David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a really important MPI. I want to reject a lot of those assertions. Eighty-two per cent is totally unrealistic. There is no country in the world, unless you're somewhere that has oodles of lakes like Canada, that can do renewables to 82 per cent. Here are the basic physics—to get it off my chest—so you understand: grids run on alternating current, and renewables, unless they're synchronist generators, generate direct current. They have to synthesise it into alternating current and it's very unstable with big machines. If you can prove to me that this hypothetical world exists and you can find an engineer who says it will, you're doing well, because we can't.

At today's rally against too many renewables, people came from around the country. I have people here today whose livelihoods, their own town's industry, are at risk. I met people from Port Stephens who I have met at huge rallies in Port Stephens and in Hawks Nest but there were also people affected by the Illawarra offshore wind farm which, like the Port Stephens, Hunter and wild coast proposal, will destroy the commercial fishing industry. It will destroy the blue water economy. The 1,400 square kilometre area of the Illawarra occupies half the fishing grounds of the South Coast fishing fleet. That's both for eating fish and for eastern rock lobster. It is the same with Port Stephens. It's a billion-dollar economy based around commercial fishing and blue water tourism. Both these areas are pristine—so much for saving the environment.

This is going to impact RAMSAR-protected islands and birds—kestrels and other sea birds. Some 40,000 giant whales pass through these offshore wind farms. There are a lot of electromagnetic fields—the mapping, the sounds—and there are 6,000 commercial ships going in and out of the Port of Newcastle and Port Stephens. The risk during storms and tempests for these massive 267 metre high wind turbines that are anchored by wires to cement blocks will be Pasha Bulka times 300 in each area—that's how many wind turbines there are. It will clash with the East Coast current and divert it because there will be so much turbulence.

The economic concerns of these areas are valid. If you're in these places that mums and dads own looking out to sea, the views will be destroyed. The Australian Property Institute has conservatively estimated that all these houses will decrease in value, as will all these jobs and industries that exist in these areas opposite them.

You've got the same environmental vandalism happening in Queensland. There are going to be 600,000 hectares in Queensland, along the Great Dividing Range, destroyed by these onshore wind farms that are popping up all over the place, with all these cowboy carpetbaggers who sign things up and get them approved by the local council without even councillors knowing. There are ridiculous leave passes for all the environmental checks and balances for these wind farms. It's the same in New South Wales, except they get a leave pass higher up the chain of government.

People on the other side are obsessed with talking about really expensive nuclear projects, but they never talk about the best-case-managed nuclear projects, like the one in the Emirates. We all know about Hinkley C; it's an example of how you don't do it; that's why people don't do it the way they've done it. But in the Emirates they have 5,600 megawatts—almost the same as the baseload of New South Wales—built and delivered and operating in the Emirates for US$22 billion. They started building it just as I came into parliament, in 2013, and, in the space of 10 years, they have built exactly what we need in New South Wales. It's cheap if you do it well.

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