MEMBER for Mallee Andrew Broad has expressed doubts over the viability of wind farms in the Wimmera.
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Wimmera business and community leaders quizzed Mr Broad on a range of issues during a breakfast at Horsham Golf Club on Friday.
A Federal Government review recommended Australia's Renewable Energy Target should be axed.
Mr Broad said the review - undertaken by climate change sceptic Dick Warburton - was not done to give the government ammunition to abolish the target.
"Part of the RET is that it has to have a legislated review," he said. "It's not been a conspiracy theory to scrap it."
Mr Broad said a 32-square-kilometre wind farm planned for Murra Warra might not be a good project.
"I'm not sure - and I know Horsham Rural City Council won't like this - if it's windy enough to get 40 per cent efficiency," he said.
Mr Broad said if the subsidies remained, wind farms would be built in places where they would not operate efficiently.
"The danger of leaving the target where it is we're going to see wind farms built in places where you're only getting 27 per cent efficiency of power generation instead of 40 per cent because it's not windy enough and that's really the question for the ones around here," he said.
Mr Broad said the target would cost taxpayers $22 billion if it was unchanged.
Wimmera Development Association executive director Jo Bourke asked Mr Broad when the National Broadband Network would be rolled out in the region.
"We've got businesses that have put plans on hold because of the uncertainty about the National Broadband Network," she said.
"The scheduled roll-out has been deferred a number of times since the election."
Mr Broad said under the Coalition government, NBN Co was reluctant to announce targets it could not meet.
WorkCo chief executive John Ackland expressed concerns about government policy in the youth sector, including the scrapping of the youth connections program and significant cuts to Local Learning Employment Networks.
"There's not many programs for young people and then they leave the region," he said.
Mr Broad said he argued for Youth Connections to continue but there was evidence of the program being rorted in some areas.
He said he would take Mr Ackland's concerns about a lack of youth spending back to Canberra.
