Victoria has some of the lowest electricity prices in the national market while emissions fall and demand grows. Yet energy and climate are barely visible in Labor’s election campaign.
When Lily D’Ambrosio stood up in the Victorian parliament almost five weeks ago to give her valedictory speech after 24 years as a Labor MP, Australia’s longest-serving energy minister offered some pointed advice to her colleagues preparing for the November elections, including the state’s new premier.
“I know that Premier Ben Carroll will continue to take Victoria in the right direction in energy, environment and climate action, because I do know personally that he cares about the future of these elements,” D’Ambrosio said in her speech.
“The answers lie in facing the future with courage, not in going back.”
The comments – along with the standard thanks to family and trusted staff and a lengthy list of her achievements – clearly haven’t filtered through to the intended audience.
Visit Labor’s website where the ruling party lists its ‘plan’ to win a fourth straight term in office, and there is no mention of energy, the environment or even climate change. Not among some three top priorities and 11 other targets.
The absence is surprising because, by a range of measures, Victoria has led the nation when it comes to offering relatively lower power prices but greenhouse gas emissions have been coming down too.
That’s not to say Victoria doesn’t face major challenges, not least its reliance on future offshore wind to power the state when the dirty brown coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley shut down.
Major infrastructure projects, including VNI-West, are likely to be multiples more expensive than initially planned. Victoria’s hardly Robinson Crusoe on that island, with Snowy Hydro’s 2.0 pumped hydro just the latest major project to project a big cost blowout.
Sure, the media has succeeded in making people fear their next power bill even though electricity is roughly half the share of the consumer price index as petrol, much less than rent and even lower than beer. And cost of living is supposed to be on the top of everyone’s worry list, so candidates are expected to discuss little else.
But it’s not like energy – and climate – policies can’t contribute to a lower cost of living story. Because in Victoria, there’s a tale to tell.
D’Ambrosio noted in her speech that Victorians are faring better than those interstate.
“The [Victorian Default Offer] fell by 5 per cent for households this July and is $444 lower than the default market offer in NSW, Queensland and South Australia – the lowest in the country – and our small businesses on the VDO are paying $1,299 less than their counterparts in other states,” she said.
The Australian Energy Market Operator, in its latest quarterly market report, backs up the former minister’s comments when it comes to wholesale prices. For the September quarter, wholesale spot prices in the state were down by 27 per cent from the previous three months to $56 per megawatt-hour.
Tasmania matched the low, while those in NSW were $74/MWh, Queensland’s averaged $61/MWh and those in South Australia were $69/MWh. Here’s how the prices have stacked up over the past five years or so.
That Victoria should have had the lowest wholesale power prices in the national electricity market for the last quarter was notable because the state accounted for almost all the growth in electricity demand for the July-September period.
The demand growth reflected “ongoing electrification, higher industrial demand and increasing data centre loads,” Aemo noted.
The state also happened to record a new all-time winter maximum demand during the quarter, at 8,955 MW, up 137 MW from the previous winter record set in June 2025, Aemo said.
The Victorian grid coping with strong demand hasn’t just been a winter thing. Back on 27 January, the state hit record power demand on its hottest ever day – remember that climate change thing? – and did so without issuing a single ‘lack of reserve’ notice (unlike South Australia the previous day).
A mild winter helped temper Victorian demand, especially for gas. The state, much-maligned by the pro-fossil gas media and the conservative side of politics, actually lifted gas exports north, supporting record Queensland methane exports.
“Continuing the trend observed throughout 2025 and Q1 and Q2 2026, Victoria experienced the largest demand decrease, with ongoing reduction in industrial, commercial and residential usage, exacerbated by above average temperatures, which decreased requirements for heating,” Aemo’s report said.
Gas is the most expensive major fuel in the NEM, so the less burnt to generate electricity, the lower wholesale prices for all power users.
The outlook for wholesale power prices also has Victoria projected to be the cheapest in the NEM, Aemo says.
So, there’s a case Carroll, or new Labor energy minister Jaclyn Symes, could make that on the electricity price front, Victoria is presently leading.
Rystad, an energy analytics group, has noticed too, arguing Victoria had the lowest wholesale power prices in the regions of the world they survey.
There’s a lot to be said about where energy and climate policies sit among the priorities of the Liberals – who are favoured by the polls to take office after 28 November – and One Nation.
For the Liberals, energy items rank eighth and 11th among its priorities in their first 100 days should they win office, but not in a particularly positive way.
They pledge to “[r]everse Labor’s gas appliance bans and invite gas producers to propose conventional gas exploration opportunities to bring down power bills for Victorian homes and businesses”. Never mind that getting people off gas is a good way to cut energy bills – and avoid inhaling a lot of nasty gases – and that there’s not a lot of gas to extract, and very little would like to be cheap.
The other top priority would be to “scrap VNI West and begin the review of the state’s transmission plan and its impact bills for Victorian homes and businesses”, the Liberals say. Some big energy firms, though, have a different view, saying bills will rise.
One Nation, not renowned for its policy nous, would “scrap all net-zero targets and subsidies”, and judge energy policy “on price, reliability and what is best for Victorian families and industry, not on ideology”. It would “[p]rovide long-term industry security to encourage investment into upgrading coal power infrastructure”, perhaps an accidental acknowledgement of coal’s unreliability.
But even without the odious policy contrasts, it’s passing strange Labor is trying to bury the relative success on the energy front, or in some cases, hint at a retreat.
Carroll even bowed to opponents by announcing a price review of the 190-kilometre Western Renewables Link, a key transmission project. Three local Labor MPs were cited in Carroll’s media release but absent from the missive were energy minister Jaclyn Symes and planning minister Sonya Kilkenny who had been making major energy comments that day.
Those in the energy and climate field know that every day is a battle to hold ground against well-funded fossil interests and their media mates. To abandon this fight is to leave them to fill the void – and they will.
Republished from Renew Economy
Peter Hannam
Peter Hannam is a veteran journalist whose work spans almost four decades and includes stints outside Australia, including time in China, Japan, Singapore and Mongolia. He has lately reported extensively on energy, climate and environmental issues in Australia, and also worked for the federal Climate Change Authority as a special media advisor.