Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
Mrs MARINO (Forrest) (20:20): I concur that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy has not used the right process—a terrible process, in fact—for the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. But I just want people to consider the burden that Labor's massive renewables-only energy policy is having on regional and rural Australia. Just think about this: Labor's plan includes nearly 60 million solar panels, over 3,500 new wind turbines and 28,000 kilometres of new transmission lines, all in rural and regional areas.
We know that the government will need to double the size of the transmission grid just to connect all of this new renewable energy, but, if it's double the size, I suspect it will be double the price and the cost—cost that will be added to families' and businesses' power bills. As we know, these endless kilometres of wind turbines and solar panels and 28,000 kilometres of additional transmission lines are impacting rural and regional areas, and farmers and food production.
This is also, sadly, dividing neighbours, dividing friends and dividing communities. That's appalling. I'm also concerned about reports regarding the fine plastic coming off turbines over time and farmers having to make declarations that will affect their businesses, their markets and their profits in time.
I read that farmers who graze livestock under solar panels, wind turbines or other renewable energy infrastructure must now declare it under the national on-farm livestock assurance program. Equally, I understand that this change to the Livestock Production Assurance program was quietly introduced in September. Farmers and producers are rightly very concerned about the potential consequences of this.
Meat & Livestock Australia contracts a company called Integrity Systems Company to manage its Livestock Production Assurance process. This process requires farmers to identify any chemical or physical contamination risks to livestock from equipment or infrastructure that may be degrading with age. Solar panels and wind turbines are both cited as examples, because solar panels degrade as they reach end of life, and it will be farmers who bear the cost and the risk of these solar panels and wind turbines as they degrade.
I just hope they're actually aware of these risks. We've even recently seen the collapse of a wind turbine. I also read that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy has appointed Tony Maher as his Energy Infrastructure Commissioner to deliver the government's wind tower and transmission plans in regional and farming areas.
Tony Maher, as we know, was the CEO of the National Farmers Federation for many years. I'd say to farmers, 'I hope you're aware that the role of the Energy Infrastructure Commissioner will be to deliver the wind, solar and transmission plans for the government, not for you.' I also wonder whether farmers will be made aware of all the current and future costs and responsibilities they will have, and I wonder whether their obligations under the integrity systems will actually be explained to them at all.
On top of all of this, farmers and small businesses will now have to report their scope 3 emissions. This endless green tape process will cost each one of us, those of us who are farmers. I can see this also, maybe, as a mechanism the Labor government will use to impose methane and additional carbon taxes on the farming sector once they actually announce their 2035 emissions reduction targets, which they haven't done and were supposed to do in February.
Mr Hogan: After the election, I think. Mrs MARINO: Yes. It's farmers that are actually the targets.
In the South West of WA, in what is the iconic and beautiful Geographe Bay, Labor has decided to build a wind factory. It has declared a zone of 4,000 square kilometres with massive turbines of nearly 300 metres from base to blade tip—close to 1,000 turbines—with prices and profits for investors underpinned by Labor's Capacity Investment Scheme, which now means the profits of these offshore companies will be underwritten by Australian taxpayers year on year.
All of this is off the federal budget. With the wind factory proposal, what we saw in the South West was a terrible and arrogant and superficial, badly named—misnamed—'public consultation'. It wasn't a consultation.
It was typical of the steamrolling of regional communities that we're seeing in other states. Over time, I suspect our communities will be left with this rusting infrastructure in one of the most loved, visited and enjoyed areas in Australia, Geographe Bay. Of all places, Geographe Bay is the wrong place.
This is for locals and for domestic and international visitors. This is where the diving, the fishing, the camping and the recreational and commercial fishing and boating happen. No wonder our communities are so strongly opposed to this.
They didn't want it, and they are absolutely strong and active and vocal in their opposition, angered and frustrated by the process, a bit like that of this bill, of terribly arrogant and superficial consultation. It wasn't consultation at all. And the representatives at these sessions couldn't even answer basic questions for us about exclusion zones.
They told us that the exclusion zones could range from 50 to 500 metres around each turbine and the actual distance would not be known for up to 10 to 12 years. How's that? Over time, our community would be left with rusting and aging massive turbines that need to be replaced on a regular basis or left for taxpayers to deal with.
It's one or the other. It's a regular replacement. The Leader of the Opposition came to the electorate and said that we will not proceed.
The coalition will not proceed with this project if the coalition wins government. I see that four of the proposed proponents of this project have pulled out of the application process. The deadline for the applications was pushed back twice and ended last month.
But here's something else. I also read that Australia's oldest commercial wind farm, the Chinese-owned Pacific Blue, has said it will not re-power the site at Codrington in Victoria, because it will be too expensive. So here we are.
These are supposed to keep going. They're supposed to be endless wind and solar. We have a site that was commissioned— Mr Hogan: Wind is supposed to be free.
Mrs MARINO: Right. We have a site that was commissioned in 2001, and it will have to be decommissioned in 2027 because it's too expensive to re-power. Will this be repeated?
How often? The company has yet to announce what it will do with the neighbouring Yambuk wind farm, commissioned in 2007. We'll wait and see what happens there.
I suspect the same will happen with offshore wind turbines as well. Labor's renewables-only policy is failing the Australian people and failing business and failing families. The cost of energy is driving businesses absolutely to the wall or to fail or to consider leaving Australia.
Labor's energy approach is actually five times the cost that Australians were initially promised. Families and businesses are bearing this cost. It is obscene, in a resource-rich country like Australia.
It is absolutely obscene. Energy bills have risen by up to 52 per cent, and more than 27,000 businesses have been forced to close their doors. There's no doubt that soaring energy costs are a major reason for these closures.
These high-energy costs apply right throughout your input—at all stages of your input. Every input will involve an energy cost, and that adds to your cost of doing business. Business and industry—ACCI and COSBOA's—concerns are being totally ignored by the government.
How on earth can Labor talk about a future made in Australia when business, industry and households don't have affordable, dispatchable power? It's that simple. What is even worse, Labor is putting Australia's energy security into China's hands.
Every 20 to 25 years, the wind turbines and solar panels that are made mostly in China will have to be replaced. We will be dependent on China for our energy security, and this will compromise our national security. Anyone in this House knows, and everyone should know, that energy security and national security are actually the same thing.
You can't have one without the other. In WA we are short of power, and in my electorate I have businesses and industries that are paid by AEMO to switch off their processing to feed the power into the grid just to keep the lights and air conditioners on in Perth. I've even seen what I think is power rationing over summer in the south-west in my area, even at my home and on our farm.
Synergy, the state government owned energy generator, is supposed to provide between 220 and 250 volts to my house. Over summer it got down to 212 and 214 volts only. I've had Synergy out to have a look at this.
We have to have a generator because we can't be sure we're going to have power. You can imagine, with this type of power and generator, then trying to connect the transfer box, what was going on in that space. We've seen prices increasing in WA significantly.
WA owned power company Synergy recently sent me an email saying they were increasing my small businesses' power bills. It is happening to small businesses right across Western Australia. They are reporting 30 per cent increases in price in some instances.
But Synergy offered me a special deal, a subsidised deal where, as a taxpayer, my taxes would be paying a government subsidy. This is the WA government with a hand in each of my pockets at once. This is just another example of the challenges we're facing with energy in Western Australia.
As we know in WA, we have a significant amount of gas, and gas is the transition fuel in Western Australia. It is up to the state government and to Synergy to make sure that we have the power we need in our businesses and our households. It should not be that businesses and industries in my electorate have to turn off and stop their production just so that they can keep the lights on in Perth and keep enough power in the system.
There is a shortage of power even in Western Australia, of all places. Mr Hogan: Shame! Mrs MARINO: Yes, shame!
The greatest concern is when I'm watching the damage that's being done to rural and regional Australia, and when I look at those desperate farmers in Victoria—they've got no choice. They're just going to get steamrolled, and I am so concerned about them. There are also concerns around fire in those same communities, with insurance premiums going up.
One thing leads to another, but none of this burden is felt by basically anyone on that side, nor by the government at all. On that basis, I conclude my remarks.