On Monday last week I went to the Brisbane Ekka for the first time since coronavirus. The Ekka was always the time when the bush came to the city but it doesn’t feel like that anymore.
It was not COVID that had done it. This “city-fication” of the Ekka has been slowly happening for a while. Most cattle are not even at the Ekka when the gates open to the public. The cattle judging happens on the Thursday and Friday before the show opens.
The Cattleman’s bar has been shut (to make way for more seating for moto-cross shows and the like). Along Gregory Terrace and surrounds it is now rare for your feet to touch grass, dirt or, horror of all horrors, mud. Cosmetic, plastic mats cover almost every bit of earth.
I now cannot tell the difference between the Brisbane Agricultural Show and a Westfield Shopping Centre.
So it was a nice change at the end of the week for the city to come to the bush, for a Bush Summit at Rockhampton. The Great Western Hotel does feel like the bush. A pub with a rodeo and bullring dust just a short walk from the bar.
Bush Summits were held all over the country, organised by News Limited papers, broadcast on Sky News and sponsored by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting. They were great events that did much to highlight the major concerns of the bush to a city audience. The Great Western Hotel in Rockhampton was the perfect location for Queensland’s Bush Summit.
The major topic of discussion was the growing impact of renewable energy on agricultural land and our environment in Central Queensland. Just west of Rockhampton the Kalapa wind farm is due to sprawl across 10,900 hectares of what is pristine forests and farming land.
Ostensibly the Kalapa wind farm is to help replace the Stanwell coal fired power station. The coal power station takes up just 1600 hectares (just over 10 per cent of the wind farm). Yet the wind farm produces just 10 per cent of the energy that the coal power station does. How does destroying more of our environment, for less energy output, protect our planet?
Around 30 concerned farmers gathered to welcome the Premier and other Government Ministers to the Bush Summit. The Premier was asked about the farmers’ concerns on stage and failed to give a direct response. Bizarrely, the Premier instead started talking about how Japanese energy companies want to build the wind and solar farms.
One farmer faces the prospect of solar panels engulfing his property. He only has one road to his house and if the solar farm is built, he will have to drive through 9 kilometres of glare reflecting glass to get to his place. Imagine having to drive for about 10 minutes and all you can see is industrialised glass over what was previously beautiful rolling hills.
Large scale renewable energy is not green, it is a monstrosity.
For months the Nationals party have been trying to establish a Senate inquiry to look in to the farmers’ and environmentalists’ concerns. We have been blocked by the Labor and Greens parties so far.
At the Tamworth Bush Summit the Prime Minister told concerned farmers that he “in principle” supported a Senate inquiry. We will return to Canberra in a couple of weeks and hold him to that promise.
If we do not get renewable energy right, future Brisbane Ekkas may struggle to return to their rural roots, as our countryside becomes increasingly industrialised.
