Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table a letter from Graeme York, Chief Executive Officer of International Power, the owners and operators of Hazelwood power station in Gippsland.

Leave granted.

There is going to be a protest at Hazelwood on 12 and 13 September. We do not have a problem at all with people protesting, but we do have a problem with misinformation. The activist website and promotional material claim that Hazelwood was due to be shut down this year because of excessive carbon emissions. This is not true. Hazelwood was sold to a consortium including International Power in 1996, with a projected 40-year life to 2036. In 2005 the Victorian government endorsed the environmental effects statements on the relocation of the Morwell River and Strzelecki Highway to enable Hazelwood to gain access to coal it had already purchased in 1996. That decision reaffirmed the business life of Hazelwood to at least 2030. In making this decision, the government imposed a cap of 445 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from Hazelwood over its remaining operating life. International Power are fully committed to operating within that limit.

It has also been claimed that Hazelwood is a dangerous, polluting and outdated way to make electricity. Again, this is untrue. Hazelwood power station operates under a strict EPA and other licences which ensure it has minimal impact on the environment. The reality is that since 1996 the Hazelwood business has reduced its CO2 intensity by 10 per cent, representing a saving to date of more than 15 million tonnes of CO2. International Power have invested more than $500 million on environmental and thermal efficiency improvements across the business in this time, including the development of wetlands and preservation of native grasslands.

Perhaps the most mischievous claim of all is that Hazelwood is the world’s most polluting power station. This erroneous claim has been based on a discredited WWF report prepared in 2004, which claimed that Hazelwood is the industrialised world’s most polluting power station. This biased report excluded all smaller thermal and cogeneration plants, relied upon incorrect WWF produced data, and excluded all plants from major developing economies, such as India and China.

Brown coal fired power stations account for 94 per cent of Victoria’s energy needs. This low-cost and reliable form of baseload electricity generation has underpinned the development of the state as Australia’s manufacturing heartland and will continue to do so for many decades to come. Right now there are no alternative technologies capable of delivering the baseload power generation. IPR is the largest independent electricity generator in Australia, with investments in coal, gas and wind businesses as well as an electricity retail business. International Power is one of the world’s largest owners of wind generators. The Hazelwood business supports 900 jobs, supplies up to 25 per cent of Victoria’s electricity needs and, along with other Latrobe Valley generators, contributes some $800 million annually to the regional economy.

These stations are very important to my electorate, to Gippsland, to Victoria and to Australia. We have thousands upon thousands of years of a very good resource available to us. We should not let it go. (Time expired)