Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to express my support for the motion moved by the member for La Trobe reaffirming the parliament's commitment to the promotion of clean energy industries and the importance of wind energy as a renewable energy source. I refer the member for Hughes to the Wind turbine health impact study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, whose epidemiological studies suggest no association between wind turbine noise and psychological or other distress. As for this question of needing backup sources of power, I do not know whether the member for Hughes is aware of it or not, but there is such a thing as a national electricity grid which serves to ensure that renewable energy sources are used to maximum effect. Wind power is a significant component of any effective response to climate change. Building more wind farms will help facilitate the structural change we need to become a low-carbon economy.

It is with great concern, then, that I note that the Victorian Baillieu government is imposing unreasonable restrictions on wind farm development. Its changes extend considerably the areas to be excluded from wind farm development in Victoria. In effect, they create wind farm no-go zones. Wind energy facilities are to be excluded from such areas due to various concerns that they raise. Quite remarkably, proposed wind farm developments now need to obtain the written consent of any owner of a dwelling within two kilometres of any turbine. While the Baillieu government says that such amendments provide certainty, the amendments effectively create a presumption against wind farm development over a large part of Victoria. There will be negative consequences for investments in wind farm facilities. By creating many no-go zones for wind farm development in Victoria, the amendments will re-entrench existing patterns for energy transmission and generation and impact on Victoria's commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The amendments are also tarnished by the revelation that a Victorian Liberal MP, Simon Ramsay, lobbied against the wind farm if its developer, Acciona, did not meet a series of requests, including buying his family's Western District farm. He sought a string of concessions, including that the company pay him $66,000 to grow trees as a noise and visual screen, scrap all turbines within two kilometres of his home and pay for works, including the sealing of the local gravel road. Mr Ramsay represents western Victoria in the state upper house and made the demands in a letter to Acciona over its plan to erect to 63 turbines at Birregurra, near Colac. In the past, he had been a champion of wind farms and had in fact obtained permits for turbines on a parcel of land that he has since sold. His lobbying triggered allegations that he sought to use his political access for personal gain and that he may have failed to adequately notify parliament of his interest during key debates on new wind farm rules last year.

A new report by the accountancy group PricewaterhouseCoopers for Acciona finds that the Waubra wind farm has boosted the economy of its region, near Ballarat, by $346 million and has created nearly 1,700 jobs for the area. The modelling by PricewaterhouseCoopers finds that investment in the Waubra farm of $226 million has increased Victorian industry output by $685 million and created over 1,800 new full-time jobs. In New South Wales, investment of over $50 million in the construction and operation of the Gunning wind farm created over 350 full-time jobs in its region, reduced regional unemployment and added over $69 million to gross domestic product for the area.

Renewable energy infrastructure, construction and maintenance create more jobs per dollar invested than conventional power generation. The Baillieu government needs to rethink its new laws for wind farms, which will cost jobs and investment in regional Victoria, stunt the growth of the wind farm industry and damage the environment. It is a remarkable double standard that the Victorian government is giving landowners within two kilometres of wind farms an effective right of veto when in every other circumstances you can think of it is eroding local residents' rights to object to planning proposals. Not only do my constituents in Brunswick not have a power of veto over the planned expansion of the Brunswick electricity terminal station; the state government expressly moved in to override the decision of the Moreland City Council to reject the expansion.

I challenge the Victorian government to nominate any other piece of infrastructure—power stations, coalmines, freeways, airports—where every resident within two kilometres is required to agree before the project can proceed. There is none and it is a dead giveaway of the Victorian government's unreasoning and inexplicable hostility to wind power that it should be singled out for such treatment.

See this speech in context