Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to express my clear and strong reservations about the desalination plant which has been proposed for the Wonthaggi region on the edge of my electorate. Let it be absolutely clear that the environmental impact statement, which was put out by the Victorian government last week, was a hopelessly inadequate document. It was inadequate for a very simple reason: it failed utterly to consider, firstly, the alternatives and, secondly, the energy impacts and requirements. In a chamber which talks much about greenhouse impacts, it is extraordinary that the Victorian government has adopted the highest consumption form of new drinking and usage purpose water creation that you can imagine.

Let me deal with this environmental impact statement. Firstly, there is a procedural question. It is 1,600 pages long, yet the community groups have five weeks to respond to it. Secondly, there is a charge of $250 for those members of the community who want to seek access to this environmental impact statement. Thirdly, we know that recently costs were ordered against the Your Water Your Say Action Group in a case jointly run by the Commonwealth and the state. That is an enormous barrier to any community group which seeks to exercise its legitimate democratic right to challenge the procedures and the way forward as carried through an environmental impact statement. The use of Commonwealth and state financial power against community groups denies them the opportunity to use their rightful approach for appeal, for challenge and for questioning. The courts have now become a place of fear and loathing for community groups in Victoria, following two such actions by the Victorian government to punish community groups who dared challenge decisions of the Victorian government. It has done so on both occasions with Commonwealth complicity. I therefore use this chamber at this moment to say to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett, that he should withdraw the Commonwealth’s request for costs against these community groups. It is utterly unacceptable that we have a Commonwealth environment minister punishing community groups such as Your Water Your Say and others—as was the case with the north-south pipeline, which was a breach of the Victorian Labor government’s election promise. Those two groups have been punished through the courts. It is important that we use this democratic chamber to stand up on their behalf.

On the substantive side, what we see with the desalination plant is twofold. Firstly, we see a system which will have real local impact. We will lose one of the most beautiful local visual amenities in the Bass Coast region. That area, on the edge of a state park, will be scarred with an industrial site on what is otherwise a beautiful, open, greenfield space. It is almost inconceivable that this space has been chosen. Secondly, we will also see a powerline, in the vicinity of 70 to 80 kilometres long, which will cut right through the heart of some of the most productive horticultural and agricultural farming land. These are real impacts on farmers whom I have met who will lose the value of their land, who will lose the amenity of their land and who, in many cases, will lose the capacity to farm that which they have tilled, which they have managed and which they have dealt with as families over generations. If the Victorian government does go ahead with this project, the powerlines must be buried. There are adequate examples of that occurring, such as in the Murray Link program and the Basslink program. This is a system which can happen, which should happen and which must happen if the requests and demands of the community are ignored and the desalination plant goes ahead.

The other reason why it is important is that there is a real and viable alternative which is environmentally far preferable. That alternative is simple. It is to clean up the Gunnamatta outfall by cleaning up the Eastern Treatment Plant in Melbourne—to clean that water up, not to discharge it off our coast. We have seen today in reports in the Melbourne Age that the Victorian government is backing away from plans to fully clean up the Gunnamatta outfall. Rather than a desalination plant, be very clear that the first priority should be to end the discharge of 150 billion litres of ocean outfall off the Mornington Peninsula at Gunnamatta. We will fight to make sure that that is the plan. (Time expired)