Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of sadness to actually rise in the Senate tonight to speak on behalf of the thousands of rural and regional Victorians who have been significantly impacted by the rollout of transmission lines in their communities in and around Ballarat, throughout the Mallee and beyond. There was the lack of consultation with these communities and the riding roughshod over their private property rights with incursions onto farm properties. We know the Victorian Farmers Federation has condemned OzNet's incursion onto farm properties along the Ballarat to Bendigo transmission line. OzNet services workers entered without prior contact or seeking permission from landowners.

It reminds me of when I first arrived in this place. We had coal seam gas companies rocking up to farm properties seeking to enter at will and exploring whether that particular property had resource under it et cetera. There was a great deal of concern among the agricultural communities impacted that these companies were not giving the property owners the basic courtesy of letting them know that they were coming and, in the end, a right of return of a lot of the wealth generated as part of the exploration and development of coal seam gas enterprises on their land. We have moved a long way from those sorry days of 13 years ago.

But to be here in 2023 and have a serious corporation not seeking permission to enter a private property is absolutely unconscionable. There are safety and biosecurity issues associated with individuals and companies entering farmers' properties. It is blatant disregard of property rights, and farmers are rightly sick of it. They do a hard day's work and produce fabulous produce. They want to be prosperous and sustainable into the future, and they expect a level of respect for what they do and for the fact that these are private properties.

Let's face it: the rollout of 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines across this country isn't being equally shared between private property owners and public owners. State and Commonwealth land is not being asked to carry the burden of these transmission lines. It is actually farmers and rural and regional communities—out of sight, out of mind—who are expected to put up with strangers coming on their properties, marking out lines and not checking: 'How is this going to impact your enterprise? Is it better if we spend a little more time and go along the boundaries of your property?' In typical bureaucratic fashion, the quickest way from A to B is a straight line: 'We will carve up your properties with transmission line overhead, over your cattle herds or sheep flocks and right through your horticultural enterprises.'

Farmers aren't asking for a free ride. The agriculture sector in this country signed up to net zero by 2050 before the parliament did as a whole. The beef industry, in particular, signed up to net zero by 2030. So this isn't about the veracity or otherwise of climate change. It is about who has to pay the cost of transition. I've said in this place many, many times—and I will never tire of saying it, because it is the people who have sent me to this place whom I have the great privilege to represent—that it is unconscionable for a government and government entities to seek to penalise one sector of our community over another and to penalise the most marginalised, most vulnerable and poorest sections of our communities. Never mind what it's going to do to food production and prosperity.

I think for us in Victoria this has been quite a potent public debate, particularly in the Ballarat region, for over 18 months, and it is growing across the country as more and more communities are being subjected to not being consulted and to having strangers rock up at family properties—because these aren't just businesses or hay sheds. They are family homes where children are raised and where, often, multiple generations of individuals live. The level of disrespect that has been shown time and time again beggars belief, and it shows what the government really thinks about those of us who don't live in a capital city and who live in National and Liberal Party seats: not a lot. You don't care for our opinions or our consent, and that's why you choose not to consult us, because you feel you don't have to.

That's why men and women from the Mallee in Victoria got up at 1 am to get on a bus and to travel to Canberra to make it very clear to this Prime Minister and, in particular, to his energy minister, Minister Bowen, the devastating impact of their policy, because it seems that—no matter how many submissions or letters they write, how many phone calls, petitions or Facebook pages they produce or how much they contact their local council, their state government, AusNet or AEMO—no-one's listening.

And so they do what so many people in the regions, unfortunately, feel like they have to do: come here to the nation's capital to be seen and to make a ruckus. Bear in mind that making a ruckus isn't their natural character. These are men, women and families who just want to get on with the job at hand, which is producing food. But they don't expect their government to disrespect them in such a way. There's this fury building right across regional Australia, from Ballarat to Port Stephens, Gippsland and the Illawarra. It's out around Tamworth and the New England. Labor are riding roughshod over the Australian people with their ideological agenda to build massive transmission towers across prime agricultural land.

There are better ways to do this, and the least they could do is have the decency to sit down and have a conversation about how to do it in a way that works for all the stakeholders, not just for Minister Bowen. All that this motion seeks to do is to set up a Senate inquiry. We've had some pretty quirky Senate inquiries in my time in this place and this would hardly be the strangest. This would actually be a Senate inquiry that has wide public support—it has been called for by a community which feels it has no voice in this government. That is what this chamber has so often been called on to do: to give a voice and platform to the marginalised and vulnerable in the Australian community—to those who aren't feeling that they're getting a fair go. If the marches in country towns are anything to go by, the fact that these guys and gals will get on buses in the middle of the night to come up here—and these aren't activists! This isn't the Environmental Defenders Office crew. These are not men and women hitting the streets for Palestine every weekend. These are men and women who run small businesses, so it actually costs them money and opportunity to take a day and a half out of their community and off farm to come up here and make sure that this building has heard them. Why? Because this chamber refuses—refuses!—to hold a simple Senate inquiry. It's insane!

We're supposed to be the chamber that gives voice to the Australian public in a proportional way. The variety of Senate inquiries we've had range from coal seam gas to forced adoptions—that was an amazing Senate inquiry that I was on. There was an inquiry on the Murray-Darling Basin and we had huge inquiries into the disability sector before the royal commission. So this chamber and its committees have performed a crucial role in a whole raft of areas in making sure that those who don't have power and agency can be heard, and can have their concerns aired publicly. That's particularly so when powerful entities, such as governments or corporations, are seeking to abuse that power, as is happening in this case.

No-one is arguing that net zero by 2050 isn't going to be a challenge. But what is occurring, increasingly —and, hopefully, there's more cognisance of it in this building—is that the poorest communities in our nation are being asked to pay the most burden. It isn't the suburbs of Canberra that are being crisscrossed by transmission lines and carpeted with solar panels. It's not the suburbs of Brunswick and Fitzroy, or those on the North Shore. It's the communities far away—out of sight and out of mind. I humbly beg this chamber, again, to actually give them a voice and allow us to have a Senate inquiry so that their voices can be heard.

I heard David Jochinke, the newly-elected National Farmers Federation president, talk about the cumulative impact on agriculture of Labor government policy initiatives—policy across governments.

It is not just Minister Watt's biosecurity tax. It is not just Minister King's truckies tax. It is not just Tanya Plibersek's abhorrent abuse of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, even turning her back on the deal that Tony Burke did all those years ago to get everyone on the same page, turning her back on the social and economic devastation that water buybacks and the additional 450 giga litres—which was never part of the plan—will actually have on the basin and on food production. If it's not that, it's this.

Everywhere you look in this government, there are decisions being made that impact on the agriculture sector and take rural and regional communities and our industries for granted like we're always going to be there and we're always going to be doing what we're doing, exporting 70 per cent of what we grow. One in four jobs in this country is as a result of our great status as a trading nation. The Prime Minister is in China this week celebrating ag getting back into China at the very same time that his ministers here at home are making decisions to nobble and cripple that industry. It's not me saying that. It's not the National Party. It is the National Farmers Federation, who very clearly articulated their need to be part of the solution.

Why aren't public landholders carrying the same amount of burden for these transmission lines as private landholders? They are genuine questions. Why won't you consult? Why won't these entities ask permission? These are basic rights, you would have thought, in a liberal democracy such as ours.

I hope we can find a way through. I hope that this chamber will reconsider its obstinance about allowing the men and women that grow our food to have their say through a simple Senate inquiry. We've all been here. We can all bring our usual suspects. The left bring their witnesses, the community bring their witnesses and the opposition bring their witnesses. Everyone gets a say. That is how it should work in this chamber and with our committees, but the fact that this government is refusing to allow the Senate inquiry to occur for these very genuine concerns to be publicly aired and be transparent says a lot about the culture of this government and its faux commitment to transparency and accountability.