I WRITE this letter with a thought and a mission.
The Australian government has committed us to achieving a greenhouse gas emissions target of ‘Net Zero’ by 2050.
But Net Zero is affecting my community and neighbours and there appears to be no avenue to state how we as community members feel about this.
Well, today, I am changing that.
Our neighbours have signed up for the great Australian lie.
Net Zero is reducing and converting farmland and rural communities into a commodity for money hungry corporations.
These corporations state that they are community minded and part of our community, but as an active member of my community for the last 30 years I have not seen one of these community minded people helping and involved within my community.
They seem to think that providing a small community benefit fund to groups that this approach washes.
We have seen the offers and they are nominal over a period of 10 years, when it has been publicly stated that the industrial facility they are proposing has a life expectancy of 50 years. Well, that does not seem very community minded to me.
A little research reveals that some people associated with these corporations have a foot in each camp, one in renewables and one in fossil fuel.
Now is that not a conflict of interest, that is like $50 each way on a two horse race?
Our farmland may not be precious to these corporations, but this is my home and community.
Take your industrial project and place it on an appropriate industrial site or would that be too expensive for the initial land acquisition?
The next time someone says that there is no cost for renewables think of the people, neighbours and communities displaced because of the drive by a few people in government and the multi-nationals looking for a quick profit at the cost of our communities.
— Bruce Richards, Lower Mt Walker.
