Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I will stand up briefly because I know everyone probably would not mind a short break before the bill comes on next time. I want to thank all members for their contributions. I even found the minister’s contribution engaging, not convincing, but what we are seeing here today, is a genuine collective passion for good‑quality renewable projects. We are in furious agreement when you listen to the debates about the need for new and better and cleaner power generation. We believe that it should have a social licence. We are in furious agreement with the member for Pembroke that Tasmania and the world need to decarbonise.
I encourage the member for Pembroke to talk to his federal Labor colleagues who in the past three years have approved more than 30 coal or gas mines or extensions of those mines. I would encourage the minister and the member for Pembroke to think that if you want to rapidly have an impact on lowering greenhouse emissions, you listen to the science and you end native forest logging because that would be, as we saw after the Tasmanian Forest Agreement, that has had a very significant effect on our greenhouse account and it has allowed us – the protection of our native forests since 2013 – to genuinely hold our head up in this country and say by protecting native forest, look at how much greenhouse gas we prevented from going into the atmosphere. There are ways to do this.
Minister, you read out that part of your 2030 strong plan that you claim gives you a mandate for the regulation that the Greens are moving to disallow today. You did not say in that policy ‘we are going to increase Hydro’s capacity by removing parliamentary scrutiny’ because they were the words that I was listening for from you because you said you took this to the last state election, but you did not. You took a promise to power up Hydro to the last state election, you did not take a promise to disempower parliament and remove our capacity to scrutinise large‑scale electricity generation projects.
Let us be really clear here. Although Hydro is a renewable energy generator, it still oversees the Tamar Valley gas plant, and there is nothing in the Hydro-Electric Corporation Act that requires it to stick to renewables because in its charter, the functions of the corporation are as follows –
To generate electricity.
To do all things necessary for, or related to, the generation of electricity.
To retail electricity if the minister approves, and
To perform other functions as agreed between the corporation and the minister.
There is nothing in the legislation that requires Hydro to only invest in renewables. In fact, this regulation could allow Hydro Tasmania to construct or partner in a massive gas‑fired power plant because that is what the law and the regulations say and, as we know, the company ConocoPhillips had plans, – I do not know if they are drilling yet – to drill for gas off King Island.
There is plenty of corporate interest in gas generation and that, again, creates a problem this regulation reinforces. We need to have oversight of Hydro’s decision-making and what major projects it invests in. We need to help Hydro be its best self. The other thing that has come through in this debate is massive pride for Hydro and an imperfect entity, was part of volatile, highly politicised community division around the Franklin Dam and for a very long time wielded far too much political power in this state. But that is not the Hydro of today.
I want to correct the minister who suggested that if the Greens are serious about this, then they should just get on with doing stuff. I will just remind the minister it was the former Australian Greens leader Christine Milne, Order of Australia inductee onto the honour roll, who effectively designed the price on carbon and the legislation that wrapped around it that allowed Hydro Tasmania to deliver an extra $70 million dividend to this state.
Ms Forrest – It is worth those two years.
Ms O’CONNOR – Yes and that clean energy package delivered a massive benefit because of the entity that Hydro is to Tasmania and its people. We were richer by $70 million a year for it. What the Liberals do under Abbott as soon as they got in, they smashed it up because of this antagonism towards the environment and to be honest at that time, certainly a genuine antagonism towards renewable energy. That is another great thing about this debate. We all agree that new quality renewable generation is what we need. That does not mean putting a wind farm wherever a corporation thinks it is a good idea to put one. Because unless you have some measure of social licence for a project you are going to have problems in the future. Unless you make sure parliament has an oversight role of this massive and important GBE, we run the risk of allowing massive mistakes to be made in the future by another minister potentially or this minister, hopefully not, another Hydro board in the future with another as yet unknown type of technology because the regulation does not require it to be renewable. The regulation and the act does not require it not to poison the atmosphere, for example.
I appreciated the contributions from all members. It was the words that the member for Nelson used about the responsibility we have on the behalf of the people of Tasmania that it really struck me. We know this to be true; we have this responsibility for oversight. I was here for the disallowance motion on the finfish farming regulations and spoke in favour of disallowance, but I have not watched many disallowance motions in this Chamber and I understand why they would be hard to have support for because it is almost like in a legislative and regulatory sense, time has moved on from you. You are trying to bring back that time to have a debate about why a regulation was conceived of and introduced.
I hope my colleagues here can see that. We should not give this away. We have a responsibility on behalf of the people who elected us to oversight, and I concur with the member for Murchison’s observations of how frustrating the process is for GBE hearings being filtered politically through the minister of the day. You might get your short two or three question run scrutinising, for example, the Hydro, then it moves on to the next person who might be running interference for the minister, for example.
You can sit at that GBE hearing table all day with some entities and not feel any wiser, but feel dulled in the mind when you leave because of the frustration of it. The bottom line is this. As it was confirmed in the briefing today, the act as it currently stands and section 8 has prevented nothing, has prevented no major new generating facility from getting up. The language that we heard, we had Mr Edmunds described parliament as a handbrake. We had the minister describe the parliamentary process of disallowance oversight as overly arduous and a barrier. They never have been. Not once since 1995 has this parliament stood in the way of a hydro generation project, not once in 40 years has this parliament, either House, moved to disallow an instrument tabled under section 8 of the Hydro-Electric Corporation Act.
This is a fundamental problem that the government has. They have not provided a solid rationale for this regulation. They have tried to mislead us that it is just about solar when we know it is not. It cannot just be about solar when the word solar is not written into the regulation and the regulation is black and white; clause 4(C), 300 megawatts is the limit fixed by regulation for all other forms of new generating plant, all other forms of new generating plant.
Mr Duigan – Nonsense.
Ms O’CONNOR – That is what the regulation says. All other forms, so geothermal, bioenergy, burning trees, which some of your people are right into, minister. I will close by saying this. We have been in furious agreement about a number of key principles here. What there is disagreement about is the role of parliament in overseeing Hydro’s investment decisions and construction project activity. We have been given a responsibility to do that on behalf of the Tasmanian people, the Liberal and Labor parties apparently view parliamentary oversight as overly arduous, a barrier and a handbrake. We should not accept that. Never in 40 years has this parliament been a barrier or a handbrake on Hydro’s generation projects. If this disallowance is accepted we will go back to the status quo. Then maybe the government would have the courage to come in with an amendment bill to the act itself, rather than putting rust into the act effectively by writing a regulation that basically does away with clause 8 and the oversight responsibility that was given to both Houses of the parliament by this Council in 1995.
It’s an important principle here. I personally, as someone who believes in parliament, have felt insulted by some of the language used about parliament in the debate today. That is okay. We are all grown-ups in here. This parliament has not been a handbrake on renewable projects. It is no barrier to good Hydro projects getting up, but it absolutely should be there to keep a check on arguably our most important GBE in the future. The only one that is not for sale, the sacred cow that apparently we want let out of the paddock to go feral without any parliamentary oversight of the big projects that it is likely to be investing in or partnering in in the future, and potentially in energy types that we cannot even imagine now.
Let us be careful here. Let us retain our oversight capacity and invite the government to come back with a legislative amendment, come back with something that is specific for solar, if you want us to believe it is that. Then we can have another informed discussion. Do not insult us by suggesting this regulation has any solid rationale. Do not insult us by pretending it is just for solar. Stop insulting parliament by calling us a barrier.
