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

I have made it quite clear to the states that if you want to build a climate change policy that has wind as part of the renewables response to it, you cannot have state Labor governments continuing to ride roughshod over the views of local communities. You need to engage them.

In Western Australia, the new Minister for the Environment, Mr McGowan, said at a recent meeting of environment ministers: ‘Sometimes you have got to roll over the local community’—as he sought to do in the town of Denmark in Western Australia, and as Mr Hulls has done in Gippsland. He said to local communities, ‘You cannot have a say.’ The approach is to build a set of guidelines to ensure that communities have a say in the future of their communities. We know that Labor is opposed to that. We know that, down in Gippsland, for every two wind turbines that will be built under this government, they will build five. And they will do it without any reference to the views of local communities.