Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria)

My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and concerns the anger felt by many residents of Moorabool shire about the state government’s failure to engage with them on two threats to their quality of life.

The first is the bid by the Maddingley Brown Coal site in Bacchus Marsh to accept contaminated soil from the West Gate Tunnel Project. The scale of the proposed dumping and its proximity to residential property and schools is the cause of huge alarm, as is the threat to local watercourses and the vast and prized agricultural production they support. Constant heavy truck traffic would destroy the quality of life of this small town, and the health consequences of PFAS contaminated soil dumped so close to human habitation are not adequately understood.

You only have to visit beautiful Bacchus Marsh to see the beautiful Avenue of Honour, which would be degraded by incessant truck movements; to note the fertile agricultural land which surrounds the site; to appreciate the proximity to houses; and to understand the hilly nature of the MBC site, which makes run-off impossible to control.

Residents feel ignored by a government hell-bent on ramming this project through in a desperate bid to stop their flagship infrastructure project sinking beneath waves of mismanagement and incompetence. Decisions have been centralised, information withheld. Even Moorabool Shire Council have been kept in the dark.

The complete unsuitability of the site does not seem to matter, as long as it can be readied fast enough. Even the law of the land is altered to speed the project. The minister’s recent statutory rule, made at a time when Parliament was not sitting, makes the dumping of tunnel-bored soil quicker and cheaper, removes the need for public consultation on disposal sites and precludes legal action against their approval.

The second issue affects not just Moorabool, but communities all the way across to Ararat. The Western Victoria Transmission Network Project will see overhead powerlines scar 190 kilometres of our landscape, destroying historic family farms, ruining livelihoods, despoiling the environment and increasing fire risk.

Necessary because this government has failed to match its commitment to renewable energy with honesty about the transmission network it requires, this rushed proposal is a desperate attempt to remedy a failure in forward planning which shames the state.

Good government needs honest government, but in these cases no sincere attempt has even been made to explain to communities why they must suffer this infrastructure for the greater good.

The minister has failed to reply to my most recent letters on either subject, so the action I seek here is her agreement to accompany me on a visit to those affected by both projects. She should see with her own eyes the impact they will have, and, if she still so believes, explain to those affected why there is no alternative.