Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Petition #721 tabled by Dr Mansfield on waste-to-energy
18 March 2026
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):
I rise to speak in support of this petition that has been tabled by Dr Mansfield. Victoria is running out of landfill. The sensible thing would be to increase recycling. Look at the ACT, which has a resource recovery target of 90 per cent and is investing in local recycling.
Recycling here in Victoria has flatlined. In 2020 the Victorian government set a target to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030. According to the Auditor-General just recently, six years on literally no progress has been made – nada, zip.
Worse still, instead of investing in recycling initiatives, the government is banking our recycling funds. The sustainability trust fund grew from $76 million in 2022 to $545 million in 2025. That money is being used to offset debt, not expand recycling. What is the government doing? It is basically contracting multinationals to torch our waste – ‘Burn, baby, burn’, as Dr Mansfield says.
Wouldn’t it be great if government actually did the job of governing rather than outsourcing problems to the private market? But no, relying on market mechanisms is their go-to. It saves them the trouble of developing policies that instead improve the lives of Victorians. I have accused this government of many things, but this policy is so mind-bogglingly dumb that I am almost lost for words – and for those who know me know, that is a very rare thing.
For example, they have not investigated the relative technologies that could be applied to the incineration process – ‘Let the market decide.’ They have not mandated that the incinerators be built near train tracks. Instead, they are happy for thousands of trucks to traverse our suburbs, with B-doubles daily rolling past childcare centres, schools and shopping centres – ‘Let the market decide.’
They have not set any minimum standards for the new incinerators – ‘Let the market decide.’ Victorians are angry that the Allan government wants to dot incinerators around Melbourne’s outer suburbs. It is a ring of fire.
To put this in some perspective, the Allan government has issued 11 waste-to-energy licences, with only five incinerators planned for the entire rest of Australia. We are, frankly, disgusted that the government will not release documents on the waste-to-energy tender process. This may be about rubbish, but it is time for the government to come clean.
The ACT has banned incinerators. The New South Wales government has banned incinerators in metro Sydney, allowing them only in four outlying regions. But in Melbourne’s suburbs, these billion-dollar incinerators will burn rubbish 24 hours a day, seven days a week for decades to come.
There is obviously currently an inquiry coming up to look into this proposal, and I think it is fair to say that the communities affected by these proposals demand an undertaking from this government that there will be no processing of development applications and operating licences until this inquiry is complete.
Victoria’s incinerators are not proposed for well-heeled suburbs like Brighton or Toorak. Instead, it is the suburbs of working people that are in the firing line. Take my region – Sunbury, the town forced to take the West Gate Tunnel’s 1.5 million cubic metres of soil, is now proposed to burn 750,000 tonnes of waste; Wollert near Epping, 760,000 tonnes; Laverton, 280,000 tonnes; Dandenong, 100,000 tonnes; and Maryvale, 650,000 tonnes.
I am delighted that Sunbury MP Josh Bull has joined the ranks of traumatised government MPs who have realised what a disaster this proposal will be. Incinerators are cheap and convenient ways for the government to privatise waste disposal and handball the problem to multinationals from the Middle East, Asia and Europe.
How sad is it that a Labor government believes the suburbs overwhelmingly populated by working-class people are the natural home for rubbish fires. Shame on this government. I commend the motion and the petition to the chamber.
[Motion agreed to]
