IT’S not my style to stick the old nose in where it may not necessarily be required, as you would all know, but watching things going on across my part of the world I feel my advice will be most welcome – even if not yet invited.
How many of you have stopped to look around at these solar and wind farms popping up all over the place?
And now we know for certain – regardless of what you may think, or wish – the VNI West transmission line is going to slice its way through the heartland of some of northern Victoria’s prime farming country.
So what we are all going to get out of it?
Well, if the government and big business have their way, bugger all.
Which is why now it is time for everyone to take heed of the old Whacker before it is too late.
If we can harness the energy which has gone into opposing the inevitable, we cannot miss.
Yes, farmers with windmills and solar panels get (on the surface but the reality is yet to be fully tested) a fair whack of rent or potentially premium price for land sold.
And yes, farmers who get these massive towers and powerlines running through their farms are also likely to be in line for some cash as well.
But why stop there?
Here, right in front of us, is a spectacular opportunity for the united voice of all northern Victorians to get a much better, and much fairer, shake out of the whole show.
For the purpose of today’s lesson, however, our focus shall be on the VNI West.
If I have read the map right – and I wasn’t wearing my spectacles so you might have to bear with me – in Victoria the line will cut through Buloke, Gannawarra, Loddon and Northern Grampians shires.
What the Whacker is proposing is every farm, house, business, sporting club, institution, hospital, whatever (even the shire offices) in those four shires demand in one, strong, united voice, that everyone and everything using electricity in those four shires be given a permanent power bill which is the equivalent of the feed-in tariff of the day.
Just think about the potential of this plan for a minute.
Yes, a handful of people will get some compensation, and they still will get that, but at the same time let’s make it an opportunity not just for a better result on our personal bottom lines; think of the industry, the businesses and the jobs that sort of power deal would create in these four councils.
It would mean more housing, bigger and better schools, bigger and better hospitals, serious sporting grounds and facilities, because business will come when you can guarantee ironclad control of energy costs.
Forget the lies from the politicians, the obfuscation from the power companies and the very, very dodgy share market which drives so much of these projects without ever sparing a thought for the little people.
Instead, think about the future you, I, we, can be building for our children, our grandchildren, and beyond.
But this is going to take unity, it is going to take determination, it is going to be a new fight – but a fight we can win.
Naturally your old Whacker would humbly accept the role of steering committee chairman to pull all this together – after all, you want someone who knows what they are doing at the helm.
And heaven forbid we rely on councils to get anything right anytime soon.
But pushed by all their ratepayers, forced out of the anonymity of their shire offices, endless meetings and 1001 excuses why something can’t be done, let’s deliver them a fait accompli.
Get it done or we will get rid of you.
In addition, we should pull in the VFF to access its resources to run our war room.
Brett Hosking, the new man at the helm there, is already doing a cracking job of getting the ailing organisation back into financial shape and back into its primary role of being a major influencer of progress and change across rural and regional Victoria.
He is beginning to remind me of the young firebrand the Whacker was a few years (alright, a few decades) ago and once I have your steering committee up and running, I would happily hand the torch to him and fully expect it to burn brightly – just as your lights will burn brightly on your new peppercorn rates.
