BILLS – Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Protecting Environmental Heritage) Bill 2024 – Second Reading

There’s probably not a more pressing issue in rural areas of our country than the takeover of land by industrialised renewable energy investments. The proponents of these large-scale solar and wind projects are running roughshod over people’s property rights and their right to amenity in their local community all the while our natural landscapes are being destroyed in the futile attempt by this
government to reduce our carbon emissions to net zero. The fundamental problem with this so-called environmental move to renewable energy is that it’s not good for the environment. Solar and wind energy is not good for the environment because of the basic principle that it takes up too much of our environment. It takes up so much of our land to produce such small amounts of power. If we want to go to 82 per cent renewables, as the government does, we’re going to need an enormous area of land to be covered with solar, wind and potentially batteries, and even more land for solar and wind if we want to move to hydrogen. Why are we having this massive impact on our natural environment? There’s a recent study by Net Zero Australia that estimated we would need an area the size of half of Victoria covered in solar and wind to meet our net zero emissions target— half of Victoria! When will we have the debate about whether this is what we should do to our natural landscape? Why would we destroy the environment in a futile attempt to protect it? Putting aside the fact that we account for only a small amount of carbon emissions, we’re going to destroy our natural environment. If we do achieve our target and convince other countries to cut emissions at the same time—even if all that is done—what for? We will have lost our kingdom for a horse. We will have lost this beautiful country’s natural landscapes, which will be destroyed totally unnecessarily. We can’t just throw out the need to protect our environment because we’re going to save the world from global warming by ourselves. While the rest of the world ignores their commitments at the Paris Accord, we’re willing to go forward trashing our environment to benefit, what is mostly, foreign renewable energy companies. In Central Queensland alone there are 27 wind and solar projects currently proposed or being built with very little oversight. A number of these wind projects will require the top of mountains being cut off to install the wind turbines. Many have you will have seen the vision of the Kaban wind project in Far North Queensland. Next to it the wilderness is being cleared for the Chalumbin wind farm—four times bigger than Kaban. Where are the advocates for the Magnificent Brood Frog and the Greater Glider—now that their habitats are being destroyed. And let’s not forget that the Kaban and Chalumbin sites are abutting the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. It’s an absolute environmental outrage. It is vandalism on an industrial scale that these projects, with government approval and often government funding, can come along and just knock off the tops of mountains to put 200 x 200 square metre pads for wind turbines. The grand irony of all this, is that while these projects get marginal scrutiny, if a farmer were to take the same action in the same areas, they’d fall foul of the regulations that were designed to protect the Great Barrier Reef. For decades, farmers have been told they can’t cut down a tree or change their land use in these areas because that would cause more sediment run-off to go into the rivers and then out to the Great Barrier Reef. How is it that an Australian farmer, an Australian landowner, basically can’t really move one bit of dirt on their property without approval by the Greens and the
government, and yet a foreign investor can come in and knock the tops off mountains onto the sides of hills and just walk away? Where are the assessments of this? I’ve looked through lots of environmental impact statements on this, and there are very inadequate assessments of the wider impacts compared to what you typically must do now regarding farming and mining. We’re
destroying our local habitats in this country, and we are removing the wonderful natural landscapes we have all in some futile attempt to respond to climate change. The worst thing here is that no-one is pausing to look at what the cumulative impacts will be. Farmers are being accused of being criminals, but these large investors can just walk in and destroy our local environment, with no questions asked. There must be a greater spotlight put on these practices because people are making decisions out of complete ignorance. They do not know what’s going on the ground, and it will be too late when we wake up in 10 or 20 years and vast swathes of our wonderful, rural, green landscapes have been turned into industrial wastelands. People on the ground deserve this sort of
oversight today. It should have been done yesterday, before we made some of these decisions, but it needs to be done as soon as possible. This issue has rapidly become one of the major issues in regional Australia. I can’t go anywhere on the eastern seaboard without people coming up and asking for help in stopping these projects from destroying their towns. And this problem is only going to get worse because the land usage required by large-scale solar and wind projects is
significantly larger than that of a coal mine, and even more of an impact than that of a uranium mine and nuclear power plant. Because not only do we have the wind and solar factories themselves, there’s the mines for all the materials that are needed for these, and then there’s also the need for storage to make up for when the weather isn’t producing any energy. This means either more land being used through pumped hydro, destroying more homes and habitats, or battery storage requiring lithium mines. We need a better balance in this debate. If we want to reduce our carbon emissions, let’s do so in a way which doesn’t destroy our natural environment—which is happening right across Australia. I ask the people in our cities who are listening to this, please listen to the greatest custodians of our environment in our country: our farmers. They live in the natural environment and understand what is happening on their farms. It may seem like renewable energy is clean and green when you see the advertisements on TV showing these wind and solar farms looking fantastic, but out on the ground, on the front lines, the reality is coming true. Please listen to our nation’s farmers before it’s too late and we destroy our natural environment. This bill serves to ensure that we’re not needlessly destroying our beautiful environment by making sure that these projects are properly assessed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1997 (‘EPBC Act’). This bill will ensure that every large-scale solar and wind project will require approval under the EPBC Act to go ahead. I want to recognise and acknowledge all the people who travelled to Canberra over the past days to get their voices heard about the recklessness of this rush to renewables. Regional communities are being divided by these projects. Landholders who own neighbouring properties are left worrying about their own way of life, and about their ability to continue generations of farming. By rushing this transition, all we’re doing is furthering the risk to our environment in a moral crusade to try and save the world from carbon emissions. This is the double-edged sword of these net zero policies. To save the world we need to destroy our environment. Any average observer should be able to see that this makes no sense. Our natural environment is at risk from these massive renewable projects, and we as a parliament have an imperative to do something about it. I commend this Bill to you.