Marinus is a terrible plan, and all the posturing from the two major parties, in furious agreement with each other in claiming we need it, won’t remove the growing stench of a fish rotting from the head down.

Marinus won’t bring the much promised ‘jobs and growth’, it won’t ‘put downward pressure on power prices’, it’s highly unlikely to ‘help the mainland transition from fossil fuels’, and perhaps most crucially, it won’t help Tasmania’s transition to a thriving, growing, circular, sustainable and all-electric economy.

Marinus Link, and TasNetworks’ North West Transmission Development (NWTD), evolved in a series of ad hoc decisions, with the priority being to use TasNetworks as a sock-puppet to raise revenue for TasNet’s sole shareholder, the state government. Seeing the opportunity to leverage investor and federal funds in the transition to renewable energy, our state government and TasNetworks want to industrialise our north with ‘Renewable Energy Zones’, and a vast new transmission grid, the NWTD, which will route all new foreign renewables energy to the mainland energy market.

Investors win – they get free Tasmanian wind energy plus a guaranteed market, TasNetworks win – they get to reverse their debt-to-asset ratio (on our dime), and the state government revenue side wins – they take a cut of all the money flowing from us as Efficiency Dividends via TasNetworks. We pay for it all, and get…nothing.

Well, not quite nothing.

Our community in the Loongana Valley, as is the case with other communities across the north, get bulldozed forests, farms and iconic tourism sites. The worst possible site for a wind farm on the planet, the internationally critical birdlife region – Robbins Island, gets trashed for a single windfarm. Loongana, meanwhile, gets increased fire risk from the new grid, and lowered property values from having a truly enormous overhead grid on, or adjacent to, our properties.

We get to watch our threatened and endangered species, in our incredibly bio-diverse valley, flee or get mown down as road-kill during construction. Loongana’s covenanted and Land for Wildlife properties, the last wildlife corridors between the dwindling patches of wild forest, will be cut, will stop being refuges, and fall silent.

But wait! That’s not all!

One thing they’re not mentioning is that the Marinus Link isn’t a one-off. At the recent Energy Development Conference in Devonport, TasNetworks were smugly assuring potential investors that all four Marinus Links were well ahead in planning.

That’s right – whatever number you put on the debt of Marinus Link needs to be quadrupled. Our government and TasNetworks want at least five Bass Strait interconnectors.

The tragedy here is that the two major parties have no vision other than to extract money from us – via taxes, intergenerational state debt, and power bills from state-owned companies like TasNetworks. They don’t see the opportunity we have with Tasmanian wind energy to plan for Tasmania, for the people, for the long-term.

Many of our pollies don’t even believe the climate science, which is why virtually none of the tens of millions TasNetworks and the state are pouring into PR to buy social licence for Marinus mention it.

Instead we’re ‘helping the mainland’, and bringing ‘billions in investment’ for ‘jobs and growth’. It’s a sad, cynical bunch of lies.

Premier Rockcliff’s dramatic posturing, ‘thus far and no further!’ is just political theatre, as he plays to both sides of the house – talking up Marinus, while threatening to dump it if he doesn’t get more money from the feds. Labor’s stance isn’t worthy of comment. Christine Milne is on the money, and we should all give her credit for investing time and money into fact-checking the claims.

So, while Marinus is a bad plan – four Marinus Links should make even rusted-on Liberal and Labor voters think about voting independent next time around. Marinus is a con. We need a better plan.

SOLVE – Supporting Our Loongana Valley Environment – is a community group formed to protest UPC-TasNetworks’ unjustified and destructive proposed transmission line, and protect local jobs and the beautiful environment they depend on. 

TASMANIAN TIMES: Marinus Stink! Government Gets Yips on Megaproject Cost.