Bernard and Carmel Righetti said they were offered $8000 a year to host an NBN tower.

But a strong sense of social responsibility to the local community would not allow them to accept the offer, the couple said.

Mr and Mrs Righetti said a tower on land they owned in Alice Street would have been too close to residents’ houses.

But a new application on land owned by another Smeaton farmer would put a tower adjacent to land on which the Righetti’s children plan to build houses.

“We are most upset that the application is riding roughshod over our family’s potentiality,” the couple said in a letter to Hepburn Shire Council.

Mrs Righetti said Australian safety standards for wireless towers were much less stringent than those imposed overseas.

She likened the issue to early safety concerns about tobacco and asbestos, adding a family member was already fighting a battle against cancer.

Her comments come as community opposition mounts to another locally proposed communications tower at Buninyong.

Residents have voted to fight plans to erect a tower there “as long and as hard as necessary”.

A planning permit for a tower at 37 White Hills Road, Smeaton, was lodged with council in November.

Mrs Righetti questioned the timing of the application, making it difficult for people to object over the Christmas holiday period.

She said the proposed 40-metre tower adjoined land where two of their nine children plan to build houses.

“The proposed wireless tower renders our (home) sites completely unsuitable to live on because of its proximity,” she said.

The site is also approximately 500 metres from Smeaton Primary School but the school’s principal, Liz Carmody, could not be contacted for comment.

The New South Wales Department of Education does not endorse telecommunication facilities within 500 metres of a school fence.

But a spokesman for the Victorian Department of Education could not confirm a similar policy.

According to the Smeaton permit application, the landholder is Mr Ian Miller.

Mr Miller did not respond to calls from this newspaper.

A spokesperson from NBN said their wireless towers would emit a “small fraction of acceptable safety limits” for electromagnetic energy, much less than power levels required by television and radio broadcasts.

“The safety standard in Australia is based on the international safety standard recommended by the World Health Organisation,” the spokesperson said.