State of chaos after new Hastings blunder by Victorian minister
A Victorian minister has been caught making incorrect claims about the state’s troubled Port of Hastings renewable energy terminal.
A Victorian minister has been caught making incorrect claims about the state’s troubled Port of Hastings renewable energy terminal, just two days after the Premier wrongly stated that the proposal had been through state government environmental approval processes.
Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos told a press conference on Thursday that he understood the state government had only received a “summary” of his federal counterpart Tanya Plibersek’s rejection of its proposal, and was still waiting for her full reasoning.
But Ms Plibersek’s 12-page statement of reasons was published on the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s website on Friday, at the same time as her decision to find the project “clearly unacceptable” was made public.
The Australian understands it was also sent to the state-owned Port of Hastings Corporation on Thursday, ahead of the decision being published.
Mr Dimopoulos’s claim comes after Jacinta Allan on Tuesday stated multiple times that the Hastings proposal had already passed through state government environmental approval processes.
The Premier’s office later conceded that the approval processes remain ongoing, with documents published on the state Planning Minister’s website showing that she referred the project for a yet-to-be-completed environmental effects assessment on October 11.
Ms Allan on Tuesday said she was “confident” that the environmental risks to internationally significant wetlands which form the basis for Ms Plibersek’s veto can be “mitigated”.
Asked whether he shared Ms Plibersek’s confidence, and how the state government intended to mitigate the environmental risks, Mr Dimopoulos was unable to say.
“My understanding is that we have a, effectively a summary of the decision. We don’t have the full decision yet, so it’s hard to give you an answer to that question without having the actual details of the reasons the federal government said no,” he said.
Mr Dimopoulos said the Hastings site had been chosen due to its location and existing infrastructure.
“Let’s understand what the decision is before we then commit to whether we stay on that site. But your question is, how do we mitigate it? Well, we need to find out what they’re concerned about in detail, before I can give you an answer on how to mitigate it,” he said.
The Western Port wetlands which surround the Hastings site have been listed under the UN’s Ramsar convention for decades, and the Victorian government itself cited the listing in vetoing AGL’s proposal for a gas terminal at nearby Crib Point in 2021.
Asked how the government could not have been aware of the potential environmental impact on the wetlands, Mr Dimopoulos said: “Nothing’s binary on these things.”
“Biodiversity protection, environmental protection and clean energy projects can coexist. So nothing’s binary. You can’t just make a decision that just because something is a particular site, that it has no opportunity for any clean energy projects. I don’t accept that,” he said.
“I think what we need to understand is what exactly is the detail of the decision in relation to mitigation, or what the decision detail is, then whether there are mitigation efforts we can make, that would make the (federal) government feel more comfortable. If that’s not the case, then we’ll move on to another site, but that’s premature. We don’t know at this stage.”
Asked why Mr Dimopoulos had said Victoria had only received a “summary” of Ms Plibersek’s decision, when the full reasons have been published online, a government spokeswoman said the Minister had been referring to the need for further discussions between state and federal departments in order for a fully informed decision to be made about the way forward.
Mr Dimopoulos’s comments come after Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio took aim at the federal government, accusing it of assuming that the development of offshore wind farms would “magically sort itself out”.
“If we had a national plan with national targets and national funding and national co-ordination, then we wouldn’t have had this problem with the port,” Ms D’Ambrosio told Nine newspapers.
“The Commonwealth can’t expect to simply issue a bunch of offshore wind exploration licences and then just sit back and think the states will do absolutely everything else”, she said. “Every other country in the world that is rolling out offshore wind is doing it under national leadership.”
Asked whether Ms D’Ambrosio was right, or whether Victoria had failed to do its homework before attempting to build in a Ramsar wetland, Anthony Albanese said his government would “work through those issues constructively with the Victorian government.”
“We need to make sure that the objectives are met to provide for Victoria’s energy needs, whilst making sure that the environment is also subject to appropriate protections, and I’m sure that those issues can be worked through, as the (federal Energy) Minister (Chris) Bowen has said, and in discussions that I’ve had with Minister Plibersek as well,” the Prime Minister said.
Mr Bowen said he would continue to work with the Victorian government.
“We have an MOU which outlines that we work closely on offshore wind and I very much support Victoria’s targets and plans,” he said.
“They have a role to play, we have a role to play. But nobody has suggested or would suggest that any application should not go through environmental approvals regardless of targets or anything else.
“It has to go through environmental approvals and pass the test and tick the boxes. If it doesn’t then it won’t proceed.”
In a joint statement, federal opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien and environment spokesman Jonno Duniam said Ms D’Ambrosio had “aptly described the shallow thinking behind federal Labor’s entire climate and energy plan.”
“The overruling of the Victorian government’s Port of Hastings project has exposed the bare fact that the Albanese government has no co-ordinated approach when it comes to meeting its renewables target,” Mr O’Brien and Senator Duniam said.
“What Minister D’Ambrosio failed to point out was that the Victorian and federal government(s) had no Plan B when it came to the Hastings project, leaving a gap in their energy transition plans and both governments scrambling to point the finger at each other over who is in the wrong, rather than focusing on what they should be doing: working together to bring stability to the grid and lowering power prices that they promised would be $275 cheaper.
“Ninety per cent of Australia’s baseload power will exit the grid over the next ten years as a direct consequence of Labor’s failed energy policies with no guarantee of replacement.
“In fact, the Clean Energy Council has revealed the rollout of renewable energy is running at one tenth of the pace required, whilst Labor smothers the supply of gas and continues forcing baseload energy out of the grid.
“A lack of supply means higher prices and a less reliable grid.”
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