Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Economy and Infrastructure Committee

Inquiry into the Closure of the Hazelwood and Yallourn Power Stations

Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:19): I am really pleased this afternoon to speak on the inquiry into the closure of the Hazelwood and Yallourn power stations, and particularly the minority report that I wrote on behalf of The Nationals and the Liberals. If you turn to the back of the report, on about page 165 you will find the minority report.

I moved the motion for this inquiry in Parliament back in March last year. EnergyAustralia came out and said that they would close Yallourn by 2028 in the transition out of coal-fired power stations. What happened in here was that Dr Cumming, Mr Meddick and the Labor members decided to vote against that inquiry—it was an inquiry to unpack and to let local business, industry and community group voices have a say about the future of their region—which is astounding, but there it is. I thank the other members of the crossbench and indeed my team here for passing it, and we had that subsequent inquiry, with approximately 60 submissions. Again I thank people from all walks of life and all opinions for their very interesting submissions, and I thank them for also coming forward and putting themselves forward to speak at the inquiry. I would have actually liked to have seen more hearings, but we will take what we are given.

Now, I wrote a minority on behalf of The Nationals and the Liberals because there were some major flaws. First of all, and not surprisingly, even though the government did not want the inquiry they then stacked the inquiry, and there was an imbalance in the material presented in the committee report. It ignores a large proportion of expert evidence. Experts can be people who live in the valley; they also can be people who have worked in industry there for many, many years. It lacked expert advice.

Anything or anyone that was particularly critical of the Andrews government, guess what, did not get a run in the committee report. And if there was an unpacking of the way the Latrobe Valley Authority ran either its worker transitional services or the worker transfer scheme or about some of the grants that went out, rather than looking at these and analysing what went wrong and how things could be done better, because there is going to be a need for those sorts of services and future investments and collaborative work with industry and business to establish new jobs, the government shut it down and voted them out.

The committee also really did not look at the information, the data and the practical experience and positive suggestions made in some of these submissions. They just put them to the side. As usual, the government will always speak to what it has done well. When challenged on the number of jobs that it created, 4000 jobs—well, we know over the last 10 years the Latrobe local municipality, the LGA, has lost in that vicinity of jobs. So at the moment it is net, but the problem that the committee report did not look into was that in actual fact they said that they have created them but they have not been able to substantiate whether they are long-term jobs or whether they are one-off construction jobs for social infrastructure. Social infrastructure deserves to be on the plan too, deserves to be in our region and deserves to be there from a bucket of money, but we need a plan, Latrobe Valley needs a plan. We need a plan, and we need it to be rigorous. The government have put $292 million so far through the Latrobe Valley Authority through various programs, and they do not have a plan.

Now, our region is transforming. We want it to transform. We need it. There will be a multitude of transformational jobs as we come on. What about recycling of renewables and manufacturing of solar panels? These could be some of the things they look at. The government has brought out smart specialisation. It is a wonderful, trendy word, and the person that spoke to us about it spoke about growing algae in East Gippsland. Well, how does that relate to transitioning jobs in the valley? These people are really important. They have driven our economy in the past, and I certainly will have more to say. I suggest that the committee and this house take a little time and have a look at it. I have not been political; I have been constructive. On this side of the house we want to be constructive about how we move forward, and I am really pleased with and I call on the house to read this minority report.