The nation's energy ministers must be locked in a room when they meet in Canberra next week and not allowed out until they agree on an immediate path forward to deliver fair and equitable ground rules around land access and the transition to renewable energy.
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The Albanese government has agreed to implement all the findings from a review into community engagement around new energy developments and transmission lines, but Energy Minister Chris Bowen has not been clear about how or when the government will actually enforce change.
The report by Australian energy infrastructure commissioner Andrew Dyer revealed more than 90 per cent of landholders are dissatisfied with the level of engagement and information provided during land acquisition negotiations.
It called for improvements to the way projects sites are selected, recommended complaint handling processes be improved, said communities should be kept informed about the transition, including its goals, benefits and requirements, and recommended benefits of the transition be equitably shared. While it was full of high-level principles, it was pretty soft when considered against the backdrop of the many submissions detailing the traumatising effects the energy transition is having on individuals.
But it's not too late to right some of the wrongs and arrest some of the inequity and power imbalance that has plagued projects like the VNI West or Energy Connect transmission line developments, or the REZ acquisitions taking place in the NSW Central West right now.
A priority must be a state and federal agreement around social licence and the behaviour of energy companies engaging with landholders, with corporate-equivalent criminal penalties for companies and their representatives who deceive, bully or mislead landowners during easement negotiations.
There must be greater emphasis on the need to properly inform landholders on the full list of impacts of construction, as well as helping to identify the financial impacts of easement payments and route selection needs to be a lot more defined before consultations begin.
It would be nice to think that with $20 billion sitting in the government's clean energy fund to bank roll its 'Rewiring the Nation' initiatives, there might be some minimum social licence standards and penalties attached to engagement conduct before energy companies can access the fund.
The community engagement review can't simply be another bureaucratic exercise. The government knows it has a problem it must confront on engagement. State and federal energy ministers must agree on swift implementation on the review's recommendations before more families and communities are hung out to dry.
- Lucy Knight is a woolgrower from the NSW Southern Tablelands and a former press gallery journalist.
