Windfarm plans in choppy waters as Coalition and One Nation whip up doubts
Windfarm plans in choppy waters as Coalition and One Nation whip up doubts
People in the Hunter and Illawarra fear offshore turbines could damage marine life and tourism, but parties are accused of ‘weaponising’ the issue
The bases of wind farms act as artificial reefs. Fish and marine life love them.
The jobs servicing the wind farms are clean green and marine.
There isn’t a policy yet devised that Dutton and the jackboot brigade wouldn’t oppose if it looked like it would do some good.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Frank Future didn’t expect to find an ally in Peter Dutton over his concerns that the offshore wind farm proposed for the Hunter region could have an irreparable impact on the environment.
On the back it said tourism, property values, marine life and whale migration were threatened if the offshore windfarm zone 20km from the coast was allowed to go ahead.
Ben Abbott, one of the founders of the No Coastal Wind Farms Port Stephens Facebook group and who met the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on Monday, says he is concerned for the region’s tourism industry.
This included NSW One Nation upper house member, Tania Mihailuk, who said Australia’s emissions were too low to have to pick up the “heavy burden”, warning that taxpayers would foot an exorbitant bill to pay for the transition.
Abbott says he doesn’t agree with the anti-climate change and pro-nuclear rhetoric spruiked at the rally, but says his biggest concern is that the proponents of the project are “in charge of their own environment study”.
Shelley Wright, who runs Blue Water Sailing in Corlette, says she’s “cautiously supporting” the proposal because she’s worried about climate change, particularly after a thick blanket of smoke shrouded the Hunter during the black summer bushfires.
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An important bit missed:
He also says his group, which uses a whale tail as its branding, has stepped back from the claim that windfarms could cause mass whale deaths.
The risk to whales has formed a core part of local campaigns against the windfarm zone, with some posters and placards showing a lifeless whale on the beach. Members of the Port Stephens fishing industry paid for a billboard for three months on a roadside showing a beached whale with turbines in the background.
“It [has] been disproven; we’re not taking the whale thing up anymore,” Abbott says.