To connect or not to connect; that is the question. As Hamlet might have asked, in the face of political and social upheaval, is it wise to remain part of the wider world, warts and all, or should we raise the drawbridge?
The reality is that we’re an island community, defined in large part by the 250 km of water that separates us from the island-continent to our north. Long ago we opted to be part of that much bigger community, but that didn’t alter our physical separation.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the continuing saga of the $5 billion Marinus project, the interconnector aiming to complete the integration of Tasmania’s power grid into the Australian energy market. Tasmania will contribute $103.5 million to the project.
The first stage of Marinus, now underway and due to be completed in the 2029-30 financial year, involves laying a 750 MW cable, under both the ground and the seabed, across 350 km between Heybridge near Burnie and Hazelwood in Victoria, crossing the Victorian coast just west of Wilsons Promontory.
In addition, TasNetworks is building 120 km of new dual-circuit transmission lines from Palmerston substation, near Poatina, to Heybridge via Sheffield, along with new lines from Stowport to Heybridge and line upgrades between Burnie, East Cam and Hampshire Hills.
Marinus Stage 2, currently scheduled to start in 2029, will involve a second Bass Strait cable and new transmission lines from Sheffield to Burnie along an inland route.
The technical complexity of Marinus is multiplied by the involvement of three jurisdictions and numerous state agencies, not to mention negotiations with local governments and landowners to secure deals over use of large tracts of Tasmanian and Victorian land.
Beyond all that is what Marinus means for this state’s future, economic and otherwise – how it might affect, for better or worse, our ability to manage our lives, our communities and everything else in this Southern Ocean outpost.
To energy and renewables minister Nick Duigan this is a no-brainer. Over recent months, after criticism from Upper House MP Ruth Forrest, he has repeatedly defended its benefits. In January he argued that it was “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to harness our existing assets and leverage our natural advantages to create jobs, industries and grow our economy.”
A month ago he said Marinus would make Tasmania “a clean energy powerhouse” delivering lower power prices and greater energy security while unlocking “billions” in economic returns. He accused Forrest of misrepresenting Marinus, saying her criticisms were inaccurate and “fundamentally misunderstand how the market operates.”
He said Forrest’s description of future revenue claims of Marinus proponents as “speculative” was “demonstrably false”, and that her expressed concerns about Tasmania’s energy security were “misrepresentation”.
Forrest, who chairs parliament’s energy joint select committee, claims that the minister’s defence of Marinus amounts to wishful thinking and that the Australian Energy Market Operator supported Marinus “because it is least‑cost for the mainland, not because Tasmania needs it for energy security.”
“We have not done the work to identify the lowest‑cost way to get it,” she said. “No Tasmanian analysis has compared Marinus to local storage, local firming, incremental upgrades, or demand‑side solutions. Instead, Marinus has been treated as the default answer to every question.”
She said minister Duigan’s later claims misrepresented what she wrote and failed to address the substance of her arguments. She has also described the Marinus deal as “flying blind into Tasmania’s energy future”.
After all the blunders in Tasmania’s other Bass Strait project, the ferry service, Duigan is right to be nervous. The Commonwealth and Victorian stake in Marinus should prevent such calamities happening here, but these days nothing is certain.
In negotiating this minefield I’ve been greatly helped by discussing with a friend in the North-West the outcome of an “Island of Ideas” forum in Burnie in mid-May, led by UTAS policy academic Richard Eccleston, director of the Tasmanian Policy Exchange.
One message from that event was that emerging new technologies might offer better solutions than a new Bass Strait link, but given where Marinus is now at and adding in the urgent need to compensate for the end of coal, it makes sense to continue with it.
The forum heard that a lack of surplus hydro energy means Marinus link cannot realistically aspire to become the “Battery of the Nation”, but it can add smaller amounts of power at critical times to help stabilise the national grid as renewable rollout continues across all states.
All that said, Forrest must be commended for applying a forensic lens to a complex project that’s going to shape the state’s energy and economic resources for many decades.