Agriculture
9 October, 2025
COMMENT: Contrasts in community consultation
By CHRIS EARL ACROSS northern Loddon communities - where wind factory speculators are circling - real contrasts in styles of consultation and engagement have emerged among renewable energy proponents. Few are yet to fully brief the communities whose...
By CHRIS EARL
ACROSS northern Loddon communities - where wind factory speculators are circling - real contrasts in styles of consultation and engagement have emerged among renewable energy proponents.
Few are yet to fully brief the communities whose landscape they seek to change for at least the next 30 years.
Even Loddon Shire Council, according to CEO Lincoln Fitzgerald, has had little contact let alone information.
When asked this week how they would engage with Loddon residents, Atmos Renewables told the Loddon Herald that they would have an information stand with information on its Macorna wind farm plan that edges into the Loddon at ... the Kerang Show.
Unless there’s been an unknown redrawing of boundaries given tick off by the State Government, Loddon residents are not yet paying their rates to the neighbouring Gannawarra Shire.
Another renewable energy factory proponent was into semantics, too. European Energy has asked neighbours for its Mincha wind and solar farm proposal to book a meeting to be told the detail. “We go to the neighbours and request to meet with them rather than them requesting meetings with us,” we were informed.
These companies could avoid suspicion in our local communitires by not sending out letters to neighbours, keeping them in the dark until they agree to talk. Instead, be open and up front with out local communities, including the shire council who it appears is in the “other stakeholders” bin and will be briefed somewhere down the track ... well after community frustration and annoyance has potentially brewed into fully-blown distrust.
Contrast these companies, and there are others active on the Loddon patch, with the approach of Potentia, the company wanting to have a solar farm at Mologa.
Now people in this area aree well experienced in community engagement and consultation. Gold explorer Catalyst has been active in the district for years.
Potentia, perhaps taking a leaf out of the Catalyst approach that has earned a level of respect, has written to landowners.
It has also gone straight on the public front-foot and held the first of two community information sessions in Mitiamo last night. Catalyst, like all prospectors, explorers and miners, is bound by a set of robust government regulations around their activities and engagement.
Renewable energy speculators, so far, have been handed a virtual free rein by the State Government, certainly when it comes to engagement and consultation.
New draft guidelines have been released. Are they as robust as for miners? On the surface ... no.