Vikki Campion: Why rural communities protest against wind and solar factories
In Labor’s attack on nuclear, they say: Do you want a reactor in your backyard? Yet they never asked us if we wanted 300m-tall wind towers or thousands of acres of solar, writes Vikki Campion.
Opinion
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They came with tiny babies and small children, in Akubras and flannels and dusty boots, with clumsy chants, handwritten signs and mistakes at the microphone. For most, it was the first protest they had attended in their sun-weathered lives.
“We aren’t very good, are we?” one laughed. “We are not professional protesters.”
They came from hours away, up early or driving the night before, to meet Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Bush Summit in Tamworth, united in one cause — that when they told billionaire and foreign-owned wind and solar factory and transmission line consultants their concerns, they were ignored.
It’s the same story from one community to the next.
These companies come in without publicity, only dealing with hosts, who are kept isolated with nondisclosure agreements.
They promise easy money. When they think they have enough hosts, they have a community meeting, but rarely is it in a place the community go. It’s to events dominated by visitors from Western Sydney.
They are digital masters, designing pretty websites and community newsletters — out of sight of those working a rural paddock with no Wi-Fi.
There’s no serious attempt to talk to the neighbours. Instead, the companies create “community consultative committees” that end up representing stakeholders who stand to gain from the project financially.
They hold “community information sessions” where people are split into couples and pushed to different corners of the room.
Answers are obfuscated. They provide maps without scale, so you can’t work out how close you are to a turbine or a solar panel or a transmission line.
They refuse at any stage to admit there are any adverse impacts.
Dare to bring up microclimates, vibrations, noise or the effects of electromagnetic fields and you are a conspiracy theorist.
Each proposal requires a social impact statement, with the proponent bringing in pro-renewables consultants based in Collins St in Melbourne to “help” rural communities.
They tell families three turbines will be near them in the early days and, 18 months later, those families find out there will be 22.
Some hint that, if you don’t agree, your land will be taken by force.
Farmers struggle to get adequate legal advice in towns where the local solicitor is better at conveyancing than being the star of The Castle.
In some towns, there is a shop front for the renewables company, where one, Walcha Energy, keeps the door locked when opponents are around and diverts their concerns to Gold Coast-based consultants.
Elsewhere, people are disdainfully ignored if they ask for meetings with proponents.
In Muswellbrook, Nigel Wood’s wife was treated so aggressively by consultants for one company that she collapsed. He put in a formal complaint and never heard back.
Everywhere, it’s the same story, from another town Albo’s never seen.
North West: “My wife asked a question, the guy turned his back on her.”
Central West: “They told us if the houses were too close, they’d knock them down.”
South West: “They told us if we didn’t agree to the road, they would take our place by compulsory acquisition.”
These foreign billionaire bullies destroy our lands and throw a few crumbs to communities.
The Albanese government abandoned eight years of work for a nuclear facility in Kimba to “stop the distress” of the Barngarla people.
Yet he ignores the distress of the Anaiwan people to be surrounded by industrialised wind factories.
Armidale’s Anaiwan fundraised and bought a bush block for the revival of their language, culture, ceremonies and traditional land management, and now fight a proposal by Twiggy Forest’s Squadron Energy for a 20km by 8km wind farm featuring 107 turbines, one of which will be just 500m away.
Their neighbours are the Kindly Animal Sanctuary Armidale, where Naomi Hooper says the Booralong Wind project will also destroy critical koala habitat.
In Canberra, Labor and the pretend independents fuss over these subsidy-suckers as if they are a cuddly teddy bear, who refuse to acknowledge their business plan is not just selling energy to the grid but also carbon credits to foreign companies and countries.
In return, we get power we cannot afford, a landscape which we cannot farm, and forests destroyed and littered with industrial towers, panels and transmission lines.
In Labor’s attack on nuclear, they say: Do you want one in your backyard?
They never asked us if we wanted 300m-tall wind towers, thousands of acres of solar or cobwebs of transmission lines in our backyard, but we are getting them.
Albo parrots Chris Bowen’s claims that nuclear is too expensive, maybe refusing to acknowledge or disbelieving entirely the NetZero Australia report, which forecasts his plan to cost $7 to $9 trillion by 2060 if he wants to keep the lights on.
He thinks they are green.
Hundreds of kilometres will be cleared with promises to spend millions of dollars to protect land somewhere else as an “offset”.
Respect for the environment, biodiversity or Indigenous culture only matters when it is being used as a convenience and it aligns with the policies of your party factions.
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