Barnaby Joyce is still pretending he doesn’t know what solar panels are. He is taking a leaf out of a Reform UK politician who is making a name for himself at the moment by threatening to lay down in front of bulldozers and stop the UK’s biggest solar farm from being built. Joyce is using the same arguments, and pretending that you can only have one use for land – that a renewable project on a piece of land will mean that there is no way you can run animals on it. That is not true, but between his made up claims of ‘locking up land’ and his made up use of false numbers on the cost, this is the new battle ground.
Mike Bowers recorded some of this morning’s bonker’s doorstop
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He's like the mad uncle at Christmas - we should all just ignore him, but he's given so much airtime.
An important point about stock grazing and solar panels is that the solar panels condense atmospheric water at night and this water runs down and onto the ground, producing much lusher grass for stock feed. It's a boon to sheep graziers. It's not so suitable for cattle. They tend to use any post they find as a back scratcher and their size means damage to solar infrastructure. Goats are destructive and will jump up onto the panels, eating everything in their path, including wires.... so sheep are the thing.