Stop Labors Towers Newsletter – September 12, 2026
The ultimate fate of the Western Renewables Link will be decided at the ballot box during the upcoming state election. The fight against these high-voltage towers cannot be won in silence this project will only be stopped if thousands of ordinary people refuse to let our communities be buried.
A newsletter sitting quietly in your inbox changes nothing. What matters is how far its message travels before election day.
If you believe regional Victoria deserves to be heard and not simply managed and overridden we are asking you to take one simple, practical step today:
Share the newsletter on your socials. Post the link with a short message in your own words. Every share brings new eyes and new voices into the conversation.
Forward this email to your network. Send it to Family, friends, colleagues, fellow volunteers, and local business owners anyone who will be forced to live with the consequences of these decisions.
This isn’t about building a mailing list; it’s about building undeniable political pressure. When politicians and developers realize that regional communities are organized, informed, and talking to each other, the political cost of ignoring us leading into an election rises fast.
One newsletter, widely shared, can spark conversations in farm kitchens, CFA sheds, council offices, and city boardrooms. It forces people to connect the dots between transmission corridors, severe bushfire risks, rising bills, and a government that refuses to listen to the people whose land and livelihoods are on the line.
Please do not just read this and move on. Take thirty seconds right now to hit “share” or “forward.” Add one sentence about why protecting our regional landscapes matters to you, and send it.
The landscape has a memory, and so do its voters. Let’s make sure our story travels further than these towers ever will.
VNI WEST: CANCELLED. WRL: LEFT HANGING
There is a quiet menace stalking the golden fields and ancient volcanic plains of western Victoria, a shadow cast not by storm clouds, but by the looming threat of industrial steel.
Under the banner of a relentless flawed energy transition, the Victorian Labor Government is orchestrating an egregious assault on the natural and agricultural landscapes, pushing forward with the massive Western Renewables Link (WRL) and VNI West megaprojects. Blinded by the arithmetic of aggressive generation targets, they seek to carve permanent, 100-metre-wide greenfield easements across our most sensitive and productive earth, erecting 500-kilovolt transmission towers that will forever scar the horizon and threaten the delicate balance of rural ecosystems. They force these behemoths upon the land using coercive statutory powers, treating the custodians of the soil as mere obstacles to be paved over.
In the face of this ecological and agricultural tragedy, the Liberal and Nationals Coalition offers only a tepid, trembling resistance. Their position is fundamentally weak; rather than standing as a bulwark for the land, they propose merely to “pause and review” the transmission plans while promoting urban solar parks. A pause is not a rescue it is merely a delayed execution. It leaves rural communities in a prolonged state of agonizing uncertainty, lacking the courage to definitively sever the cords of this destructive machinery.
It is only One Nation Victoria that has risen with the absolute, positive resolve to kill these monstrous projects entirely. They alone recognize that we must not sacrifice our vital food-producing farms, our high-bushfire-risk country, and our fragile habitats to an outdated, heavy-handed transmission model. One Nation’s pledge is a vital vow to the earth and the farmer alike: the total cancellation of the WRL and VNI West, and the absolute restoration of landholder rights. They understand that a truly sustainable future cannot be built by destroying the very environment and communities it claims to save, demanding instead that any future energy solutions respect the quiet dignity and irreplaceable value of the Victorian countryside.
PREMIER CARROLL’S TRANSPARENCY TEST: OPEN THE BOOKS ON WRL
Premier Ben Carroll has promised Victorians a new direction built on trust, transparency and accountability. The Western Renewables Link is where that promise must be tested.
Premier Ben Carroll says his government represents a “new direction” and that his Cabinet must earn the trust of Victorians.
Those commitments should not be measured by speeches. They should be measured by what his government is prepared to disclose.
For our community facing the Western Renewables Link, Labor’s record has been the opposite of transparent.
For years, landholders and residents have been asked to accept conclusions we have not been given a fair opportunity to test. Critical information has been delayed, withheld or heavily redacted. Explanations about bushfire risk, undergrounding, costs and route selection have shifted. Consultation has occurred without communities having equal access to the evidence used by the Government and AusNet.
This has created a fundamental imbalance:
The Government and the project proponent hold the information. The community carries the consequences.
That is not informed consent. It is not meaningful consultation. It is decision-making behind a curtain.
TRANSPARENCY MEANS SHOWING THE EVIDENCE
Publishing a conclusion is not the same as publishing the evidence behind it.
If the Government says the proposed overhead WRL is safe, necessary and represents the best available option, it should release the data, assumptions and modelling that produced that conclusion.
Independent experts should be able to examine the information, reproduce the analysis and challenge the assumptions.
That is how credible science and engineering work.
The community should not be expected to accept that risks are “manageable” simply because a government department or project consultant says they are. The evidence must be open to scrutiny.
Bushfire risk provides one powerful example.
BUSHFIRE: WHY DISCLOSURE MATTERS
The project’s own Environment Effects Statement records:
- More than 500 bushfires within 50 kilometres of the proposed project since 1980.
- A projected increase of three to six extreme fire-weather days each year by 2070.
- Intersections with priority bushfire access and evacuation routes at four locations.
- Restrictions on helicopters drawing water from dams beneath or adjacent to the transmission line.
- An inability for ground crews to work within the electrically active transmission easement.
- The possibility that fallen infrastructure could obstruct emergency access or delay evacuation.
- No alternative access or evacuation route for residents in the Lerderderg Gorge Road area if infrastructure failed at the critical time.
The community is entitled to see exactly what conclusion was reached.
What wind conditions were modelled? Were fire-generated and pyroconvective winds fully considered? What assumptions were made about tower failure, flashover, emergency de-energisation, aerial firefighting and blocked escape routes? Were maximum foreseeable conditions tested or only conditions the project considers reasonably likely?
The 2018 Camp Fire in California, officially attributed to power lines, killed 85 people and destroyed 18,804 structures. It demonstrates why low-probability but catastrophic infrastructure failures cannot be dismissed through reassuring language. CAL FIRE confirms the cause and consequences.
Transparency means releasing the underlying bushfire modelling so qualified experts can test it.
It does not mean telling communities to trust a summary.
UNDERGROUNDING: WAS THE ALTERNATIVE TESTED FAIRLY?
Undergrounding is another example.
Labor and AusNet have repeatedly argued that undergrounding is not feasible.
However, AusNet’s own undergrounding report says a fully underground option was excluded because it was considered not to meet the existing project objectives and regulatory requirements.
The report also acknowledges that a detailed assessment of the underground option’s costs, timeline, approvals and environmental impacts was not undertaken.
That distinction matters.
Excluding an alternative under predetermined project objectives is not the same as comparing it equally and transparently against the overhead proposal.
A credible assessment would publish a like-for-like comparison of:
- Overhead HVAC transmission.
- Underground HVDC transmission.
- Hybrid overhead and underground designs.
- Alternative corridors.
- Strategic undergrounding through high-risk locations.
- Relevant grid upgrades, storage and other system options.
Each option should be assessed using the same capacity requirements, risk assumptions, contingency allowances and project timeframe.
The full comparison should include lifetime costs not merely initial construction costs including maintenance, compensation, agricultural disruption, environmental damage, insurance exposure and bushfire consequences.
If the overhead WRL is genuinely the best option, an open comparison should
prove it.
THE SAME TEST APPLIES TO EVERY IMPACT
The principle extends beyond bushfire and undergrounding.
Communities are entitled to see the evidence concerning:
- Agricultural productivity and biosecurity.
- Biodiversity and habitat destruction.
- Property values and insurance.
- Social and psychological impacts.
- Emergency access and evacuation.
- Route selection and rejected alternatives.
- Project costs, contingencies and future consumer exposure.
Publishing hundreds of pages does not automatically create transparency. Information can still be buried, fragmented or presented without the data required to test it.
Real transparency means making the critical evidence accessible, complete and independently verifiable.
PREMIER CARROLL CAN ACT NOW
Premier Carroll did not initiate every failure associated with the WRL. But he now leads the government responsible for deciding what happens next.
His government should:
- Publish the WRL Inquiry and Advisory Committee report
- Establish a public register of all WRL reports, modelling, expert advice and government decisions.
- Release the underlying data and assumptions used for bushfire, cost, engineering, environmental and route assessments.
- Publish unredacted documents wherever there is no compelling legal reason to withhold information.
- Identify the precise legal basis and public-interest justification for every redaction or withheld document.
- Commission an independent comparison of overhead, underground, hybrid and alternative-route options.
- Require catastrophic bushfire stress testing under maximum foreseeable conditions.
- Provide written answers to outstanding community questions.
- Meet directly with affected communities.
- Make no irreversible commitment until the evidence has been disclosed and independently tested.
The WRL Inquiry and Advisory Committee submitted its report on 8 May 2026. The Government’s response will provide an immediate test of Premier Carroll’s promised new direction.
A GOVERNMENT THAT HAS NOTHING TO HIDE SHOULD SHOW ITS WORK
Premier Carroll does not have to agree with affected communities to be transparent.
He does have to allow the evidence to be tested.
Every non-Labor party seeking to form government should commit to the same standard: disclose the evidence, compare the alternatives fairly and let decisions withstand independent scrutiny.
Labor has spent years asking communities to trust a process they could not properly examine.
Premier Carroll has promised a new direction.
He can begin by opening the books on the Western Renewables Link.
Transparency is not a slogan. It is evidence the public can see, test and challenge.
THE FUTURE FREEDOM OF AUSTRALIA IS ON THE LINE
– Gina Rinehart
The below is an extract of Hancock Prospecting executive chairman Gina Rinehart AO’s 2026 keynote Bush Summit address, delivered on her behalf by Adam Giles, chief executive, Hancock Agriculture. Hancock Prospecting is the national presenting partner of the Bush Summit.
Fellow Australians, I have always wanted to believe that the Australian people, when told the truth, will meet it with the courage that has never yet failed our nation.
We are told that what is now creating the crises around us, from record debt and record business failures, to falling real investment and falling standards of living, plus rising crime and too high immigration, is no coalition at all – merely a convenient arrangement, a passing accommodation of Labor, of the Greens – who are no longer the environmental party they used to be, and of those who campaign under the pastel colours of the confusing or confused Teals.
We are asked to believe that these are separate parties, with separate aims.
But are they held together by something far stronger – an appetite for your money; an appetite to kill agriculture, and kill the businesses that depend on agriculture; an appetite to kill small businesses; an appetite to kill investment and hence your industries; an appetite for the ordering of your private life and the policing of your public speech.
I would like to think that these appetites are confined to the parties that I have mentioned, but perhaps a closer look is warranted at the record of other parties while in office too.
And let us be clear about the character of the politics they bring.
It is a politics of huge expensive bureaucracy, huge expensive tape, climbing taxes, charges and costs, central direction, and compulsion.
It says to the miners bringing the bulk of the revenue supporting our country, to the struggling farmers providing our top-quality food, to the small businessmen the largest provider of private employment in our country, that you are the problem, and we are the cure.
This is the oldest and most tried instrument in the manual of every socialist or communist who ever misled a people.
Let me set out the danger, plainly, as I see it. They come first for our prosperity. They massively regulate the industries that keep the lights burning and the refineries running.
They tax the productive to subsidise handouts, to buy them votes.
They come next for our living standards. Every family in this country now knows the arithmetic of the grocery bill, the mortgage, the electricity account, the licence costs.
They come next for our speech. They decide, from an office in Canberra, what may be said, what may be doubted, what may be laughed at.
And they come, for something vitally precious, the freedom of every Australian, a freedom that must be defended, or will be lost – our government’s prime responsibility, a responsibility they have dangerously neglected, our defence.
Without this freedom, we lose the freedom to build a life, own a home, raise a family, hold an opinion, and be left to raise our flag in peace. Please do not underrate the gravity of the hour. Our opponents are organised, they are well-financed and they are determined.
They have friends in the institutions, in the universities, in the schools and throughout the press.
But let’s not forget our own history. We have the historic strength of a people who cleared this continent’s harshest country and made it yield.
We have the strength of the Diggers who went out from these shores. We have the strength of every pioneer who came here with nothing but a suitcase and a stubborn faith that with hard work they could provide a better life for their family. We have the strength of a nation of patriots.
We simply cannot afford to surrender our freedom and our future.
