Speaking about a renewable energy bill, state Member for Euroa Annabelle Cleeland said regional communities were still being left in the dark as outages continued, and she was pushing for more significant investment in energy infrastructure across the region.
“While I understand the need for addressing emissions and renewable energy targets in our state, there still remains far too many concerns with energy supply and reliability, particularly in regional areas like my electorate,” Ms Cleeland said.
“It was incredibly unfortunate seeing much of our state left without power following extreme weather recently.
“While this has had an enormous impact on people right across Victoria, this has been what parts of my electorate, like Euroa, Longwood, Violet Town, Ruffy, Nagambie and Strathbogie, have been dealing with for over four months now.”
Power outages across the region ranged from minutes to over 24 hours long, with residents in some of the worst-hit towns saying they experienced up to 80 hours of power outages in January and December.
The Victorian Government has announced grants for people affected by power outages due to recent severe weather.
However, Ms Cleeland said the scope of the payments was limited, and she was continuing to push for increased compensation for those impacted by frequent power outages.
“For the past few months, the outages in my region cannot be blamed on the weather,” Ms Cleeland said.
“While I acknowledge that poor weather has caused outages across the state, in my region, this is more than just a weather issue.
“There have been outages when it’s cold, outages when it’s hot, outages when it’s dry, outages when it’s wet, outages when it’s windy, and outages when it’s calm and still.”
There is a single line of supply running from Benalla to Violet Town through to Euroa and spread out across surrounding localities, which has been the likely cause of many of the power outages in the Euroa region.
The supply line has been one of the most problematic in Victoria since the 1970s; however, nothing has been done to address the issue.
“People’s health and safety, their ability to operate a business, and their general wellbeing are all significantly compromised when there is a lack of reliable power,” Ms Cleeland said.
“Upgrading this infrastructure is essential and will go a long way to preventing the frequency of these outages.”
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