“Shouldn’t industrial-scale developments, such as the planned battery energy storage system near Uriarra Village, be directed towards appropriately zoned industrial land rather than bio-diverse rural landscapes,” asks letter writer MURRAY MAY.
Resistance to data centres has been building in Australia, based on adverse human and environmental impacts.
Like data centres, many may not be aware that there is also a significant community backlash against battery energy storage systems (BESS) across rural areas in the US.
Temporary moratoriums and outright bans on BESS projects are therefore increasingly evident there and in Australia.
In the ACT, the multinational firm Quinbrook has acquired land only a couple of kilometres from Uriarra Village and is proposing a 520-megawatt (MW) stand-alone BESS there, relatively close to an existing grid transmission line. This is twice the size of the Williamsdale BESS, making it one of the largest in the country.
BESS systems comprise rows of shipping containers full of battery racks of lithium-ion battery cells.
The proposed development would be larger than the size of Uriarra Village itself and raises multiple environmental and social impacts on the Uriarra Valley region.
The developer appears to have glossed over these, in order to suit its business objectives.
Just to name a few, these include the site’s location within a high bushfire-prone area, the risk of difficult-to-extinguish battery fires and the release of toxic smoke, impacts on biodiversity including disturbance of fauna, Aboriginal cultural heritage, and the substantial impacts of noise.
Similar to data centres, BESS constantly emits noise from cooling fans, inverters and power electronics, and transformers.
Some noise components are in the readily audible range, while other high-pitched sounds and low-frequency hums can escape any wall sound barrier.
As this noise is generated 24/7, residents of Uriarra Village would certainly be affected adversely.
This is industrialisation by stealth. Shouldn’t industrial-scale developments be directed towards appropriately zoned industrial land rather than bio-diverse rural landscapes?
Murray May, Cook
Big Splash: we’re being treated like mugs
Why does the ACT’s tick- the- box lease register accept a pink, plastic, portable toilet as sufficient 21st century sanitary and hygienic support for the required “family restaurant” set-up linked to the Big Splash site?
Does this mean that any bar or restaurant owner can install one portable toilet on the pavement outside their premises whenever their toilets stop working and let them remain closed for weeks on end, or without repair forever?
Other hardworking, compliant ACT land and business owners and the public at large are being insulted and treated like mugs (“Big Splash need not reopen as water park”, citynews.com.au) in what has become an increasingly costly dance around the public interest planning “outcomes” that should have been well defined before now by our reformist ACT lawmakers.
Clear and targeted practical follow-up actions, however complex, are well overdue for this Belconnen location and many other derelict sites without slyly stuffing all the issues down the nearest rabbit hole yet again.
Sue Dyer, Downer
Cut the spending, increase tax
The increased support for false prophets like One Nation is a symptom of increasing disenchantment with the toleration by the major parties of the growth of extreme wealth when increasing numbers of people are struggling to meet basic needs for food and housing.
Spending cuts and increased taxation are needed to reduce inflation and to respond to the growing funding required in many areas including health, aged care, disability, the environment and defence.
If politicians were genuine about creating a fairer society they would consider introducing the means testing of programs; increasing taxes on the gas industry, reducing fossil fuel rebates, introducing capital gain taxes on the family homes, of say valued over $5 million, lowering the allocation of funds to wealthy private schools, removing franking credit refunds and superannuation concessions benefitting high-income earners, more fairly allocating GST revenues and reviewing the merits of major infrastructure programs.
The backlash from those who have their entitlements reduced would be severe. It could be reduced if the government demonstrated the wealthy were paying their fair share of tax and the reforms will have more integrity than displayed by the prime minister in relation to the allocation of grant revenues.
Reform will be difficult as it requires removing tax breaks and subsidies often provided to individuals and corporations on the basis of lobbying and financial contributions, not demonstrated economic benefit.
Failure to make progress on needed reforms will only fuel support for One Nation and its ill-considered agenda.
Mike Quirk, Garran
The ugly underbelly of political debate
As Helen Haines lies in hospital with horrific injuries from the brutal attack at her electorate office, the investigation into this incident has uncovered the ugly underbelly of Australian political debate and the blatant underlying hypocrisy.
Right-leaning media organisations including 2GB and Sky News as well as conservative politicians were quick to get behind the microphones offering their “crocodile tears” and pseudo condolences when many of them have been instrumental in fuelling this growing anger, hatred and senseless violence.
Talkback radio takes every opportunity to defame and discredit Albanese and other senior Labor ministers, persistently branding the PM a liar, a chant also taken up by the Liberal Party and Hanson’s One Nation.
Innocuous as this petty name-calling might appear, given credence by politicians and the media and further fuelled by ignorance and algorithms, these words quickly become more vehement, vulgar and ultimately violent.
Social media is littered with foul language aimed at the Albanese government and even thinly veiled threats against their safety: f**k Labor, d***heads, s***bags, traitors, woke filth… and on it goes.
And it’s not just the uninformed who are verbally challenged. In the hallowed halls of our Parliament many of our highly paid representatives seem incapable of taking part in constructive and respectful political debate.
Liberal Leader Angus Taylor, hopeful PM and, allegedly, an Oxford educated, Rhodes Scholar, previously referred to the PM as an “arrogant p***k”.
The rot starts from the top.
Declan McGrath, via email
Moore should educate himself more fully
Re Michael Moore’s column “Independents embarrass Labor on human rights” (CN October 22): If someone was bothering me on the phone about the genocide in Gaza, I would point them to the Hamas charter and 40 years of statements coming from Iran about the annihilation of the people and State of Israel. Those ideas are genocidal.
The fallback position after the Hamas attack on Israel was that, if they were not successful in holding the Israeli area they attacked, they created traps for any IDF counter attack.
To ensure the safety of incoming soldiers going into buildings set up with IUDs, tanks were brought in to blow any explosives. The extensive tunnel system which had openings in schools, hospitals and close to mosques was also part of strategic traps that had to be neutralised, as well as snipers on high-rise buildings.
I am not one to excuse policies on both sides that have led to the present situation, but for Michael Moore to repeat the trope of genocide when a country is fighting a vicious war of defence is something upon which he should educate himself more fully.
Ben Gershon, via email
They shook hands on a peace deal
Janet Parnwell’s letter (“Palestinian leaders brought it on themselves”, CN October 29) is partial and tendentious.
She omits, notably, the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Palestinian leader Arafat shook hands on a peace deal in Washington in front of US President Clinton.
On his return to Israel, Rabin was shot dead by a compatriot.
John Griffin, via email
Failure of peace talks contestable
Janet Parnwell (letters, CN October 29) disagrees that the failure of Israel and Palestine peace talks remains contested.
To discover why they are, I encourage people to view the acclaimed documentary, The Human Factor (2021), by Israeli director Dror Moreh, which follows the path of the negotiations from the point of view of the American mediators involved.
It is illuminating. The failure of Camp David and President Clinton’s condemnation of Arafat had more to do with his bruised ego.
Those who maintain that it is only Israel that acts in good faith forget that PM Rabin feared civil war within Israel as one possible consequence of talks.
He ultimately paid with his own life in 1995 when he was murdered by an Israeli right-wing nationalist urged on by Likud’s movement against peace.
In 1994 the American Israeli Zionist, Goldstein destabilised the process by perpetrating the massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. Dror Moreh’s earlier television documentary series The Gate Keepers (2012) features interviews with the heads of Shin Bet who discuss Israel’s internal terrorist threats and provide background to those who are responsible for the genocide in Gaza today.
Peter Curtis, via email
Kangaroos the scapegoat for biodiversity crisis
How can the ACT Government justify killing thousands of kangaroos in the name of protecting biodiversity when threatened grassland species continue to decline?
The latest announcement about the deteriorating conservation status of the Perunga Grasshopper raises serious questions about whether the government’s approach is working.
For years, we have been told kangaroo numbers must be reduced to protect smaller, threatened grassland species. Kangaroos are repeatedly blamed for habitat degradation, yet these species continue to struggle.
If killing kangaroos is supposedly helping, where is the evidence?
Canberra continues to expand, with housing, roads and infrastructure destroying and fragmenting the very habitats these species depend upon.
Rather than adequately addressing habitat loss and development pressures, the government continues to make kangaroos the target of its conservation policies.
Kangaroos are native wildlife, not a convenient scapegoat for the environmental consequences of urban expansion.
It is time to stop blaming kangaroos for a crisis of our own making and start protecting the habitats all native wildlife depend upon.
Whitney Anders Richardson
Winter fills me with dread
Spare a thought for the residents who live next to the reserves that are targeted under the ACT government’s annual culling program.
Each year we have shooters killing animals behind our houses at all hours of the night, with no warning.
I can hear gunshots throughout my house including in my bedroom as well as seeing the shooters sneaking into the reserves.
Winter fills me with dread, and I am overcome with stress, anxiety and insomnia.
My daily walks during the “cull” are distressing also. I have found pools of blood; joey skulls, a dead male kangaroo who was surrounded by cans that had been thrown at him; a dead joey; and a kangaroo who was shot, left behind and attacked by a fox.
This winter I found huge pools of blood and remains at Crace reserve where the animals were shot and bled to death as well as a site where joeys were bludgeoned and decapitated at Mulanggari.
In a way, the survivors are the most heart wrenching examples of the ACT government’s cruelty. At Mulanggari Grasslands, a joey approached me begging for milk having lost their mum. I also found a lone male survivor who was hanging around where I found pools of blood that had been his family.
I have no more words for this horror.
Rebecca Marks, via email
News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.
Leave a Reply