Rachel moved a motion requiring the Economy and Infrastructure Committee to inquire into the expansion of waste-to-energy infrastructure in Victoria.
With seven new licenses granted for waste-to-energy plants last week and the government increasing the annual cap on waste burning by 150%, it seems the future of Victoria’s waste management is going up in smoke. But not all waste-to-energy is created equal.
An inquiry into waste-to-energy infrastructure will allow for a thorough analysis of what a waste-to-energy transition would mean for Victoria’s future, as well as examining alternatives.
Wednesday the 27th of August 2025
Victorian Legislative Council
Rachel Payne (South-Eastern Metropolitan):
I rise to make a contribution to this motion, 1002, in my name. This motion requires the Economy and Infrastructure Committee to inquire into, consider and report on the development and expansion of waste-to-energy infrastructure in Victoria.
For the uninitiated, waste to energy involves turning waste into energy resources and can include a wide range of technologies, including incineration. For those of us young enough to remember, this might conjure up images of backyard incinerators where households used to burn their waste. Make no mistake, these waste-to-energy facilities are not your grandparents’ backyard – or in my case my parents’ backyard – but they will be burning through millions of tonnes of Victoria’s waste. I would like to think we have come a long way since the time of the backyard incinerators. We have learned about that little thing called climate change and how to reduce, reuse and recycle, and yet puzzlingly the government’s waste management agenda of the future looks a lot like the waste management of the past.
In Victoria we have more waste-to-energy projects in the works than all other Australian jurisdictions combined, and the annual cap on the amount of waste that can be burnt has increased by 150 per cent in three years to 2.5 million tonnes. Just last week seven new licences were granted for new waste-to-energy projects. While at the same time it was good to see, in the same announcement, that plans for the Lara facility were rejected, it should not take the opposition of the Deputy Prime Minister for community concerns to be heard. Residents, council and the Geelong Chamber of Commerce all raised concerns about the level of odour and air pollution this plant could produce, with some homes mere hundreds of metres away. Similar concerns are held by all communities where these facilities are proposed. Once these projects reach full capacity, the vast majority of waste in Victoria could be taken from landfill to be burnt. This represents one of the most significant shifts in waste management policy in Victoria’s history. It is deeply concerning that this major shift in waste management policy is happening at the same time as this government is gutting hundreds of jobs from the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. In today’s changing climate, we must ask ourselves if this is part of the future we want for Victoria, a future where we are creating even more ways of polluting the people and planet.
When it comes to waste to energy, we need to examine the suitability of existing plans and policies, the adequacy of community consultation and opportunities for greater alignment with Victoria’s circular economy plans. A parliamentary inquiry will allow us to listen to the experts and fully understand the consequences of waste-to-energy transition. Communities, particularly those who may end up living next to these facilities, deserve to understand what the consequences will be. We need to look at the proximity of these facilities to residential areas and transport infrastructure. Communities should not be made to live next to these facilities and deal with hundreds of trucks full of waste barrelling down their local roads at all hours of the day. Infrastructure plans and policies also must be examined to ensure they can cope with the rapid growth of waste to energy.
The cap on the amount of waste that can be burnt in Victoria has gone up and up and up again. It may be 2.5 million tonnes now, but what could it be next year, and can the infrastructure keep up? Our motion requires an investigation into the economic, social and environmental consequences of the waste-to-energy transition. Commercial arrangements between proposed waste-to-energy project operators and various levels of government are also something that should be questioned. We should not be allowing decades-long contracts for these incinerators that require a certain amount of waste to be generated each year. All this does is incentivise waste generation and the importation of waste from other jurisdictions. We have seen that happen overseas; I am not making this stuff up.
While we are pleased to see that the government’s waste-to-energy plans emphasise the importance of separating out organic and recycling materials, we are concerned that in practice, is this actually happening? To understand our concerns, you only need to look as far as the Recycling Resources from Waste April report from the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. This report highlights several ways in which the Victorian government is failing to manage waste heading to landfill. In the last decade recycling in Victoria has been in a state of crisis following China’s closure to low-grade Australian recyclables. From 2019 to 2020 this meant that, according to Sustainability Victoria, 63.7 per cent of Victoria’s recycling went into landfill. While Victoria’s recycling capacity has increased since then, these extensions are slowing. The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office found that there were gaps in mandatory reporting by some operators, and we do not know how much organic matter is actually being sent to landfill. They also found that the amount of waste going to landfill has not changed since the government announced their circular economy strategy in 2019.
That strategy is 10 years long and we are halfway through, and to see that there has been no change in the amount of waste going to landfill is astounding. With a track record like this, how are we meant to trust that recycling and organic waste will not just be sent to be burnt at these waste-to-energy incinerations?
We also have concerns about the nature and management of emissions, toxic waste and ash by-products. In the UK nearly half of the rubbish produced is incinerated. An examination by the BBC found that burning rubbish was their dirtiest form of power, producing the same amount of greenhouse gases for each unit of energy as coal power. It is no surprise that many places in the UK are restricting the construction of more waste-to-energy facilities. On top of this, most waste-to-energy facilities produce residues and by-products, including toxic ash, which can contain heavy metals and toxins. It is a falsehood to say that waste to energy is part of the circular economy when this process creates toxic waste. In my region Hampton Park residents have fought strongly against a waste transfer station that was planned to package up rubbish from nine councils and ship it off to a waste-to-energy plant in Maryvale. The proposed operator Veolia had been the subject of numerous complaints and litigation over their management of their landfill site. It is no wonder that these communities have little trust that the operators of waste-to-energy facilities will not fall victim to mismanagement and fail to responsibly deal with toxic by-products. Surely we can do better.
With that in mind, our motion requires an investigation into alternative waste management approaches and emerging technologies that better align with circular economy principles. It is important to remember that not all waste to energy is created equally. In central Victoria there is a farm that started investing in waste-to-energy technology about 30 years ago using anaerobic digestion. This is pretty interesting, because trillions of tiny anaerobic bacteria break down manure waste, which creates gas that can then be used to power machinery, and the waste generated can be used as fertiliser. Some of these technologies are truly innovative, and more are developing every day, but others, like incineration, leave a lot to be desired.
When this government are faced with the option of burning their waste or investing in innovative alternatives, they have a history of going with the easy option. In 2020 the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee conducted an inquiry into recycling and waste management. Included in a small part of this was waste to energy, which was heralded as the solution for Victoria’s waste woes. The reality is that there are solutions for dealing with waste, but they just take a bit more effort and ambition than incinerating it and setting it on fire. Reducing the amount of waste generated and better separating different waste streams is a really good place to start. A lot has changed since the 2020 inquiry, and the government appear to be at a critical juncture where they are turning Victoria into the waste-to-energy state. Now is the time for us to look at alternative waste management approaches and emerging technologies that better align with circular economy principles.
Community consultation and the ability to build and retain a social licence are some of the other major issues faced by waste to energy. While many of these projects are in the early stages and have not been subject to formal community consultation processes yet, after seeing how the community of Hampton Park were treated during community consultation for their waste transfer station, I hold grave concerns. Consultation is only meaningful insofar as it has a direct influence on government decision-making. It cannot simply be a tick-box exercise. It must extend to all members of the community. We do not want to see our CALD communities and our working-class and vulnerable communities exploited by this government, and that is why our motion requires an investigation into the adequacy of community consultation. These waste-to-energy projects are not being proposed in Brighton or in Toorak. They are being proposed in suburbs that are used to being walked over and which have a long history of being the state’s dumping grounds.
In New South Wales, out of an abundance of caution for the risk to human health and the environment, incinerators are banned in metropolitan Sydney. In the ACT they were banned entirely after immense community backlash and significant concern over toxic pollution. This forces us to ask: why is waste to energy not good enough for them, but it is good enough for Victoria? If the government wants to know why these proposals so often suffer from a lack of social licence, a mirror could help in this situation, because many of the MPs from Labor’s own ranks have stood up publicly against their government’s plans for waste to energy. But all too often this opposition is only heard when the proposed facility is in their own backyard.
Despite introducing waste-to-energy legislation into Parliament back in 2022, Minister for Climate Action Lily D’Ambrosio has opposed a project near her northern Melbourne electorate and signed a petition by her Labor colleague Bronwyn Halfpenny to oppose a proposal in Wollert. With all this in mind, it is no surprise that the public are failing to buy into the idea that waste to energy is something they should embrace in their neighbourhood. Again we are forced to ask: why is waste to energy not good enough for them, but it is good enough for us?
At the end of the day the most important thing is stopping waste before it starts. The reality is we are continuing to produce mountains of waste, and until something changes it needs to be managed responsibly. An inquiry focused on the development and expansion of waste-to-energy infrastructure in Victoria will take the advice of experts and engage with the community to understand all the options. It is our hope that this inquiry will enable better outcomes for people and the planet and force the government to consider if this huge shift away from waste management policy is in the interests of all Victorians. To that end my colleague David Ettershank will be moving an amendment to this motion. We encourage all parties across the chamber to support this motion.
Motion 1002:
I move…
That this house requires the Economy and Infrastructure Committee to inquire into, consider and report, by August 2026, on the development and expansion of waste-to-energy (WTE) infrastructure in Victoria, including:
(1) the suitability of existing WTE infrastructure plans and policies, including:
(a) the proximity of WTE projects to residential communities and transport infrastructure;
(b) annual caps on waste that can be used in thermal WTE processing;
(2) economic, social, and environmental consequences of WTE, including from:
(a) the terms of commercial arrangements between proposed WTE operators and governments;
(b) separating recycling and organic material from WTE streams;
(c) nature and management of emissions, toxic waste and ash byproducts;
(d) the cost–benefit of WTE generation to consumers and businesses;
(3) alternative waste management approaches and emerging technologies that better align with circular economy principles, having regard to the recommendations of the Environment and Planning Committee’s 2020 inquiry into recycling and waste management and the role of WTE in the Victorian government’s circular economy plan;
(4) the adequacy of community consultation and social licensing; and
(5) any other related matters.
Related:
> Victoria’s Burning Problem – Rachel Payne
> Rubbish: A burning problem in Victoria – Rachel Payne
> Waste-to-energy could cause more problems than it solves – Rachel Payne
> Waste incineration and landfill targets – Rachel Payne
