Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question without notice is to Senator Campbell, Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Can the minister confirm that he will now be forced to reconsider exactly the same proposal for a wind farm at Bald Hills as the one he blocked four months ago? Isn’t the only change one whereby the company will now submit a management plan for the orange-bellied parrot so as to allay the minister’s concerns about the bird with a once in a thousand-year risk of flying into one of the 23 wind farms somewhere on the Australian coast? Isn’t this precisely what the Department of the Environment and Heritage told the minister he should ask for before he unilaterally vetoed the project in April? Isn’t it also a fact that the government has approved five wind farms with management plans in that area since 2001? Couldn’t this whole fiasco have been avoided if the minister had simply followed the law?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think that the hypocrisy of the Australian Labor Party on this is quite overwhelming. Senator Carr’s comrade in the Victorian government Mr Hulls knocked back a wind farm at Port Fairy and a wind farm at Ballan on the basis that they might kill 2.7 wedge-tailed eagles. This is a species that is not on a threatened species list, unlike the ones in Tasmania where we are down to 130 breeding pairs of wedge-tailed eagles, in northern Tasmania—and three have been killed in the last three months. The Labor Party is deeply embarrassed by the Victorian government’s duplicity and hypocrisy on this matter. This is a Labor Party that has hidden from the Australian people the truth about the impact of bird strike caused by wind farms. Mr Hulls’s and Senator Carr’s Labor Party comrades in Victoria refuse to supply to the Australian public or to the Australian government evidence that it had that the impacts on the orange-bellied parrot were potentially catastrophic. Senator Carr in his question continues to repeat what is clearly untrue in relation to the potential bird impacts. Yesterday in a debate he referred to a report given to me that said that the impact was one in a thousand years. That report nowhere says that. In fact, when the Victorian government wrote to the author of the report and asked them to confirm that their mathematics were correct on that, the response from the Biosis report author was, ‘No, that is not correct.’

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not true.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But if you repeat a lie often enough, as Senator Carr tends to seek to do—he works on the theory that if you repeat a lie often enough it might come true. But once a lie always a lie. I agreed to a request from the proponent that they withdraw their court action. They came to me and said, ‘Let us withdraw the court action.’ They tried to get a whole range of conditions on that.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are big-noting yourself again.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just wish we had some more turbines in here to put in front of the mouths of Senator Evans and Senator Carr because there is far more wind coming out their mouths than there is blowing around the Australian coast at the moment.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! There is too much noise on my left.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What Senator Carr needs to understand—he is obviously confused over this and embarrassed, I suspect—is that the proponents withdrew the court action and said that they would like to put a new submission to me. They have not told me what will be in their submission and I will review the submission when it comes to me. I will certainly not prejudge it.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Why wasn’t it the case that during the minister’s 450-day quest in search of a parrot he did not think to ask this company for a management plan? Doesn’t the taxpayer now face a legal bill of $250,000 because of the actions of a minister who is more interested in political stunts than he is in acting in accordance with the law?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr displays selective indignation about ministers who in the best interests of the Australian environment make decisions based on science and on the law. When his comrade Minister Hulls in Victoria—

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr interjecting—

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

stopped two wind farms in the last six months—

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Based on science? What a joke!

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr turns a blind eye. That can only be described as rank hypocrisy and selective indignation.