Ian Campbell: Bird's-eye overview of dirty politics

Environment Minister Ian Campbell
responds to his critics over the orange-bellied parrot
August 02, 2006
IN recent weeks, the ruckus over the orange-bellied parrot has reached a crescendo, with wild and fantastic claims given currency by some sections of the media and Victorian Labor. On one level, this furore is good sport: the parrot, after all, is an easy creature to lampoon. On another, it raises serious issues about the lengths to which Victorian Labor will go to score a political victory, regardless of the facts.
But the tide is turning. Recent revelations in The Age in Melbourne that the Victorian Government received advice about the orange-bellied parrot similar to that given to me but chose to bury it exposes the cheap political shenanigans for what they are.
The report from Victoria's Department of Sustainability and Environment said: "The Bald Hills wind farm development will increase the level of threat to the orange-bellied parrot", and "OBPs commuting between habitats will fly across the site at heights encompassed by the rotor-swept area".
It concludes that "a conservative approach is therefore required".
Victorian Labor has not yet fully explained why it chose to bury this critical piece of information. Contrary to claims the document is publicly available, the DSE submission is conspicuous in its absence from any Victorian government information or website.
The Victorian Government's assessment report to my department offered just a few cursory sentences on the DSE submission in more than 413 pages of documentation and failed to include its key findings on the orange-bellied parrot.
In short, all this argy-bargy over the Bald Hills decision comes back to the Victorian Government playing parish pump politics for political gain. They know it. We know it. They know we know it.
It's easy for the Bracks Government to make political capital at the expense of this beleaguered bird. Unfortunately the parrot is not cuddly or loved like the panda, koala or whale. Had I made a similar decision about, say, underwater tidal power turbines on the migratory path of the endangered blue whale, no doubt it would have been applauded. Yet, as the World Conservation Union recognises, the Australian orange-bellied parrot is in the most threatened category, more threatened than the blue whale and the polar bear.
The Victorian Government should take a look in its own back yard. Last year it blocked a wind farm near Ballan, north of Melbourne, because it might kill three wedge-tailed eagles a year out of a population of 100,000 or more. Given the Victorian decision on the eagle, a bird that is not threatened, making political capital out of the Bald Hills decision is breathtaking hypocrisy.
What has unfortunately been muddied with the commentary about the Bald Hills decision is the issue of global warming. The Victorian Government is mischievously trying to paint the Australian Government as anti-wind. This couldn't be more wrong. Since January, 11 new wind farm proposals are under construction, about one every two weeks, having passed through federal environment law.
Put simply, the orange-bellied parrot has not stopped the wind energy industry, as some hysterics have suggested. Never has Australian government policy been more conducive to the encouragement of the renewables sector. Under our policies, $3.4billion of investment has been driven directly into renewable energy. In 1996, there were 20 turbines in Australia. Today there are 600 built or under construction.
The fact is, this wind energy will be supplied because the Australian Government, through the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target program, has mandated that by 2010 9500 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year will be sourced from renewable energy producers. That's the law. This Government is pumping billions into its climate-change action plan and $3 billion into the National Heritage Trust, which includes habitat protection for endangered species. We can and should do both: address climate change and protect habitat.
Let's look at what this debate is really about. After ignoring wind power for eight years, the Victorian Government chooses to pick a fight on one wind farm that could mitigate 175,000 tonnes of carbon to distract attention from its decision to extend the life of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Described by the World Wide Fund for Nature as the dirtiest greenhouse gas polluter in the southern hemisphere, Hazelwood would pump out 445 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
The politics for Victorian Labor are obvious.