By trashing Australia’s pristine forests, the wind industry is wiping out critical habitat for the iconic koala. And the political cult that supports it, couldn’t care less.
In a recent post, STT covered the work of Dominic Legoe, who is now part of a growing chorus of outrage about the way the Queensland and Federal governments are complicit in the destruction of Queensland’s pristine dryland tropical forests. That wanton and pointless destruction has been green lighted by Federal Labor’s Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek.
As far as Plibersek is concerned, the koala is yet another expendable component on our way to an all wind and sun powered future, as Nick Cater reports below.
Labor falls for renewables crusade over koala habitats
The Australian
Nick Cater
2 October 2023
Tanya Plibersek may never have another day in politics as good as the one when Clive Palmer’s Central Queensland coalmine application came across her desk.
For a Labor MP defending an inner-city seat, where the Greens come second, it was like winning the lottery. With a single stroke of a ministerial pen, she could show her loathing for Palmer and coal, profess her love for the Great Barrier Reef and koalas, and take a gratuitous swipe at the Coalition.
“You’ve got the Liberals and Nationals, who have always had a kind of ‘let it rip’ view on development that has led to the environmental crisis that this country is in at the moment,” she told The Age after knocking back the mine in February.
“If you want your kids and grandkids to be able to see koalas in the wild, we have to change what we’re doing because in NSW, we’re on a trajectory to no koalas by 2050.”
Yet the sincerity of the Environment Minister’s love for our cute national icon is open to doubt so long as she applies different standards to the renewable energy sector, which has been ripping into koala habitat without compunction since Labor announced its renewable energy targets.
In February, a review found Plibersek’s department had 140 koala-killing projects under consideration, 29 of them for wind, solar or hydro generation.
Since the koala is an endangered species in NSW and Queensland, Plibersek would be on firm ground should she choose to give the developers the same treatment she meted out to Palmer. Yet the signs are not promising.
In December, Plibersek approved a wind turbine development at Lotus Creek in Central Queensland, reversing a decision by her Coalition predecessor, Sussan Ley.
Ley ruled against the Central Queensland development in June 2020, describing it as “clearly unacceptable” under national environment laws, partly because the site was home to species afflicted by the previous summer’s catastrophic bushfires.
By overturning Ley’s decision, Plibersek gave the green light to the bulldozing of old-growth forest on the Clarke-Connors Range, including 341ha of known koala habitat.
The figure is likely to be underestimated. Renowned natural photographer Steven Nowakowski visited the site recently and described it as “koala central”. Nowakowski is hoping the authorities might revoke the approval, even after the construction site has been pegged and the bulldozers prepare to move in.
“Plibersek either wants to halt the extinction crisis, or she doesn’t,” Nowakowski told me at the weekend. “By approving these projects, she is hastening the extinction of native species.”
There will be ample opportunity for the minister to redeem herself as similar applications hit her desk. They include the highly controversial proposal to put giant turbines in the middle of an upland tropical forest at Chalumbin on the Atherton Tableland, where 844ha of koala habitat were identified in the original plan. The developer is an offshoot of Korean Zinc, the same corporation backing Lotus Creek.
Plibersek is not alone in disregarding the environmental damage caused by renewable energy. The Queensland state government recently gave the green light to the Moah Creek wind turbine development on untouched native bushland 30km west of Rockhampton, putting some 380ha of koala habitat at the mercy of the bulldozers.
Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk’s social media pages rival Plibersek’s for koala-hugging happy snaps. In 2019, Palaszczuk released a koala protection strategy promising “the strongest koala protections Queensland has ever seen”.
It pledged to ban the clearing of priority koala habitat areas and bring 385,606ha of koala habitat into the protected zone.
Yet on Palaszczuk’s watch, 3680ha of koala habit have been surrendered for constructing seven wind turbine plants that are either operating or under construction, according to a study by environmental charity agency Rainforest Reserves Australia.
The organisation has identified another 6500ha of threatened koala habitat in proposals still on the table, bringing the total to more than 100 sqkm of threatened koala habitat in Queensland alone.
The blatant double standards in the application of land clearance rules between agriculture and mining on the one hand and renewable energy on the other is fuelling community anger, particularly in Queensland, where the government says yes to everything to which the word “renewable” is attached under the controversial Code 23 assessment process. Code 23 is framed around a logical paradox as equally absurd as Joseph Heller’s Catch 22: Climate change is killing koalas. Renewable energy prevents climate change. Therefore, renewable energy saves the lives of koalas.
It is the kind of circular argument beloved by the anointed. Their vision is not constrained by the laws of physics, engineering or unintended consequences. Their arguments are steeped in morality rather than science.
They are compelled by the imperative to take action to solve problems regardless of whether it causes further problems or whether the problem can be solved.
Those possessed of this vision see no contradiction between opposing the clearance of native vegetation for mining and agriculture and allowing it to construct renewable energy plants. They see no contradiction in banning the excavation of coal because of the risk of sediment in flowing into the waters around the Great Barrier Reef and allowing the excavation of rock for the construction of roads and wind turbine pads.
Plibersek justified the ban on Palmer’s coalmine because sediment might be carried by freshwater creeks to the Great Barrier Reef, smothering the seagrass meadows that feed dugongs and provide breeding grounds for fish. Yet the Queensland government has approved Chalumbin, Kaban and Moah Creek, and other turbine developments within the Great Barrier Reef catchment. Sediment run-off caused by excavating thousands of tons of rock and dirt is considerable. Erosion and landslips are a lasting danger, particularly since we’re being told to prepare for more extreme weather events.
Are we expected to assume that is good sediment, enriched by the good intentions of those who engineered the project, in contrast to the residue soiled and degraded by Palmer’s moral character?
To ask these questions is to forget that the consistency of process or the quality of outcomes is of little concern in virtue-seeking politics. The first and sometimes only goal is to prove that your heart is in the right place.
The Australian
STOP THESE THINGS 
This liberal-driven insanity is a cancer on the landscape and environment. Unfortunately, a lot of damage will be wreaked before it’s seen as such.