Rob Hulls - Attorney General Minister for Industrial Relations Minister for Planning
Media Statement - 29 July 2006
The Federal Environment Minister, Senator Ian Campbell, has again exposed his appalling ignorance about his own portfolio with his latest claims about the Bald Hills wind farm and the risk to endangered orange-bellied parrots.
The Minister for Planning, Rob Hulls, and the Deputy Premier and Environment Minister, John Thwaites, said Senator Campbell's claims about supposed secret departmental advice to the Bracks Government were nonsensical.
"This would be laughable if it was not so serious," said the Planning Minister, Mr Hulls. "Senator Campbell is referring to a departmental submission to a public and independent panel process investigating the project's environmental impacts.
"The department presented a power point on its submission at the public hearings, and distributed its submission to everyone present. Its findings and recommendations were quoted in the final panel report, a copy of which was sent to the Federal Government and is also on the internet.
"So Senator Campbell is being either dumb or deceitful. He was certainly too lazy, apparently, to read the panel report as part of his own assessment of this project.
"If he thinks this submission is a secret, then he must also think Peter Costello doesn't want the Prime Minister's job. "Senator Campbell's credibility is in tatters and John Howard should get rid of him before he causes any more damage to Australia's environment."
The Deputy Premier and Environment Minister, John Thwaites, said the DSE submission referred to an increased risk but did not quantify it, and recommended compensatory habitat management. "Senator Campbell's own independent consultants, Biosis, then went on to quantify the risk, and their modelling found it to be potentially one dead parrot every 1000 years.
"Unlike Senator Campbell, we heeded the advice from the independent panel, which assessed this and other expert submissions and recommended that the wind farm be approved. "Senator Campbell received the same advice from his department, and ignored it."
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