Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I rise to talk to this motion. Before I forget, I must put on the record our condemnation at this point of Peter Dutton’s nuclear strategy. Nuclear is not a solution in a country like Australia where we have ample renewable resources. It is not even a strategy that the Liberal Party at the federal level believes in. It is not a strategy to deliver nuclear. It is too expensive, it takes too long, it is simply not viable. We have to call it for what it is. It is a complete and utter dead cat. It is all about a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry. This is all about promulgating gas and promulgating an ongoing exploitation of fossil fuel resources to generate electricity and to delay and destroy the inevitable and much‑needed transition to renewables.
We put on the record our condemnation of that policy. Nuclear is not a solution. It comes with so many risks, not only a risk of catastrophic nuclear fallout and collapse, an accident as has happened around the world at different times. Nuclear waste and where we deal with the waste from these kind of facilities is an issue. It is to be condemned that the federal government inevitably looks to remote Aboriginal lands as a dumping point for nuclear waste – not only Australia’s nuclear waste, but in some cases international nuclear waste. I want to make sure that it is abundantly clear that the Greens will stand opposed to nuclear energy come what may, nuclear weapons come what may. In many ways the two go hand in hand.
I want to say that in looking at this motion, we support the need for action on climate change and the fact that it is a significant national and global issue. Tasmania is not immune. We have seen a summer where fires have ravaged our west coast wilderness areas and coastal areas, where we are unable to deal with the increase in dry lightning strikes which is happening because of climate change, the increase in the fires that occur as a result, the drier landscape and the fact that these fires spent weeks just meandering around the landscape and ultimately consuming 100,000 hectares of country over on the west coast.
The sheer scale of the destruction over there is immense. Not all of that landscape would have been fire adverse. Some of it is quite tolerant to fire and has burned before and will burn again. It is a simple fact that it burns more intensely these days because the landscape is dryer. The scale of it, the sheer extent of the fires this time is of significant concern. Irrespective of the vegetation, the scale of it and the extent of it is truly alarming.
We have had shocks here in this state before, environmental, social and economic shocks from these kind of natural disasters, from the fires and floods that keep happening. These are things that our economy and our people and our emergency services have to deal with. Sea level rise is consuming parts of our coastline. The warming waters are contributing to a whole range of issues in our coastal environments, probably not least some of the issues that are being faced by the salmon industry this year.
In Tasmania, when we look at climate change, we have to consider the global humanity, our brothers and sisters in the Pacific region. It is the poorest people of the world who have made the least contribution to climate change who suffer the greatest impact.
The Greens stand for action on climate change. We absolutely know that we need to take action, and we need to take it urgently. That is not just in a transition in the energy space. We absolutely do need to transition urgently away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but it cannot stop there.
We have to take action to end native forest logging. Native forest logging is a massive carbon contributor from this state. It is one of our biggest contributors. As we enter the autumn burn season, we will all have an opportunity to see our contribution to climate change, written large across our skies over the coming months. It is a disgusting disgrace that here in this state we are still logging native forests, the habitat of threatened and endangered species. We are burning them after we have logged them and putting massive carbon bombs into the atmosphere. It is a disgrace and it must end.
We need to be restoring degraded landscapes. They are a huge opportunity from a climate perspective, because as they recover, they will suck carbon out of the atmosphere and they will contribute to addressing climate change and storing that carbon in ecosystems. It is the same in the marine environment. We have seen the loss of our giant kelp forests and other important marine ecosystems. We need to be doing more both to protect those systems from predators such as the Centrostephanus, and to restore these ecosystems.
We need to get out of our cars, at the end of the day. I know my colleague over there, Helen Burnet, member for Clark, is a great advocate for active transport and public transport. We need to get people out of their cars. The transport sector is a huge emitter in Tasmania. We need to get people out of their cars and into buses. This government stands condemned in relation to the public transport network, particularly here in Hobart where services have been cut. We heard the question being asked this morning about an 11-year-old girl who had to stand for an hour or more, waiting for a bus to get to school, could not get it, and had to turn around and go home. We are not going to get people out of their cars and into buses if we have not got a reliable public transport system.
We need active transport systems as well. How shameful is it that here in this clean, green, clever state, we have the Minister for Transport pulling funding from an active transport initiative trial in this city, the Collins Street bike lanes. This is despite the fact that it is clear the community supports that trial and the fact that it is critical for the safety of our people. We need to get people out of their cars and into active modes of transport, and we need more things like bike lanes.
We also need renewable energy, but we need the right renewable energy in the right place and it needs to be assessed in the right way. The Office of the Tasmanian Economic Regulator (OTTER) in March 2025 published its Energy in Tasmania Report 2023-24. It has some really interesting data in it. I will quote a little bit:
Compared to 2022-23, the Tasmanian energy market experienced:
- a 1.3 per cent decrease in energy consumption;
- a 5.0 per cent decrease in on-island energy generation;
- a 9.3 per cent decrease in hydro-electric generation;
- a 31.0 per cent increase in the amount of solar energy that was exported to the Tasmanian electricity grid;
- a significant increase in gas-fired electricity generation, up from 71 GWh in 2022-23 to 221 GWh in 2023-24;
- net imports of 1 249 GWh across Basslink;
…- a 2.3 per cent reduction in the total number of residential gas customers.
What that tells us is that Tasmania, as it stands today in the year 2023-24, is certainly not 100 per cent renewable. It is certainly not necessarily leading the world. One of the reasons that Hydro’s generation was down was because there was less rainfall and Hydro’s catchments were down. To read in here:
During 2023‑2024, there was very low rainfall over Hydro Tasmania’s catchments. To preserve energy and storage levels, Hydro Tasmania reduced its hydroelectric generation, increased its gas generation and imported more energy through the Basslink interconnector.
There are some challenges in our energy system and it is clear that we are not 100 per cent renewable. We do need renewable energy and we need to have that assessed and located properly.
Solar is a huge opportunity. Let me read into here what the OTTER report says about solar:
The contribution of small-scale solar generation to Tasmania’s generation mix continued to increase, with a 49-gigawatt hour or 31 per cent increase in exports to the network compared to 2022‑2023. This growth is attributable to 4613 new solar installations in 2023‑2024 and to 2023-2024 being a particularly sunny year. Although data is not available, it is likely that commensurate increase in unmeasured on-site consumption of generation from small‑scale solar has contributed to the 1.3 per cent decrease in measured consumption in 2023‑2024.
Solar offers a huge opportunity for Tasmania. We have been on the record repeatedly here in this place about initiatives, and taken to the election initiatives, to make sure that solar panels are rolled out across public and social and affordable housing, so that those tenants and occupants of those houses can derive a benefit from what is on their roof and can save money on their power bills as a result.
People can save and we can use less energy if we are installing and creating more energy efficient properties that way. They are going to be using less energy to heat their properties or indeed to cool their properties and that will cost them less. With battery technology getting cheaper, more efficient and more accessible, the opportunities in this space are huge.
There is also large‑scale solar. I have been several times to Connorville to have a look with Roderick O’Connor at his proposal for very large‑scale solar, larger than the wind farms that we have in this state. He has done it in a really sensitive and appropriate way. He has done it on already cleared agricultural land. He has done it right next to an existing transmission line, so it does not need to be pushing transmission infrastructure through as‑yet uncompromised landscapes. It is this smart, industrial‑scale energy generation that we are really strong supporters of.
Similarly with efficiencies in Hydro – I too have been to Tarraleah a couple of times and the notion of upgrading to improve the efficiency and the use of water in some of our Hydro facilities is clearly a good one. We need to be making the most of the water that has been dammed because those rivers and environments have been lost, and we need to do better with them.
When it comes to wind, from our perspective, we are supporters of wind, but not at any cost. We have been supporters of projects over the past, but take Robbins Island for example. Robbins Island is explicitly named up in this motion as something for which they are seeking our support, together with Whale Back Ridge, which is proposed for a nature conservation reserve in the north west.
The environmental impacts of Robbins Island are really clear and, from our perspective, have not been properly dealt with.
Mr Ellis – I thought you were talking about already cleared land just before.
Mr BAYLEY – These migratory shore birds are not really interested in the cleared land, minister Ellis. There are migratory parrots. We saw a situation where the EPA itself wanted to impose a shutdown during the migration season of the parrot. Of course, there are disease‑free Tasmanian devils on Robbins Island. It is not at any cost. There are clearly costs associated with Robbins Island Wind Farm.
The State Coastal Policy – we had a cost to our democratic processes here where a reform to the State Coastal Policy and a retrospective of approval was rammed through this place within a matter of days to overcome a legal hurdle without actually letting a live court case conclude, without letting the community who was in the Supreme Court have their case heard and have the court do what courts do when there is ambiguity around law, which is make a determination. Instead, the developer clearly rang up and the government jumped, with Labor’s support, and put that legislation through this parliament.
When it comes to Robbins Island and the Aboriginal community, there are not many things Aboriginal people across the board and Aboriginal organisations are united on, but when it comes to Robbins Island it seems the case. I know the Aboriginal Land Council and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre have been implacably opposed and engaged in the process around Robbins Island, and utterly underwhelmed by the response. Also, unbelievably, the Circular Head Aboriginal Corporation has put its opposition to the Robbins Island development very clearly on the record. They say that their response is one simple ask: that Aboriginal communities across Tasmania are included in energy matters that relate to them, namely the developments associated with energy power.
Robbins Island is a living Aboriginal cultural landscape. It was somewhere that Robinson visited when he was rounding up the last of the tribal Aboriginal people when they were en route to Wybalenna at Flinders Island. It is a really special place. It is a really special Aboriginal cultural landscape, but it is a really special shared landscape for that reason as well. To think that Robbins Island has been assessed and did not even trigger a permit, as I understand it, under the Aboriginal Heritage Act.
I remind the House again, three‑and‑a‑half years ago the minister came into this House and tabled a report on the review of the Aboriginal Heritage Act that said that it did not work and it did not provide effective mechanisms of protection for Aboriginal heritage. Despite this, projects as odious from an Aboriginal heritage perspective as Robbins Island are assessed against that development irrespective.
Then there are the transmission line impacts. We know the North West Transmission Developments project has been hotly contested by communities in the north west who are concerned about those transmission projects pushing through either reserve land, forested land or land that is really important from a community perspective. This is the problem with large, industrial‑scale generation in remote areas versus what we would support when it comes to renewables, which is distributed networks.
We would like to see more smaller scale distributed community networks and batteries put on roofs around our communities. It is more resilient from a bushfire and a natural disaster perspective. It is less expensive, and as you can see from the OTTER report, with a 39 per cent increase in solar generation and uptake, it is a really popular thing as well. People want to do it because people make real savings.
When it comes to Marinus, I am sitting on a joint select committee and it is hearing some really interesting evidence. It is clear that its mind is not made up around the benefits or the value of Marinus. We heard Mr Garland come into this place yesterday and raise the issue of one industrial customer having been told that because of Marinus, its transmission costs are going to go up by 29.6 per cent – that is Grange Resources.
It is a massive project. It has cost Tasmania $100 million plus already. It is a $3.86 billion project for just stage 1. That includes the North West Transmission Developments. It is a $2.8 billion investment in stage 2, and we are yet to even see the whole‑of‑state business case.
It is absolutely impossible really to make an informed judgement that Marinus is going to be good for the state or deliver lower prices or drive a certain amount of activity, because that work is still being done. It is going to be handed down some time in May, and then we understand the government will make an investment decision some time later in the year.
Marinus from our perspective is not necessarily a beneficial project. We are not hotly opposed, but we are not supportive. We are deeply concerned about the industrialisation that it will drive across our landscapes, the sheer scale of industrial development, particularly when it comes to wind farms across our landscape. I will put those concerns on the record here and now and look forward to continuing to participate in the Select Committee for Energy.
At the end of the day, is it Tasmania’s job to drive the renewable energy transition on the mainland? On the mainland level there are similar opportunities in terms of solar generation, distributed networks in communities, energy efficiency, a whole range of different factors. With the environmental and social issues that are associated with an industrial scale rollout of energy across our landscape, there are deep concerns about that.
I am going to leave it there and I will time for other speakers. I know Mr Garland would like to get to his feet. While we can agree that climate change is a significant national and global issue and we need to develop new renewable energy power, there are other aspects of this motion that are hugely problematic. We did toy with the idea of amending but decided against it because there is a fair bit of amending to do.
From the Greens’ perspective, we will not be supporting this motion. We strongly support renewable energy. We strongly support our transition away from fossil fuels. We strongly oppose nuclear energy, but the details and the content of this motion render it unsupportable from our perspective.
