The Wimmera Machinery Field Days will soon be upon us, and I look forward to seeing Wimmera community members at this year’s event – there’s always a crowd and it is great to say hello.

This last fortnight I’ve been representing you in Canberra and spoken several times in the House of Representatives about Labor’s reckless approach to energy policy.

Not only has Labor broken the promise it made 97 times before the last election to deliver $275 permanent energy bill savings to Australians by this year, but their energy policies are also having a direct and serious impact in the Wimmera and Mallee.

There are, at last count, 8 wind turbine projects built with another 11 proposed in Mallee – plus at least 3 more just over the river in NSW.  The latest proposals feature turbines potentially 280 metres tall, just 17 metres short of the height of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne.  The Eureka Tower stands in the top 5 tallest structures in Australia, so imagine the blight on our environment and landscape.

In Germany, 350 metre high turbines are being constructed – if turbines that big are built in Mallee, they will be the tallest structures in the nation. That’s not to mention the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines Labor wants to weave in a spider’s web across the nation including Mallee.

This fortnight in Canberra I highlighted that most if not all the cowboy companies promoting wind turbines in the Wimmera are foreign-owned.  What guarantee do we have they are acting in the national and local community interest? Their secretive divide-and-conquer approach to date is a poor indicator. Will they put the money down to ensure farmers aren’t paying up to $700,000 per turbine to take them down at the end of their relatively short operative lives?

The Coalition’s responsible energy policy will use existing transmission networks, ramping up our use of gas in the energy transition, and including nuclear power at existing grid-connected coal-fired power plant sites as they retire.  The Coalition will preserve our national food and energy security.