Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, regularly comes into this chamber full of glowing self-assessments of his achievements and full of glowing self-praise. It tempts me to remind people what is said about self-praise. When any of his claims to greatness and his self-assessment are challenged, his immediate response is that the opposition is doing nothing more then carping or whingeing. When he is confronted with some direct questioning about the rationale behind some of the decisions that he personally makes as a minister or the processes that are being made by the department for which he has responsibility, he simply dismisses the questioning as coming from an opposition that has nothing better to do than carp or whinge and he avoids giving to the Senate and to the senators asking questions meaningful answers or holding himself or his department accountable in the normal way one would expect a minister to do so.

One notable example that comes to mind is the issue of the Bald Hills wind farm project. That was a project that the local member in the area, Mr Russell Broadbent, actively campaigned against. It was also a project that had been subject to a two-year strict environmental study by the Victorian government which approved that project, and which had taken all the environmental issues into consideration before it gave approval some two years earlier for that particular project. But the minister, using the ministerial discretion that he has under the appropriate act, simply banned it on the basis that the orange-bellied parrot may be endangered by the turbines of the wind farm once every thousand years or so.

It would seem logical to most people that the orange-bellied parrot would have more chance of being struck down by lightning than of being endangered by that particular wind farm. Any sensible person could only come to the conclusion that it was more of a political decision than an environmental one, and that it was one to support—in what is considered a marginal seat—one of his political colleagues. I think it is a disgrace that a minister would, in my view, misuse his ministerial prerogative on such blatant political grounds. The $220 million Bald Hills wind farm project would have reduced Australia’s greenhouse emissions by 435,000 tonnes per year. As I said, that project was approved two years ago by the Victorian government after a strict environmental assessment.

The minister then said, ‘I didn’t hear anyone from the Labor Party complaining about a different wind farm 200 kilometres away in Victoria that was not approved by the Victorian government,’ and asked why we were not criticising that. The same tests were applied against both farms by the Victorian government, using a strict environmental process. One passed and one did not based on environmental—not political—considerations. The minister went on to explain that the other wind farm could have endangered two to three wedge-tailed eagles per week. Two or three birds endangered per week is a very different situation to one potential death every thousand years or so. The logic of the minister in trying to give his old position some justification on the basis that the wedge-tailed eagle is at a lesser level on the endangered species list than the orange-bellied parrot and that, in his mind, he is able to reconcile those two things and say, ‘That farm should not have been given permission to go ahead based on the wedge-tailed eagle scenario,’ simply does not flow.

It is a concern that the minister for the environment does not seem to have in his mind the need for Australia to go down the renewable energy path. Wind energy technology is now moving offshore to China in order for it to be commercialised. This minister thinks that is a reasonable outcome when Australia is in the position of desperately needing to develop alternative technologies, but he does not want to provide any encouragement, does not want to set any mandatory renewable targets— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.