Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. It's farmers that are actually the targets. In the South West of WA, in what is the iconic and beautiful Geographe Bay, Labor has decided to build a wind factory. It has declared a zone of 4,000 square kilometres with massive turbines of nearly 300 metres from base to blade tip—close to 1,000 turbines—with prices and profits for investors underpinned by Labor's Capacity Investment Scheme, which now means the profits of these offshore companies will be underwritten by Australian taxpayers year on year. All of this is off the federal budget.

With the wind factory proposal, what we saw in the South West was a terrible and arrogant and superficial, badly named—misnamed—'public consultation'. It wasn't a consultation. It was typical of the steamrolling of regional communities that we're seeing in other states. Over time, I suspect our communities will be left with this rusting infrastructure in one of the most loved, visited and enjoyed areas in Australia, Geographe Bay. Of all places, Geographe Bay is the wrong place. This is for locals and for domestic and international visitors. This is where the diving, the fishing, the camping and the recreational and commercial fishing and boating happen. No wonder our communities are so strongly opposed to this. They didn't want it, and they are absolutely strong and active and vocal in their opposition, angered and frustrated by the process, a bit like that of this bill, of terribly arrogant and superficial consultation. It wasn't consultation at all. And the representatives at these sessions couldn't even answer basic questions for us about exclusion zones. They told us that the exclusion zones could range from 50 to 500 metres around each turbine and the actual distance would not be known for up to 10 to 12 years. How's that? Over time, our community would be left with rusting and aging massive turbines that need to be replaced on a regular basis or left for taxpayers to deal with. It's one or the other. It's a regular replacement. The Leader of the Opposition came to the electorate and said that we will not proceed. The coalition will not proceed with this project if the coalition wins government. I see that four of the proposed proponents of this project have pulled out of the application process. The deadline for the applications was pushed back twice and ended last month.

But here's something else. I also read that Australia's oldest commercial wind farm, the Chinese-owned Pacific Blue, has said it will not re-power the site at Codrington in Victoria, because it will be too expensive. So here we are. These are supposed to keep going. They're supposed to be endless wind and solar. We have a site that was commissioned—

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