Tasmanian power link ‘risks heritage areas’

Bob Brown has said a decision to fast track a new Tasmanian electricity link with the mainland could threaten World Heritage-listed reserves.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown. Picture: Richard Jupe

Former Greens leader Bob Brown has stepped up his anti-wind farm campaign in Tasmania and said a decision to fast track a new electricity link with the mainland could one day threaten the state’s World Heritage-listed reserves.

Mr Brown told The Australian mega-wind farm projects already on the drawing board would kill ­eagles and other endangered birds and visually spoil the natural beauty of the island state. Proposed turbines measuring 270m tall at Robbins Island and elsewhere would be among the biggest in the world and have a major environmental impact, he said, adding the “Battery of the Nation” plan for Tasmania’s hydro and wind power industry should be renamed “battering the nation”.

“It is a money-driven proposal dressed up as a huge public relations exercise and the devil can take the environment,” Mr Brown said.

Mr Brown said he expected to be criticised as a hypocrite for his stand but said, like the Franklin dam, not every renewable energy project should go ahead.

The federal government has included the Marinus interconnector electricity link between Tasmania and Victoria in a list of $72bn infrastructure projects that would be fast-tracked under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Mr Brown said the Morrison government’s decision to cut green tape would abandon what little federal environmental ­assessment there was. “Big industry has got the Morrison government’s ear and simply wanting to leave us with a completely ineffective environmental process at a national level,” Mr Brown said.

He said Environment Minister Sussan Ley had already flagged there would be decisions made on the environment under the fast-track process whatever comes out of the inquiry. “The inquiry itself has been sidelined,” he said.

A spokesman for Ms Ley said the minister would consider recommendations in the EPBC interim report due this month. Ms Ley last week rejected a wind-farm development proposal in Queensland due to the unacceptable risk it posed to koala populations.

Mr Brown said that Tasmania already had enough renewable ­energy. “What we have got is out of state corporations based in Sydney and overseas that see the wind potential of Tasmania as something they can make money out of,” he said. “In the process projects that were turned down years ago have become financially attractive.”

He said with the Marinus link, the federal government was intervening in the energy market and subsidising an otherwise unviable energy project to land wind energy into the mainland market.

Mr Brown said a “brace” of other major wind-farm developments had been proposed for the Tarkine and on Tasmania’s central plateau.

“All are renewable energy, as was the Franklin Dam way back, but they have major impacts on the wild and scenic nature of Tasmania which is our biggest job producer,” Mr Brown said. “People come here for the wild and scenic amenity.”

Wind farms would have an impact on species that were heading for extinction. “I am fearful that with the Marinus connector the unspeakable could come where in a few decades down the line they will be talking about invading the World Heritage area in Tasmania (for wind turbines),” he said.

Mr Brown said the best form of energy for Australia was energy ­efficiency. “If we stopped wasting the stuff we would have 10 to 20 per cent more than we do now’, he said.