Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the wild storms which have caused enormous damage and had a huge impact on my home state of Victoria over the past 24 hours. Deputy Speaker Chesters, I know you, as a regional member, are well aware of the impact of these storms right across our regional communities. Firstly, I do want to acknowledge the tragic loss of life which has occurred in Mirboo North, with the death of a local farmer as a result of the storms. For those members in this place whose communities are still facing danger right now, I pass on my enormous sympathies, and my thoughts are with you. Obviously, there are bushfires still active in the communities surrounding the seats of Wannon and Mallee, bordering the seat of Ballarat and also near Bendigo. I want to acknowledge that we have lost a life already, as well as to appeal to those people now involved in the clean-up—householders and residents—to please take care. The clean-up after these major storm events is often as dangerous as the storm itself. There have been many occasions in the past where trees have fallen on people who have been involved in the clean-up activities, so please take care as you undertake that clean-up work.

In that same vein, I need to acknowledge the extraordinary effort of our emergency services crews, our volunteers from groups like the SES and the CFA, the professional crews, the shire contractors, the shire workers themselves, people involved in the clean-up activities, and the crews that are out there right now trying to restore power and telecommunications networks across the state. These people are out there doing an incredible job, working against the clock in cleaning up after nature's ferocious storm swept across our state.

It's worth reflecting that we got to this point as a direct result of large transmission lines coming down, which tripped four units at Loy Yang in my electorate of Gippsland and forced load shedding and disruption to power across hundreds of thousands of homes. As we stand here tonight, there are still thousands of Victorians experiencing another night without power and with unreliable communications. It's also worth reflecting that the Loy Yang Power Station is still an incredibly important part of the energy mix in my home state of Victoria. In fact, we still receive in Victoria in the order of 60 per cent of our generating capacity from a brown-coal-fired power station in Latrobe Valley. It's an incredibly important part of the energy mix in my home state. In the light of this storm event, it's inevitable there'll be conversations about energy security and reliability. I am concerned that there is a reckless rush to transition to renewable energy at the expense of reliable baseload energy. We need to make sure we get the balance right. By no means am I someone who doesn't believe in the importance of renewable energy, but I also understand you need to have a reliable and affordable source of energy for households, for families trying to meet their family budget, and for business and industry and manufacturing. They need a reliable and affordable source of energy.

We've got to learn some lessons from storm events like this. The conversation now in large parts of regional Australia is becoming quite heated around the transmission lines associated with establishing new renewable energy locations. Part of that conversation is around the fact that there is no plan whatsoever to put those transmission lines underground. The very cause of this dramatic disruption to Victoria today has been the major failure of transmission lines causing the Loy Yang units to trip and disrupting power supplies right across the state. We need to have this conversation about undergrounding transmission lines. It was one of the recommendations of the Black Saturday bushfire royal commission. We understand as regional people that quite often bushfires are starting as a result of powerlines being disrupted, sparking and causing fires, which then spread and cause enormous damage, including loss of life. There's a huge logistical challenge on right now right across parts of my electorate of Gippsland to simply restore power because of the damage caused by trees falling over powerlines and the disruption that is then causing the community.

This disruption is something that people need to think about. People need to think about how these disruptions occur. When the power goes out you can no longer operate the petrol bowser, so fuel becomes a problem in some of my towns. When the power goes out, the EFTPOS machines aren't working either because the telecommunications network is compromised, so people who don't have cash are having trouble doing transactions. When the power goes out, you have issues at supermarkets with a rush on food. When the power goes out, householders with food in the fridge or food in the freezer start to worry about the wastage. These are all important considerations with an event like this. I do wish the crews all the luck in the world as they go about trying to re-establish power to vast numbers of impacted communities, which are almost inevitably some of the most remote locations and smaller country towns in Victoria.

I know for a fact that there are towns and communities in my electorate right now who don't even have access to triple 0. If there were an emergency, they wouldn't be able to call triple 0 to get some help. So I appeal to people in my community who may be listening on the radio or something else to make sure you check in on your friends and family. Do a welfare check on those in your neighbourhood to make sure that they're okay. Check on your friends at this difficult time.

We are very dependent on our telecommunications. Some will have battery backup; others won't. They're supplying generators to try and restore the power. But, without the energy being provided to those telecommunications towers, a whole range of other impacts are felt throughout the community, and there are still thousands of Victorians, thousands of Gippslanders, who are without power tonight.

On the bright side, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, as you well know, regional people are practical, resilient people. We've been through very similar events in the past, and most people have a bit of a backup plan. But there are some lessons here for the Victorian government to learn. Whose stupid idea was it to introduce a ban on gas connections to new households in Victoria? What a spectacularly stupid idea by the environment minister. Right now in Gippsland, with no power, people are using their gas stoves. They've got an alternative source of energy. But in the future, if there are no gas cooktops in these houses, when there's no power, what will people do? We've got to plan a more resilient system. It's complete madness for the Victorian minister to be banning gas connections to new households in Victoria and making people dependent on only one form of energy.

Those on this side of the House are determined to play a practical role in the energy debate in this country. We understand how important a reliable and affordable source of energy is not just for Victoria but for every state. What we saw yesterday in Victoria, ironically, was that there was plenty of wind around, but there was too much wind, so the wind turbines didn't work. Wind turbines simply don't work when you exceed the specifications. Again, having a weather dependent form of energy in the future, without the reliability of the baseload supply from other sources such as coal or gas, is complete economic and, I would say, social madness which will cause enormous problems, going forward.

I will give you an example from a friend of mine I was just talking to tonight. He'd dropped into one of the hardware stores and he reported to me—what a surprise—they'd sold out of generators. People have been down there today buying generators. They've sold out of any camping gas cookers. Again, people are preparing to be without power for an extended period of time. The staff at the hardware store were showing customers around by torchlight, and they were giving them handwritten receipts and writing down the details of their credit cards. People without cash were still able to buy things, and I thank the hardware store operators for doing that to allow the economy to still function. But at some point they're going to have to reconcile all those purchases. Handwritten receipts will have to do for now. I think we're finding cash is king in Gippsland right now. A lot of people are relying now on cash to make even the most basic purchases.

So we do need a resilient system when it comes to energy. The events in Victoria over the last 24 hours have certainly exposed some of the fragilities of—and perhaps shown a lot of us to not take for granted—the systems we have in place, because, when they go down, it becomes very difficult for our community to function. We've got to have this debate without the zealotry. Just forget about the zealotry. There are people at the extremes of the debate on both sides. Forget the zealots. Work out practical systems that are reliable and affordable for the Australian community.

Speaking of zealotry, I want to use my remaining time in the debate tonight to reflect a little bit on the native hardwood timber industry in the state of Victoria, or the former native hardwood timber industry in the state of Victoria. The decision made by the Andrews government and endorsed by the Allan government was based on science—political science. There wasn't an ounce of environmental science behind the decision to ban the harvesting of all native hardwood timber in my home state of Victoria.

Deputy Speaker Wilkie, your home state of Tasmania has a third of the timber available to it that Victoria has—a third. Victoria's got three times as much timber on public land. There are now logs being harvested in Tasmania, floated across Bass Strait, processed in Victoria into high-value products and sold into the Melbourne market. So supply is still being met. Demand is still there for this product, but it is complete environmental madness to think that Victoria taking timber from other places is the best way to manage our future demand for hardwood timber in my home state. When it comes to timber, there are two choices: you use your own wood or you use someone else's. The Victorian government, in an act of complete political bastardry, shut down the entire industry in six months and committed Victoria to just taking wood from other places. Now Victoria brings in timber from Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland, and our net imports of timber vastly exceed our exports. We are just taking timber now from countries with lower environmental protocols and selling it off in the Melbourne market.

Right now there is a very impressive project in the heart of Melbourne: the St Kilda Pier. It is a beautiful project, a great project, a multimillion dollar project. The timber for that project is coming from North Queensland and the Northern Territory. It is madness to think that a state with three times the timber resources of Tasmania will not be using any of the hardwood timber on public land into the future. I'm sure that at some point in the future reality will strike and a new government with half a brain in its head will work out a policy that allows the hardwood timber industry to be restored, but who in the private sector is going to invest in that industry, going forward, with the risk of a state government potentially shutting them down again? Who is going to put the money up?

The big issue is not only the loss of jobs, which is significant enough. It's not only the fact that we're now raiding other countries and other states for our timber supply. The other big loss is the very people I talked about in my first comments here today: the volunteers at the CFA and the SES—the people out there with chainsaws, clearing roads to get access to properties. These are people with practical bush skills. When they lose their jobs, they don't stay around. They've got no reason to stay around. If there's no job for them anymore, these people with practical bush skills will leave my community. We're already seeing that. People with skills in the bush, people who can use heavy equipment, people who have knowledge and understanding of how the forest can be managed—they're going to leave, and they are leaving, because there are no jobs for them in the hardwood timber industry.

Particularly in times of emergency, you can't replace them with someone who just jumps in a bulldozer once or twice a year over summer to clear a firebreak. We find that, during emergency situations, the contractors who work in the timber industry are the ones who have the skills to keep our communities safe. They have the practical bush skills. They know how to use the harvest equipment and the bulldozers—the large equipment—to keep our communities safe. Those people won't be there anymore.

Those are the social, economic and environmental consequences of a political decision to shut down the hardwood timber industry for one reason only: Greens preferences in the city. There is no science to justify shutting down the entire hardwood timber industry in Victoria, only political science. It was all about gutless Labor MPs in my home state of Victoria not having the courage to stand up for blue-collar workers. Not one of them in the federal or state parliament lower house had the guts to stand up for blue-collar workers, because they've sold their souls for Greens preferences. That has been the most appalling decision I've seen a government make in my 15 years as a member of parliament. There is no logic behind it, and we're seeing massive social and economic disruption in my community of Gippsland. The environmental consequences of a poorly maintained natural bush reserve in the future will be felt by all of us.

Leaving the bush unattended and unmanaged is a recipe for disaster. All of the bushfires which occurred in the Black Summer in my community started on public land. They all started by natural causes—lightning—when the bush was dry after a long season of drought weather. It's poorly managed public land that is the worst neighbour to have if you're living in a community in Gippsland. If they don't have resources on the ground to do that practical work, my communities are put at greater risk. I say as a matter of philosophy and a matter of principle that, if my community is expected to be the custodian of a vast public land estate, it should get jobs associated with managing that public land estate, whether it's through a sustainable and world-class timber industry or natural resource management activities to keep our communities safe. I thank the House.

See this speech in context