Antinuclear

Tony Abbott is a danger to clean energy in Australia

Tony Abbott’s proposed main business adviser just revealed that he thinks efforts to build more clean energy in Australia should be scrapped.

Top Abbott business adviser wants renewables target scrapped Maurice Newman, chairman of Coalition’s proposed business advisory council, doubts scientific case for global warming  Lenore Taylor, political editor  guardian.co.uk,   13 June 2013  The chairman of Tony Abbott’s proposed business advisory council, Maurice Newman, has called for the renewable energy target (RET) to be scrapped because he believes the scientific evidence for global warming and the economic case for renewable energy no longer stack up…….

Whether the Coalition will change their policy on the RET is up to them … I believe it should be removed because the basis upon which we accepted in good faith that we needed it is no longer there…..

when we look at the science it no longer supports the global warming theory and when we look at the health and economic effects of windfarms and the obscene wealth transfer from poor to rich we have to ask: why are we persisting with them? I think it is a crime against the people.”….

Guardian Australia contacted Newman after seeing minutes of a meeting of an anti-windfarm group called the Crookwell District Landscape Guardians at his southern highlands property on 28 April.Newman appeared to warn the 56 attendees they might not sway the Coalition……

other anti-windfarm activists are preparing for a 18 June rally at Parliament House, effectively trying to use the same “people’s revolt” strategy encouraged by Abbott against the carbon tax to try to push the Coalition leader to drop the RET and stop new windfarms.

A slick, anonymously-run website called Stop These Things (STT) urged readers to attend the June rally because “while it’s safe to assume the Coalition will cruise to victory in September, don’t assume they are on our side”. It added: “It’s time to put them in the spotlight and find out precisely where they stand … the main game is in Canberra where the RET policy was started and where it has to end. The Coalition need to get the message loud and clear – and the message is simple. Australia simply can’t afford the great wind power fraud……

the time is right for marching in the streets. So grab your placards, don your T-shirts and put your angry face on for a march on parliament…..

“STT throws down the gauntlet to Coalition MPs to turn up and front the mob that assembles on 18 June to explain what the Coalition plans to do about the greatest fraud in Australian history.

“STT thinks that the wind industry is well and truly on the ropes, but our ‘never say die until it’s dead and buried’ attitude means we won’t be happy until there is a garlic-coated crucifix driven through the heart of this rort-ridden scam of the century. Turn up, be loud and take our country back. Let 18 June 2013 be a day the Coalition won’t forget.”

Coalition senators Chris Back and Ron Boswell and backbencher Craig Kelly are scheduled to attend the rally.

As reported by Guardian Australia, the Coalition’s yet-to-be-released resources policy will pledge to mandate continuous noise monitoring of windfarms, a requirement the industry says is crippling in cost and will not provide useful information…….

The Coalition resources spokesman, Ian Macfarlane, says the Coalition supports windfarms and the policy aims to allay community fears and provide transparent information. But many Coalition MPs want to see the RET scrapped and new windfarms banned.

Newman has previously made his anti-wind power and climate sceptic views clear, but has not put the business case for the Coalition to remove the RET.

Last January Newman wrote in the Spectator that windfarms were “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions”.

Abbott has said the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, to be chaired by Newman, would meet three times a year….. As well as health and landscape concerns, members of the Crookwell Landscape Guardians at the meeting were concerned that “electro magnetic electricity” could be transferred from windfarms through the air and the ground, possibly causing failures of farm machinery and the danger of electric shocks from farm bores.

Newman’s property is close to the Crookwell 1 and 2 windfarms proposed by Union Fenosa.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/abbott-business-adviser-renewables-target

June 13, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics