Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

to contact the department to find out where it is up to. I made an inquiry and found out that the department was still considering the application and had yet to deliver advice, so it is impossible to make a decision on the application before I receive that advice. That would be rather stupid, but I guess you expect stupid suggestions from Labor and Senator Carr on environment approvals.

What is important to note, however, is that there are two points which again demonstrate the Labor Party’s hypocrisy on this issue. Firstly, regarding the advice on the impacts to threatened species—in fact, in this case it is about a critically endangered species and the threat to extinction of that critically endangered species—the Victorian minister received the identical advice and used such advice to close down not only one wind farm but two wind farms in Victoria. Furthermore, the former member for McMillan, a member of the Australian Labor Party, proposed a private member’s bill to close down the Bald Hills wind farm. I do not know whether the Australian Labor Party has yet withdrawn the private member’s bill to close down the Bald Hills wind farm, but at the moment, until they make an announcement on the previous member for McMillan’s private member’s bill, their policy is to stop the Bald Hills wind farm.

The other thing that should be noted is that the Labor Party ignored the impact on critically endangered species, for whatever reason—I do not know why. However, to the great credit of the developers of the Bald Hills wind farm, they have in fact respected the consultants’ report that looks at those impacts and, as I understand it, the proposal they put forward is to radically change the proposal and shift the wind turbines some miles from the habitat of these critically endangered species—not only the orange-bellied parrot that so—