Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a tragedy, Senator Cadell. It's a tragedy that you and Senator Colbeck have had to move this motion seven times. For those listening to the broadcast, I think it's really important to set the scene. Why has this motion been put up seven times? It must be an extraordinarily controversial motion. It must directly criticise the government, undermine some sort of government policy or do something terribly radical. Well, in actual fact, it doesn't. No offence, Senator Cadell and Senator Colbeck, but this motion doesn't do anything radical at all. All it does is give voice, which is the one of the most important jobs this chamber has, to a group of people who want a very important issue canvassed in the forum of a Senate committee.

The issue is the huge number of transmission lines and the other infrastructure that will be installed in Australia over the next decades, based on this government's current plan, and the disproportionate impact that that's going to have on a relatively small part of the Australian community. Transmission lines feed into the city, in general, from where the power is created, often in rural and regional areas. When they hit the city, they go through a little bit of urban land, but the vast bulk of the impact of those transmission lines and that infrastructure is on regional communities. The impact is on farmland.

Those communities want a say in this plan for tens of thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines, new sites for wind turbines and new sites for solar factories. They want a say in how it's going to be rolled out, how it's going to impact them, how they're going to be consulted and how they're going to be compensated. Those communities deserve to be heard. It's not too much. In fact, having this chamber, through the committee process, look at these issues is the very least that those communities should be given.

It's not that the committee process is an adversarial one. Sometimes it gets a bit feisty, but the committee process is also a way in which future-looking bipartisan, tripartisan or otherwise multipartisan plans for contentious issues can be taken forward. In my time in this place, I have seen it time and time again. Committees have actually come together to try and reach a point of agreement and take forward a model that satisfies very divergent requirements—and the requirements are divergent. Nobody's saying that this isn't a difficult issue, but that's why we need an inquiry. It is a difficult issue. The difference between choosing path A, path B and path C for a transmission line can have dramatic impacts. It can have dramatic impacts on communities and on individual farming properties, including generational farming properties, which this chamber, through the committee system, should be empowered to look at.

I just find it ludicrous that the Labor Party and the Greens have backed themselves into a corner, rejecting these entirely reasonable terms of reference for an inquiry. There is nothing radical in here. There is nothing that's a direct attack on the government. There's nothing that says that this committee should find that there shouldn't be allowed to be any transmission lines on anybody's farm ever again. That's not part of the terms of reference. They are very reasonable terms of reference to look at an issue that is very real and that imposes burdens, supposedly for the benefit of all society, on a very narrow part of society. It's not people in urban areas who are going to have to deal with these tens of thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines or with the wind farms and the solar farms. It simply isn't. They will see the supposed benefits of these things in time—we can have another argument about that—but the fact is that people in urban centres, people in cities, don't have to deal with the transmission lines. They don't have to deal with the massive imposition.

The areas we're talking about are simply staggering. One company in Western Australia is talking about 4,000 acres of solar and wind projects—one company with 4,000 acres, and that's just to power their business. That's not powering Perth. That is not powering the grid. That's just for their business. So we are talking about staggering amounts of land use into the future. Whilst perhaps on the west coast that will be slightly less than on the east coast, the fact is that the same issues are at play no matter where you are in Australia.

These issues deserve to be ventilated in a forum such as a Senate committee where we can hear from local communities, and we will hear a lot of different perspectives. I have absolutely no doubt about that. We are not going to hear from just one view of the world. There are plenty of people who would love to see opportunities for their patch, including economic opportunities, but let's hear about it. Let's hear about how the costs and benefits can be shared between the city and the bush. Let's hear about how the costs and benefits can be shared between those who derive revenue from these electricity generation projects and transmission lines and those who have to put up with the impost upon them.

Let's hear about how we can compensate landowners for their loss of amenity and loss of property rights. If we're serious about our Constitution then we should be serious about that issue. How do we compensate property owners for the continual taking, via regulation, of their rights? Again, it's not an issue that's going to be dealt with easily, but it is something that this place should be willing to confront.

Labor and the Greens again have an opportunity to change their minds, and I ask them to consider it. They've again got an opportunity to say: 'We got it wrong the first of six times. We should have this inquiry. We should enable a Senate committee to look at what is a very important issue'—just as literally thousands of other inquiries have been held on important and contentious issues. We'll see whether Labor and the Greens can bring themselves to support what is an entirely reasonable motion from Senators Colbeck and Cadell. We'll see whether they'll listen to the voices of those in the regions who will be directly impacted by this suite of policies, and whether they'll let them tell the Senate what they think the way forward should look like. That would be the only fair and reasonable thing to do.