Vikki Campion: Spin and wind as land grabs see farmers’ plight lost in transmission

As farmers receive notices their land could be compulsorily acquired for massive power transmission lines, city-dwellers remain blissfully ignorant: no lines will run through their homes.

Art featuring the black bags farmers are finding on their fences and gates. Pictures: Supplied

Hanging off the farm gate is the plastic bag where the propaganda starts, almost a metaphor for the green boot on farmers’ throats.

Inside black plastic, with “HELPING THE ENVIRONMENT” screaming across the label, is a notice warning your land will be ripped up to build 500KV towers, 80m high, 400 metres apart.

What’s to come is many more foreign corporate giants building wind and solar factories with imported components, and linking them with thousands of kilometres of transmission lines, to give Sydney’s western suburbs some of the most expensive power bills in the Western world, which the NSW Government’s EnergyCo calls the “modern-day equivalent of power stations”.

A power station might cover a few hundred acres. This plan covers hundreds of thousands — the power equivalent of a morning commute in hot air balloons.

EnergyCo’s “Dear Resident” letter doesn’t mention they will compulsorily acquire our private land to give it to someone else, since EnergyCo will not be building the transmission infrastructure, operating or maintaining it.

Stuart Hackney and his son Mitchell next to silos that are in the path of the proposed transmission lines on their Dunedoo property. Pic By Dean Marzolla

It’s a neat trick. A new government organisation authorises whatever they want – and then they will flip the deal. To who? They can’t tell us.

We know they will have to be fabulously wealthy and aren’t doing this for charity.

They are coming into farm homes and agribusinesses and saying, “We’re going to take part of what is yours and give it to someone else to build and run a business on — but don’t worry here is a biodegradable bag”.

They have a six-month window; if no agreement is made, Energy Co’s compulsory acquisition kicks in.

And then, after it’s built, you will have to adhere to “exclusion zones” on your own land where you won’t be able to do fencing, irrigation or use farm equipment for safety reasons.

The inner Sydney Climate 200 or Labor voter has to walk 533km north to Coffs Harbour or nearly 200km west to Bathurst before they even encounter a single of the hundreds of approved wind and solar factories.

Power lines hang from transmission towers on Torrens Island, South Australia. Picture: Getty Images

There will not be a single transmission line running through their premises. Imagine telling anyone in Warringah or Mosman the government will run an extension cord through their house to power the buildings in Barangaroo.

And if you disagree, EnergyCo will acquire sections of your kitchen at their price and time frame. And from that point forward, you can’t do anything in your house without asking the government’s permission first.

But they would never try anything like this in a Climate-200-funded seat like Mosman or Warringah. When planners wanted to put 12-storey buildings (about half the height of a transmission tower) on Military Rd, North Sydney authorities knocked it back for being too high.

They won’t accept more buildings where buildings are, but they are happy to industrialise farmland.

When planners wanted to put affordable housing over a metro station in Crows Nest, the “village” went nuts, and the 350 apartments were slashed to less than 150.

The same communities that believe themselves progressive enough to vote for so-called Teal candidates blanket the bush in industrial towers so they can feel good about getting power from a wind factory, continuously squash plans for new housing in a housing crisis.

Farmers would love even a portion of the finance, resources and idle time these people use to fight new apartment developments where there are already apartments.

Let’s be honest. It’s not about the shade or protecting a “village-feel”, it’s to protect the value of their asset.

Senator David Pocock. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Many of our farms are worth less than their houses, but we don’t have a friend who is a King’s Counsel or the money to hire publicists to tackle the tide of lobbyists regularly flying in and out of our towns.

And what are the fruits of all this? An unaffordable, intermittent power system that the Australian Energy Regulator warns prices will increase 20 per cent from July 1.

And rather than giving the communities who wear the burden of wind factories and transmission towers cheaper power, authorities are instead creating “schemes” for the green companies to give grants to community projects in the areas that host them.

Gone too is any pretence that biodiversity will be protected.

Yet even with a host of endangered animals from Queensland to Victoria to lose habitats for transmission lines, Labor refuses a Senate inquiry into them, voting it down four times.

Even Senator David Pocock, the Climate 200-funded independent who once chained himself to a digger in the Pillaga, has not said he would support an inquiry.

The Climate 200-backed teals took a chartered plane to look at the gas line in Narrabri but are nowhere to be seen for the biodiversity losses for transmission lines.

Like the compostable plastic bag itself, the whole project is wrapped in spin for a so-called green product that can’t do what it promises.