Whammo! Biff! And a bloody good eye gouge! All the news from the front row seats

From an STT ringside correspondent –

The last few weeks have seen some monumental shifts in attitude amongst coalition MPs.

Dan Tehan MP received a notable mention in dispatches for his ringside road to Macarthur conversion.

Dan has since come out brawling in favour of his long suffering constituents and we say about time. Well done Dan. And just before the final bell.

Last year, Craig Kelly gave a notable performance in Parliament that was hailed in London; notable no less because it demonstrated the kind of cojones sorely missed in modern Australian wrestling …. er, we mean politics.

Alby Schultz MP has been on his toes over the fraudulent REC claims made by Acciona about its Waubra wind farm. More than three years after it started operating, the Department of Planning in Victoria still refuses to issue a certificate of noise compliance.

As Jack Little might say: “NO COMMENT!” Except that’s what we’re here to do.

Liberal party hopeful and future heavyweight champ Angus Taylor weighed into the fight with the story on the front-page of the Australian Financial Review.

Did that little number wake up the bookies? You betcha!

The wind developer’s propaganda rag, the Climate Spectator, scored a spectacular fuzzle when it argued wind power was now commercially competitive with fossil fuel generation.

Angus’s response – an expertly applied full Nelson – was to congratulate the wind industry on finally becoming competitive with the rest of the electricity generation world. He told the Spectator that if that was the case, there was no need for the REC subsidy at all.

Oops!  Held, held then dropped like a bag of mouldy spuds. Out for a count of eight. Good move Taylor.

Read the fun and games here.

Or scroll down for Taylor’s response, which we reproduce in part:

Importantly, if your argument is right, then we no longer need a RET (and RECs) to incentivise wind, because wind can compete with other means of abatement anyway (or gas, at least). So good riddance to the RET, it is no longer necessary to support the wind industry. Instead, we need a single mechanism that picks the most efficient means of eliminating emissions. Direct action can do that, if done well. If you are right, the wind industry will be absolutely fine without RECs.

So well done for arguing that renewables no longer need additional subsidies over and above other means of abatement! No doubt the religious zealouts will now find another argument for wind, but I tend to lose interest at this point, because we are moving beyond the rational.

– Angus Taylor

Nicely put. A glorious bit of head-locking indeed.

Senator Ron Boswell also gave the wind industry a spray last week.

STT has never doubted that Ron had the “nacelles” needed to call a spade a “stinking subsidy-ridden rort fest” whenever required.

STT readers will know the Draft Excessive Noise Bill, sponsored by Senators Nick Xenophon and John Madigan is something that people in the bush want and need.

We think it goes a long way to restoring some kind of balance to the question of where wind farms should be located (if at all).

The Bill was narrowly defeated in the Senate last week.  It went down by only a few votes. Here’s how the wrestlers played it.

In favour:  Abetz, Bernardi , Birmingham, Boswell, Boyce, Brandis, Bushby (Teller), Cash, Colbeck, Edwards, Eggleston, Fawcett, Fierravanti-Wells, Fifield, Heffernan, Humphries, Joyce, Kroger, Macdonald, Madigan, Mason, McKenzie, Nash, Parry, Payne, Ronaldson, Ruston, Ryan, Scullion, Sinodinos, Smith, Williams.

Against: Bilyk, Bishop, Brown, Cameron, Carr, Bob, Carr, Kim, Collins, Crossin, Di Natale, Evans, Farrell, Faulkner, Furner, Gallacher, Hanson-Young, Hogg, Ludlam, Ludwig, Lundy, Marshall, McEwen, McLucas, Milne, Moore, Polley (Teller), Rhiannon, Siewert, Singh, Stephens, Sterle, Thistlethwaite, Thorp, Urquhart, Waters, Whish-Wilson, Wright.

Xenophon was sick.

Predictably, the Green-Labor Alliance voted with their wrestling trunks pulled up way over their nipples.

Here’s what Christine Milne (left) has said about the Green’s relationship with the bush.

“I think a lot of people who live in rural communities perhaps don’t see that the Greens are their natural allies,” she said.

“We’ve got lots in common, and I want to work with rural communities on issues of sustainability, but also to bring more jobs and opportunities to rural areas.”

All we can say is that sister won’t be wearing the belt for too much longer, in our opinion.

What was notable, however, was that the Coalition all voted for a Bill which has the potential to prevent the siting of wind turbines within 5 km or more of rural homes.

Bear in mind that the Mecca for wind farm developers, South Australia, has a Labor mandated setback of a measly 1000m.

STT says that the only people who deserve to live within that distance of a wind turbine are Infigen or Pacific Hydro executives –  and anyone else who claims that wind turbine noise is a soothing soundtrack perfect for sleep. Yeah, right.

The Bill will also force developers to hand over wind speed and operational data so that people can finally have independent acoustic engineers carry out proper noise measurements.

Until now, developers flat out refuse to hand over that kind of data, claiming “commercial in confidence”.

At STT we hadn’t really thought of wind speed at a wind farm as some kind of “state secret”, although there are those of us who like to keep our own wind speed to ourselves.

But the wind industry has got all sorts of tricks stuffed down its ill-fitting trunks.

While the Bill failed to jump its first hurdle in the Senate, we understand the Coalition is lining up to reintroduce it with even more grunt than it currently has: adding at least another pair of “nacelles” to an already beefy bit of legislation.

It will be a tag-team event to end all events!

Ian Macfarlane issued a press release on the Coalition’s support for the Bill.

Seems like Mac the Knife is moving towards the side of the ring of “people who get it”– STT will be pleased to herald that move.

We have always favoured a “ways and means” kind of approach when it comes to putting some sanity back into the country.

We are quick to congratulate anyone who has the guts to stand up for the people in the bush who have, till now, been faced with a lack of genuine interest from any part of the political spectrum.

We are aware that among the Coalition there is a solid group being driven by, heaven forbid, a moral responsibility to their constituents rather than the financial incentives that come with sucking up to the wind industry.

And we hear the numbers of such noble folk are growing by the day.

The push is on within Coalition ranks to amend the draft Bill even further to add provisions that force the wind farm developers to pay for the noise, sleep and health research which the industry has been so desperate to avoid and which rural communities like Waterloo have been fighting to have done for years.

See STT posts: here, and

here,

and here and here.

In wrestling, that move is called the Tombstone. Other likely techniques include The Spear, the Shing Wizard, the Ankle Lock, the Ear Buster and our favourite, the Nacelle Knee Squeeze.

Additionally, the Coalition rank-and-file is ready to slap penalties on wind farm operators in the event that their outfits are shown by that research to cause adverse health effects, such as sleep disturbance. In boxing parlance, think of this as the Backdrop Driver.

That wind turbines thumping away all night long might just possibly interfere with sleep will come as no surprise to STT readers.

If the right people are involved, then proving the bleeding obvious shouldn’t be that hard.

The sting will apparently come by removing the operators’ current entitlement to RECs, unless and until they prove that it is not their turbines driving the neighbours mad at night-time.

To STT it simply sounds like sensible policies for a happier Australia. To wrestling fans, it’s the perfect Figure Four Leg Lock.

In conclusion we say this.

There’s still a few rounds to go but that damned shiny big championship cup feels so close we can practically reach out and touch the bastard.