Vikki Campion: People have a right to air valid concerns about ’clean’ energy
Professional activists are a new class of the entitled disgruntled writes Vikki Campion, organised by quasi-political parties and bullying people who have to live and work under transmission lines and wind turbines.
Opinion
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If Lisa Wilkinson’s preened and perfumed women’s march on parliament’s lawn had been disrupted by a men’s rights lobby, the screeches of misogyny would have been deafening.
As would the hollering cries of racism if No voters had targeted the Vote Yes to the Voice walk to Canberra.
Yet a peaceful rally, planned initially to enlighten the elected on the experiences of farmers, residents and environmentalists against foreign power companies knocking out native bush, agricultural land and dolphin habitat for industrial wind, solar and high-voltage transmission lines, gets no such grace.
Fears of bushfires caused by towers in areas where the only firefighters are the residents who live there are obvious but dismissed.
Losses to heritage, biodiversity and property values would be deemed utterly unacceptable if they occurred in Marrickville or a lush Canberra suburb.
Yet, these concerns are waved off as NIMBYism if they are far enough from the eyeline of Capital Hill.
Instead, the rally against reckless renewables, protesting against a foreign developer-led, government-subsidised, gold rush on bush, oceans and farmland with more than 1000 projects proposed, has become the target of extremists circulating a counter-protest.
It has left mums and dads from farming and coastal tourist towns feeling threatened, yet if their issue was for a different hue they could rally without worry.
The groups circulating a counter-protest include the sticky protesters Extinction Rebellion, notorious for gluing themselves to Canberra bridges and gallery banisters, and lighting baby’s prams on fire.
GetUp, essentially an unregistered political party, joins them, along with elements of the union movement, which Labor called upon relentlessly for Yes work during the failed Voice campaign.
Politics is changing in Australia.
When Coalition opposition leaders rallied at the carbon tax protest and the mining tax protest on that same lawn more than a decade ago, no opposing force showed up just to shut them down.
Now it’s not enough to report people’s Facebook posts of their experiences as “misinformation” to Meta. If our experiences don’t match what they want them to be, they intimidate and spread ludicrous propositions that anyone who turns up is funded by “big oil”.
Many rallying next week are pro-nuclear, a position they have come to after witnessing hectares of koala habitat gobbled up for industrial factory projects and their energy bill rise. GetUp, in its counter-attack, deems pro-nuclear views “dangerous, expensive” even though every other continent, except Antarctica, relies on it. Such is their disinformation; GetUp wildly claims rally attendees could be funded by big oil from the United States.
The reality is a little less sensational — and attendees have reduced bank accounts to prove it.
It’s people paying as much as $150 return for a bus ticket from northern NSW and using the cheaper motels at towns outside of Canberra.
Motels around Canberra are unaffordable to an average family during a sitting week, when room rates soar to gobble up political staffer travel allowances.
People are rallying to bring some reality to the decisions made in political offices at the behest of renewable lobbyists, academics pushing their barrow and philosophical zealots under the guise of a climate change crusade.
These people call to MPs and senators across the political spectrum, since many of their own in Labor seats aren’t listening.
And they are waiting for Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen to respond to Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner Dr Andrew Dyer’s recommendations — the one he has been sitting on since last year.
GetUp has been invisible since the Albanese government came into power. What mattered to GetUp under the Coalition doesn’t matter to them under Labor, but now they have been ordered to attack.
Finally, they can rally their troops, fundraise and shut down different points of view that they deem “toxic” and “dangerous”.
If they can’t win it with logic, they will try other means. Some of their tactics have worked already.
A number of mums with smaller children changed their attendance plans.
A peaceful rally is one thing to attend with your breastfed baby; one where Extinction Rebellion, GetUp, unions and farmers could collide under the watch of the Australian Federal Police is another.
And why are unions, who are yet to see any major job creation from the transition with overseas workers flying in on migrant visas, coming in to be the muscle of a student pensioner protest group?
Of the 600,000 renewable jobs Albanese promised for the transition, the only ones regularly advertised in a local Renewable Energy Zone are for highly paid corporate spin doctors and lower-paying lawn mowing-type maintenance.
The local community doesn’t see a dollar from predominantly Irish and European tradies getting bussed in and out of developments for 12-hour days.
NSW transmission agencies such as EnCo are giving councils $250,000 grants for feasibility studies on setting up “donga towns” for wind tower workers — if these jobs were going to locals, wouldn’t they already have an address?
Regular people, inexperienced in fighting bureaucracy and genuinely hurt by government policy, are not just up against the department spin but also the emergence of professional activists.
It’s a new class of the entitled disgruntled. They are engaging in cancel culture, funded by others, organised by quasi-political parties, and bullying people in the middle who must live and work under transmission lines and wind turbines.
Far from being a benevolent order the kids should follow to attain moral enlightenment, the reality is strident tactics; unleashing submissions purporting to speak on behalf of communities they have never been to and have no interest in other than enforcing their “vision”
An example is the North West Protection Advocacy group, which has spent years campaigning and participating in government inquiries and planning hearings. It has an unauthorised website with zero transparency, where some members claim to live in Narrabri but investigations have revealed most live in inner Sydney and coastal towns.
They adopt the guise of an organised group of concerned locals but it’s actually a couple of puppet masters running the show.
Or look at the Rising Tide protest in Newcastle, which flew in activists from Queensland, Adelaide and Perth.
Planning authorities aren’t interested in the difference.
Only a certain person has the luxury to abscond from all pressing responsibilities to picket for even a day. They must have time — which rules out most parents getting their kids to school — and money, which rules out those under the crunch of a cost-of-living crisis who must turn up to work.
The Albanese government will start next sitting week choosing to either listen to the people who genuinely live in their seats — Labor seats — or the hired help of foreign wind factory proponents.
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