Barnaby Joyce MP addresses a NSW State Government committee investigating the impact of renewable energy zones on rural and regional communities and industries in NSW.
By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
NEW England MP Barnaby Joyce has told a NSW government inquiry that renewable energy projects are an economic swindle, but will Chris Minns, the Greens and a large section of the Liberal Party listen?
They had better, otherwise they will do the state irreparable damage. It’s happening already and Barnaby Joyce is seeing the effects of it already on the farms, industry and rural poor of his electorate. Joyce says the trend continues, Australia will be deindustrialised.
Joyce admitted to committee members he was wrong when he put out a press release in 2016 lauding the White Rock wind farm as a “great economic opportunity” but now “the facts have well and truly changed”.
“What other industry part of our economy in the New England has subsidised capacity investment schemes which basically underwrites you even if you make a loss, even if you don’t produce enough electricity?” Joyce asked the inquiry chairman.
“We would love that in the cattle industry where we’d get paid even if we didn’t produce cattle.
“It has government-paid transmission lines and Energy Co being a classic example of that. It has a policy where it is almost compulsory – well is compulsory – for a purchase a section of their product to be purchased.
“It has provided policy that basically bans its competition in removing other things such as base load power. Most importantly, it’s a swindle in virtue.”
Joyce cited the case of Glenn Innes as “a classic example” – basically billions invested in intermittent power precincts. “But what’s happened to the town? Has it its population grown? Are there new industries there? Are there new jobs there?
“There’s only probably a handful, maybe one or two. There’s no car park at the at the intermittent power precinct because hardly anybody works there. Yet they promise so much. So why is it happening, Mr Chair?
“It’s happening because there is a massive pecuniary benefit that goes to a select few and we can see those proponents out there at the moment – Mr Forrest, Chinese overseas companies. multinational companies from China, from Singapore, from France, from Holland.
“These are the real benefits of this swindle on the Australian people and the swindle on the people of New England. And as we see in our community, bad policy makes bad politics.
“You’ve not just divided our community down the middle, you have divided them 90% to 10%. With 90% in some sections furious, politically furious at the lack of representation, politically furious at the at the low volume that should be played out on their behalf – furious because they feel that they’ve been completely run over.”
Joyce described the wind farm approval process as the “carpet bagging approach” where small country communities in country halls were subjected to micromanagement, not properly heard, “pushed to separate corners of the rooms basically” and told that everything’s going to be fine.
He said he had seen this process at Wulleman and Limbry. “These are good country people who’ve had limited experience with the highest levels of government with the highest levels of corporations and they’ve been run over.”
Joyce said at Gowrie, south of Tamworth, landholders were told by Energy Corporation of NSW that their land would increase in value when it’s encircled with solar panels.
“When I approached them on this and said that’s a warrant that you have now given, so do you now promise that if a valuation is taken now and a valuation is taken later that you will pay them the difference?” The company refused.
Joyce said his own family was offered the chance to be a site for a proponent but the family said they were not interested. “We produce food. We produce fiber. We don’t rip off pensioners with an exacerbation of their power price. So we, so I declare our interests in that we said no.”
Joyce said intermittent power and its process were apparently part of net zero but the vast majority of the GDP and the vast majority of the world population were not participating in it, so its efficacy was null and void.
“It doesn’t have effect. It is not going to do anything. So why are we continuing on with it?”
He said there was also no real promise of help for local governments. “I don’t go to areas and see that new dams have been built or new precincts have been built for the all for the apparent flow-in of industry that’s going to happen, because it’s not going to happen.”
Quoting a Labor Party representative Andrew Wyatt, Joyce said that the price quoted about two years ago to decommission a structurally sound wind tower was $600,000, but for structurally unsound ones is was two $1.6 million an hour.
“That means if the farmer is responsible for it, we are heading towards – and I used to value land for a company called QIDC – we are heading towards negative value on farmland. You will not be able to borrow against it. No one will want to buy it.”
Joyce went on to explain that while governments are pouring money into wind and solar projects, they had removed funding for the Dangan Dam and never promised any upgrade of Mount Dam.
They had also stalled projects such as the Tenterfield bypass “because the wind blades don’t need to go past there.”
Joyce said the winners in the game were the ones who got the development approvals. The contracts carried a guaranteed rate of return that’s hidden in commercial confidence on the not for publication budget papers.
“All I have to do is have that piece of paper and I’m guaranteed money, I’m guaranteed loot… So what happens is that one person buys it and they flip it to another person to clear their risk so they’re not indebted to the farmers.
“All their guarantee is gone, the next person buys it, the next person buys it. It is total carpet bagging.”
He said the beneficiaries of this was not Armidale, not Wagga Wagga or Glen Innes, but Shanghai, Singapore, of Amsterdam, “and then billionaires such as – and God bless him, good luck to him, he’s a great businessman – Andrew Forest, that’s who the beneficiary of this is.”
Joyce said farmers who accepted renewable deals were often under stress. “This is how swindlers work and offer them and then look into their eyes and say how much can I get away with to rip this person off.”
Early on in developments people were getting paid around $3000 or $2000 a tower. “Now they’re up to $45,000 a tower. Are they going back to the other people and saying, ‘Oh, we kind of ripped you off, so we’re going to pay you a little bit more?’ No, they’re not.”
He said people were misled into accepting what they believed would be “a great management plan” that would allow them to hand the property over and get an income stream for themselves and retire to the coast.
“What they don’t see is the in obvious obsolescence that’s coming their way. And they’re actually responsible. They will be responsible for an order put on them for the reclamation of the land and so their kids won’t have a property, the kids will have a problem, a massive financial problem.”
