Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Professor Matthew Campen from the University of New Mexico has in a recent study come forward with a rather startling revelation that we may be walking around with up to a spoonful of microplastics which are 100 thousandths of the width of a human hair in our brain. They've crossed the blood brain barrier and are now exacerbating conditions such as dementia. Microplastics such as these come from tyres, cosmetics and clothing, but they also come from wind turbine blades, as clearly pointed out in the November 2024 report by the Department of Wind and Energy Systems at the Technical University of Denmark. There's up to a kilogram of microplastics per year per blade. These microplastics blow off the blade and onto the pasture to be eaten by cattle, then consumed by you, and they enter into your bloodstream and into your brain. Or they enter into the sea to be eaten by the fish which are consumed by you, and they enter into your bloodstream and into your brain.

As Tamara Galloway, professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter, stated, you cannot treat the environment as one big dumping ground. That is how your intermittent power targets and wind turbine blades are treating our countryside and our sea. You may not be able to see the intermittent power wind turbine blades in New England or off the coast of the member for Wannon's electorate, but don't worry; you get to eat some of them later on—but, later on, you may not remember it.

In closing, I also give a big shout-out to Kimberly Hone, the Nationals candidate for Richmond. Go, Kimberly!

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