Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 31 March 2023
Sink the Link
BBF today launched a website exposing the disastrous environmental and economic consequences of Marinus Link for Tasmanians. Communities are speaking out loudly and calling for Tasmanians to stand together to determine their own future and not sell it out via Marinus Link.
“Tasmanians have sent a clear message to the Government that they don’t want a repeat of the bankrupted Basslink and want our renewable energy to be used here in Tasmania and not exported to the mainland,” Christine Milne said.
“No amount of propaganda from the Tasmanian Government, Hydro Tasmania and TasNetworks or ritzy lunches at Wrest Point can change that. The attempt to pivot to a warm and fuzzy ‘Tasmanian’ story of hydro-industrialisation at our expense, to justify the same again, is insulting. It is history repeating itself and that ended up with the Franklin Blockade,” Christine Milne said.
“No one in Tasmania’s south appreciates the sell-out and industrialisation of the north that is being proposed to line the pockets of private developers and feed power to the mainland. The magnificent Robbins Island, takayna, Stanley, and forests and farmlands from Circular Head to Eddystone Point and the Central Plateau are all in the firing line. It is time that people had access to information about what is happening on the ground,” Bob Brown Foundation takayna Campaigner Scott Jordan said.
“Tasmania can be a world leader in wilderness protection, ecosystem restoration and electrification in an age of global heating and extinction. However, one cannot be at the expense of the other – climate and biodiversity are two sides of the same coin,” Scott Jordan said.
“Mainland Australia is investing heavily in new renewable energy and battery technology and every day the idea that Tasmania can be a ‘battery of the nation’ becomes even more last-century and even more economically disastrous. Tasmanian energy is not even modelled in Victoria’s transition plan.”
It is time for Tasmanians to stand up for our island, its wild places and its cultural heritage and Sink the Link,” Christine Milne said.
https://bobbrown.org.au/
Nature Repair Market will not repair nature at all
The Bob Brown Foundation rejects monetising nature and the premise that establishing a Nature Repair Market is an ecologically effective, permanent, transparent, accountable way to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and environmental decline in Australia.
“A Nature Repair Market or Green Wall St is an extreme expression of failed neoliberal economics and should be dropped in recycling bin now,” said Christine Milne.
“No evidence has been provided that the proposed Nature Repair Market will halt or reverse the extinction crisis. Considerable evidence does exist of similar markets failing and resulting in further biodiversity loss, double dipping, rorting and poor governance,” said Christine Milne.
“Australia can afford to secure our land, water and ecosystems. If we can afford $358billion for submarines to prop up our defence alliance, we can afford to protect the land that sustains us and actually secures our lives. After the submarine deal, the Government can never say it does not have the money, it is a matter of choice,” said Christine Milne.
“Australians would prefer putting funds into protecting nature and restoring ecosystems to stave off extinctions rather than putting it into the pockets of the rich through stage three tax cuts,” Christine Milne said.
“Instead of wasting money setting up another complex dodgy offset market to advantage the offset developers, it is time to reject what George Monbiot calls, ‘the Natural Capital Agenda: the pricing, valuation, monetisation, financialisation of nature in the name of saving it.’ It does not work.”
“The urgency of the climate and biodiversity emergencies and the 6th wave of extinction demand direct and effective Federal Government action, the Nature Repair Market is not it,” Jenny Weber said.
Ben Marshall
March 31, 2023 at 15:15
Southerners need to understand that for many individuals and communities in the north, trying to find out what TasNetworks and the state government (and foreign renewables companies) are up to, we’ve had to become our own investigative journalists.
Why is information so hard to find? Renewables companies and TasNetworks have adopted worst practice community engagement, relying on PR strategies to avoid genuinely informing the community while resolutely ignoring community issues about projects like UPC/ACEN’s appalling Robbins Island windfarm and TasNetworks’ Marinus project. TasNet and the corporate sector are using cash splashes, sports sponsorships, small grants to worthy local causes and endless PR to buy social license and drown out community voices. During years of this distressing time for many of us up north, I give Christine Milne every credit for doing what our media and politicians refuse to do – question assumptions and fact-check TasNet and corporate and state PR.
In doing so, Milne’s research has proved insightful and articulate on the bigger picture, and has validated our community’s conclusions about Marinus Link and TasNetworks’ proposed new grid to support it. It’s a money-grabbing con, and we’re the suckers.
Southern Tasmanians need to understand we’re not nimbys, ‘bloody greenies’, deniers, or anti-renewables. Our issues are real and substantial. The costs and impacts that the industry, orchestrated by TasNetworks and AEMO, seek to impose on us, on our lives, our lands, and our wild forests, are being ignored by TasNetworks which lies that it’s engaging in extensive community consultation’ – while railroading us. TasNetworks withholds vital information and only ‘engages’ community via orchestrated and choreographed ‘information sessions’ which promote an ‘it’s all good’ narrative while taking difficult questions ‘on notice’.
We’re fed up with lies and the liars who tell them. We’re paying through our power bills, taxes and state debt for a PR campaign that seeks to buy social license for Tasnetworks’ plan that doesn’t benefit us – but does benefit TasNetworks. Now, the state government, which seeks to take a cut of the potential profits from shipping foreign-owned Tasmanian energy to the mainland market, is paying for a massive expansion of the PR campaign. It wants to industrialise the north with a vast new grid, attract investors, and harvest the Efficiency Dividends from TasNetworks. If you think Marinus is questionable, wait until you see the maps showing plans for another three Bass Strait interconnectors.
Jobs, growth, power and profits are all planned to go offshore. We’ll be giving away our wind energy resources, and subsidising the companies shipping it out. Meanwhile, guess who has to pay for all the PR from the state government and TasNetworks?
TasNet has spent a million on influencers, and tens of millions on global PR companies. At a time when every cent needs to be spent on Tasmanians’ futures, our state government is gambling on the renewables boom – using our money – in the hope of future revenue.
It’s nothing to do with ‘jobs and growth’, nothing to do with ‘helping the mainland transition’, and has absolutely nothing to do with the climate and biodiversity crises. Government and TasNetworks’ hope of a vast new grid is all about money.
We need to shut Marinus down. We need to kick TasNetworks out of their Jurisdictional Planner role of the entire energy sector. We need our truly abysmal, self-interested politicians to begin planning to use Tasmanian wind energy to benefit us, not themselves and foreign shareholders. We need independent costs-benefits analysis, genuine action on climate-biodiversity, genuine plans for sustainable jobs and growth here, and to do it in a way that isn’t an environmental disaster.
Whether you live in the north, south, east or west, tell your local MP to call for a halt to Project Marinus – or your grandkids will be paying the price into their dotage.
Jan Dittmann
March 31, 2023 at 18:23
We need a second link, at least. We are an integral part of Australia and are in a position to help out our mainlanders when they require extra energy, as at times when we require a helping hand.
Selfishness is not part of our DNA, so prove you are part of the solution, not the problem.
Rhonda Downie
April 1, 2023 at 13:07
If those smart scientists and researchers can find an alternative to fossil fuels and coal then I’m all for it. Tasmania could be a little less parochial in this regard.
Planes and ships arrive daily with what we buy and sell to the rest of the world.
If there’s a cleaner way, is that not best for Tasmania?
Ben Marshall
April 2, 2023 at 13:14
Hi, Jan.
Assuming you’re not currently employed by Transend / TasNetworks, your points are: ‘we’ need a second link, that we have a moral obligation to help Mainlanders, that anyone disagreeing with that is guilty of simple selfishness.
Defining ‘we’ as the Tasmanian people, not TasNetworks (which stands to financially benefit from Marinus) or the State government (ditto), then we may, or may not, need a second interconnector. What we most certainly need, however, is transparent climate-energy-jobs planning that connects all three policy areas to advance Tasmanian interests, and to genuinely address climate-biodiversity crises. Marinus does neither, nor does TasNetworks’ vast new grid. What we need is cheap(ish) Tasmanian renewable energy to be owned by us, not given away, and which is used to transition our whole economy, not merely the power grid, to renewable / sustainable / circular. To date, no government planning genuinely addresses that.
If our renewable energy, distribution and storage was owned by us, and directed primarily toward our needs (as other states are doing and we are not), it’s reasonable to suggest excess energy could indeed be sold to the Mainland, something which possibly qualifies as ‘helping’ them. And, yes, a second interconnector might play a useful part in that scheme, but currently it will only serve those seeking to profit from it.
Those, like our community, and many others across the north of our state, are learning that it’s not selfish to want fair planning, transparent government, and the greater good to be served before the corporate interests of TasNetworks, the State government’s thirst for a cut of any deals, and those of foreign shareholders. Other States are planning for their people, but our State is planning for TasNet and itself while socialising the costs of infrastructure to lure foreign investors here, then taking a cut of the privatised profits as the energy is sent via Marinus to the Mainland market. It’s an unfair and egregious conflict of interest by both the jurisdictional planner, TasNet, and the State government which stands to make millions from its ownership of TasNet. It’s hardly selfish to call for honesty and genuine action on climate-biodiversity from our State government.
Finally, you mention a solution and a problem, but don’t identify either. The problem is catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, plus the extinction crisis and the industrial pollution of our skies, seas, rivers and lands. Simply adding more renewables into the mix of the energy sector is one small part of any solution to that.
The bigger solution lies with representative governments heeding the calls of science, evidence, and the needs of the people in working toward an all-electric, sustainable and circular economy. The current Marinus PR plan stands directly in the way of that.
Ben Marshall
April 2, 2023 at 13:33
Hi, Rhonda.
One of the many reasons our community objects to Marinus, and to TasNetworks’ plan to industrialise our north with a vast new transmission grid, is that it’s not a ‘clean’ or ‘green’ plan. Nor does it address our fossil fuel use outside the electricity sector – which is currently a privatised market.
Badly-sited windfarms can be an environmental catastrophe – and there’s no better example of how not to do it than the proposed Robbins Island windfarm project. Overhead transmission lines are also potentially devastating to the environment.
Here in the Loongana Valley, our biodiverse wild forests are under threat as TasNetworks tries to railroad us with a double transmission line. 90 metre easements will destroy, divide and dry out forests, and they and access roading will pollute karst cave ecosystems and our water catchment with run-off.
Critical habitat and wildlife corridors linking wild forest remnants will be cut and reduced. Raptors, bats and insects will be adversely impacted or killed by the lines. Fire risk will increase as the ability for the TFS to fight fires near or under HVOTLs will decrease. This is just one example of how badly-sited transmission lines can be anything but clean and green. In Victoria, TasNet plan to bury the lines, but here they’re not bothering because they think they can get away with cheaper overhead lines, thus imposing very real costs on our community, our small tourism businesses, and our precious wild flora and fauna, to build them.
There are ways to do renewables in a relatively clean and sustainable manner, but the current plans ignore them in favour of the fastest and cheapest route to short-term financial gain.
Geoff Holloway
April 4, 2023 at 13:26
The future for the planet is steady-state economics, not growth (see Herman Daly), and this has been central to the economic policies of the United Tasmania Group (UTG) since 1972.
Tasmania could be in the perfect position to achieve a steady-state economy given its resources and population, but first it would need to forget the Marinus link and focus on its own electrical energy needs. This is not selfish, but rather an opportunity to set an example for the rest of the world to follow.
This topic will be expanded in the next UTG Journal (No. 9).
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For reader convenience, No. 8 is here.
— Moderator