Essay by Eric Worrall
A shouting match reportedly erupted after green entrepreneur Andrew “Twiggy” Forest allegedly suggested to rural MP Llew O’Brien that farmers pushed out by green energy development could find somewhere else to farm.
‘Gutless’: Nationals MP launches into expletive-filled tirade at mining magnate Andrew Forrest as pair become embroiled in fiery row over renewables
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Andrew Clennell Political Editor
February 28, 2024 – 11:00AMNationals MP Llew O’Brien has become embroiled in a shouting match with mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest in a meeting at Parliament House on Tuesday, where Mr O’Brien called Mr Forrest a “f***ing charlatan” and a “f***ing snake oil salesman” after the two got into a row over the impact of transmission lines on farms.
The argument over wind farms and transmission lines to create renewable projects descended into a stare-off between the men, according to multiple Nationals sources, including a witness to the stoush.
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When Mr Forrest made comments about how farmers affected could be compensated and find other places to farm, Mr O’Brien blew up, according to sources.
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Read more: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/gutless-nationals-mp-launches-into-expletivefilled-tirade-at-mining-magnate-andrew-forrest-as-pair-become-embroiled-in-fiery-row-over-renewables/news-story/7272e20e78a3af15f67a0a3124818fcc
This isn’t the first time greens have been accused of having a callous attitude to people who get in their way.
According to the BBC, in Africa disregard for the rights of people who get in the way of money making green projects has led to violence and allegations of war crimes.
I hope similar violence doesn’t occur in Australia. I am certainly not accusing Twiggy of wanting to kill anyone or commit war crimes. But seriously: What is the plan if thousands of Aussie farmers in the path of green energy transmission lines or other infrastructure projects simply refuse to move?
What would Aussie farmers do if the government responds to rural refusal to comply, with insensitivity, state backed violence, and mass expropriation? Do they think farmers would sit down and take it quietly?
I don’t know exactly what was said in that meeting. It is possible the whole situation has been wildly exaggerated, sometimes these tales grow in the telling. But you Twiggy had better issue a clarification, and fast. Because if you don’t, you might put a match to the powder keg of discontent which is building in rural Australia, over the Albanese Government’s aggressive disregard for farmers, during their rushed implementation of their poorly planned green energy policies.
Why can’t the green subsidy farmers do that elsewhere and leave the useful food farmers where they’ve been farming for decades?
Seems a simpler solution.
I don’t know about Australia but here in Canada the prime (and less than prime) farmland is already being farmed. After 150 years arable land is no longer just sitting vacant waiting for farmers.
It’s not like new land is being created somewhere. It’s all either privately owned or government owned. So where are the farmers to go? Are they supposed to take somebody else’s land from them? Is the government going to give up government owned land?
I was once told by a real estate investor to “buy land because they aren’t making any more.” Seemed like good advice.
Plenty of desert in the outback like twiggies harebrained scheme to export to Singapore this guy is truly deranged
The cost of the connection to the grid is becoming apparent even to this grifter so hence take over farmland “close” to the existing grid .No thought that farming might be impossible in a desert without unavailable irrigation
Ignorant or a selfish c#$t ???
Twiggy has twigged to the fact that the easiest way to make more $billions is just to jump feet first on to the green energy taxpayer funded boondoggle.
He’s planning to launch Solyndra 2.0
Ignorant and selfish MF full of his self importance.
Like in New York?
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/new-york-sues-meatpacking-giant-jbs-over-climate-claims-2024-02-28/
If billionaire grifters are looking for support for commercial size solar they won’t find it from rooftop solar owners-
Rooftop solar owners to get less cash for feeding grid (msn.com)
For consumers their electricity bill includes a daily service charge (as well as a hidden one already in their electricity kWhr rate/s) but unlike Distributed Network Service Providers they don’t pay a charge to feed into the grid so they’re free-riding now. That’s coming as the value of their dumped electrons heads zero and ultimately negative.
Does Australia allow the government to take land from private owners for the public good? Are there any legal protections?
The government can seize land by eminent domain. But they desperately need the cooperation of the countryside, they need people to pick up the phone when they see metal thieves dismantling pylons, not provide coffee and refreshments.
In most eminent domain situations I have been associated with the government had to show good cause that the land was the only land available for the purpose. It’s not a matter of cost but of “is there another way to do it”. Like creating a flood control lake along a river, you can’t do it by appropriating land far from the river!
Even then the landowner has to be compensated appropriately. The government can’t just seize the land for free. There is no better way to skyrocket land prices than to let plans leak that the government is going to buy up right-of-way!
In Australia, expropriation is a death knell to land ‘value’ … when they want to tax you on land value it is a market based valuation and when they want to expropriate it is any basis to get you out as cheaply as possible. There have been some exceptions.
A lot of the large properties are pastoral leases.
further out a long way , yes some. BUT where they want to run Vic lines is private and tightly held old land for the most part, early settler and service mens blocks after war tended to get bought up into rather large properties.
In Canada the Covid scam made it abundantly clear that Canadians have no guaranteed rights whatsoever under our toilet paper Charter. We have little arable farmland and the Government is free to commandeer that under any slight pretext of the greater good. If Australia is anything like Canada, there is a systematic war underway against farming and the greentards think that it is ecologically more desirable to cover land with solar panels, or solar panel dumps, than it is to farm it.
Yeah, because who needs food?!/sarc
More S G,
In 1986-7 I urged my employer to take the then Federal Minister for the Environment to Court over a proposal to include into a new world hertitage proposal, a large area of land in which we had many valid granted exploration licences and mineral leases, granted by that same Australian government and all procedurally normal and legal.
We ended up before the Full Bench if the High Court, as high as you can go here, while they decided that thay could not agree if the matter was justiciable or not. They essentially abandoned us, with no compensation, to the greed of the United Nations green people and denied us our rights to mine. We had, in 1969, just discovered the world’s largest and richest known uranium deposits nearby at Ranger One and we were in the course of uncovering more deposits up to 50 km distant. We has ore grade intersections in drill holes, that level of encourangement, then whammo ! We lost everything.
Unless matters have improved, I think that the answer to your questions are:
(While we were not a private owner, as that concept did not apply in this Northern Territory, we had legal entitlement to work the land and an obligation to proceed to mining if successful). Yes the government can take land.
Was it for the public good? No, unless you define loss of national income to be a public good. Any legal protections? I am unaware of any. The opposite has been applied, whereby various forms of title over land like pastoral and mining leases can be declared null and be taken with no compensation, such as being determined to be Aboriginal land, or park land, or military land, or more. Our Constitution at section 51 reads in part –
51. Legislative powers of the ParliamentThe Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
(xxxi) the acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws;
Legal protection has focussed on the creation of story lines that fill the requirement of “good government”, namely, any act of bastardry that politicians think is good for them.
Geoff S
p.s. Australian people might have gained tens of billions of dollars from the export of uranium if these prospects had been allowed to develop instead of being stopped in the late 1970s. For green dreams.
we export just about every scrap we mine, just not what we could have been doing. should process here as well really
“When Mr Forrest made comments about how farmers affected could be compensated and find other places to farm, Mr O’Brien blew up, according to sources.”
A Question.
Did these farmers grow up on that land?
Is the house they grew up in on that land?
Those farmers wanted, needed, the land to be productive.
Prove how a pinwheel or solar panels would make it productive.
No “boilerplate” stats but actual output from past installations.
PROVE it’s been worth in other places it’s been tried before kicking people out of their homes.
See my comment just below based on some quick research. Much ado about nothing.
Read up some of my articles on what has been happening, the main point of contention right now is utter disrespect and contempt for the concerns of rural land owners.
The ‘Twiggy‘ in Andrew “Twiggy” Forest refers to his critical thinking and not his green credentials.
Since I own a dairy farm in the Wisconsin Uplands, was curious. Technically a transmission corridor is under an easement for which the land owner will be compensated at appraised fair market value—true both in FL and AUS.
In Florida, permitted within easement activities include gold courses, row crops, citrus, and cattle/horse ranching.
Based on the Electronet.com.au easement guidelines, the easement width depends on the transmission line, but it typically is either 30 or 60 meters on each side of the center line. Permitted activities include 4.1.2 active recreation (golf, tennis, biking and hiking paths…but NOT Australian rules football), 4.1.3 food production (row crops), 4.1.8 animal keeping (sheep and cattle plus), and 4.1.11 fencing (not more than 2 meters high if conducting materials, with suitable maintenance crew access gates.) Also under ‘fencing’, trees permissible anywhere within easement so long as their max height is not more than 1.5x their distance from the easement centerline. (In Florida, that AUS rule would enable citrus not directly under the line.
So my impression is that this kerfuffle is of little substance other than NIMBY.
But NIMBY is a big deal almost everywhere. In Germany, it has prevented the construction of additional North-South transmission needed by the Energiewende.
But … if it’s needed by Energiewende then it isn’t needed.
The situation has been grossly mishandled from the start. Land owners are furious about allegations of illegal trespass, protest signs being confiscated from their property, pressure on vulnerable people (“sign this or we’ll go to court and seize your land anyway”), and the refusal of power companies to consider burying power lines to protect sites of natural beauty.
Power companies and politicians have treated land owners with contempt, as obstacles to be overcome, rather than interested parties to be consulted and treated with respect. I’ve attended rural meetings where everyone showed up except power companies and pro-green energy politicians. Despite respectful invitations to put their case, they simply couldn’t be bothered.
People stand up for and support each other in the countryside, and power companies and green energy obsessed urban politicians are just starting to get a taste of where this could lead.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/08/greens-in-shock-at-australias-rally-against-reckless-renewables/
Hey Eric, I am on your side, but not to your degrees of IMO excess uat WUWT. There is simply too much at stake WUWT credibility wise. BTW, a reason I might NOT decide to newly subscribe besides having hosted both Willis and Anthony at my place here. Ads I can skip over. Accused Bias I cannot skip over ever.
There is zero evidence that 60 or 50 Hz interferes with GPS. Else the whole system would not work for the US military targeting critical infrastructure.
I read the AUS transmission easement law. You apparently didn’t. It permits trans line surveyors to ‘temporarily’ transit farmer land for transmission surveys. By legal definition, no trespass. After all, there is no permanent harm from a simple transit survey.
Note my use of the word “allegations”, I’m not passing judgement on the legality of what has been done to date.
It’s entirely possible all actions which have occurred are legal, for example, one of the activists told me the people allegedly confiscating signs told her they did so because under the rules the signs were judged to be a road hazard, as they contained the logo of a power company.
Nevertheless people are upset and feeling ignored, and there’s a real risk it could escalate into something worse. My opinion is the government and power companies are to blame for the risk of escalation, especially with d*ckheads like Twiggy pouring gasoline on the fire.
It’s entirely possible all actions which have occurred are legal
Just because it’s legal does not mean it’s right.
a lot of surveys are done by chopper and IF trees need trimming then they come with trucks , chainsaws. I have to allow them on my land as I have a pylon on houseblock. they used to access via vacant block and a side fence. well thats now sold and access is impossible. will be rather amusing to see em try n get a truck in now. garden, trees,, immobile caravan and house are in the way
Depending on the cause of the easement, access roads may also be required. The towers and electromagnetic fields also mess with GPS crop harvesting. May be better to locate the ruinables elsewhere and run transmission lines down corridors not affecting scarce farmland … oooh, that would cost a lot more to do
EMF messes with GPS?
Bold claim , I can’t see it has any validity as it would be more common as GPS is used in every phone now. Transmission lines exist in many forms not just the High voltage ones
Each reciver gets many signals maybe up to six satillites depending on location and topography . Im Very very sceptical of this claim
Said structures can interfere with navigation devices that depend in part or whole on devices like a magnetic compass. In the early days of GPS we retained magnetic compass facility for backup if batteries failed or the GPS went down or on reduced accuracy. I have read no data suggesting that such structures influence GPS, though like most people, I have not read all of the literature. Geoff S
bees hate powerlines too. they also tend to dislike mobile phones, my apiarist friends found turning phs OFF stopped them battling angry bees
To be fair anyone owning land owns it for their individual purposes so naturally they’re all NIMBYs with any interference or worse having it compulsorily acquired (unless you were thinking of selling anyway). In that sense rural landowners will naturally look hard at the professed communal need for their property or restrictive easement and naturally they’ll find climate realist arguments telling without looking too hard.
All that required is an easement , not the whole property. This is how existing lines were built. Most actual farmers are grateful for the free money, many hobby farmers are there for lifestyle reasons and land bankers. They are more prone to claims the future land value is less despite the easement payment.
It’s all very well to say the lines company needs to listen but some feel they have veto
hobby farmers arent reliant of crops for the most part easement rds as well as nogo areas make planting n harvesting more than a problem. especially if its harvest time. you dont want trucks coming in
Rud,
In the dispute I mentioned above, the Crown argued in the intermediate court that we the miners about to be dispossed, were similar to service station (gas station to you) operators who might lose trade if a new highway was built elsewhere, taking away passing trade, as happens often.
This gross level of ignorance put up as precedent failed to acknowledge that you can move a service station to a new highway, but you cannot move the place where nature created a mine. When they argue at that low level of comprehension, you have to be fearful of them understanding any important concept about dispossesion.
Geoff S
when overhead huge towers run right through a farm making it a huge area lost..then its not NIMBY ism its losing a large chunk of income for quite a few
Nothing new under the sun
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
So even Shakespeare was got at by the Elizabethan climatocracy. So who put up the ducats for that expensive Globe Theatre. Probably these nasty Spanish dagoes with their dastardly climate friendly Armadas. Mind you it was in the Little Ice age which as all you right thinking climatistas did not happen. And which sod chopped down the trees of Birnam wood.
Lead on Macduff and take Malcolm with you, he brought some axes.
Does one think the average man did and does comprehend such beauty in words then or now . I think ith we return to darker times before Shakespeare’s life.
Studied that at high school in the early ’70s. Loved that poem.
FGM shares dropped 5.5% yesterday.
Ouch!
And that’s after falls of 1.28% on Monday, and 1.18% on Tuesday. !
I’m down quite a bit of virtual money 🙁
We don’t lose anything until we sell though.
Dividends acceptable?
Dividends acceptable?
Yes. 🙂 🙂
The fact the shares were brought at $4.30 and are now worth $26 doesn’t hurt, either.
I’d just rather they would keep going up ! 🙂
And that Twiggy would stop being an ass. !
FGM has experienced high turnover at executive level. I expect Twiggy is getting harder ti work for. He seems to have lost his mind. He split with his wife last year.
https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/peter-switzer/the-life-and-troubled-times-of-andrew-twiggy-forrest/
Forrest has sniffed out free money and is resolute to ensure he satiates his greed at the taxpayer filled pig trough.
There’s not an endless supply of arable land in Australia, we an arid country largely not suitable to cropping or ranching … what is available is being used or environmentally locked.
The Marie Antoinette left: Just give them a check and tell them to move on.
So simple. I mean, cheap farmland is literally everywhere, right?
<devils facetious potato>
Ermmmmm, didn’t the Global Greening Sputnik, you know the one and how it works in minute detail, didn’t that Sputnik tell everyone that Global Greening from Carbon Dioxide Fertilation has created two new North Americas of lush verdant greenery on this globe?
About the same as two new Australias.
We KNOW this is true as we endlessly parrot it round here, how Sputniks & Computers & NASA are *always* right – even before the massive extension of Growing Seasons, lovely toasty warm weathers and idyllic Mediterranean Climates that are now overtaking everywhere.
How commentators here are simply always posting pictures of this loveliness.
so why is there a problem with Twiggy’s suggestion…
<end potato>
Maybe the people ‘on the ground‘ know some other truth, maybe they know better than Sputnik
maybe they don’t ‘have cake & eat it’
I am especially appreciative of Shakespeares’ wit and insight lately. Particularly his view on the self serving nature of the corrupt and narcissistic political class. Bloated and cowardly with very few true champions these days too . except one of orange th tint mane will he survive to the thrown. Perhaps some day some one will write the story in a play.
You haven’t seen anything yet, people will only stand for so much. billionaires and government can take a hike.
Without farms we don’t eat.
Paul Harvey reading a poem
Andrew “Twiggy” Forest is an opportunist looter who is making sure he has jumped aboard the gravy train.
Twiggy is a farmer too. He farms other people’s money aka green subsidies. He has no idea when it comes to consideration of we peasants. The ones whose taxes pay for his green hydrogen wet dreams.
Hasn’t his recent investment in nickel mining assets turned into big fat zero. That must hurt even when super rich in assets
Naff off with your dark Satanic mills-
Alberta to ban renewables on ‘prime’ land and preserve ‘pristine viewscapes’ (msn.com)
Story Tip : Welsh farmers demonstrating about 20% rewilding plans being considered by the Welsh Senedd:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/28/wales-farmers-subsidies-farmland-protest-woodland-wildlife/
and find other places to farm
That’s not always that easy – you need the right kind of land to farm.
Confiscate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s fortune to compensate the farmers he’s displacing.
Twiggy can then find somewhere else to earn his money.
How arrogant of “Twiggy” Forrest to tell farmers they need to go elsewhere. Let’s face it, over the course of history, farmers have settled in areas where the soil, climate, rainfall, and topography are suitable for raising a particular crop.
Most renewable energy supplies don’t produce enough electricity to require the high-tension wires used by conventional coal or gas plants. Why doesn’t Twiggy run some lower-voltage wires to an existing transformer station, where the power produced by renewable sources can be transmitted along existing high-tension wires which already have rights-of-way, without disturbing any farmers?
where theyre planning the towers n lines arent that close to old grid and our old grid apparently doesnt like power coming in intermittently along the way
As a businessman in Australia, I used to worship Andrew for what he achieved with FMG against all the odds. Now I think he’s an out of control lunatic.
this could get rather amusing. Twiggy owns huge stations as well as fortescue mining. think he flogged one? off recently after the divorce. I seriously doubt his best buddies aboriginal dwelling on his patch and elsewhere would be overjoyed if a few birdshredders n PV landed in their patch. like to see him try n tell em to move;-) and western Vic is NOT backing down over lines acress properties. Labor is talking of forced aqisitions but that WILL start a much bigger shitfight.
a LOT of people whos houses were forced sales for roadways etc then it fell through here in vic and in SA are already damned angry