Turbine fight ‘a losing battle’

A DAVID and Goliath legal battle waged by a farmer and bird enthusiast to stop a $1.5 billion wind farm northwest of Geelong “does not have a real prospect of success”, the state’s Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, says.

Rokewood farmer Adam Walton and brolga advocate Hamish Cumming have sought to appeal the government’s decision to approve a wind farm that may add up to 228 turbines to 17,000ha at Rokewood.

Central to the pair’s appeal is their view the planning minister made a mistake in determining the model needed to rule on buffer zones around brolga breeding grounds on the project site.

But in Supreme Court documents, lawyers for the planning minister said he acted on expert advice and that final boundaries needed to go through a secondary approval process with the Department of Planning. Mr Walton and Mr Cumming have claimed the number of turbines in the project should be reduced from 228 to about 130 if the buffer model is applied correctly.

Last year Mr Cumming and Mr Walton were ordered to pay about $350,000 in costs incurred by the State Government and wind farm proponent Westwind following a judicial review of the project.

The wind farm is crucial to the state’s plan to source 40 per cent of its electricity needs from renewables by 2025.

Meanwhile, the pair said they were denied procedural fairness while a permit for the wind farm was being decided because the planning minister did not show them a letter from Westwind requesting he follow the recommendations of an independent planning panel to allow the project to include a maximum of 228 turbines. The planning minister’s lawyers said the letter had no bearing on his final decision.

“(The letter) contained no new information and ... the applicants (Mr Cumming and Mr Walton) were not denied procedural fairness: to the contrary, they were provided with the opportunity to make submissions to the planning panel on the wording of the (permit) conditions (for the wind farm).”

Mr Walton and Mr Cumming said the permit to allow the wind farm was invalid because it did not include mandatory conditions. The planning minister’s lawyers said the omission of conditions was “plainly an oversight”.

State laws allow for mistakes in permits to be corrected if “a clerical mistake or an error arising from any accidental slip or omission” is made.

The planning minister’s lawyers said he did not deliberately omit conditions.

“Leave to appeal should be refused and the appeal should be dismissed.”

A further hearing date is yet to be fixed.