Renewables landholders will become 'pariahs' unless Renewable Energy Zone system fixed: NSW Farmers President

Some farmers in his area still won't fight bushfires on each others' property, 20 years after battles over the construction of the Queensland interconnector that left them enemies, he said.

The NSW Farmers President has added his voice to residents concerned about the social impact of the region's planned $10.7 billion New England Renewable Energy Zone (REZ).

Farmers should have more involvement in energy development, he said, both in terms of consultation and compensation.

If it doesn't happen, the vastly larger build-out of the New England Renewable Energy Zone will cause proportionately greater grief as well, he said.

Mr Jackson said host landowners will simply become social pariahs.

"A lot of these people who are going to host these renewables, essentially they're going to be absentee landlords, they'll have to go and spend the money down the coast because they'll never get invited to another barbeque locally," he said.

"People won't live around them. It'll hollow out the rural landscape. It's not pretty."

NSW Farmers are not "philosophically opposed" to renewables, he said.

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But farmers are concerned power projects will displace agriculture the same way coal or gas projects can, he said. For decades, NSW Farmers opposed resources schemes across the Liverpool Plains and elsewhere for exactly that reason.

Farmers aren't sufficiently included in the REZ consultation group, New England REZ Regional Reference Group, he claimed.

"The quality of the consultation at the moment is rubbish," he said.

He said government ought to also change the just terms compensation act to make whole neighbours of renewables projects, rather than just host landowners, among several other changes to the rules.

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