7 April 2017, The Conversation, The stampede of wind farm complaints that never happened. National Wind Farm Commissioner, Andrew Dyer, has just released his much anticipated first annual report. In its first year of operation until the end of 2016, the National Wind Farm Commissioner says his office received: 46 complaints relating to nine operating wind farms (there were 76 operational wind farms in Australian in 2015)

• 42 complaints relating to 19 proposed wind farms
• two complaints that did not specify a wind farm.

The commissioner’s office closed 67 or these 90 complaints, with the remaining 23 complaints still in process. Of the 67 now-closed complaints, the office closed 31 because the complainant did not progress their complaint. This suggests these complaints were minor. The office closed the file on another 32 after it sent complainants more information about their complaints. This leaves only four, which the report describes two as being settled after negotiations between the parties, and two given the ambiguous category of “other”. These figures are frankly astonishing. The complaint investigating mechanism was set up after a Senate enquiry report that cost undisclosed millions to deal with a “massive” problem with wind turbines. But the hordes of people who apparently needed a way to help them resolve matters have now gone shy. Chair of the Senate Committee on Wind Turbines was ex-Senator John Madigan, a public critic of wind farms. Read More here