Ministerial plenary session

Speaker abstracts and biographies

Chair: Richard Bolt, Secretary, Department of Primary Industries

Richard joined Victoria's Department of Primary Industries (DPI) as Secretary in November 2006. As Secretary, Richard leads the department in its role to enable the sustainable development of Victoria's agriculture, earth resources, energy, fisheries and forestry industries.

He represents Victoria on the Primary Industries Standing Committee and sits on the Commonwealth Energy Minister's High Level Consultative Committee for the Energy White Paper.

Richard was Deputy Chair of the former State-Territory National Emissions Trading Task Force, which developed the first comprehensive blueprint for an Australian emissions trading scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He was formerly a member of the Murray Darling Basin Commission.

Richard holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the South Australian Institute of Technology (now the University of SA) and a Masters degree in Public Policy and Management from Monash University.  
 

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Victoria’s energy future
The Victorian energy sector will undergo substantial changes as it transforms to be part of to a carbon-constrained economy. In the coming decades, we will have to make energy differently - from a wider range of sources, with new technologies, and in new places. We will also have to use energy differently - in our homes and businesses, in our industries and in the vehicles we drive.

To assist in managing this transition, the Victorian Government has recently released two key policy papers, Victoria’s Energy Future and the Taking Action for Victoria's Future Climate Change Action Plan. Together they outline our approach to ensuring a secure and sustainable energy supply for Victoria, while reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in the most efficient way.

Minister Batchelor will outline how the energy sector transformation will affect Victoria. He will describe the challenges Victoria faces and highlight the opportunities for businesses to invest and for communities to be involved in this exciting transition.
 

Peter Batchelor MP, Minister for Arts, Minister for Energy and Resources
State Government of Victoria, Australia
Peter Batchelor MP is the Minister for Arts and Minister for Energy and Resources in the Brumby Government of Victoria, Australia. He has been the member for the Thomastown electorate since 1990 and Manager of Government Business in the Legislative Assembly since 1999. Prior to being elected to Parliament, he was the Victorian Secretary of the Australian Labor Party from 1983 - 1990.

As Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources, Peter Batchelor is responsible for delivering the Brumby Government's energy policy, Meeting Victoria's Energy Challenge. The policy aims to deliver affordable, reliable energy to Victorian families and businesses in an environmentally and socially responsible way.

Minister Batchelor is also responsible for the Arts portfolio, which supports a diverse mix of arts and cultural activity across the state. The Arts portfolio offers funding and opportunities for Victorian artists to further their careers, works to safeguard the state's cultural facilities and collections, and strives to ensure that all Victorians have opportunities to get creative and enjoy Victoria's vibrant cultural life

Parliamentary Positions:

January 2010 - Current

• Minister for Arts
• Minister for Energy and Resources
• Manager of Government Business in the Legislative Assembly

2006 -January 2010

• Minister for Energy and Resources
• Minister for Community Development
• Manager of Government Business in the Legislative Assembly

2002 - 2005

• Minister for Major Projects
• Manager of Government Business in the Legislative Assembly

1999 - 2006

• Minister for Transport (Including Public Transport, Roads and Ports)
• Manager of Government Business in the Legislative Assembly

1992 - 1999

• Shadow Minister for Public Transport
• Leader of Opposition Business in Legislative Assembly
• Economic Development Committee - Member on all party Parliamentary Investigatory Committee
• Parliamentary Library Committee – Member

ALP Caucus Committee

• Transport and Infrastructure Committee - Chairperson, 1994
• Infrastructure, Planning and Development Caucus Committee - 1990-1994

1990 - 1992:

• Economic Budget Review Committee - Public Accounts Committee - An all party Parliamentary Investigatory Committee

ALP Caucus Committee

• Ethnic Affairs Caucus Committee
• Transport Caucus Committee
• Planning and Conservation Caucus Committee

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Adam Bandt MP
Adam Bandt is the federal member for Melbourne and a former industrial lawyer. Adam was elected to Parliament in the 2010 Australian federal election, and is the first member of the Australian Greens to be elected to the House of Representatives at a general election.

Adam was born in Adelaide, South Australia but grew up in Perth, Western Australia, where he attended high school and university before moving to Melbourne. As an industrial and public interest lawyer, Adam was a partner at Slater and Gordon and recently completed his PhD in law and politics from Monash University. Adam has written on links between anti-terror legislation and labour laws and worked on issues facing outworkers in the textiles industry.

Adam’s main policy interests are environmental, industrial, and human rights issues, having "nominat[ed] pushing for a price on carbon, the abolition of mandatory detention of asylum seekers and changing the law to recognise same-sex marriage as his top priorities in parliament."
 

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Capital plans for a cleaner Canberra
As the nation’s capital, Canberra has a special role to play in showing the way to a low carbon future for Australia. The ACT Government is keenly involved in this process and is implementing policy and practical measures that make Canberra one of the most advanced jurisdictions in Australia in the clean energy sector.

Minister for Energy and Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Simon Corbell MLA, is responsible for delivering the transition of the ACT to a low carbon future.  Minister Corbell will outline how strategies such as the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets in the country and the creation of a sustainable transport sector are making a cleaner Canberra for Australia.

Simon Corbell, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water and ACT Minister for Energy
Simon Corbell MLA was first elected to the ACT Legislative Assembly as a Labor Member for Molonglo in 1997. He was re-elected in 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2008 and has been a Minister in the Stanhope Government since its election.

Simon is currently the Attorney General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Energy.

Simon is heading up the Department of the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water and is responsible for helping to tackle one of the biggest issues of the 21st Century. So far he has successfully implemented the ACT Electricity Feed-In-Tariff, where Canberrans can be paid for the solar energy they feed back into the public grid, and introduced legislation for Australia’s most progressive greenhouse gas reduction targets. Simon views Climate Change the single largest issue confronting our community today.

Simon is a strong advocate for the development of public transport infrastructure in Canberra. He is using his previous experience as Planning Minister and his current portfolio for the Environment to encourage people to get out of their cars and onto buses, or their bikes, which would see Canberra emit less greenhouse gases and be more environmentally friendly city.

Simon has, during his time as a member, also held the portfolios of Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relation
 

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LIFE – a path to sustainable, carbon-free energy
Now operational at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s most energetic laser, capable of producing 1.8 MJ and 500 TW of ultraviolet light. By concentrating the energy form all of its 192 extremely energetic laser beams into an mm3 –sized target, NIF can reach the conditions required to initiate fusion reactions. Demonstrating ignition and net energy gain on NIF will be a landmark scientific achievement and an essential step toward demonstrating the viability of inertial confinement fusion as a source of clean energy for humankind.

The roadmap for transforming fusion energy into a source of electricity can be thought of as a four-step process:

1.     Demonstrate that the underlying principle of achieving fusion is sound;

2.     achieve net energy gain from a fusion system;

3.     build and demonstrate a prototype power plant; and

4.     build commercial power plants.

This presentation will describe the plans for achieving ignition and net energy gain on NIF and demonstrating the feasibility of Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE) power generation. The talk will also discuss LIFE’s roadmap toward commercial power plant development, a path that will help meet the goal of abundant, secure, and clean energy for the world’s population.

This work performed under the auspices of the U.S Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
 

Dr Edward Moses, Director, National Ignition Facility (NIF) and Principle Associate Director, NIF and Photon Science Laboratory, Livermore, California, USA
Dr Edward Moses is the Director for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the Principal Associate Director for the NIF and Photon Science organization at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. Dr Moses was responsible for completing construction and activation of the NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser system and transforming it into an experimental platform for the broad national and international scientific user community. Experiments on NIF will access high energy density regimes with direct application to strategic security as well as applications for fusion energy research, high energy density science, and astrophysics. Dr. Moses is also the National Director of the National Ignition Campaign to achieve fusion ignition in the laboratory, the culmination of a 50-year quest. The NIF and Photon Science principal directorate is also responsible for the development of advanced diagnostics and laser technologies for homeland security, economic competitiveness, and energy needs.

Edward is internationally recognised in laser and optical sciences. He received a B.S. in 1972 and Ph.D. in 1977, both in Electrical Engineering, from Cornell University. He holds several patents in laser technology, fusion and fission energy, and computational physics. He has received many honors, including the Fusion Power Associates 2008 Leadership Award, the National Nuclear Security Administration Defense Programs Award of Excellence, the Memorial D.S. Rozhdestvensky Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Lasers and Optical Sciences, and the R&D100 Award for the Peregrine radiation therapy program. Dr. Moses is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of SPIE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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