Bird Ban Excuse Selective

The Weekend Australian, Page: 9
Saturday, 8 April 2006

THE endangered orange-bellied parrot - used by the Howard Government to block a proposed wind farm in a Victorian marginal seat-proved no barrier to federal approval of four other wind farms in the bird's habitat. And as John Howard cautiously backed federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell's decision to scuttle the $220 million wind farm, he said he would take a close interest in a $400 million housing estate project in danger of being halted to save a moth. ''The moth sounds a little, how shall we put it, more far fetched, '' the Prime Minister said. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks suggested yesterday the wind farm decision might have been influenced by political donations from energy companies.

Official returns reveal two $4000 donations to the West Australian branch of the Liberal Party from Chevron Texaco and Griffen Coal, as well as $2000 from Woodside. Senator Campbell, described by Mr Bracks yesterday as wacky, promised to stop the locally unpopular wind farm in the 2004 election, helping wrest the seat of McMillan from Labor. This week, he rejected the project, although no orangebellied parrot has been seen within 50km of the site. Labor environment spokesman Anthony Albanese yesterday highlighted four wind farms that the federal Government had allowed in the parrot's territory.

He said the approval of the farms - at Woolnorth and Jims Plains in Tasmania, Portland in Victoria and Port MacDonnell in South Australia - showed the Bald Hills decision was ''all about politics and not about parrots''. Renewable energy company Roaring 40s, which operates the Woolnorth wind farm, said the federal Government cleared its project despite it being in the flight path of the parrots. The rare birds, thought to number less than 200, breed and nest at two sites in Tasmania's remote southwest from late spring to autumn. Roaring 40s general manager Mark Kelleher said he was amazed by the decision to block the Bald Hills wind farm and it raised concerns for the future of another wind farm due to be built on Tasmania's west coast.

He said modelling for the proposed $290 million Heemskirk project showed it was likely to cause the death of one orangebellied parrot every 20 years, compared with one mortality every 143 years projected for the Bald Hills wind farm. The minister's decision to block the Bald Hills wind farm, forecast to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 435, 000 tonnes, has been attacked by green groups and industry groups keen to foster renewable energy. Now Senator Campbell must rule on a $400 million housing estate west of Melbourne that has been halted by the discovery of a rare moth that lives for just four days. Senator Campbell yesterday accused Mr Bracks of defaming him by saying he was influenced by fossil fuel companies and said the Victorian Premier had approved an expansion of the dirtiest fossil-fuel power station in the industrialised world'' in Gippsland.

He said the federal Government would honour its legal requirement to create 9000 KW hours of renewable energy by 2010.