He formally launched a 60-day consultation on Friday to declare the coast off Victoria’s Gippsland region a suitable location for offshore energy projects – a legal step required before any projects can be approved.
He also announced he intends to launch consultations for a zone near the Hunter region in NSW shortly. The Illawarra region south of Sydney,Portland in Victoria,the Bass Strait north of Tasmania,and Perth and Bunbury in Western Australia will follow within 18 months.
Laws allowing offshore wind projects were put through parliament only last year and came into force in June.
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“We’re way behind the game,way behind the rest of the world,in producing wind off our coastline,” Bowen said.
“There’ll be questions,there’ll be valid concerns,there’ll be issues that need to be worked through with communities,whether they be recreational fishers,commercial fishers,environmental issues that need to be factored in. This is exactly what will be happening over the next 60 days in Gippsland and it’s what we’ll be doing across these zones over the next 18 months.”
The previous government announced in April,days before the federal election was called,that Gippsland would be the first priority area,but did not launch the consultation process because the underpinning legislation had not yet kicked in. It did not name other likely regions at that time.