Stop Labors Towers Newsletter - May 24, 2026

Stop Labors Towers Newsletter – May 24, 2026

Transparency Before Decision

Western Victoria Community Alliance Media Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – MAY 24 2026

HEADLINE: Western Victoria Demands Public Release of WRL EES Report Prior to Minister’s Decision; Warns “Cloak of Secrecy” Will Only Delay Transition

WESTERN VICTORIA – Communities across Western Victoria are calling on the State Government to end the “cloak of secrecy” surrounding the Western Renewables Link (WRL) by committing to the public release of the Inquiry and Advisory Committee (IAC) report immediately and strictly prior to any final ministerial decision.

The community is presenting a two-pronged challenge to the government:

The Evidence is Categorical: The EES Has Exposed a Fundamentally Flawed Project

After a year of exhaustive testimony and rigorous expert analysis, the Environment Effects Statement (EES) process has achieved the exact opposite of what its proponents intended: it has conclusively demonstrated that the WRL is a broken, un-developable project at every single level. The evidence brought forward during this process proves that the proposed overhead line poses an unacceptable and unmitigated threat to Western Victoria. It introduces catastrophic, unmanageable bushfire risks to highly vulnerable regional communities, threatens irreversible damage to precious biodiversity and local heritage, and segments some of the most productive, prime agricultural land in the state.

Any objective, science-based assessment of the EES record must find this project entirely unfit for purpose. The EES did not clear the project; it indicted it. To ignore these findings would be a direct insult to the community and a blatant disregard for the very independent experts the government appointed to investigate these severe impacts. Furthermore, the EES process clearly highlighted that viable, vastly superior alternatives exist – including undergrounding and smarter grid routing – that could deliver a clean energy transition without sacrificing the safety, environment, and economy of Western Victoria.

Transparency is a Catalyst, Not a Constraint

The Victorian State Minister for Planning, Sonya Kilkenny retains the discretion to withhold the IAC report from the public. We are demanding a rejection of this closed-door approach and calling for the report to be released before the Minister makes a final determination.

A “cloak of secrecy” will only lead to further community friction, protracted legal challenges, and deep-seated mistrust, all of which will paralyze and delay any energy transition. If the government truly wants a “smooth transition,” it must stop hiding the independent findings. Transparency is the only way to ensure the process isn’t viewed as a rubber-stamping exercise for a rigged and outdated infrastructure design.

“We’ve seen these tactics before: keeping regional communities completely in the dark until the decisions are made behind closed doors. We are calling it out now. The EES process has already put the facts on the table, proving that the WRL is a flawed project that compromises agricultural food bowls, escalates bushfire risks, and decimates local environments when safer, better technical alternatives are readily available.

The only reason a government would withhold this IAC report is to shield a broken project from public accountability. If the government is truly confident that the WRL is the right path forward, it shouldn’t be afraid of what its own inquiry found. Hiding the truth doesn’t speed up a transition; it just builds a wall of community resistance that will last for years.

End

Sonya Kilkenny, Minister for Planning of Victoria

THE FICTION OF THE “FRESH START”:

HOW THE ALLAN-ANDREWS CONTINUUM EXPOSES THE CROWN CORRUPTION OF THE BIG BUILD

For years, the spin doctors in Spring Street have desperately tried to sell Victorians a fairy tale: the myth of a “new” government. We are told that the current administration, under Premier Jacinta Allan, represents a clean break from the dark, combative, and secrecy-shrouded era of Daniel Andrews.

It is a theatrical performance designed to distance the current leadership from the stench of suppressed anti-corruption reports, multi-billion-dollar debt mountains, and backroom union intimidation. But as the legal iron curtain drops over IBAC’s Operation Richmond report, the grand illusion shatters completely.

The cold reality is now entirely undeniable: Jacinta Allan is not the antidote to the Andrews era. She is its architect, its continuity, and its co-conspirator.

To suggest that the institutionalized rot plaguing Victoria belongs solely to a retired former Premier is a historical lie. Jacinta Allan sat at the absolute center of the Andrews cabinet for nearly a decade. More importantly, she was the commander-in-chief of the “Big Build” – the very mega-project machine that transformed Victoria from a functioning state into a playground for debt-fueled political patronage and unaccountable bureaucracy.

The same culture of cover-ups that used an army of lawyers to padlock the Operation Richmond files in a courtroom safe is the exact same culture that drives Victoria’s infrastructure agenda. It is a seamless continuum of arrogance that stretches from the Premier’s private office straight into the heart of regional Victoria.

Nowhere is this Andrews-Allan continuum more visibly destructive than in the unyielding insistence on pushing through unnecessary, outdated white elephants like the Western Renewables Link (WRL).

Under Allan’s watch as the long-time infrastructure gatekeeper and now Premier, mega-projects have ceased to be about serving the public interest. Instead, they operate as a closed-loop system of state control. They are the financial fuel used to appease powerful institutional allies, reward corporate conglomerates, and manufacture a superficial illusion of economic activity to hide a bleeding balance sheet.

When regional landholders, local farmers, and environmental advocates present ironclad engineering alternatives – such as modern undergrounding or localized battery storage – they aren’t just fighting a bad infrastructure design. They are colliding head-on with a political machine that cannot afford to look back, cannot afford to admit error, and absolutely refuses to yield to public scrutiny.

To the Allan Labor government, the community’s refusal to accept massive, life-threatening overhead transmission lines isn’t viewed as a democratic right; it is viewed as an administrative inconvenience to be crushed by executive decree.

The playbook never changed when the leadership baton was passed. When the opposition launches Freedom of Information requests to uncover what the Premier’s office knew about systemic construction corruption, the government drags the matter to VCAT to stall for time. When the anti-corruption watchdog gets too close to the bone on secret union deals, the legal machinery is deployed to choke the output. And when regional communities demand transparency over a multi-billion-dollar transmission line that tears up multi-generational family farms and pristine agricultural corridors, the state responds with the same wall of bureaucratic silence.

The suppression of the truth in Melbourne and the forced imposition of the WRL in the regions are two sides of the very same coin. It is the signature of a 12-year-old regime that has consolidated so much power within its centralized executive that it no longer feels the need to govern by consent.

Jacinta Allan cannot wash her hands of the Andrews legacy because she is the legacy. The rot didn’t walk out the door when Daniel Andrews was forced from office; it simply changed its public face. Until the culture of institutionalized secrecy and backroom patronage is thoroughly dismantled, the state will continue to bury its corruption in courtroom vaults – and bury our regional heritage under a mountain of unneeded steel and wire.