued a notice and granted the permit back in December 2019. But the community response was well organised. They were forensic with the community response, and over a hundred individuals logged 17 separate applications to VCAT challenging the approval. What happened? The wind company at the time failed to obtain consent from all the dwellings within that 1-kilometre area of the proposed turbines. VCAT actually said these people had done their homework and ruled that the minister and the proponent were noncompliant and removed the entire permit application, and the whole scenario was withdrawn.

What this particular bill will do is to stop that entirely. That will not be able to occur. We are losing safeguards and are losing our autonomy as individuals with rights. The other thing that it will do is reduce your abilities. This bill defines broad categories of protected information. It will exempt people from accessing freedom-of-information requests. One thing that provides confidence in communities is the ability to access information to seek to understand what has gone on with the minister, what has gone on between the proponents and what has gone on with the department. This restricts that from occurring. This is an infringement of our rights as individuals and as people in society, where the government is more and more leading us to an autocratic environment. It provides unchecked ministerial powers, and this, as I have said, is a hallmark of authoritarian governance. It also impacts human rights. As we have discussed, $12,000 for denying access, over $4000 for refusing to provide identification and $1000 for removing a notice – $1000 for taking some secateurs out and cutting the sign off your fence. This is absolutely outrageous.

Let us look at some of these problems, and they are significant. I know others will comment about things in their area. We understand VNI West is a huge concern to farmers in that space, and they have been rallying against it. But what does this government do? It does not look wholesomely at other opportunities. We have got Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, who has made comments only recently about the Victorian transition plan. He said:

Drastic changes to private property rights, as the Victorian government is proposing to enforce a poorly founded transmission plan, are unlikely to achieve its objectives and will poison the water for other renewables and transmission developments …

This government is poisoning the water, poisoning social licence and ultimately not solving the problem in our energy space.

Finally, in my last few minutes, let me speak from some of the people in my space.

[QUOTES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Farmland is not only our home, it is our workplace, and in some areas it is protected by conservation covenants because of its biodiversity values. These expanded powers to VicGrid will have immeasurable consequences that will change landholder rights in Victoria …

said one of my constituents. Another one said:

Over the past 18 months we have been overwhelmed by the speculatory activity of the renewable energy companies, along with VicGrid, in our district. We feel under siege, and that is an understatement.

Finally:

Victoria’s renewable energy transition must be founded on fairness, accountability, community trust and long-term sustainability …

said one of my constituents in Gippsland. How would this be – fairness, accountability, community trust and longstanding sustainability? The Nationals oppose this bill. We want to see our amendments get up, but this reflects none of those things that my fantastic constituents are speaking about. There is no fairness, accountability or community trust, and we cannot see it being long term in its sustainability.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (15:45): I rise to speak on behalf of the Victorian Greens on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. The bill establishes VicGrid as the authority overseeing the regulation of Victoria’s new renewable energy zones and related functions. This bill represents the second stage of the government’s legislation to facilitate the transition to renewable energy in Victoria. I am pleased to see the government has included in this legislation some of the improvements I called for when I spoke on their VicGrid stage 1 bill last year. This includes ensuring that regional communities hosting transmission infrastructure will benefit from the cheap, clean energy that they are helping to bring about for all of us. As I said at the time, a truly just transition to renewables includes recognising the essential role our communities are playing in hosting this infrastructure to enable our whole state to benefit from renewable energy. I am glad to see this is now reflected in the new community energy fund set up by this legislation. I also noted at the time that we heard from traditional owners who wanted their land rights considered, including the potential for community ownership models that would deliver ongoing benefits. It is good to see that this legislation also lays out a distinct traditional owners fund that will provide support and benefits to the traditional owners of these lands.

Climate change is the biggest threat facing our communities and our ecosystems, and it is not some distant future threat; it is here now. We see it in fiercer and more frequent bushfires, droughts, floods and deadly heatwaves. Year after year we are breaking heat records and doing our best to adjust to new, unpredictable seasonal changes. My electorate of Western Victoria is still in the grips of a terrible drought which is devastating farmers and rural communities. While we all continue to hope for an end to the drought, farmers know that conditions are changing over the long term. They are having to adapt their practices to recognise these drier conditions and greater frequency of extreme weather events.

Our beautifully unique animals are at increasing risk of extinction as their ever-decreasing habitat becomes impossible for them to live in, and our native plants are not faring any better. Just last week the Guardian reported that under current global heating projections, we are likely to lose a quarter of Victoria’s ancient mountain ash trees. As more trees die and decompose, these carbon-storing giants will instead turn into a source of emissions, speeding up the process even further. Just imagine what that will do to precious places like the Otways, again in my electorate. I have been down there a couple of times over the past year and walked through areas that are usually temperate rainforest but are tinder dry with trees browning in ways that I have never seen before. Luckily we have a solution. We have tools to get off fossil fuels to start slowing down the progression of climate change. We must kick our fossil fuel habit immediately. This legislation is one more step towards finally doing that in Victoria, so the Greens will be supporting this bill.

I would like to thank the many stakeholders and community members who got in touch to share their perspectives and concerns about this bill. The Greens and I were able to represent these concerns to the government. I would also like to thank the minister’s office and VicGrid for listening and responding to the issues that we raised. My Greens colleague Tim Read flagged in the other place that we intended to bring amendments to address some of these concerns, and I will speak to those now.

One of our initial concerns was that the community energy fund was too limited in deciding which projects this scheme would fund for communities hosting renewable energy. I am very pleased that the government has said that they will back our amendment, allowing the community energy fund to support not only renewable energy projects, but also projects that support biodiversity outcomes, including biodiversity programs and research in local communities.

Another concern was that this legislation, as written, would allow the Treasurer to appropriate funds from the community energy fund into consolidated revenue. This was never likely to be a significant source of revenue for the government, but its inclusion in the bill makes it easy for people to be suspicious of the intentions of this legislation.

Again, to their credit, the government has heard this criticism and agreed to support our amendments, removing this power from the legislation. If I could ask the clerks to circulate our amendments now.

I hear from so many of my constituents who are concerned about whether building renewable infrastructure could impact negatively on local flora and fauna. This change will show that renewables and nature do not have to be at odds with each other. In fact the single best thing we can do for our local ecosystems is to protect them by getting off coal and gas as quickly as possible.

I would like to note that we have heard a number of concerns from western Victorian residents about the land access provisions in this legislation, particularly the steep fines if landholders refuse access to their property. The Greens and I brought these concerns to the government. Based on those conversations, we understand that the penalty is seen as a last resort and would only be reached after a number of preceding steps were taken, certainly long after making initial attempts to negotiate a voluntary access agreement. I understand that this fine can only be imposed by a court. The government tells us that it is their hope and intention that these negotiations will be successful and mutually beneficial for all parties and that no court ever has to issue a single one of these fines. However, I will have more questions about these aspects of the bill during the committee stage. I also understand that there could be amendments regarding this part of the bill, and we will have more to say about those as they are spoken about and circulated. I have not seen all parties’ amendments at this stage.

Noting that the government has engaged with us in good faith on our many questions around this bill and has agreed to support our amendments, we are supportive of this legislation. I will note that, being in an electorate that has been on the forefront of the renewable energy transition, there are extremely high levels of anxiety, stress and confusion about many of the transition projects. I have been out to rural communities. I have sat with many people who are absolutely understandably worried about what these projects are going to do to their farms and their townships. They have been left with an information void a lot of the time and empty so-called consultations where they are being asked for their opinion on things that have already been decided, which has disempowered people. It has created fear and in some cases allowed misinformation to spread.

So much of this distress could have been avoided if there had been genuine, honest, up-front engagement with them from the outset. I appreciate that part of the reason for establishing VicGrid was to try and address some of the failures in proper community engagement that had occurred under federal oversight. I understand, though, why there is scepticism from the communities about the prospect of any significant improvement with a shift to state government oversight. These are communities that are continually experiencing really poor engagement from this state government on everything from mining projects to health care.

Failure to involve communities in shaping key decisions before they are made and then a lack of up-front honesty and information about decisions that have already been made has left many feeling like they have been treated with contempt. The worst part is that so many of the farmers I talked to understand the need for renewable energy. They started out being really keen to play a role in supporting the transition, but now there are many parts of Victoria where getting back to that position is going to be a tough journey for this government. It is also going to be very tough to get on with this important work if the quality of the engagements with these communities does not drastically improve.

We are supporting this bill because we know that the renewable energy transition has to happen and because establishment of community benefits funding is long overdue recognition of some of the concerns of rural communities. But there is a whole lot of stuff that has to happen that is not outlined in any laws that are ever going to pass through this Parliament, and that particularly relates to engagement with affected communities. That is not something that we can write into law. It is something about how the government goes out and does their day-to-day operational business. If the government really wants to get on with the transition, as we would like to see them do, it is in their own interest to start really, really investing in proper community engagement, because the reality is we do need to get on with this transition and time is absolutely against us. We should have done most of this work decades ago.

The best way to shut down persistent rumours that Yallourn might be extended is to finally get Victoria’s renewables going. The best way to reduce power prices is to get off expensive coal and gas and onto renewables. But the longer we wait, the more expensive all forms of power will get. And the best way to protect communities, especially rural communities, from the ongoing impacts of climate change that they are already living is to rapidly reduce emissions by getting off fossil fuels and onto renewables. We have the resources and the technology. If this bill passes, we will also have the legislation. So let us get off coal once and for all and make sure we are looking after regional communities while we do it.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:56): I rise to speak on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025 currently before the chamber. This bill is the second in a series of bills amending a number of existing pieces of legislation which relate to energy production, energy infrastructure and the grid in Victoria. Right now all governments have two big jobs when it comes to energy. The first is to ensure that we can provide consumers and industry with the reliable and affordable energy that they all need and good infrastructure that will last decades into the future. We are going to need 27 gigawatts of new energy in the next decade or so. You cannot just wish it into existence, you have to build it. The other is to help drive and facilitate change to the make-up of our energy grid in a way that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels so that we can reduce our carbon emissions without sacrificing any of the industries or quality of life. The Allan Labor government has taken a range of existing measures to ensure that we can achieve both of these aims. Perhaps the most eye-catching of these would be bringing back the SEC, which since 1 July this year has been providing government buildings with government-owned renewable energy, including all public schools, all hospitals and zoos, as well as providing energy to the public sector.

The SEC is also helping Victorian families put solar panels on their roofs and transition towards cheaper-to-run, more energy efficient electrical appliances in their homes. While the SEC is already providing information and resources to help families to navigate this process, this will be the main objective of the SEC one-stop shop when it launches next year. The one-stop shop will organise a network of reliable, professional, accredited and SEC-endorsed installers who the public can trust with installations of their new systems. While this bill does not directly relate to the SEC itself, it is an important part of building the energy infrastructure that we are going to need to support our state over the next few decades and achieve our emissions target of net zero by 2045.

The changes made in this bill will assist in the transition taking place at VicGrid from being considered a state body to being a state business corporation. VicGrid is a public body which was established so that it could oversee the changes in, restructuring and expansion of Victoria’s energy grid. This includes building new transmission and infrastructure to get energy from where it is produced to where it is consumed, upgrading existing infrastructure, working with communities to ensure that projects can be delivered in a way that benefits their local areas and of course planning and developing Victoria’s new renewable energy zones. The changes made to VicGrid in this bill will include restructuring it as a state business corporation as well as transferring functions and powers to VicGrid from the energy market operator. This transition and these changes will allow VicGrid to implement the 2025 Victorian Transmission Plan and enable it to create Victoria’s new renewable energy zones.

As part of this restructuring, the bill will also create a new framework for funding benefits for local communities who are affected by the development of new infrastructure. This could be new transmission, new generation or new storage. This framework will focus on benefits for individual landholders, for local communities and for traditional owners in areas which are to be affected. There will be two separate funds being created: one for local communities and one for traditional owners. It is important that we fund projects like these because communities deserve consultation on these sorts of projects, and they deserve help that will make these changes more manageable. Public opinion matters, especially in areas which are directly affected, and it is important that we bring people along with us when we propose new projects in their local area. Obviously these projects will bring benefits on their own, including well-paying, high-skilled, secure jobs, as well as many of the other ripple effects that these sorts of projects bring to communities. Nevertheless it remains important that the government actively engages with communities and takes their issues, their concerns and their worries seriously, because while benefits will be felt statewide, the potential for temporary disruption and change within the community would make things difficult for people in the immediate area.

The simple principle of the renewable energy zone community energy fund and traditional owners fund is that when the community hosts infrastructure that benefits the entire state, there should be direct benefits to their local area as well. These benefits, which this bill is bringing in, are in addition to the benefits for landholders which we introduced last year. We introduced those because we wanted to ensure that nobody was left worse off by the disruptions caused by these vital projects. Compensating for disruptions is important but it is also expensive, which is why this bill focuses so much on building a system which gets planning right.

This is why we are shifting responsibility for transmission network planning from the Australian Energy Market Operator to VicGrid. This is so that VicGrid can make sure that we are building the infrastructure we need in the places most suitable to host it. It will also enable VicGrid to implement the 2025 Victorian Transmission Plan. This is a plan which sets out how much wind and solar energy this state will need to build over the next 15 years. To replace our ageing coal-fired power stations, which are rapidly approaching the end of their natural life cycles, it sets out seven new renewable energy zones covering roughly 7 per cent of the state, in the locations most suited to generating renewable energy. The plan estimates that less than 1 per cent of the state’s landmass will be needed for renewable energy projects. The draft plan further emphasises that only a small amount of the land in each renewable energy zone will be needed to host new projects and that locals will be consulted about planning decisions. This is because we on this side of the chamber recognise that you get better outcomes when you work with landholders and farmers. Of course not every piece of land is suitable for renewable energy and not every existing land use is compatible with renewable energy generation. In most cases nobody knows each piece of land better than the landholders themselves. That is why energy developers in the renewable energy zones will negotiate directly with the landholders on how the projects will be built and how much compensation will be given. This is not just to ensure fairness in the process, but also in many cases we expect it will actually lead to a better outcome. A landholder hosting a typical project can expect compensation of $8000 per square kilometre per year. This comes on top of the full and fair compensation mandated by the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1986. The draft plan received feedback from stakeholders in the public process, which finished in June, and the final plan will be released later this year.

The reason why this bill is so crucial to realising the 2025 Victorian Transmission Plan is because it gives VicGrid the grid planning and grid access powers which are necessary for implementing the plan. By laying out and implementing a clear plan that works with stakeholders, not against them, we can give certainty to industry and certainty to investors. There are a lot of firms looking to make investments in the renewable energy sector – this is understandable. There happens to be quite a lot of money to be made out of producing the cheapest form of new energy available to us here in Australia. Demand for energy will only go up in the coming years as the population grows and the energy-intensive industries continue to move here, so it is vital that we give investors the security and the knowledge that we are going to back them in when they say they want to come and build more energy. We are not just laying out the rules and regulations for them, we are helping them by setting out specific renewable energy zones in some of the locations in the state most favourable to renewable energy generation.

By giving the powers contained in this bill directly to VicGrid, it will allow for clear and centralised implementation and will give investors the certainty and support that they need. That is what this bill is all about. It is about certainty, fairness and strengthening our energy system – certainty and fairness for investors, with clear rules and a favourable regulatory environment and certainty and fairness for landholders, with a generous compensation scheme that pays out in addition to any other compensation to which they would be entitled. Landholders and traditional owners can also look forward to a mechanism to deliver community benefits to the areas which host new energy production and transmission infrastructure. Additionally, we will be providing certainty and fairness for all those Victorians who rely on our energy grid, which is all Victorians.

Having an energy system that is reliable and that is affordable for consumers and for the industry benefits everyone. So it is important that we make these investments in transmission and generation in renewables. It is the cheapest form of new energy, and in a few years – soon –it will be the most abundant source of energy in Victoria, because it is no good creating all this new renewable energy if there is no transmission infrastructure to take it where it can be used.

Further to the point, I am very glad to see that the minister in the other place is treating the issue with the urgency that it deserves.

It takes years to reshape an energy grid. Our local coal-fired power stations are going to reach the end of their natural life spans and go offline in a few years, and we need to make these investments in new energy now. It is no good waiting for them to go offline before we bother looking into what will replace them. Planning ahead is always the most important thing the government can do to ensure that we have reliable, affordable and clean energy into the second half of this decade. But it is not just that. We also need to be planning ahead for the next decade and the decade after that. Any member of this chamber who has been paying close attention to the field of energy policy over the last decade would know this. They would also know that it is exactly what the Allan Labor government and the Andrews Labor government have done before, that this year we are expecting to reach our target of 40 per cent of our total electricity being renewable and that by 2035 we are aiming for 95 per cent of our electricity being renewable. This took a decade of work for the government and the minister, and it will take another decade to finish it off. It just goes to show why VicGrid is so important and why giving it powers, which are being transferred by this bill, is also important.

This bill is one part of the plan for VicGrid. In fact it is only the second in a series of bills relating to creating a more powerful and more impactful VicGrid. Further, our plans for VicGrid, the 2025 Victorian Transmission Plan and the renewable energy zones are only one part of a broader energy strategy. These policies help to facilitate private development in renewable energy, while at the same time the SEC is producing publicly owned renewable energy and using it to power our public schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure.

Our rebates and our subsidies for rooftop solar and energy-efficient appliances are enabling individuals and families to produce their own energy and use it more efficiently. Our power saving bonuses have helped Victorians save money and helped with the cost of living while also encouraging them to switch to a more competitive energy deal through the Victorian Energy Compare website. Helping people to navigate what can often be a difficult and confusing market not only helps people with the costs of energy but also promotes competitiveness between energy companies. Of course the power saving bonus is making its return this year, offering households with a concession card $100 off their power bills, as was announced in the budget in May.

The Allan Labor government understands how important the price of energy is. When energy bills go up, it can be one of the most viscerally difficult aspect of the cost of living. In the modern age in Victoria there are not too many households or businesses left who can choose to live without using electricity, which is why our long-term plans for the security and supply of electricity in this state are so important. VicGrid and its new powers and responsibilities are going to be a big part of that and so are our renewable energy zones and our transmission infrastructure projects. Some people look to the challenges facing our energy system and see only negatives. Those of us on this side of the chamber see the opportunities to transform the grid to be cleaner, more affordable and more secure and to create more jobs. It would be completely irresponsible for any government to let those opportunities slip for no other reason than because the work involved would be too difficult and long. Our government has been working towards seizing these opportunities for a decade and in doing so have made important and irreversible changes to the make-up of the grid already. With bills like this one and the plans we have for renewable energy generation and transmission, we will be able to continue to have the work done and to take it even further. That is why this bill matters, and that is why we are pushing on with producing the energy that the state needs. I commend the bill to the house.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:09): I rise to contribute to the debate on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. Divisions 1 and 2 of this bill will amend the new law relating to the statutory body corporate VicGrid and transfer the powers and responsibilities of the CEO of VicGrid to the body corporate VicGrid. The bill will also transfer certain functions of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to VicGrid so that planning and decisions about the Victorian transmission and energy network are made in Victoria and not by the national operator.

The Liberals do not oppose these changes, and in fact we support moving decision-making from AEMO to Victorian agencies. However, the useful parts of this bill are completely overshadowed by the outrageous and totally unacceptable parts of this bill. That is why the Liberals will be strongly opposing this bill, and I urge all members of this house to reject it.

The bill is the end result of a decades-long failure to consult properly with regional and rural communities and a failure to plan comprehensively for large-scale energy transition. The Labor government have totally lost control of the energy system in Victoria, and now they are trying to make up for the lack of planning and engagement with heavy-handed coercion. They want to use coercive powers to give contractors access to private land and force massive transmission lines onto rural communities that do not want them. The government thinks that this bill will allow it to intimidate and control rural communities, but in fact it will only inflame opposition and create even more delays to the energy transition.

The rotten core at the heart of this bill is an attack on the fundamental rights of Victorians. Under this new legislation authorised officers can enter land without consent by simply providing notice, leaving the landholder with no right to refuse. If the landholder tries to protect their property by denying access to the land, the legislation will allow contractors to use force to break open locks and smash down gates. If any landholder tries to get in the way of a contractor who is forcing his way onto the property, that landholder can be slapped with fines of up to $12,000 for an individual or $48,000 for a corporate body. These provisions are an outrageous violation of basic property rights and fundamental values in our country. The right to decide what happens on your own property is one of the most fundamental rights in our political system. The right to lawfully enjoy your land and use it how you wish and the right to stop other people from encroaching on your land are basic to the functioning of a liberal democracy. This right should never be violated.

Farmers have good reason to care deeply about maintaining the security of their property and particularly their animals. An energy contractor could breach that security by leaving gates open or maybe even damage a recently sown field because it looks like an empty paddock that they think they can drive over. Farms also have strict biosecurity requirements. In my electorate we have recently had several agricultural businesses quarantined due to viral or fungal outbreaks, and farmers cannot afford to risk a biosecurity breach from a truck or shoe bringing contaminated soil or faeces onto the farm.

Farms are not just workplaces, they are also homes for families, with pets and children running around freely. It is unacceptable for contractors to force their way onto a farm with trucks, equipment and materials that may create a real safety risk for the children who live and play on their family’s farm. There is also a serious concern for child safety if contractors have unsupervised access to farms where children might be moving around out of sight of their parents. This raises serious questions about the screening of workers and whether the contractors and workers will have working with children checks before they go onto the farms.

The government should not violate your right to secure your own property unless there is a very strong justification. If there is unlawful or dangerous activity taking place, even then it must be done through a proper legal process. But when I look at this bill and I hear the government speeches defending it, I cannot find good justification for the draconian overreach contained in this legislation. This bill had a one-page second-reading speech but a 10-page statement of compatibility with the human rights charter, which details all the ways in which this bill infringes on human rights.

Ultimately the government cannot justify this legislation because the rapid and forced transition to renewables is not actually an urgent necessity. The government has other options to ensure reliability in the energy network, but it has chosen to ban gas and force the renewables transition when it does not have to. It has chosen ideology over outcomes, and that will never be enough to justify the violation of basic property rights that this legislation will allow.

The member for Albert Park in the other place said there is nothing to see here and there is nothing to worry about. There is already a provision under section 93 of the Electricity Industry Act 2000 for enabling access to land. If that is true, then what is the need for this bill? As the member noted, the only way to enforce access against an unwilling landholder is to obtain an injunction from the Supreme Court, and the member laments that this process is expensive and time consuming – and so it should be. When we are talking about violating someone’s basic right to decide what happens on their property, there should be a very high bar for using the state’s powers to override that decision. This bill will lower the standard and only require an order from a Magistrates’ Court. The protections in this bill are very weak. Clause 65, new section 93BK, says that when magistrates make their decisions about giving an entry order they:

… must have regard to –

the need for the expeditious development of electricity transmission …

This is telling the magistrate to rubberstamp entry orders. There is no real legal protection here for landholders who are having their basic property rights violated. Just as there is no moral justification for the draconian laws in this bill, there is also no economic justification. The member for Thomastown in the other place said that she is looking forward to power prices going down because of the government’s renewable energy policies. The minister also told us that prices will go down, down, down, but under her watch all they have done is go up, up, up. I am sorry to say, but the member for Thomastown will be waiting a very long time for prices to go down. Power prices are only going up, and they are going up because the Labor government has completely bungled the energy transition.

AEMO’s recent report shows that the cost of the VNI West transmission line will blow out from $3.9 billion to $7.6 billion and possibly even up to $11.4 billion. Respected energy expert Bruce Mountain has said that the government’s transmission plan will cost $28 billion over the coming decade. Who is going to wear that cost? The consumers will wear that cost, and more importantly it will be Victorian consumers who wear that cost. Professor Mountain says household electricity bills will go up by about 50 per cent and power bills for industrial electricity users will explode by between 250 and 350 per cent. This will kill industry in Victoria and destroy regional economies, where businesses are already struggling with rising costs and many have decided to move to other Australian states that have better business conditions. We have seen that with Bega recently in my electorate.

What really worries me is the effect that this will have on my constituents in Northern Victoria. My constituents are already hurting after years of inflation, the cost of living going up and then recently the devastating effects of the drought. Now they have to worry about the Allan Labor government forcing electricity companies onto their land to put up massive transmission lines that will blight the beautiful scenery of the country that they have grown up in. The Allan Labor government seems hell-bent on hurting the whole of regional Victoria, and this bill is just the latest in a long line of attacks on regional Victorians. Regional roads are falling apart, and the government is totally ignoring its duty to provide safe driving conditions for Victorians. State parks and forests will soon be locked away, despite the Premier promising she would not. Massive housing projects are being approved for small country towns that do not have the infrastructure to handle them. Labor reacted too slowly on drought support and had to be dragged to the table to listen to farmers and provide assistance and relief. They have totally failed to offer any real opposition to Commonwealth buybacks for irrigation water that our agricultural industry and regional economies rely on. They failed to properly consult when drawing up the renewable energy zones. They have imposed a big new tax on Victorians, the so-called emergency services tax, most of which will not actually go to improving the capabilities of frontline responders.

Now, on top of that, Labor are bringing in this bill, which will give energy companies the right to force their way onto private land without consent and hit you with a massive fine if you resist. It is hard to believe how much worse it can get for regional Victorians, but never underestimate the ability of the Allan Labor government to find new ways to hurt rural communities in order to chase green votes in the city.

The Minister for Energy and Resources claims that this bill will establish a framework for funding and payment of benefits to landholders, local communities and traditional owners impacted by the new renewable generation and battery storage infrastructure. But Labor will only pretend to help rural and regional communities impacted by their disastrous energy policies. In reality, the promise of any benefit for communities is just a fig leaf. Benefit funds are a cover under which Labor will use payments from energy companies to fill the government coffers and offset their spending in metropolitan Melbourne. They are doing the same thing with the so-called emergency services levy, most of which will not actually help frontline emergency services, and they will do it with this bill as well.

Clause 50 inserts new section 92 to provide for payments into and out of the REZ community energy fund. Subsection 4 states:

The Treasurer, after consulting the Minister and VicGrid, may direct VicGrid to pay out of the REZ Community Energy Fund a specified amount of money to be paid into the Consolidated Fund.

I knew this Labor government was sneaky, but this takes it to another level. It is country Victorians who have to carry the burden of the renewable energy transition. Labor is not building solar farms or putting wind turbines in safe Labor metropolitan seats – it is country Victorians who suffer while their beautiful and scenic landscape is covered with the industrial infrastructure of renewable energy projects. Therefore it should be country Victorians that are generously compensated by energy companies who make use of country farmland. And yet when we look at this bill, we see Labor’s real plan to create a so-called community benefit fund that the Treasurer can dip into whenever she wants to to pay for pet Labor projects in metropolitan seats.

This bill will actually have the opposite effect of what the government intends. The government thinks the transition to renewables is taking too long and that bothersome local communities are getting in the way. The purpose of this bill is to threaten and intimidate them, shut them up, scare them into agreement so the government can speed up its rollout of renewables. But in fact this bill will do the opposite; this draconian overreach by a Labor government obsessed with wielding power will actually in fact backfire. Country people are generous and cooperative, but when you threaten their livelihoods, their land, their basic property rights and their families, they will not take it lying down. Every new transmission project will become a battleground, a face-off between angry landholders and energy companies. Farmers desperate to protect their land will be arrested at the farm gate. There will be conflict and delays and then more cost blowouts that will flow through into the electricity bills of every Victorian, making the cost of living even higher.

This bill is a recipe for failure that will inflame opposition and totally destroy all trust in the government and ultimately make the energy transition even more difficult. This bill must be opposed because it violates basic property rights, it does not afford sufficient legal protections for Victorians, it will make electricity prices go up for everyone, it will delay the energy transition and it will not produce any real long-term benefits for country Victorians, who will be the most impacted by the industrial infrastructure being forced onto their productive land.

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (16:24): I rise in opposition to this bill. Despite some wags from the opposition in the other place trying to make out like I was not going to oppose it, I most certainly am. This is a monster of a bill for what seems fairly simple. I have been through it, and there are questions one must have. In fact I might refer to Mr Limbrick’s contribution earlier. There is a lot that I agree with him about that, about the net zero we are doing here while the places that are really bad and that really need to work on their emissions are doing diddly. From that perspective I wonder just how morally right it is to be able to have the government, in this case the contractors, force their way onto your land, whether you want it or not.

There was the use of the term ‘reasonable force’. I know under section 462A of the Crimes Act 1958 reasonable force is a pretty serious thing. I would like to hope that when entering your property reasonable force does not end up meaning the same thing, because to some people the powers that this bill gives to contractors and the affront that that causes means it feels that big to them. Whether you believe in renewables as the next saviour or not is immaterial to a large degree. This is about what is happening to the communities out there.

I went for a drive out to Lexton and Stuart Mill, which is where these things are going. As it happens, when I came to Victoria a long time ago I lived outside of Stuart Mill, so I know the area pretty well – the Kara Kara National Park, or state forest as it was back then, and that area. There are some powerlines that go through there, but they are relatively small in the scheme of things. At the place I visited they are probably about 10 metres above the tree line, which I suppose you can get used to – but they are not going. What is going to happen is we have other powerlines much higher going for much longer. I have got to say that part of the attraction of those areas – Lexton, St Arnaud, Natte Yallock and all those sorts of places – is the bucolic feel. You feel like you are out in the country. The last thing you want are dirty, great powerlines.

I feel that this bill is giving life to people’s fears. People do not trust governments. People should not trust governments; I am starting to sound a bit like a Libertarian. There are some things you have to do as a government, but I feel that this has been attacked in the wrong way. A lot of farmers are doing well out of this. They will get some recompense for their problems, but the ones that do not want a part of it I think are being given the raw prawn. When I was out at Lexton I was talking to someone affected by this, and they were talking about the consultation meeting, the town hall – whatever they called it – that was going to be happening the evening I was there. They had got an email about it the previous evening. That is not a lot of time, particularly for people who may not be there or may not see their email. I am not saying it was in a conspiratorial way, I am not saying that it was deliberate, but it was done very poorly, hence why we have a lot of unhappy people.

It was mentioned – I cannot remember by who – that we could have put these things underground, or at least some of them. That still is a possibility. Should this bill get through in its current form, that is not going to happen. What is going to happen is some poor guy that does not want his farm desecrated, for want of a better term, with a great big 80-metre tower – someone can correct me if I am wrong – someone is going to come in with a truck, cut the locks, drive onto his property . Even presuming they do the right thing with biosecurity, they are going to erect a dirty big tower in his yard, and he will just have to suck it up. That is not how I feel governments should go. That is not how I feel life should be. Australia was built on a fair go. I feel that the fair go has fled from this issue.

The last comment I will make before I take a seat again is that we keep on getting told about renewables being cheaper. One of the things I learned very early on in the scheme of this place was that all power forms are subsidised to a degree, whether by state government or federal government. I would be truly interested to see what the unsubsidised amounts are. I know there is a lot of opposition to nuclear, and it is going to be expensive and yadda yadda yadda. From a data point of view, there is no level playing field. I cannot say that nuclear costs this per megawatt. I cannot say that renewables cost that, gas is that. At this stage you have got everyone doing a little bit of something in the pie, and the numbers are everywhere. I would love just to see them. Maybe I am right, maybe I am wrong. At this stage all we get is, let us call them, figures that have been chosen. Until we really know what is going on, we will just have to accept them.

I am going to sit down. I know Mr McIntosh loves his renewable power. We have had discussions about this at length. I am salivating to hear what he has to say.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (16:30): Thank you, Mr Bourman, for the segue. I might put down my notes and I might put down my phone, which is ringing very inappropriately, and why don’t we pick up on a couple of points that Mr Bourman has raised and Mr Limbrick has raised as a starting point. I think a starting point is one of a point of values. There have been questions raised at a high-level value point: do we need to decarbonise our economy? I would say yes. Now, it might be correct that we are 1 per cent of global emissions. In World War I and World War II we were probably 1 per cent or 2 per cent, whatever it might be, of the fighting effort, but we contributed. We turned up because it was important, and it is incredibly important that we reduce our emissions not only to people around the globe who are living in far greater poverty than most of us here in Australia but also to ourselves. When we look at the landmass that we are able to use for agricultural production, as our climate dries, as the band of land from the coast that is available for productive agriculture shrinks and as soil temperatures dry up, we know that if the ambient temperature of the soil is warmer it is harder to grow things at the same time as you are having lower rainfall.

We know farmers are getting smashed, whether it is by wind events, by fire, by flood or by whatever is happening out of a more unstable climate. When we have more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the sun’s rays come in they get trapped, things heat up and we get more moisture in the atmosphere, and when that moisture moves around at a higher pace and at a more ferocious level, bad things happen – it is not good – and that hits us economically. For our farmers, when they get hit and smashed, then that flows on to everybody in the price at the supermarket. It hits us from an economic perspective, because we have got $20 billion worth of ag product in this state, so if we are losing swathes of that due to any one of those storm, fires flood and drought events et cetera, then we are less economically productive and our cost of living goes up as we are paying more at the supermarket.

From an agricultural perspective we should be striving to be more productive. We should be striving to be more productive in every way. So when our conditions to grow disable farmers from being more productive, when it gets harder and harder to be productive, it is bad for our economy. And it is bad for those farmers, because we want to see those farms being passed down from generation to generation. That is something that we should absolutely strive for. I would love to hear from somebody from the coalition. We know that their policies are driven out of Queensland and they struggle to ever present policies, let alone have independent policies of their own making. They are a powerful group up in Queensland, and I know that the Liberal-Nationals here quiver in their boots when the Queenslanders tell them to pull their heads in.

But farmers interests should be first – farmers, not multinational mining companies. If we do not want to see the corporatisation of farming in this state, if we do not want to see the corporatisation of farming in this nation, if we want to see mums and dads and families on farms – and over there they are shaking their heads because they do not actually care about who owns the farms – and if we want to see family farms being passed down from generation to generation, then we have to ensure that the conditions are there for farmers to be able to do so. I will come back to the point I made about starting with a position of values. I am very proud to have a value of decarbonising our economy and reducing our emissions so we are all not getting smashed economically, whether that is the farmer or our entire society, from lower agricultural outputs.

I have not even touched on the 16 per cent jump in insurance bills last year because of severe weather events year on year on year on year. And it does not matter – anyone can say whatever science they want. If you come down to the hard dollars of what insurers are doing to all of us collectively, I think we have got to get a little bit away from ‘Them, them, us’. We are all Victorian, we are all in this together, we all suffer the costs. When in doubt, look at the insurance bills and look at what the insurance councils have been saying for a very long time about the impacts of climate change. So as a starting point we need to reduce our emissions.

Secondly, there has been doubt and assertion put over this. Mr Bourman was just saying this, and we have actually sat down and started this discussion in the past, and I will have it now. It will be great, because he will not be able to talk back to me; I can say whatever I want and get away with it scot-free. But when we talk about cost, I think an important starting point is that our entire energy system here in Victoria was a public asset. Public funds established our generators, public funds established our transmission lines, public funds established our distribution networks and public funds retailed energy here in this state. When we sold those assets, we sold them without any private investment, without any private skills, without a private workforce having created those networks. So when people say coal is cheaper, of course it is, because we have assets that are 20, 30, 40 years old that were funded and established by the state. They were sold, but they are existing assets. I think we can get that as a starting point. And then we look at: what is the cost of new assets? Mr Bourman raised the point that there are varying subsidies, as there are for multiple sectors, for multiple industries, whether we are talking mining, whether we are talking diesel subsidies – whatever we are talking about. But even if we strip all that away and we are looking at solar, off the top of my head – and I hope I get this roughly right – let us say broadly solar costs $60 or $80 a megawatt, depending on whether it has got battery on it or not. We have got wind – we start going into $100, $120 per megawatt for onshore wind. Perhaps offshore gets a little bit more. And then we get to gas, and gas is into the 200-and-something dollars for generation.

Even if you leave aside the fact that gas supplies are finite and that gas rigs are being pulled out of the Bass Strait to be decommissioned because there is simply no more gas there, to order and construct and commission a gas turbine takes years, then you have got to get the gas, and then, if you actually do not start with the underlying principle that we want to decarbonise our economy – it does not fit the plan, but even if you leave that aside and you say, ‘We don’t care. Whatever – drill, baby, drill’ – economically it does not make any sense. Why would you go for a more expensive form of generation?

And then what about other nations? ‘They’re not doing anything; other nations are not doing anything.’ Anyone who is following China knows they are installing incredible amounts of renewables, and they are electrifying their transmission. The other thing we should talk about is our energy security. I love the idea of electrifying our transmission, of generating our electricity here, of having a closed loop of Victorian jobs, a decentralised generation model where many people are profiting and benefiting and gaining income from the generation of electricity, which is what a decentralised renewable model offers. Then we are giving ourselves energy security for when a flare-up happens around the world, a geopolitical whatever – war breaks out – or someone decides at some point they want to get in the way of oil being shipped to Australia or anywhere along that long route. I love the idea that the value, the profits, the jobs and everything are right here – that we are sustainable. And that is exactly what China are doing. They are taking a strategic approach.

Last year their car show – it was not an electric car show – was 95 per cent EVs, because they understand that they do not want to have to buy their fuel from elsewhere. They are decarbonising their generation because they understand they do not want to have to buy their coal from elsewhere. So on a climate perspective, on a cost perspective and on a geopolitical strategic perspective it makes sense to electrify along the whole way, and that does not even talk about air quality and pollution and the hundreds or thousands of people even here in Victoria, in Australia, that lose their lives every year off the back end of air pollution, not to mention other places around the world. Economically it makes sense. Subsequently there is not further investment in coal, because a new coal generator is not economically competitive with the renewable forms of generation I have just gone through. If you get to that point, then it is about saying, ‘Well, how are we going to power this state?’ I am proud that the Labor Party has laid out over the years and has met and beaten our targets. We are now at 42 per cent renewables in this state annually generated here in Victoria. When it was 5 per cent and when it was 10 per cent and when it was 20 per cent, ‘Oh, it can’t be done. Oh, this, it can’t be that, it can’t be that.’ Why do one in three households have solar panels on their roof? Because it makes sense. Have a bit of sun, hits a bit of panel, get a bit of electricity. Not bad, is it? You can generate it yourself. Why are businesses doing it? Have a bit of sun, hit a bit of panel, get some electricity, save money. It is good.

Another point: through decentralising that – and I love the home battery program of the feds – we are giving energy security to households. Just like I was talking about with electric vehicles, we give energy security to households, to businesses, through community batteries, through any sort of storage that is decentralised, that is more localised in place. We are giving more autonomy and more security to homes and to businesses in their place. I will tell you what, when these storm events hit – and even though I have only been in Parliament for three years, in my time I have already seen a number of these events – where powerlines are down, whether that is through wind or fire or whatever may happen, to be able to have that resilience in community, whether that is in a community hub or within a home, is incredibly valuable.

I was asking Mr Davis in his contribution; he says he believes in action on climate change. I think he might have spoke a little bit out of the side of his mouth on the angle he was on. But I think a lot of farmers want to see their productivity continue. They want to be able to hand their farms over to their children. If that is the goal and we want to reduce emissions and we want to keep farmland productive, how are they going to generate their energy? If it is gas – because Mr Davis is always talking about gas – there is only one place they are going to get gas from, and that is from underneath the farmland. We know that they have pushed fracking in the past. I believe Mr Battin made a tweet. The Leader of the Liberal Party made a tweet recently that they are open to lifting that moratorium on fracking. To farmers, ask yourself. The Liberals cannot define their values and what they believe in, they cannot define policies about how they will generate energy for Victoria and they cannot present a plan about how they will provide affordable, reliable electricity to this state. If it is gas and the only way they can source that is through fracking, ask yourself. The Liberal–Nationals have done it before. They will go back to frack our pristine agricultural land. If the Liberals can present an energy plan to this place, to the public of Victoria, then we can debate that. We can debate exactly the merits, the pros and cons. I said in a contribution yesterday we should not be afraid to bring policies to this place and debate them vigorously. But at the moment you have one side bringing clear, decade-long plans and policies that actually see us move forward as a state, and you see another side that comes and says, no – no, no, no, no. If you ask them: what is their plan? The answer: we do not have one.

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (16:45): I have to take issue with Mr McIntosh to start with. What a disgrace – suggesting we are proposing fracking. We are definitely not. But what we are proposing is onshore conventional gas exploration, which is what you should be embracing wholeheartedly and getting on with. As for talking about insurance bills, I will tell you what, Mr McIntosh, insurance bills are going through the roof – if you can get it on a property that might have transmission lines on it. Insurance companies do not want to go near anybody that has got transmission lines. That is what is happening to farmers in this state. You talk about farmers getting smashed. They absolutely are – by you, by that government across there – getting smashed. If it is not an emergency services tax, it is transmission lines running roughshod over their property, affecting fabulous environmental areas and destroying the land that feeds and clothes and houses you. You are all a disgrace over there.

I want to thank Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell from One Nation, I want to thank David Limbrick from the Libertarians and I want to thank Jeff Bourman from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, because these crossbenchers are standing up for the farmers and the country people in this state. Any other crossbenchers and Labor MPs from regional Victoria should hang their heads in shame for supporting this outrageous piece of legislation. It is absolutely outrageous. I want to say I often stand in this place and point out the habit of this Labor government to govern by media release. At the first hint of a problem, real or imagined, they rush out some shiny announcement: a new commissioner, a new body, a new law with a glossy title. It is government by sound bite, by headline, vacuous and content free. I have to admit that today that criticism would be far from valid – very far. The National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025 is not meaningless fluff. It is not some token gesture that will vanish with the next press cycle. This bill will have real and lasting consequences. It overturns longstanding traditions, rewrites fundamental rights and equips this government and its agencies with powers that could harm the people it is meant to serve. What it contains is an assault on the property rights of Victorians, a dangerous erosion of democratic oversight and a heavy-handed intrusion into the livelihoods of farming communities.

The only good thing I could say for the government is that this was not their original intention. This bill is not the triumph of strategy. It is a monument to failure. It exists not because the government won support but because they lost it. They could not make their case through consultation. They could not persuade those most directly affected. And so, having squandered trust, they turned to coercion. Here is a hint for the government: if your policies are truly sensible, you do not need to rewrite centuries of property law to make them work. Instead of fixing the real problem, the policy you are adopting is a scorched-earth approach, blasting through reasonable and sensible opposition. The question the government should be asking is simple: what is wrong with this plan that it suddenly requires a bill like this, when no government before has needed such powers? The answer lies not in the law but in the failure of the policy itself. The government’s whole approach to transmission lines was wrongheaded in the first place, and it should be clear to everyone that this coercive attempt to fix it is doomed to failure too.

One of Australia’s leading energy experts, Professor Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, has warned:

Drastic changes to private property rights, as the Victorian government is proposing to enforce a poorly founded transmission plan, are unlikely to achieve its objectives and will poison the water for other renewables and transmission developments that would otherwise be likely to find local community agreement.

This bill is the very definition of that drastic change, and it will not work. It will not build transmission faster. It will not win community acceptance. It will only harden opposition and deepen mistrust. You have no social licence to go down this path and you know it, so you have to introduce the most draconian laws that have ever happened in this place.

Speaking of fostering mistrust, it is not just forced entry to private property which is going to cause this. It comes also from the sham this government has dressed up as community benefits. They speak proudly of the renewable energy zone community fund as if this were some great act of generosity towards the regions that will bear the brunt of transmission. But buried deep in the bill is the truth. New section 92(4) of the bill states:

The Treasurer, after consulting the Minister and VicGrid, may direct VicGrid to pay out of the –

renewable energy zone –

… Community Energy Fund a specified amount of money to be paid into the Consolidated Fund.

Yes, this is what this is about: putting money back into the coffers of your debt-ridden Treasury. There it is in black and white: the Treasurer has the explicit power to rip money out of the so-called community fund and pull it back to Melbourne, inside the tram tracks, into consolidated revenue. This is not a community benefit. That is not a guarantee for farmers or regional towns. It is a giant hoax, as my lower house colleagues rightly dubbed it. Richard Riordan called it a lie and a deception and code for ‘We’re going to take your community money, put it into the Treasury, and we’ll spend it on tunnels in Melbourne, overblown projects here in Melbourne,’ and every other wanton cause this government is failing to pay for through a mismanaged and poorly funded budget.

The way this bill has been handled only reinforces the anger. It is a 160-page bill with sweeping implications for property rights, energy planning and community trust, yet the government gave members in the Assembly barely an hour and a half to debate it. If the bill were defensible, the government would welcome open debate. If it were sound, they would invite scrutiny. Instead, they ram it through, embarrassed by their own legislation, afraid of what the public might learn if this Parliament were given the time to pull it apart. At its core this bill is a land grab unprecedented in modern Victorian history. It empowers so-called authorised officers to enter private land without the consent of the owner. It allows them to use reasonable force to cut locks, break gates and dismantle fences. What was once a civil planning issue is transformed into quasi-criminal enforcement on private farmland. Bruce Mountain is right; this is a drastic change to private property rights. It tears up centuries of principle that a man’s home is his castle, that a farmer’s land is his livelihood. Katherine Myers, a farmer from Tourello, near Ballarat, expressed it in personal terms, saying:

The connection farmers have to their land is incredibly strong, and it goes far beyond the economic – and even beyond social – it’s quite a spiritual connection to do with history and future. Promises of the past and the hope for the future.

This bill violates that connection. It tells farmers their history counts for nothing, their future counts for nothing. The government can enter, occupy and disrupt without consent. And if they resist, they will be crushed with fines. For individuals, those fines may be $12,210. For companies, which includes countless family farms run as partnerships or trusts, the fines leap to $48,842. This is a cash grab and a land grab.

Ross Johns, president of the Wimmera Mallee Environmental and Agricultural Protection Association, has been pretty blunt: ‘The Victorian government is just a bunch of liars.’ Farmers do not use those words lightly. They use them when they have been deceived, when consultation has been promised but never delivered, when trust has been broken time and time again.

The bill even drags Victoria Police into this coercive regime. It authorises police officers to accompany VicGrid staff as they force their way onto private farmland. Let me be clear: police exist to protect communities, not to act as the private army of VicGrid or other transmission proponents or this government. They are not your army to run roughshod over private property and individuals. Their neutrality and their trust with local communities will be undermined if they are seen as enforcers of energy policy rather than protectors of public safety.

To remind you, all of this comes not from a position of strength but of failure. The government has lost control of energy planning, and it is ordinary Victorians who are paying the price. Take VNI West: forecast at $1.6 billion in 2023, revised to $3.3 billion, then $3.9 billion. Now it stands at $7.6 billion, and independent experts warn it could blow out to $11 billion. The Western Renewables Link – from $370 million to $3 billion. These are not minor overruns, they are the direct result of ideology over competence, of arrogance over planning.

Meanwhile so-called compensation for landowners is $8000 per kilometre of transmission line annually – a pittance. It is insulting when compared to the lifetime loss of productivity, the disruption to farm operations and the mental stress on families. Brett Hosking, president of the Victorian Farmers Federation, said:

If we truly want to reduce emissions this decade, we must start by respecting the people who manage and care for the land … Farmers already protect biodiversity, steward water resources, and produce the food and fibre our society relies on.

This bill does the opposite. It disrespects them, coerces them and undermines the very people who feed our state. That is the legacy of this government’s heavy-handedness – a broken relationship that will take years to rebuild. Social licence is not a box to tick. It is not something to buy with a slush fund. It is earned carefully over time through respect and negotiation. This bill obliterates social licence. It replaces negotiation with coercion, persuasion with penalties, trust with force.

The government also ignores serious warnings about safety. CFA brigades have declared they will not fight fires under 500-kilovolt transmission lines due to the risk and hazards. They forge ahead with overhead towers across fire-prone country. The Western Renewables Link threatens to destroy Victoria’s food bowl, undermining other things like potato growers and processors around Ballarat. Sensitive ecosystems are put at risk, from eagles to endangered orchids. This is not a green plan, it is ecological vandalism.

There are better ways forward: Plan B, designed by Professor Mountain and Simon Bartlett, using existing easements. It is cheaper, more resilient and less invasive, yet the government dismisses it out of hand. Other proposals, like underground cables along existing corridors, are ignored, because this government is not interested in negotiation, it is only interested in control. This bill is a blueprint for authoritarianism. It trashes property rights, it drags police into civil disputes, it hides documents from scrutiny, it hoaxes community with false benefits and it ignores experts and alternatives. Above all, it betrays the people of regional Victoria – the farmers who feed and clothe us, who care for the land and carry the burden of this government’s ideology.

Our democracy has always rested on a simple truth: governments govern with the people, not against them. From Federation onwards Australians have trusted that the rule of law protects their homes, their farms and their livelihoods. The opposition will fight this bill every step of the way. We will vote against it here, and if elected we will repeal it. We will restore property rights – (Time expired)

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:00): I rise to make a contribution on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. From the outset, I want to make it crystal clear that Legalise Cannabis Victoria (LCV) are 100 per cent supportive of Victoria’s switch to renewable energy. We recognise the absolute necessity of transitioning from coal-powered energy, of establishing transmission infrastructure and of creating certainty for renewable investors. It has to happen, but we have been deeply concerned by the way this government has gone about it, particularly around seeking social licence from the community and the encroachment upon people’s property rights. As members have noted, regional communities have not been treated with appropriate respect or provided with an appropriate suite of consultative services. Further, we believe that certain basic civil liberties have been eroded by this bill – for example, with regard to restricting the ability of magistrates to consider compliance with applications for access orders. I know our colleague Georgie Purcell from the Animal Justice Party shares our concerns, and these are reflected in the position we put to the chamber today.

Labor has been in government for a long time in Victoria. In the past 25 years there has only been one term when Victoria has not been governed by the Labor Party. It is almost hard to remember a time when they were not in power. But governments do change and governments’ time in power will inevitably end, and that applies to the present government as it has to every other elected government. And what happens then? The old government will have left behind a legacy of precedents of residual powers that new governments can use, as they will. While oppositions may argue vociferously against the government’s adoption of increased powers, those same opponents, when they find themselves on the other side of the chamber, rarely unwind those laws. Nobody likes to cede power. We cannot say how these questionable or even dangerous precedents will be used by future governments, so it is incumbent on us as lawmakers to proceed with caution when governments introduce laws that set these kinds of precedents.

The proposed land access amendment in the bill represents exactly the sort of precedent I am talking about. For this reason, LCV and the Animal Justice Party have negotiated amendments to try to ameliorate some of the concerns of our regional constituents. So I would like to circulate the amendments, and I ask that these amendments be distributed now. In relation to the appointment of authorised officers in the bill, these officers have broad powers to access private land, but there is no definition of eligibility criteria for appointing these officers, and we had concerns that private contractors were being given broad powers to enter private land, issue fines and even use reasonable force to access land. I must say, the image of the sheriff swearing in the deputies – ‘Let’s go get ‘em’ – was rather in our mind, given that lack of discipline or definition.

Our amendment 1 inserts a new clause 62A, adding a definition into the Electricity Industry Act 2000 that ‘public sector employee’ has the same meaning as it does in the Public Administration Act 2004, and further amendments to clauses 63 and 65 ensure that only a public sector employee can be appointed as an authorised officer. This ensures that the authorised officers are bound by the Victorian public sector code of conduct, have undergone the necessary pre-employment checks and are subject to the relevant performance management or misconduct processes. It also guarantees that private contractors cannot be appointed and given those broad powers to enter private property without consent.

The stakeholders we consulted with were alarmed by provisions in clause 65 relating to an authorised officer’s ability to apply to the Magistrates’ Court for an entry order to gain access to land where access to that land had previously been hindered, delayed or obstructed. Our stakeholders felt that the requirements for the issuing of an entry order were too narrow, with the magistrate directed only to have regard to the need for the expeditious development of electricity transmission infrastructure and not required to consider the proportionality or necessity of the officer’s intended actions or any concerns of the landholder, only whether the statutory criteria was satisfied. There is no way that that sort of approach can be justified.

Our proposed amendment 8 ensures that the magistrate must have regard to whether the authorised officer has complied with the relevant obligations under the essential services code of practice in relation to entering onto the applicable land, the circumstances of entry and the purpose of entry. This code of practice has been in place since 2015, and I guess we draw some comfort that since it has been in place for that length of time it is probably a pretty safe bet. Importantly, the code requires that all necessary steps to ensure access are taken before – not during, not after – entry onto the land and before an access order can be applied for, and that step must be undertaken before seeking an access order. The penalties for noncompliance across these provisions were in our view excessive – and I know a number of speakers have referred to this.

Our proposed amendments 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11 halve the penalty units for landholders’ breaches under the act. Our proposed amendments 12 to 14 reduce those penalties by one-third. Our proposed amendment 16 inserts a new provision to restrict the creation of an entry order to a magistrate and removes the power of the VicGrid CEO to make such an order. These are things which are appropriately dealt with in the realm of magistrates within a jurisdictional framework, not by the appointed executive of VicGrid.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, LCV are 100 per cent supportive of the transition to renewable energy. The installation of transmission lines is necessary, and it just has to happen. We enter the debate on this bill primarily through the lens of what constitutes reasonable powers and how those powers might be exercised. There are a lot of worthwhile provisions in this bill that have been overshadowed by the clumsy way the government has gone about achieving the social licence to undertake necessary works, including the provisions around extending the benefits of funds collected by VicGrid to traditional owners.

While far from perfect, we believe our proposed amendments go some way to ameliorating the concerns expressed around the broad powers that this bill grants to government agents to enter land where landholder consent has been withheld and other areas of potential administrative overreach. We will continue to be vigilant in ensuring that the government does not misapply the broad powers conferred under this act.

On behalf of both LCV and AJP I would like to thank Minister Lily D’Ambrosio and her staff, including Nick Parry, for the assistance provided to us in getting our heads around the bill and working through these changes in a productive manner. I would indicate that we will also be supporting the amendments proposed by the Greens. I commend the bill, as amended, to the chamber.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (17:09): Have we ever seen anything like this bill in the history of this chamber – a bill that permits authorised officers to use reasonable force to access private property and fines the landowner up to $12,000 if they refuse. This is not the first time I have been shocked. I was shocked when I attended a community information session a couple of years ago about the transmission lines, in Charlton, and a security guard was there. It set the tone adopted by this government, which is reflected in this bill before us today.

Energy production is crucial. It is critical for every household, for every business, for our future. But this government has made a mess of energy production in this state. We used to export energy to other states; now we need lines built so we can import energy from other states.

There is an inquiry by the Economy and Infrastructure Committee due to commence on the impact of wires and renewable energy zones in country areas, and hopefully it will unravel some of these issues. But where are we at now? The Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) have issued media releases on these issues, and they have written to members of Parliament from all sides. They have made it clear that this government has sold us a message, a plan that is needed to keep the lights on, but it still leaves farmers in the dark, and they have questions that do need to be answered. How much power will actually be built? What protections do farmers get? What benefits will flow back to communities? What are the rules on compensation and fair consultation? How much will the transmission project cost?

We have heard other members talk about that today. Initially VNI West was estimated to cost just over $3 billion, shared with New South Wales. Now that figure, according to AEMO, has blown out to $7.6 billion, and they have warned that the cost could even hit over $11 billion. Eventually these costs will hit consumers. But I am very concerned about this government’s ability to manage projects, because we have seen costs blow out again and again. We have heard reports and we have heard Bruce Mountain mentioned. The Weekly Times included reference to this about the regions and the impact. I will quote from the article:

Victoria Energy Policy Centre director Professor Bruce Mountain estimated the true cost of the blueprint to connect renewables to the grid would be more than $28bn.

“Leaving other factors unchanged, this means household electricity bills will go up by about 50 per cent,” he said. “Power bills for large power users will rise by between 250 per cent and 350 per cent.”

There is a cost to these projects and not just the cost of construction. There is a cost to agricultural land, to the environment and to regional communities who will bear the burden of these infrastructure projects. And today, as we have heard, there is another cost with the removal of private property rights.

We have seen power bills continue to rise under this government, but they have said power bills will come down. To help, they offer the power saving bonus. The first stage was $250 off your power bills. Now it is $100 off for some, but it is a bandaid on a bigger issue. As I speak with families and businesses, they are concerned that costs keep going up and up, and they wonder how they can continue to make ends meet. And who is listening to these issues? When I have spoken to farmers, most feel as if the government does not care. People have come from across the state to voice their concerns. They have protested on the steps of Parliament, and there have been protests in towns across the region.

I grew up on a farm. I understand the hard work, the commitment and the connection that you have with the land, and farmers deserve our respect. The VFF have put it simply: the government needs to stop leaving farmers guessing and be transparent. They did a survey recently of 700 members. More than 92 per cent of farmers do not believe the Victorian government understands or even listens to the concerns of farming communities. I received a letter from a shire, which I know the government has been in receipt of as well, and it talks about the impact. It says:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

As the level of government that is closest to the people affected by the Victorian transmission plan and the energy transition, the council has a critical role to play in engaging with and representing our citizens. I urge you to support council’s request that all government agencies engage with Buloke Shire Council in a genuine, open and constructive manner. Such engagement is essential to ensure our community’s views and concerns are fully understood and considered in decision-making on energy projects in the shire.

I think that is representative of how many feel.

But the fact is that regional areas face the biggest burden when it comes to transmission lines and renewable energy projects. It does impact their land, it increases fire risk and when infrastructure is placed on their property it restricts how they can use it. Instead of working with communities to address these issues, this government has sought to silence regional Victorians by removing the right to appeal to VCAT if they oppose or challenge renewable energy projects. We have also seen the reduction of the buffer zone for wind turbines to 1 kilometre.

I do support the concept of renewable energy. The sun is powerful. It is wonderful that we can harness the energy from the sun and turn it into electricity – and the same with wind. Windmills have been around for a very long time, and it is great that we can generate power from wind, but it is about balance and getting the balance right. And right now this government – we heard it from Ms Watt –are leading the world and transitioning faster than anywhere else. But the change is rapid, and regional communities, who are asking questions, are being ignored. Basic questions are being ignored that need to be urgently addressed. We do have millions of solar panels being installed across the state and hundreds and hundreds of massive wind turbines that are up to 300 metres tall, like the Eureka Tower. I mean, if you think of that, the size is incredible. They are expected to last up to 20 years. I have seen it in their documentation. I have not long turned 50, and 20 years does not feel like it was that long ago. But what plans are in place now for 20 years time when all this infrastructure needs to be replaced? What will it cost to replace all this infrastructure? What will it cost our environment? How will we manage the waste? The Legislative Council’s Environment and Planning Committee considered these issues, and I am a member of that committee, along with Labor members, Greens members and crossbench members. In the final report that was tabled earlier this month there are recommendations 30 and 31. Recommendation 30 states:

That the Victorian Government investigate and report to Parliament on the end of life of renewable energy products including wind turbines, solar panels and batteries and opportunities for recycling within Australia.

Recommendation 31 says:

That the Victorian Government undertake a review of the resilience and sustainability of Victoria’s energy generation and associated transmission, distribution and storage networks, including an assessment of impacts on agriculture and manufacturing.

The government does have six months to respond to those recommendations, so I look forward to that response. Victorian farmers produce 25 per cent of Australia’s food and fibre, using just 3 per cent of Australia’s farmland. They employ more than 150,000 people and contribute more than $20 billion to Victoria’s and Australia’s economy. Just yesterday I was hearing about an exciting new project near Shepparton. It is about 10 MCGs worth of work going on there to grow tomatoes, and there are also new manufacturing plants and robotic dairies. They were speaking about the industry and innovation in the agricultural sector, how advanced it is and the technologies that are in use. I am reminded of the importance of reliable energy supply, because just a flicker – if the power goes off just for a second if you work in an office, you may not notice. It does not matter; the power comes back on. But they were talking about this particular dairy and the robotic dairies. Even with a flicker of the power going off they will be offline for about 7 hours, having to clean all their lines. That is the impact that is being felt that is holding back manufacturing in this state.

I visited Bendigo Woollen Mills recently, a very successful business in Bendigo. It has been around for a long time, and I was amazed to see their machines. They had so many machines there producing beautiful wool that is sold across Australia and overseas, and they need reliable energy. There are so many exciting opportunities to grow and expand in manufacturing. There are many companies that are struggling to grow because of distribution issues, and that is an important conversation that we do need to have, because it is not just about transmission, it is about the distribution as well. For many businesses, the power supply to their business is not sufficient, and they are now looking to graphite batteries to create their own energy supply. We are a resource-rich state. We have what the world wants, but we are not managing the resources we have been given. Labor has been in government now for years. They have had plenty of time to get it right, but they have made an absolute mess of it. We need more energy. We need to think beyond the next election to 2050 and well beyond that. There is a better way, and this bill is certainly not it.

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (17:19): I rise to speak on the bill before us today and want to begin by resolutely saying Victoria must transition to renewable energy, and we must do so as quickly as possible. But the way that we do so has real repercussions. The urgency is real. Around 48 per cent of Victoria’s net greenhouse gas emissions is from burning fossil fuels for electricity. It is abundantly clear to most people in this chamber and most people that we represent that we are in a climate emergency. Victoria also hosts the most unreliable coal-burning power stations in our country. Our transition to renewable energy and the development of more transmission projects not only fights the ever-growing threat of the climate crisis but also significantly improves the reliability and cost of our energy network.

Regional communities like mine host the vast majority of energy-related infrastructure: energy generation, batteries and, yes, transmission lines. To some extent this is understandable. Our state is large, and certain parts of regional Victoria are particularly suited for hosting renewable energy projects. In particular, certain parts of my electorate of Northern Victoria have high average daily solar exposure.

With ambition, Melbourne itself can be a renewable energy zone. The government has made great strides in encouraging the uptake of personal residential solar panels, but there is more that can be done to unlock Melbourne’s full potential for generating energy. More local generation means fewer transmission lines and less energy lost to transmission. There is more and more research emerging on how to accomplish this, and to quote the Committee for Sydney’s Sydney as a Renewable Energy Zone policy paper:

Imagine a city where the sun powers not just our homes, but our buses, our businesses, and our neighbourhoods …

With Melbourne accounting for almost 90 per cent of Victoria’s total electricity usage, it is an undeniable fact that to meet its needs we must construct more transmission infrastructure. This is an issue that many are frustrated by, but I do accept that we cannot connect new solar, wind and storage projects to the grid without upgrading the poles and wires that underpin our energy system. Where this frustration, which I wholeheartedly share, stems from is this government’s long-term and consistent failure to do the work which earns a genuine social licence. Many of the affected communities are not inherently opposed to renewable energy, but they are opposed to being sidelined and ignored in the process and fail to see any of the benefits. I accept this is a long-term failing of AEMO, and it cannot be solved overnight. It does appear the government is aware of its trust deficit, and VicGrid planning and engagement processes are significantly better than they were under AEMO. Social licences cannot be legislated; they are earned and built through respect, trust and fair negotiation.

The real sense of frustration and fear amongst members of the community has not been helped at all by the expansion of land access provisions in section 93 of the act. I completely understand why. In order to comply with planning requirements, land must be accessed. The amendments moved in Mr Ettershank’s name create greater safeguards for the use of authorised officers and their requirements to comply with the Land Access Code of Practice. I also welcome the addition of more detail for consideration when magistrates are making an entry order.

A key part of creating this social licence is for regional communities to receive direct tangible benefits from hosting these projects, both through local, good green jobs and – importantly for today’s debate – through direct financial benefits. I welcome the government’s attempt to do something about this through the newly created community energy fund and the Traditional Owners Fund. The Traditional Owners Fund will be poured right into the Self-determination Fund, controlled by First Peoples for First Peoples. This is truly wonderful and acknowledges that First Nations people know the needs of their own communities and how to address them better than anyone. This is exactly what I would have liked to see happen with the community fund as well.

The essence of what the government is trying to do in this area is a great improvement and clearly well intentioned. However, the community energy fund is to be distributed by VicGrid through grants for very specific energy-related projects. The government have said that they heard that communities want it spent on this through their consultation on the fund, and I do not reject this for a moment. But for the community fund to truly live up to its name it must allow the community to decide how it is spent and what on. Regional communities are not monolithic; they do not have all the same needs. If the government’s consultation is 100 per cent reflective of every community hosting energy projects, then they should have no concern with allowing them to decide how it is spent.

This bill includes a mandatory public review on the community energy fund after its second anniversary, and I am looking forward to seeing how it considers improvements and how the fund evolves to best serve the needs of regional communities. It will also be able to consider the findings from the ongoing inquiry into community consultation practices, as well as the New South Wales inquiry into the impact of renewable energy zones on rural and regional communities and industries.

The amendments also moved by the Greens make welcome improvements to the fund. Removing the frankly outrageous ability for the Treasurer to move money from the community fund into consolidated revenue is something I know all of my colleagues will support. Unsurprisingly I also welcome the additional ability for the fund to be spent on biodiversity programs and biodiversity research. The Minister for Energy and Resources office has clarified to us privately that this will likely still be specifically on energy-related projects, which still serves an important purpose.

I have spoken before in this place about the ways that the impacts of wind turbines on our bird population can be mitigated, and I have also heard from many in my electorate who have raised concerns about the bushfire risk associated with hosting energy projects. There are a range of measures which can mitigate harm to bird species, some complex, like the IdentiFlight bird detection system, and some simple, like the painting of turbine blades, which was found to reduce bird casualties by 70 per cent. Funding mitigation is important, particularly considering our incredibly flawed Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 and Planning and Environment Act 1987.

I, alongside my crossbench colleagues, particularly those in the Legalise Cannabis Party, have considered this bill incredibly cautiously. As I have said several times in my contribution, our renewable energy transition is both essential and urgent, but it also needs to be done in the right way. There have been incredibly legitimate concerns raised with this bill and more broadly with the way energy projects are planned in this state. We have all worked with the government on improving this, and I am now confident that we have landed in a place that is far better than when we started. The amendments moved by Mr Ettershank alleviate many of the genuine civil liability concerns we have heard from our communities, and although I do still strongly believe the community fund could be managed significantly better, I also welcome the amendments proposed by the Greens. They are both areas my office have also engaged with the government on improving.

Bills like this demonstrate the importance of a strong and united crossbench. What we have finished with is a significantly better version of what was first introduced into this house, and I am glad I am now in a position to say that I can commend the bill to the house.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:28): I rise today to speak on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. This is a bill that needs urgent attention because it is arguably one of the most egregious pieces of legislation, threatening to destroy private property rights along with extreme risks to energy and food security. The scale of land that is required for these reforms is founded on Victoria’s net zero targets, and the huge carbon and largely foreign manufactured physical infrastructure footprint it leaves will have a profound and most certainly irreversible impact on our farming communities and areas, including regional landscapes. This is going to particularly affect the areas that I represent.

This bill enables mass industrialisation of landscapes that were previously marked as protected, including remnant forests, prime farmland, wetlands and marine zones. Victoria is projected to host 45 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2050, including 30 of solar and 15 of wind, and a vast expansion of transmission infrastructure, but what is overlooked often is the amount of land that it will consume.

According to the very conservative model by Net Zero Australia, this infrastructure will require nearly 80,000 hectares of land, so that is almost 200,000 acres – and that is just for solar, wind and transmission towers. It excludes the land that is needed for batteries, offshore wind, hydrogen production and the transmission corridors that obviously connect it all. But that is still not including the federal government’s national targets to lock up and conserve 30 per cent of Australia’s land mass and 30 per cent of its marine areas by 2030.

Let us go through some of the modelling that does concern me, particularly as a representative of Eastern Victoria Region. Net Zero Australia modelling takes a careful and reserved approach, and it significantly underestimates the land footprint that is required. Their own report admits that there has been no comprehensive spatial assessment of biodiversity protection. That is actually unbelievable – no comprehensive spatial assessment. The model does not constrain development on farmland, and it falls short of safeguarding biodiversity. This means the real land required for the transmission rollout will be far greater, and we are already seeing the consequences of that.

Analysis from this government’s Offshore Wind: Policy Directions Paper from March 2022 stated that to meet net zero targets using onshore renewables, it could require up to 70 per cent of Victoria’s agricultural land to host wind and solar farms. Seventy per cent is an absolutely astronomical amount. One of my concerns is that often when we make bills in this place, there is not that mindset from people that are from farming and agricultural backgrounds. If we look at all the space that we have in Australia, we can fall into the trap, if we are not careful, of looking at that land as land that has not yet been subdivided for housing builds, but it is so much more than that. Agricultural and farming areas are the areas that feed the state, feed the nation, feed people in other nations and also build the nation. This does not even include the vast amount of land for fast-tracked mineral extraction projects under the government’s strategic extractive resource areas project, which I have spoken about quite a bit here, that has also been gaining some community pushback.

The newly released Victorian transmission process proposes seven renewable energy zones and four new transmission lines. These zones only cover around 7 per cent of Victoria’s land area, but even within them the footprint of solar and wind projects is growing rapidly. We know that this will cover the vast majority of farming land. It includes big new transmission lines for huge agricultural areas in South Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley that will be linked to offshore wind farms. It is the infrastructure needed to connect these zones, like the VNI West transmission line, that are proving deeply controversial, with massive regional community pushback. This is something that I do not believe the community consultation has even touched. Here are some examples. A permit for a wind farm in Gelliondale, Gippsland, was granted despite ongoing community opposition. This site is nestled between two state forests along a critical migratory path within striking distance of the Corner Inlet Ramsar wetland. This is a textbook case of ecological greenwashing. Surveys downplay the presence of endangered birds like the swift parrot and the white-bellied sea eagle. Past failures to predict eagle deaths at nearby Bald Hills are completely ignored, and the consultants that are involved are repeat players. They are the same ones used over and over again, yet their assessments are the ones that are used to justify what risk is coming up. The more you look into it, the more it actually is very worrying.

Because this has been classed as something that has to be pushed through as an emergency, rather than these meeting the general planning requirements around bird kill and the impact on wildlife, rather than meeting the standards – because they did not – they just changed the guidelines. These are things that we are just not hearing and we are not talking about.

But right across Victoria farmers are being forced to accept transmission lines for solar and wind farms across productive farmland. The VNI West line, originally estimated to cost $3.9 billion, has now blown out to $11.4 billion. Its completion has been delayed until 2030, and hundreds of farmers have rallied against it in regional towns and even here on the steps of Parliament. In Colbinabbin a 700,000-panel solar farm was fast-tracked despite community opposition in the thousands, including documented threats to the environment and farming lands and increased bushfire risk. The government process was labelled as a whitewash.

The proposed lithium battery farm in Little River here in Victoria triggered strong community opposition due to concerns over transparency, safety and the environmental impact. Developers were accused of misleading planning submissions, while warnings of damage to the landscape and tourism were completely ignored. You would have known and seen that lots of locals, including Catriona Rowntree, the TV presenter, were unaware of the project until it was lodged. It bypassed council scrutiny because it was classified as a green energy initiative, a fact acknowledged even by the town’s mayor. You cannot have that and then say that you have adequately consulted the community.

This is the part that should really worry you if none of the other things have: the site is located in a bushfire-prone area with a history of deadly fires. It now is going to host 372 lithium freight containers, which will take up the space of approximately 44 or 45 acres near the You Yangs Regional Park, which is a major tourism destination. It is a huge fire risk, and it is something that is really distressing the community that has called the area home for a very long time. This is despite the government blatantly making the false claim:

We established VicGrid to make sure communities have a real say on the way transmission and renewable energy projects are planned across the state, and to ensure certainty for industry.

I do not even need to highlight any of that. Just think about that for a minute. It is just absolutely astonishing doublespeak.

There seems to be this pattern of deception that happens. It starts off with a pre-prepared plan that is a foregone conclusion, like what Ms Bath says. She says it is not called consultation, it is called ‘consultold’. It is like that. There is a foregone conclusion without genuine community consultation outside the elite consultants that they pay tens of millions of dollars to every year. That is step one. Step two is where they sell it as a win for the public good. Haven’t we seen it this year? It is always ‘Oh, but it’s for the greater public good.’ Anyone who has any concerns gets guilted into it because it is like ‘How can you put yourself above everyone else?’ But it leaves huge chunks of relevant information completely outside of the whole consultation process. Number three: once the public see that they were told a lie, it uses the weight of the law to crush them into submission. We are seeing this with astronomical fines, which I will go through. In this case it wants to force access to private land with the threat of huge crushing fines. Just to solidify my submission: some of these people have been on this land for generations and generations, and their lives are about to change.

Landholders who obstruct access to authorised officers face fines in excess of $12,000. That is huge. Refusing identification and proof of ownership – that could cost you up to $4000.Who was it? It was one of my colleagues here. It might have been Mr McCracken who said, ‘Are you going to have to carry your passport around?’

A member interjected.

Renee HEATH: Yes, show your papers. It is astronomical. Interfering with notices of entry – that is going to cost you over a grand, about $1200. And corporations can be hit with fines of just shy of $50,000. This is unbelievable. This makes sense of why the government’s second reading for this bill was not even a page long. I heard Ms Lovell talk about this. It was not even a page long, but the statement of compatibility filled almost 10 pages.

I want to read you something that I love. One of the reasons that I became a Liberal was I started to read about the values and what the basis of liberalism was. Something our founder really spoke about was the importance of home ownership. He said:

The material home represents the concrete expression of the habits of frugality and saving “for a home of our own.” Your advanced socialist –

Now, this is amazing. Just tune into this bit – talk about foresight.

Your advanced socialist may rave against private property even while he acquires it; but one of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours; to which we can withdraw, in which we can be among our friends, into which no stranger may come against our will.

That is pretty incredible. But that is not a reality in a Jacinta Allan Victoria. I cannot help but bring in a quick comparison of the madness that passes for government policy under this government. In Victoria serious criminals are allowed to run riot. It has made this place into a criminal paradise. But private property owners and farmers wanting to secure their land – so, literally the opposite – and secure their rights to withstand the government’s forceful push will face the fury of the law. That is absolutely unbelievable. Whose interest is this government really representing? These are not isolated incidents, but they are a very early warning sign of the land use crisis unfolding under various banners of public good, including this push to net zero.

Once again I have probably read too much, so I am just going to jump to my conclusion. I am energy agnostic. I believe one of the things that made Victoria a place where people could come and prosper, where manufacturing could thrive, where people could break through and have good farm businesses and really get ahead in life was actually our cheap, accessible energy. I look at the entirety of the data and its impact in real world consequences, and this one has some that are absolutely serious. This will be at a huge cost to the very land that sustains us. It will drive energy costs and food through the roof, and this is something that we absolutely should worry about. Mr Bourman said, and he was absolutely correct, that the only way that these renewables can be sustainable is when they are the recipient of government funding. So I think that we have to look at this really carefully, and I certainly will not be voting for this bill.

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (17:43): I thank all members for their contribution on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025. We are at a critical stage of the transition to renewable energy. Our coal-fired generators are increasingly unreliable and are set to close. We must deliver the replacement capacity to allow our industries to grow, to ensure reliability and to keep bills as low as possible.

The CSIRO tells us that the cheapest form of new build power generation is renewables backed by storage and transmission. The scale of the transmission is unprecedented, but we know that we have to get on with it and build the infrastructure that Victoria needs. Through the creation of VicGrid and the implementation of the Victorian transmission investment framework we are creating the mechanisms to ensure that we build the right infrastructure at the right time and in the right places to ensure our state’s prosperity for decades to come.

The bill does several important things. Firstly, it transfers the existing transmission planning functions from the Australian Energy Market Operator to VicGrid. This ensures that the network planner is accountable to the Victorian government and operating in the interests of all Victorians. Second, it establishes the renewable energy zone scheme’s framework, commonly referred to as the Victorian access regime. The Victorian access regime is a new way of managing and connecting the energy generation and storage projects to the grid. Under this regime, VicGrid will set a cap on capacity of renewable generation that can be developed within a REZ based on the amount of capacity that is available in the network. This provides certainty for both investors and the community. Communities will know how much new capacity will be built within a REZ. The generators will have greater certainty of their ability to get their energy to market. The new Victorian access regime will replace the existing open-access regime that currently operates in the national electricity market and that gives new generators access to the grid regardless of the curtailment impact they may have on existing operators. This new approach will improve coordination, reduce social and environmental impacts, give investors certainty and support investment in the renewables we need for Victoria’s energy future.

It will also create a mechanism to generate funds for the third important element of the bill, which is the establishment of a framework for the funding and payment of benefits to landholders, local communities and traditional owners that host new energy infrastructure. The stage 1 legislation last year established additional payments to landholders who host new transmission infrastructure. The payments of $8000 per kilometre of new transmission hosted per year and indexed for 25 years – nominally $200,000 per kilometre – recognise the important role that host landholders play in the energy transition. The payments are in addition to any compensation that landholders are entitled to under the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1986, which covers any loss of land value and often runs into the millions of dollars.

At the same time our government also publicly committed to developing renewable energy zone development funds for host communities and traditional owner funds. Having engaged in consultation, we are now creating a framework for the establishment of these funds through this bill. First, the REZ community energy fund is an opportunity to invest directly in projects that improve local energy outcomes and create other benefits for communities in regions hosting energy infrastructure. The REZ community energy fund will be funded by REZ scheme fees paid by generation developers who develop projects within renewable energy zones and contributions from transmission companies. The aim is to ensure communities benefit in a meaningful and lasting way, based on their vision of the energy priorities for their region. The bill also establishes a traditional owners fund that will support self-determination and the broader aspirations of traditional owners that host new energy infrastructure. This will ensure that for the first time traditional owners will share directly in the benefits of energy infrastructure hosted on country.

Fourth, the bill will establish a new compliance and enforcement framework for land access and REZ schemes to support the performance of VicGrid’s functions. There is already – and this is an important point – a provision for enabling access to land by transmission companies under section 93 of the Electricity Industry Act 2000. These provisions are common across large infrastructure projects such as transport and in other states. However, under the existing regime the only legal option to enforce land access is for a transmission network service provider to seek an injunction from the Supreme Court to enforce the right to access land under section 93 of the EIA, which is expensive, time consuming and not fit for purpose. It also means that there is no direct accountability to government, as the private transmission companies are responsible for accessing the land.

This bill does two things to improve the land access provisions. First, it creates an enforcement mechanism for the access provisions. Of course the preference is always that energy corporations work cooperatively with landholders to agree access to land.

VicGrid has already worked with the Essential Services Commission and the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner to create an enforceable Land Access Code of Practice. Before energy corporations access land they must ensure that they first attempt to negotiate a landholder’s access agreement and consult with the potential landholder in accordance with the Land Access Code of Practice. Where agreement cannot be reached with a landowner and it is essential that access be obtained, compulsory access will be triggered.

The second thing the bill does in relation to land access is introduce an authorised officer regime. Authorised officers will be appointed by the Minister for Energy and Resources from public sector entities, ensuring that they are accountable to the government. An authorised officer may issue an infringement notice for these offences, other than impersonating an authorised officer, but does not otherwise have prosecutorial powers. An authorised officer may also apply to the Magistrates’ Court for a court order, including where entry to that land or the exercise of section 93 of the EIA powers have previously been refused, hindered, delayed or obstructed or where it has not been practicable to give a warning or direction, provided that the required written notice has been provided. This is a last-resort measure, and the bill includes numerous protections. It will help ensure that critical infrastructure can be built to keep the lights on.

Finally, the bill will enable VicGrid to conduct early works and enhance the procurement approach to augmentations to the declared shared network. This will help projects get built and ensure value for Victorians.

The government has accepted a number of amendments to this bill, and I am going to just run through which ones these are. In relation to the Greens amendment 1, to expand the REZ Community Energy Fund to encompass supporting biodiversity outcomes and biodiversity research in Victoria, we will be supporting that Greens amendment, and similarly Greens amendment 2, which prevents funds from the REZ Community Energy Fund being paid into the Consolidated Fund. In relation to Legalise Cannabis Victoria’s amendment 1, to reduce the maximum fines issuable by an authorised officer and the Magistrates’ Court, we will be supporting that amendment. We will also be supporting LCV amendment 2, which clarifies that authorised officers may only be public sector employees. We will be supporting LCV amendment 3, which requires that VicGrid comply with the Essential Services Commission’s Land Access Code of Practice before exercising the powers provided to the Magistrates’ Court to issue penalties up to the maximum amount prescribed in the bill. I would just like to acknowledge the constructive way in which the crossbench has worked with the government in relation to this bill. It has been very collaborative, and I want to thank the Legalise Cannabis Victoria party, the Animal Justice Party and the Greens.

This bill, alongside the stage 1 legislation that passed last year, completely reforms the way that we plan and develop energy infrastructure in Victoria. All of these changes are about making sure that we can build the new energy infrastructure that we need efficiently, while ensuring that regional communities, traditional owners, landholders and others are considered in the process and benefit. I commend the bill to the house.

Council divided on motion:

Ayes (21): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, David Ettershank, Anasina Gray-Barberio, Shaun Leane, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Sonja Terpstra, Gayle Tierney, Sheena Watt

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

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Committed.

Committee

Clause 1 (18:01)

David DAVIS: Minister, concurrent with this there has been a Victorian transmission plan (VTP) released. That transmission plan lays out the government’s future ideas for so-called renewable energy zones (REZ) and transmission infrastructure, including that long-distance transmission infrastructure and other –

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Sorry, Mr Davis, I am going to interrupt you again. The continuous chatter from about five different conversations is really distracting for the minister and for the person asking the question. Can we please have some quiet in the chamber. If you want to have conversations, take them outside.

David DAVIS: One of the key aspects is the overall cost of the transmission network and the cost going on to bills. In the Herald Sun about a week ago – I think last Friday – there was an article by Bruce Mountain, who is well known to many of us, from the Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University. Professor Mountain is a well-respected commentator but also academic who understands many of these aspects around energy infrastructure. He looked closely at the government’s costings, and he came up with quite a different figure. He says:

The government’s transmission plan entails capital outlays including interest during construction, of more than $28bn over the coming decade.

He says:

The government and its recently established transmission planning agency, VicGrid, has not been truthful in the development of its plan.

They have tried to suggest that their plan only entails expenditure of about $6bn.

But there is another $22bn in five projects in their “Base Case” that are briefly listed … in an appendix to their plan.

His commentary goes a little further, and he says:

In fact, even worse than attempting to hide this hole, the government counts the “benefits” of the $22bn of “Base Case” expenditure but they … fail to count the $22bn of expenditure in their calculation of … net benefit.

Had they done their sums honestly, their claimed benefits would fall far short of costs.

The government hides the $22bn cost because they say it is “sunk”.

But –

in fact, and I would like the minister to confirm this –

the expenditure is yet to be made and the decision to spend it is the government’s to make.

Can the minister explain to me the actual cost of the transmission plan with those costs included, or is Professor Mountain wrong?

Ingrid STITT: Thank you, Mr Davis, for your question and that preamble. We would respectfully reject the proposition that has been put. The revised estimated cost associated with the transmission plan is $8 billion. This remains an estimate and the reason it remains an estimate is because this is a plan over a long period of time, and like with any infrastructure plan of this nature, it is obviously not possible to forecast too far down the line accurately. These are significant projects that will be delivered over a very long period of time, and we know that circumstances and market conditions will continue to change. We cannot possibly predict what those could be. But what I will say is that since the draft plan was released, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has released its Draft 2025 Electricity Network Options Report, which updated its transmission cost database. VicGrid has taken on board the latest available information. It has carried out robust industry benchmarking, and that reflects changes to the scope of the plan to update the cost estimate.

David DAVIS: Minister, that is just not really quite good enough. You say $8 billion is the cost, but when I look at appendix A to the transmission plan Candidate Development Pathways and look at page 49, ‘A.4.3 Baseline project assumptions’, this is a list of baseline projects assumed across all the candidate development pathways. These are projects and the assumed benefits, and the costs are not included. We know the costs are not included – for example, the list has the RDP stage 1 projects, Marinus Link stage 1, Marinus Link stage 2, Western Renewables Link (WRL), VNI West and Gippsland offshore wind transmission. We know from AEMO’s document that you have referred to that AEMO now says that, far from VNI West costing $3.2 billion or $3.4 billion, it is now going to cost $7 billion on their estimate and $7.6 billion on the proponent’s estimate, and both have a headline or an out cost of up to 50 per cent greater, which means a range up over $11 billion, perhaps to $11.4 billion. So with this one project here, that is assumed. Thus it cannot have the cost reflected in the project. If you say it is $8 billion, how can it be that all these other projects could be built for that? Let us just suppose the $7 billion that AEMO estimates for VNI West is correct. How can all of those other projects be built for just $1 billion? I mean, it is absurd.

Ingrid STITT: I think in my previous answer I indicated that these were revised cost estimates. We could spend a lot of time back and forth tonight on your hypothesis about costs, but the bottom line is that this is a long-term transmission plan and each individual transmission project has to pass a cost–benefit test to be approved for construction.

David DAVIS: With respect, Minister, that does not answer it. If I take you to another section of your documents, appendix D, the economic appraisal, also dated August 2025, and I take you to page 17 and the base case transmission capital expenditure.

Some VTP projects are also expected to occur in the Base Case as they are critical to replace end-of-life assets or relate to offshore wind (which is assumed to occur in both the Base Case and the Project Case) …

‘It is assumed to occur.’ Well, the costings are not there. There are eight such transmission projects shown in table D-3. They are in addition to the baseline projects outlined in appendix A. We go down and we see in D:

Install a second Gippsland 500 kV double circuit radial line …

So there is Woodside to Driffield, Woodside to Giffard.

Increase the rating of the Portland to Heywood 500 kV double circuit lines

Replace the H1 and H2 South Morang 330/220 kV transformers.

Then they go:

… Projects delivered earlier in the Project Case compared to the Base Case …

And they run down the transformer Cranbourne and tie in the existing Hazelwood to Rowville, and there is $90 million in that. I could go on, but the truth of the matter is the government has said it will cost $8 billion, and that is patently a lie. It is flatly a lie. How can we proceed when the government is not even remotely truthful? And I do not hold you personally responsible, Minister. You are not the minister who is the proponent on all of this. But it is just extraordinary that the government has not produced proper costings for this. Please explain.

Ingrid STITT: It is extraordinary that we are about 12 minutes into the committee stage and you have already accused the government of lying about four times. But let us just go back to the nub of this. This Victorian transmission plan is a 15-year strategic plan to facilitate the development of the renewable energy zone so that Victoria’s energy system can transition out of its current unpredictable and costly base into cheaper and more reliable renewables, and this is the framework that will allow that to happen. Your questions around costings, Mr Davis, are not even within the scope of the bill. We are not debating individual project costings, because frankly this bill does not approve any projects. It is a bill that facilitates construction of projects that get approved.

David DAVIS: But Minister, it is all within the purview of the transmission plan. That is what the bill seeks to do. It seeks to do this within the purview of the transmission plan, and yet the costing on the transmission plan is wrong. Are you saying there is no linkage to the transmission plan? I do not think you are actually saying that. Do you want to tell me that?

Ingrid STITT: What I am saying, Mr Davis, is that we are arguing about the way in which we will arrive at the outcome, and what the bill is about is facilitating the transition of our energy system in Victoria. It is a 15-year strategic plan. That is why the figures that I have given you, I have been very clear they are revised cost estimates, and they can only be an estimate because we cannot possibly be expected to predict what will happen over such a long period of time with such a complex transition.

David DAVIS: But with respect, Minister, and again, I understand that you are not the responsible minister, these are weasel words. The Vic transmission plan is intimately connected with this bill, and the aim of the bill is to facilitate that plan, as you have indicated. But actually, the plan is based on this set of costings, and the set of costings is frankly not credible. It is not just me saying this; others have concluded the same thing. Professor Mountain is a very respected academic, and he says the actual cost is 28 thousand million dollars – $28 billion.

But that cost is not what the government says. The government says it will be $8 billion, as you have outlined. But how can that be when the AEMO estimate for just one project is near the cost of your $8 billion? How can that possibly add up in a plausible way? Please explain.

Ingrid STITT: I refer you to my previous answer, and in addition to that I would just point out to you that these are regulated assets that we are facilitating through this bill. They only get built if they pass a regulated cost–benefit test, and that is administered by AEMO.

David DAVIS: Let me just put on the record that I am far from assured by a cost–benefit analysis put out by AEMO, which is given a whole series of assumptions that it must presume whether it agrees with them or not. It is required to take the state government’s assumption.

Ingrid STITT: Well, you like to quote AEMO whenever they issue a report, Mr Davis.

David DAVIS: No, I do not. I actually think AEMO’s reports are often very, very weak and unsatisfactory. That does not mean there is nothing in them, but it means that the reports are weak and unsatisfactory. However, let me just record that I think your answers are deeply unsatisfactory, and I will move to another area.

One of the aspects of this is that the costs for the new transmission infrastructure will be sheeted home to those who pay power bills – that is, businesses and households – and the increases to pay for that will be significant. Can you tell me how much the increase will be for households and businesses due to this infrastructure cost over the next decade?

Ingrid STITT: As you would appreciate, Mr Davis, we cannot crystal-ball 10 years ahead, but what we do know is that the cost of renewable energy is far cheaper than coal-fired energy and the grid that we have relied on historically. I would point you to the fact that Victoria’s power prices are consistently lower than other states. That is because of our record investment in renewables. Our retail power prices are lower. In June 2025 the median household bill in Victoria was lower than most other states in the national energy market, and our wholesale power prices are lower. They are consistently the lowest in the country and are projected to remain the lowest in the future. Of course that is not an accident. We have done a lot of work on making sure that our default offer prices are lower. Households on the Victorian default offer will pay $431 per annum less than the default market offer equivalent, and small business will pay $1542 less. We are absolutely focused on making sure that Victorians pay lower power prices, and that is because of our record investment and our continued investment in renewable energy.

David DAVIS: Minister, the problem with what you have just said is you have missed the fact that I asked about the future. You responded –

Ingrid STITT: I answered that, Mr Davis.

David DAVIS: Not really. You talked about the costs now, and you said that Victoria in some way was advantaged, but actually our power prices have gone up and up and up and they are not in the same position compared to other jurisdictions as they were. But leaving that aside, this is about the future. Professor Mountain estimates that the transmission cost component for households on the supply spot on their bill will increase by 50 per cent through this plan. Do you accept that figure, or do you have an alternate figure, and will you explain, if you do, how you arrived at it?

Ingrid STITT: Mr Davis, with respect to the eminent individual that you have been quoting from, they will not necessarily have access to all of the data and information that AEMO has. As you know, AEMO do significant planning around the cost–benefits to consumers of particular energy investment, and the plan is renewables to deliver on that cost–benefit to consumers.

David DAVIS: Minister, you say you do not accept Professor Mountain’s figure?

Ingrid STITT: No. I did not say that. Mr Davis, what I said was, with the greatest of respect to that individual’s work, they may not necessarily have – and they probably would not have – access to all of the data and information that other entities and agencies have.

David DAVIS: So you are suggesting there is an alternate calculation? If so, would you provide that with the background figure work?

Ingrid STITT: Mr Davis, I am advised that it is publicly available.

David DAVIS: I am not sure that is right, because not all of AEMO’s material is publicly available, and that is contrary to what you just said – that Professor Mountain might not have access to all of the material. So you are saying that he does have access to all the material, and he has calculated a 50 per cent increase. Now you are telling me – well, you just said that he would not have access to all the material because AEMO would not release all the material, but now you have told me it is all –

Ingrid STITT: No, I did not say anything about releasing it.

David DAVIS: Well, that is what you did say, actually.

Ingrid STITT: No. That is not what I said.

David DAVIS: So is the material all available or not?

Ingrid STITT: The report is available, Mr Davis.

David DAVIS: It is the calculation that I am seeking and all of the calculation materials.

Ingrid STITT: I am going to answer it in this way. It is publicly available, the work of AEMO, and the government has responded in detail to Professor Mountain in relation to his work. I think that is as far as we can take this line of questioning.

David DAVIS: With respect, I do not believe all the material is available. AEMO does not release everything, and many of the assumptions that AEMO makes are assumptions that they are required to make because they are required to accept the state government’s position on a number of capital projects and the state government’s costings. So I just put that as a side fact.

Professor Mountain has said:

The government hides the $22bn cost because they say it is “sunk”.

But the expenditure is yet to be made and the decision to spend it is the government’s to make.

The Minister has told parliament she rejects my estimate of the Base Case cost, but has refused to provide her own estimate.

That is one side of it. That is the capital side of it. On the estimate of the cost increases side, Professor Mountain has estimated a 50 per cent increase for power bills, and large power users, businesses primarily, will rise between 250 and 350 per cent. I am just looking for careful figure work that refutes these figures. If you do not have that careful figure work, we can just move on.

Ingrid STITT: Professor Mountain has published his report called plan B. We are aware of that obviously. We do not agree with the findings of that report, and we have provided a detailed response to Professor Mountain that is publicly available.

David DAVIS: Sadly, though, Professor Mountain basically indicated that the response by the government does not actually answer many of the questions around presumptions and costings that he has sought assistance on. I think we will just move on at this point to some other matters. In this bill, Minister, there are a series of new penalty provisions, a series of new matters that look at the use of authorised officers, a series of – I call them – additional and draconian provisions. Why did the government feel it necessary to do this? Where did this come from? Did somebody request these powers? Where did this push for powers of entry and various powers for authorised officers come from? Why is the government proceeding with this?

Ingrid STITT: I think that this point has been made by a number of my colleagues in the second-reading debate, but essentially at present if an electricity corporation is unable to access land under section 93 of the Electricity Industry Act 2000 (EIA), the only means of addressing this situation is to make an application to the Supreme Court and to obtain a court declaration under that provision. This is a significant body of work, the transition plan that the government is implementing. Of course the government’s very strong preference is always that energy companies work cooperatively with landholders to reach voluntary agreements for access. However, it is important to balance the rights of landholders with the need to deliver these projects in a timely way for the benefit of all Victorians. These updates to land-access provisions will introduce more consistency, structure and oversight of activities of energy corporations in the way that they access land, and they are designed to provide a compliance and enforcement framework that supports existing powers to ensure progress of critical projects. The bill that is before the house today is in response to the need to continue the energy transition here in Victoria.

David DAVIS: Who said that it was necessary for that? Who said that?

Ingrid STITT: Basically in planning for delivery of the WRL it became apparent that appropriate land-access provisions similar to what is in place for things like telecommunications were not in place in respect of energy infrastructure, and that is the reason why the bill is before the house today.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: As it is now 6.30, pursuant to standing orders I need to interrupt business.

Sitting suspended 6:30 pm until 7:32 pm.

Melina BATH: Minister, you have seen that the Victorian Farmers Federation have come out very strongly opposed to this bill and have asked specifically to have the egregious sections taken out of this bill. What conversations and interactions have you had with the VFF and, say, the president Brett Hosking?

Ingrid STITT: Personally I have not had any. I am not the minister – I am representing the minister. But I am happy to get some advice from the box for you, Ms Bath.

The minister and VicGrid meet regularly with local MPs, local councils, the CEOs of AEMO and Ausnet, the VFF community groups and landowners. VicGrid staff are on the ground attending community information sessions, meeting landowners and holding regular meetings with important stakeholders, including the VFF.

Melina BATH: I do not know whether the department have seen that their newly minted 718 survey has this issue: VicGrid and the transition are ranked on the fifth level of concern – very concerned or concerned. Sadly, this bill is likely to go through tonight by virtue of crossbench members.

How is the government going to and how is the Minister for Energy and Resources going to support farmers and reconcile the fact that many of them are still doing it incredibly tough with drought conditions and trying to save their farms at the moment? In relation to the stress related to having these new charges and new onerous impositions on them, what is the government going to do?

Ingrid STITT: In terms of additional consultation, that is expected on the Victorian access regime and renewable energy zone access schemes. Prior to declaring REZs and REZ schemes, VicGrid will further consult on design and implementation details in 2025, specifically through the upcoming release of an access and connections consultation paper and draft grid impact assessment guidelines, which will inform an access and connections handbook and final GIA guidelines. VicGrid will also consult on draft REZ schemes before declaring final REZ schemes. It is anticipated that VicGrid will also consult on draft regulations for REZ schemes and REZ scheme fees. I appreciate that there has possibly been a fair bit of misinformation around the community about this bill and the transmission plan. That is certainly having an impact on people’s sentiment about these matters, but there is every intention for that further consultation to occur.

Melina BATH: I just want to drill down. You said ‘misinformation’. What do you mean by misinformation? I am seeking clarity on that comment.

Ingrid STITT: Well, I think generally, and I am speaking generally, there has been some conflation by some in respect to different elements of the bill. We certainly respect the fact that there are many people who have strong feelings about the bill and many who oppose the bill, including yourselves opposite. But importantly, beyond the passage of the bill this evening, subject to what happens in this place, I have just gone through some of the further consultation that will occur with the community in 2025.

Melina BATH: This will be my last question for this section. Now that we are investigating consultation, one of the comments from a farmer in the central area of this state on renewable energy transmission is – and this is from the Victorian Farmers Federation:

The biggest issue facing our operation at the moment is the proposed greenfield development of overhead transmission lines with a lack of consultation with the communities let alone the land holder.

Clearly this farmer, who is a member of the farmers federation, feels that there is a lack of consultation with communities and the landholder. How can the government say that it is consulting enough when clearly this is one of the biggest issues facing this person and their business?

Ingrid STITT: Well, you are asking me for an opinion about the consultation, and what I have tried to do, Ms Bath, is outline factually for you what further consultation will occur. The bill will be building in the use of the code of practice for land access. But really, I would draw you back to the main purposes of the bill, which is – as we have indicated in committee this evening – about managing the transition of the energy sector and doing so in a way that provides a framework for how that might occur, including on private land.

Melina BATH: Biosecurity has been something that the farmers federation has also raised as a significant concern. What is the government going to do to address this? Clearly, there are going to be authorised officers who are going to seek to access property to investigate and potentially move on to land. Only a few years ago we had amendments to the biosecurity act to ensure that there are penalties for people who break those biosecurity provisions.

What will the government do to ensure that biosecurity is not compromised by these new powers and people entering onto farming properties where livestock and horticulture operate?

Ingrid STITT: Indeed biosecurity is everyone’s responsibility, including property owners, visitors and workers, and certainly transmission network service providers must engage early and genuinely with landholders in accordance with the Land Access Code of Practice. Under that code of practice, transmission network service providers are required to consult with affected parties to understand site-specific biosecurity needs, including any applicable biosecurity management plans, property-specific needs associated with fire risk, property-specific needs associated with health risks and property-specific needs associated with cultural heritage protection. They have to take into account the following actions in relation to biosecurity risks associated with access to private land: they need to develop and implement biosecurity policies and procedures that minimise impacts consistent with ‘come clean, stay clean, go clean’ practices; provide effective parties with details of any applicable biosecurity policies; document and communicate biosecurity incidents, including how they have been managed to affect parties immediately; and authorised officers will be required to take into account the biosecurity obligations when accessing land for the purposes of section 93 of the Electricity Industry Act 2000 to undertake works.

Melina BATH: You mentioned in there, in relation to biosecurity, that they are required to consult and to provide details. Can you please provide to the house how that consultation and how those details will be communicated to the landholder? What is the process there?

Ingrid STITT: I mean, essentially the process is contained in the Land Access Code of Practice. Authorised officers and electricity corporations will only be able to enter land under the proposed provisions if either – sorry, just one moment, please, Ms Bath.

So authorised officers must follow several procedural safeguards, including doing or causing to be done no more than is reasonably believed necessary to facilitate electricity corporations powers. I could further advise that authorised officers will be required to undertake specific training on biosecurity, and I think in my previous answer I just outlined the fact that biosecurity has to form part of the planning whenever accessing land.

Melina BATH: In relation to the communications, noting that sometimes in our regions we do not have good internet, what is the designed pathway for communication? Is it a written letter, is it internet communications, is it telephone calls? Could you just provide a bit of context there, please?

Ingrid STITT: Are you talking about general access, Ms Bath, or specifically in relation to biosecurity? I mean, the provisions in the bill around notice requirements I think are probably where I would point you to, and that requires that an authorised officer can enter land under statutory authorised officer provisions. At least 30 days notice must be given, with a reminder notice at least 48 hours before the first date of proposed entry, and these notices can be provided by either an authorised officer or a transmission network service provider. They may be delivered personally. They may be left at the usual or last known place of business of the person with a person who is over 16 and apparently in charge of or employed at that place. It can be sent by prepaid ordinary post, addressed to the person at the usual or last known place of residence or business of the person, if the person has given an alternate address for this purpose by sending it by prepaid ordinary post to that address, and if the person is given an email address for this purpose by sending it to that email address. So there are a number of different ways in which it can be communicated.

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, one of the concerns of landholders is the issue of insurance. What compensation or what modelling have you done to establish what are going to be the insurance impacts to landholders with a transmission line on their property?

Ingrid STITT: I will just get some advice about whether we do have anything on that matter for you, Mrs McArthur.

I will just take that on notice while the advisers seek an answer for you in relation to that question. I am happy to take a different question from you in the meantime.

Bev McARTHUR: Thank you, Minister, for that. I look forward to the response. Minister, as you know, we have had a bit of an issue with working with children checks of late. Contractors and workers who enter farms where families live therefore may have unsupervised interactions with children. Will these contractors and their workers be subject to screening and holding working with children checks?

Ingrid STITT: You mean authorised officers?

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, basically anybody who is working on these transmission projects – authorised officers who may have to go onto the properties, but there will be surely workmen engaged in building these transmission lines. What oversight are you going to ensure –

Ingrid STITT: So you are asking more broadly, once access is provided, either voluntarily or under the access regime?

Bev McARTHUR: Yes.

Ingrid STITT: One moment.

Relevant workers, including authorised officers, would be required to get a police check. I am taking on notice your question specifically around working with children, because I suppose when access is being provided once work is commencing on land, then there are some sometimes pretty serious health and safety issues. You would not want children around those sorts of works in the first instance, so let us take that on notice. We may be able to get something for you this evening, or we may not.

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, on the issue of the community energy fund and the Traditional Owners Fund, how is that going to play out? What percentage of the fund would go to the community energy fund and a Traditional Owners Fund? How are we going to establish who gets what?

Ingrid STITT: In relation to the Traditional Owners Fund I can give you some indication of when this will be established. The establishment of a Traditional Owners Fund will, in our strong view, support self-determination and the broader aspirations of traditional owners who may be impacted by new critical energy infrastructure on their country. The Traditional Owners Fund will be established when clause 50 of the bill commences, which is anticipated to be 1 November 2025. In terms of the implementation steps for the Traditional Owners Fund, the Victorian government will be putting in place a dedicated approach to benefits from the energy transition for traditional owners in line with self-determination principles. Key aspects of implementation will be co-designed with traditional owners in the First Peoples’ Assembly.

In relation to the general fund, the REZ Community Energy Fund is an opportunity to invest directly in projects that improve local energy outcomes and create other benefits for communities in regions hosting energy infrastructure. The aim is to ensure communities benefit in a meaningful and lasting way based on their vision of the energy priorities for their region. It will have the same establishment timelines as the Traditional Owners Fund. Again, it is important that in terms of implementation steps, we are proposing a process whereby the community reference groups specific to each REZ and with broad community and industry representation will be established to identify, review and recommend appropriate funding opportunities. A cross-government reference group will provide decision-making guidance to the regional community reference groups. Broadly, Mrs McArthur, the funds will support regionally significant projects and initiatives that improve energy supply, reliability, efficiency and affordability for businesses, communities and households and capture the benefit from the energy transition.

Bev McARTHUR: With great respect, Minister, that does not tell us much. If the proponent has to provide money for the community energy fund but also the Traditional Owners Fund, how is that broken up? Is it 50–50 or 25–75? Also, for the land on which you will be basing the Traditional Owners Fund, is that just on public land, or do you assume a transmission line on private property is also subject to a Traditional Owners Fund application?

Ingrid STITT: In relation to how the funds will be allocated, it will be on a 50–50 basis between the funds. In respect to the traditional owner arrangements, just let me clarify one point for you, Mrs McArthur.

I just wanted to make sure I had this clear in my mind, Mrs McArthur. It is not about the specific land. I think your question goes to how you determine that. On private land there would be no impact, because this is about the benefits generated by the investment and then the community fund split being based 50–50 between the traditional owners fund and the community fund.

Bev McARTHUR: So when a landowner is forced to provide access to a transmission line, the company putting that infrastructure on their land has to pay a certain amount into a fund, from which the traditional owners, who are not necessarily the traditional owners of that land, are going to benefit.

Ingrid Stitt: No, that is not what I said.

Bev McARTHUR: If the fund comes from every transmission line project, it is on private land, isn’t it? There may be some transmission lines on public land, and that may be subject to the traditional owners area. But private land does not, as I understand it, have traditional owner oversight.

Ingrid STITT: I think that you are on the wrong path here. In respect to the traditional owners fund, part of the proceeds of REZ scheme fees paid by generation developers who develop projects within renewable energy zones and contributions from transmission companies will be contributed towards the traditional owners fund. That is no different to the way in which it would operate for the community energy fund. I think that what you are doing is conflating a little bit the way that this will operate.

Bev McARTHUR: Given that the community fund is going to provide benefits supposedly to the community, although we are suspicious about the make-up of your fund oversight people, are there any criteria for how the traditional owners fund will be spent? Where will that money go?

Ingrid STITT: I took you through earlier the implementation steps for the traditional owners fund. It will be based around the principles of self-determination, and it will be co-designed with traditional owners and the First Peoples’ Assembly. In relation to the community fund, I have already taken you to the guidelines for expenditure. These funds will support regionally significant projects and initiatives that improve energy supply, reliability, efficiency and affordability for businesses. A cross-government reference group will provide decision-making guidance, but ultimately the regional community reference groups will be determining what the priority energy projects are in their area.

Bev McARTHUR: In effect, for the traditional owners fund, nobody will have any involvement in how they spend that money. That could just be distributed amongst that traditional owner grouping to individuals. Is that the case?

Ingrid STITT: It will be managed by the Self-Determination Fund, and we do not make any apology for providing that method for traditional owner groups.

Gaelle BROAD: The Essential Services Commission (ESC), on their website they do have the Land Access Code of Practice. It was developed and implemented from 1 March 2024. I guess I am interested in what impact this bill will have on that existing process with the Essential Services Commission.

Ingrid STITT: I think that this will get dealt with via one of the amendments that is going to be before the house during this committee stage. What I would say is that the code will apply but there is an amendment that goes to these issues, Mrs Broad, that we will be dealing with soon.

Gaelle BROAD: The website states an affected party can ask questions and provide feedback, including feedback on their preferred dates for a transmission company to access land or the terms of any proposed access agreement. Will this standard still apply if this bill is passed?

Ingrid STITT: The entire code will apply. Furthermore, VicGrid will need to demonstrate compliance with it. But as I said, I do not want to pre-empt the house’s consideration of an amendment before the house.

Gaelle BROAD: My understanding when I look at the ESC material is there are two options for transmission companies to access land. Option 1 is entering into an access agreement with individual landowners, and option 2 is to exercise their statutory right under section 93 of the act to enter land. The energy and water ombudsman of Victoria is the nominated dispute resolution body for option 2. Is that still the case once this bill passes, if it passes?

Ingrid STITT: It is the case under the code.

Gaelle BROAD: On the ESC website, under ‘How do I lodge land access complaints or disputes?’ it says to first contact the transmission company and lodge the complaint, and then, two, contact the energy and water ombudsman of Victoria. I just want to know, does that process still apply?

Ingrid STITT: The code will still apply, Mrs Broad.

Gaelle BROAD: Okay. And you can request to reschedule land access if required?

Ingrid STITT: Under the voluntary access arrangements, do you mean? Obviously there is a desire to, as much as possible, reach agreement with landowners about access.

Gaelle BROAD: But if it is under the second option, under the statutory option, is it still possible for people to request to reschedule the land access if required?

Ingrid STITT: I think if I answer it this way, Mrs Broad – the code is not being changed by this bill. A requirement to comply with the code is being strengthened, but the actual code itself is not being changed by the bill.

Gaelle BROAD: Okay. So I guess, just to understand that, what is already outlined by the Essential Services Commission and the process for putting in a complaint or putting in a request to reschedule a date if it does not suit, that would still be relevant if the bill passes?

Ingrid STITT: Again, sorry; I am not being evasive in any way. It is just that this will be dealt with in an amendment that we will be dealing with this evening at some point, so it might be appropriate for us to come back to it if you have still got questions.

Gaelle BROAD: Minister, can you just define which amendment you are referring to?

Ingrid STITT: Yes. It is under Mr Ettershank’s name. It is one of his amendments.

Gaelle BROAD: Mr Ettershank, just with the code of practice, currently under the Essential Services Commission, people can go to the energy and water ombudsman if there is an issue. There is also the ability to reschedule a date if land access is requested. Would that still apply with the changes that you have proposed?

David ETTERSHANK: I am sorry, I am not actually aware that I have an amendment that answers that question or that I have an answer in terms of that. We have certainly referenced the code of practice under the essential services legislation, but I am afraid I am not in a position to respond any further than that.

Ingrid STITT: I am happy to take the question if Mr Ettershank has got no objection to that. The answer is yes.

Gaelle BROAD: That is all. Thank you.

Sarah MANSFIELD: Given that the purpose of this bill is to facilitate the transition to renewables, will you make a commitment on the record here today that you will not extend the life of any of Victoria’s coal-fired power stations?

Ingrid STITT: Clearly the intent of the bill is to make sure that Victoria’s transmission plans continue at pace. We do not have any time to waste. We know that as a result of the market forces, if you like, coal-fired power stations are of their own motion leaving the market. We are committed to the plan as outlined in the Victorian transmission plan, and this bill is just one of many which will facilitate that transition.

Further to those comments, Dr Mansfield, as you are aware, the government has a legislated target of achieving 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035, and we have structured transition agreements with the owners of Yallourn and Loy Yang A coal-fired power stations. Those commitments have not changed, and today’s bill is a crucial element of delivering on those commitments.

Sarah MANSFIELD: One of the concerns we have heard a lot from different stakeholders is about how environmentally sensitive areas are going to be respected and dealt with during the rollout of transmission infrastructure. How is that being taken into account by the government? How are we going to ensure that environmentally sensitive areas are not being compromised by the transmission rollout?

Ingrid STITT: The Victorian transmission plan has introduced a new approach to planning transmission, which takes environmental impacts into consideration from the start of the process using the strategic land use assessment. This ensures that the most environmentally sensitive landscapes can be avoided, and all proposed projects will continue to be subject to the planning and environment approval processes under the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and also the Environment Effects Act 1978.

Sarah MANSFIELD: In the last VicGrid bill I asked about how the loss of value of productive land from transmission is being recognised from landholders. This is distinct from a per-kilometre compensation payment to landholders. I was told at the time that more work was being done on this, and maybe we would expect to hear more about it. I just want to understand what further work the government has been doing in this space.

Ingrid STITT: VicGrid has carried out further research and engagement with agricultural stakeholders to understand the potential compatibility of different types of farming with the co-location of renewable energy and transmission infrastructure, and this work has guided decisions about the most suitable places to develop new energy infrastructure, aiming to minimise the impact on agricultural production.

Sarah MANSFIELD: Another question that is raised is that we know that a lot of renewable infrastructure is likely to require significant supporting infrastructure to be built. We need improved roads, because there is a lot of heavy equipment that is going to be moved across them, accommodation for workers and suchlike. Will this be temporary, or will communities have the opportunity to benefit from these changes in the long term?

Ingrid STITT: The Victorian government is committed to delivering those meaningful long-term benefits for communities and regions hosting new energy infrastructure. We are working across departments to ensure the transition to renewables delivers lasting economic benefits and social value, and where possible that supporting infrastructure will be developed to enable legacy use.

Sarah MANSFIELD: I have got one more. Will the government make a commitment that these transmission lines will not be used to transmit energy derived from future waste incinerators?

Ingrid STITT: Dr Mansfield, today’s bill does not refer to waste-to-energy facilities at all. But if such facilities are built, then they are subject to the same grid connection standards as any other electricity generator.

David ETTERSHANK: Good evening, Minister. I would like to start out in new subdivision 4 ‘Entry in accordance with court order’ and 93BF(g), which has this concept of reasonable steps being made by a farmer or a property owner to facilitate access to a site. The key concept here seems to be one of reasonable steps. Could I ask: how should we understand the meaning of ‘reasonable steps’ in the context of this clause, please?

Ingrid STITT: Thank you for your patience. Obviously this is the subject of one of the amendments that we are going to be dealing with shortly – maybe shortly, maybe not so shortly, I am not sure. But of course the government was happy to commit that the code would specifically deal with these matters, that the code would be –

David Ettershank interjected.

Ingrid STITT: Yes, that is right.

David ETTERSHANK: If there is an emergency or unavoidable reason for not enabling access on the day, can the landholder still be penalised?

Ingrid STITT: That is the code of practice again. It is not intended for it to be a prescriptive system of notice without any flexibility; there are steps that can be taken and the code gives that guidance. So I think that, again, it comes back to demonstrating compliance with the code.

David ETTERSHANK: This may again come back to the code; I probably should have done more homework on this one. But given these properties are pretty big, if they have got to facilitate access, it could pretty much take up most of a day or a significant part of a day. What compensation does the landholder receive for enabling access if it takes a chunk out of their day and they are not able to do other productive work?

Ingrid STITT: Mr Ettershank, there are payment schedules based on different types of access. I apologise for fluffing around with my book for a long time there, but I am just trying to put my fingers on the exact arrangements. I know they are in here, but there are compensation payments that landholders are eligible for depending on what type of access is being provided.

David ETTERSHANK: This may have been a question that was asked by my opposition or National Party colleagues, so forgive me if that is the case – I might have missed it. Minister, will authorised officers be required to implement protocols to maintain biosecurity when entering farms, and how will that be monitored?

Ingrid STITT: I did go into that in some detail with Ms Bath earlier. I am happy to do that again, if you wish. But in the meantime I found the land-access payments, if you are interested. The landholder participation fee – landholders facilitating field surveys and investigations can receive a one-off payment of $20,000 recognising their cooperation. Survey access payments – for survey work on the property Ausnet pays $2000 per day beyond the initial five days, capped at $50,000 per property.

David ETTERSHANK: I appreciate both of those responses, and I will find out about the biosecurity when I watch the video.

Ingrid STITT: I am happy to go to it again if you want.

David ETTERSHANK: No, it is fine, thank you. I am looking forward to watching the movie. Obviously we have got a proposed amendment that strikes to this question, but could I ask: whether the amendment is successful or not, what sort of training will authorised officers be required to undertake before they are deemed to be qualified for the job, and I mean specifically or in particular with regard to the right to exercise reasonable force?

Ingrid STITT: VicGrid is intending to appoint a Victorian public sector body that already has an existing authorised officer workforce. In addition to any existing training, authorised officers will be trained in their role under the new provisions of the Electricity Industry Act as well as in engagement and conflict avoidance skills and safe work practices. Authorised officers will follow standard operating procedures, which will require them to act respectfully and engage with the community in a professional and appropriate manner. Just to advise you of what I have already advised Ms Bath in relation to biosecurity matters, there will be training required for authorised officers in relation to biosecurity.

David ETTERSHANK: Thank you, Minister, for that response. Last question from me: if a property owner commits a potential offence – say, for example, denying access to an area – and they do it over multiple days or they do it repeatedly in response to a request from an authorised officer for access, would the penalty payments apply for each instance in which access has been denied, or would it be wrapped up in one penalty?

Ingrid STITT: Mr Ettershank, just to clarify, there are maximum infringement penalties that authorised officers can issue. I am mindful that we have got an amendment before the house that deals with how many penalty unit points are associated with those penalties, so I will not go into the details of that and pre-empt that debate. But essentially the proposed provision as drafted is based on the existing land access and enforcement framework under various Victorian acts, and that includes the notice provisions in the telecommunications act and draws on similar arrangements in South Australia in terms of their Electricity Act 1996. It is only if the landholder refuses access after having been provided with two notices, followed by a warning and then a direction – it is only at that point – that a penalty can be issued.

David ETTERSHANK: Minister, thank you for the answer, but I would just like to clarify that slightly. Obviously there is a timeframe that would be associated with that process of getting the order from the magistrate, and that may well extend, presumably, beyond 24 hours. If there is a stand-off situation, where the property owner is denying that and it happens over successive days, do each of those days then become offences that could each be separately processed and penalised, or do they become cumulative?

Ingrid STITT: There is a land access process set out. There are notice period requirements for each step. I think that it would only be after that process is exhausted that you would then see penalties potentially issued by authorised officers. If you went through the whole voluntary access process without any agreement reached, then you would have to start the process for access denied, which is a further set of steps before infringements could be contemplated.

David ETTERSHANK: Sorry, I just want to be clear on this one, though.

Ingrid STITT: It is a maximum, but I am not going to say the amount because we are going to deal with an amendment that is the maximum.

David ETTERSHANK: I am definitely happy to leave the amounts and figures. Let us assume that that process of getting orders through the magistrate takes, let us say, a week, and during that week, access is denied on each day. Am I correct in understanding – and I am not being pedantic here; I really want to understand how this is going to work –

David Davis: Seven offences.

David ETTERSHANK: Thank you, Mr Davis, but I guess the question is: would it be seven different offences that occurred within the one week, which all sit within the hearing window, or would it be dealt with as one offence and then the order would be given?

Ingrid STITT: It is a 10-step access process of notice, reminder, attempted entry, warning, direction for refusal, infringement notice – the final step being that you would have to seek further rulings from the court. But just hang on a sec, Mr Ettershank.

The answer is no, you would not be penalised multiple times, because at that stage of the process the court process would be sought.

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL: Can the minister tell me: if authorised officers damage crops yet to be harvested during the planning or building process, will farmers be compensated for their lost earnings?

Ingrid STITT: As we have been discussing a fair bit in committee, Mrs Tyrrell, the authorised officers are required to comply with the code. That sets out a range of things, including appropriately accessing land. There are obviously compensation payments associated with providing access for certain works, as I was just talking to Mr Ettershank about – for example, $20,000 as a one-off payment for facilitating field surveys and investigations and $2000 per day for survey access payments. But if there was damage to a property beyond the works that were being undertaken, yes, they would be eligible for compensation, and that is already the case under the act. This bill does not change that. Basically it is already covered in the act and in this bill at clause 68.

Georgie PURCELL: Minister, can you please clarify that newly created section 16ZHA will only be able to be used to amend the existing orders made under section 16Y of the principal act during the transition from the AEMO to VicGrid?

Ingrid STITT: Correct. Section 16ZHA is limited to amending 16Y orders to give effect to the amendments in the stage 2 legislation, and the wording in section 16ZHA, which limits this ability, is to give effect to the amendments made by the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025.

Georgie PURCELL: Could you also please confirm that the government will continue to fund both local communities’ renewable energy projects and mitigation for potential impacts on biodiversity, alongside funding provided from the new community energy fund?

Ingrid STITT: The community energy fund will exist in addition to existing government programs.

Georgie PURCELL: Could you also provide some more detail on how the community energy fund grant decisions will be made and who will be making them?

Ingrid STITT: Yes. This is in relation to the work that community reference groups will identify and projects and initiatives that they identify to be funded. These will be ratified by an interdepartmental executive reference group, like for similar funds. Then the VicGrid board will provide the recommendations to the minister for approval.

Georgie PURCELL: Minister, a few of us in our second-reading contributions spoke about the impact of these projects on native wildlife. Is the minister aware or able to advise of how many nest sites of the endangered southern brolga have been disrupted by wind turbines?

Ingrid STITT: I do not have that immediately to hand. That information is not available, as I understand it, to the minister. However, it should be noted that the final Victorian transmission plan has avoided brolga flocking areas in light of information provided by Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA).

Georgie PURCELL: Could you confirm that the new transmission lines must avoid all national parks and protected areas, including nature conservation reserves and Trust for Nature sites?

Ingrid STITT: I am advised that all new transmission projects would be assessed under the relevant state and/or federal environment and planning legislation, which requires a demonstration of avoiding and minimising impacts on protected areas and other areas of ecological value.

Georgie PURCELL: Minister, do the boundaries of the Gippsland shoreline renewable energy zone enter the Ninety Mile Beach Marine National Park or the Corner Inlet Marine National Park, and is the government confident that the zone will not impact the parks’ biodiversity?

Ingrid STITT: The Gippsland shoreline renewable energy zone does not extend into either of those parks. Infrastructure developed in the Gippsland shoreline renewable energy zone will be assessed under the relevant state and federal environmental and planning legislation, which of course again requires a demonstration of avoiding and minimising impacts on protected areas and other areas of ecological value.

Sarah MANSFIELD: I have some questions on clause 50, but I might ask them now if everyone’s okay with that. How will community consultation take place to determine which projects will be funded by the community energy fund?

Ingrid STITT: That local decision-making that responds to local needs and priorities will be a cornerstone of the delivery of these funds. It is proposed that community reference groups with broad community and industry representation will identify, review and recommend appropriate funding opportunities. The make-up of the groups is yet to be determined, but that is the purpose of the groups.

Sarah MANSFIELD: What process is going to be stepped through to determine which community members are included? I know you said it is yet to be determined which groups they will be, but what is the process that will be used to determine who gets to be on those reference groups?

Ingrid STITT: Sorry about that delay. I am advised that – and I think I answered this question a bit earlier in relation to the timeframe for setting up the fund – with the local community groups there is an intention to consult about who would be on those groups, and then there will be guidelines, as I have gone through in answer to a couple of other questions earlier, about how funds or projects will be assessed and what steps they have to go through in order to be funded through the community fund.

Sarah MANSFIELD: One of the issues that has been raised by a number of my constituents and other members of the community who have concerns about the rollout of transmission is whether any kinds of community benefits could be used to support workforce development. I understand that the parameters around the community fund – and there will be more discussion with the amendments – are largely confined to energy-related projects as stated in the government’s bill. Could it be used to fund, say, trade schools to help upskill the workforce to facilitate the energy transition? Could it be used for a purpose that is part of the energy transition but maybe not an energy project in and of itself?

Ingrid STITT: Yes. As you have indicated, these funds will support regionally significant projects and initiatives that improve energy outcomes, but they will also support projects that create benefits from the energy transition. Examples include projects that help upskill the workforce, build renewable energy supply chains, create jobs in the energy sector or promote renewable energy research and innovation. This could include the potential to support upskilling through trade schools.

Sarah MANSFIELD: I had a number of questions about authorised officers, but I think you have covered them off in a number of the answers to other questions, including around biosecurity and the steps that have to be followed, so I might just leave them and perhaps come back to them. But one question I want to ask is whether the powers that are prescribed in this bill could be used for purposes unrelated to transmission infrastructure – so to gain access to a property for any other reason?

Ingrid STITT: No.

Bev McARTHUR: Just in relation, Minister, to Ms Purcell’s question in relation to the existing community investment fund, will that continue alongside your new REZ Community Energy Fund or will the existing local community fund that has been in place up until now – or up until when you get this other one happening – be discontinued?

Ingrid STITT: The community energy fund will exist in addition to existing government programs.

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, that actually does not answer the question. The existing community fund, where the local community have a say over where the money goes – it might be a football ground or, I do not know, a roadside or something: will that funding and that whole process be discontinued and replaced by the new community energy fund, which can only, you have just indicated, provide energy-related climate change outcomes and projects?

Ingrid STITT: That existing government program fund is not being changed by the bill.

Bev McARTHUR: Great. So that means the local community can still advocate for funds to go towards whatever local project they want?

Ingrid STITT: Within the guidelines of that particular government program. None of the provisions in the bill before us today change any of that. This community fund is an additional stream of funding.

Bev McARTHUR: If a landowner cannot or will not pay their $12,210 fine – if they are a family with a trust in the property that you insist on entering, it will be a $48,842 fine – if they cannot or will not pay those fines, are you going to institute action that might result in them going to jail?

Ingrid STITT: It would be treated the same as any other court-issued fine.

Bev McARTHUR: That is really reassuring. You said – I think it was in answer to Dr Mansfield’s question – that you will define environmentally sensitive land areas. How will you do that?

Ingrid STITT: That is not exactly what I said to Dr Mansfield. What I said to Dr Mansfield was the Victorian transmission plan has introduced a new approach to planning transmission which takes environmental impacts into consideration from the start of the process using the strategic land use assessment. What I went on to say is that all proposed projects will continue to be the subject of planning and environment approval processes.

Bev McARTHUR: Every farmer could argue that their land is environmentally sensitive. Why wouldn’t they? How are you going to respond to that?

Ingrid STITT: The environment effects statement (EES) will address that in the normal manner. That does not change.

Bev McARTHUR: You also mentioned that further research had been carried out by VicGrid in relation to farms. What further research has been carried out? Can you provide us with that?

Ingrid STITT: Mrs McArthur, because that is the subject of an amendment, perhaps it is better if we deal with that then. Let us deal with it in the amendment.

Bev McARTHUR: You also said, in an answer to a question from Ms Purcell, that the new authority, VicGrid, would be defining a protected area. How will you arrive at that definition?

Ingrid STITT: I am just not sure that I did say that, actually. What I referenced was that sensitive environmental areas would be – well, I am not going to verbal Ms Purcell. She is not in the chamber, but she asked me a question about a number of national parks and the answer went to the fact that the renewable energy zone does not extend into those parks. But again, it is the same answer – that state and federal environmental assessment legislation would apply and environmental assessments.

Bev McARTHUR: One of the road maps in the Western Renewables Link plan was to carve a swathe through a biolink connecting one forest to another in the Western Renewables Link area. Would that plan now be abandoned because that is a sensitive area and environmentally important?

Ingrid STITT: The bill sets out a process for how you might deal with such scenarios, but in that particular case that you have referenced the environment effects statement is already underway.

Bev McARTHUR: We understand you talk about end-of-life plans. You may not, but Mr Batchelor did in his speech earlier for coal stations. What end-of-life plans in this new scenario will there be for renewable infrastructure given its life span is about 20 to 25 years?

Ingrid STITT: That question is outside the scope of the bill, Mrs McArthur. Essentially I would point you to the very detailed strategic plan that is the Victorian transmission plan. It is a 15-year strategic plan.

Bev McARTHUR: If you have got a 15-year strategic plan, surely you would have to include the end-of-life plans for your renewable farms, the infrastructure that is exhausted and how you are going to environmentally deal with the residue of a renewable energy project with wind towers et cetera. Surely that should be incorporated into your 15-year plan, probably you should have a 2500-year plan, really. But how are you not addressing the issue of what happens at the end of life in renewable projects?

Ingrid STITT: Perhaps the way I will answer this, Mrs McArthur, is to indicate to you that individual generators have requirements built into their approvals, but that is again outside the scope of this bill. Really what we are doing here is managing an energy transition of unprecedented scale because we are seeking to achieve net zero emissions by 2045, and we want to ensure a reliable and clean energy source for all Victorians.

Bev McARTHUR: This might be a comment, Minister, but environmentally clean might mean how you deal with the residue from redundant renewable energy projects. But my question is: what emergency services levy tax will be applied to a windfarm?

Ingrid STITT: Again, that is outside the scope of the bill before the house, Mrs McArthur.

Bev McARTHUR: It is a major issue at the moment, because you are applying a 150 per cent tax to a farmer who might be forced to have a transmission line on their farm to accommodate a renewable energy project. Basically we understand they will be paying a 5 per cent emergency services levy tax while the farmer will be paying 150. Is that fair?

Ingrid STITT: It is not in the bill before the house that we are in committee on.

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, can you just describe what ‘reasonable force’ means?

Ingrid STITT: It is a common legal test that is well understood in the court system.

Melina BATH: Minister, in terms of Crown land leases for agricultural purposes – so where a farmer has an agricultural lease – my question is: does this bill capture agricultural leases?

Ingrid STITT: Capture them in what specific way, can I ask?

Melina BATH: First of all, if a farmer has an agricultural lease and is conducting their farming practices there – they have crops down or cows – and they deny access, will they be reprimanded and charged with infringement notices on agricultural leases?

Ingrid STITT: It is the occupier of the land that needs to comply.

Melina BATH: In relation to this particular issue, if the occupier of the land – meaning the farmer with the agricultural licence to operate on that land – occupies Crown land but the agricultural licence is operated by the farmer, who receives the compensation? Is it the Crown land holder – the government – or is it the licence-holder, the farmer with the agricultural licence?

Ingrid STITT: It is the landholder, but just let me get clarification for you from the box. The occupier would receive the compensation.

Melina BATH: By occupier, do you mean the Crown land owner, meaning the government, or do you mean the farmer?

Ingrid STITT:The leaseholder. The farmer. The leaseholder working that land. That should make you happy.

Melina BATH: Well, I am not happy with this bill at all, Minister. I am just trying to find some clarity for farmers, notwithstanding that I appreciate that you are answering the questions. I will give you another scenario: crop harvesting. A farmer is about to harvest their crops, and they actually say, ‘No. This is dangerous. I need to fulfil my obligations to get these crops in and done,’ but an authorised officer still decides that they want to come on there and they provide an infringement notice. Is there any right of way or leniency for farmers who are actually trying to get their crops cut and in?

Ingrid STITT: As I have indicated in answer to a number of lines of questioning around land access, it is desirable that there is an agreement reached with the farmer, with the landholder. So we would expect that the process that is set out and clarified in the code would require flexibility around those sorts of issues. We always want to see, as far as possible, voluntary arrangements entered into. But there is a process set out in the bill for the steps that you need to go through when seeking to reach voluntary agreement in relation to access.

Melina BATH: Minister, with the greatest respect, I think there are farmers watching this and they are quite worried and concerned about making sure of their crops – and of course their crops equal their repayments, their mortgages, their payments back on their machinery, their livelihoods. So could you just expand on how that negotiation is going to take place, and if the ruling has come down, is there any form of request for leniency or challenge to that position that the government or its entity may take?

Ingrid STITT: Ms Bath, there are reasonable excuses for noncompliance. That is why the 30-day notice is given to give time to discuss what those reasonable excuses might be. I can give you a few of the details of what the proposed safeguards are in relation to issues around land access. So of course there is written notice before entry – that is, 30 business days prior to the initial entry and again 48 hours prior to entry; announcement and identification on entry; authorised officers must carry and produce for inspection an identification card on request; doing or causing to be done no more than is reasonably believed necessary to facilitate section 93 EIA powers; taking reasonable steps to minimise disruption and not staying longer than is reasonably necessary; prohibiting entry onto land contrary to the conditions of their authorisation; prohibiting entry into residential premises or buildings; ensuring the authorised officer provides a warning before giving any direction to stop interfering with land access powers; and having a reasonable excuse defence in relation to the infringement offences, as I have just touched on. And safeguards for any entry under the authority of an entry order from the Magistrates’ Court include taking all reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the order on the owner or occupier of the land as soon as practicable after an entry order is made, and if an attempted service is unsuccessful, the authorised officer must cause a copy of the entry order to be affixed to or in a conspicuous place near an entrance to the land. So there are those safeguards built into the bill. But as I indicated earlier, it is our absolute preference that sensible negotiated agreements are reached wherever possible.

Melina BATH: I am assuming that the authorised officer who is seeking to access the property would not necessarily have – I am not trying to be funny about this – knowledge of veterinarian understanding or an agricultural degree, because how will a reasonable excuse be validated if there is somebody who has no understanding of the farming operation onto which that they are seeking to come?

Ingrid STITT: In answer to a question a little earlier around what training the authorised officers would be receiving, and the fact that they will be drawn from a public sector entity and subject to the public sector code of conduct, we certainly expect that there will be training provided that would ensure that they were cognisant of some of the issues that would be relevant in farming communities, particularly in respect to the areas that will be part of the renewable energy zones. Can I just clarify, in relation to an answer I gave you earlier about reasonable excuse, that the court assesses that.

Melina BATH: Just on that, the court assesses a reasonable excuse –

Ingrid Stitt: If there was a contested –

Melina BATH: Yes, sure. Thanks, Minister; I appreciate that. In terms of the FOI and the diminished capacity for people to access FOIs through this legislation, if someone was looking to challenge whether there was a reasonable excuse, might they not be able to actually access the information because of clauses in this bill about freedom of information?

Ingrid STITT: The magistrate would be assessing what the farmer says is a reasonable excuse. The issues in relation to FOI are really more about commercially sensitive information in terms of the rollout of the transmission projects. So I am not sure that that is a well-founded concern.

Melina BATH: You mentioned that, potentially, these transmission lines et cetera will not be going through national parks.

David Davis: She didn’t quite say that.

Melina BATH: I know; that is right. I would challenge that there is nothing specific in the bill to say that they will not actually go through national parks or sensitive areas.

David Davis: In answer to the Animal Justice Party, the answer was that they could.

Melina BATH: Technically, Minister, transmission lines could go through other public reserves. For example, it could go through the back end of – I am just using this as an example – a golf course. It could go through some other sort of public reserve. If it did, who receives that compensation?

Ingrid STITT: Again, I am not sure that is the correct reading, but perhaps if I can answer it this way: the bill does not deal with planning and environment requirements for a project; they are dealt with via existing environment and planning legislation. Just to clarify, there was a bit of conjecture going on about what I had said to Ms Purcell about national parks. The answer I gave in relation to Ms Purcell’s question – she was asking about whether transmission lines must avoid all national parks and protected areas, including nature conservation reserves and Trust for Nature sites – was that all new transmission projects would be assessed under the relevant state and federal environment and planning legislation, which requires a demonstration of avoiding and minimising impacts on protected areas and other ecological values.

The government will not receive any payments from this legislation, regardless of the example that you have given about a particular land tenure. Planning and environment considerations are not dealt with in this bill.

Melina BATH: Just finishing off on the infringements, the penalties, if the farmers are obstructing access, for example, with the WRL or the VNI West, through the process of an EES – let us pick the VNI West. If the planning and the processes are going here and a farmer or landholder has said no and it then entirely moves somewhere else – it is not feasible – does that farmer still have to pay those penalties on the infringement notice, despite the fact that there will no longer be any thought of the transmission lines going through their particular property?

Ingrid STITT: I think, Ms Bath, we want to give that certainty, and that is the purpose of the Victorian transmission plan and the renewable energy zones. Having that certainty is very important. Just let me get a little bit more advice from the box.

The whole purpose of the land access provisions of this bill is so assessments can be made about whether they are suitable locations for energy transmission projects. That is the purpose of the entry provisions of this bill.

Melina BATH: So across any cross-section of a particular renewable energy zone and corridor there could be multiple fines on the same, we will say, latitude or longitude if farmers are choosing not to enable access – that is my take on that.

Minister, in relation to VicGrid and the body that was set up for VicGrid and the rollout of this next tranche with VicGrid stage 2, why didn’t the government investigate, think about and explore an independent body, not the statutory VicGrid body, to oversee the rollout of the renewables and transmission infrastructure? Why has it gone in-house; why hasn’t it sought to have an independent body to make these sorts of assessments?

Ingrid STITT: Obviously subject to the passing of the legislation, we are the only state, Ms Bath, using AEMO as its transmission planner, so VicGrid, subject to this bill passing, will become a state business corporation, meaning it will be operated as a state-owned entity separate from DEECA, and that will ensure an appropriate level of independence as it moves to take on the declared network functions for Victoria.

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, why are you limiting the community infrastructure fund to, effectively, climate change-related projects and spending? What if a community needed a new community hub, or a –

Gaelle Broad: Mental health.

Bev McARTHUR: mental health facility, you know, a hospital, whatever. Why is it being limited to, effectively, climate change-related projects?

Ingrid STITT: I need to correct you there, Mrs McArthur: it is not climate change projects, it is energy-related projects that will be able to be funded through the community fund. The government has a whole budget process in relation to other investments across the state and they cover all manner of things; you have mentioned a couple in your question. But the bill before us deals specifically with energy projects for the community fund.

Bev McARTHUR: Are there any restrictions on a landowner or anybody else who wants to take VicGrid or the government to task, effectively, through the courts to challenge your accessing of private land?

Ingrid STITT: No.

Gaelle BROAD: There is a section in the bill on page 133 that refers to authorising ‘an authorised officer to use reasonable force to gain entry if it is reasonably necessary to do so, including by using reasonable force to remove any obstruction’. You referred earlier to reasonable force. When I look at Victoria Legal Aid, it talks about reasonable force as meaning ‘using enough physical force to arrest you, and no more’. Is that what you are saying applies in this bill, that reasonable force could be used to arrest a landholder?

Ingrid STITT: No. I said that it was a well-understood legal term.

Gaelle BROAD: It is also a legal term that is used in self-defence laws, deciding what is a reasonable amount of force in any situation. Do landholders have a right to use a reasonable amount of force in self-defence?

Ingrid STITT: Thank you for that question. They are matters that are outside the scope of this bill, and they are matters that would be subject to a court deliberation, if indeed such a matter made it to a court. They are matters for courts to determine.

Gaelle BROAD: Thank you, Minister, but the bill does refer to reasonable force. I think it is very much a part of this bill, and it is of great concern to the communities that I represent. Given that authorised officers will be trained – I am assuming that there will be training – what advice will they be given before it even sees a court?

Ingrid STITT: Mrs Broad, you asked me about whether an individual would have self-defence provisions apply in these situations, and my answer to you was very clearly that it is not in the scope of this bill, and this bill does not impact on of any of the existing self-defence provisions. Authorised officers will go through a range of training, which I have gone to a couple of times in answer to a few questions, in undertaking their duties.

Gaelle BROAD: Another paragraph in the bill refers to authorising ‘a person entering the land to bring with them any equipment or other things reasonably necessary for the purpose of the exercise of a power under section 93’. Can you clarify what is acceptable equipment? Are bolt cutters acceptable? Is a bulldozer acceptable? If you can define.

Ingrid STITT: Acceptable equipment will depend on the circumstances, but the primary reason for seeking access will be to determine the suitability of the land for transmission purposes. There may be certain works that are carried out, and that would have to be in accordance with the access provisions of the bill. I cannot give you a specific answer. It is going to be dependent on what type of work is required on that particular land.

Gaelle BROAD: Would an authorised officer be able to cut locks or cut fences, for example?

Ingrid STITT: Perhaps the way I can answer this is to point you to how authorised officers will exercise their powers. The bill is very clear that authorised officers and electricity corporations will only be able to enter land under the proposed provisions if either an authorised officer or a relevant electricity corporation have advised a landholder that an authorised officer may attend the site and they have given the required notice as set out in the bill and they have followed all of the required identification steps contained in the bill. The legal right to access land relates to the purposes of facilitating access by an electricity company, which will include conferring temporary section 93 EIA powers on the CEO of VicGrid or the CEO of VicGrid’s authorised representative until the transition date. Following the establishment of VicGrid as a state business corporation and the commencement of relevant provisions of the bill, an electricity corporation will include the new VicGrid state business corporation or exercise powers themselves under section 93, where they have been expressly authorised to do so.

I have gone to a couple of the safeguard provisions already in answer to some questions from Ms Bath, but there is a requirement for authorised officers to follow several procedures, including doing or causing to be done no more than is reasonably believed necessary to facilitate electricity corporation powers under the act, taking reasonable steps to minimise disruption and staying no longer than is reasonably necessary.

David DAVIS: Perhaps I can help the minister here. At the briefing, the CEO of VicGrid indicated that those reasonable forces could include using boltcutters to cut locks. That might just be helpful, and the minister might like to confirm what the CEO told us on transcript here, that cutting locks would be one of the reasonable force steps that could be used.

Ingrid STITT: I am not sure there was a question in that.

David DAVIS: I am asking you to confirm it on the transcript.

Ingrid STITT: Confirm what – a briefing that I was not at?

David DAVIS: That is right, and you can perhaps go and ask at the desk whether some of these people might well have been there. But the CEO was quite clear that lock cutting was amongst the reasonable force that could be used.

Ingrid STITT: In terms of these issues, I have indicated that the authorised officer must follow several procedural safeguards, including doing or causing to be done no more than is reasonably believed necessary to facilitate electricity corporation powers, and that includes taking reasonable steps to minimise disruption and staying no longer than is reasonably necessary.

I am not in a position to answer hypotheticals about how these authorised officer land access provisions will happen over the period of time, but what I will reiterate is that there are safeguards in the bill that require authorised officers to act in a way that is reasonable and necessary under the electricity corporation powers.

David DAVIS: I will just put on the record that the CEO did point to processes around it – yes, that is correct – but he did also indicate that locks could be cut. Let me ask you another question about reasonable force: could an officer use a headlock on somebody as part of reasonable force? Or let me put this another way: can you rule out an officer using a headlock as part of reasonable force?

Ingrid STITT: As you know, Mr Davis, we have got authorised officers across a range of different government departments, including DEECA, particularly in the public land and environment space. I have indicated in answer to a number of other questions the government’s expectations around the training that will be provided for these authorised officers. Obviously I am not in a position to predict what a court might determine to be reasonable force or not, but what I will say is that there is an expectation that part of the training will include de-escalating situations. We do not want to have any confrontation associated with the access of land for these purposes under the bill.

David DAVIS: One of the other points that the CEO made in the briefing, and he indicated there was a process, is that moving machinery might be part of the role of some of these officers. They may need to move machinery where a landholder has left machinery strategically positioned. Will you confirm or rule out the use of these officers to use reasonable force to move machinery?

Ingrid STITT: I have already gone into a bit of detail about how authorised officers can exercise their powers. I am not going to get into different hypothetical scenarios that you are putting to me in the committee stage. I have responded in relation to the expectations around training of AOs in regard to this bill, and I think I have already answered this question a number of different ways.

David DAVIS: Again, I just say to the minister that the CEO did indicate at the briefing that it is entirely possible that officers might well move machinery. My question is: what training would they have in the start-up and operation of heavy machinery?

Ingrid STITT: In answer to a question – I think it was from Mr Ettershank – I have already answered the questions around the types of issues that the training would go to, so I refer you to my previous answer.

David DAVIS: Did that include heavy machinery operation?

Ingrid STITT: Again, you are asking me to respond to a hypothetical scenario. What I indicated in a broad sense was that the training that these authorised officers will receive will include making sure that they are cognisant of the issues that will be relevant in the land settings that they are required to access.

David DAVIS: I just want to record that this is deeply unsatisfactory of the minister. You may not want to say it, but the CEO was quite clear in the briefing that there may be occasions where moving machinery might be part of the role of these officers. The CEO also indicated cutting locks might well be part of the role of those officers to gain entry to a property. So it is trite, if I can put it that way, to say, ‘It’s only a hypothetical.’ It is not a hypothetical. These officers are getting enormous powers to do these matters. I am concerned that those officers may well exceed their powers, may exceed their competence. I for one would be very worried if some of these officers were to try and start up or move pieces of heavy equipment – graders, big agricultural equipment –

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: I was about to say headers and others of that nature. So if you are able to tell me that they will not do that, I will be somewhat reassured on that count, but it does not seem you are able to say that to me. But I am interested to hear: can you rule out these officers initiating the moving of these large pieces of agricultural equipment?

Ingrid STITT: Again, you are presenting a scenario to me, but what I can say – and you will know this from your own reading of the bill before the house – is that the bill refers specifically to the use of reasonable force. That is a well-understood legal term, which the courts interpret – it is not for me to interpret, it is for the courts to interpret – and of course the bill refers specifically to the use of reasonable force to remove an obstruction.

Melina BATH: Minister, we discussed earlier in relation to denying access to an authorised officer to come onto somebody’s land and that if a farmer has obstructed entry and there is a difference of opinion about why, there is a dispute resolution process, and part of that could end up being in a Magistrates’ Court for a magistrate to make a ruling on this. That is how I heard it; is that correct?

Ingrid STITT: There is a process which initially encourages a voluntary agreement to be made around land access. Essentially the answer is yes, but there are a range of different steps before you would get to that point, Ms Bath. Our hope is that there will be many examples of where access can be via a voluntary agreement that has been reached and people taking a reasonable approach to what particular circumstances might be live on a particular farmer’s land.

Melina BATH: If I can reflect some of the sentiments of people out on the steps over recent weeks and months, they are not feeling reasonable anymore. They are feeling quite frustrated and desperate. I will put it as a hypothetical, but there is a question at the end of it. Because farming communities are feeling that the government is running roughshod over them and because they feel that they have lost their say and their right to operate their farms without people coming on to them, they could actually potentially slow the whole rollout of transmission lines and renewable energies because they could choose to end up in court when dispute resolution is not successful from the government’s point of view. So rather than running roughshod over them, if there was a different way, a more conciliatory way, you actually may end up with a faster rollout in a better location than you have got now. That is a point. But noting my hypothetical, which could happen, is the government actually looking at more resources for our regional court systems and/or more magistrates if farmers en masse decide to oppose and seek courts to decide these outcomes?

Ingrid STITT: I have said more times than I can count that our preference is that voluntary agreements are entered into. I also would point out to you that, under the existing land access powers, if land is unable to be accessed, then the only way that you can pursue that access is by making an application to the Supreme Court. So under the current system, you are into court almost straight away. What we have proposed in this bill is a different, preferred approach when it comes to reaching voluntary agreements to access land. But then if access is blocked, the bill sets out a process for what steps have to be taken to access the land.

David DAVIS: Minister, would you explain to the chamber and the community why the government felt it necessary to invoke an FOI exemption for certain activities? Why did the government suppress the general FOI powers?

Ingrid STITT: You would know, Mr Davis, that alignment with AEMO, which we are transferring the functions from. Some commercially sensitive information needs to remain confidential in order for there to be confidence in investment in this transition plan. It is of an unprecedented scale and so the commercially sensitive information is exempt from FOI.

David DAVIS: I am already on the record indicating that AEMO is a body that is beyond the reach of normal scrutiny, normal examination. It is a publicly owned body, a private company, but cannot be properly scrutinised with normal techniques. To document motions in the chamber, the government refuses to provide information. AEMO is exempt under FOI. So I do not think it is a model that you would want to compare yourself to. But you are creating a new statutory body, a normal body, so why would you not allow it to have the normal FOI rules? Section 34 of the FOI act provides exemptions for commercially sensitive information, so why not allow, subject to that, FOI to operate in the normal way?

Ingrid STITT: I will reiterate that AEMO as a non-government entity is not subject to FOI. This means that information provided to AEMO in their role as Victoria’s declared shared network planner has not been subject to disclosure under the FOI act. Under the bill VicGrid is subject to a specific confidentiality and protected information regime that impacts its obligations under freedom-of-information laws. The bill introduces detailed provisions restricting the use and disclosure of protected information by VicGrid, which includes information given in confidence or related to VicGrid’s renewable energy zone planning and statutory functions. So while VicGrid will be subject to the Victorian Freedom of Information Act, the bill designates documents containing protected information as exempt documents and therefore exempt from FOI requests.

Bev McARTHUR: Minister, subdivision 4(1)(c) ‘What is an entry order?’ authorises a person entering the land to bring with them any equipment or other things reasonably necessary for the purpose of the exercise of a power under section 93. What equipment is being proposed here, minister?

Ingrid STITT: We have been down this road a few times, but it would depend on the circumstances of the land that access was being sought on.

Bev McARTHUR: Could it include body cameras and capsicum spray, for example?

Ingrid STITT: I think that is being alarmist.

Bev McARTHUR: Answer the question. Handcuffs?

Ingrid STITT: Mrs McArthur, I would point you to the discussion we were having much earlier in the evening about the code of practice and the fact that authorised officers are an established workforce in a number of different parts of government. I point you to those answers that I have given previously.

Bev McARTHUR: I just know that when I had some drovers out in the Moyne shire, the VicRoads authorised officers had body cameras and capsicum spray and were very intimidating, so I am presuming these authorised officers will be equally equipped.

But I am wondering how the box has gone in finding out the answer to the child protection orders. So how is that going with anybody coming on to properties? Will they have a working with children certificate?

Ingrid STITT: I note that authorised officers, Mrs McArthur, are not permitted to enter homes on land, but notwithstanding that, yes, they can be required to have a working with children check.

Bev McARTHUR: Can – or will it be compulsory that they have a working with children certificate?

Ingrid STITT: We are saying yes, Mrs McArthur.

Richard WELCH: Mr Davis was asking questions before about freedom of information and other transparency measures. One of the obstacles to transparency is the claim of commercial in confidence over certain contracts and decisions. Could you please give an example of what on these projects would be commercial in confidence and why?

Ingrid STITT: When VicGrid takes over the role of AEMO – subject to this bill passing the Parliament – as I have already indicated, there will be sensitive market information that will need to remain confidential. These exemptions are also essential for ensuring that the confidential information that VicGrid receives as a result of its network planning role is protected from unauthorised or unwanted use or disclosure, including through FOI requests. It is not the project itself that is sensitive per se, it is the information held by VicGrid, some of which will come from a particular proponent.

Richard WELCH: I would like to understand: what market information? What does that mean? That is a very broad term that could mean practically anything. What is the market information that is commercial in confidence?

Ingrid STITT: I cannot predict that in specific terms, but what I can say is that sensitive information could include costs, models of operating, operational plans and the like. There would be much potentially sensitive information that would be part of any particular energy project proposal – security, for example.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I invite Mr Davis to move amendment 1, which tests amendment 9.

David DAVIS: I move:

1. Clause 1, page 3, lines 20 to 23, omit all words and expressions on these lines.

This is the VicGrid amendment, and this is the removal of part of clause 1. I give notice that we will move amendments 9 onwards on our list to oppose the retention of clauses.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting this amendment. This amendment would exempt the statutory body corporate VicGrid from the requirement to hold a licence under the act to transmit electricity, so the amendment would prevent VicGrid from delivering a crucial function of the legislation to plan Victoria’s electrical transmission infrastructure.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The question is that Mr Davis’s amendment 1, which tests his amendment 9, be agreed to.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.

Gayle TIERNEY: Pursuant to standing order 4.08, I declare the sitting to be extended by up to 1 hour.

Council divided on amendment:

Ayes (16): Melina Bath, Jeff Bourman, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Moira Deeming, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, David Limbrick, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Bev McArthur, Joe McCracken, Nick McGowan, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, Richard Welch

Noes (21): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, David Ettershank, Michael Galea, Anasina Gray-Barberio, Shaun Leane, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Gayle Tierney, Sheena Watt

Amendment negatived.

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL: I move:

1. Clause 1, page 3, lines 27 to 30, omit all words and expressions on these lines.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting this amendment. The amendment would remove all land access provisions from the bill, and the proposed amendment would fail to deliver a critical function of the legislation to establish a new compliance and enforcement framework for land access and REZ schemes to support the performance of VicGrid’s functions and the delivery of essential energy infrastructure.

David LIMBRICK: The Libertarian Party will be supporting Ms Tyrrell’s amendment for the exact reasons that the government opposes it.

David DAVIS: The Liberals and Nationals will support Ms Tyrrell’s amendment. In fact it is identical to ours, and we see that it is actually a very well framed amendment, if we say so.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The running sheet does say that all of Mrs Tyrrell’s remaining amendments are tested. That is not in fact true, because some of them are to omit a clause, so Mrs Tyrrell may choose to divide on those amendments as well. The question is that Mrs Tyrrell’s amendment 1, which tests her amendment 2, be agreed to.

Council divided on amendment:

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

Noes (21): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, David Ettershank, Michael Galea, Anasina Gray-Barberio, Shaun Leane, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Gayle Tierney, Sheena Watt

Amendment negatived.

Clause agreed to; clauses 2 to 49 agreed to.

Clause 50 (22:10)

Sarah MANSFIELD: I move:

1. Clause 50, page 80, line 20, omit “subparagraph (i).” and insert “subparagraph (i); and”.

2. Clause 50, page 80, after line 20 insert –

“(c) to, through the payment of grants of money from the Fund, support biodiversity outcomes in Victoria, including support for the implementation of biodiversity programs, and the carrying out of biodiversity research, in Victoria.”.

I spoke to these in my second-reading speech, but the amendments I am putting forward today pertain to the community energy fund. They are quite simple. The first set of amendments proposes that the community energy fund be not only used to support renewable energy projects, as currently written in the legislation, but expanded so the parameters of the program include projects that support biodiversity outcomes, including biodiversity programs and research in local communities.

On the second set of amendments, I will speak to that now. I understand that the Liberals have an identical amendment, which will take precedence, but I will speak to it anyway. We actually agree with this. The ability of the Treasurer to take money away from the community energy fund into the Consolidated Fund should not be allowed to occur. This amendment would ensure that money in the community energy fund can only be used for local communities, as the fund was intended.

Ingrid STITT: In relation to Dr Mansfield’s amendment, the government will be supporting this amendment. As we went into earlier in committee, the amendment expands the REZ community energy fund to encompass supporting biodiversity outcomes and biodiversity research in Victoria, and this will deliver material benefits to Victoria’s environment. I will hold my thoughts about Mr Davis’s amendment, which is in identical terms to Dr Mansfield’s, until we get to that.

David DAVIS: There are different opinions here. On the biodiversity, I just have a question. As I understand it, this will see additional charges put on the bills. Where is the money coming from for this? As I understand it – and obviously the amendments are new to us this evening – the money will come from households and the bills that they pay and businesses. Please tell me if I am wrong on that, but I want to know where the money for this funding is coming from.

Sarah MANSFIELD: Just for clarity, the community energy fund is already outlined in this legislation, and where the funding is coming from for that has already been outlined by the minister. All our amendment does is expand the types of projects that money can be spent on. So it does not say anything about where the money comes from – that has already been discussed – and perhaps the minister can speak to where that money comes from. This does not change the amount of money that is collected; it changes the scope and the breadth of the types of projects that can be funded so that it is not just energy projects that can be funded but also projects that support biodiversity.

David DAVIS: That is exactly as I understood it. You will seek to fund a larger range of projects with the same amount of money, but I do not see that this bill fixes the amount of money. I see that this bill is actually open-ended for what is struck, and my fear is that additional charges will be put on families and additional charges will be put on businesses to pay for this. It is good in its intent, but I am very concerned that there will be additional costs put on families and businesses.

Ingrid STITT: No, that is not the case, Mr Davis. This will not change decisions about the funds or indeed the amount of money that will be in the funds. It is just one more eligible use under the fund.

David DAVIS: But I want to record here now that the minister could not tell me earlier in this committee the amount that would be put onto each bill year by year going into the future. You could not tell me that, and that worries me, because I think what is going to happen here is effectively a larger number of items will be required to be funded, and families and businesses will pay more on their electricity bills.

Ingrid STITT: I reject that hypothesis. Essentially you are conflating a number of different issues and questions in committee. The amendments are very clear, and the government is supporting Dr Mansfield’s amendments. We have no issue with expanding the REZ Community Energy Fund to encompass projects supporting biodiversity outcomes.

David DAVIS: So how much will be put on the bill of each family and each business next year and the year after and the year after? Can you tell me that? Is there a schedule or a list or an estimated amount? Is that available somewhere?

Ingrid STITT: Mr Davis, you are playing a few games with this one, because basically you have already been told that it is the same amount of money.

David DAVIS: Which is an undefined amount of money. You cannot tell me how much it is. I am concerned about that. In that sense I see it as an open-ended new tax.

David LIMBRICK: The Libertarian Party will not be supporting these amendments. I see the community energy fund as just a way for the government to buy social licence with the money of the energy consumers, so it is giving their own money back to them, effectively, in a long roundabout way, and expanding the uses for that I do not support. I think that this is a magnet for misallocation of resources and potentially corruption, and therefore I will not support expanding its uses.

Council divided on amendments:

Ayes (21): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, David Ettershank, Michael Galea, Anasina Gray-Barberio, Shaun Leane, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Gayle Tierney, Sheena Watt

Noes (15): Melina Bath, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Moira Deeming, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, David Limbrick, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Bev McArthur, Joe McCracken, Nick McGowan, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, Richard Welch

Amendments agreed to.

David DAVIS: I move:

4. Clause 50, page 81, line 24, omit “Fund;” and insert “Fund.”.

5. Clause 50, page 81, lines 25 and 26, omit all words and expressions on these lines.

6. Clause 50, page 82, lines 1 to 5, omit all words and expressions on these lines.

The amendments simply ensure that money in this fund cannot be taken into consolidated revenue.

Ingrid STITT: The government will be supporting these amendments. These amendments are identical to amendments that have already been agreed with the Greens. And yes, the amendments remove the possibility that money from the REZ community energy fund can be returned to the consolidated fund.

David LIMBRICK: I have a question for the minister regarding the community energy fund. It is my understanding that this is a supplier charge based on volume, which seems quite similar to an excise tax. Has the minister received advice on the constitutional validity of this charge?

Ingrid STITT: I am not the minister; I am the minister representing the minister. One moment, please.

Yes, there has been advice received, and that will inform the making of the regs.

David LIMBRICK: The Libertarian Party will also be supporting these amendments. I think these are good ones, despite my reluctance to support the community energy fund in the first place. Since I have been in this Parliament I have seen too many times where the government sees pots of money, like the TAC or WorkCover or water boards, and they see this capital in these funds and then they do a ‘capital repatriation’, they call it normally, and they rip the money out. But effectively this is just a tax when that happens, so this will at least prevent that and ensure that the money will be spent according to the rules of the fund, rather than just sent back to consolidated revenue.

Sarah MANSFIELD: As indicated, the Greens will be supporting this. We had an identical amendment, so we think this is a sensible change to the legislation. We understand that there probably was not an intention for this to occur anyway, but ensuring that this potential gap in the legislation is closed just gives certainty that the community fund will stay as a community fund and the money will remain in there.

Amendments agreed to.

David DAVIS: I move:

7. Clause 50, page 82, after line 28 insert –

“93A Retailer to notify customer of Fund costs passed on

(1) If a retailer passes a Fund cost on to a customer as described in subsection (2), the retailer must notify the customer of that cost.

(2) A retailer passes on a Fund cost to a customer if –

(a) the retailer charges the customer for electricity; and

(b) that charge includes an amount (a Fund cost) that is subsequently to be paid to VicGrid (whether by the retailer or by any other entity) for payment into the REZ Community Energy Fund.

(3) A notification under subsection (1) must be made within 12 months of the Fund cost being passed on.

(4) In this section –

retailer has the same meaning as in the Electricity Industry Act 2000.”.

Amendments 7 and 8 are a pigeon pair. They are transparency measures. In the case of 7, it requires that money that is collected for the REZ Community Energy Fund is obviously collected from the bills, from the supply charge of every electricity consumer, so that is households and businesses. They are not told currently, clearly and upfront how much is collected and how much is paid through a number of these schemes. With respect to this scheme, we seek to set up a regime so at least annually they are told how much is collected from them. Otherwise they will never know.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting this amendment.

Council divided on amendment:

Ayes (16): Melina Bath, Jeff Bourman, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Moira Deeming, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, David Limbrick, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Bev McArthur, Joe McCracken, Nick McGowan, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, Richard Welch

Noes (21): Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, David Ettershank, Michael Galea, Anasina Gray-Barberio, Shaun Leane, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Rachel Payne, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Gayle Tierney, Sheena Watt

Amendment negatived.

David DAVIS: I move:

8. Clause 50, page 85, after line 22 insert –

“95A Retailer to notify customer of Fund costs passed on

(1) If a retailer passes a Fund cost on to a customer as described in subsection (2), the retailer must notify the customer of that cost.

(2) A retailer passes on a Fund cost to a customer if –

(a) the retailer charges the customer for electricity; and

(b) that charge includes an amount (a Fund cost) that is subsequently to be paid to VicGrid (whether by the retailer or by any other entity) for payment into the Traditional Owners Fund.

(3) A notification under subsection (1) must be made within 12 months of the Fund cost being passed on.

(4) In this section –

retailer has the same meaning as in the Electricity Industry Act 2000.”.

The same applies to the traditional owners fund. People who are paying the money should at least know how much is being taken from them.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting this amendment.

Amendment negatived; amended clause agreed to; clauses 51 to 58 agreed to.

Clause 59 (22:33)

David DAVIS: I move:

9. Clause 59, omit this clause

This is a repeat of an earlier one, but the substance is different in the sense that the clause must stand part of the bill, and in that sense we will move it again.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting this amendment. The proposed amendment would fail to deliver a critical function of the legislation to establish a new compliance and enforcement framework for land access and risk schemes to support the performance of VicGrid’s functions and the delivery of essential energy infrastructure.

Clause agreed to; clause 60 agreed to.

Clause 61 (22:34)

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL: I move:

3. Clause 61, omit this clause.

[The Legislative Council report is being published progressively.]