So they pay $12,000 to the farmer, but they get $600,000?
So, he gets $12,000 a year, but if anything happens to it he's got to fix it?
Yeah when they catch on fire, they're responsible for their neighbor's property going up in smoke. That kind of thing.
Alex Nicol.
Alex, now, you used to work for the federal government.
I did, yeah, for 7 years.
Doing what?
I was policy advisor for a liberal party senator.
Until you were saying that you were working about the windmills?
Yes, the area that I was working in was renewable energy, and basically it was my job to uncover a lot of the stuff that was going on with renewable energies equipment that was put in in 2002 during the Howard government. That was the Liberal Party put there in place, and I was looking at the mess that it had created. What a lot of people don't understand is that the Renewable Energy Act creates a subsidy environment where if you build wind turbines you are paid between $600,000 and 900,000 per turbine per year as a subsidy alone.
Well, if it's on your property?
No. What happens is that the wind company comes in and leases they pay a lease to the farmer to build the wind turbine and that in effect makes sure that the farmer is still liable for the turbine and they pay a lease of $12,000 a year usually and the company gets paid between $600 and $900,000 per turbine per year.
So they pay $12,000 to the farmer, but they get 600,000?
Exactly.
Per turbine . . .
Yep.
This is a big incentive to put in turbines.
Yeah, and the landowner takes the liability for the turbine.
So, he gets $12,000 a year, but if anything happens to it he's got to fix it.
Yeah when they catch on fire, they're responsible for their neighbor's property going up in smoke. That kind of thing.
Woooow.
And effectively that money, that that subsidy getting paid to the wind farms is draining $40 billion a year out of the Australian economy and it's paid by everyone, householders, schools, hospitals, everything, everyone. It's not just coming out of your tax, it's coming out of your power bill.
Is this why power bills are going up?
That's why power bills are going up . . .
So power bills are going up to pay for wind turbines that don't work?
Exactly.
And why don't they work?
They don't work because for a start they draw power off the grid so they have to have coal-fired power in order to turn. They're not windmills, they're turbines.
Sorry, what do you mean, the power to turn, we see them turning . . . that's not the wind that's powered generating turning?
Essentially. They have to draw power off the grid, so they have to draw coal-fired power off the grid in order to turn. What happens when the wind picks up, they do start to create electricity of their own but that electricity is so intermittent and unreliable that when it gets back to the grid it has to be balanced on the grid which you can't do with your coal-fired power station, you can't ramp your coal-fired power stations up and down. So the coal-fired power station stays at the same level because it takes 24 to 48 hours to get up to heat anyway, just let off steam as the wind comes on to the grid so there's absolutely nothing about them that works apart from draining that amount of money out of the Australian economy and it's going offshore.
That money's going offshore . . .
