Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (20:28): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change. For the last few weeks we have heard terrible stories of suffering out of Gippsland and the ranges east of Melbourne—thousands of homes damaged and many people displaced. A constant feature of the reporting on this calamitous storm is that many residents were without power for extended periods of time, and many of them are still awaiting reconnection. The Andrews government appears to be learning nothing from such experiences. They remain committed to rolling out overhead powerlines along the Western Victoria Transmission Network Project. This is despite overhead powerlines clearly being a massive liability; just ask the poor residents of the Dandenong and Yarra ranges.

This government desperately needs to connect the burgeoning renewable energy industry in Western Victoria. However, rather than doing it properly and listening to key stakeholders—the community and landholders—they appear committed to forcing overhead lines on the citizens of Western Victoria. The proposed route cuts a swathe through productive and arable farmland. It severs a critically important biolink as well as spanning the Merrimu Reservoir, essentially closing the critical water source for use by firefighting aircraft.

Recently the Moorabool Shire Council released a report that underlined just how much of a no-brainer this decision should be and how much obfuscation and misdirection the Labor government and energy providers are engaging in. The report, compiled by well-respected power transmission and distribution consultancy Amplitude, firmly recommends that the lines be placed underground. The report clearly outlines that the underground option has the lowest social and environmental impact and would deliver a significantly more reliable and robust asset. Specifically the report outlines that there would be little to no risk of the line inadvertently starting a bushfire if it is buried underground, there would be little to no risk of power supply interruption during said fires or severe weather, there would be minimal impact on private land or current land use and there would be little to no electromagnetic field impacts.

The government and proponents have been touting that an underground option for this project would be prohibitively expensive, amounting to over 10 times the cost of an overhead line. This report has succinctly smacked this notion down, stating that the overall cost would be closer to five times the cost, which would be very easily recouped over the life of the asset. So I ask the minister: considering recent weather events in eastern Victoria and the release of this report by the Moorabool shire, will she guarantee that serious investigations will be made into placing these lines underground?