Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to start my contribution by talking about the real reasons why Hazelwood closed down, because we heard utter rot and rubbish from the member for Murray. He talked about a $20 million cost imposition. Even if I accepted that—and I do not—Hazelwood was facing a $400 million safety upgrade bill just to bring it up to modern WorkCover standards. Add to that a massive requirement to increase their capital expenditure to modernise the plant and you have the real reason the Hazelwood owners made a commercial decision to end this plant's life. The decision is no surprise, because the average age of Victorian power stations is 41 years. In New South Wales, it is 35 years. This infrastructure is reaching the end of its life, and we should be having an adult and sensible conversation in this parliament about how we replace its generation capacity. But we are not, and that is the great tragedy of this government and this Prime Minister.

Yesterday we saw the demolition of the two 155-metre cooling towers at Lake Munmorah power station on the Central Coast. It is a region you represent, Madam Deputy Speaker Wicks, as do I. It was the end of an era. The power station was of the same vintage as Hazelwood but produced slightly less power—1,400 megawatts versus 1,600 megawatts for Hazelwood. This was another power station that closed because it had reached the end of its plant life. The Hunter Valley, of which I am a proud representative, has one-third of the coal-fired power stations in the country: 9,000 megawatts of power production. Its four power plants are due to close in 2022; around 2030, for Vales Point; 2034; and 2035. A third of our power production from coal-fired power will go in the next 20 years, yet this government have no plan to replace it. They have no plan to replace it because they will not embrace what all of industry is calling for: an emissions intensity scheme that will give industry the certainty to make investment decisions. These decisions cannot be made based on the whim of whoever is going to be Prime Minister in six months time; they must be based on a bipartisan commitment on investment regulations over the next 40 years.

Every significant energy player in this country has called for an EIS, most recently—last week—Snowy Hydro, of which the Prime Minister is such a great fan. BHP has called for it, and so have the Business Council and AIG. Every major energy player, the energy consumers, the energy networks, the Grattan Institute—effectively everyone with a pulse in this sector has called for it, and the only people standing in the way are the government. That is a great tragedy. We do have an energy crisis, and that is because the government have sat on their hands for four years. Workers and communities are now paying the price, and we will see more need for structural adjustment as these plants close down.

That is the essence of this motion: the complete lack of commitment to structural adjustment from this government. When Northern power station closed last year, the government provided nothing other than a CV-writing course. Unfortunately, coalition governments have an appalling track record on this front. When the mighty BHP steelworks in Newcastle closed in the late nineties, what was the structural adjustment support the federal government gave the workers? The renovation of the Newcastle yacht club. The renovation of the Newcastle yacht club was the greatest structural adjustment assistance for thousands of steelworkers put out of work. Regrettably, not many steelworkers are members of the Newcastle yacht club and they did not benefit. Not even the construction activity benefited those redundant workers.

We need a just transition for the Hazelwood workforce, and that is why I support the Victorian government's attempt to move as many workers as possible into other power plants. I really applaud the fact that they have been able to save 150 jobs. Hopefully, there will be more as other power companies come online. I pay tribute to the Victorian government, the unions involved and the companies who tried to make this happen, and hopefully, if the federal government comes to the party, more can be done.

This is a time for a serious adult conversation about energy in this country. What we have from the member for Hughes is climate change scepticism, petty point-scoring and a failure to embrace the future. What we need is a serious plan centred around an emissions intensity scheme and a just transition focus for structural adjustment that means that workers in communities like mine, the ones around Hazelwood and the next member's communities are not suffering all the pain from a necessary transition. I am hopeful that we can come to a solution on this. I am very willing, as is all the Labor Party, to work with the coalition on this, because this should be above politics, but unfortunately so far we are just getting desperate political point-scoring for the coalition government.

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