'When will insanity end': farmer fury over power play
Several hundred people packed the front steps of Victorian parliament on Wednesday as the lower house prepares to debate a controversial bill this week.
Under the legislation, state government agency VicGrid would be granted powers to access private farmland to build transmission towers.
It states authorised officers can use "reasonable force" with an entry order and people are banned from obstructing, hindering or delaying access.
Fines of up to $12,000 for individuals and up to $48,000 for body corporates can be handed out if there is resistance.
Protesters held signs reading "no government stooge on my land" and "hands off our land" as the state pushes on with network expansion to facilitate the transition to clean energy.
VNI West, a second 240km transmission line between Victoria and NSW, has had its delivery date delayed two years to late 2030.
A construction timeline for the 190km Western Renewables Link from Bulgana in Victoria's west to Sydenham in Melbourne's northwest has also been pushed back.
The plans continue to face opposition despite the Victorian government committing to pay landowners $8000 a year for every kilometre of transmission infrastructure for 25 years.
Gerald Feeny, a fourth-generation farmer from near St Arnaud in western Victoria's Wimmera region, said producers couldn't be bought off or bullied into submission.
"(Premier) Jacinta Allan says she's a country girl," he said.
"What country girl would bully and try to intimidate rural people, farmers on their own land?"
Kanya farmer Marcia McIntyre said farms were for food not energy production and pondered "when will this insanity end".
"After some horrendous lying, coercion and bullying from AEMO, (the government) have a revolt along the unnecessary VNI West transmission and WRL transmission lines," she said.
"Instead of fixing the problem that they and their own agencies caused, they are just going to roll out some legislation to enforce their will on the people."
The premier insisted laws already allowed private companies to enter farms and the proposed changes would "centralise" arrangements through VicGrid.
"What we've seen by some of the private companies with the way they've engaged with landowners in some parts of our state hasn't been up to scratch," Ms Allan told reporters.
"That's why we understand it needs to be better co-ordinated - we need to work with landowners and that's exactly what we'll do."
Opposition Leader Brad Battin accused the Labor government of railroading farmers, who also fought tooth and nail to win a 12-month reprieve from an expanded emergency services levy.
"We're not anti-renewable energy but you can't do it by bulldozing through people's properties," he said.
Nationals Leader Danny O'Brien told the crowd the coalition would repeal the bill if passed and it wins the next state election in November 2026.
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Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Dear Leader Jacinta Allan will fight for your right to do what you're already doing
Greetings comrades. Having spent my weekend at the Victorian State Labor Conference, I feel suitably re-educated to talk to you about something peculiar going on within our great and glorious movement. Comrades, has it ever struck you as passingly strange that, for all the things we could be doing in a state where we have been in government 21 of the past 25 years, we spend an awful lot of time talking about the Liberal Party? I say this as a registered observer at the conference, rather than a member of our great and glorious movement, so you will forgive me for not recognising the real and present danger the Liberals represent – with their 20 members in an 88-seat Legislative Assembly – to the rights and lives of working people. But from my cordoned-off position at the back of the room, where delegates are free to approach the journalists as long as they don't feed them, the constant references to what the Liberals did in the 1990s or didn't do in the single term they governed this century seemed a little over-egged. This is what our Dear Leader, Jacinta Allan, told us in her speech: 'Never forget, the Tories have already had their turn and they didn't just sit on their hands – they swung the axe. They shut TAFE campuses (Shame!) and locked young people out. They closed hospitals (Shame!) and made families travel longer. They cut schools and then asked why kids were falling behind. They sold off the SEC (Shame!) and my dad lost his job. Loading 'Deep down, they don't believe working people deserve better.' They sound awful. I'm glad the SEC is back in business, enshrined in the Constitution and, no doubt, employing all those workers again. The Latrobe Valley must be rocking these days. But when you say the Tories have had their turn, are we still talking about 1993? Another thing, comrades. All this stuff about bosses darkly plotting against the interests of the workers they employ – does anyone really believe it?
The Age
3 hours ago
- The Age
Dear Leader Jacinta Allan will fight for your right to do what you're already doing
Greetings comrades. Having spent my weekend at the Victorian State Labor Conference, I feel suitably re-educated to talk to you about something peculiar going on within our great and glorious movement. Comrades, has it ever struck you as passingly strange that, for all the things we could be doing in a state where we have been in government 21 of the past 25 years, we spend an awful lot of time talking about the Liberal Party? I say this as a registered observer at the conference, rather than a member of our great and glorious movement, so you will forgive me for not recognising the real and present danger the Liberals represent – with their 20 members in an 88-seat Legislative Assembly – to the rights and lives of working people. But from my cordoned-off position at the back of the room, where delegates are free to approach the journalists as long as they don't feed them, the constant references to what the Liberals did in the 1990s or didn't do in the single term they governed this century seemed a little over-egged. This is what our Dear Leader, Jacinta Allan, told us in her speech: 'Never forget, the Tories have already had their turn and they didn't just sit on their hands – they swung the axe. They shut TAFE campuses (Shame!) and locked young people out. They closed hospitals (Shame!) and made families travel longer. They cut schools and then asked why kids were falling behind. They sold off the SEC (Shame!) and my dad lost his job. Loading 'Deep down, they don't believe working people deserve better.' They sound awful. I'm glad the SEC is back in business, enshrined in the Constitution and, no doubt, employing all those workers again. The Latrobe Valley must be rocking these days. But when you say the Tories have had their turn, are we still talking about 1993? Another thing, comrades. All this stuff about bosses darkly plotting against the interests of the workers they employ – does anyone really believe it?
Sky News AU
3 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Jacinta Allan ushers in entitled 'leaners' culture in working from home legislation that will drive Aussie jobs overseas
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