Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my colleagues for their contributions. I will note the project that Senator Colbeck talked about in Queensland next to the wet tropics World Heritage area, the Chalumbin wind farm project. Imagine if that were being built in Tasmania. You would have Bob Brown out there chaining himself to windfarm pylons, because he has protested against wind farms in Tasmania because apparently his wedge-tailed eagles are far more important than our last remaining community of chlamydia-free koalas. As Senator Colbeck says, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Senator Cadell quite rightly said this is about allowing people to tell their story. We keep getting our stories—this proposal, this project and this inquiry—blocked by Labor, the Greens and Senator Pocock on the crossbench. Luckily for them, we can stand in this place and share parts of their stories. I have spoken previously about the HumeLink Action Group and the work they have done to try and bring the attention of people to the HumeLink transmission line project that is going from Snowy 2.0 to the South Australian border over some of our most pristine highland country and also over native forestry areas and softwood plantations.

Just this week, the New South Wales softwood group said that the HumeLink transmission line project could be the final nail in the coffin for the Highland softwood plantation, which have been through bushfire, which have been through COVID, which have suffered supply chain issues. But the HumeLink is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

I also want to talk about something a little bit closer to my home. On 18 July, I had the opportunity to join a packed room of concerned landholders at the Deniliquin RSL club to meet with a team of Transgrid staff, with the guidance of a professional moderator, to talk about the New South Wales side of the VNI West project. This is a project that is going to connect to the Dinawan renewable energy zone near Coleambally in New South Wales to Victoria and then power Melbourne. Good on Melbourne! I hope you're very comfortable in Toorak! One of the amazing things about this project is that a draft corridor report was published in February, and it had a range of options, but it also identified the preferred option, which it said would 'maximise the positive net economic benefits to those who produce, consume and transport in the National Energy Market'. The preferred option was from Waubra onto Echuca Moama and then on to the Dinawan Energy Hub in New South Wales. That was the preferred option in February.

Fast forward to July, Transgrid publishes a new corridor report with a new option, option 5(a). No-one had heard of 5(a) before. It goes from Dinawan, north of Jerilderie, passed Conargo, over almost the whole of one of Australia's longest merino bloodline studs—160-odd years of a single merino bloodline—across some of our most productive sheep and rice producing areas, around the Werai State Forest, because, on this occasion, they've worked out that they shouldn't be going over state forests, then crossing the Murray River at Murrabit. Everyone is scratching their heads, asking why the New South Wales leg of the VNI West project suddenly increased from 184 kilometres, which would be the most direct route, following roads, probably following a road corridor, to 216 kilometres over predominantly private farmland.

It is estimated this change in route will cost New South Wales an extra $154 million. Everyone is questioning why. Well, thanks to the investigative reporting of Peter Hunt, at the Weekly Times, we now know why. The Victorian energy minister, Lily D'Ambrosio, demanded option 5(a). We thought—silly us!—that the Australian Energy Market Operator would choose the appropriate route based on an option that maximises the positive net economic benefits. But we found out that Minister D'Ambrosio insisted that the AEMO consider option 5(a), unbeknownst to anyone else.

When these farmers in Deniliquin gathered at the Deni RSL to try to understand why, they also rightly asked, 'Well, what does this mean?' Now, apparently, you can't go underground, you can't follow the road corridors, you can't follow the predominantly disused but still government-owned rail corridors and so you need to go over private agricultural land. What does that mean? It means, once the final route is selected, a 70-metre-wide easement. It means 80-metre-tall towers every 450 metres. It means an air-exclusion zone 120 metres wide and 60 metres above the top of the transmission lines.

We are in an irrigation area. As much as some in this place would like us to do away with irrigation, irrigation is still a vital part of our economy. One of the things that irrigation farmers do is farm rice. Ours are the most water-efficient rice growers in the world, but we still do have flooded rice bays, and the best way to maintain that rice and get the best bang for your harvest is by aerial application of fertilisers. Sometimes, in a wet year like the year we've just had, where it was flooded, the only way to get the rice onto the bays is to aerial sow. Could you imagine having 120-metre-wide air-exclusion zones? You can't fly drones in that 120-metre zone, so for the graziers who now utilise drones as an efficient way to monitor their stock and their stock water points it's: 'Sorry—no can do. You can't do that anymore.' That is an impact on your farm business. You will have to change the crops you grow, you will have to change the way you apply water and you will have to change the way you manage your livestock. Forget about the fact that, during the construction period, you can't have livestock in those paddocks. When asked, Transgrid said, 'Oh, well, you just agist them somewhere else for the duration.' Biosecurity, anyone? I'm just mentioning it. You can't just transport 160-year-old merino bloodlines to a different station and hope they come back disease free.

As Senator Cadell said, there are other impacts. What is the impact on the capital gains status of the farm? Some of these farms have been in the same family for five-plus generations. But, because you're changing land use on a corridor of it and changing income streams, the advice that some of our farmers have had is that that will change the capital gains status from that point on. How do you value that when you're trying to work out what the upfront compensation package should be? What will the impact on land tax be? As Senator Cadell said of off-farm income, how does that impact you when you're applying for primary industry grants?

The other thing in our area is that we are a recognised plains-wanderer habitat. There are farms throughout our area that have nature conservation caveats on their titles. When we asked Transgrid about that, Transgrid said, 'We'll just offset it.' The plains-wanderer is an endangered species. My area is the offset. There is no alternative offset area you can go to. When we asked about having a nature conservation caveat, they said that, obviously, we'd have to go somewhere else. We said, 'Clearly, you've done a survey to understand where these caveats are held?' We got a blank look. 'We haven't done that work yet. We'll do that work after we've determined what corridor we're going to follow when we lodge our EIS.' I've never heard of anything so ridiculous.

Why would you not do it all concurrently, so you know you're planning for a corridor where you don't have to have these problems? And that would have also happened up at Chalumbin—if we did them concurrently.

This is what we want to explore in this inquiry. We want to hear more of these stories. We want to hear where the planning processes are letting us down and actually adding to our costs, even if we still continue with an overhead powerline option. With the planning processes, instead of following a Labor state minister's demands to skirt around their preferred electorates, we want to make sure there is net benefit. We want to make sure they've considered nature conservation caveats. We want to make sure that they are going in the most direct route, instead of the most politically convenient route.

Let us have this inquiry. I don't tire of asking, because I quite like standing here and standing up for my constituents and communities so that their stories are heard. But wouldn't it be better for all of you if, instead of hearing it through me, you heard it direct? So let us have this inquiry to hear from the people who are directly impacted and to hear from the TransGrids of the world, because it would be an open public inquiry; we would not block anyone. Let us have this inquiry.