Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the 188th report of the Committee of Privileges, entitled Person referred to in the Senate: Ms Andrea Selvey, and I move:

That the report be adopted.

This report forms part of a series of reports recommending that a right of reply be afforded to persons who claim that they have been adversely affected by being referred to in the Senate either by name or in such a way as to be readily identified.

On 8 December 2025 the President received a submission from Ms Andrea Selvey relating to a speech made in the Senate by Senator Whitten on 28 October 2025. The President referred the submission to the committee under privilege resolution (5). The committee has considered the submission and recommends that Ms Selvey's response be incorporated in Hansard.

The committee reminds the Senate that, in matters of this nature, it does not judge the truth or otherwise of statements made by senators or the persons referred to; rather, it ensures that these persons' submissions—and, ultimately, the responses it recommends—accord with the criteria set out in privilege resolution (5). I commend the motion to the Senate.

Tyron Whitten (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Tuesday 28 October last year, I gave an adjournment speech which discussed the governance failings and questionable conduct at the Shire of Augusta Margaret River in Western Australia.

Ten years ago public officers from this local government set the objective of developing a wind farm and then outsourced the project directly to their own external corporation, known as AMRCCE. The same people then used public resources to support their project. For these ten years the shire and AMRCCE only ever promoted a community-owned 10-megawatt project, but last year the wind farm was secretly sold to Synergy, who is now advancing a project more than ten times larger right in the heart of the Blackwood River and Scott River seasonal wetlands.

The community and I have both received direct responses from the shire in relation to my speech. The shire CEO, Ms Andrea Selvey, attacked me through a public statement on the shire website and through a hostile letter attacking my personal integrity. The community was also on the receiving end. Selvey contacted Facebook community group administrators to censor my speech and information from the community. In the 26 November council meeting, the shire president, Ms Julia Jean-Rice, can be watched on YouTube threatening residents with claims that there are certain procedures they can follow in relation to what she terms 'defamatory misinformation'. These are the standard buzzwords for when somebody's on to you. Ms Jean-Rice also says that the shire pursuing a large-scale renewable energy project without a guiding policy would be bad governance. We'll, that's exactly what they've been up to at the shire since 2017.

These shire leaders want these matters to go away. Not only are they trying to censor information but they are covering up their tracks. For example, the key minuted records which showcase AMRCCE's overlap with the shire are no longer on the shire's website. The sustainability advisory committee and reference group meetings across 2017 to 2021 are one such example. AMRCCE's conduct is also questionable. This so-called community spirited, publicly funded organisation took its records offline in April last year, including annual reports, AGM minutes and full membership list, but we have all of them. We have the skeletons and the smoking guns. Today I'm going to discuss the two key policies the shire used to endorse AMRCCE, namely the local energy action plan and the climate action plan. Then I'm going to talk about the decade-long deception led by the shire.

The policies which supported the shire outsourcing its multimillion dollar wind farm to AMRCCE began in October 2014, when the shire embedded the goal of a community-owned wind farm into its local action plan. By 2016 these ambitions were added to the corporate plan, and the shire assembled a group of 20 people to advance the project. On 17 May 2017 this group separated and created AMRCCE Inc. By 14 June former councillor and AMRCCE's chairperson Ms Lyn Serventy wrote a letter to the shire requesting policy and funding support. The very next day, the shire's sustainability advisory committee met and reviewed Serventy's letter. Not only did Serventy sit on the committee herself; she led the motion to endorse her own letter. Another AMRCCE member, Ms Laura Bailey, seconded the motion. In fact, the meeting was attended by nine AMRCCE members, and five of them sat on the committee. Unsurprisingly, they supported the letter's requests. Two weeks later, at 28 June 2017 council meeting, councillors also approved the letter's request, endorsed AMRCCE as the external vehicle to achieve the local energy action plan and outsourced the windfarm directly to AMRCCE. In both council and committee meetings, not one interest declaration is recorded, despite at least 10 public officers involved being AMRCCE members.

If I move to 2018, on 14 November the council adopted the final local energy action plan. The community consultation section shows that three out of four groups the shire consulted with were all the same people hiding behind different names. This included AMRCCE itself; AMRCCE's chairperson, Lyn Serventy, on behalf of herself yet again; and Transition Margaet River, a group aligned with AMRCCE in both people and ambitions. By 2019 the shire had worked to replace the local energy action plan with a climate action plan. To develop this new policy, the shire partnered with another external organisation created by its own public officers, this time climate action Augusta Margaret River. Together the group and the shire hosted a summit on 28 May 2019, where they put together the climate action plan and made sure it suited AMRCCE's windfarm goals.

AMRCCE, Transition Margaret River and climate action Augusta Margaret River all share overlapping members made up of people who hold or have held shire roles. These public officers at this shire have established a culture of creating their own external organisations to support shire activities. The shire supports these groups with public resources and then uses them to help shape community consultation and shire initiatives. Some of these organisations bypass policies and use public money in a very private way, just like AMRCCE's windfarm in the absence of a renewable energy policy.

Now I want to discuss the mistruths by the shire and AMRCCE about the Scott River windfarm. Synergy first announced its commercial scale Scott River windfarm in February 2024, but for 10 years prior the shire and AMRCCE led this windfarm proposal. Together they only ever disclosed aspirations for a community owned 10-megawatt project, but AMRCCE was just a front for Synergy, and there was never going to be a small community project. The four key stakeholders in this include the shire, AMRCCE, Synergy and WALGA. In 2018 AMRCCE's first annual report already acknowledges Synergy, Western Power and multiple windfarm hosts of today, and thanks Synergy's lawyers, Herbert Smith Freehills, for their free legal support. AMRCCE's 2019 annual report cites progress at signing up multiple land-access agreements, even though the 10-megawatt project would only require one property.

In October 2019 then shire president and AMRCCE member Ms Pam Townshend is credited with signing away the shire's energy procurement rights to WALGA through the Cities Power Partnership. In AMRCCE's 2020 annual report, Herbert Smith Freehills are thanked again for even more free legal support. Across 2021 and 2022, AMRCCE signed commercial marketing deals with one of its own member's, Mr Rodney Littlejohn's, private companies—Tersum Energy Pty Ltd and Clear Energy Pty Ltd. The shareholders among his two companies are very interesting and include big-time energy developers and policy players such as Mr Dermott Costello, who is not only the group global general manager of a wind turbine development company called Galetech but also chief executive officer for the Clean Energy Council in Western Australia, and Mr Greg Allen, who is the director of project development and the deal origination for Vestas. Vestas is the very company that builds windfarms for Synergy.

By AMRCCE's 2022 annual report, the group had applied for 22.5 megawatts with Western Power in April. But the shire continued pushing mistruths about the 10-megawatt community project in their 21 June Sustainability Advisory Committee meeting. In 2023 and 2024, Synergy's lawyers turn up again. This time Herbert Smith Freehills lodged windfarm land-access caveats over properties on behalf of Synergy before the community ever knew the project was coming. In February 2024 Synergy finally announces its Scott River windfarm policy, the project scale increases more than tenfold, and the community ownership component vanishes.

Western Australian parliamentary Hansard records from 19 September 2024 show AMRCCE handed over multiple landowner agreements to Synergy. On 16 September 2025 the Western Australian minister for energy claimed Synergy acquired the rights to AMRCCE's windfarm on 23 February 2023, but we see Synergy's own EPA submission documents include dates which indicate Synergy was working on the project much earlier than this. It should surprise nobody that the wind farm has ended up in the hands of Synergy and its partner Enel. Both are among WALGA's preferred suppliers, and this ties everything back to 2018 and 2019, WALGA's Cities Power Partnership and all that free legal support. Nothing will go to the project's neighbours, and the environment will be subject to fibreglass and epoxy based turbines degrading into pristine pasture, forests and the groundwaters of the Blackwood River catchment. And the endangered birds and bats are another story.

The foreign oil and gas companies who own 80 per cent of Synergy's renewable energy portfolio must be absolutely laughing. This is a betrayal of the community and the environment. All the evidence will be made available at my office, and I will also forward copies directly to the Shire. I seek leave to table the evidence.

Leave not granted.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.