Have Your Say

TRANSCRIPT: 2CC BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, 1 AUGUST 2025

1 August 2025

Subjects: Net zero, US beef imports 

E&OE 

STARTS 8.07am 

ENDS 8.15am 

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

Seven past eight on this Friday the 1st of August. Good to be with you as you head into the final hour of the program. Still to come, we’ll cross to the United States and catch up with Tim Schildberger, we’ll catch up with Michael Shoebridge from Strategic Analysis Australia and talk about a new biography of Bob Hawke as PM by David Day. Before we get to that though, I do want to talk about a number of things with the Member for Riverina and former Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack who joins us now. Michael, good morning. 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

Good morning, Steve.  

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

I want to talk about, and I guess they’re both related in the sense that net zero and renewable energy are tied in, but let’s focus on this wind installation that’s been proposed for your electorate between the towns of Binalong and Bowning. This really highlights a bigger problem with these wind and solar installations in that there’s a whole, well firstly we’re destroying prime farming land with these things, but there’s farmers that are obviously earning a quid out of it and nobody’s actually going to begrudge them that because farming’s a tough business, but then there’s neighbours that have got to, I guess, deal with the fallout.  

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

You’ve summed it up in a nutshell and there are farmers who are making a quid out of it now, but will they be making a quid out of it when the wind towers have to be decommissioned and no council wants to take the landfill? Will they be making a quid when the cost of actually decommissioning these huge wind towers, 260 metres high, in fact, are going to need to be pulled down and done something with. Are they going to be able to bury them on their own properties? That’s going to leach their waterways. There are a whole host of issues that you’ve just quite correctly described, and it is setting a neighbour against a neighbour. Generational family farmers who have been friends for years, indeed it’s dividing families because some families have been, you know, some members of families have been offered huge contracts with Wind Prospect and other companies, and others have not. And they’re not talking to one another now. And that’s so, so un-Australian.  

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

So how do we address the approval process here? Because these are deemed State Significant Developments, we’ve also got the Wallaroo solar farm, which is going on just across the border here in the ACT, 90 football fields worth of prime cattle raising land that’s going to be gone, and because the people on the ACT side of the border don’t get to vote in New South Wales, they don’t get any say in this and don’t get the same protections. We’ve got the Yass Valley Council who says we’re saturated with renewables projects, we can’t take any more. But these people seem to be ignored. 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

Therein lies the problem. You’ve summed it up. State Significant Status. So, the Macquarie Street bureaucrats and boffins can then ride roughshod over Yass Valley Council, over the people such as Emma Webb and her family, sheep farmers, generational sheep farmers in between Binalong and Bowning, Local Council Considerations, local communities, once it gets State Significant Priority Status, nothing else matters. Local considerations don’t get say whatsoever. Therein lies the problem.  

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

From the perspective of, obviously this is all being driven by the Government’s net zero policy, yourself and Barnaby Joyce have caused a little bit of friction on your own side over your wish to abandon net zero. Are you getting the … 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

… That’s perhaps understating it. 

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

Well, yeah, probably, what are you? Two steers or two bulls or whatever? We won’t go into that again. But have you got the messaging right here? Because hasn’t this opened you up to a very simple attack from the Government saying, well, these guys don’t believe in climate change, when we need to be able to separate those two messages? 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

Indeed, but you look at the history of this. I mean in 2004 The Guardian in the UK said that Britain would face a Siberian climate by 2020. Al Gore, the former US Vice President in 2008 said the Arctic would be ice free. Tim Flannery of course suggested that the rivers would never run again and then this week we’ve had the climate tsar from the United Nations Simon Stiell saying that vegetable and fruit eating in Australia would become a once-in-a-year treat. Now, I don’t think people should be buying that message because, indeed, it’s not right. This intermittent power is a nonsense, because what we’re seeing is this rush to 82 per cent by 2030, let alone net zero by 2050. We’re seeing Chris Bowen, who is quite frankly ‘The Minister for Ruining Regional Australia’, he might have a mandate, but he doesn’t have a mandate to ruin country areas, he doesn’t have a mandate to take up all the arable farmland with his reckless rollout of renewables. And the communities have said enough’s enough. It’s not just wind towers, it’s the solar panels. They were going to have a project near Yass, which was going to be bigger than the town itself. We’ve got these Battery Energy Storage Systems cropping up all over the place where the Local Rural Fire Service’s volunteers say they won’t go out and put out bushfires, started by, started near or around these because of the toxicity of the flames. And that’s happening at Talbingo, Mangoplah, Gregadoo, you name it. 

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

But doesn’t this come back to, if we look back to the last election, the problem that the Coalition had was not necessarily the policies, it was how you went about selling them. Don’t you have to get the messaging right here? Because, I mean, it’s all well and good to say, well, we know we can’t get to net zero by 2050, even under the Government’s plan, but there’s enough people out there that believe climate change is something that needs to be addressed. Don’t you have to couch it in that manner? 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

And yes, and we need to do our part in reducing emissions, I get that, but put these things where, quite frankly, communities might welcome them, out on the Hay Plains or elsewhere, I know there’s a proposal out there that the local community is all for. Don’t take up arable farmland. The greatest challenge for humankind going forward is going to be able to feed the people of the world and Australia’s not going to be able to play a part if we’re going to continue to take up our arable farmland with these massive wind towers, with these solar factories, which are just going to be a blight on the landscape and take up so much of our beautiful, rich farmland, our great soil. You know, we’ve only got so much of it, and if we take it up with this rush to renewables, well, we won’t be able to continue to grow the food in the capacities that we’ve been able to in the past. 

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

Michael, I want to touch on something else that initially concerned me, and that is the lifting of these restrictions on US beef. You’ve tried to get a Senate Inquiry up, but the Greens have voted it down. I’m in two minds about this, because when I speak to Cattle Australia, they say, well, the reality is we’re probably not going to see a lot of US beef come into Australia, so it’s not going to be that much of an issue. 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

Well, we don’t need to see that much if some of it’s got mad cow. The traceability is the issue. If it’s being processed in Mexico or Canada where they don’t have the same traceability systems that we have in Australia, if we get brucellosis, foot and mouth, you name it, coming in in just even a small portion in some of this beef coming in from the United States, our agricultural industry, entire industry, not just cattle, gets placed at risk. We shouldn’t be putting our biosecurity on the high altar of the fact that the Prime Minister can’t get a meeting with Donald Trump to talk about the issues that are important to Australia. This is what we’re doing. We’re just caving in, we’re giving in to US demands. We shouldn’t be having any more US beef than what we’ve had in the past. This is an absolute crock, and the Greens stand condemned.  

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

But aren’t we talking about processed beef here? 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

Well, we are, but it can still come in in microbes, it can still come in. Our biosecurity will be placed at risk, and we need to know that this isn’t going to be the case. And having it as a Senate Inquiry, having a full-scale investigation into this is absolutely 100 per cent necessary.  

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

Michael, great to talk to you this morning. Thanks for your time.  

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK  

Always, Steve, thanks.  

 

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO 

Michael McCormack, the Member for Riverina and former Deputy Prime Minister. It’s a quarter past eight. 

 

SEARCH WEBSITE