Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the many different people that make up our Queensland community, three weeks ago I travelled the Atherton Tablelands, known locally as the Garden of Eden. The area is amongst the world's most productive farmland. Original native forest and vegetation still cover much of the tablelands—until now. Now, foreign predatory, parasitic corporations are replacing our natural environment with an industrial landscape of wind turbines. Thousands of hectares are being cleared to make way for 86 wind turbines in the foreign-owned Chalumbin industrial wind development. At 250 metres tall, these towers will have the third-longest blades in the world. Installing these parasitic misinvestments involves literally grinding the tops off mountains to create the large, flat area needed for the base of these monsters, plus access roads and easements to get the power back to where it is needed. This is industrial-level environmental vandalism.

Already, the nearby foreign-owned Kaban development has created scars across the tops of mountains, destroying habitat for native flora and fauna. Kaban has disturbed arsenic naturally in local rock formations. We simply don't know what effect this will have on native wildlife in the years ahead. The Woodleigh Swamp is an important wetland. Thousands of swans and brolgas normally rest here each year. Locals say that since Kaban opened, only a few kilometres away, the swamp has been almost deserted. Kaban and Chalumbin environmental impact statements make no mention of the catastrophic effects these installations have on uplift capacity for migratory and soaring birds, nor abandonment of natural upland habitat, despite a wealth of papers proving the link. The Australian Conservation Foundation are calling for an end to wind turbines being located in virgin bushland. That should be the consensus. The Atherton Tablelands community I listen to have asked me to relay a message to Minister Plibersek: end the environmental vandalism now!