Constituency Question - Energy and Environment Policy

CONSTITUENCY QUESTION

‘ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT POLICY’.

Thursday, 4 August 2022.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:42):

My Constituency Question is for the Minister for Energy and Minister for Environment and Climate Action, and I ask: will Labor match the Liberal Party’s energy and environment plans for our state’s future?

My constituents want to see this plan for the future adopted, because they know it will benefit them. Yet on energy Labor has been caught flat-footed. We have seen the market operator suspend the market and warn of future supply shortages.

By contrast the Liberals have a plan for affordable, reliable and clean energy, which includes a legislated local gas guarantee for supply, a $1 billion Victorian hydrogen strategy and a fix-Victoria’s-grid task force to modernise our system.

And on the environment the Government looks tired.

The Liberal Party will turbo-charge solar and batteries through a power-to-thepeople plan that sees the product installed to 1 million Victorian households by 2035, legislate an emissions reduction target of 50 per cent by 2030 and increase tree canopy coverage across metropolitan Melbourne from around 15 per cent to 35 per cent by 2050.

My constituents want to see this plan matched.