Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Negative. If you look at the science, the interesting part of this is that the variability is in the capacity for a parrot to avoid the strike. It is called ‘avoidance’. In this report, it was worked out that there will be 98 per cent avoidance. There are other behaviours of this parrot, however, that may alter that. The reason that it is so hard to know how many there are is that it may migrate at night. This report clearly indicates that that may well be a scenario and that any impacts at all on this parrot are going to be extremely deleterious to its continued survival.

If you look at the whole range of scientific impacts discussed in this report and apply the precautionary principle, if it migrates at night there will not be 98 per cent avoidance. I have not had the opportunity this afternoon to do the numbers on that, but one would think that the number of parrots—or half parrots—endangered would increase substantively. This continued use of the phrase ‘one in 1,000 years’ is disingenuous. I will quote the study:

Given that the Orange-bellied Parrot is predicted to have an extremely high probability of extinction in its current situation, almost any negative impact on the species could be sufficient to tip the balance against its continued existence. In this context it may be argued that any avoidable deleterious effect—even the very minor predicted impacts of turbine collisions—should be prevented.

Senator Carr went on to tell me that parrots are very hard to find. We got plenty of parrot jokes from Senator Carr. He said that they are particularly hard to find. He said that we have only seen one 40 kilometres from Bald Hills. It is not the information that he provides but the information that he leaves out that is important. I would have thought that he would have read the report. The reason they are so difficult to observe is very specifically laid out in the report. Not only are there very few birds in the extended population but there are only a very small number of ornithologists able to identify the bird. Further, the terrain along much of the west coast of Tasmania—its habitat—is very difficult, and access to that terrain is also very difficult. Also, often when it is seen in the open it is because it is flying across Bass Strait, and unless you happen to have the right sort of ornithologist on the boat at that moment it is obviously going to be pretty difficult to observe. Further, the size of its habitat along the coastline of Tasmania is extremely large. Again, I point out the fairly disingenuous arguments being made by the other side. They are trying to provide real scientific evidence and failing. It is absolute gammon; it has absolutely no scientific substance.

We make a lot of fun of the orange-bellied parrot but the Victorian government’s own website states that several proposals over recent years have been stopped due to the risk to the orange-bellied parrot. In fact, the Victorian government ranks the orange-bellied parrot among the rarest and most endangered of world wildlife, alongside the giant panda and the Siberian tiger. The precarious position of the orange-bellied parrot was recently recognised by the World Conservation Union, which has included the bird on its red list of critically endangered species. It is extremely endangered.