The Weekend Australian
July 29, 2006
NO one was talking about the orange-bellied parrot when Environment Minister Ian Campbell declared, two days into the last election campaign, that the Bald Hills wind farm - smack in the middle of prime marginal seat territory - was in trouble. With the 52-turbine project in the heart of Victoria's Gippsland a stormy local issue, Liberal candidate Russell Broadbent was anxious for Campbell to rule a line through the $220million proposal in a bid to steal a march on his Labor rival in the area.
While the rare parrot was yet to fly into the picture, Campbell insisted he had "undoubted powers" to veto the wind farm. Three days before polling day, Campbell delivered for Broadbent - writing to agitated local voters, urging them to send a message to Labor that they were not "happy to play host to increasing numbers of wind turbines in your region".
While Campbell formally put Bald Hills on hold three days after Broadbent won the seat, it was not until April this year that he killed off the wind farm, citing the threat to the orange-bellied parrot, an issue that Broadbent now admits was not on the radar in the 2004 campaign.
The Weekend Australian can reveal that not only did Campbell reject his own department's advice to approve the wind farm, he kept on commissioning studies despite being told that further research was inappropriate and that the threat to the bird was "negligible".
He eventually found a study he was happy with.
But the author of the Biosis report relied on by Campbell has told The Weekend Australian that no parrots were seen at Bald Hills; that he was unaware of the closest sighting; and could not accurately predict the bird's collision rate with the wind turbines.
Dispite the growth in wind farms in part being driven by the Howard Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets, they have been a growing political wedge for the Liberals. Cabinet ministers, including Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran, whose seat of Gippsland neighbours Broadbent's, have reacted to community opposition to attack the wind industry and Labor's support for it.
"We can't figure out why Campbell's done this," said Stephen Buckle, the managing director of the project developer Wind Power. "Why is he so desperate to keep an election promise in a marginal seat? Maybe it comes from Howard who says to his ministers that we have to protect marginal seats at all costs."
Campbell has argued that he acted because Biosis found the turbines could result in up to one extra parrot death each year. But author Ian Smales said he never intended to find out the number of birds that would be killed at Bald Hills and that the one death was the potential impact of 23 wind farms, built and unbuilt.
Moreover, the predicted death rate was only an "informed scenario" and "should not be construed as being anything other than a possibility within the context of the overall cumulative modelling project".
Documents seen by The Weekend Australian show that, weeks after the last election, Campbell's department commissioned consultants to review all research done in the previous two years into the impact of Bald Hills on birds.
The company, Latitude 42 Environmental Consultants, was asked to examine the likely impact on listed and threatened migratory bird species; the relevance of bird-strike modelling and the need to do further species-specific surveys.
Its draft December 2004 report was clear-cut, finding the site did not support an abundance of birds; had few, if any, listed threatened species; and low numbers of listed migratory species. It ruled out the need for further research, saying "more sophisticated modelling would seem inappropriate and unlikely to yield meaningful predictions".
"Additional species-specific surveys are unlikely to add much value or additional information in terms of (legislative) requirements, and any impacts on bird populations appear likely to be negligible."
Over the next three months, Buckle sought information from Campbell's department about when the minister would make a decision. By March last year, the department was telling Buckle that before Campbell could make a decision, he wanted another study. This time it would not just be on Bald Hills, but on the cumulative impact of all existing and proposed wind farms in Tasmania, Victoria, NSW and South Australia on a range of migratory birds.
The department told Buckle in May that it expected to receive the information by the end of June, and Campbell would then be able to make a decision.
Campbell has defended the broad review, saying it was necessary because of the growing interest in wind farms and the need to understand the collective harm they might have on listed species. The work conducted by Biosis went against the earlier consultants' advice and investigated individual bird species, including the parrot. It was not finished until January.
Biosis found the mortality rate on all the wind farms - built or not - on the parrot would be "very small". However, in findings subsequently seized on by Campbell, it said given that the parrot already had a high probability of extinction,"almost any negative impact could be sufficient to tip the balance against its continued existence".
"In this context, it may be argued that any avoidable deleterious effect - even the very minor predicted impacts of turbine collisions - should be prevented," the report says.
But it added that such action would have "extremely limited beneficial value to the conservation of the parrot" without addressing much greater adverse affects operating against it.
Two months later, Campbell had still not made a decision. On March 10, he received written advice from Gerard Early, a departmental first assistant secretary, recommending he approve the wind farm.
Early's detailed advice, seen by The Weekend Australian, says that based on all the available research, including the Latitude 42 and Biosis reports, the impact on listed threatened and migratory species was "acceptable".
Early told Campbell the harm to the parrot was likely to be "negligible and there is no threat of serious or irreversible damage" to the bird given "no orange-bellied parrot has been recorded there; there appears to be no suitable habitat on the site; (and) even through the assessment report has noted the occasional parrot may fly across the site in the migration season, it is not considered to be a major migration passage".
Early said that if the minister considered there was the threat of a serious or irreversible impact on the parrot from the wind farm, he would need to rely on the Biosis conclusion that any negative impact on the parrot would threaten its continued existence. He said Campbell would have to rely on the difficulty in identifying parrots in the wild given their size and very small numbers.
Campbell could also argue that there appeared to be good parrot foraging habitat 35km east and west of the site,"which may add strength to the view that the site is a migration passage". In this context, Early said, the minister may choose to have Wind Power resubmit the proposal or grant the application provided wind turbines are not within 2km of the coastline.
But, critically, he added: "On balance, these options are not supported by the department". "Both of these approaches would represent a lowering of the previous threshold for unacceptable impact on the orange bellied parrot, particularly as there does not appear to be direct evidence of any impact on the orange-bellied parrot at Bald Hills."
The options might be seen as inconsistent with the approach to other wind farms that have previously been approved at Portland in Victoria and Woolnorth and Musselroe in Tasmania. "It would have ramifications for all coastal development in western Tasmania, Victoria, southern NSW and southeast South Australia," Early wrote.
By the time Early's advice landed on Campbell's desk, Buckle and his partner, Andrew Newbold, had had enough, and had decided to take Federal Court action to force a decision. The legal action hastened the process and Campbell announced in April that the wind farm had been torpedoed.
He seized on small aspects of the Biosis report to justify his decision. Denying that he was playing politics, he declared the "alarming" report showed the wind farm would hasten the parrot's "extinction from the planet". This was despite other wind farms, which posed a bigger threat, being approved by the Howard Government.
Four Victorian wind farms were okayed in 2002 although they were found to have a significantly higher kill rate - one every five years. Unlike at Bald Hills, parrots were spotted on one of the sites last year.
In written answers to questions from The Weekend Australian, Ian Smales, the Biosis report author, said identifying the number of birds that might be killed at any one wind farm such as Bald Hills was "not the intent of our work".
"The scenario used in our modelling for a particular site. .. is simply an informed scenario for the purposes of modelling," he said. "It should not be construed as being anything other than a possibility within the context of the overall cumulative modelling project."
The report assumed parrots would make 15 migrant passages through the site each year. But Mr Smales said he could not say how often the parrot would pass through the site. "We do not have any data on which to base an answer on this," he said. "None were observed in fauna assessments of the site (done by others) but the species is very cryptic and rather unpredictable in its occurrences in Gippsland."
Wind Power has challenged Campbell's decision in the Federal Court, arguing it was denied natural justice because the minister did not give the company an opportunity to respond to the Biosis report. It argues no reasonable person could have made Campbell's decision given the Biosis findings. Buckle and Newbold say they have spent $1.6 million on the project, first submitted for approval in 2002.
"Campbell's had every bird expert in the country and potentially in the world, because these Biosis guys are world-renowned experts, tell him that there is no orange-bellied parrot issue," Newbold said. "This has ramifications for industries other than the wind farm industry. If you take an overall Australian view of this, this is not how we should be governed. This type of decision does nothing to promote the Liberal Party ethos of backing the little bloke."
Broadbent acknowledged that Campbell's intervention helped him and that was why he wanted the minister to speak out. "Absolutely, but only under the powers he has," he said. "I was lobbying him to make sure every effort we could make to knock off the wind farm would be looked at. There was no guarantee given. No deal was made with Campbell. "Even when I was elected, he never ever once gave me the nod or a wink that he could do anything about this wind farm."
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