Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Ian Campbell, Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Isn’t the sole basis of the minister’s defence of his Bald Hills decision a single sentence from the Biosis report, that ‘almost any negative impact on the species could be sufficient to tip the balance’ against the orange-bellied parrot? Did the minister even bother to read the next sentence in the report, which says, in relation to blocking wind farms:

... such actions will have extremely limited beneficial value to conservation of the parrot without addressing very much greater adverse effects ... currently operating against it.

Doesn’t that sentence completely destroy the minister’s defence of this blatantly political decision? Can the minister tell the chamber why he has failed to tell the whole truth and, instead, has selectively quoted words to justify his political decision to veto Bald Hills?