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Tony Abbott’s observation that wind farms are ugly and noisy has prompted a predictable reaction from that most predictable of publications, The Age, which today (June 12) takes the Prime Minister to task with two reports intended to suggest what an un-hip goose the man must must be. As is now the norm with Fairfax Media publications, the stories are written in the ink of omission and moral preening.
The first piece appears beneath the byline of Lisa Cox, another who learned her craft at University of Technology, Sydney, where red-raggin’ Wendy Bacon teaches how stories need to be covered — in this instance, only in part. Wind turbines are the bees knees, say Hamish and Anne Officer, whose property near Warrnambool is home to 48 of the eyesores. Cox somehow neglects to mention that the Officers are the poster couple for the Victorian Wind Alliance, which trots them out whenever questions about wind farms are raised. For some reason, Cox doesn’t quite get around to asking the Officers’ neighbours how they regard the giant bird-mincers. Shire councillor Jim Doukas, to name but one local critic, might have provided some colourful quotes, as would residents who tell Quadrant Online that the Officers are building a nice new home in Hamilton, some 45kms distant from the wind towers they say make such wonderful company.
Another element missing from Cox’s story is just how much money the Officers are pocketing from their involvement in the wind industry. Cox notes that “the family receives money under a lease agreement” but doesn’t seem to have been curious about the size and frequency of those cheques. According to 60 Minutes, a typical Victorian lease fee might run to $10,000 per unit per year, so just how much the Officers are pocketing would seem germane to any reader’s appraisal of their enthusiasm.
The second article is by “environment editor” Tom Arup, who telegraphs a partisan enthusiasm for wind turbines by parroting that coal mines are ugly and polluting, further adding that Abbott’s aesthetic objections to big fans on every hilltop demonstrate that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Be that as it may, what fails to figure in Arup’s sermon is any mention that, when it comes to beauty, there is something about which all reasonable people can agree: that sliced and minced carcasses of the many birds struck down by whirling rotors are anything but attractive. As Arup is the Age reporter whose brief it is to cover the environment, you might think this would be of interest. If so, you would be wrong, because the quite shocking statistics for avian mortality at the Officers’ wind farm and neighbouring properties figure nowhere in his, ahem, analysis, which seems chiefly concerned with suggesting that Abbott is no more than a dumb tool of Big Coal.
This link will bring up a report commissioned by operator AGL on bird casualties at the Macarthur wind farm, of which the Officers’ property is part. Its conclusion: each wind tower kills at least 10 birds per year, a tally that includes eagles, hawks, kestrels, magpies and migratory swifts. The photo atop this item — a sliced and diced pelican — is typical of such casualties.
The report on avian deaths is available via the link below. The next time you read some puffery on behalf of the wind-industry’s rent seekers, wonder why it is a crime to shoot a wedgetail but not worth mentioning when they are killed by wind turbines.
— Roger Franklin
