Electricity infrastructure
Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (17:54): (1082) My adjournment matter is for the Premier, and it concerns the planned transmission lines and other renewable energy infrastructure across the countryside in north-west Victoria. The action I seek is simple: cancel the VNI West and cancel the Western Renewables Link. Hundreds of angry rural Victorians both young and old gathered last week to demand the government halt plans to run transmission lines on private farmland. Whilst in Bendigo, presumably visiting her own electorate from Melbourne, the Premier was heckled and booed by locals as she left the rural press conference via the back door, ignoring pleas from the rural community to be listened to and heard. ‘You’re a disgrace,’ one man yelled. Another said, ‘Allan’s a dud.’ Protesters held up signs saying, ‘The Allan ideology is destroying Victoria,’ with some branding Jacinta Allan ‘Joan Kirner 2.0’, an embarrassing comparison. Cattle and grain farmer Jason Barratt said that Premier Allan was ignoring country Victoria and pushing an ideology on country people. He said:
We are farmers and we farm food and fibre – we don’t farm electricity …
We’re sick of being pushed over by the government …
It’s beyond belief the contempt that Jacinta Allan shows for us.
In response at the rural press club Premier Jacinta Allan said she was protecting rural communities from climate change. She said:
Whether it’s water, whether it’s the quality of the soil … we are the most exposed to this issue in regional Victoria and part of the answer to that is delivering more renewable energy.
What the Premier does not understand or realise is that she is destroying the very communities she is feigning concern for and pretending to protect by running massive transmission lines right through them that locals do not want. Premier, get the message: nobody who lives near them wants your proposed powerlines. Do your job and listen to the rural communities before your own party does a job on you.