One Nation has revealed some of its energy policies to a crowd of 1,000 supporters in western Victoria, promising to reinvest in coal and gas, and ditch renewable energy projects.
The party was the headline act for a Farmers Fightback rally in the small Wimmera town of Marnoo last night, where anger over the VNI West transmission project is boiling over.
Farmers Fightback is a farmer-led group that protests against large-scale renewable energy and transmission-line projects on agricultural land.
One Nation's Victorian leader Warren Pickering told the crowd that, if elected, his party would remove energy infrastructure company VicGrid's compulsory acquisition powers for the highly controversial transmission line needed to bring wind power into the electricity grid.
"But more importantly than that, we'll abolish the renewable energy zone that we are on here tonight," Mr Pickering said.
Federal One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce will continue their Victorian tour in Gippsland tomorrow, buoyed by the party's breakthrough by-election win in Western Australia yesterday.
Hanson calls for coal, nuclear
In a rare interview with the ABC, Pauline Hanson said that Victoria should consider new coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactors.
"We used to have coal-fired power stations that delivered the power to this nation," Ms Hanson said.
"Put in new coal-fired power stations, you can build those, but also look at nuclear as well."
Ms Hanson declined to answer how One Nation would fund new coal and nuclear projects but said renewables were failing to deliver affordable power.
Mr Pickering said expanded coal and gas projects would be funded by private investment, but could not put a figure on what that would cost.
"Back to the energy resources that made us the most abundant state in the country in the first place," Mr Pickering said.
Mr Pickering declined to answer how his party would unwind existing contracts attached to VNI West and renewable energy zones but said more details about One Nation's energy policy would be revealed at an event at Yallourn Power Station in Gippsland tomorrow.
Farmer frustration
At Marnoo, many farmers were united in their frustration over VNI West.
Simon Schinkel, who owns an agricultural equipment business, said VNI West threatened farmland that had supported families for generations.
"Don't wreck the farms," he said.
"There's a lot of big buildings in the city; they could put solar panels on them and get their own power."
Buloke Shire Council Mayor Graeme Milne said One Nation was "saying the right things" when it came to VNI West.
He said farmers in the region had also welcomed the Coalition's recent announcement that it would cancel VNI West if elected.
Mine concerns remain
Farmers Fightback previously rallied hard against both mining and renewable energy developments on farmland.
But its chair, Ben Duxson, has since made clear that stopping VNI West was the group's main priority.
Farmer Cathy Ross said she remained undecided about her vote, after hearing from One Nation at the event.
Ms Ross said she rejected One Nation's argument that mining and farming could coexist.
"How can they coexist together when one destroys the land and the other one's trying to put either animal husbandry or cropping there?" she said.
"It doesn't work."
Mr Pickering said proposed mineral sands mines in western Victoria would need to be considered individually.
"If it's an impediment on food and fibre production, productive food and fibre land, then we're not for it," he said.
One Nation announced speech pathologist and former primary school teacher Donna Buxton as its candidate for Ripon, alongside Stuart Robinson in Wendouree, Paul Ballinger in Eureka and Vaughn Williams in Western Victoria.
