Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

My question without notice is to Senator Campbell, Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Can the minister confirm that he will now be forced to reconsider exactly the same proposal for a wind farm at Bald Hills as the one he blocked four months ago? Isn’t the only change one whereby the company will now submit a management plan for the orange-bellied parrot so as to allay the minister’s concerns about the bird with a once in a thousand-year risk of flying into one of the 23 wind farms somewhere on the Australian coast? Isn’t this precisely what the Department of the Environment and Heritage told the minister he should ask for before he unilaterally vetoed the project in April? Isn’t it also a fact that the government has approved five wind farms with management plans in that area since 2001? Couldn’t this whole fiasco have been avoided if the minister had simply followed the law?