Australians now know the true cost of the Albanese Labor Government’s globally unprecedented renewables-only approach.  The PM’s plans are so financially undercooked, you wonder if they ever left the mixing bowl. Instead of Labor’s claimed renewables transition cost of $112 billion, independent thinktank Frontier Economics revealed on Friday 15 November the cost will be at least $642 billion.

Labor might be the kings in the Canberra counting house, counting other people’s money, but in the electorate of Mallee it’s worse - Labor are acting like feudal lords. Mallee farmers are being treated like peasants. Farmers thought they had private property rights.  However, Victorian Labor has pointed at Mallee from high in their Melbourne ivory tower, knocked over the safeguards and - lo and behold - the raiders from the energy and mining sectors have swooped in to carve up Mallee farms and stir bad blood in small local communities.

In Mallee alone, over 50 energy projects are enticed by a proposed 350-kilometres of huge towers which themselves threaten farmland.  If those 50-plus projects all get up, there’ll be many more transmission lines trashing land rights.  We will all pay through our power bills for Labor’s estimated 28,000 kilometres of new transmission lines, turning regional Australia into a metallic spider’s web.

Mining companies emboldened by the government’s ownership of minerals under farms have also divided Wimmera communities, paying lip service to social licence, land rehabilitation and food security.

Energy and mining companies alike offer landholders dollars wrapped in secrecy and non-disclosure agreements.  Worse still, the company that landholders deal with may no longer be around when future liability arises.  That’s why I prepared a Private Member’s Bill in Canberra, moved this month by my Nationals colleague the Member for Nicholls, to impose the same rehabilitation requirements on energy companies as mining companies: they will have to put down a huge financial bond to clean up at the end of the project.

We can’t let Labor lords carve up Mallee farms treating farmers like serfs – generations have worked and cared for the land and they must be respected.