26 Jul STARING DOWN DISASTER: “LET THEM EAT SOLAR PANELS”
Swathes of prime Australian agricultural land will be lost to the “renewables revolution” being imposed on the public by State and Federal Governments, Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) Leader and Traeger MP Robbie Katter has warned.
Mr Katter said Australians, who were increasingly unable to afford their power bills and other essentials such as groceries due to the cost-of-living crisis, were being taken for fools.
“When we’ve turned our beautiful agricultural plains into industrial wastelands of imported solar and wind power products, and when the only fresh produce we can afford is imported, will the governments cry out “let them eat solar panels”? he asked.
“All jokes aside – why have all these self-identified environmentalists not stopped for a second to consider the impact that forcing a transition to renewables, which have drastic resource requirements, on the environment?
“Australia is blessed with some the richest agricultural lands in the world, we’re meant to be the food bowl of Asia, and yet it feels like there’s a race to destroy what we have instead of protecting and utilising it.
“This is the perverse underbelly of environmentalism in the 21st century.”
Mr Katter said unlike major development projects such as mines and dams, the renewables sector was being given a “hall pass” and held to different environment and social standards.
He pointed to comments made by Goondiwindi Mayor Lawrence Springborg at the 2023 Bush Council Convention this week, where he claimed a massive wind farm in the Goondiwindi region had failed to produce a single local job.
“If you were to spend just $100 million on a dam or water infrastructure project you would be getting hundreds of jobs in construction, roads and expanding agricultural precincts,’’ Cr Springborg told the convention [1].
“But with a wind farm you get pretty much nothing, zero.
“The companies building these wind farms are constantly changing hands – we will be left with the job of cleaning up after they become ghettos.”
Over the next decade, about 22 gigawatts of additional renewable energy projects is expected to be built across Queensland, generating energy to power about 6.6 million homes [2].
This includes the 400MW Western Downs Green Power Hub which totals more than 1 million solar panels over a 1,500-hectare site.
The issue is fracturing some rural communities [3] and raising alarm within agricultural advocacy bodies[4].
Mr Katter called for all levels of government to ensure renewables projects were adhering to high levels of environmental and social responsibility and called for an expansion of protections for prime agricultural land across Queensland.
4 https://www.agforceqld.org.au/knowledgebase/article/AGF-01808/
[1] https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/lawrence-springborg-says-qld-wind-farm-is-no-benefit-to-region-demands-a-return-on-renewable-projects/news-story/1770a27322dbdb58b4c20dd5d6570078
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-07-06/toolkit-queensland-landholders-negotiating-renewable-companies/102563094
[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/expansion-of-wind-farms-likened-to-coal-seam-gas-clashes/102208318
[4] https://www.agforceqld.org.au/knowledgebase/article/AGF-01808/
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