Thursday, 1 August 2024

Renewable energy infrastructure

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:54): (1030) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning and concerns Victoria’s regional airports and the threat they face from inappropriately sited renewables infrastructure, both generation and transmission. The 2022 Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning report Safeguarding Victoria’s Airports begins with the claim that:

The Victorian government recognises the significance of the state’s airports large and small to Victoria’s economy.

But the reality is devastatingly different. I recently questioned the Minister for Regional Development on the threat to Lethbridge, Geelong’s regional airport, posed by the planned Tall Tree Wind Farm project. The plan for that development includes the construction of 60 wind turbines up to 271 metres high. Quite apart from the damage to the communities of Meredith, Inverleigh, Teesdale, Lethbridge and Bannockburn, there will be a significant impact on emergency services and airport businesses. The flight school and agricultural aviation services face closure, as do the hangarage company, maintenance facilities, avionics specialists and aircraft dealers. There is no realistic local alternative, so locals have rightly said you cannot relocate the airport to suit the wind farm development so why not go the other way and relocate the proposed turbines? Neither the company nor the renewables-obsessed Victorian Labor government has answered this question.

I want to raise a similar issue regarding Melton airfield, which faces a threat from AusNet’s Western Renewables Link project. I can personally attest that AusNet claim to have consulted and negotiated at length on this location, but they still seem to have got it wrong. AusNet now consider that Melton airfield will be unaffected by their routing, so it will no longer consider the impact on operators on that site. Yet activity on the ground suggests their reassurances are incorrect. The local flying school has observed AusNet’s work on a new tower position on the northern boundary of MacPherson Park is directly in line with the extended centreline of the main runway. If this location is correct, the flight path would clear the top of the towers by 100 feet, and the future of Melton airport would be significantly, perhaps fatally, compromised.

While I understand that AusNet ought to be the first port of call in this inquiry, I am told they have stopped engaging with the parties affected, so the action I seek is for the minister, as a matter of urgency, to intercede on my constituents’ behalf and to ensure the full publication of all Melton airport aviation safety assessments carried out by AusNet or other public authorities.