Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today is the first day of spring, and across the Riverina there are swathes of golden glory wattle—and today is the national day—and canola in full bloom. New lambs have hit the ground, and green shoots—thankfully not of the political variety but of the pasture variety and crops—are thankfully, finally, out, because it's been very, very dry. There is a crispness and a freshness in the air that only comes about on 1 September, but there's also an uneasiness in the air—tension you can sense, you can feel and you can see.

I want to talk a bit about the faces of net zero. I want to talk a bit about a fellow I know very well; I'm not going to mention his name. He told me yesterday: 'Our land is the absolute pinnacle of prime agricultural land and I believe is well and truly amongst the best and most highly productive in Australia. I do not believe we deserve this to be happening in our landscape and having our food security placed in jeopardy.' He's talking about wind turbines, and his area, Old Junee, between Wagga Wagga and Temora, is not a windy area. It's not an area where there are huge ridge lines, but it matters not, because these wind towers as tall as Barangaroo are coming to a country area near you.

Yass Valley mayor Jasmin Jones said:

We're not a renewable energy zone—

and that's really important to remember—

They keep approving these in prime agricultural area, prime tourism and agri-wine area. We're internationally acclaimed for our wines, and we're turning into an industrial junkyard. They're village killers and we've had a gutful.

That is what she said.

Emma Webb—she's a wool grower between Binalong and Bowning—told the Bush Summit in Wagga Wagga last Wednesday:

It's really tough at the moment. I'm a wool grower, so anyone whose involved in the wool industry knows how tough that is and when you couple that with poor seasons and rising costs, things are really, really tough and what it means with it being so tough, is its opening up the door to predatory renewable energy developers coming into our communities with bags of cash and buying off farmers so they can industrialise prime agricultural land.

And that's the rub, because these companies send out these spivs, they send out these shysters, and they are buying off one farmer and not the farmer's neighbour. They are making people who are generational friends friends no more. They are dividing families. This is not the Australia I grew up in. This is not the regional Australia that I know and love. These companies, quite frankly, can go to hell. They really can.

Take Cheryl O'Donnell from Crookwell. 'We just get this constant noise,' she says. She lives in the shadow of one of these wind towers. She says she suffers headaches and dizziness from the continual reverberation. 'It can be like a jet engine coming over the hill.' About her husband, Michael, she said, 'He's broken. He said to me recently, "I'm running out of places to hide from them out here."'

The Upper Lachlan council area between Upper Lachlan and Yass Valley has got 42 per cent of the state's green energy projects and it's not even in a REZ. Then you've got 60 per cent of the wind turbines in New South Wales in Upper Lachlan. Yet now Essential Energy are looking to put them on—wait for this—diesel generators for backup power because they don't have the continual power that they need, even though they're providing the green energy power. Some of the projects proposed in that council area won't even be connected to the grid, because they're just taking the subsidies and running.

The greatest moral challenge for humankind is not the weather, which we cannot change, but the ability to grow food to help feed a hungry world. I note the number of capital city based politicians demanding action on behalf of their virtue-signalling, weather hand-wringers and rent-seeking corporations. Never has the city-country divide, sadly, been greater. It's all well and good to cover our farmland, our beautiful farmland, with battery energy storage systems, solar factories and wind turbines. How about we put offshore wind turbines at North Head or on the Yarra River or turn those sails on the iconic Sydney Opera House into solar panels? Why not do that? Why take up our farmland, which we need to grow food and fibre and which we need for our agricultural production, at the expense of—what?—trying to change the weather? Yeah, good luck with that.

The member for McMahon may have a mandate, but he doesn't have a mandate to ruin regional Australia. He does not. I have to say this is just a complete nonsense. It's not going to change the weather. That's why I support the bill from the member for New England.

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