The reality is that even just the erection of the measuring mast will devalue property assets located within the vicinity of this mast. Why would the council would wish to do this to its ratepayers and residents, some of whom have spent generations developing the value of these property assets, simply so that some outside business can take a profit from what was once their amenity?

Moving onto wind farms themselves, of all the money used in their investment, usually less than one percent goes to the local region in the form of temporary construction jobs. These costs will later be recovered through the higher electricity charges for electricity generated from the wind farms, and will be paid for by the victims of the wind farms themselves, as well as their friends, acquaintances, neighbours, and everyone else within their community.

Moreover, since wind farms in SA generate 90 percent of their rated capacity only six percent of the time (Windfarming in SE Australia, Miskelly and Quirk, 2009) which equates to about one hour and 26 minutes of useable electricity per day, they must be backed up or shadowed by what is known as a Spinning Reserve held by a fossil fuelled generator.

The implications of holding a large Spinning Reserve means that in our case it is most likely would be done by the Playford A&B coal burning generators at Port Augusta. European and US studies have shown that holding a large Spinning Reserve means not only extra capital and fossil fuel costs in order to mitigate the intermittent output of the wind farm, but it also generates larger amounts of carbon dioxide (up to 50% more) to achieve this, as well by causing the generator to run in an inefficient manner.

Meantime, the (mostly) multi-national businesses who own these wind farms generate windfall profits by being paid in Renewable Energy Certificates for the generation of this unstable supply of electricity, for which local electricity consumers are charged prices far above that electricity generated from traditional sources.