Joint Statement - Hastings wind project collapse exposes conga line of incompetence

Joint Statement – Hastings wind project collapse exposes conga line of incompetence

James Newbury, Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change

David Davis, Shadow Minister for Energy, Affordability and Security

Roma Britnell, Shadow Minister for Ports and Freight

12 January 2024.

This week the Premier, Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Energy and Resources, Minister for Planning, and Minister for Environment were exposed as incompetent by pushing a proposal to assemble offshore wind turbines in Western Port which hadn’t even been agreed to by their own Government before it was shut down by their Federal Labor colleagues.

This debacle has become a national embarrassment and will further weaken local and international investment confidence in Victoria.

Worse still, yesterday, Minister for Environment, Steve Dimopoulos, was caught out not doing his homework before fronting the media to answer basic questions about the proposal’s collapse. Speaking to the media, the Minister said he couldn’t answer several questions about the project because the Federal Labor Government’s reasoning behind the rejection of the proposal had not been publicly released.

This is despite the reasoning being publicly released onto the Department’s website almost a week earlier.

The Minister’s basic mistake follows:

• The Premier, Jacinta Allan, wrongly asserting the Victorian Government’s proposal had passed Victoria’s environmental assessments.
• Planning Minister, Sonya Kilkenny, referring the project for environmental assessment on 11 October 2023 because of “significant environmental effects”.
• Minister for Energy and Resources, Lily D’Ambrosio, failing to explain how the Allan Government will meet its commitment to produce at least two gigawatts of electricity through offshore wind by 2032, following the Federal Minister for Energy, Chris Bowen, stating: “We don’t expect much offshore wind to be operating by 2030 in Australia”.
• Minister D’Ambrosio blaming the Federal Government for the project failure, which occurred on her watch
• The Minister for Energy and Resources and Minister for Ports and Freight going to the Port of Hastings to “look at where the terminal will be built” before the project had even been approved.

Shadow Minister for Environment, James Newbury, said: “Minister Dimopoulos is the latest in a conga line of incompetent Ministers who have no basic grip of their job. If only one had made a mistake, perhaps you could blame their summer laziness, but successive Ministers and the Premier have now embarrassed themselves and our State on the national stage.”

Shadow Minister for Energy, Affordability and Security, David Davis, said: “The government’s daily trip-ups should concern all Victorians and have a broader damaging effect on the confidence that industry can have in our state. There is no doubt the government has shown as a group they’re not fit to govern.”

Shadow Minister for Ports and Freight, Roma Britnell, said: “Yet another project has been jeopardised by an incompetent process under the Allan Government. Labor clearly has no understanding of its own port infrastructure, and their farcical management of this project now threatens future investment and economic opportunities in what could be the biggest investment into ports in decades.”

Roma Britnell, Shadow Minister for Ports and Freight

David Davis, Shadow Minister for Energy, Affordability and Security

James Newbury, Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change