Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage (Senator Ian Campbell) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to the proposed wind farm at Bald Hills, Victoria.

What we saw in question time today was the minister’s attempt to defend his complete public humiliation last Friday when confronted with a court process that called into question his totally politically charged decision to knock over a wind farm proposition. What we saw as a result of the court hearings was that the minister was forced to accept a settlement which said that he would reconsider his decision according to law, the clear implication being that the first decision was not determined according to law but was a decision made according to politics—base politics that the minister pursued.

The minister today wanted to discuss the Victorian government, the WA government and something to do with the Supreme Court building in Victoria. He also discussed John Faulkner’s period as environment minister. Distinguished though it was, that did not seem to me to be all that relevant to the minister having to publicly explain why he put in a political fix, why he misused and abused his role as environment minister and why he sought to put political considerations in front of his obligations as a minister of the crown.

The minister’s behaviour in relation to the Bald Hills application for a wind farm is a sorry tale. He spent 450 days in search of a dead parrot. Here are the numbers on this issue: the minister was told that you would get one dead parrot in 1,000 years and that in the 10,000 sightings made when surveying the area they had not found one orange-bellied parrot—they had sighted 10,000 birds but not one parrot. What we know is that although this application was denied he approved 800 other turbines around the coast. While 800 turbines were approved, the Bald Hills application was knocked over—and this is despite the fact that a lot of these turbines were in areas where there is a genuine risk to the orange-bellied parrot and where there have been sightings and are breeding grounds.

What is at the heart of this is that for 450 days the minister refused to make a decision. Why? Because he was in search of an excuse. He was required under the act to make a decision within 30 days, but he took 450 days. From October 2004 until April this year he refused to make a decision. Why? Because he was looking for a justification to knock over the application.

What do we know? We know that every piece of advice that he got said that there was no justification for knocking back the application. His department and the scientific advice all said one thing: ‘There is no basis for you to refuse this application.’ The best he could do was to dredge up a dead parrot and say, ‘There is some minute risk to a parrot, and that is my justification for knocking off this one application.’ He approved 800 other turbines on the basis of the same sort of advice. He did not even require some applications to come to him. But he intervened in this case to ensure that this application did not go ahead.

Why? What was the only thing on the record that would support his decision? I give the minister credit for this, because he is honest in the sense that he honoured a political promise to the people of McMillan. He said before the election when writing to the electors that he would not allow that application to go ahead. Without any evidence and without any consideration for his role as minister he promised that it would be stopped. And you have to give him his dues: he did stop it. He put in the political fix. It took him 450 days to find the dead parrot to use as his excuse, but he finally found that and he hung the decision on that.

What we know is: at the first whiff of court action, he was humiliated. He had to withdraw and pay the legal costs of the other side because his advice was that he did not have a case. Now he has had to commit to going back and reconsidering his decision. It is a humiliating backdown, and what it shows is that he is not fit to be the minister for the environment. No-one—not industry, not the environmental community—can have any confidence in the decision-making processes, because they know that he will put a political fix in front of proper decision making.