‘Can't get a fair go': Beef farmer rails against NSW government pressure to seize more land for renewables projects
The 'Electricity Infrastructure Investment Amendment (Priority Network Projects) Bill 2025' passed state parliament on Thursday afternoon, granting Energy Minister Penny Sharpe additional powers regarding priority renewable energy infrastructure.
Ms Sharpe said the bill 'does not change' the approval process for projects and insisted the state Labor government was not 'shortcutting' the NSW planning system.
She added the legislation will 'allow energy to flow sooner' and allow her to choose from a wider pool of projects to 'address a reliability or systems strength gap and keep the lights on'.
Beef farmer Grant Piper, based on the Great Dividing Range near Coolah, told Sky News there was already compulsory acquisition rights for state-significant infrastructure, which had only covered transmission lines.
'I guess that they talked about extending that to more projects,' he said.
'Anything that extends the Minister's powers or their executive order ability to just ram things through, it just crushes the whole idea of having a parliamentary democracy. I can't see how you can justify it in any way whatsoever.'
Mr Piper said the state government kept 'ignoring our concerns' and would not acknowledge the downside of the renewable projects, including bushfire risks.
'We're going to have 130-odd turbines to the west of us, the next ridge west, which is an absolute fire hazard. We won't be able to fight a fire in there with aircraft,' he said.
'Then north of us is 185 turbines on the Liverpool Range Wind Farm and then inside the REZ (Renewable Energy Zone) is, you know, scheduled to be over a thousand turbines plus the solar.
'It's going to be a huge change and a huge impact and they actually don't acknowledge any of the downsides.'
According to The Daily Telegraph, government sources claimed the new powers were necessary to allow the Minister to direct more transmission projects and will allow her to direct projects to the state regulatory framework, rather than the more encumbered federal one to streamline completion times.
Mr Piper said the unfolding list of renewable projects across the state meant he and other regional Australians 'can't get a fair go'.
'They keep ratcheting up the pressure and taking more power and we saw that through COVID and these are the same techniques being used now to ram through the transition net zero rubbish,' he said.
'We're all suffering for it, we're all going to pay for it and so are our children. The costs are immense and it has no technical merit or economic merit, and it has no environmental merit - locally you're taking farmland out of production to put this toxic junk on it.'
Earlier, Victorian Nationals MP Anne Webster called federal Labor's push for renewables a 'fast moving train' which she could only hope 'derails'.
'In Victoria you would be aware the VNI West was $3.6 billion last year, thereabouts, and looks to $7.6 billion this year – wow, and then you know potentially $11.9 billion for the same piece of transmission line that very few people in my electorate want,' she said.
'Lots and lots of people coming up and talking to me about the heartbreak in their communities, the division in their communities… it turns out in my electorate 60 per cent do not support net zero or 2030 targets.
'Let's face it they're political and ideological and these are very pragmatic people and they do not support it. Of the 30 per cent that do support net zero, 68 per cent are not prepared to pay more than $100 a year.
'Well, the horror story is, as you and I know, people are paying well more than that already for this disastrous plan.'
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