Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott is no fan of wind turbines. Far from it. In the past he has called them “ugly” and “noisy”. Now he has slammed them as “visually awful” after coming face-to-face with the Green left’s favourite source of alternative power generation.
The UK-born Mr Abbott (his family moved to Australia from London when he was aged three), who once famously dismissed the argument behind anthropogenic climate change as “absolute crap”, told a radio interviewer a cycling trip to an island off the Western Australia state capital Perth had rammed home his personal dislike for wind generators. He added that he wants “fewer” wind farms in Australia and is keen for an inquiry into their health impacts.
“When I’ve been up close to these things, not only are they visually awful, but they make a lot of noise,” Mr Abbott told Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones on Thursday. “Up close, they’re ugly, they’re noisy and they may have all sorts of other impacts.
“It’s right and proper that we’re having an inquiry into the health impacts of these things.”
Labor’s opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler reacted with scarcely-suppressed indignation at the proposal. He said it was hard to believe Mr Abbott “could find a less sophisticated argument against renewable energy than the one he offered yesterday.
“This is more than a joke, Tony Abbott is actively campaigning against an industry that employs thousands of Australians, attracts billions in investment and reduces Australia’s carbon pollution.
“No other world leader would show such recklessness towards one of their own industries.”
Certainly Tony Abbott is not like any other world leader. A keen Thatcherite, one of his conservative coalition’s first acts after its 2013 election victory was to repeal a Labor-imposed punitive carbon tax on Australian industry. Abbott described that as one of his “greatest achievements.”
He was equally quick to stop the flow of illegal immigrants crossing by boat from Indonesia. Mr Abbott ordered the Royal Australian Navy to seize the craft before they entered Australian territorial waters; then the asylum seekers offloaded and their craft sunk by naval gunfire. The intending settlers were sent to other parts of the Pacific for processing and eventual repatriation to their homelands.
Strictly enforced border controls are in line with Mr Abbott’s belief that nobody has the right to just turn up on the doorstep of a sovereign nation like Australia and demand a new home.
“Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia” he said in a 2010 television appearance.
Mr Abbott is just as firm in his belief that Islamic terrorism should be vigorously met with military force wherever it is found. On Wednesday he warned a regional counter terrorism summit that Islamic State terrorists are challenging the world with a “simple message, submit or die.”
As reported by Breitbart London, he said: “Daesh [IS] is coming, if it can, for every person and for every government with a simple message: ‘Submit or die’. You can’t negotiate with an entity like this, you can only fight it.
“This is not terrorism for a local grievance, this is terrorism with global ambitions.”
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
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