Breezy dismissal | Science & nature | The Australian: "Environment Minister Ian Campbell is indebted to an endangered parrot, writes Ewin Hannan


April 08, 2006
TWO days into the 2004 federal election campaign, Ian Campbell was on the telephone with a message for voters in the marginal Victorian seat of McMillan. The federal Environment Minister told me he had 'undoubted powers' to veto the Bald Hills electricity-generation wind farm proposed for the electorate, saying it was an outrage that Steve Bracks's state Labor Government had overridden the concerns of local residents to approve the project.
Campbell's intervention was a gift for Liberal candidate Russell Broadbent, who accused local federal Labor MP Christian Zahra of not standing up to his state ALP colleagues.
Three days before the election, Campbell wrote to McMillan residents, telling them, somewhat dramatically, that their vote 'may well decide the future of South Gippsland's magnificent landscape'.
'As the Minister for the Environment, I guarantee that I will exercise my responsibilities to ensure that any development submissions meets every requirement of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act,' he wrote. 'The voters of McMillan may well decide who governs Australia for a long time to come. Should Christian Zahra be re-elected as part of a [Mark] Latham Labor government, you will send a signal ... that you tolerate interference from the Bracks Government in local planning decisions and that you are happy to play host to increasing numbers of wind turbines in your region.'
Three days later, Zahra lost the seat, the only Victorian Labor member to be thrown out at the 2004 election. On the following Tuesday, Campbell delivered, announcing the Bald Hills wind farm had been put on hold.
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