One Nation previews coal and gas policy at Marnoo

Pickering, One Nation's Victorian leader, gave the crowd a pair of promises with verbs on them. If elected, the party would strip energy infrastructure company VicGrid of compulsory acquisition powers for that line. "But more importantly than that, we'll abolish the renewable energy zone that we are on here tonight," he said. He put coal and gas as the state's future and, when Clark asked how expanded coal and gas would be paid for, said private investment. He would not put a figure on it. "Back to the energy resources that made us the most abundant state in the country in the first place," he said. "Any government in this country that doesn't support mining in some way, shape or form will preside over the death of this nation."

Hanson, in a rare interview with the ABC at the same event, went further than gas. Victoria should consider new coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactors. "We used to have coal-fired power stations that delivered the power to this nation," she said. "Put in new coal-fired power stations, you can build those, but also look at nuclear as well." She declined to say how One Nation would fund new coal and nuclear. She said renewables were failing to deliver affordable power. She did not give a figure.

Pickering also declined to say how the party would unwind existing contracts on VNI West and the renewable energy zones. He pointed at Monday. More of the energy policy, he said, would be revealed at Yallourn Power Station. Hanson and Joyce keep the Victorian tour into Gippsland on Monday, after One Nation's Western Australian by-election win on Saturday.

The candidates got names. One Nation announced Donna Buxton, a speech pathologist and former primary school teacher, for Ripon. Stuart Robinson will run in Wendouree, Paul Ballinger in Eureka, Vaughn Williams in Western Victoria. Buxton is the one Clark flagged next. Ripon takes in a lot of the country that drove into Marnoo on Saturday night.

Farmers Fightback's chair, Ben Duxson, co-hosted. Joyce was on the stage clapping him. The group has rallied against mining as well as renewables on farmland. Duxson has since made the priority clear: stop VNI West. That sequencing matters in a room that is not of one mind about mines. Cathy Ross, a farmer, told Clark she was still undecided after hearing One Nation. Mining is her election issue. She rejected the argument that mining and farming can coexist. "How can they coexist together when one destroys the land and the other one's trying to put either animal husbandry or cropping there?" she said. "It doesn't work." Pickering's answer was case by case. Proposed mineral sands mines in western Victoria would be considered individually. "If it's an impediment on food and fibre production, productive food and fibre land, then we're not for it."

Simon Schinkel, who owns an agricultural equipment business, was not undecided about the line. VNI West, he said, threatened farmland that had supported families for generations. "Don't wreck the farms. There's a lot of big buildings in the city; they could put solar panels on them and get their own power." Clark noted he has supported One Nation for decades. Buloke Shire mayor Graeme Milne said One Nation was "saying the right things" on VNI West, and that farmers in the region had also welcomed the Coalition's recent announcement that it would cancel the project if elected. "Once you get the farmers or the mainstream people in the bush offside, you've got to do a lot to get them back," Cr Milne said.

That is the political weather in the Wimmera this week. A transmission project has a farmer group, a major party, and a minor party all saying stop. The thousand people at Marnoo are the visible count. The Coalition's cancellation pledge is a second count, sitting in a different column. Labor's position on VNI West is not in Clark's Sunday report. What is on the record is a Saturday night in a town most of Melbourne could not place, a recreation reserve that held a crowd, and a Monday appointment at a power station that still burns coal.

Yallourn is the right place to finish the sentence. It is Gippsland, not the Wimmera. It is a working station, not a paddock. If Pickering has a figure for private coal and gas, a method for existing contracts, or a map of which renewable energy zones actually fall on night one, that is where it should show up. Hanson has already put nuclear on the table next to new coal. The funding question followed her around Marnoo. She did not answer it. Yallourn is where the rest of the numbers are meant to land.

VNI West is the project under the speeches. It is the transmission line the state wants for wind. It is also the line farmers in the Wimmera and Mallee have spent years fighting on compulsory acquisition, on routes across cropping country, on the gap between a city target and a paddock that has to host the towers. Farmers Fightback exists because of that gap. One Nation showed up because a thousand people will drive for it. The Coalition's cancel pledge exists because those same people vote. It is a count, a date, and a named company with a power the next parliament might take away.

VicGrid is that company. Pickering named it. Compulsory acquisition is the power. He said he would strip it for VNI West, then went further and said he would abolish the renewable energy zone under the stage at Marnoo. Those are two different instruments. One is a transmission project. The other is a planning overlay that makes the next project easier. A party that will say both out loud, in a recreation reserve, in front of a farmer group that used to campaign against mines as well as turbines, is a party contesting a state election, not only a protest. The test is Monday, when the backdrop is a power station instead of a football oval.

Saturday is specific. A thousand people in Marnoo. A farmer group with a chair who will put his name on the bill. A Victorian leader who will say VicGrid and VNI West and renewable energy zone in the same speech. A federal leader who will say coal and nuclear on tape. Four candidates with seats attached. A mayor who will say the bush is offside. A farmer who will say mining still wrecks the paddock. It is a turnout, a policy preview, and a date: Monday 31 August, Yallourn Power Station. The Wimmera showed up. Gippsland gets the rest of the argument.