Farmer’s fight in High Court
A BROLGA enthusiast will fight to scrap the $1.5bn Golden Plains wind farm planned for northwest of Geelong in Australia’s highest court.
Squaring off against the state government and wind farm developer Westwind Energy, farmer Hamish Cumming has asked the High Court to consider if the process that approved the 228-turbine wind farm, to be built across 17,000ha at Rokewood, was fair.
Despite an estimated legal bill of $500,000, Mr Cumming has entered the next round of his David-and-Goliath fight following unsuccessful appeals in the Victorian Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeal in August. The wind farm, with turbines spinning blades that reach up to 230m above the ground, is crucial to the state government’s legislated plan to source 40 per cent of the state’s power from renewable energy by 2025, and 50 per cent by 2030.
The Golden Plains wind farm could contribute up to half the 2025 target.
Mr Cumming’s application to appeal centres on a letter Westwind sent the state government in late 2018 that attempted to change the project’s turbine layout to maximise the wind farm’s output.
He said the letter should have been shared with him because it contained information he was not privy to during an independent planning panel process that informed Planning Minister Richard Wynne’s decision to approve the project.
Mr Wynne y ne said in court documents the letter had no bearing on his decision to approve the wind farm, which was made days after he received the letter.
In appeal documents, Mr Cumming said the information contained in the letter should have been considered by a planning panel that reported on the merit of the project.
“That new information (in the letter) was different from, but related to, the matters addressed in the hearings before the panel,” he said.
Appeal documents lodged by Mr Cumming’s barrister, University of Melbourne chancellor Allan Myers, QC, state “because the information was adverse to ( Mr Cumming’s) position, and credible, relevant and significant, the minister was required to disclose to (him) the substance of the November 9, 2018, letter”.
This would allow Mr Cumming “an opportunity to respond”, the appeal documents say.
Mr Cumming previously told the Geelong Advertiser that strict buffer zones were needed around the Golden Plains wind farm to protect the threatened brolga that inhabit the area, and which he has tracked for 30 years.
He will have to wait to find out if the High Court allows his appeal.