Stop Labors Towers Newsletter – September 19, 2026
In case you’ve been living under a rock – or, more likely if you’re in Victoria, down a pothole – it’s been a momentous week.
We have been subjected to a brutal political whiplash, swinging violently between the cold, calculated betrayal of a Labor government intent on sacrificing our region, and the sudden, fierce hope sparked by the Coalition and the media finally tearing the veil off this catastrophic agenda.
But whether you read every word of today’s newsletter and we deeply hope you do or just take away one single, unequivocal truth, let it be this: if the WRL is to finally die, the Victorian Labor Party must be voted out at Novembers State Election.
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IN THIS ISSUE
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Jess Wilson and the Liberals: “We Will Cancel WRL”
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The EES Outcome: An Environmental Assessment Farce
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Premier Announces WRL Cost Review
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David Davis on WRL Costs and Allegations of Corruption
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Bev McArthur Demands Answers in Parliament on WRL Costs
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The Australian’s Robert Gottliebsen: The $4 Billion WRL Revelation
ELECTION COMMITMENT:
LIBERAL’S JESS WILSON PLEDGES TO SCRAP THE WRL IN ITS CURRENT FORM
The Liberals announced via an offical party Social Media post on Thursday 17th September 2026
The Western Renewables Link will not proceed in its current form under a Wilson Liberal Government.
As Jess Wilson MP made clear on Peta Credlin’s show this week, she has met with farmers and affected communities, and it’s clear this project does not have social licence.
For more than six years, communities have campaigned against the WRL. It started around Emma Muir kitchen table, went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Liberals have listened and acted.
Well done to the many locals who have campaigned tirelessly for the past six and a half years
Transcript of Liberal Party announcements this week post the release of teh WRL EES
Jess Wilson on Peta Credlin – Wednesday 16th September
We will not allow this project (WRL) to proceed without fundamental changes to what Labor has proposed, if it ever does procced.
Liberal Candidates Emma Muir, Eureka and Megan Reed, Rippon via Social Media Post:
The Western Renewals Link will not proceed in its current form under a Wilson Liberal government, the fight against this project started around my kitchen table 6 1/2 years ago for 6 1/2 years our communities have put all their energy into fighting this project
And for 6 1/2 years labor and their MPs have been letting us down.
The planning minister signed off on the environmental effects statement the day before Jacinta Allen was rolled as premier. Curiously just a few days ago Ben Carroll ordered a review of the costings of WRL those exact costings that have been kept secret for years.
This project has divided communities for six years now and has absolutely no social licence to proceed.
The Liberal team have listened and the Liberals are making a clear commitment
Labor’s Western Renewable Link in its current form stops here.
Regional communities deserve to be heard and properly represented and that’s exactly what Emma and I will do as part of a Wilson Liberal Government.
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WRL EES DECISION: MINISTER’S ASSESSMENT AND IAC REPORT PUBLISHED
The Victorian Minister for Planning, Sonya Kilkenny has published her assessment under the Environment Effects Act 1978 of the Western Renewables Link (WRL).
Her assessment finds that the environmental impacts of the project are, on balance, acceptable with implementation of the environmental management framework, environmental performance requirements and recommendations made by the Minister for Planning.
To read the recently published Environment Effects Statement reports for the Western Renewables Link is to witness the profound arrogance of the distant bureaucrat.
What the committee and the Minister have delivered is not an honest assessment of environmental impact, but a formalized death warrant for our rural communities, bound neatly in the sterile, cowardly language of political expediency.
For six years, we have stood rooted on our land, trying to explain the irreplaceable value of our soil, our wildlife, our farms and our livelihoods to people who see our homes only as blank corridors on a planner’s map. The Minister and this committee have willfully dismissed the catastrophic, undeniable realities on the ground – the amplified threat of bushfire, the devastation of native landscapes, and the quiet, deliberate murder of our local communities. In their desperate pursuit of a top-down, ideological agenda, they are orchestrating nothing less than state-sanctioned ecocide. They claim the mantle of environmental progress while gleefully sacrificing the actual earth and the people who steward it.
For nine grueling months, we were pulled from the real, sustaining work of our lives.
The time and energy that rightfully belonged to our families, our soil, and the daily tending of our acreage were stolen from us, redirected into the sterile, exhausting theater of the EES hearings. We marshaled an unprecedented defense, compiling massive community submissions – ten’s of thousands of pages of local wisdom, hard facts, and lived reality, offered in good faith to defend our environment and homes.
Yet, we were forced to sit in bureaucratic rooms, watching the seasons turn outside without our hands in the dirt, only to realize we were participating in a charade designed merely to placate us, a performance rigged from the start by a biased and fundamentally wrong agenda.
The foundational promise of an independent, neutral assessment was stripped away the moment it became politically inconvenient. Through blatant political intervention, the process was corrupted to serve a hollow, top-down ideological agenda rather than the truth of the landscape. They quietly dismantled the safeguards that were meant to protect our region, revealing that the government’s priority is not the health of the environment or the survival of rural communities, but the relentless, blind advancement of their own narrative.
It is an unforgivable betrayal: the machinery of the state working not to weigh the catastrophic facts of the impacts and unmanagable risks, but to bulldoze reality itself in the name of a false, distant ideal.
This EES is a profound failure of both morality and imagination. It proves that the government is perfectly willing to destroy a real place to serve a political abstraction. But they have fundamentally misunderstood the people of this region. We do not love our land in the abstract, our connection to these acres is not a policy; it is our blood and our breath.
We stand absolutely united against this egregious betrayal. We will not be moved, and we will not allow our farms and families to be sacrificed to decorate a politician’s legacy.
This community is awake, we are unbroken, and we will do everything within our earthly power to bring about the complete and final end of the Western Renewables Link.
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PREMIER BEN CARROLL WRL COST REVIEW
To read this announcement from the Premier is to witness the architecture of a state-sanctioned sleight of hand. Premier Ben Carroll stands before the public, cloaked in the benevolent rhetoric of easing the “cost of living,” and announces an “immediate, independent assessment into the costs” of the Western Renewables Link. We are asked to be grateful for this fiscal prudence, for the promise of transparent costings after nearly a decade of planning. But watch carefully the space between the words.
This is not a reprieve; it is a shallow, calculated deflection designed to pacify the exhausted while the machinery of extraction continues to grind our region into dust.
While the Premier assures us that no compulsory acquisitions will occur during this narrow window of assessment, AusNet remains ravenous, aggressive, and entirely unmoved.
A review of the ledger means nothing when the bulldozer’s engine is still running. The government has offered a glittering distraction while refusing to dismantle, or even temporarily halt, the bureaucratic and physical apparatus designed to force this infrastructure through our soil. Look at what they have deliberately chosen not to stop.
• Planning Scheme Ammendment (PSA GC209)
• the final Incorporated Document
• Development Plans
• preparatory works
• vegetation clearing
• voluntary easement acquisition
• procurement
• detailed design
• other State approvals
This is the grim reality of corporate-state synergy. They will audit the finances while they clear the vegetation; they will calculate the savings for the Victorian consumer while they secure the voluntary easements and finalize the development plans that map the ruin of our region. It is the language of economic relief used to sanitize the relentless, uninterrupted mechanics of ecological and communal destruction.
If the Premier considers independent scrutiny necessary before compulsory acquisition proceeds, then no irreversible planning or preparatory decision should be made while the the Premier’s independent cost assessment remain unresolved.
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SHADOW ENERGY MINISTER DAVID DAVIS
David Davis Commenst at CEDA forum on Tuesday 15 Sep.
Victoria’s shadow energy minister David Davis has launched a scathing attack on the state Labor government’s energy legacy, singling out “massive corruption” as a real risk to the state’s wind energy and transmission projects, while talking up the prospects of gas power and prospecting.
In a speech delivered to a CEDA luncheon event in Melbourne on Tuesday, Davis pulled no punches in his critique of the Victorian Labor government’s more than a decade-long management of the energy transition, describing it as a “broken and ramshackle approach” underpinned by an “ideological war on gas.”
Davis delivered his speech shortly after new state energy minister made her first public appearance since inheriting the role from Lily D’Ambrosio, promising to “stay the course” on renewables, develop offshore wind, and help homes transition from gas.
Davis also took the opportunity to bring up the corruption allegations plaguing the Labor government over its Big Build program, saying that nobody should assume that “construction of energy projects, including long-distance wires,” was immune from the “rampant corruption” under Labor.
“On the contrary, all the evidence shows that there is a real risk that energy projects, whether wind farms or long-distance wires and connectors, will need to be watched very closely,” Davis told the gathering.
“We should be aware that this massive corruption is a risk, and unless you missed it, Labor have tagged that our energy or our electricity projects are the new big build.”
Separately Davis is quoted within this week’s Star Weekly.
Victoria’s opposition has vowed to review and potentially scrap the WRL project, which has faced major scrutiny from many landholders who live along the project’s proposed route.
Opposition energy spokesman David Davis suggested WRL’s ultimate cost could be higher than $1.5 billion, pointing to a 2025 report that listed its price tag at about $4 billion.
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BEV MCARTHUR (WESTERN VICTORIA) QUESTION TO LABOR IN PARLIAMENT THIS WEEK
Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (12:48): (2599)
My question is to the Minister for Energy and Resources. On 6 March 2026 Brookfield Infrastructure Income Fund filed a certified annual shareholder report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In its section on AusNet, the Brookfield-controlled company delivering the Western Renewables Link, it described the Western Renewables Link as an A$4 billion project, saying AusNet had finalised its commercial framework with the Victorian government and executed a binding construction contract.
Yet on 27 May, responding to a parliamentary request for WRL’s total estimated investment costs, the government gave only a $1.53 billion construction estimate and a $1.6 billion construction contract. Minister, what exactly does Brookfield’s approximately $4 billion figure comprise, why was that figure not disclosed to Parliament and what is the current cost of the WRL, which Victorian electricity consumers will ultimately pay?
Labors Response ?
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WESTERN RENEWABLES LINK COST BLOWS OUT TO $4BN IN US DEVELOPER SEC FILING
-THE AUSTRALIAN
Thursday’s The Australian exposes a massive $4 billion cost blowout for the Western Renewables Link hidden in a US developer’s SEC filing, raising serious questions about the project’s viability at the expense of Victorian power users.
- The cost of the Western Renewables Link (WRL) has skyrocketed to $4 billion—approximately 2.5 times higher than the $1.5 billion estimate previously presented to the Victorian public.
- This explosive cost blowout was not disclosed to voters, but was instead revealed in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by the project’s developer, Brookfield.
- Brookfield’s Australian subsidiary, AusNet, has already executed a binding construction contract and finalized a “commercial framework” with the Victorian government, which likely guarantees developer returns that will be paid for by Victorian power users.
- The Australian argues the final price tag could easily exceed $5 billion due to the involvement of the CFMEU and comparisons to similar interstate projects.
- The project faces rigorous opposition from local farmers who argue the transmission line will destroy their land.
The Victorian Labor government’s handling of the Western Renewables Link is a staggering display of political deception and utter contempt for regional communities.
By keeping the true $4 billion price tag hidden from the Victorian public while allowing Brookfield to boast about de-risked capital and guaranteed returns to US regulators, the government is treating everyday citizens as an endless ATM. Promising a post-election inquiry into the WRL’s costs while simultaneously locking taxpayers into a binding commercial framework is not governance; it is a calculated cover-up designed to defer the political fallout until after the votes are counted.
This deliberate financial obfuscation adds incredible insult to the very real injury inflicted on local landholders. Families and farmers across western Victoria including those fighting tooth and nail for years to save their regional homes are having their lives upended by a project that the government knows is bleeding billions. Hiding a massive cost blowout while locals spend years in the trenches fighting to protect their properties from destruction is a deep betrayal of trust. It demonstrates a government perfectly willing to sacrifice regional communities and saddle households with a crippling $4 billion to $5 billion transmission line bill, all while hiding the truth from the people forced to live under its shadow.
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EES BUILT ON A BILLION-DOLLAR LIE: THE WRL’S FAKE ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
A RIGGED REVIEW: WHY THE WRL APPROVALS MUST BE IMMEDIATELY SCRAPPED
The Labor government’s deception extends far beyond a simple budget blowout; it strikes at the core integrity of the entire planning and environmental review process.
By allowing the Environment Effects Statement (EES) to be published and assessed on the fantasy figure of $1.53 billion – while sitting on the knowledge that the true cost was already north of $4 billion – the government has fundamentally rigged the project’s economic foundation. This massive discrepancy materially alters the project’s value, the cost-benefit analysis, and the comparative assessment of alternatives. If the EES conclusions relied on a $1.53 billion figure after the State knew it was completely untenable, the entire assessment is structurally compromised, stripping it of any credibility.
For our comunity who have spent years meticulously preparing their own EES submissions to highlight severe bushfire risks, visual amenity destruction, and catastrophic property impacts, this cover-up is a profound insult. It reveals a government perfectly willing to hold local communities to impossible regulatory standards while feeding them fabricated economic data. This demands immediate accountability: the government must publicly release the dated cost advice to establish exactly when ministers, officials, and the inquiry were informed of the $4 billion reality.
A documented reconciliation of scope, price dates, and inclusions is urgently required to explain this massive financial chasm.
Furthermore, the government must come clean on the true exit exposure to Victorian taxpayers. A $4 billion estimated construction cost does not equate to a $4 billion cancellation bill, and any attempt to use the inflated construction price as an excuse to avoid scrapping the project is simply another layer of manipulation.
The EES’s approval is not valid. It cannot be allowed to proceed on an outdated economic fiction. The government’s staggering lack of transparency invalidates the current assessment framework and demands an immediate halt and full reconsideration of the WRL before any further approvals are granted.
HOLD THE LINE. FINISH THE FIGHT.
VOTE LABOR OUT.
Our fight is far from over. The Western Renewables Link threatens too much—our homes, our farms, our environment and our communities’ safety. The risks are too great. The consequences too lasting. This project cannot proceed.
We have stood together for too long to surrender now. Stay the course. Stand united.
Make every conversation count and every vote.
One mission: vote Labor out of government.
Our land. Our future. Our voice at the ballot box.
