Prime Minister Abbott has come out against "visually awful" and "noisy" wind turbines, telling 2GB radio broadcaster Alan Jones he would reduce the numbers of wind farms as much as possible.
"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 not doubt that, not only are they visually awful but they make a lot of noise," Mr Abbott said.
"What we did recently in the Senate was to reduce, Alan, capital R-E-D-U-C-E, the number of these things that we are going to get in the future. I frankly would have liked to have reduced the number a lot more but we got the best deal we could out of the Senate and if we hadn’t had a deal, Alan, we would have been stuck with even more of these things.
"What we've managed to do through this admittedly imperfect deal with the Senate is to reduce the growth rate of this particular sector as much as the current Senate would allow us to do."
Earlier last month – and after 18 months of stalled negotiations –the Federal Government and Labor agreed to set the Renewable Energy Target at 33,000 gigawatt hours. It was previously set at 41,000.
The Federal Government has also agreed to scrap two-yearly reviews of the target which Labor argued the sector could not afford.
Wind farms provide 'economic opportunities'
Andrew Bray from the Australian Wind Alliance told SBS wind farms provide significant "economic opportunities".
"Continual government interference in renewable energy comes at a cost," he said. "It deprives regional communities of economic opportunities they should be enjoying now and holds Australia back from becoming the renewable energy powerhouse we should be."
Shadow Minister for Climate Change Mark Butler said the Mr Abbott was "short-sighted" in his approach to renewable energy.
"It’s gobsmacking that Australia’s Prime Minister can be so short-sighted, and so out of touch,” Mr Butler said in a statement.
"Renewable energy is enormously popular in Australia. People want more renewable energy, not less, because of the obvious economic and environmental benefits of creating clean energy from free resources like wind, solar and waves."
'No consistent evidence wind farms have adverse effects': NHMRC
In February, a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) report found no consistent evidence to suggest wind farms have adverse effects on human health.
The report identified more than 4000 studies and documents that address the health effects of wind turbines.
Only 13 of those were up to sufficient scientific standard to be taken seriously, despite the “scientific” label often used to promote those studies.
Those 13 documents relating to noise, radiation and shadow flicker were found to be of poor quality, due to problems including small sample sizes and potential problems of bias.
“It is important to note ‘no consistent evidence’ does not necessarily mean ‘no effect on human health’,” Professor Anderson previously told SBS.
“It’s very hard to prove a negative."
The federal government’s Select Committee on Wind Turbines has published submissions on wind farms, with the committee's final report due out on August 3.
