Bush Summit: Crop farmer goes off on government’s ‘terrible’ transmission project plan
Crop farmer Barry Batters is apoplectic with government bureaucrats riding roughshod over hardworking farming communities. And he’s ready for a fight.
On a wet winter’s day in the Wimmera, crop farmer Barry Batters leans on his gatepost overlooking an ocean of sprawling, lush green paddocks and fires up to tell his story.
Apoplectic with government bureaucrats riding roughshod over hardworking farming communities, he’s not holding back.
“I’m sick to death of people from afar telling us how to live our lives,” he exclaims, frustrated with a planned incursion on his 3000ha property near St Arnaud, 200km northwest of Melbourne.
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As one of many furious farmers throughout country Victoria affected by the proposal to access their properties and construct an interstate electricity transmission line, Barry is ready for the fight – and prepared to go to jail if need be.
Barry recounts the morning when he opened the local newspaper to learn a 4km section of the proposed 475km Victoria New South Wales Interconnector (VNI) transmission line was slated to run squarely through his Sutherland property.
“It’s like someone from the government knocking on your door and saying, ‘we’re here to fit a new window in your house’,” he says.
“And you tell them ‘But I don’t want a new window!’ But the government says: ‘That doesn’t matter – you’re getting a new window, it’s just a matter of where we put it’.”
VNI West is a proposed 500 kV double-circuit overhead transmission line which carries renewable power from renewable energy zones in Victoria and New South Wales – in particular wind and solar energy from western Victoria and the regions surrounding the Murray River.
NSW energy infrastructure operator Transgrid describes the need for building the project as because Australia “undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime change toward a net-zero future” – something of which Barry and many other farmers in Victoria are particularly sceptical.
Barry’s property is earmarked for four towers, each between 60 and 80 metres tall, and a separate property his family leases will have a further six – all requiring a 70m-wide easement corridor.
The intricacies of just how the land is compulsorily acquired seem somewhat complex, Barry points out, and farmers are to be compensated yet the manner in how they have been consulted has been “terrible”. Just recently some farmers were handed large piles of documents to digest with little time to make an informed decision.
“They’re just ticking the boxes – that’s what they call consultation,” he complains.
The project’s cost has – and is – rising exponentially, first flagged as costing $3.4bn, revised to $7bn and is now forecast at $11.4bn, leaving Barry and his united group of collegiate neighbours despairing and cynical of the whole process.
“It’s an ill-planned project costing an unknown amount of money.” Barry says. “They haven’t even dug a hole yet and nobody has any idea what they’re doing. You can’t manage what you don’t know.”
“They will have a caveat over the land they’ve acquired on your property,” he explains, “so if you want to sell, there will be a caveat register on your land title and prospective buyers will have to negotiate with the power company separately.”
But farmers are faced with heavy penalties if they don’t co-operate – the government could invoke Section 93 of the Electricity Industry Act where authorised persons can enter their properties “to undertake surveys and other necessary activities associated with the Western Renewables Link”.
As for going to jail, Barry says he hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“We’re getting more traction,” he explains. “And all this because of (Energy Minister) Chris Bowen’s thought bubble to save the planet. Farmers aren’t to blame for politicians’ incompetence.”
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Originally published as Bush Summit: Crop farmer goes off on government’s ‘terrible’ transmission project plan
