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

Despite my youthful good looks and boyish charm, I am old enough to remember the good old days when the Greens chained themselves to trees, not wind towers, and when the Labor Party actively pretended to have an interest in the environment instead of bulldozing it. I see thousands of people out the front today have had a massive—there are thousands. In this chamber there are farmers from new England up there. They're on their land, trying to grow lucerne and feed animals out in the world. Straight after this, I'm meeting with VNI West. We have anti wind farm people from Port Stephens, from the Illawarra. I have Oberon against wind farms out there. We have 'no' to the Central West-Arana area. All these people want a say. We have Transmission Tuesdays. We couldn't get it up today because we weren't here yesterday to lodge the motion, but it will be back.

We want to give them a say about what's happening to their land in this process. Any significant change in Australia requires all the parties of governments to agree about the way forward so it isn't chopped and changed every time there's a new government. This isn't a thing that is happening well. We have the government's own report in which Mr Andrew Dyer, the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner, came out and said 92 per cent of residents say this is not being done well. They are not being consulted with. They are not being engaged with. It is going poorly. Ninety-two per cent is a massive fail. It's an eight per cent mark in an exam. Even I at school didn't manage to get that low, and I was trying hard sometimes!

This is a joke. We need to have an inquiry to see how this can be done better. We are not taking land the size of Singapore under powerlines for stage 1 and stage 2 of Rewiring the Nation, more under solar areas and massive areas under wind turbines. (Time expired)