Victoria to NSW Interconnector West

I am writing this submission as a deeply concerned family friend of a farming family whose property in Mallan, NSW, lies directly in the path of the proposed VNI West transmission line. While I am not a landholder myself, I grew up in a farming family and have spent many years alongside this family and others in the region, witnessing firsthand the hard work, values, and deep connection they hold to the land. I feel compelled to raise my voice in support of them and others facing the same distress across the Riverina and beyond.

The farm in question is not just a parcel of land — it is a working, multi-generational enterprise that supports livestock and cropping, specifically sheep grazing, rice production, and barley. It has been in the same family for generations and is a testament to the strength, resilience, and contribution of regional Australians to our national food security and economy.
The family impacted by this proposal has run their farm for decades, with three generations contributing to its stewardship. Their knowledge of the land is intimate — they know when to plant, when to graze, when to flood the paddocks, and when to rest them. This isn’t just a business. It’s their home, their history, and their legacy.
I have attended gatherings on this farm. I’ve listened to their struggles during flood and drought, joined in the celebrations of a good harvest, watched lambs born in the middle of winter and sat at the kitchen table after long days in the paddock. What happens to their land happens to them. The proposed transmission line would tear through not just their fields but through the heart of everything they’ve built.

There will be many impacts of the VNI West Transimssion line on this family and their farm.
a) Disruption to Agricultural Operation
The farm relies on a delicate balance between dryland and irrigated agriculture. With sheep grazing, rice and barley production, and critical irrigation infrastructure in place, the arrival of high-voltage overhead power lines poses serious and permanent disruption:
• Rice fields require precise water flow and aerial monitoring. Towers would obstruct aerial application and monitoring during critical stages of crop development.
• Sheep movement and mustering across paddocks would be limited by tower placement and access roads, forcing operational inefficiencies and increasing labour.
• Barley paddocks may be partially unusable due to soil compaction from construction works and ongoing maintenance access.
• Irrigation systems, including levees, channels, and pivot points, may be compromised or require costly relocation — if relocation is even feasible.
All of this represents not just inconvenience, but lasting damage to productivity, profitability, and sustainability.
b) Safety Concerns and Fire Risk
Operating large machinery near high-voltage infrastructure introduces unacceptable risks. In an area where crop spraying, header operation, and flood irrigation are commonplace, the presence of transmission towers increases the likelihood of accidents.
Moreover, in a hot, dry climate, any additional infrastructure presents a heightened fire risk — something that simply cannot be taken lightly in a farming community that relies on clean harvests and safe pasture.
c) Impact on Mental Health and Community Wellbeing
I have personally seen the toll this uncertainty has taken on the family. The stress of not knowing how much land will be lost, how operations will change, and whether they’ll even be able to pass the farm on to the next generation is palpable. It’s affecting their sleep, their ability to plan, and their emotional wellbeing.
This isn’t unique to this one family — it’s happening across the region. Farmers are not anti-renewables. Many are keen supporters. What they oppose — rightly — is a top-down, forced infrastructure plan that fails to respect their connection to the land or the viability of their livelihoods.

The fact that infrastructure of this magnitude can be forced through productive private land — with or without the consent of landholders — is both morally and politically unacceptable.
Compensation, as proposed, does not even begin to cover the actual long-term costs:
• Loss of productivity
• Loss of future capital value
• Legal and operational costs
• Loss of amenity, peace of mind, and trust in institutions
Landholders are not asking for special treatment — just fair, respectful consultation and for the route to avoid productive, generational farmland.

There has been little transparency around alternative routes, and almost no willingness to underground the line through sensitive agricultural zones, despite strong precedent in Europe and parts of Australia.
Why are landholders expected to carry the burden of a project that is meant to serve the entire east coast grid?
The government must do better than simply picking the "cheapest" route. It must consider the long-term human, agricultural, and environmental costs, not just capital expenditure.
There is something sacred about a family farm. It is built slowly — season by season, lesson by lesson, generation by generation. And it can be lost in an instant by decisions made without proper respect or understanding.
The family I support have done everything right: they’ve invested in their land, grown food sustainably, raised children there, supported the local economy, and been good stewards. They deserve better than to be sidelined for infrastructure planning that refuses to consider the people at the heart of the land.

As a concerned family friend, I respectfully submit the following:
• I oppose the routing of the VNI West transmission line through productive farmland in Mallan, NSW, particularly the property of the family I am supporting in this submission.
• I urge the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure to consider alternate alignments that avoid high-value agricultural land.
• I support calls for undergrounding the line through sensitive or intensively farmed regions where rerouting is not feasible.
• I call for greater transparency, landholder protection, and long-term impact assessments that account for operational and emotional wellbeing — not just environmental factors
Please do not sacrifice a lifetime of work, and a region’s farming future, for expediency. This family — and many like them — deserve to be heard and respected. We must plan for the future without erasing the past or disregarding the present.
Thank you for the opportunity to raise this objection.

We totally object to this project on the basis of; destruction of family farms & generation farms affected. The projects capacity to even deliver the outcome that’s expected of it long term. The short & long term Health implications this project will have on farms & individuals living amongst it & increased fire risk to properties surrounding it & beyond.

This project has lacked consultation and transparency.
The EIS has been rushed and most of the information is not correct.
Maps are lacking named creeks and waterways.
Land uses are not correct.
Homes, intensive agriculture, critically endangered species and wetlands are not being avoided, but instead they are being destroyed.

I Object to this project as it will impact a lot of my friends and family who live on the farms that this project will be invading, it will have huge negative impacts of their lives financially and mentally being a farmer is tough enough as it is but when people are trying to make life harder for the farmers it’s just not fair think about where your food comes from and the clothes you wear then thank the farmers for putting it there, Save the farmers Save their land Save their lives.

Most of the EIS is not correct.
Maps don’t even show many named creeks and waterways.
Land uses are not correctly listed.
The EIS looks like a teenagers rushed attempt at a school project. FAIL

Insufficient land studies, incorrect reporting, failure to liaise and work with affected land holders to come to a mutual agreement, inadequate compensation

Please see the attached letter, thank you

Submission on VNI West
By Alan Moran, Regulation Economics
The primary objective of VNI West is to reduce the cost of providing secure electricity transmission between NSW and Victoria in the near term and facilitate the longer-term transition of the energy sector across the National Electricity Market (NEM) to low emission energy generation sources. More specifically, the project aims to:
• provide reliable and affordable electricity to customers
• improve energy security of the south western transmission network, enable greater sharing of energy between NSW and Victoria and help to unlock the potential capacity of proposed REZs in the region
• support the national transition to a lower carbon emission energy system by enabling more renewable energy generation to enter the market, supporting Australia’s emissions reduction targets
• support the development of a greater mix of renewable energy in the NEM.

The Economic Impact Assessment is irrelevant when it addresses the activity that is being stimulated within the area because such activity is only valuable when it is responding to markets. What we have with the proposal is an assemblage of money being gathered by direct government spending – that is from taxpayers – or expenditures that are to be reimbursed as a result of forced payments by customers of electricity.

Much of government spending is of this nature and not all of it is worthless. But that for VNI West cannot pass the test that spending on new sewage lines, or roads or hospitals normally pass.

This is because of two reasons

The first is that the project is fundamentally designed not to provide cheaper electricity but as a collector and distributor of wind and solar energy. And that form of energy is highly subsidised so that it displaces cheaper and more reliable energy from coal and gas.

Even though governments parade the notions that wind and solar are the cheapest form of energy they know that this is untrue. That’s why they continue to mandate subsidies for these sources, subsidies that were first portrayed a leg-up for an infant industry that would soon stand on its own two feet. 20 years later there is no sign of this happening – indeed the subsidies to make it happen are presently running at $16 billion a year. The key Commonwealth schemes are the absurdly named Capacity Investment Scheme under which at least $10 billion wind and solar supplies are forward-purchased at prices that are not revealed; and it has the billion dollar a year “Safeguard Mechanism” under which the largest 226 entities are obliged to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, a scheme that is forcing deindustrialisation.

And this is predicated on grounds that we must decarbonise to prevent climate change. It is unclear that any significant climate change is occurring as a result of human induced emissions but even if there were Australia with one per cent of total emissions can do nothing about it. Indeed, now that President Trump has reneged on US measures to this end, countries like the EU, UK, Canada, Korea ostensibly taking emission reductions seriously account for less than a quarter of the total and even collectively would have a very modest effect.

Part of that $16 billion a year is the costs of new transmission lines. Because renewables are diffuse and intermittent they require much more transmission of the sort that VNI West envisages. A couple of years ago Australia’s transmission network was valued at about $23 billion. Now we are planning to spend $100 billion for the Brave New World of wind and solar.

Moreover, these weather dependent plants are not readily controllable and, unlike hydro, nuclear, gas and coal plants, don’t simply stop when the sun goes in or the wind stops. Their inertia gives time for the controller to do something. The absence of grid inertia brought about blackouts here in South Australia and Broken Hill, and in Spain, Chile and Texas over the last couple of years. Australian Energy Market Operator chief Daniel Westerman recently revealed the number of interventions to stave off blackouts had exploded from six in 2016 to 1800 last year.

The second reason why the proposal is clearly uneconomic goes further into the costs. Originally thought to be good value when its cost was put at $3.7 billion, its political support still thought it was worthwhile when it was reassessed at $7.7 billion; and now its cost is expected to balloon further to $11.4 billion it is still supported. Those promoting it are not using their own money and in their ideological zeal might support it at any price.

I strongly object to this project.
Too much agricultural land is being used for renewable projects.
I have concerns about the impact on the environment.
I have concerns for the mental health of the landholders who bear the brunt of this project.

It is unclear whether the habitat of the plains-wanderer has been suitably studied on the final proposed route. The plains-wanderer is listed as an Endangered species in New South Wales (NSW) under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016. At the Commonwealth level, it is listed as Critically Endangered under the EPBC Act. Has suitable ground truthing occurred along this route? Previous studies by WSP occurred prior to the final route being confirmed.

This project is a costly destruction on the Australian rural landscape. It will be more veins of renewable energy infrastructure cancer and spread further out, destroying rural communities and prime farming land. When does food security become an issue to our useless politicians? When does food security become an issue to Chris Bowen and Penny Sharpe? These projects are destroying lives and our politicians don't give a sh!t.

I object to this project,don't pollute our rural area with ugly power lines . Build new state of the art coal fired or nuclear power stations and use the inforstructer that is in place.
Politicians need to get out of the city and come and see the damage the renewable industry is doing to the land and people

The only thing this project is connecting is destruction and generations of debt.

I object to the Victoria to NSW interconnector West due to the devastation it will cause the environment and those living close to this development. The VNI West connection and the Dinawan Substation have not been planned with any consideration to the farming communities living near by. The enormous amount of infrastructure proposed to be built in the area close to the Dinawan substation will create an industrial zone which will adversely affect the both native wildlife and flora as well as the people who will be forced to live amongst it.

I object to this Interconnector project

this will destroy a large part of rural NSW.

I object to this project. There is no social licence around this.

This project will destroy rural Australia.

this project is based on deception. I object.

I object to this project