Stop Labors Towers Newsletter – October 04, 2026
IN THIS ISSUE
YOU HOLD THE POWER – NOT THESE BASTARDS.
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- The political choice on the WRL is clear.
- The cost review continues. So does the WRL approval process.
- Who is really pulling the strings?
- Approval first. Answers later.
- Ripon political party debate
- Victoria United Rally – WRL must be front and centre
- Cloaked in Red: how Labor’s socialist rhetoric is hiding an authoritarian agenda
YOU HOLD THE POWER – NOT THESE BASTARDS.
The Labor government does not own our communities. It serves them. It does not grant us a voice. It answers to ours.
On November 28, vote Labor out of government.
Our objection is clear: we do not accept the WRL in its current, overengineered form through greenfield land with its massive impacts and risks. We demand that its necessity be demonstrated, its alternatives examined and its impacts honestly addressed.
No community should be treated as an obstacle to be overcome. No family should be dismissed as collateral damage. And no government should mistake public patience for public consent.
We have sought respectful dialogue. We have asked for answers. We will not settle for decisions imposed upon us without genuine accountability.
The time for asking these bastards to listen is over. The time to make our votes count has come.
Let our anger become resolve. Let our resolve become action. And let that action be peaceful, democratic and decisive.
On November 28, remind them who holds the power.
Not the ministers. Not the party.
You.
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The political choice on the WRL is clear.
Labor remains committed to progressing the Western Renewables Link, while the Liberal–National Coalition and One Nation have each stated opposition to the project in its current form.
If those commitments are maintained and either alternative forms government with the capacity to implement them, the WRL’s present path would face a fundamentally different future.
For communities that have spent years challenging the necessity, route, cost, risks and impacts of this project, the issue has therefore moved beyond another round of consultation. The question now is whether the next Victorian Government will continue the present WRL or change course.
Our position remains unchanged: the WRL in its current overengineered greenfield form is unacceptable, its necessity must be demonstrated, genuine alternatives must be examined, and affected communities must no longer be treated as collateral damage in decisions made elsewhere.
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THE COST REVIEW CONTINUES. SO DOES THE WRL APPROVAL PROCESS.
Peter Hunt’s latest report in The Weekly Times deserves to be read by every community along the Western Renewables Link corridor.
On 15 September, Premier Ben Carroll announced an “immediate, independent assessment” of WRL’s costs, saying Victorian consumers deserved “updated, transparent costings”. He also said no compulsory acquisitions would occur while that process continued.
Then, just 15 days later, the Planning Scheme Amendment for WRL was gazetted.
As Hunt reports, Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny’s GC209 amendment makes the Minister the responsible authority across the six affected planning schemes and provides that no planning permit is required for development of WRL project land. The activities covered extend well beyond the towers themselves, including terminal stations, construction compounds, temporary worker accommodation, access roads, vegetation removal, demolition, excavation, stockpiling and associated works.
The Government’s own WRL material confirms the significance of what occurred: the gazettal of GC209 on 30 September “establishes the planning controls for construction and operation of the project.”Further approvals remain necessary before construction can begin, but this was plainly not an administrative footnote. It was another substantial step in the project’s approvals process.
That is the contradiction our community is entitled to question.
How can the Government tell Western Victoria that WRL’s multibillion-dollar cost is being independently reassessed while, at the same time, advancing the planning framework that enables the project to proceed?
And what happened to local government?
Hunt reports that councils along the route have been displaced from their ordinary planning-permit role for WRL project land. One affected farmer describes this as another removal of the project from the normal “checks and balances”.
For communities that have spent years participating in consultations, preparing submissions, appearing before the EES inquiry and demanding alternatives be properly examined, that sequence deserves scrutiny.
The Premier says the community wants transparency. We agree.
So let us have it.
What exactly is being reconsidered? What decisions remain genuinely open? And if the independent cost assessment concludes that WRL cannot be justified in its present form, why was it necessary to gazette these planning controls before that assessment was finished?
Peter Hunt’s article sets out what happened.
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WHO IS REALLY PULLING THE STRINGS?
Symes. Kilkenny. D’Ambrosio.
Three politicians. One continuing project. And one question that still demands an answer: whose interests has the Western Renewables Link really served?
Leadership is not a title. It is a duty. Power is not a possession. It is a public trust.
Lily D’Ambrosio may have been disposed of, but the energy and transmission policies developed under her watch have not disappeared with her. In 2023, as Energy Minister, she announced the Ministerial Order progressing VNI West and connecting it directly to WRL at Bulgana. Jaclyn Symes has inheriting the energy, climate and State Electricity Commission portfolios.
The minister may have changed. The machine keeps moving.
Then came the extraordinary contradiction.
On 15 September, Premier Ben Carroll ordered an independent assessment of WRL’s costs, saying Victorians deserved “updated, transparent costings” and confirming that compulsory acquisitions would not occur while that process continued.
Yet barely two weeks later, Planning Scheme Amendment GC209 was gazetted, establishing the project-specific planning controls needed for WRL’s design, construction and operation across six municipalities.
One arm of government reviews the cost. Another advances the project.
That is the contradiction communities are entitled to have explained.
And hanging over all of this is another question that cannot simply be brushed aside: what influence have organised labour and construction employment objectives had on Victoria’s transmission agenda?
Unions have publicly advocated for a continuing pipeline of energy-sector work as Victoria’s coal generation closes. A 2026 joint union submission involving the ETU and CFMEU expressly argued for coordinated planning and investment to provide a continuing pipeline of work. That establishes an employment interest in the energy transition.
The unions are pulling the strings?
If they are not, demonstrate it. Release the evidence. Show the decision-making trail. Explain why WRL was selected, why alternatives were rejected, what role employment objectives played, and whether political or industrial relationships influenced any of those decisions.
Because our communities deserve answers, not slogans; consultation capable of changing outcomes, not consultation after the destination has effectively been chosen; accountability, not institutional buck-passing.
No faction. No union. No minister. No political party has a greater claim on Victoria than the public it serves.
Symes must account for the project she has inherited.
Kilkenny must account for the planning decisions she has made.
And D’Ambrosio’s departure from the Ministry does not erase the decisions made during her stewardship of Victoria’s energy transition.
The Government should demonstrate whose interests these decisions advance, whose concerns materially changed the project, what the project will actually cost, and why it should continue while its own Premier has decided those costs require independent examination.
The WRL is too consequential for unanswered questions.
They hold office. The public is entitled to the answers.
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APPROVAL FIRST. ANSWERS LATER.
What happened this week should concern every community along the Western Renewables Link.
Just 15 days after the Premier declared that WRL needed an immediate independent cost assessment, because Victorians deserved “updated, transparent costings”, the Planning Minister pushed through the planning amendment that establishes the controls for the project to proceed.
Think about that.
The Government says it does not yet have confidence in the current cost.
It has ordered a review that will not report until the end of the year.
Yet it continues advancing the project.
We are told our views are already understood because we participated in the EES and IAC process.
In effect: we have been heard, therefore there is no need to hear us again.
We are told alternatives can still be investigated, but they are now measured against an approved Baseline Project, and any change must not materially delay that baseline.
We are told WRL is strategically important because it appears in Victoria’s transmission planning, even though that planning itself proceeded on the assumption that WRL would be delivered.
And we continue to hear sweeping claims about affordability, reliability, renewable energy and economic benefit.
But where are the contemporary numbers?
What does WRL cost today?
What is its current quantified net benefit?
What happens to that benefit if the project now costs billions more than originally contemplated?
What alternatives have been tested against WRL on equal terms using today’s costs and today’s energy system?
These are not unreasonable questions.
They are the questions that should have been answered before another major approval was granted.
Instead, we have witnessed something deeply troubling:
The cost is still being investigated.
The alternatives remain constrained.
The community remains opposed.
But the approvals keep moving.
The Premier says Victorians deserve transparency.
We agree.
So give us the numbers.
Give us the current business case.
Give us the genuine alternatives.
And explain why this project is being advanced before the Government has completed the very financial examination the Premier himself said was necessary.
For years, our communities have been expected to prove the impacts WRL will impose upon us.
It is time the Government proved its case.
Not with assumptions.
Not with slogans.
Not with another approval.
With evidence.
Because right now, the unmistakable message from Spring Street is this:
APPROVE FIRST. JUSTIFY LATER.
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WRL MUST BE FRONT AND CENTRE
This rally brings together regional Victorians concerned about farming, property, emergency services, infrastructure and the future of their communities. And among those issues, the Western Renewables Link deserves a prominent place in the public discussion.
WRL is no longer an obscure transmission proposal. After years of community opposition, it has become a major political and policy controversy, attracted national attention, entered the Victorian election debate and, most recently, prompted Premier
Ben Carroll to order an “immediate, independent assessment” of its costs.
That makes a large regional gathering at Parliament House particularly significant for the WRL debate.
The people affected by WRL have spent years raising questions about productive farmland, compulsory acquisition, environmental impacts, bushfire risk, project costs and the treatment of regional communities. Supporters of the project argue that new transmission is necessary to connect renewable generation and strengthen Victoria’s electricity supply, while opponents dispute whether WRL in its present form is the appropriate solution.
A major rally provides something individual submissions and meetings cannot: visibility. It puts regional concerns in one place, in front of Parliament, the media and the wider Victorian public.
For WRL campaigners, the opportunity is therefore clear: ensure that WRL is visible, identifiable and impossible to confuse with the other issues represented on the day.
WRL has already attracted attention far beyond the transmission corridor. This rally is another opportunity to put the communities living beneath the proposed towers at the centre of the public conversation.
View the Victoria Unites event post on Facebook
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CLOAKED IN RED: HOW LABOR’S SOCIALIST RHETORIC IS HIDING AN AUTHORITARIAN AGENDA
In Victoria today, we are not witnessing a failure of governance. We are witnessing its mutation.
The Labor Government, cloaked in the noble language of socialism and misguided ideology – of equity, collective progress, and the public good – is using that very guise to conceal a cold, calculated consolidation of power. What began as a party of the people now governs in a way that is anything but.
Beneath the red flag and the worker’s promise, we find not community empowerment but community erasure. Not the defence of public interest, but the repackaging of it – to serve political agendas, private contracts, and bureaucratic control.
They call it progress.
They call it necessary.
They say it’s for the greater good.
But as Orwell warned, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
And we are saying – what we are screaming – is that this is not progress. This is imposition. This is coercion dressed up in the robes of green virtue and red solidarity.
Just as Michael Liebreich has cautioned: when the clean energy revolution is taken over by a centralised elite, it stops being a revolution. It becomes a racket – designed to enrich those who manage the transition, not those who live with its consequences.
The Western Renewables Link is a case study in exactly that.
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Announced, designed, and advanced with minimal transparency
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Imposed over communities, not in partnership with them
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Justified with socialist-sounding slogans, but executed with top-down, private-sector and union collusion
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Dismissing dissent not with reason, but with moral superiority – the most dangerous weapon in modern politics
This is not about decarbonisation. It is about domination.
This is not about social good. It is about state control.
And the language of fairness has become a tool for silencing those who dare to say, “This is wrong.”
The irony is thick: a government claiming to protect the working class is now dispossessing working families of their land, their peace, and their voice. A government once built on union solidarity now rules with a corporate fist in a velvet glove.
They say they are building a greener future.
But what they are building is a precedent – one where decisions are made without consent, where questions are met with deflection, and where opposition is branded selfish, ignorant, or worse.
Let’s be very clear:
This is not the path to climate justice.
This is not how you earn a social licence.
And this is not what socialism was ever meant to become.
This is authoritarianism in soft focus – bureaucracy without humanity, governance without humility.
The people of Western Victoria will not be moved. We are anti-bulldozer. We are anti-secrecy. We are anti-hypocrisy. And we are awake.
The red cloak has slipped. The green paint is flaking. And what lies beneath is a government that has forgotten who it serves – and who it is meant to protect.
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