As Winston Churchill once said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” And if ever there were a moment to stand, it is now.

The Environmental Effects Statement (EES) is not just a box-ticking exercise. It is a battleground of truth versus spin, of lived experience versus political convenience. The government will say you had your chance to speak. They will say the community was consulted, the science was sound, and the risks were assessed. But we know better. And unless we submit our stories, unless we speak up now, they will claim our silence as consent.

Your submission is not just paperwork. It is your record. It is your stand. It is your truth.

Tell them what they didn’t see — because they didn’t look. The EES is built on models, assumptions, and outdated maps. Only 10% of affected land was ever physically accessed. That means 90% of what they claim to understand about this project’s impacts is guesswork. They don’t know where the native grasses grow. They don’t know the water course that floods in spring. They haven’t seen the wedge-tailed eagle’s nest, or the old scar tree by the creek. You have.

And that is the greatest vulnerability in this entire process: the EES is blind without ground-truthing — and ground-truthing only becomes visible when people speak.

If you have ever walked your fence line in a storm, cut firebreaks in December, or watched your land recover after drought, you already know more than the consultants ever will. Your knowledge is not anecdotal. It is evidence. And right now, it’s the evidence that must be heard.

The government is counting on fatigue, confusion, and silence. They want you to believe it’s too technical, too late, too big. But every submission — no matter how short, personal, or simple — widens the crack in their story. It says: You don’t have my consent. You don’t know my land. You don’t speak for me.

This is your moment. Tell your story. Ground it in truth. And make sure they can never say we stood aside and let it happen.

The Western Renewables Link Environmental Effects Statement (EES) is live.

Make no mistake: being silent is exactly what they want.

Our review of the EES has uncovered serious deficiencies.

Every submission makes a difference.

You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be heard.

Here’s a link to our EES Response Starter Guide

Don’t step aside. Stand up. Submit.

Attached for your reference are three more high-level reports containing a sample of our assessment of the EES.

Purpose: These reports highlight significant flaws in the EES and are provided to empower you to prepare and submit your own response.

Ongoing Updates: We will release further high-level reports on other critical issues in the coming weeks. Our analysis is following a chapter-by-chapter basis and should assist in navigating and responding to the EES in detail.

Customisation: Please tailor these and the other reports to your own circumstances, or simply use them as inspiration. Our analysis takes a broad approach, your specific impacts may differ and provide powerful inputs.

Extracts from the reports are highlighted below. We encourage you to review these reports, adapt them as needed, and use them to build your own informed submissions.

Chapter 7 Community and Stakeholder Engagement

Extract: The evaluation of Chapter 7, “Community and Stakeholder Engagement,” reveals significant deficiencies and compliance risks that undermine the credibility and robustness of the project’s social impact assessment. Persistent “Community distrust” indicate a profound failure to achieve the substantive transparency and genuine public involvement objectives inherent in the Act.

Chapter 11 Landscape and Visual

Extract: The analysis reveals significant deficiencies and inconsistencies within the EES’s LV assessment. While the EES outlines a methodology, its application frequently lacks the rigor, transparency, and evidence-based justification required for such a major infrastructure project. Key flaws include subjective impact rating justifications, inadequate consideration of heritage landscape impacts, and an over reliance on design mitigation without robust evidence of effectiveness.

Chapter 12 Land Use and Planning

Extract: This examination concludes non-compliance with key EES Scoping Requirements and Victorian planning principles. These flaws pose substantial risks, including a significant underestimation of project impacts, potentially leading to inadequate planning and management of adverse effects on land use,agricultural enterprises, residential amenity, and cultural heritage. Such deficiencies risk eroding public trust due to perceived biases and the dismissal of community concerns. Potential legal and regulatory challenges may arise from non-compliance, leading to sub optimal environmental and social outcomes if mitigation measures are insufficient.

Don’t wait. Start your submission today and stand up for Western Victoria.

Start here: Download the EES Submission Guide

More details and resources here via Moorabool Shire

Western Victorian Community Alliance & Moorabool Shire EES Drop-In Sessions

The Western Victorian Community Alliance, in partnership with Moorabool Shire, will be hosting three community drop-in sessions to support landholders in preparing their submissions on the Western Renewables Link Environmental Effects Statement (WRL-EES).

These sessions will not be attended by AusNet and are intended to offer genuine, practical guidance to help you complete your submission.

Please begin working on your submission beforehand using the guidelines above. Arriving with a draft will allow for deeper support and tailored advice.

Session Details:

• Bacchus Marsh – Lerderderg Library, 215 Main St
  Thursday 24 July, 4:00pm–8:00pm

• Myrniong – Myrniong Hall, 6 Short St
  Thursday 31 July, 4:00pm–7:30pm

• Ballan – Council Office, 15 Stead St
  Saturday 2 August, 10:00am–1:30pm

More details and resources here via Moorabool Shire

Stand with our farmers, and unite to stand for ALL Victorians!

HANDS OFF OUR LAND

LAND ACCESS RIGHTS PROTEST

Hosted by Across Victoria Alliance

Spring Street, Melbourne

Wednesday 30 July 2025

Speakers will commence at 11.00am

FARMERS • FAMILIES • RURAL & METRO COMMUNITIES

SAY NO to forced entry onto private farmland and rising government overreach!

Stand with us against the new legislation, which allows government officers warrantless access to your property, and the Emergency Services Volunteer Tax — a new burden on those who give their time to protect our communities.

This is about more than just farmland. It’s about defending our rights, our privacy, and our freedom from all forms of overreaching government control.

SPEAKERS | SIGNS | SOLIDARITY

Bring your voice. Bring your signs. Bring your neighbours.

Together, we’ll send a clear message from across the bush and through the city.

ACROSS VICTORIA ALLIANCE

Farming strong. Standing united

The Thin Edge of the Wedge

By a landholder, a neighbour, a witness

Let us consider for a moment what it means to be dismissed. Not in the loud, dramatic way of tyrants, but in the quiet, bureaucratic way of governments with neatly folded letters, sterile maps, and the gentle hum of contempt disguised as process.

That is how this has felt. This Western Renewables Link.

Not a proposal. Not a conversation.

But an imposition.

It did not arrive with humility, with open hands or honest eyes. It came cloaked in certainty, with promises of progress, whispered in boardrooms far from the paddocks they plan to cut through. It came with tower lines like veins of steel, set to pump profit through private arteries not to heal the land, but to scar it.

They never sought a social licence.

They assumed it.

And worse still, when it did not appear, they tried to buy it.

We see them now agents with clipboards and tired smiles, offering options agreements that read like ransom notes. Sign here. Surrender quietly. Swallow your doubt. Disregard the damage.

It would almost be laughable, if it weren’t so egregious.

Because how does one sign away a wombat corridor? Or a firebreak line?

How does one price the silence of a bird that will no longer nest?

Then came the Draft Victorian Transmission Plan a document so riddled with errors, with half-truths and omissions, it seemed almost to mock the intelligence of the very people it affects. And now the Environmental Effects Statement follows in its path, thick with volume, thin with truth, and empty of soul.

There is legislation pending now.

Not to correct these wrongs, but to enshrine them.

To give them legal muscle where moral standing has failed.

And the tragedy, the aching tragedy, is that all of this could have been avoided.

We would have accepted a government that admits error that says, “We got it wrong,” and then begins to steer differently. We are not unreasonable people. We know that the climate is changing. We know that energy must evolve. But we also know we feel, in our bones that there is a better way. A way that does not carve through communities like an empire on rails.

This is not just about towers and easements. It is about how deeply broken the relationship has become between power and people.

We watch now as politicians flinch from truth, driven by fear, ego, and the brittle illusion of control. They speak at us, never with us. They hope, still, that we are weary enough to give in.

But they underestimate us.

They underestimate the fire in the bellies of old farmers who know what it means to defend their soil. They underestimate the sharp-eyed mothers who read every word of the EES with a highlighter and a red pen. They underestimate the quiet strength of communities who have stood side by side through fire, drought, and now this.

Yes, we stand against the WRL.

But we are not alone.

We are the thin edge of the wedge and behind us stand thousands.

Ready. Awake. Unafraid.

We are not seeking grandeur.

We are seeking justice.

And no government built on concealment will outlast the truth.