Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on an issue which is causing grave concern to large parts of my electorate: the way that wind farms are running roughshod over local communities in their efforts to get these wind farms up. With the Mount Fyans wind farm—and I have a petition here with over 400 signatures to it—the company is not listening to Indigenous owners and community groups. In the Shire of the Moyne, where all these wind farms are going, there is not one household which is benefiting from cheaper power. I say to all those people: think what it would do to your local communities if they were being industrialised by transmission lines and by these wind towers.

Most recently, we have seen a proposed wind farm at Garvoc, where they put the planning application in and then went to the communities and told them what they are doing. My communities have had enough. That is why I will be tabling this petition, with 400 signatures, to say: do your consultations properly. Don't plant your transmission lines right across our patch. Don't industrialise our electorates. Do it, do it properly, and do not see all the benefits go to the cities, where, if this were happening there, they would not tolerate it.

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