Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I find it absolutely astounding that there's been a huge amount of consultation—in-depth, genuine, good-faith consultation with industry, with all state and territory governments, with the crossbench et cetera—and we can't talk about the impact on 215 facilities of what we knew was coming before this parliament by way of legislation mandating emissions reductions. You refused again to answer whether any of the 215 facilities captured by the safeguard mechanism have existing plans to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent by the year 2030. That was a question I asked yesterday. You said perhaps the department would be in possession of the information. Today you said you have nothing further to add. I can only assume the government hasn't even gone and checked with these 215 facilities.

You don't have any information on that first question. You don't have any information on how much it will cost V/Line to meet the government's mandated emissions reductions targets. Therefore, I suspect you won't be able to tell me how much more Victorian passengers will have to pay in fares to meet the costs associated with this safeguard mechanism, so I'll skip over asking that question; we can just take it at face value that they'll be paying more as a result of this. Let the record show that that's what is going to happen. Do we know how much it will cost V/Line to convert from diesel locomotives to electric as a measure to meet the emissions reductions baseline that this legislation is going to establish? Do we know how many batteries are going to be required, for example? I would hope the government have gone and done some work with V/Line, a massive contributor to public transport in the state of Victoria.

Of course, AEMO has warned the state of Victoria, and the government, that Victoria could face electricity rationing or blackouts in the coming years due to the government's mismanagement of the grid. How much electricity in megawatt-hours is going to be required to power electric locomotives in Victoria if they choose to try and comply with the enforced baselines under the safeguard mechanism?