Mr PALLAS (Tarneit)  — I too rise to outline the opposition’s
position and its concern about what effectively is legislation that is much ado
about nothing. This legislation comes from a government that has talked the
talk to business and to industry about its desire to create jobs, but it
reflects the government’s mismanagement of community engagement and is ultimately
legislation more aimed at window-dressing than practical and effective delivery
of a key policy that requires consistency of view and direction.

As the member for Mill Park indicated in her contribution to this
debate, the key turn of events that have taken place in relation to these
issues really should constitute a matter of great concern and a great warning
to businesses in terms of their dealings with this government.

This is so not because government members have not talked the talk
about their pro-business, pro-jobs approach but because of the inconsistency in
the way they have gone about dealing with issue, which can leave businesses
with little, if any, confidence that the government is genuinely committed to
working through these issues in a methodical, scientific and
community-sensitive way. Ultimately the possibility of bringing about the
proper and responsible utilisation of the resources of this state requires a
government that is transparent in its dealings with the community, not one that
tries to be tricky either by setting up inquiries that seem to be intended to
be self-serving — and are therefore destined to lose community support — or
by not being clear about the direction in which it wishes to go, always
indicating that it will be guided by the evidence and the science. That is what
has been sorely lacking: there has been a failure to bring the community along
with the government.

This legislation is, as I said, nothing more than window-dressing,
which refers to the use of a technology — involving the benzene, toluene,
ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) chemicals — which to the best knowledge of
industry members and that of everybody else has not been used in the state of
Victoria.

That is the great concern here. It is not that a prohibition on
BTEX, given all the associated risks to health in a community, is not in itself
laudable; it is more that this is about this government wanting to be seen to
be doing something rather than addressing the issues of concern the community
has more generally and which quite frankly the industry also has. Industry
members want to see that there is a serious process of engagement around how
coal seam gas can be properly and responsibly extracted without creating too
much concern within the community at large.

Let us look at the historical turn of events leading to the point
we are at now.

On 12 April 2012, Labor called for an inquiry into and a
moratorium on coal seam gas. On the same day, the then Minister for Energy and
Resources, now Treasurer, slammed Labor’s position, calling it antijobs and
saying it would put the industry at risk. On 23 May 2012, Mr Lenders, a member
for Southern Metropolitan Region in the other place, moved a reference in the
Council for a parliamentary inquiry, which was ultimately rejected by the
government.

On 24 August 2012, the minister imposed a moratorium, effectively
accepting the proposition that Labor had been advocating at the time. We
advocated for that proposition for the very obvious reason that there were
growing levels of discontent and concern about how this government was going
about discharging its responsibilities as a custodian of the resource base of
the state and its willingness to engage with the community in relation to the
implications of coal seam gas extraction.

Nobody on this side of the Parliament has in any way said that
these resources should not be responsibly used for the good of the community,
but the community has to understand what this means, and we all have to
appreciate the risks associated with the irresponsible use of the resource.
That being said, on 12 December 2012 the government announced the establishment
of its Gas Market Taskforce. This was effectively a review managed by former
federal minister Peter Reith — who is clearly conflicted in the context of the
resource industry — to give advice about the responsible management and use of
this resource. Quite frankly, if you were trying to allay the concerns of the
community, you could not have set up a more inappropriate process. You could
not have done more to disconcert the community and drive away its embryonic
level of willingness to engage in this area.

In June 2014, after that process was completed, a process which
ultimately led to mismanagement, fear and concern among members of the
community, the government panicked and put any onshore gas extraction on hold.
That is preposterous. If you want to see press releases from hyperventilating
ministers on the other side that articulate antijobs positions, there you have
it. Nobody — certainly nobody on this side of the chamber — has ever called
for a prohibition on onshore gas extraction by conventional means.

Therein lies the concern of the industry — that this is a
government that lacks nerve, vision and clarity in terms of its direction, a
government that ultimately talks the talk about being tough and pro-jobs but
then sets up sham processes of community engagement, ultimately losing the
confidence of the community, which is not being brought along by the government
in what is understandably an issue of considerable concern. Community members
have been left out of the process. They are essentially being managed by the
government to get to a policy position that it sees as being ultimately
desirable. That policy decision is very clearly evidenced in the media releases
of the previous energy minister, the now Treasurer, about the desire for jobs
and jobs bonanzas coming from the industry but containing very little about the
responsibility of government to ensure that the community’s issues and concerns
are adequately catered for.

That is why the industry is so bereft of hope that this government
will ever come to a position that is coherent, clear and capable of building a
community consensus about the capacity to access this resource responsibly. Of
course, it cannot and should not be accessed until the community has been
brought along and until the science is clear. That is appropriate, it is
responsible and it is the way the industry actually wants it to be done. The
industry did not want this cart-before-the-horse approach to policy, but that
is what it got. Ultimately what it got was a lot of political posturing from
this government about how much better and more pro-jobs it was compared to
Labor. In the process it forgot that it also has to be pro-community. Having
been left behind, the community let this government know in no uncertain terms.

As a sign of how poorly managed this process has been, this
government also managed to leave businesses behind, and they feel greatly
aggrieved.

Understandably they feel that they have been let down by a
government that talks big and talks tough but that ultimately comes to nothing.
The government pushed this policy position off a cliff. Hopefully it has not
pushed this industry off a cliff. This resource can be responsibly managed if
the government involves the community and is led and advised by science — as
opposed to sitting back, expressing a view and then proceeding regardless, and
then saying, ‘Well, perhaps we ought to have a self-serving review — or maybe
a moratorium. Hey, let’s extend the moratorium to conventional gas extraction
onshore’. Nothing could be more preposterous or embarrassing for this
government. Let the science speak loud and clear, let the community have a say
and let a moratorium serve a genuine purpose, not a predetermined fix up. That
is what the people of Victoria expect. They do not expect the sort of
window-dressing that this legislation reflects.