Letters to the editor

The Australian Energy Regulator has revealed draft electricity price increases of between 20 and 22 per cent over the coming financial year.

Except in Victoria, where the figure is more likely to be a 30 per cent price surge.

In other states small business customers are expecting price rises between 14.7 and 25.4 per cent, depending on their region.

But Victoria's Essential Services Commission has released its default offer, with an even larger 30 per cent increase in household electricity prices and 31 per cent for small businesses.

That will turn a typical household bill from $1403 into $1829 a year, while small businesses will be belted even worse — an increase from $5620 to about $7358.

In a double whammy, massive price hikes to gas bills will hit Victorians harder than any state — costing as much as another $1000 for the next year.

Regardless of retailer, households have been given the bad news to brace for minimum 25 per cent price rises, adding an average $480 to yearly bills — and even more for larger families.

How bad is that? NSW, Queensland and South Australia have been told to expect increases under $100.

We are facing some of the steepest hikes in history and that hurts even more because in our state the typical home is far more reliant on gas appliances.

About 72 per cent of Victorian households use gas; the state uses more than double the amount of the second-biggest consumer, NSW.

Pressure is mounting on governments to develop a winter plan to help Victorians tackle soaring gas bills, with a cap on prices not expected to trickle through until 2023-24.

And despite all this shocking news, Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen wants everyone to give him and his government a pat on the back, claiming credit for keeping price rises down.

Seriously?

Even worse, it doesn’t just impact homes, small, medium and big business — significant users of both forms of energy — will also be smashed, putting their running costs through the roof.

And we know where a good part of that is going — down the food chain, with price rises for consumers.

While the impact on bottom lines across regional tourist towns, for the accommodation industry, for hospitality, for small business, will be catastrophic.

Is renewable energy the right goal?

Almost certainly.

Is it attainable today, tomorrow, next year?

Absolutely not.

So we must stop this ridiculous rush to shut down everything else until we have solutions, not more problems.

Peter Walsh,

Member for Murray Plains

Leader of The Nationals

Riverina state needed now

Seventy six per cent of the population, politicians and political power in NSW is concentrated in the cities of Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong.

In the 2019 state election, 435,400 people voted for the Greens, mostly from within this population and the north coast.

There are only 398,000 voters west of the Great Dividing Range. There are many more people in NSW opposed to natural resource-based industries such as irrigation farming and native timber harvesting than there are people in the areas whose livelihoods depend on these industries.

History has proven that it doesn’t matter what we say or do or elect to parliament, the suppression of the irrigation and timber industries, and of our economies and livelihoods, continues.

Political decisions in NSW are not made on environment facts, as these decision makers pretend, they are made on political facts, and the political facts are that any politician in the Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong areas that doesn’t follow the green line will not be elected, and his or her party will not form government.

Only a Riverina state, separate from NSW, and dealing with the Commonwealth and other states as an equal, can ensure the survival and prosperity of the people in Murray and the wider Riverina.

A Riverina state is needed — and it is needed now!

David Landini,

Wakool

We need the Federal Government to support farmers

My heart aches as I watch our news and current affairs programs continue to highlight the pain and suffering of our children, who are not getting enough food because in many cases it is no longer affordable.

Then I get angry when I think about what our governments, especially the Federal Government, are doing to food production. They appear to have no concept of what is involved in growing food, or what we can do to increase production and therefore decrease its cost.

Over the past decade our national milk production has declined more than 20 per cent. In prime dairying areas across northern Victoria and southern NSW, a majority of dairy farmers have walked away from the industry after governments removed water from farm production. The obvious consequence will be higher milk prices in the supermarket.

Australian rice growers are among the most efficient in the world. But will we have a rice industry in the future? If the Federal Government insists on continually taking water from farm production, which is its current policy, it is unlikely. So we will eat imported rice that is not as clean or efficiently grown and inevitably will cost more.

Our farmers need water to grow fruit, vegetables and wheat. They need water to grow pastures that feed our sheep and cattle. Under current policy, production of all these food basics will decline. As a result, they will cost more at the supermarket.

And you know what makes me most angry? It’s the fact that if we use water wisely there is plenty for farming and plenty for the environment. Politicians know that. But they also know there are votes in ‘the environment’ but not too many in farming.

So next time you see a child going hungry because his/her mother cannot afford three staple meals a day, don’t blame anyone but our politicians. And when the cost of your meat, vegetables and dairy products continues to rise, likewise don’t blame anyone but our politicians.

Because they know delivering policy that allows our farmers to grow more food and ease cost-of-living pressures is both easy and sustainable. But they won’t do it, because it may cost votes, especially among the city elite who do not understand what is required to effectively balance water management so we grow food while at the same time protecting our environment. In practical terms, this is not difficult; in political terms, it is probably impossible.

Sue Braybon,

Tocumwal

Are nest boxes bullet-proof?

Are the nest boxes the hunting groups have so honourably constructed, for $160 each of taxpayers money, bullet-proof? In the name of conservation and for that price I imagine they would be. Can the swans and other non-game species who live on the same wetlands as ducks shelter in the boxes too to escape the looming gunfire and noise? If not, has someone advised them where they can go while their homes are under attack and their lives are in danger?

Liz Filmer,

Sale

Blissful wetlands should stay that way

Looking over the natural wetlands adjacent to my property just now I can see families of water birds peacefully going about their daily life, species including black swans, egret, heron, spoonbill, pelican, cormorant, coot, darter, lapwing and swamp hen.

Soon these birds will have shotgun pellets razing their homes, quite likely striking them as hunters spray their habitat with masses of small metal shot in the hope one of the projectiles makes contact with an innocuous duck.

The noise alone will displace and distress these birds, as will the trampling and disturbance of their breeding grounds by armed humans and unbridled dogs.

Ducks are not the only innocent victims of this cruel activity, and killing native birdlife is not the only damaging effect this pastime has on our sensitive wetland ecosystems.

The harm caused not only to our natural environment but to an array of sectors by the impact of this carnage is beyond the bogus fix of building nest boxes that hunting groups claim they so nobly carry out at our, the taxpayers’, expense.

Anyone with an ounce of compassion or concern for our dwindling and threatened natural environments and fauna would be horrified to witness what I will unfortunately see unfold soon.

This is only one reason why regional Victorians are demanding the belligerent and antiquated activity of duck shooting be banned.

Elizabeth McCann,

Newmerella

Consultation process an insult

Last week, I attended a meeting organised by the Federal Government to explain the process around water buybacks. My conclusion: Is it any wonder we get fed up with bureaucratic ‘tick a box’ exercises, which they claim is ‘community consultation’?

This meeting was nothing more than a bureaucratic sham by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

For starters, some people who registered were not allowed to attend, supposedly due to ‘Covid protocols to protect our health and safety’. This was yet another poor bureaucratic excuse to ban anyone who might object to water buybacks.

For example, we were told they wanted to hear from community leaders. If that’s the case, why was Lloyd Polkinghorne, a community leader from Barham, barred from entering the meeting?

And while the bureaucrats claim they want to ‘hear from community leaders’, when they were told over and over about the damage to our communities from water buybacks, their focus remained steadfastly on telling those in attendance that they have deadlines to meet with Basin Plan implementation. In other words, ‘we don’t care about the damage to your community; we don’t care that there aspects of the Basin Plan that obviously need reviewing; we don’t care that there are better options to buybacks, which may take a little longer to implement’.

The government’s sole priority, regardless of the damage to our communities, is a poorly modelled timeline of recovery volumes that was developed in haste well over a decade ago and is no longer either appropriate or necessary.

The bureaucrats from our federal environment department do not even care about the unintended environmental damage being caused by some of the current water management practices, nor are they interested in listening to how this can be rectified.

In frustration, I walked out of the meeting before I exploded at these uninformed city-based individuals who show such arrogant disregard for our region and the role we play in feeding our nation and the world. And unfortunately, most are on such high incomes and lack appreciation of what is involved in growing food, that they give no thought to the cost-of-living pressures that their policies will have on all Australians.

In fact, I lack confidence that the pertinent and important points raised by those in attendance will ever go beyond this ‘information session’. While I believe a government representative was taking notes, how will we know whether they are a true record of community concern?

In my view, the meeting was a farce and Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek, who is leading the buyback campaign, should hang her head in shame at the unnecessary pain that is going to be inflicted on our communities, for no reason other than political gain.

Laurie Beer,

Mayrung

Come on, David

The hypocrisy of David McKenzie on water issues is perfect (The Riv 15/3).

How can he blame all the devastation in irrigation communities in northern Victoria on government buybacks when he and his fellow Goulburn-Murray Water administrators operate a 100 per cent carry over and allocation formula, which enables the environmental water holders to use nearly three times the dam storage space as they own.

I, on the other hand, as one of the few irrigation dairy farmers remaining in northern Victoria, had to wait until the flood year of 2022 to get any allocation of my low security water, despite paying annual fees for 16 years.

That, Mr McKenzie, is a total of 700,000 megalitres of farmers’ water per year that you and others at G-MW have removed from farmers and handed to the Environmental Water Holder and water traders, such as Canadian super funds, to give stockpile storage space to.

Are you now taking responsibility for the damaging floods that have occurred as all the storages overflow together. Of course you will not, but you should.

John Brian,

Tongala

The life

Not many people are fortunate to have a smooth journey through life.

There are periods of happiness, like childhood, school age, growing up, graduating, seeking a partner, getting married, having children, taking care of them and seeing them grow up.

But there are also periods of despair, such as riots, revolutions, wars, natural disasters, epidemics, viruses, health problems, accidents and deaths of people we love.

We are playing only a small role in the evolutionary development of the human race and improvements are taking a long time.

Jiri Kolenaty,

Rushworth