Government was forced into a Royal Commission on the financial services industry recently.
We can now see why they were so opposed.
It is time to trot out another look into the wind farms.
Some former and present State Ministers and bureaucrats and Clean Energy bodies should face some very awkward questions.
Thanks to a few brave senators we do have a Wind Farm Commissioner.
But he has no power.
His second annual report is a detailed description of the lack of, or variation in, wind farm planning regulation by the various states.
Years ago, a senior energy professor at a Sydney university told me that no inland wind farm in Australia would ever be viable without huge Government subsidy.
There is not enough consistent wind.
Our Governments are subsidising overseas wind farm developers with up to $1.5 million per turbine per annum.
We are despoiling our landscape for nothing and forever.
Turbine removal is too expensive as thousands of rusting towers abroad in Hawaii and Western USA will testify.
Madness.
As I write this column, the eight turbines in Crookwell One have not turned for a week.
We have had no wind.
Over the 20 years of its existence it wouldn’t have achieved 20 per cent efficiency.
Claims that wind farms are clean and friendly and have no effects upon health, landscape and values raise a massive question.
It is 21 years since I addressed Crookwell Council about consent for the first industrial wind farm in Australia (Crookwell 1).
I said that they risked having our scenic agriculture area converted to a sea of steel – an industrial area.
It is now happening.
Even our clear night sky, acclaimed by so many visitors, is under threat from 21 red lights to be on top of Crookwell 11’s 150 metre turbines.
Windfarm hosts have no control over the developers who have invested up to 20 times the value of the title holder’s land in wind turbine infrastructure (much of it Government subsidies).
Hosts hadn’t understood what they had signed up to.
Three very recent local property sales have confirmed that a host wind farm loses 30 to 40 per cent in value.
Crookwell 1 host-farm with its eight turbines sold for $2900/acre.
Similar basalt soil an equal distance from Crookwell with inferior buildings but no turbines sold for $4100.
The ongoing pointless desecration of landscape must stop, solar is taking over as nuclear is politically impossible.
