Bill Debate – National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025

I am so proud to be able to speak on the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025, because I will have an opportunity to make sure that the voice of rural and regional Victorians is heard in this place. That is something that the Allan Labor government is seeking to again gag, because step after step in the rollout of VNI West, the rollout of more renewables across the state, the Labor government have completely ignored the property rights of landholders through this area. Let us just go back to step one of what is going on with VNI West. There is a better option on the table. There is a better option which is cheaper to install, which means that it is lower costs that will be put on the energy bills of every single Victorian, because it is Victorian energy bill payers who will actually pay the price for Labor’s rush for renewables and this folly of VNI West. Plan B uses existing easements, so you do not have to cause the heartache and the pain and the anguish and the mental health issues that AEMO and the Victorian Labor government have inflicted on communities from Stawell right through to the border. You have not allowed people to have their voice heard. People have been kicked out of community meetings. I actually even heard this week – I was briefed by a council that said AEMO are planning on putting out a full-page ad to apologise to their communities that they have spoken to about how badly they have treated rural and regional Victorians. How are Labor responding to that? They are introducing legislation that would actually fine landholders for stopping these same people who are apologising for their behaviour from setting foot on their land. Labor are trampling on the rights of property owners and instead threatening a $12,000 fine instead of actually listening to them. You should be listening to your communities. I note that the member for Ripon is not in the chamber now; I would not be surprised if the member for Ripon does not make a contribution to this bill. It is her community that are speaking out. It is her community that are coming to the steps of Parliament in protest of this, and it is her community that expect her to stand up and vote against this legislation that they do not want. It is Martha Haylett’s constituents who do not want this bill, and they will judge her by her actions today. We want to hear from the member for Ripon. Where will she stand? Will she choose her party and her career over the people that she is supposed to represent in this place? We will see; time will tell. I would like to go back to plan B. Plan B uses existing easements. It is cheaper but, more importantly, it would unlock more renewables. So from what I hear, this climate change guilt that you are putting forward – that if you do not support VNI West, you are anti-climate and you are basically wanting all the farmland and all of the state parks and national parks and state forests through regional Victoria to burn – is the most disgusting emotional blackmail on regional Victorians that I have ever heard, and that is what was insinuated by the previous speaker. That is simply untrue. These people just want to have their voice heard, and how is Labor responding? They are responding by legislating that if you stand up against the Victorian government, against their plans, they will slug you with a $12,000 fine. That is not fair. We can look at the facts and know that there is a better option. We can look at the facts and know that the existing lines which link into New South Wales are brittle and aged and built to send energy in the wrong direction. That should be the priority of government. The priority of government should be to minimise the cost impost on energy bills for all Victorians, because going down a more expensive route – we have heard today that the cost for VNI West will double, which is not double for this mystery bucket of nothing. It is not the Labor government who just magically find money; it is actually Victorian taxpayers and Victorian energy bill payers who will have to pay that price. It is a huge impost. Maybe the government are looking at this as a bit of a revenue-raising exercise. They can get the $12,000 fines to compensate for the massive cost blowouts we are already seeing on a project that Victorians simply do not need. This is something that has been so frustrating for the communities that I represent and the neighbouring communities within the Ripon electorate. The frustration is that we see this rollout of renewables with very little opportunity for local people to have their say or to say, ‘We don’t want that,’ or that they want something decent in return. What do we get in return for hosting these battery projects and industrialising our land, which is otherwise a beautiful, pristine environment? It is a beautiful landscape in regional Victoria. I invite some of you to come out of Melbourne sometime and have a look at what actually happens in country Victoria, because it is a beautiful landscape when you do not have industrialisation all around you. What do we get in return for hosting all of these industrial projects for Melbourne? We get bad roads, we get cuts in our hospital services and closure of our hospital services, we do not have enough childcare opportunities or access in our communities and we do not have enough support for housing – in fact very limited housing. We get nothing in return. Let us have a look at the community benefits scheme that is outlined in this bill. What does it do? It legislates – there is a clause that says this – that the community benefits fund can go into the general revenue of government, so we do not even get any return in our regional communities for hosting this infrastructure. It is grossly unfair for a government to inflict additional infrastructure on our community when it is not the infrastructure that we want or need. We hear so often from people in regional areas that they want more infrastructure, but they are not calling for more industrial parks and they are not calling for more powerlines. We want safer roads. We want the Western Highway fixed so that it is not riddled with potholes and we finally see that duplication completed beyond the birthing tree. We want to make sure that we have got health services available in our own communities, which is something that has diminished since Labor came into power 11 years ago. Our community want to make sure there are investments in housing. We want to make sure that we are getting our fair share of all of this taxpayer money that has been taken from our communities and put into that big black hole in Melbourne called the Suburban Rail Loop. We want to see some return. Yet here we are with Labor saying they are going to establish a community benefits fund but that money can be raided at any point in time to fill the budget black hole created by Labor for Melbourne-based projects – and I bet VicGrid will take a bit of a clip of the tag on the way through. We just want our fair share, and that is not an unreasonable ask. I stand by our communities who call for that. There are so many better options than what Labor are promoting. There has been no consideration at all with VNI West or the vast number of renewables projects across the region when it comes to managing fire risk. Our CFA brigades are volunteers. They are turning out to massive bushfires like those we experienced last summer in the Grampians and in the Little Desert. They are the people that would be asked to turn out to fires at wind turbines, and we have seen that recently. We have seen a number of fires at solar farms as well with failed transformers. We have got this risk now of large batteries coming into our area, which, if they catch fire, simply will not be able to be put out. The CFA volunteers have not been engaged with. You need to make sure our people have their voices heard and not support legislation that would instead trample on their rights, silence their voices and threaten to slug them with a great big fine. That is not fair. That is not what any government should do. You are not delivering a realistic outcome. You are not delivering lower energy prices. In fact as we move more and more to renewables, our energy prices keep on going up and up and up. That is because renewables cost more money. The cost of the transmission lines is never included in any of the numbers that are quoted in the media by the government. They should be included, particularly when you get a doubling of the cost of the infrastructure that Labor are planning and that so many electrical engineers say we do not need. I stand by the community that I represent and regional people who understand that we can do better than this legislation. Rural and regional people are smart. They grow our food, they grow our fibre. They have done their research around what a better option is. They know what the solutions are and they want to have a fair deal, but they are simply not getting it from an Allan Labor government that is only focused on bulldozing away the rights of regional Victorians, who are now paying the price.