2016-05-26
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I was disturbed but not surprised to read in this morning's media that the owners of the Hazelwood power station have announced via testimony to the French Senate that they are considering either closing down or selling off the Hazelwood power station.
Now, just a week or so ago we asked the Premier at the estimates inquiry whether he had any information on this and he in fact played somewhat ignorant. He suggested that he had no particular insight into when, how or if a major power station was going to be closed down in Victoria. Well, it is not good enough if the company has been working away on planning the closure of the power station or for that matter simply offloading it to, let us say, a less liable entity, that the government to this day still does not have a plan for how it is going to deal with this energy transition or sort out the economic situation down there in the valley.
There must be thousands of people in the valley who, like me, are disturbed but perhaps not particularly surprised at this announcement from the company owner, but we have seen these sorts of major economic shocks occur in Victoria before. I really hope the government is not going to be caught flat-footed with this one.
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