All hundreds of residents of the small town of Waubra in Victoria want is for the town’s name to stop being dragged through the mud. According to the Waubrans concerned, the group doing the dragging appears to have no intention of stopping.
A 300-signature petition from the Waubra community, home of the Waubra Wind Farm, has apparently been ignored by the “Waubra” Foundation; a group crusading against wind farms based on some issues that have continually been debunked.
According to a press release from the Victorian Wind Alliance; the Waubra Foundation seems to feel its use of the town’s name has been a good thing for the community.
VicWind says the Foundation claims to have “brought the name of a small Victorian town to the attention of many people around Australia and, incidentally, to many other Western nations.”
Unfortunately, the old saying of “all publicity is good publicity” is at times not true in practice.
“It’s pretty arrogant really, pretending to know what’s best for Waubra when they live hundreds of kilometres away and barely know anyone here,” said Doug Hobson, Waubra farmer
“If they’d come and spoken to more than a handful of people here they’d realise that most of us are very happy with the wind farm.”
“We’re not going to take this one lying down and we’re very upset by the damage this organisation is causing our town,” he said.
“We’re currently trying to work out how on earth we can convey to these people what Waubra is actually about…We will continue to fight to convince these people that they have no right to be dragging Waubra’s name through the mud.”
Clashing with hundreds of angry Waubrans may not be the only battle the Foundation has on its hands. It seems the Australian Tax Office is investigating whether the group is entitled to retain its tax deductible charity status.
The investigation may have resulted from a complaint by Greens Senator Richard di Natale to the ATO. Senator di Natale says the Waubra Foundation is being subsidised by the tax-paying public in order to “spread misinformation about wind energy and its health impacts.”
