https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/

Article Key Points Summary from On-Line and Print Version’s

Construction Delay:

AusNet has delayed the construction of the Western Renewables Link (WRL) until after the November 2026 Victorian state election.

Political Motivation:

The delay is not due to technical reasons, but because the government fears political backlash. They know the project is toxic among rural communities.

Lack of Legitimacy:

Despite being called a “committed project,” WRL has no Environmental Effects Statement (EES), no land acquisitions, no construction started, and no major contracts finalised failing every supposed criteria for a committed project.

Mass Landholder Opposition:

Over 90% of landholders along the route still refuse to sign agreements not out of stubbornness, but from principle.

Public Trust Erosion:

The delay reflects a deepening breach of public trust: decisions are being hidden, consultation is meaningless, and better alternatives (like the Syncline underground cable) are being ignored or buried.

The Victorian Government isn’t pausing the Western Renewables Link. It’s not “taking time to consult.” It’s not “doing due diligence.” What it’s doing is running scared, from the truth, from the voters, and from the mess it created.

This latest delay, quietly slipped in like a footnote to a budget built on borrowed credibility is not a strategy. It’s a surrender. Not to the public interest, but to raw electoral calculation.

The Western Renewables Link has never withstood scrutiny. It’s a high-voltage monument to bureaucratic arrogance, energy-sector groupthink, and greenwashing dressed up as progress. Landholders know it. Independent experts know it. And the government knows it, which is precisely why they’re now kicking the can past the next election, hoping voters forget, fatigue sets in, and corporate partners are kept happy while communities are hung out to dry.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about more “engagement.” It’s not about planning. It’s about political self-preservation. The project has lost its social licence, if it ever had one.

Ninety percent of landholders have refused to sign. That’s not opposition. That’s a referendum. And the government’s answer? Delay. Distract. Deny.

It’s an insult to the farmers who feed the state, to the firefighters who defend it, and to every regional Victorian whose future is being bartered away for a ribbon-cutting and a donor dinner.

They know this project is indefensible. If it had any merit, they’d be championing it, not burying it in the out-tray of a mid-level departmental advisor. Instead, they’re engaging in the oldest political trick in the book: silence until the polls close.

And while the bureaucrats spin their way through another round of consultancy contracts, and Ministers dodge press conferences like accountability is contagious, the machinery of destruction grinds on; land surveyed without consent, heritage dismissed without thought, lives disrupted without cause.

This isn’t governance. It’s cowardice.

What we’re seeing is a government that no longer believes it can justify its decisions, and so it simply avoids making them until it’s safe. But democracy doesn’t work on lay-by. You don’t get to defer responsibility just because it’s inconvenient.

The communities fighting the WRL aren’t going anywhere. We’ve already outlasted three Federal energy ministers, a pandemic, and a government that hoped we’d give up. We won’t.

Because while the Premier hides behind announcements and AusNet buries its ethics beneath easements, the people who actually live on the land, the ones who stand in the paddocks, who fight the fires, who raise the next generation, we are still here. And we remember.

This delay is not a retreat. It’s an opening.

And the fight is hotting up.

CALL TO ACTION

DO NOT SIGN – DO NOT GIVE IN

HOLD THE LINE – AGAINST AUSNET’S HOSTILE TACTICS

In recent weeks, many landholders have reported a sharp increase in pressure from AusNet in the form of repeated emails, phone calls, and mailed offers. These communications are not genuine attempts to negotiate. They are superficial financial offers designed to provoke, isolate, and wear people down.

Let’s be clear: this behaviour breaches every standard of decency and fair process. It is aggressive, calculated, and designed to create division within our community. It violates the moral code we expect from any entity operating in good faith and, in our view, it is now bordering on unlawful conduct.

We are currently seeking legal advice to determine whether this sustained campaign of unwanted contact amounts to harassment or coercion under Australian law. The pattern is clear: AusNet is attempting to do the government’s dirty work by intimidating landholders into silence and submission.

We urge you: do not give in to these bullying tactics. Do not let their desperation become your pressure. Every phone call you ignore, every letter you return unanswered, and every false promise you reject sends a message we are not afraid, and we will not be broken.

We are stronger together. We are principled, we are united, and we will HOLD THE LINE.

We speak not with permission, but with purpose.

Not as guests on borrowed land, but as its stewards; landholders, workers, protectors, and people who have earned their right to be heard.

We do not whisper. We declare.

Here in Western Victoria, the government has mistaken our patience for weakness. It has confused silence for consent. But let it be known, we see you. We see the betrayal dressed as progress. We see the machinery of power grind over truth, grind over land, grind over people. And we will not look away.

The Western Renewables Link is not a symbol of the future, it is a monument to everything that is broken. A government that listens only to its donors. A system that calls destruction “green.” A bureaucracy that buries process beneath profit.

They sidestep consultation.

They mock heritage.

They erase community and call it strategy.

They would rather feed energy giants than feed the very people who grow the food, fight the fires, and raise their children under open skies. They do not just ignore us, they insult us.

But power, real power, does not come from titles or offices. It comes from conviction.

And we are a community of conviction.

You’ll find resistance in every paddock where a fence post leans like a weathered sentinel.

You’ll hear it in every CFA shed where boots stand ready.

You’ll feel it in the hands of every farmer who tends the soil with love and rage in equal measure.

As James Baldwin wrote, “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.” We will not shut our eyes.

We stand, not because it is safe, not because it is easy, but because it is right.

And that is the message from the community.

Not sponsored. Not bought. Not silenced.

Just standing.