Abbott causes storm over energy

One of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's first acts on coming to power was to appoint a leading climate sceptic, Dick Warburton, to review Australia's Renewable Energy Target.

PM labelled an embarrassment as he angers backers of renewable energy with his opposition to wind farms.

Australia's renewable energy sector is reeling after Tony Abbott denounced wind farms as visually awful and noisy, and bragged about restricting their spread.

The Prime Minister also lent credence yesterday to concerns about the turbines' impact on human health, although the Government's own National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recently found no consistent evidence of adverse effects.

Labor branded Abbott an embarrassment, while Andrew Bray of the Australian Wind Alliance, a pro-wind energy group, called the comments extraordinary.

"Our Prime Minister has just admitted to setting out deliberately to destroy a viable industry in Australia, one that could provide jobs to many Australians, investment to regional communities and new income to farmers," he said.

Abbott's remarks came in an interview with the influential radio host Alan Jones, who demanded to know why the Government was subsidising wind farms "when there's a Senate inquiry highlighting the deleterious effects these things are having on public health".

The Coalition leader replied: "I do take your point about the potential health impact of these things. When I've been up close to these wind farms, there's no doubt that not only are they visually awful but they make a lot of noise."

One of Abbott's first acts on coming to power was to appoint a leading climate sceptic, Dick Warburton, to review Australia's Renewable Energy Target.

He recommended that the target set by Abbott's conservative predecessor, John Howard, be radically slashed. That prompted a public backlash and negotiations between the Coalition and Labor which culminated in a compromise deal last month.

The Government claimed at the time that the review's main goal was to shield the industry from failing to meet the original target, because that would have triggered a penalty and forced up electricity prices.

But its real goal, Abbott revealed yesterday, was to try to halt the spread of wind farms.

"What we did recently in the Senate was to reduce ... the number of these things that we are going to get in the future," he told Jones.

"I frankly would have liked to have reduced the number a lot more. But we got the best deal we could, and if we hadn't had a deal, we would have been stuck with even more of these things."

Wind turbines have been blamed for more than 200 health problems in humans and animals, ranging from bruxism (teeth grinding) to night sweats.

The NHMRC examined more than 4000 studies on health effects, finding that only 13 were scientifically rigorous enough to be taken seriously.

Even those were compromised by potential bias and small sample sizes, it reported in February.

Mark Butler, the Opposition's environment spokesman, said it was "gobsmacking that Australia's Prime Minister can be so short-sighted and so out of touch".

He added: "Renewable energy is enormously popular in Australia. People want more renewable energy, not less."

Abbott's views echo those of his Treasurer, Joe Hockey, who has described wind farms as "utterly offensive ... a blight on the landscape".