Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (16:31): Last Friday in Yass I had the opportunity to sit and talk at length with three concerned advocates, Hansie Armour, Rebecca Tobin and Andrea Strong, in relation to the powerlines on huge towers that are going to go through their wonderful part of the world. There has been a lot of controversy about these powerlines and the height of the towers upon which they will sit.

These three advocates are genuine in their desires to see the lines placed underground, and had a number of cogent and reasonable arguments as to why this should be so. The thing that often concerns me when companies and organisations and, dare I say, governments put in place infrastructure that is going to affect people's vista, communities or environment is that all too often when the representative is sent out to knock on the door or to visit the farm, they come there with only scant details of the actual project.

When they come there again, it's a different person altogether. When they line up at the community forums which often happen as a result of community concerns being raised and not answered or met, again, it's a different representative. I'm not saying this is the case on this particular project, but it also bothers me greatly that these days we seem to have in this nation—particularly in New South Wales—projects placed under state-significant status.

State-significant priority supersedes all local development plans. It overrides any community concerns. It rides roughshod over what a local government or a council can do about a particular project.

Whether it's powerlines and towers, solar farms, wind turbines—you name it—it's stamped 'state significant', and locals do not get any say in that project. Generally, that project will be financed by an overseas company or a superannuation firm. They'll claim a whole heap of jobs in the construction phase, and that's all well and good—we all want more jobs.

But often these projects come at a huge cost to local people, their amenity, their views and their environment. I think something really needs to be done with the EPBC Act, with these 'state significant' projects, to say 'enough is enough'. Locals must get a say.

There has to be some consideration. What we have before us is the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It was introduced to the House, rather unexpectedly, with a view to being passed before the parliament rises.

Many people in the corridors here will be telling you that this is the last parliamentary sitting week. We saw what happened on the last parliamentary sitting day last year when Labor rushed through a whole heap of legislation. Debate was guillotined, debate was gagged and bills went through—to hell with people's local concerns.

People who have been sent here to represent their local constituents weren't able to speak on a bill. They weren't able to raise objections against a bill. Labor just bulldozed it through.

Labor, which came to office in May 2022, said it was going to be— Dr Webster: A kinder, gentler parliament. Mr McCORMACK: a kinder, gentler parliament. They would not do this sort of thing, they said.

But they did exactly what they said they weren't going to do. Not only did they do it; they did an avalanche of it. It was a tsunami of legislation being pushed through the House of Representatives and the Senate.

This bill amends the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Act 2021, under which offshore wind projects are managed. Let me tell you there is a lot of concern about offshore wind projects. I can remember the then Prime Minister, the former member for Cook, when there were some concerns about offshore exploration initiatives—these concerns were certainly raised, and people up and down the Central Coast, off Sydney and down to the Illawarra were throwing their hands up at Labor.

We heard their voices loud and clear. They were running to the media and they were doing everything they could to oppose it. But it seems that if you want to do an offshore wind project these days, that's fine.

The rush to renewables bothers me. But it doesn't just bother me. Whether it's offshore wind projects or whether it's on prime agricultural land, it is certainly bothering the farmers of the Riverina.

Don Kirkpatrick and others will tell you there is only so much arable land that can be used to grow food and fibre. What we don't want is for that land to be covered with solar panels as far as the eye can see, covered with easements so that you can't do anything because you've got some dirty great big wind tower—or electricity tower or whatever tower—higher than the Rialto or the Eiffel, all at the expense of prime agricultural land.

Yes, you'll have willing sellers. It's the same as the Murray-Darling argument. You'll get the water minister and the environment minister saying, 'Oh, they're willing sellers.' Well, sometimes the land is owned by people who do not have growing food as their No. 1 priority.

Yes, they own the land. But the trouble is that when you plonk down a massive tower, it often ruins the arrangements and the environment for all those around it who are wanting and desiring to grow food and fibre. Mark my words: Australian farmers grow the very best food and fibre in the world.

Nobody grows better food and fibre than Australians, yet Australians have been under attack from this government from day one. This government wanted to bring in a truckies tax. It wanted to bring in a biosecurity tax which was going to make our farmers—wait for this—pay for the biosecurity of foreign food coming in and competing with their products, Australian products, on Australian supermarket shelves.

What country in the world would do that? What country in the world would penalise its farmers to that extent? No country would, and ours shouldn't either.

Our farmers are also under pressure. They're stressed because of the 450 gigalitres of water that is going to be taken out of the mouth of the Murray. What do you reckon they'll do with that water?

They'll push it out of the mouth of the Murray. When Flinders and Bass were doing their circumnavigation of the country, the sandbars blocked up the mouth of the Murray, and it wasn't initially recorded as being the mouth of the Murray, a river-estuary system, because it was blocked up. What we do these days is push our freshwater out the mouth of the Murray and don't use it to grow food and fibre.

It's just crazy. We've got those opposite who don't and won't want to build dams. I have to say that I, as the Deputy Prime Minister and the infrastructure minister, built the Camden dam at Scottsdale in Tasmania, where 85 irrigators are now growing tremendous food and fibre because of that project, but I digress.

Let's talk about the bill. There are some reasons—and sound ones—for this amendment. For example, it does close a loophole which enables rejected offshore applicants to be granted licences in smaller and/or different areas, but there are a number of areas of concern.

The bill applies changes retrospectively. I always worry when Labor decides to do things retrospectively. I always worry when they want to go back and delve into the past and say: 'This bit of paperwork over here—we'll just get that, and then it will be okay.

It was three years ago, but you know what? We'll just apply it retrospectively.' It always worries me. You can't trust Labor.

Mr Tehan: It means they've made a mess of something. Mr McCORMACK: Indeed, Member for Wannon! There's no industry consultation.

It does my head in that Labor in opposition always used to go on about the stakeholders, but Labor ministers won't take meetings. They won't. And they don't consult.

It wouldn't matter whether it's electricity infrastructure, child care, health or veterans—actually, I'll take veterans back; the veterans' affairs minister is actually doing a reasonable job. But there are so many areas of endeavour that Labor is not doing a good job on. It just worries me when stakeholders who know their sectors inside out aren't getting a say.

They're just not getting a say. If they were, the bills coming before the House might be refined and might be better. They might be improved.

We all want better legislation because we can pass it in a bipartisan way. Even in the Gillard government, 88 per cent of the bills which came before the parliament were passed in a bipartisan way because, I must say, that government probably consulted better than this government does. It did.

True. Now it's political. This bill will make it easier for the minister to announce multiple feasibility licences throughout the campaign.

That's what, of course, he wants to do. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy just wants to push renewables onto an unsuspecting public. Why is it fair that regional Australia has to carry the brunt of the energy needs of capital city people who have no regard or scope or concern or understanding of what it is doing and impacting upon regional Australia?

And you get those supercilious teals. Dr Webster: Sanctimonious. Mr McCORMACK: They are sanctimonious, Member for Mallee.

They're dressed-up Greens. They're Greens with trust funds. The member for Parkes called them that.

He sounded them out really easily and really quickly and really early. He summed them up. They want to stand and talk about what renewables we need in this country, yet they couldn't care less whether regional Australia is just covered with renewable energy projects, and they don't give a jot that what is being sacrificed is prime agricultural land.

I will always defend our farmers, and I'll always defend their right to grow the very best food in all of the world. The teals just think that that wonderful clean, green, fresh food comes from a supermarket fridge or aisle. It does not.

It comes from—wait for it—a farm! They go around and they call these projects wind farms. Well, they're not wind farms.

You can't farm wind; you can farm food. It should be known to those teals and the Greens. We heard the member for Melbourne, the Greens leader, bell the cat in the 90-second statements just before question time.

He wants a governance-sharing arrangement with Labor, and God help Australia if that is the case. God help farmers if the Greens get their hands on the treasury benches, and woe betide regional Australians—regional Australians who carried this country during COVID; regional Australians who bent their backs and whose brows sweated to make sure that we grew the food and the fibre and had the mining resources to keep the lights on, to keep the export balance of payments and to keep this country going when all those teals, all those city types and all those Greens pulled up the doona and pretended nothing was happening.

That is the Greens way. That is the teals way. That is the Labor way.

It is the Liberals and the Nationals who have a plan to get this nation back on track. It is the Liberals and Nationals who understand farmers, who appreciate farmers, who applaud farmers and who will back regional Australians to make this country the best it can be.