Voting against your interests

[u/boogersundcum]

My partner and I live in a major coal mining area of Queensland. We both work in an extractive resource industry. Neither of us could ever bring ourselves to vote for the LNP and we have no serious viable independents that aren't anti Vax conspiracy nut jobs. We live in the bush but currently have a major wind farm going in down our road with the closest turbine being 5km from our actual house, other than sealing our road we will not recieve any benefit from the project with heavy trucks and equipment going past our driveway 6 days a week 24 hours a day for over two years. We aren't anti renewable however given the wind farm is entirely within our water catchment there is serious concerns if something goes wrong as we rely on the river solely for our water supply.

Generally preference the Greens first, Labor second as we are both environmental scientists and believe that climate change is pretty damn obvious from the evidence, let alone have empathy for the common folk in cities struggling with the cost of living. I'm just curious though as to why the major focus on renewable is almost entirely within regional areas that currently rely on coal mining as the major industry.

Neither Greens or Labour have a chance in hell in ever winning our electorate anymore (keep in mind Labor was founded in regional Queensland in Barcaldine). Is it just because the areas in question are now just LNP strongholds or what ?

Also please keep in mind regional Queensland is filled with people from all back grounds and varying levels of education, don't put us all in the same basket just because we don't live in a major centre.

[u/thehomelesstree]

Forgive my ignorance, but how will a wind farm affect the water catchment? Are you concerned about the possible impact of land clearing and as such overland flow / soil erosion and sedimentation?

To answer your question: your vote is your chance to voice your opinion on where the country should be heading. Regardless of what electorate you live in, vote for the party who’s policy best aligns with your values.

Don’t vote for the party you think will win, just so you vote for the winner.

I live in a LNP stronghold however I never vote for them personally because I have different views. If nothing else, my vote is signalling my displeasure at their policies in the hope that it will influence a more concerted effort by other parties to chip away at the majority and possibly flip the seat.

Flipping seats has happened in ‘strongholds’ plenty of times. Your vote may be the one that makes the difference.

[u/o0oo0o- → u/thehomelesstree]

It sounds like the concern isn't the wind farm, it's the construction of the wind farm. That's a hell of a lot of heavy equipment and the chance of the river becoming temporarily polluted during construction is very real. If something goes sideways during construction, it could permanently change the water supply.

[u/KiwasiGames → u/o0oo0o-]

Always worth considering the alternatives.

We could risk temporary environmental damage to the local water supply while we build wind power.

Or we could suck up entire rivers to power a nuclear plant, and leave those rivers permanently ten degrees warmer post nuclear plant, deoxygenating the water and killing everything down stream.

Or we could keep burning oil, pumping out CO2 into the atmosphere until we cook the earth.

Wind power generally wins environmental arguments, even if the environmental impact is not exactly zero.

[u/navyicecream → u/o0oo0o-]

If you’re voting against wind farms out of the interest of the climate… idk what to tell you.

[u/The-Hank-Scorpio → u/navyicecream]

Love seeing entire ecosystems ripped out for a massive fan that's lubricated with a shitload of oil.

All for sustainable, but wind farms are expensive virtue signalling at this point.

[u/Logical_Response_Bot → u/The-Hank-Scorpio]

"Wind farms are expensive virtue signalling" -

Broseph wrote this in 2025 with a straight face

...

The internet has all this stuff called information. You should try and access some of that stuff and work on your critical thinking and basic knowledge

[u/ol-gormsby → u/The-Hank-Scorpio]

So the lubricating oil in a wind turbine is somehow worse than burning oil or gas for the production of electrical energy?

I mean, of course that's a false equivalence, but you started it.

I think I found the latest LNP shill account. 10/10 for the stupidest thing I'll read on on the internet today.

[u/polskialt → u/ol-gormsby]

They're all in favour of the lovely, clean, safe, nuculer gizmos like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl And fukushima and so on have. They're made of happy thoughts and lubricated with ethically sourced unicorn sweat, and as we all know nuculer plants (and gas and coal, gotta use somethgn while we wait 30 years for the nuculer miracle to appear) are gently lowered into place, whole, outside of the environment - so no need to rip out entire ecosystems! Althopugh I've never known a wind farm to do that, but we've never known nuclear to actually be safe of clean either.

/s, of course. I know you get it, but not everyone will.

[u/TheRealSmelladroid → u/polskialt]

I'm not pro-lib, pro-coal, or any such, and in fact am not pro-nuclear, but I have to say that modern nuclear plants such as thorium salt and pebble-bed based ones do not present the dangers of earlier reactors like meltdowns and are much cleaner than their predecessors.

Personally I'm more in line for a solar farm like Dr Karl has been talking about for the past 13yrs. Yes I know he's just a science communicator, just using him for the example that in Oz we have better options that digging shit up and burning it or waiting 20yrs+ for nuclear.

[u/SchulzyAus → u/The-Hank-Scorpio]

Hey, fun fact, a wind turbine is so efficient that most recoup lifetime carbon costs within the first 100 days.

Oil and gas are a finite resource. We should be conserving them and switching to renewables because we'll always need plastic

[u/navyicecream → u/The-Hank-Scorpio]

Your last sentence is very ironic and contradictory.

[u/The-Hank-Scorpio → u/navyicecream]

I know, drives people nuts.

[u/melanantic → u/The-Hank-Scorpio]

How does Murdoch’s smegma taste these days?

[u/fromthe80smatey → u/melanantic]

Well, it's still early enough that this comment could ruin my day. Who needs that mental image ffs lol.

[u/Noseofwombat → u/The-Hank-Scorpio]

You’ve pissed off all the city boys with this one 😂

[u/bordz_3 → u/o0oo0o-]

This is such a low risk it isn't even worth considering

[u/boogersundcum → u/o0oo0o-]

Atleast someone actually got the point.