Moyne Shire’s campaign for ratepayers to lobby the Baillieu government for massive funds to repair the entire roadwork in our district is just a nonsense and misdirected.
AGL Energy Ltd should be required to pay for the horrific and totally unacceptable damage to our road network, caused principally by the enormous volume of heavy trucks and vehicles which have taken away the right of local farmers to safe driving on narrow country roads, from as far away as 100 kilometres, right around the Macarthur wind farm. Trucks were counted passing one particular property west of Penshurst every 45 seconds earlier this year, carting gravel and machinery to the wind farm site. These roads were never built for such loads or constant volume of traffic.
Perhaps the south-west Victorian community is not aware that AGL Energy Ltd will receive approximately $1 million per turbine per year for the 140 turbines of the Macarthur wind farm, as part of the federal government’s Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) scheme, the taxpayer subsidy which you and me, the taxpayers of Australia, are footing the bill for. RECs are the taxpayer subsidy even before these wind farm companies make enormous profits selling the power onto the consumer.
Wake up Moyne Shire, for goodness sake. Your call for the Victorian government to pay the substantial millions of dollars to fix the mess of our roads will mean that for the second time, the taxpayer has to foot the bill. As we all know this will mean less taxpayer money for Victorian schools and hospitals, while in the meantime AGL Energy Ltd will walk away from this district with buckets of money, leaving behind our road infrastructure in a diabolical mess, having only had to pay peanuts toward the approximately $60 million road damage it has been responsible for so far.
Neighbours to the Macarthur wind farm watched as AGL bullied the Moyne Shire during the planning panel held in 2006, and you just rolled over and capitulated.
Stand up and show a bit of guts and determination Moyne Shire and serve AGL with the massive bill for road repair.
Let’s see what good corporate citizens AGL are, which they’re always telling us in the media and their website.
I’m sure if locals had their time again, the community would far prefer to have their local roads restored to the pre-2010 condition when AGL hit town, than to be conned with new footy jumpers and all the new gear and equipment which has been handed out to the communities of Hawkesdale and Macarthur.
Annie Gardner, secretary Hawkesdale/Macarthur Landscape Guardians Group, Eckersleys Road, Penshurst