Mr Pallas (Tarneit)  — It gives me  great  pleasure to rise to  speak on this matter and perhaps  put  the record straight  about the contribution the  former Labor  government made towards what  is a very  substantial policy initiative in this area.

In many ways  what  we have heard from  those  opposite has been  nothing  but a blatant effort to reinvent history.

In  many ways this  is a post-electoral, reconstructed  Luddite government —  a government that does  not  actually  say  what  it  means before an election and creates an expectation within the community about the concerns the community has about the impact of new technology. It is a  government  that  has  consistently sought to appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of people’s fears and trepidations,  but  it  has  done nothing to educate people about or advance the role this new technology can play in improving people’s welfare and the capacity it has to oversee the improvement of people’s material wellbeing.

We  have heard  much since the election about how these things will improve, but quite frankly what we are seeing from  this  government is an increasing refusal to acknowledge that there we have heard so little from those opposite in terms of what they would like  to see  done materially  to advance  those  issues they  put to  the electorate before the last election.

The Baillieu coalition went to the last  election with a policy of reviewing the rollout  of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) despite its  initial  support for it. I make the  point that the federal Howard  government was keen to ensure that there was a leader in the nation’s move towards this new technology.

The Bracks  and Brumby governments agreed to be part of the  process of  rolling out the new technology, and the then opposition supported that rollout. However, as soon as the coalition heard the wavering, the concern and discontent from the community, it sought to make political capital out of it.

The coalition put its own self-serving, short-term political interests above the welfare  and  wellbeing  of  the  community  regarding a  technology  that  will ultimately — as we  have heard from speaker after  speaker on the other side of the house — have much to offer the community. Of course it does. Soon after the 2010 election, what did we hear from those opposite? A review was initiated and, of course, we  have had a number of  reviews and we have seen  some cataclysmic, almost road-to-Damascus-like  revelations dawn on the coalition when it got into government.  It has initiated  reviews  — goodness, it  realised after a second review by the Auditor-General that speed cameras actually save lives!

That came to the government  not after the first  review  in 2006 but after  the second review.

That is exactly what has happened yet again with this government. It initiated a review, despite its initial  position that it supported the rollout of AMI, just as the Howard government sought  it  to  happen.  It  then reviewed its position because  it saw there  might be  a political  advantage in  picking away  at the community’s concerns about the  impact of new technology, just like the bunch of post-electoral reconstructed  Luddites  that  government  members are.

 Labor has consistently taken  the view that these issues require proper engagement with the community. Members of the community  need to be given the opportunity to  understand the  impact of smart meters, but not all those on the other side of the chamber — even when they came to government — had a view that  was even broadly consistent with a general advancement of the welfare  and wellbeing of the community.

The  member  for Carrum  produced  and broadly circulated  in  her electorate  a document that says,  ‘Do not install  smart  meter. Please contact  Donna Bauer, MLA, state member for Carrum’  and  —  this is a killer — down  the  bottom it says, ‘Already making a difference’. We  know what difference that little bit of propaganda made; it made no difference whatsoever.

This is  a  government that will not  pass  up any opportunity to  pick  away at people’s fears and concerns, but it will not participate in a genuine process of trying to engage people about the  welfare and wellbeing improvements that could be achieved by  these  measures. The coalition  sought  to capitalise  on  these concerns in  opposition,  and essentially now it seeks to remedy and rectify the damage it did through the concern it created in the community.

Almost a year after  coming into government, in late December 2011, the Baillieu government released its review, and  who could forget it? Only 12 months earlier the  Premier  had told people, ‘You  don’t  have  to  have  those  smart  meters installed  if you  don’t want; we are going  to have  a review’.  The government conducted the review, and what did the review tell it?

It told  it what  everybody knew  beforehand — that smart meters are a valuable thing,  that they provide for  flexible pricing and  that  they would ultimately ensure that consumers  had  access  to  a level of information that would enable them to  chart the  costs that  were being  incurred as  a consequence of  their energy consumption.

How many householders — how many reasonable people — could go out and actively advocate,  as  the  member  for  Carrum  did,  that  smart  meters should not be installed? Her government is installing them.

Unlike those opposite,  with their lowest-common-denominator  mentality, we will not oppose the rollout of smart meters. We saw this as appropriate in government and —  as we are the sheer embodiment of consistency, unlike those opposite  — we  continue  to see it as  appropriate in opposition. That is  what is called a moral position.

Those opposite sought  to take political  advantage, to effectively mislead  and pick  away  at  the  community’s  concerns,  fears  and  trepidations  —  their unreasonable  belief that this new  technology would in  some way inflict damage and pain upon them. This was wrong because it lowered  the  community’s openness to and appreciation of this technology. We know how wrong it can get.

It  gets so bad that members of Parliament actually advocate that people  should not  install  this  technology  despite  the  fact  that  the government  itself ultimately backflipped on its position.

That was the second backflip in this sequence. The first  backflip was that when in opposition the  coalition supported the rollout  of smart meters.  The second one was that when it heard the community did not like smart meters much and they had concerns, the  coalition  thought  it  could  pick  away  at  that.  When it ultimately got into  government and realised this was a compellingly strong case and that there was a substantial  level of  liability to the companies that were charged with the responsibility  of rolling out the  smart meters, the coalition members started to pretend again — because their hearts and minds were never in it — that the  meters  should be rolled out. That left the  poor old member for Carrum out there creating fear and an  expectation in the community that she has been unable to assuage.

She  was out  there telling  them, ‘Do not install smart meters’. Well, they are being  installed  and  they  are being installed for good reason — because  the community ultimately will profit by it.

The advanced metering infrastructure program is an important innovation  to help consumers with rising energy costs. By  having delayed the AMI program by almost a year  to  conduct its review,  the  government has prevented  Victorians  from accessing the  benefits  of time-of-use  tariffs  until 2013. The  government is responsible for  having  misled Victorians over  the future of the  AMI program, only to have backflipped again and let Victorians down.

See Tim’s Speech in Hansard here.