State LNP promises “strict new audits” of solar and wind, Barnaby promises a big new coal plant

While much of Australia was distracted by the latest regime change for the federal Liberal Party, a fascinating political arm-wrestle has been playing out in Victoria between the Coalition opposition and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, as both parties court the anti-renewables vote.

Last week, the Victorian Liberal Party announced that it will introduce “strict new independent audits and economic impact assessments on new energy developments” if elected in the state poll in November.

“Communities across regional Victoria are increasingly concerned about the Allan Labor government’s approach to rolling out renewable energy projects without properly considering the long-term impact on agriculture and food production,” shadow energy minister David Davis said in a media release on Thursday.

“Under a Liberal and Nationals government, independent agricultural and economic impact assessments will become mandatory as part of the approvals process for major renewable energy projects and transmission developments to ensure prime farmland is protected.”

Shadow minister for agriculture, Emma Kealy, said the policy would complement the party’s previously announced commitment to overturn Labor’s changes that “ride roughshod over community consultation.”

“Instead, we will give farmers their voice back by restoring their ability to challenge inappropriate developments through VCAT, rather than forcing landholders into long, complex and expensive legal battles,” Kealy said.

Kealy is referring, here, to the Allan government’s expansion, two years ago, of the Development Facilitation Program (DFP) to include renewable energy and storage projects – a move that has, no doubt, stirred opposition in regional communities.

Most contentiously, the rule change ruled out third-party appeals to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for projects approved through the DFP – a move the Victorian Farmers Federation said would “steam roll… farmers and regional communities, with little regard to how it impacts their livelihoods and countless generational family farms.”

At the time, Premier Jacinta Allan said important renewables projects were regularly being tied up for years seeking approval, leading to a build-up of around $90 billion worth of project investment value in the pipeline.

Indeed, a Clean Energy Council report revealed that only four renewable energy projects were completed in Victoria in 2023 – two solar farms and two wind farms – setting the state behind on its target of 65 per cent renewables by 2030 and 95 per cent by 2035.

So far, the Victorian planning department has used the DFP to fast-track approvals for 22 solar, wind and battery projects. In a statement last week, state energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio said record investment in renewables has helped the achieve the lowest wholesale power prices in the country.

“Over the last year, Victoria’s average wholesale price was $78 per megawatt hour, compared to $103 for New South Wales, $96 for Tasmania, $87 for South Australia and $85 for Queensland,” D’Ambrosio said.

In his statement last week, Davis said that while renewable energy had an important role to play in Victoria’s energy future, “projects must also have social and economic licence.”

“This is about restoring fairness, transparency and proper community scrutiny to planning decisions that directly affect Victoria’s food security and regional livelihoods,” he said.

“Our policy will ensure renewable energy developments and transmission infrastructure are subject to rigorous, independent assessment before they proceed, protecting farming communities and prime agricultural land.”

Renew Economy has emailed David Davis asking for further detail on the proposed independent audits and who would conduct them. RE had not received a response by the time of publication.

But RE-Alliance, which works closely with farmers and regional communities across Australia and Victoria says that while it is hearing genuine concerns about how key pieces of energy infrastructure are being progressed, there is also a lot of misinformation fanning those concerns.

“People are becoming increasingly fatigued by the division in their communities,” RE-Alliance national director Andrew Bray told Renew Economy on Monday.

“It is incredibly hard to access locally-relevant information on the shift to renewables – and that information void is being filled by political commentary in an election year and social media algorithms that encourage division.

“What we see in our day to day work is an appetite among regional Victorians for a seat at the table in shaping legacy benefits like better roads, housing infrastructure and energy discounts for entire postcodes,” Bray says.

“Councillors, council staff, leaders of community organisations, farmers and passionate locals who want to get the best outcomes for their communities.

“We would encourage all policy decision makers in Victoria to engage with these leaders and make this change work for rural and regional Victoria.”

Meanwhile, One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce went all-in on division in his keynote address to the inaugural Across Victoria Alliance conference, which took place in the first week of February in the regional city of Horsham in western Victoria, where opposition to the VNI West transmission runs hot.

“Don’t ever call them renewables,” Joyce told the crowd. “They have nothing renewable about them… They’re swindle factories. They’re intermittent power swindle factories. They’re not going to change the temperature of the globe, they’re just going to make really rich people, really, really, really rich. That’s what they’re going to do.

“What we’re seeing here in Victoria, in so many areas, is people’s rights been diminished as the state goes into bat for domestic billionaires and foreign multinationals to build solar precincts, wind precincts, transmission lines, all underwritten by a capacity investment scheme,” Joyce continued.

“We believe in building coal fired power stations. They hate us saying that: I believe in building coal-fired power stations. They’re a really good idea, big coal-fired power stations, because I believe that we’ve gotta make Australia as powerful as possible as quickly as possible.”

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