Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell. Can the minister confirm that in September 2002, three months after lodging its proposal for a wind farm at Bald Hills, Windpower lodged a separate proposal for a wind farm at Wonthaggi, about 20 minutes drive up the road? Did the Wonthaggi proposal explicitly recognise that the wind farm posed a threat to the orange-bellied parrots because the bird had actually been seen in the vicinity? Is it not true that, despite the proven threat, the government allowed that wind farm to go ahead without any conditions at all? Why is it that an application which explicitly acknowledges a threat to the orange-bellied parrots gets approved without conditions but another application for a wind farm 20 minutes up the road, which did not identify any threat, gets held up for 450 days and gets knocked off?