Second reading
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (11:40): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Energy and Other Legislation Amendment (Resilience, Reforms and Other Matters) Bill 2026. This is somewhat of an omnibus bill in the energy space, but there is some important stuff in here and some issues that we certainly have concerns with. There are few issues in regional Victoria at the moment that are more contentious than energy in a whole range of factors, and this bill covers quite a few of them. The resilience reforms are of particular importance or concern to my electorate.
The member for Monbulk highlighted the impact of the June 2021 storms on her electorate, and I think October 2021 as well. We had subsequent storms in 2024, particularly the mini tornado that hit Mirboo North, or the Boonado, which the locals sometimes refer to it as, which was far more significant and localised than any of the other storms, which were devastating and did massive amounts of damage, as the member for Monbulk indicated. I think she said 20,000 trees in her electorate – I would be surprised if I did not have 200,000 trees damaged, frankly. There were some parts of the Strzeleckis where entire plantations were wiped out. Again as the member for Monbulk described, they did look like giant matchsticks in that area. But in the Strzeleckis, particularly on the southern side of the Strzeleckis, there were just trees down everywhere and subsequently powerlines down everywhere. It was an unusual south-easterly storm, which the trees and the forests and the farmland do not normally cop in Gippsland. We normally get south-westerlies or northerlies or easterlies, but the south-easterly clearly had an impact and took out many, many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of trees and at the same time powerlines.
It was a wake-up call, I guess, on the question of resilience, for AusNet in our neck of the woods and for other distributors and transmission line operators, because in some areas we had people that were off for a week. We had dairy farms that were off for three and four days, and at that point some still did not have a backup system. I think pretty much every dairy farmer now does, because they cannot afford to be without power for 24 hours or more, and that storm really did impact them. The Mirboo North storm was not just Mirboo North; it did hit quite a wide area, but the intense impact straight through the town of Mirboo North was something to behold. If you did actually go and see it at the time, even if you had seen the photos and the film or the video of it, nothing prepared you for what it actually looked like in person.
I remember talking to AusNet the day after it occurred, about getting powerlines picked up and getting them in there to get it fixed, and the message clearly had not got through. A couple of days later I mentioned there were still powerlines on the road, to which the AusNet staff member said to me, ‘Oh, don’t be going anywhere near powerlines on the road.’ And I said, ‘Mate, they’ve been down on the road for three days now.’ Virtually the entire power grid in Mirboo North was taken out. There were concrete power poles that were literally snapped in half, Acting Speaker Addison, and you might have seen them when you visited. There were others that were broken off at the base and teetering, just held up by the wires from other poles, so it was a massive issue.
I did call, back in 2021, for a review. The government did undertake an electricity distribution network resilience review after that, but it was very poorly advertised. Indeed when I asked the minister at the time how it was advertised and who gave feedback, I think there was a public information session or feedback session in Traralgon, and I think it was six people that provided feedback. Given that Traralgon had not been particularly badly impacted, I do not know that they necessarily got the views of those that were most impacted. Nonetheless, this is one of the outcomes of that review. I have no problem with the resilience reforms. I would have thought, as a principle, that the distribution companies would be doing exactly what is proposed here in having a resilience plan and making sure that they stick to it.
The broader issue that I want to raise is that of resilience and the performance of the network more generally. I am getting repeated complaints about blackouts in the network in the electorate of Gippsland South. There are concerns in places like the Tarra Valley, Yarram, Woodside, Mcloughlins Beach and Woodside Beach. I get complaints from Loch and Nyora, the Poowong area, the Buffalo area near Fish Creek and Meeniyan, which have had multiple blackouts over the last period of time. Some of the excuses provided by AusNet are implausible, and some of them are genuine and they have worked to address them, but I am concerned that not enough is being done by the distribution companies to ensure longer term resilience. We saw concerns also in the recent heatwaves that we have had, particularly on the catastrophic fire day, where there were rolling blackouts in certain areas. In one area in particular, Central Gippsland, originally a text message went out to customers that indicated it was the result of a direction by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which clearly got many of my constituents hot under the collar, who felt that they were losing power for grid stability to ensure that Melbourne was kept on. AusNet subsequently advised that that text had been sent in error and that it was in fact a fault on the line to Bairnsdale that had caused the blackout. There is a fair bit of scepticism in our community about that explanation, I have got to say. There are a fear and a scepticism that country areas, particularly the less populated ones, are the first to be switched off to ensure grid stability and that blackouts do not occur elsewhere in the system. That is something that I think they probably have good reason to be concerned about.
It goes then to the point where in this legislation the government is making some changes with respect to VicGrid’s powers. There are probably not too many agencies or organisations that have had more legislation in the last couple of years than VicGrid. Some of that is progressive reform, and some of that is the government messing up and having to go back and clean up its messes. The single biggest mess of course was last year’s legislation on VicGrid that gave them and their agents the power to force their way onto private land and threaten farmers with $12,000 fines if they had the temerity to defend their land from that access. This is after both the Premier and the Prime Minister said, ‘We acknowledge we’ve been doing this wrong and we’ve been disrespecting regional communities.’ Well, Premier, the way to respect regional communities is not to say, ‘We’ve got it wrong, but we’re now going to bring in legislation that’s tougher and will result in you being fined.’ I find that in this legislation as well. We have had the government establish renewable energy zones. This legislation we are debating today will give flexibility to make new renewable energy zones where there is not one yet declared and where there is existing sufficient transmission infrastructure. So in effect the government is saying, ‘We can just make a renewable energy zone wherever we feel like it.’ In that case, what the hell is the point of them? That really is the question for me. I do not understand what that is.
Second to that are the changes to the assessment process that effectively give the ability for some ‘limited class of transitional projects’ to not have to go through the same processes that are required, particularly for community engagement, for projects in renewable energy zones. While I understand there might be some that are further progressed and that have got a different set of circumstances, no is our response to that. They should not be subject to different community engagement processes, because it is a very big issue in regional Victoria, and certainly in the west of the state at the moment. It has been a big issue in the south-west and in Gippsland for a long time, and we have been dealing with this. I have said so many times in this place that we cannot continue to have a situation where regional areas bear the brunt of the bad parts of renewable energy development and the city only gets the benefits, and so we need to do better on that. We need to actually make sure that if this is going to happen, firstly, regional communities are respected and, secondly, they get benefits out of these projects and that their communities, their landscapes and their farms in particular are not adversely affected. That is why the Nationals and Liberals have committed to introducing a strong test about the impact on farmland from these projects, and I am concerned that this legislation will actually make that worse.