Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party like to talk about this as a backdown. I reiterate: the proponents to construct the wind turbines came to the Commonwealth and said that they would like to get this out of court, and we said that we thought that was a good idea for the taxpayer. They also asked that we pay their costs. Apparently, according to my legal advisers, that is the entirely normal thing that a government does. That is the advice of my legal advisers. It is probably the same advice that previous Labor governments got. The trouble with Labor on this issue is that they say that you cannot protect threatened species and build renewable energy. This government is seeking to do both. We are pumping billions of dollars into wind farms and hundreds of millions of dollars into solar and other renewables and we are protecting threatened species. We believe in a sophisticated approach to this; Labor just want to play politics.