Constituency Question
Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (14:45): (6408) My question is to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and I want to know when the government will be able to guarantee a reliable and efficient electricity service. My constituents in the areas of Devon North, Tarra Valley and Won Wron in the last week have suffered four or five different power outages. We have been in touch with AusNet over what the issues are, and there are some issues there. But this comes a year almost to the day after the disastrous storms last year that saw many of my constituents offline for over two weeks. The government has undertaken a review, and I have been calling for that to be made public and to allow the public to have their say and have since, just recently, been advised by the minister that in fact that has now closed and that only a select group of the public were allowed to be involved in that review. I need to know: what are the results of that review, and what is the government doing to actually improve the resilience of our power system so that we are not constantly suffering blackouts, like the people of Devon North, Tarra Valley and Won Wron have done this week?