TRANSCRIPT:
I rise today to speak on the Energy and Land Legislation Amendment (Energy Safety) Bill 2025. This bill makes amendments to a series of existing pieces of legislation, including the Electricity Safety Act 1998, the Gas Safety Act 1997, the Pipelines Act 2005, the Energy Safe Victoria Act 2005 and the Land Act 1958 in addition to some other minor amendments to other acts. The main purpose of this bill is seemingly to enhance powers, penalties and regulatory frameworks within Victoria’s energy sector. This includes an increase in the penalties for contractors committing offences under both the electricity and gas safety acts as well as creating greater powers to immediately suspend these workers in the case of breaches. Additional changes to the Electricity Safety Act include expanding the requirement for bushfire mitigation plans for specified operators and proposing the abolition of the Electric Line Clearance Consultative Committee and the Victorian Electrolysis Committee.
While frameworks for improving electrical safety are incredibly important, abolishing these committees is something that is difficult to comprehend. These committees offer independent expert advice, ensuring that decisions are not solely falling on the department and the minister’s office. Removing these committees from the equation brings forward significant concerns relating to the accountability, transparent reporting and checks and balances in place that can ensure safety and trust in the energy sector is improved. The increases to both enforcement powers and penalties are also significant, and there has been minimal clarification as to why these increases have been made. One point of view might be that increasing penalties and enforcement in the energy sector would help further drive this government’s crusade against gas.
This bill imposes severe penalties that could certainly be used to undermine the livelihood of any tradesperson who attempts to get in the way of this government’s ideological goals. Ultimately this government’s pursuit of this city-centric policy has failed to consider the necessary role that gas plays as an energy source for residents in regions like mine. It is without a doubt that regional Victoria will be disproportionately impacted by the short-sighted transition, particularly through high energy bills and the fallout that comes from having an already unreliable power supply. We know that many of our regional communities are still only fitted with gas options for heating, cooking and their water. Removing gas options in these houses will only put further pressure on our electricity supply, which has regularly crumbled under the slightest bit of pressure in recent years.
I am all for the responsible transition to renewables, but how are our already struggling communities meant to survive when there are no alternatives? The financial impact on our households and businesses will be severe. Energy bills are already through the roof and further mismanagement of our energy supply will only hurt the pockets of people in our towns even more. These bill increases have significantly impacted our regional communities too, and far more than those residents in the city. A recent default tariff for AusNet, which services mostly regional areas in the east of Victoria, was $1902 for a residential household and $4388 for businesses. Meanwhile, the CitiPower tariff for metro Melbourne was just $1456 for households and $3025 for businesses. My office is contacted every week by people concerned about the impact these rising tariffs, rates and bills have on their ability to live their lives and continue operating their businesses. Our towns are crying out for some relief, but under this government the cost of living is getting so much more expensive. This will only get much worse when removing gas supply in our regional communities.
After power outages left much of the region without electricity last year, AusNet research found that electricity-only households were saddled with significantly higher costs than those that had gas connections as well. Electricity-only customers spent on average $1100 to respond to an outage, but those that had gas connections too? That was reduced to just $360. Towns like Benalla, Euroa, Longwood, Violet Town, Ruffy, Nagambie and Strathbogie are all continuing to deal with regular outages, making those figures really, really concerning during a cost-of-living crisis. These outages extend beyond bad weather and can be tracked back to issues to energy supply itself. There have been outages when it is cold, outages when it is hot, outages when it is dry, outages when it is wet, windy, calm and still. In absolutely all weather conditions we have had outages directly relating to local electricity supply.
Many of the issues in my region are due to there being a single line of power running from Benalla to Violet Town, through to Euroa and spreading out across the surrounding region, traversing 1200 kilometres of powerlines running off the longest feeder line in the state. It is pleasing to hear that a $22 million project to install a second powerline in the region is currently awaiting approval with the Australian Energy Regulator, and that some changes to the current switches are set for the near future. Despite this promising proposal, construction would likely be years away.
Just last week I held meetings with representatives from AusNet to discuss the ongoing concerns over power reliability in my region. Meetings like this have unfortunately become far too frequent, with this most recent meeting following outages the week prior that impacted 2500 households in the wider Benalla region. These unplanned outages follow several similar incidents in Euroa, Violet Town, Longwood and Nagambie in recent weeks and have left local businesses and homes so worried, and they are just buckling under the financial pressure.
While a series of upgrades have been implemented, there are still too many days where our towns are left with absolutely no power. It is incredibly frustrating for everyone that is affected by the outages and it is imperative that improvements continue to happen. Too many households and businesses in our region have suffered due to these regular and prolonged outages. People have been left unable to contact loved ones, unable to operate electric medical equipment and unable to keep their homes at an appropriate temperature during extreme weather.
Businesses have had to close. They have lost considerable stock as refrigerators are left without power and have been forced into purchasing expensive generators just to operate.
While this bill aims to make changes to our energy sector, issues remain with the execution. A lack of clarity, excessive penalties and potential overreach make this bill difficult to condone. Some amendments to the legislation have been proposed. Ideally they would make this bill much more appropriate and ensure this government was more transparent. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? This includes addressing the issue of statutorily protected consultative committees, specifically the Electric Line Clearance Consultative Committee and the Victorian Energy Safety Commission. This amendment would prevent the disbandment of these committees, ensuring the status quo is maintained. We strongly oppose the government’s continued attack on independent expert advice. We like transparency. In particular the government’s conflict with the ELCCC, which has provided advice the minister disagrees with, is concerning. The first amendment aims to preserve these committees and their statutory foundation.
The second proposed amendment addresses the government’s intentions to alter Energy Safe Victoria’s requirement to table an annual corporate plan, instead allowing it to be done every three years with updates provided annually to the minister and Treasurer. We believe the Energy Safe Victoria corporate plan in this bill should still be published, with annual updates in between also made public to ensure greater transparency – that word again that we love on this side of the house and it seems the government does not.
The last amendment addresses the bill’s power to enter into an agreement to lease unreserved Crown land that is subject to the Environment Effects Act 1978 for projects under section 134 of the Land Act 1958. This amendment includes seeking to improve transparency by adding a requirement to publish details of this prior to granting such a lease, including the value of the access to the public land, the basis of calculation and the value of the signed lease. All three of these amendments would make this bill a more considered and reasonable piece of legislation. If this bill remains as is, this is not something that we can support.