Thursday, 13 November 2025

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:26): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes that the State Electricity Commission (SEC) 2024–25 report was tabled on 30 October 2025;

(2)   further notes that the SEC is a state-owned company led by an independent board of directors, with the Premier and Treasurer being SEC shareholders;

(3)   in accordance with standing order 10.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within four weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution:

(a) the agendas and minutes of all SEC board meetings held since the SEC was declared a state-owned company under the State Owned Enterprises Act 1992 on 14 November 2023;

(b) the agendas and minutes of the audit and risk committee meetings held since 14 November 2023; and

(c) the agendas and minutes of the investments and assets committee meeting held since 14 November 2023.

It is a very simple motion. The SEC is a very secretive body. It is a private company. It is not able to be FOI-ed and it is a body that deserves much more scrutiny. Even the old SEC was able to be FOI-ed, but this one cannot be, and that is why this documents motion is so important. The documents can be directed to be provided to this chamber by a motion of this chamber, and that is what we will seek to do through this motion. We need to see the decisions that are being made by the SEC, the basis of those decisions and how they are being proceeded with.

It is clear that the SEC is not the SEC of old. I mean, it had 28,000 employees. This one is a much more modest body, with just a small number of people in the Latrobe Valley. In fact in the Latrobe Valley they actually work in the GovHub when they are not working at home. There is a very small number of people, less than a handful, and that is fine. That is a very modern way of conducting themselves. It is not the SEC of old with 28,000 employees down in the Latrobe Valley, but it is a body to which government money has been committed – significant government money. It has begun to make some investments, and it is important to investigate and scrutinise the decisions that are being made there.

The body has now taken on the role of providing electricity for all government entities – the whole lot. Every school, every hospital, every government office, every park rangers hut – everything that is run by the government – is now being provided with electricity by the SEC. Goodness knows how much more they pay for that. There is a real question here. I am a former health minister; we actually got huge deals by going out to market and using Health Purchasing Victoria to crunch some of the energy providers and get very cheap deals, which helped our hospitals have more money. The opposite process is now occurring with the SEC. There is no competitive process. There is no competitive neutrality. What is happening is every government agency is forced to go via the SEC, and they are paying more.

But there will be assessments of that. Some of that will come to the board no doubt, and we want to see exactly those sorts of pieces of information – what processes the SEC has gone through in its planning and in the steps going forward.

This is a motion that is heavily in the public interest. You cannot FOI this private company – it is a publicly owned private company – through normal FOI channels. However, we can get to see these documents through a documents motion in this chamber. For that reason it is particularly pertinent that this motion comes before us today and it is particularly pertinent that those documents are provided. It is in the public interest for us to scrutinise the enormous expenditure of public money and the decisions that have been made to mandate every single government agency going through the SEC.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (10:31): Many in this place have been eager to see results, and rightly so. The SEC represents one of the most significant reforms in Victoria’s energy landscape in decades – a return to public ownership, a recommitment to affordable energy and a major step forward in our transition to a renewable energy future. Let me say from the outset that we will not be opposing this motion, Mr Davis. We welcome the opportunity to highlight the extraordinary progress that has already been made. I am not going to talk down public ownership. We are getting on with building the SEC. We are putting power back in the hands of Victorians and accelerating our transition to cheaper, cleaner and more reliable renewable energy.

Construction is underway, for the benefit of the chamber, on the SEC’s first two major projects, both right here in Victoria and both publicly owned. The Melbourne renewable energy hub will become one of the world’s biggest batteries, with 600 megawatts of capacity and 1.6 gigawatt hours of storage, enough to power over 200,000 homes during the evening peak-hour period. It will be the first publicly owned energy asset connected to Victoria’s grid since the 1990s. The second is the Horsham renewable energy park, the state’s first 100 per cent publicly owned renewable generation project since privatisation. This is a 119-megawatt solar farm, a 100-megawatt battery and a $370 million investment by the SEC. It will power 51,000 homes and deliver jobs and investment in regional Victoria.

In fact the SEC is not just about building projects; it is also powering the state. Mr Davis is right that the SEC is powering many, many public assets. Since 1 July the SEC has been supplying 100 per cent renewable electricity to all Victorian government operations, powering our schools, our hospitals, trams, trains and even right here in Parliament House. When the Metro Tunnel opens in early December, it will be powered by the SEC. Through the SEC’s one-stop shop – one that I have spoken about in this place a number of times and one that I am entirely excited about – over 14,000 households have already received support to electrify their homes and cut power bills. That is what public ownership delivers: clean, affordable energy and really trusted advice, which I know is so vital as we make the transition.

That is what this is all about: making clean energy accessible, affordable and achievable for every Victorian household. The SEC is becoming a trusted partner for families and communities looking to take control of their energy use and cut costs at the same time. As has been mentioned in this place a number of times, we are backing the transformation of the Victorian energy grid with serious investment, including the Victorian government’s commitment of an initial $1 billion to deliver 4.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy and storage projects – enough to power 1.5 million homes. This investment will secure jobs across the state, attract private co-investment and ensure Victoria remains a national leader in renewable energy and climate action.

We cannot talk about the SEC without addressing its history, because, as Mr Davis has said, the SEC was around in its previous iteration many years ago – 30 years in fact. Thank you for familiarising the chamber with some of the extraordinary statistics of the time of the previous SEC. Thirty years ago the Liberal government, under Jeff Kennett, sold off the SEC, and with that they also sold off energy security.

What happened was that prices went up, workers were sacked and private energy companies made billions while ordinary Victorians paid the price. The generators alone made $23 billion in profit at the expense of Victorian households. In the Latrobe Valley more than 7000 jobs were lost, with thousands more across the state as our linesmen, maintenance crews and support staff were shown the door. Thirty years later they have still got some lessons to learn across the aisle, I have got to say. What I have heard from the Leader of the Opposition is an open declaration to tear down the SEC, if elected.

David Davis interjected.

Sheena WATT: No, I said the Leader of the Opposition, not the leader in the chamber. Imagine that – there is a commitment there to tearing down a publicly owned energy provider at the same time that it is helping thousands of Victorians to save on their energy bills and driving the biggest renewable energy build in our state’s history. Victorians deserve better. They deserve a government that is standing up for them, protecting their assets, creating jobs and bringing power back into public control. We here on this side will continue to look forward, to build up the SEC to, power Victoria’s future and prove once again that when Victorians own their energy everyone benefits.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:36): I am very pleased to rise to support Mr Davis’s motion 1141 in the house today in relation to documents for the SEC. It is a state-owned private company and therefore cannot be FOI-ed, so I believe it is very pertinent to Victorians that this chamber has the ability to scrutinise the SEC and investigate whether the SEC is living up to expectations.

My office is in Traralgon. I love the valley. It is a place I spend a lot of time. If you went down to the valley during the campaign in 2022, I remember at the time the Premier Mr Andrews and the minister for energy, Minister D’Ambrosio, popped down there. They stood in front of the closed old Yallourn power station frontage – it is a very old building – and they spoke about bringing back the SEC. While they were doing that they were handing out little show bags, calico tote bags with ‘SEC’ on them, and a whole level of paraphernalia that they thought was a winner. Clearly it was not a winner. My colleague and our member for Morwell Martin Cameron produced a hat of his own. We will call it a gimmick. He paid for it out of his own pocket, but rather than SEC standing for ‘State Electricity Commission’, it was ‘Soaring energy costs’, and that got a huge run. The people in the seat of Morwell in the Latrobe Valley viewed the gimmick, the stunt that is the SEC with cynicism and with a shrug of the shoulder on most occasions.

What they are not shrugging their shoulders at is that over the last 11 years this government has overwhelmingly abandoned the Latrobe Valley. I could give you a list as long as my arm of promises that were made and things that were broken. But the major thing about the SEC that was sold – the Premier, and we still hear it today, was selling – as creating 59,000 jobs and being a boon in the area of the Latrobe Valley. Let me explain to you that as of this week the figures are out, and only 4 per cent of the revamped SEC workforce is based in the Morwell office as at June 2025.

A member interjected.

Melina BATH: The GovHub – in fact, if you wanted to take a tray of coffee in to the SEC workforce, you could do it with one hand. This is very disappointing because we have heard government members in this place and all over the place talk about this, and there are really not the results on the board. In 2023–24 the Melbourne-based staff were 44; the Latrobe Valley staff was one single person. In 2024–25 the report says that there are 119 staff in Melbourne and five, apparently, in the Latrobe Valley.

This government has overseen the closure of many things in the valley. The unemployment rate is unfortunately one of the highest unemployment rates in the whole state. What we see constantly is this government throwing money at themes without the results. I will be very interested, because I am very sure that the Latrobe Valley Authority that has now come and gone was apparently a fabulous idea. Initially it had a purpose, which was about transitioning those workers from Hazelwood into new careers and into new jobs. They did a lot of retraining. I know one specifically was on becoming an ambulance driver for transport, and they did all the courses and then there were no jobs in the area whatsoever. We have heard promises from this government. We have heard from the Latrobe Valley Authority; it has come and gone – $300 million – at the end of its tenure and at the end of its space. Go and look it up. There is a brochure; it is a glossy brochure. There is no pathway for this government that has a direction for our people in Latrobe Valley. It was all aspirational. It was all the vibe. This is what this SEC is. Our people deserve better. I will be very pleased to see the ins and outs of these reports when they are tabled in Parliament.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:41): I am pleased to rise to speak on Mr Davis’s short-form documents motion seeking various documents and board minutes from the SEC. I am not sure what is more of an anathema to the Liberal Party, public ownership or renewable energy, because they are opposed in equal measures at different times to both. We know that they are opposed to the public ownership of energy assets here in the state of Victoria, because they sold them all off when they were in government. The rampant privatisation agenda of the Liberal Party under Premier Jeff Kennett sold Victoria’s energy assets, and Victorians paid the price over decades.

We know that the Liberal Party and the National Party are opposed to renewable energy. They are opposed constantly in this chamber, beating a path to the door to denigrate and argue against renewable energy projects across this state and the infrastructure that makes them possible. I think members of the community can legitimately be confused and concerned about what the Liberal Party in particular stands for. I think it is pretty clear where the National Party stand on renewable energy: they do not support it. I think they are particularly concerned, particularly at the moment, about what the Liberal Party thinks about renewable energy in this state and in this country, because they are witnessing from the Liberal Party federally and at a state level an opposition to renewable energy. They are opposed to projects that are delivering cheaper forms of energy with lower emissions to Victorians.

Perhaps through this documents motion, through access to various minutes that Mr Davis seeks, the material that he hopes to gain might elucidate for him a path forward and might explain better why it is that investments in renewable energy in the state of Victoria are exactly in the interests of Victorian households, because we know this government is pretty clear that a renewable energy future backed by a publicly owned SEC providing renewables into our grid is better for households because renewables are cheaper, it is better for the environment because there are fewer emissions and it is creating jobs right across this state. That is what is driving Labor’s agenda on energy. That is what is driving Labor’s policy – to have cheaper power across Victoria backed by a publicly owned SEC.

We have got no idea what the Liberal Party believes in. We have got no idea what the Liberal Party really thinks. All we hear is their opposition to renewable energy. All we hear is their opposition to renewable energy projects. All we hear is their opposition to policy frameworks that seek to reduce the pollution that comes from our energy production sector. I think it is perfectly reasonable for Victorians to be absolutely confused by what they stand for and concerned about what might come next, because there is no plan from the Liberal Party about what comes next. They do not have a plan about where future energy supplies in this state or in this nation are going to come from. They are just opposed to what Labor is doing. As I said, I do not know if their opposition stems from the fact that they are against public ownership or from the fact that they are against renewable energy. But whatever it is, whatever the reason behind their opposition to publicly owned renewable energy in this state – and maybe these documents will help clarify that for them – what we really want to see and what Victorians deserve to see is a very clear articulation about what their plans are for the future. Is it more privatisation? Is it more pollution? Is it less renewables? That is what they need to clarify to Victorian people about the future that awaits them.

Motion agreed to.