The motivation behind the latest HumeLink protest was to let the new government know "we mean business", activists say.
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Stop HumeLink Towers and HumeLink Action Group members from the Riverina and beyond gathered outside Wednesday's community consultation meeting in Gundagai, hosted by project manager Transgrid.
Impacted landowners from Upper Lachlan and Yass Valley also travelled to the protest.
HumeLink Action Group chairman Bill Kingwill said they want the recently elected Labor state government to commit to under grounding the project.
It comes after Labor's shadow minister for energy and climate change Jihad Dib said Labor would "front up" and listen to the community about planned energy projects at a recent election debate.
"He said Labor was all for the consultation, to sit down and work it out," Mr Kingwill said.
"Part of that protest was to show the new government that we mean business."
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Unable to make the protest in person, member for Wagga Dr Joe McGirr provided a statement to demonstration organisers calling for underground construction options to be seriously considered.
"Australia will be crisscrossed with tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission power lines in this once in a century change to our electricity generation and distribution," the statement read.
"We should not short change our children and their children and generations to come with outdated technology for transmission. We should not put the landscape and environment at greater risk than we need to without a proper and full debate."
Stop HumeLink member Rebecca Tobin said she and the 40 other protesters want Trangrid to know "we're not going away".
"We have been raising concerns about bushfire for the last three years with no answers from Transgrid," she said.
"The only solution is to underground HumeLink, to protect communities, people and firefighting personnel."
Transgrid has maintained that the cost of burying the 360km of power lines underground would become too expensive for consumers.
"Transgrid is committed to doing everything it can to put downward pressure on customer bills," a Trangrid spokesperson said.