The community organisation SOLVE (Supporting Our Loongana Valley Environment) strongly condemns the North West Transmission Development (NWTD), a vast new transmission grid released today for public comment by the Tasmanian Planning Commission.
The group asserts that the project, which is linked to the Marinus Links and the larger “Battery of the Nation” concept, will be a “disaster” for the Loongana Valley, destroying natural landscapes and tourism businesses. SOLVE argues that the project is not in the best interest of Tasmanians and that its multi-million dollar public relations campaign is a tactic to avoid genuine community consultation and accountability.
Media release – Supporting Our Loongana Valley Environment, 20 September, 2025
The North West Transmission Development – The Great TasNetworks’ Scam
Early this morning, the Tasmanian Planning Commission released TasNetworks’ Development Application (DA) for a vast new transmission grid – the North West Transmission Development (NWTD), proposed to support the Marinus Links.
Our community contend it will be a disaster for us, the environment, for action on climate and for the Tasmanian economy.
The NWTD grid and Marinus will allow global renewable energy companies to sell the power to the Mainland National Energy Market (NEM). Nervous investors will be offered a Power Purchase Arrangement deal with Hydro Tasmania, guaranteeing them profits (at Hydro’s risk) as a sweetener. Free energy, guaranteed revenue stream, socialised costs, privatised profits – what’s not to like?
The DA is now open for public comment via the submission process.
There is little mention that NWTD Stage 1 is an integral part of Project Marinus (the Links won’t function without it, there’s no point to the NWTD without the Links), or that Project Marinus is an integral part of the $6.7+ billion Battery of the Nation concept. Despite being strategically split up (in order to more readily obtain approvals), all parts are intended to serve corporate investors and the state government rather than us.
This DA is part of the process of assessment and approval that has been gamed by complicit government and government-owned corporates like TasNetworks to avoid accountability, genuine assessment and costs-benefits analysis.
Meanwhile, their multi-million dollar PR campaign rolls on, run by TasNetworks’ ‘community engagement’ team, who have strategically avoided genuine community engagement, preferring to dismiss or ignore communities’ distress, confusion and outrage.
Why are communities outraged? Well, some are, and some aren’t.
TasNetworks has been quietly working to pick off one landowner after another with cash deals in order to gain control of land for the transmission line.
The neighbours get nothing for the loss of property value or the increased fire risks from the lines, but most know little about it other than their views will now include 45 – 60 metre towers and eagle-killing transmission wires. Negotiations have soured and, as a result, communities across the north have lost all trust in TasNetworks’ executives.
Communities like ours are in the firing line of Stage 2 of the NWTD, which will see our valley turned into a worksite, our forests bulldozed, our tourism businesses closed and our wildlife killed or driven out.
In trying to hold TasNetworks to account over the last six years we’ve been treated with indifference or contempt.
Concerned Tasmanians will be daunted by TasNetworks’ DA – sixty documents, thousands of pages, two gigabytes of boilerplate box-ticking and PR ‘narrative control’. This highlights the unfairness of the approvals system – decisions that have already been made without community collaboration or consent are now a done deal bar a token, brief 28-day period to raise issues. The process is weighted in favour of the proponent and their shareholders (the Minister and the Treasurer) and against impacted communities like ours in the Loongana Valley region.
Should you care?
In short, if this Development Application is approved, your electricity bill will rise to pay not just for the new grid but the entire Battery of the Nation. The rest of any claimed benefits disappear under scrutiny.
TasNetworks’ claims of lower power prices aren’t supported by independent costs-benefits analysis. Construction jobs will be 80% FIFO, then little new power will stay in Tasmania except to greenwash AI Data Centres and bitcoin mining, which will employ few locals, and use up energy we need.
HydroTas will use the rest to speculate on the volatile NEM, hoping to buy low and sell high. The infrastructure, including the NWTD, will be paid for by us, the profits will go offshore, and the State government will take a cut via efficiency dividends from TasNetworks and HydroTas despite both bleeding debt that our grandkids will be paying off.
TasNetworks’ Project Marinus is a ‘long con’ – and will see them goldplate their network on our dime to be ready for privatisation when a Liberal or Labor government find themselves desperate to pay for, say, a new stadium we don’t need, or to replace the taxes we aren’t getting from the salmon industry.
We call on all who are able to make a submission against the approval of the NWTD, and for politicians to dump Project Marinus so we can get on with better, equitable and affordable planning that benefits our state and our people, not global investors.
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