Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this motion moved by the member for La Trobe, for this motion gives the House an opportunity to take a reality check and to examine the effects and the costs of diverting our nation's scarce and precious resources into subsidising industrial wind farms. Firstly, far from state planning regulations being unreasonably restrictive on wind farm developments, as this motion claims, the states have so far abjectly failed to protect our rural communities, by having planning regulations and noise guidelines so lax as to be perfectly biased in favour of inappropriately sited wind farms. This motion displays a complete contempt for the rural people of Australia, many of whom are unlucky enough to be situated in areas where wind turbines could potentially be located.

Back in 2005, the United Nations Environment Program, with one of those 'the science is settled' predictions, asserted that global warming would create millions of climate change refugees. By 2010, it was said, these people would be forced to flee their homes because of rising sea levels from melting ice caps. Well, 2010 has come and gone and there has not been a single person made a climate refugee because of rising sea levels. However, here in Australia we now have some of the world's first climate refugees, forced to flee their homes not by rising sea levels but by government policies subsidising industrial wind turbines. Dr Sarah Laurie has documented over 20 Australian families who have been forced to flee their homes in Victoria alone because of wind turbine noise and infrasound. Dr Laurie states:

… current noise guidelines are completely inadequate to protect people's health because they do not involve measurement of infrasound and low frequency noise.

Today I received a letter from Mrs Pamela Connelly, an Australian climate change refugee forced to flee her home because of inadequate planning regulations which have allowed wind farms to be built too close to her home. I would like to read her letter:

I am writing to share with you our personal experience of living for three years alongside (1.2 km away) a Pacific Hydro wind turbine and more importantly the contrast after having lived away from them for 18 months.

The first time the turbines started to turn … imagine our shock of hearing a constant sort of jet engine/sonic boom whooshing sound and more annoyingly feeling a vibration sometimes in our chest bone every second or so.

When the turbines were at their worst, this noise continued day and night even through closed double glazed windows. I recall sitting on the couch on one of those earlier nights and amazed that not only could I clearly hear the turbines, but also feel the wave of vibrations every second or so through my whole body.

Another thing that increased very gradually was headaches, and in the last year or so I was taking Nurofen migraine tablets regularly … The headaches were sometimes so bad that unarmed with Nurofen, the migraines were completely debilitating … These headaches stopped straight away after moving away and in the past 18 months I have only taken two Nurofen tablets.

Mrs Connelly continues:

We asked at a meeting Pacific Hydro for written proof that it was safe for the health of us and more importantly our children but this could not be supplied.

On further questioning to Pacific Hydro at a meeting at our house we were told no further testing was needed—

and nothing could be done. She continues:

It is not until you move away from the turbines that you realise the profound effect that they had on you. You don't particularly connect the symptoms to the wind turbines because they very gradually build up over time and you put it down to co-incidence or anything as you really don't want to believe that staying where you love is making you unwell, it really only becomes clear in a short time after you leave the vicinity of the turbines how much of an effect they were having on you when the symptoms disappear.

So to the member who bought this motion I say, 'Shame,' for your motion seeks to inflict the type of pain and suffering experienced by Mrs Connelly on hundreds if not thousands of rural Australians and strip away their property rights and force them out of their homes.

This motion also farcically talks about considerable opportunities for increased employment in connection with the construction of wind turbines. This is a complete fallacy. Wind turbines are ludicrously inefficient. Let us not lie about the costs. The electricity they produce is 500 per cent more expensive than electricity produced by coal-fired plants. Simply because of their inefficiency, no one would invest in wind turbines unless they were guaranteed some type of government handout or special government privilege.

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