Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Recently I got to travel around western New South Wales and I dropped in at Dunedoo, where I ran into the Hackney family. The Hackney family are a longstanding farming family out there just on the eastern side of Dunedoo, and they see their part. They tend to the land, they have their animals and they have their crops, and they know they want to leave a better future. But they are the unintended victims of the transmission lines that are popping up all across Australia. They have a farm, and one-third of it will be unsuitable for agriculture because of power lines. They've tried to be helpful with EnergyCo. They've gone to them and said, 'How about this other route just a couple of hundred metres down on the edge of our property?' It won't segregate one-third of their property, take away the regenerational soil lands on the creek, take away their silos and their feed or take away their stock stand. EnergyCo have come back and said, 'No, we want our route where it is.' These things have to be done better. If federal money is being used, we need to make sure that we keep Australian farms productive and that people don't have to suffer unnecessarily.