Nationals Leader, David Littleproud, has welcomed a new analysis which has validated The Nationals’ constant warnings of the costs and the impacts on regional Australia, from the Albanese Government’s all-renewables energy grid.
Mr Littleproud said the report, by Rainforest Reserves Australia and Steven Nowakowski, shows why the Albanese Government has never been honest with the Australian people and told them the true costs of their all-renewables approach that will now be well in excess of $1.33 trillion.
“This makes a mockery of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s scare campaign during the election campaign on nuclear, because the costs calculated in the report also haven’t even included transmission lines, the Capacity Investment Scheme and rooftop solar subsidies, which would probably put it closer to $1.5 trillion,” Mr Littleproud said.
“Australians already have felt the financial pain of Labor’s plan through their energy bills, not coming down by $275 but instead going up by $1300, but now it’s proof they’ll have to keep rising to pay for this.”
The environmental and agricultural impacts of the policy demonstrated in the report are also real, with over 400,000 hectares of landscape destroyed, tearing up native habitat and prime agricultural land.
The key findings of Australians’ first glimpse of the true scale of the renewables revolution mapping shows the increase in renewables will take up land that will span an area larger than Sydney, with 25,000 wind towers and 250 million solar panels.
Mr Nowakowski has described the data as “an unfolding disaster for regional communities, the electricity system and nature.”
“We’re not only tearing up Australia’s food security, we’re tearing up the thing we’re meant to be protecting – the natural environment – which just proves this government is working on ideology, not practical reality,” Mr Littleproud said.
“To build 25,000 more wind towers and 250 million new solar panels, 45,000 kilometres of new roads and thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines will have an enormous impact on regional Australia.
“This report is sobering for not just regional Australians, but every Australian, who is going to pay a very big price for flawed ideology of the Albanese Government.”
