Update on MCHPA Legal Activities. Our march continues at pace to the Supreme Court to quash the Victorian Government’s orders to ‘fast track’ (you could say bulldoze) the interconnected 400km of Western Renewables Link and VNI West projects through our Regional Victoria Power Alliance communities.  Our detailed legal arguments (known as a submission) have been prepared with an enormous effort from our expert legal team and were lodged with the Court on Friday 4^th August. The Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office is required to respond on behalf of the Victorian Government with their submission to the Court by 30th August, in readiness for the trial commencing on 7^th September through to 12^th September.

The Moorabool and Central Highlands Power Alliance Inc. (the MCHPA) urgently needs everyone along the VNI West and Western Renewables Link (WRL) project corridors to help bolster crucial funds for our legal fight against the Victorian Government.

The impacts and the risks associated with the planned projects remain real, life changing and will have generational impact. We must continue to stand together to protect valuable agricultural land and the environment, along with our homes and livelihoods.

We have momentum and we have an enormous, hard-won chance to break these two projects right now. Our confirmed trial in the Supreme Court is less than a month away on 7th-12th September.

Our expert legal team has done the hard yards to get us to this point, but we now need a serious fighting fund to bring this home. THE TIME IS NOW OR NEVER!

Impact/Risk: When you think about whether to donate, think about how much a 500kV transmission line with up to 80m high towers could disrupt your land use and/or devalue your farm, or home, or business. It doesn’t even have to be on your land to have this kind of impact. And think about how much these projects will wreck the environment and its biodiversity and bring massive new risks including for fighting bushfires.

Regional Victorian community members take their fight to Melbourne’s Spring Street and delivering a simple message: Stop Labor’s Towers – save our environment, communities and farms.

Hundreds of farmers, residents and landowners will rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament demanding the State Government refuse to approve the proposed 500 plus high-voltage transmission towers carving a destructive 100-meter-wide easement through farms in Victoria’s food bowl, bushfire-prone landscape and protected state parks and native habitat. Both projects fall under the full ownership and control of the Victorian Government.

A procession of tractors, horses, fire trucks and agricultural vehicles will form a vehicle procession around Parliament House along Spring Street.

Stop Labor’s Towers spokesperson Emma Muir said “The State Government of Victoria must be held to account for it’s poor planning and execution of these projects. If the State Government proceeds with these projects, it will cause immeasurable economic damage to local farmers and irreparable harm to the environment and landscape – to say nothing of the amenity and liveability of our region and the wellbeing of residents. Bushfire risk will skyrocket, high-value agricultural land that feeds Victoria will be destroyed, and land values will plummet.”

“Our communities support renewable energy and understand the importance of an energy grid that delivers renewable energy to where it is needed. However, the delivery of renewable energy must not come at the cost of food security destroying valuable and irreplaceable agricultural land, cause catastrophic damage to the environment nor put lives at risk from severely increased bushfire risk.”

WHAT: Tractor Rally – Spring Street Melbourne
WHEN: 12:45pm Tractor Procession and Speeches 1:00pm Tuesday 15 August 2023
WHERE: Victorian Parliament House steps, Spring Street, Melbourne