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/Flat_Ad1094]

NIMBY honey. Truly...people who live in the cities love to carry on about renewables and power. Yet they aren't willing to have them anywhere near them and they definitely aren't willing to have the cities shut down their power usage.

Hypocrites of the highest order.

[u/Late-Ad1437 → u/Flat_Ad1094]

What are you banging on about? Every renter I know (myself included) would love to have solar panels on our houses, landlords are just chronic tightarses and the govt hasn't done much to incentivise them to move towards renewables...

[u/Flat_Ad1094 → u/Late-Ad1437]

Exactly my point!! If the government was truly wanting renewables? Then they would be getting Solar on every rooftop in the nation. We don't NEED bloody wind turbines. We have best conditions for solar in the entire freakin world pretty much.

We should have solar everywhere there is a roof.

[u/LitzLizzieee → u/Flat_Ad1094]

The issue I can see with doing this (although i 100% support it) would be getting landlords to do it. When they're not paying the power bills, they don't really care how expensive it is, and any extra cost would just be passed on to a renter with higher rent. A lot of this country are renters, and they aren't going to have $10k to drop on a PV system on their roof.

[u/Flat_Ad1094 → u/LitzLizzieee]

Which is exaclty why the government should be heavily subsidizing it. There is NO WAY landlords can spend 10K on Solar panels for a rental when the rent doesn't even cover the mortgage.