Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate this opportunity to say something about what is happening in the world, not to blame the Labor Party or any government about what made it happen but to blame them if we do not prepare ourselves for what is coming our way. Guy Adams, on the Isle of Barra, which is probably the most westerly point of Scotland for a hotel, is wondering whether he is going to keep his doors open. His power bill is going from 25,000 pounds a year to 125,000 pounds a year. That would mean, of course, that the people who are cash strapped have no capacity to come there and pay the cost to run a room.

The power crisis in Britain did not start with the war in the Ukraine. It started with the so-called 'wind drought' that meant that their reliance on renewables was unable to meet the requirements of the economy. It was then exacerbated by the war in the Ukraine, but there is no doubt it started with the so-called 'wind drought'. Now, why do I say this? It's because we are now rinsing and repeating in Australia what is happening in other parts of the world, and this is very dangerous.

The other day, I went to my local town, Walcha. I played rugby for Walcha. We won the grand final in 1990. It was pretty good. The town of 1,000-plus people beat a city with 67,000 people. In that town of a thousand there were over 200 people at the Walcha bowling club. Why? It was because in the town of Walcha they are about to build 515 wind towers around the town. Now, in that compendium of people who appeared there that night were members of the Greens who spoke, local counsellors, members who support the Labor Party and me. I felt I was on the surest ground, because I said: 'You wanted a renewable target. You got it. Here it is. This is it. This is what it looks like.' The Greens speaker was very good, very articulate and very cogent, and said, 'I did not come here to live in an industrial park,' and I said, 'That's precisely what you're going to have.'

The umbrage we feel is that, as we get our 550 wind towers around Walcha, there's not one that's going to be built in Manly. There's not one that's going to be built in Bondi, Toorak or on a beach in Western Australia. We will assuage their feeling of whatever it is—guilt—but we actually have to pay for it. It becomes incumbent upon us.

The other big issue is this: as we spoke to farmers, who get paid about $30,000 per tower, we said: 'Who is responsible for pulling them down when these things become out of date? Look at the contract you have entered into.' I said: 'If you have a coal mine, the decommissioning of it is the responsibility of the person who takes the lease out. They have to put money in a trust to clean up the site. It is not so for wind towers. The wind towers are the responsibility who of the people whose land it is on. This will mean there will be contingent liability that will rest upon the land. I went through how much these cost to pull down. They have to bring up specialised cranes, of which and there are only a couple in Australia, and truck the stuff out. It is about $500,000 a wind tower. In some of these places, the decommissioning cost would be more than the cost to replace, and the banks realise this as well with regard to how much money to lend them. They now have small modular reactors—20 metres high, 2.7 metres wide, 77 megawatts. Two of them would power the city of Tamworth, if you look at six kilowatts per house. Some say it's only two to three. Two would take the place of hundreds of wind towers. Very quickly, wind towers will become obsolete technology, and we will have a massive problem, like dilapidated council flats, festooned across our nation. (Time expired)