A thousand people turned out to the Marnoo recreation reserve on Saturday night to hear One Nation preview its energy policy, in a corner of western Victoria where the ABC reports anger over the VNI West transmission project is boiling over. The party was the headline act at a rally staged with Farmers Fightback, the farmer-led group that campaigns against large-scale renewable and transmission projects on agricultural land.
One Nation's Victorian leader Warren Pickering told the crowd that, if elected, his party would remove VicGrid's compulsory acquisition powers for the transmission line — the one the ABC describes as needed to bring wind power into the grid, and the same powers under which farmers have been fined for blocking access. Then he went further: "But more importantly than that, we'll abolish the renewable energy zone that we are on here tonight."
Coal, gas, and a question without a number
The party is promising to reinvest in coal and gas and ditch renewable projects. "Back to the energy resources that made us the most abundant state in the country in the first place," Mr Pickering said, adding: "Any government in this country that doesn't support mining in some way, shape or form will preside over the death of this nation."
In a rare interview with the ABC, Pauline Hanson went further still, saying Victoria should consider both new coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactors. "We used to have coal-fired power stations that delivered the power to this nation," she said. "Put in new coal-fired power stations, you can build those, but also look at nuclear as well."
What none of it came with was a price. Ms Hanson declined to say how One Nation would fund new coal and nuclear projects, arguing renewables were failing to deliver affordable power. Mr Pickering said expanded coal and gas would be funded by private investment but could not put a figure on the cost, and declined to say how the party would unwind the existing contracts attached to VNI West and the renewable energy zones. More detail is promised at the party's formal launch at Yallourn Power Station in Gippsland on Monday.
The room was with them
The local reception ran warm. Simon Schinkel, who owns an agricultural equipment business, said VNI West threatened farmland that had supported families for generations — "there's a lot of big buildings in the city; they could put solar panels on them and get their own power." Buloke Shire Mayor Graeme Milne said One Nation was "saying the right things" on VNI West. The party also introduced Donna Buxton as its state candidate for Ripon.
Ms Hanson and Barnaby Joyce continue their Victorian tour in Gippsland, buoyed — the ABC's word — by the party's breakthrough by-election win in Western Australia on Saturday. With November's state election approaching, a 1,000-person crowd in a small Wimmera town is the kind of number every party in the state will have noticed — whatever they make of the policies that drew it.
