Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Can the minister confirm that his department told him in March that the impact of the Bald Hills wind farm on threatened and migratory species was ‘negligible’, and ‘acceptable’, and that ‘there does not appear to be direct evidence of any impact’? Is it true that on the basis of this advice the department recommended that the wind farm should be approved? Can the minister now explain why he subsequently claimed that he had blocked the project because of orange-bellied parrots? Was the department’s advice not clear enough for the minister, where it said that there was no evidence that the wind farm would have anything other than a ‘negligible’ impact on the parrots? What possible grounds could the minister have had for rejecting that scientifically based advice?