Labor has no real intention of reviving the SEC and the cheap, plentiful, reliable power it brought

Daniel Andrews has no real intention of bringing back the SEC as we knew it but what he’s promising will plunge us into huge debt.

“Bringing back the SEC” is the Great Big Lie of Dan Andrews’ election campaign.

Andrews has no more intention of really bringing back the SEC – the former government-owned State Electricity Commission – than he would of bringing back its twin, the old Gas and Fuel Corporation.

That’s to say, actually recreating the SEC which for more than half a century provided Victorians with cheap, plentiful and utterly reliable electricity from coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley.

Just as the Gas and Fuel provided households and businesses with cheap, plentiful and reliable gas from the vast and now all-but-extinct gas fields of Bass Strait.

Extinct, because the Andrews government – and, to be fair, the preceding Liberal government as well – has done everything it could to stop new gas fields being found and developed.

Premier Daniel Andrews has been spruiking the return of the SEC but in what form we don’t know. Picture: Ian Wilson

If the Premier is promising to “bring back” anything, it is actually the huge debt of the “Guilty Party” – the Cain-Kirner Labor governments of the 1980s.

That debt actually forced incoming Liberal premier Jeff Kennett to sell the SEC and the Gas and Fuel to relieve the state’s taxpayers of the crippling interest bill on the debt.

That crucial move regained Victoria its triple-A credit rating and set up a 20-year cycle of responsible fiscal management.

It locked in both Liberal and the Labor governments of Steve Bracks and John Brumby to an absolute core commitment to budget surpluses and keeping the debt low and the interest bill manageable.

Now, of course, the debt has exploded – heading for $200bn and about $30,000 for every single Victorian, and more than the total debts of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined.

Ominously, Victoria’s credit rating has already been slashed to double-A – meaning we will pay more in interest every year, pretty much forever, than if we were still at Triple-A.

Critically, that figure is before the debt will at least double when the exploding cost of the Suburban Rail Loop is added.

The independent Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated the costs of just the first two – of the planned three – stages will be at least $125bn.

The one thing Labor will bring back is huge debt, like that which caused the sell-off of the SEC in the first place. Picture: Ian Wilson

The Andrews government has, of course, refused to provide any of its own figures ahead of the election.

Add the inevitable further rises with inflation and project issues, and the cost of the third stage, and the loop’s total cost is all but certain to go past $200bn.

That means a total state debt of at least $400bn – some $60,000 for every single Victorian.

Then add on the cost of the Premier’s proposal to “bring back the SEC”.

Who knows what that exactly means, as it has seemingly been plucked desperately out of thin air as the campaign has proceeded and the Premier’s and Labor’s poll ratings have slid.

It seems to mean that the state will build all the future wind turbines and solar panels as the Andrews government goes about destroying the actual power stations that were at the core of the old SEC and its cheap, plentiful and reliable electricity.

Is it intended to build – and, obviously, pay for – all of them? Some of them?

Power was cheap, plentiful and utterly reliable from coal-fired power stations.

And what about the existing ones? Is this future “Andrews SEC” – or should that be just the AEC, the Andrews Electricity Commission – going to nationalise all of them, making a wind and solar state monopoly?

Then there are the mega-batteries that have to be rolled out in their hundreds; all the power lines that have to be strung from all those scattered turbines and panels, as opposed to main lines out of the Latrobe Valley.

All of it costing tens of billions of dollars to get that supposedly “free” electricity to users.

So when we get to this Andrews-created future of a mega $500bn-plus state debt – equal to about half the entire national debt – unlike in the 1990s there will be nothing of any real value to sell off to cut back on the by-then crippling interest bill.

An only slightly smaller Big Lie from Andrews is that the 1990s sale of electricity assets was a bad deal for the state and for consumers.

No, it was in fact brilliant. It delivered nearly $40bn to slash the state debt, and it locked in low electricity prices to households and businesses. These low prices continued all the way until the Andrews government forced the closure of Hazelwood and committed to destroying the other power stations as well.

I guess, in a bizarre way, we should thank the Premier for telling us exactly the future that a re-elected Andrews government would deliver to Victorians.

It is one of massively escalating debt and an annual interest bill, and a government-owned and operated electricity system with sky-high prices, and brownouts and full-on blackouts.

Originally published as Labor has no real intention of reviving the SEC and the cheap, plentiful, reliable power it brought