Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to applaud the recently launched Australian renewables truth map by Steven Nowakowski and Rainforest Reserves Australia. It has taken three years of voluntary work to collate the information to create this website, and it's not an easy task to find and then map it for everybody in Australia to view and use. With over 1,200 projects proposed across the country, this should have been on the radar of our own environmental department, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. After all, they're the ones signing off on the vast amounts of clearing to allow half a billion solar panels and more than 31,000 wind turbines to be imported and installed across Australia.

The mapping has allowed the real costs of the projects to be calculated, and it's not free energy. It is an astonishing $1.38 trillion to industrialise Australia with intermittent and unreliable power, clearing over 44,000 kilometres of new access roads—up to 60 metres wide—to allow for blades and infrastructure around 100 metres long. These are the real costs. There are over 90 of these projects in the Flynn electorate, including Moah Creek. The project directly affects significant amounts of flora and fauna, including ancient cycads that should be protected under the EPBC Act. These landscapes must be preserved.

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