Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We're here again today. We've been here many times, and it is disappointing how close we've been at times. It wouldn't be right to name things spoken of outside this chamber, but at one stage we got to an amendment that would have seen coal seam gas and things like that on people's properties thrown into the scope of this as something we agreed to. An amendment was going to be put, we were going to vote for it and that vote would have got this across the line. It fell short and never happened—it was backed out of—so we're here again today. Senator Scarr sat here and very eloquently went through the reasons: 77 pages of shown failure in the Dyer report.

If I was introducing a product and I had a 92 per cent disapproval rating in market testing, it would be put in the bin. If I had a product and it had an eight per cent approval rating, in terms of benefits to the buyers, it would be put in the bin. But what is being done with this policy? It is being accelerated. It is being fast-tracked and rammed down throats.

Let's not pretend that the government is afraid of what the report will say. The committee we're sending it to will sit there and go through this. No particular group has a majority. The committee will go through the process. The government are scared of what will be said in evidence to it; they're not scared of what the report might say. They'll be scared of even hearing the story. As parents, sometimes we protect our kids from nightmares. We protect them from bad stories, from monsters and from the bogeyman. But this is the people of Australia, and they are being prevented from being told the truth because of the fear of what that truth holds.

We heard about the numbers. Ninety two per cent of people fear that the consultation on this process isn't good enough. Only eight per cent or nine per cent think that their community will benefit from these programs. A report hidden in Victoria says that 70 per cent of agricultural lands will disappear to build these things. We had a motion today talking about stopping PEP-11, where we might see four gas rigs off the coast of the Hunter. In that corner of the chamber there was consternation that four gas rigs might be off the coast pumping gas. But instead, we're hearing that 400 wind turbines, 280 metres tall—when offshore wind has never been commercially viable anywhere in the world—is a good thing. This is the hypocrisy of this place.

We hear that out in the Central West and Orana area there are kilometres of lines going through revegetation areas. They're going through family farmlands. They're going through important environmental lands where people have been denied the ability to farm for years because of the state of those lands, but they're okay for transmission lines. In Oberon, we're seeing towers being put on top of cliffs 600 metres tall—another 285 metres on top of that—almost a kilometre above the mean ground level, and that is okay.

We've seen former senator Bob Brown come out against these wind towers. We've seen other Greens campaigners come out against the transmission lines because they see what's happening. That is the evidence. They hear fear coming from the people. In the Illawarra they hear about the offshore wind down there coming forward. We're hearing about a political decision in relation to VNI West, where I'll be in a couple of weeks, to move the line hundreds of kilometres away because it suits some politicians, but it doesn't suit the landholders. All through the New England in New South Wales there are windfarms and wind factories going up everywhere. This is the whole point. They call them windfarms because it sounds nice. They are industrial installations in rural areas.

These people cannot have a voice for the fear of truth in this building—not fear of a report or fear of legislation, but the fear of truth. Have we become so brittle in our country now that we can't hear those truths? Never mind doing anything about it. Have we become so fearful that we will not give those people a platform to speak their truth? I ask that for all the people I talk to throughout New South Wales—from New England, through Port Stephens, through the Illawarra, out in Oberon, and out through Orana and the Central West. That is all they are asking for at the start, and we can start finding solutions. This is what we're not looking at. Anyone can find a problem. Some of these people have solutions. The way we negotiate the land, the way we acquire land, the height of these wind turbines, the distance from houses, the distance from property—all of these things are thought through. Instead of acquiring an access lane that comes through and takes up the land, can we acquire the whole property and the value and the business for a cheaper rate than diverting the line, for example? All of these things have to be thought through. We have to become a parliament of solutions. This is hard; we get it. But some of these solutions may be contained there.

This motion will not go to a vote tonight. It will go to a vote later this week. And I would ask that we walk in to hear some truths. I have not come in here casting aspersions here and there about what money is here and what money is there. That will happen. This process will happen. In terms of environmental impact statements, a 28-day period to study 900-page documents is not enough. Getting black paper bags with compulsory acquisition notices on your fence and gate is not good enough. Not having a say on how this happens—because we're using the state compulsory acquisition laws that are not 'just terms', like the federal law—is not good enough, nor is promoting this race to programs. I sit in here and I hear very good arguments when the people who are against nuclear say: 'There is not this built in the world. It doesn't exist. You're making something up.' But, on the other side, there is no commercially viable floating offshore wind farm in the world. There is no commercially viable green hydrogen electrolyser in the world. But we have to take their word for it that that exists. I am prepared to take a leap of faith on those things, but we can't take a leap of faith on reading these people.

I'm not conflating numbers. There weren't thousands out the front; there were hundreds out the front. There were large numbers out the front on this, but the number in Mr Dyer's report doesn't lie. It represents the thousands of people that didn't come here and who couldn't come here because they're trying to make a living on the farm. Let's just stick with those numbers. Ninety-two per cent say this is failing as a process. Only eight per cent see real benefit to their communities of this process. That's not even a consultation. Seventy-seven pages of failure is the result of the report we were told we were waiting for here, yet the answer is the same—no to this study. People can argue that this is about politics, but the 'no' is about politics as much as the 'we want it' is about politics. We don't want to hear that the disaster story is about politics, because it might interrupt a program we're happy with. No-one is thinking about the improvement it can make to that process. No-one is thinking about doing this. Australia is a big country. There's room for everything, except that our policy seems to be punishing Australians for others. And, if we are a chamber that cherishes truth, if we are a chamber that cherishes Australians, we shall stop, think about this, invite these people to our building and ask them, 'What can we do better for you? '