Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (12:31): What bliss it is to be lectured by those opposite and the mover from metropolitan Melbourne about the Albanese government's energy utopia! In the glow of the Allan Labor government's shining achievements, like the multibillion-dollar cost blowouts on the Suburban Rail Loop and eye-watering amounts of debt, regional Victorians are living in darkness and oppression. They are invisible to the member for Chisholm and her Labor colleagues. Worse still, regional Victorians are the targets of a radical ideology and energy experiment untried and unproven on the scale the Albanese Labor government are driving. Every Australian is paying for it on their power bills.

I notice the motion doesn't quote the line parroted by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy that renewables are the cheapest form of energy. No, now it's the bubblegum phrase 'the better future Australians voted for'. I can tell the member for Chisholm and those opposite that, in Mallee and across regional Australia, farmers and their communities are wearing the pain of the radical and reckless rollout of renewables. The proportion of regional Victorians who support a renewable energy transition has plummeted from 66 per cent to just 44 per cent now. Regional Victorians are out of sight and out of mind, and the Labor government has zero care factor.

Mallee residents are in the firing line for the Allan government's legislation which will fine farmers $12,000—or $48,000 if they're a corporation—for refusing Transmission Company Victoria access to build the new VNI West transmission line. I hate to break it to the member for Chisholm, but it's not a dreamy energy utopia Labor are building. It is a net zero dystopia. Already the Allan government's transmission plans will take up at least eight per cent of Victoria's landmass, in part because they are having trouble building offshore wind. Who knows how much prime agricultural land that eight per cent of landmass actually represents?

I continue to highlight that in 2022 the Victorian government proposed that up to 70 per cent of the state's prime agricultural land would be used for energy projects if offshore wind was not achieved—what a statement! They took that document down from their website and refuse to speak about it now, just like this motion is not speaking about renewables being the cheapest form of energy. But I kept the evidence, and I remind regional Victorians every chance I get that up to 70 per cent of prime agricultural land is in the Allan Labor government's sights for energy projects. And what about the remaining 30 per cent? With multiple mineral sands proposals in my electorate, you have to wonder how many farmers will remain unaffected.

Mallee is being turned into an industrial wasteland of transmission lines, turbines, panels and mines, and, most importantly, this is taking place without social licence. I've conducted a survey of Mallee voters, with more than 5,000 respondents so far, and the sentiment is very clear: energy projects do not have social licence. Mallee voters want farmers to be able to keep farming, oddly enough. And why would an energy company, many of which are made up of cowboys, bother with social licence when the behaviour of the Victorian government, which theoretically should act as a model corporate citizen, is to threaten farmers with $12,000 fines for refusing access?

Victorian Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie and I met with locals at Marnoo in my electorate last Monday, the day after the Allan government released their Victorian Transmission Plan on Sunday, under the cover of the penultimate round of the AFL. Marnoo and other Northern Grampians residents weren't fooled and quickly mobilised farmers and their tractors for a symbolic event, burning the Transmission Plan and saying VNI West will not be going ahead through their farms, whether there are $12,000 fines or not. The message is clear. Labor's Victorian and national renewable energy generation targets, and net zero itself, are simply unachievable.