The Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, says Premier Jacinta Allan has descended to gaslighting the people of Victoria.
Mr Walsh says the Premier’s insanely blind push to shut down gas supplies to every home in the state is now colliding with reality.
A reality he says is proving what The Nationals have been saying for a decade – sustainable energy is light years from being a viable solution to this state’s energy needs.
“Jacinta Allan knows, the whole Labor government knows, its headlong rush down the path of trying to get rid of fossil fuels is going to destroy the economy and leave Victorians freezing in winter and sweltering in summer because their sustainable fantasy has completely failed – they just don’t have the guts or the honesty to admit it,” Mr Walsh says.
“Instead, Ms Allan now says gas cooktops will be excluded from its energy road map, meaning they can continue to be installed or upgraded in existing dwellings,” he says.
“However, she claims the Labor government road map will continue the ban on gas connections to new developments requiring a planning permit and proposed regulations will still ban all gas appliances in rental properties.
“What a load of bollocks. Just wait, in a few months there will be another retreat from the precipice, and we will have gas connections to new builds, and then probably in rentals – we will have to because solar power, wind power and hydrogen hallucinations will never fill the shortfall if the Premier pulls the plug.”
Mr Walsh says by carving out only gas cooktops from its proposed bans, Victorians with gas space heating or gas hot water technically will still be required to undertake expensive and disruptive replacements of electric appliances at the end of the life of their gas appliances.
He says after spending the past decade driving down supply and driving up prices by actively discouraging offshore exploration and extending, then lifting, a ban on onshore gas exploration, the Allan Labor Government will belatedly introduce legislation to allow offshore storage.
“Victorian Labor stands alone amongst the Commonwealth government and the governments of other Australian states in its illogical, idiotic and ideological war on what Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio disparagingly calls ‘fossil’ gas,” Mr Walsh explains.
“According to the government’s own research, Victoria has the highest residential gas use in the country with 77 per cent of homes connected. Despite this, Jacinta Allan is still determined to deny these households the choice of gas space heating and gas hot water,” he says.
“There are significant conventional onshore gas reserves in Victoria that are known, which should have been utilised to increase the supply of gas as an important transitional source of energy for Victorians.
“Labor has been in power for a decade and in all that time not one new conventional onshore gas exploration permit has been issued. Labor has comprehensively botched energy policy and it is Victorians who choose gas who are paying the price.”
