Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to reassure anyone who might be listening who is perhaps feeling unwell because they are told that wind farms make them sick that they need not worry; there is no evidence anywhere on the globe that wind farms are damaging to human health—not by the NHMRC, not anywhere in the world. In fact, what we do know is that there is harm because people are told they should be worried about wind farms. This is the problem. We have a government that cuts funding to actual scientists, including the CSIRO and the NHMRC, slashes public servants who are meant to be looking after these sorts of things and now is being asked by the crossbench to establish a whole lot of new quack bodies to look into fake science. What an absolute tragedy. But the government, of course, will be loving this. Its objective, as we know, is to slash clean energy, and unfortunately it has done that by roping in the Labor Party to agree to a deal to cut the clean energy target.

And, as was revealed today in correspondence between the minister and the crossbench that linked in to recommendations of this particular wind farms inquiry, they now have a deal with the crossbench to undermine wind farms and wind energy, and to burn native forest. The government will be laughing all the way to the dirty coal bank on this one. They have succeeded in undermining clean energy. They have succeeded in burning native forest and throwing that lifeline to the native forest logging industry, which the rest of the world had walked away from, given that no-one wants woodchips from habitat. And now, of course, they are succeeding in undermining what little investor confidence there was left in wind—in clean energy generated from wind.

Of course, the huge irony here is that this government purport to be on a red-tape reduction program; yet today, in that draft correspondence on Minister Hunt's letterhead, they have agreed with the list of crossbench requirements for additional red tape on wind—baseless and completely unneeded, nonetheless red tape, to use their language—the irony that some red tape is good and some red tape is bad. Of course, the other irony is that this government want to give away environmental approval responsibilities under our actual environmental laws down to state governments. Here, thanks to the pressure from the crossbench to do the deal so that they can burn forests, they are wanting to take a state responsibility and intervene in wind farm regulation in town planning. This government know no bounds in terms of hypocrisy.

If it was genuinely concerned about the health impacts of energy generation, the government would look at the health impacts of coal. For heaven's sake, we had the Morwell fires where actual damage was done to people's health. We have coal dust with those tiny particulates that cause all sorts of respiratory problems for people. We know that coal is incredibly damaging for people's health—heart disease rates are increased, cancer rates are increased. We know that coal is worsening and, in fact, driving climate change with all of its associated health impacts. So if you are really worried about the health impacts of energy generation, where is the coalmine commissioner? Why do we have a wind farm commissioner rather than a coalmine commissioner to look at the health impacts of what is genuinely a damaging fossil fuel, damaging not only to human health but also to the environment? Unfortunately, this is just more of what can be expected from the government's tinfoil hat brigade. They do not understand climate science, they do not really like science at all and they are desperate to fall over themselves to do any deal they can that will see clean energy production in this nation. There is not a single other nation that is going backwards on climate ambition, yet this parliament has cut the carbon price and it is now seeking to cut the renewable energy target.

It is doing so because it has got a dirty deal with the crossbench, who are really concerned about wind. They need not be. I feel for them and I am sorry that they have been duped by the fake science, but there is no need for people to be concerned. Wind power is not damaging to health. It is part of the climate solution. It is in fact an industry that has the potential to generate thousands of jobs and billions of investment dollars. This is part of the clean energy mix of the future. It is not some bogeyman. If you are concerned about health impacts, look at coal.

This government has succeeded from low to go to create the uncertainty that it always wanted to create. It opened the door to negotiations with the Labor Party. Unfortunately, the Labor Party came to the table and let them cloak it in some legitimacy. Now, we hear that the Prime Minister is not happy just to cut the renewable energy target down to 33 gigawatt hours. He wants to go further. He has admitted that he wished there was never a renewable energy target in the first place, he wished that John Howard had never done that and he wanted to reduce it even further but it was all he could get through the Senate.

We are seeing what he can get through the crossbench today with this junk science that is scaring people about the impacts of wind power. We absolutely condemn this interim report.