10 November

The National Party's push to turn windmills into a regional political issue could end up costing councils a fortune in wasted legal fees, if they get involved. Tamworth Council for example has just had a judge more or less throw their case out of court for being laughable, and the local action group who the Nats stirred up pulled out of the action, no doubt realising they were going to be up for big legal costs. The current strategy of these loon groups is to point out that the big turbines will need to be transported by road. As the judge said, so what. There's no requirement to get special approval to use roads to transport large things, it happens all the time. And over 1000 whining submissions to waste everybody's time, often sponsored by fossil fuel money in the US. Tamworth had a special rate increase of nearly 40% approved recently, and many ratepayers are now furious that the Council could be facing legal bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Central West Nationals politicians are trying to get local councils involved in action like this as well. Ratepayers beware.