Farmers in Victoria have set fire to government information packs while vowing to blocks plans to run massive renewable energy transmission lines through their land.
Rural communities where locals were already furious over plans for wind farms and transmission lines were shocked by the Labor government’s Victorian Transmission Plan (VTP), which was unveiled on Sunday and contained major expansions to Renewable Energy Zones (REZ).
The final plan will now cost almost $8 billion – double estimates given by Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio in a parliamentary committee just two months ago – and the REZs will now cover 7.9% of the state’s total land area, up from 7% in the draft plan.
Upset farmers and local residents of towns in the Wimmera region protested against the REZs and transmission line plans in Marnoo on Monday, saying Premier Jacinta Allan and Ms D’Ambrosio could “go and get stuffed” while burning government materials on a bonfire.
“You’re not getting on our land,” said one farmer, who also set fire to a wooden replica of a transmission line and declared: “This is what we’ll do to their towers.”
The state government has offered financial compensation “negotiated with the developer” to property owners, but many farmers have vowed to lock developers out, especially in Wimmera where two REZs have been combined into one that is 68% larger than first proposed.
Ross Johns, the president of the Wimmera Mallee Environmental and Agricultural Protection Association, said the government would have to build the transmission lines through “enemy territory”.
“What you’ve got is a bunch of rural people and farmers who are extremely resourceful,” he told ABC News.
“The government has totally underestimated the resolve of regional and rural people.”
Mr Johns said the government did not appear to understand farmers’ concerns, and said the footprint of the planned powerlines was so huge it would prevent large swathes of land from every being farmed on or operated again.
Ben Duxson, a farmer from Marnoo in the same area, said locals were planning to “stand in our gateways and fight”.
“Our stance has always been that they need to stop and actually get an energy plan that’s good for Australia for the next 100 to 200 years and this certainly isn’t a plan that’s going to do that,” Mr Duxson said.
“We’re saying a hard no to their projects. We’re Australia’s food bowl out here, we’re certainly not the energy producers that these government people think we are.
“The farmers are resolute – we’ll stand at our gates and we’ll protect our land.”
Marcia McIntyre, a farmer from Kanya, told Nine News “it’s scary that we’ve been so ignored”.
“I’m a bit scared about what that means for our community,” she said.
“Our community has been so consistent and so clear that we do not want to be in a Renewable Energy Zone.”
Labor admits the plan will increase power bills for all Victorians, but government body VicGrid claims it will eventually reduce energy prices, with Ms D’Ambrosio calling it a “win for everybody”.
“Overall VicGrid’s modelling suggests that Victorian energy bills could be $20 lower per household and $50 lower per small business each year (real $2025),” the final VTP report stated.
But Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University, told the ABC the figures were “nonsense”, and the plan was likely to cost up to $28 billion over the next 10 years and result in households paying 50% more.
“They are only including a very small subset of the transmission expansion plan that they have set out and they’ve done that by simply relegating the vast bulk of the expenditure into what they call the base case,” he said.
“I think the government is petrified of the actual outlays that their plan entail. It might well be that if the government proceeds with this plan, customers will simply find it unaffordable and so then taxpayers will be forced to bear some large part of it.
“I estimate small household bills will increase by about half. Large bills paid by large industry, for whom the electricity transmission charge is a much bigger portion of their bill, they can expect bills to increase by between two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half times.”
The plan coincides with the closure of Victoria’s two coal-fired power stations, and VicGrid CEO Alistair Parker said it was developed to minimise impact on locals, land owners and agriculture.
“VicGrid has worked hard to balance a range of factors as we make difficult decisions about where energy infrastructure is needed to deliver reliable and affordable power to Victorian homes, businesses and industry,” he said.
The 134-page final report said the size and locations of the REZs prioritised “early engagement and involvement of Traditional Owners and First Peoples” and said the Wimmera REZs were combined based on feedback from aboriginal groups.
The report mentions “traditional owner” 112 times and “first people” 47 times, while the word “farmer” appears only four times throughout the document.
