Antinuclear

Can the Voices model help communities fight off nuclear reactors?

By Bianca Hall and Mike Foley, July 20, 2024

Coal communities across the country – facing the loss of industry, jobs and the social fabric that binds them together – are poised to transition from the fossil fuel that built their histories.

But what the future will look like in towns like Lithgow in NSW and Traralgon in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is far less certain. Will they pivot to privately owned renewables, or have government-owned and funded nuclear reactor sites imposed on them by a future Coalition government?

Community groups in every site nominated by Peter Dutton as a potential future nuclear site have joined forces to offer their answer to his proposal: no.

Wendy Farmer is president of Voices of the Valley, a community group that formed in the Latrobe Valley after the Hazelwood coal mine fire in 2014, which burned for 45 days and caused health concerns for those living there amid the smoke.

Farmer united community groups from each area nominated for a nuclear plant to campaign together against the plans. Together, they’ve formed an alliance representing seven communities to fight against the proposal, reminiscent of the independent Voices movement that sent Cathy McGowan to federal parliament in 2013 and has since been replicated across the country.

Already, two people are preparing to nominate as independent candidates to take the fight to the next election.

“I’m really hoping that it will show communities that united, we can really make a change,” she says. “We can actually demand what we want as community. To me, it’s really important that we just aren’t dumped on and told ‘this is what’s good for you, and this is what’s going to happen’.”

Kate Hook, who ran as an independent candidate in Calare in central western NSW in 2022, says she’s considering putting her hand up again at the next election against Nationals MP-turned-independent Andrew Gee.

Key to her candidacy, which she would run as a Voices-style campaign, is renewable energy and nuclear. “Is it a bunch of politicians who have just got together and said, ‘Here’s a talking point that will distract from renewable energy’?” she says.

“Because there is already something under way [the switch to renewables], which is an amazing opportunity for this region that we haven’t had in decades, and there’s a risk that that is squandered.”

AGL has announced its ambition to transform the sites of its coal-fired power stations in Victoria and NSW – the last of which is due to close in 2035 – into low-carbon energy “hubs” spanning renewable energy generation, big batteries and green tech manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Dutton in June nominated seven regional communities that he said would be home to nuclear reactors under a future Coalition government, at the sites of current or closing coal power plants.

They would be hosted at Lithgow and the Hunter Valley in NSW, Loy Yang in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Collie in Western Australia and Port Augusta in South Australia.

The announcement was made without consultation with the owners of the privately owned coal stations they would replace, according to several well-placed sources.

Unease about Dutton’s nuclear ambition isn’t limited to communities: local MPs are also wary of Dutton’s bid to build reactors on the sites of former coal-fired power plants.

Bathurst MP Paul Toole, who represents Lithgow in the NSW parliament for the Nationals, has criticised the lack of consultation by the federal opposition over the proposed takeover of the Mount Piper plant, about 20 kilometres north-west of Lithgow.

Rather than commit to the party line, he said he would back the community’s position. “I think the community feels as though they’ve been left in the dark,” Toole said last month. “The announcement lacks detail and raises more questions than answers. I’ll be backing the views of my community 100 per cent.”

Calare MP Andrew Gee, an independent who represents Lithgow in federal parliament, is also a sceptic of the opposition’s nuclear plans who has criticised lack of community consultation……………………………………………………………………………………..more https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/can-the-voices-model-help-communities-fight-off-nuclear-reactors-20240716-p5ju4o.html

July 20, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics