Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take note of the answer from Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, to the question I posed today relating to renewable energy and wind farm issues. Whilst it was in the context of Senator Abetz representing the absent-with-leave Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Abetz well knows the issues relating to renewable energy and particularly wind farms, given that, like me, he comes from Tasmania.

The policy adopted by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, and the Liberal government has been highly damaging to wind farms in this country for two reasons. One is the failure of the Liberal government, and particularly the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, to ensure the mandatory renewable energy target, MRET, which provides an incentive for the establishment of wind farms to provide power to our power system within Australia. The second is the direct and capricious actions of Senator Ian Campbell that were made notorious by his refusal to allow the Bald Hills wind farm in Victoria to go ahead on the quite spurious grounds that one orange-bellied parrot in 1,000 years could be killed.