Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Deputy Speaker, I rise to talk to this motion from Mr Garland, and I welcome that and I thank you for your words. I hear your frustration in this motion and read it in point two, ‘show some common sense’. I think that speaks to the frustration that Mr Garland and many, many others, including we Greens, have been feeling about energy policy, energy strategy, the energy approach for many, many years. This motion at the heart is talking about failing, failing Tasmanians and failing our environment and to show some common sense. So, it’s obviously very hard to vote against common sense and we’ll certainly be supporting it.
I want to put on the record right up front that we are strong supporters of renewable energy. We must decarbonise our economy. We must make sure that we move away from fossil fuels and we are strong supporters of renewable energy as part of that mix, but it cannot be at the expense of the environment. It shouldn’t be a binary choice of one or the other, and we must make sure that we protect the environment as part of the development of renewable energy projects, and that’s what we’ve failed to see so often when it comes to the assessments and the locations and the propositions around these kind of developments.
It’s really clear that the government has had no strategy when it comes to energy policy for many, many years. It’s 10 years now since the energy crisis, 10 years since Bass Link broke. Hydro got effectively caught with their pants down by cashing in on the carbon price and the carbon policy of the federal government and draining the dams got snookered by some dry weather and we had an almighty crisis in this state, epitomised by the importation of diesel generators, and we really did just get through that period thanks to some of those generators, thanks to firing up the Tamar Valley gas‑fired power station, and we just got through with the skin of our teeth.
Over the course of the journey in the last 10 years since then, we’ve had things like Norske Skog, who have been unable to get a 50 megawatt contract to be able to decarbonise their plant, their facility 30 kilometres up the river from here at Boyer. That is just nonsensical at a time when, as the deputy leader of the Labor Party just said, we’re able to find hundreds of megawatts for data centres in the north of the state. In 2025, they were told there simply is not enough power. So, there’s really, clearly, a failure of strategy and policy here, and we’re seeing it play out now with Bell Bay Aluminium as well.
I’ll acknowledge 355 megawatts is a hell of a lot of power, but there’s a gap here between what Bell Bay Aluminium are prepared to pay, what Hydro are prepared to sell at $60 million a year. We understand, we are told $60 million a year over 10 years, $600 million. We don’t have the capacity in the Hydro to actually cover that and, so, we need additional support. We have heard the questions of the government about what kind of package you’ve been putting on the table federally; what are you asking for to help resolve this situation? And whatever that resolution looks like, there’s got to be transparency when it comes to this kind of power pricing.
Saul Eslake put it on the table a few weeks ago about the inherent subsidies in these big major industrial contracts. Now, we’re not huge fans of subsidies, but, if they are going to be there, let’s at least understand exactly how much it is so that people can make their own assessment about whether it’s in the public interest. Saul Eslake’s proposition is about putting them in the budget, actually make it as a cash subsidy to an entity and make sure it’s published in the budget so it’s there for all to see. Either way, however it is done, there needs to be transparency around power pricing in Tasmania because, at the moment, under the cloak of secrecy under the cloak of commercial-in-confidence, Tasmanians do not know what’s going on in their interests, and whether it’s in their interests. Same goes for Marinus Link, Project Marinus ‑ a business case and a financial investment decision that is so heavily redacted that you can’t join the dots. You cannot understand what the whole thing is built on. It’s built on report after report from department after department that then references each other, and it’s this circular argument. I’ve sat together with the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, sat on the Energy committee – and Mr Garland sat on the Energy committee – and had incredible access to people to be able to ask the questions and try to understand, and you just go round in circles because these reports and these decisions are being made and being based on someone else’s report and someone else’s report. Eventually it goes full circle and you don’t know where you’ve ended up starting. This has led to a situation where we’ve got a multibillion‑dollar development and then the North West Transmission Developments, which is a $1 billion‑plus project simply and purely on the books of Tasmania, where the costs are severely locked in, but the benefits are incredibly opaque. It is clear from our assessment, from reading the business case, from hearing the testimony in the Energy committee, that Marinus simply does not stack up, whether it be because of the cable and the costs, whether it be the North West Transmission Development or whether it be driving industrialisation across the northern Tasmanian landscape. This is where I 100 per cent concur with Mr Garland ‑ where we have energy policy completely back to front.
Mr Garland has eloquently talked about Pilitika/Robbins Island, but it is the absolute case in point that we need to be pointing to. He said we shouldn’t have to choose between renewable energy and protecting the environment, and that is 100 per cent. Robbins Island, a living Aboriginal cultural landscape, opposed unanimously by Aboriginal people, by the government’s own statutory Aboriginal Heritage Council ‑ and yet it’s approved. It’s not only approved despite the Aboriginal heritage values, but it’s approved against an act that this government knows, and came into this place five to six years ago now and said was completely inadequate. If we’re going to be assessing these developments, we should not be assessing them against legislation and processes that are demonstrably, and by their own admission, inadequate, ineffective and simply do not work. The environmental values on Robbins Island are extreme, be it the devils, be it the shorebirds, be it the parrots, they are extreme. In the time of bird flu, when there are additional pressures on these species, it is clear, and the science is really clear, that we need to be doing all we can to protect these species. Part of that is protecting their habitat. Part of that is removing threats and not introducing new threats. If ever there was a precautionary principle that needed to be taken, it’s with a project like this.
I want to just touch on data centres in the little bit of time I have left, because this is another area where government policy is kind of just completely missing in action and we’re baffled and bamboozled by different positions. We have a humongous – 25 per cent of our power – 444 megawatts are proposed by Firmus in their three data centres, and they say that ‘for every one megawatt, we’re going to build two’. What does that exactly mean? We know they haven’t built any to this point. They’ve signed a three-year contract for St Leonards with Aurora and, as far as I’m aware, I haven’t seen them put any level of proposition on the table about building another renewable energy project, be it wind or solar or anything else. It’s really clear that policy is back to front when it comes to these issues. Matt Kean, former energy minister of the New South Wales government and current CEO of the Climate Change Authority, has said you can’t have both. You can’t have Marinus Link and these supposed mega profits for Hydro that are going to be delivered through Marinus Link, and still supplying major industrials and data centres. You can’t have both. It’s just doesn’t work. I concur that that’s absolutely the case, unless we’re going to completely industrialise northern Tasmania with transmission lines and wind farms. I want to just take up something with the Deputy Premier. He said we’ve got the trifecta: we’ve got renewable, we’ve got affordable and we’ve got reliable. I just want to challenge you on the affordable issue, because it is really clear, and we’ve heard repeatedly, particularly from some of the community sector, that power in Tasmania is not affordable. We have such poor housing stock and people are in energy poverty and people are having to choose between turning the heater on and feeding their children.
