Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Petitions
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):
Sunbury is a hip, diverse and rapidly growing town. Its vibrant centre is host to a burgeoning cosmopolitan foodie culture, supported by access to exceptional local vineyards and farms, and locals have easy access to abundant native vegetation and wildlife. It is no wonder the people of Sunbury are proud and protective of their part of the world.
As this petition attests, Sunbury also has no shortage of passionate residents determined to stop Sunbury being treated like the natural home for Melbourne’s toxic waste dumps. On hearing about the plans to plonk a big, dirty waste incinerator in their backyards, the locals wasted no time in getting a petition up and managed to collect 3500 signatures in a matter of weeks. They are fighting the good fight for the future of residents.
As part of the government’s proposed metropolitan activity centre plan, Sunbury and its surrounding areas are set to become a thriving activity centre with thousands of new residents, major retailers and speciality stores. And guess where it is growing? It is growing towards the HiQ plant. Why is this government now planning to just trash the town?
Did the government think that they could just wave this through before the populace had time to clock what was happening and raise objections? They did not reckon on the speed with which the No Sunbury Waste Incinerator group could grow from a handful of concerned residents to a fully fledged community movement. The group now has 2500 members on Facebook alone.
Let us be clear: the group is not going to take this incinerator proposal lying down. If the proponents of this project thought there would be no resistance, they were wrong. It is amazing how the threat of an incinerator in your backyard can fire up the community. And let us be clear: that is what this is. It is an incinerator.
It is simply burning garbage. As members know, the EPA have issued a waste cap licence to HiQ to burn three-quarters of a million tonnes of waste annually in this facility. Instead of investing in ways to get these resources and hazardous materials out of our waste stream, the government wants to pile them up and burn them.
We know the incinerators cannot be turned off, or should not be turned off, when the government hits its waste reduction targets. That would be logical, but the technology does not allow that without risk. We are going to keep feeding this hungry beast constantly until it is decommissioned.
Let me assure you the people of Sunbury ain’t throwing away anything close to three-quarters of a million tonnes of rubbish every year. The total landfill produced by the Hume LGA is 14,000 tonnes, so we are going to be trucking in an additional 736,000 tonnes from all over the state to keep feeding our very hungry incinerator.
And this is only one of seven proposed by the state government. We will, if these go through, have more incinerators in Victoria than in all of Australia combined.
Let us face it, the promise of waste to energy is a scam. The energy produced will not be powering homes in Sunbury or feeding the grid. The energy produced by the incinerator will power the incinerator – little or nothing more – and while doing that it will produce the same amount, if not more, of greenhouse gas emissions as coal-produced energy.
I am amazed at the government’s general lack of care around waste management and its jaundiced and enduring faith in the market to take care of our waste problems without much oversight.
For example, I was quite startled to learn that there are no minimum environmental standards set for tenderers. The laissez-faire approach is deeply troubling and further evidence of the government’s lacklustre approach to environmental regulation – doubly so, given that the government has refused to release the documentation that has been requested on the tender and selection processes.
Members might remember that Chris Bowen, the now federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy, opposed the construction of incinerators in his patch in western Sydney, describing this as ‘not clean energy … It is literally a dumpster fire.’
What about HiQ? Well, most recently, in 2024, the EPA laid a series of charges against HiQ for failure to implement a range of safety measures, and that did not stop them being awarded the licence.
I just conclude by saying that with a project that is as disgusting as this it pays to be diligent, and before we commit to incinerating three-quarters of a million tonnes of garbage, let us allow an appropriate due diligence process via an inquiry to occur. Pending that, no incinerator for Sunbury.
[Awaiting response]
