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The Cost of Being Green (Spoiler: It’s Concrete and Asbestos)

The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost: Australia’s “Green” Fantasy Cracks Alongside Chinese Poison Imports

So here’s the punchline nobody wants to admit: the renewable energy fairy tale is turning into a nightmare of buried messes and poisoned classrooms, and both problems trace back to the same toxic combination of corporate laziness and government laxity.

First up — wind farms. Australia’s first generation of massive turbines — ones with turbine bases built from hundreds of cubic metres of concrete and tonnes of steel — are being ripped down. Sounds good, right? Progress.

But here’s the problem: the companies that installed them now refuse to actually remove them. Instead of hauling away the foundations they poured decades ago, they’re planning to leave acre-plus concrete and steel moonscapes buried forever under farmland, leaving landowners to deal with the leftovers. No dismantling plan was created 25 years ago, no cash was set aside for cleanup, and now farmers are left with a literal concrete graveyard on their property.

Let that sink in: hundreds of tonnes of industrial waste that were sold as “green, eco, future-friendly” will now rot in place, untouched, while the energy corporations pat themselves on the back. Renewables being “great” suddenly feels a lot like a junkyard left in your backyard.

But wait — because things get greasier.

While bureaucrats and green promoters pat themselves on the back for replacing coal with turbines, another problem is quietly resurfacing: asbestos from China is still waltzing into Australian schools and construction projects with zero proper oversight. That “banned forever” stuff that caused the infamous Sydney asbestos crisis? It’s not gone. It’s spreading in new forms. Last month, dozens of Australian schools, including in Canberra and South Australia, were shut or partially shut after children’s coloured craft sand imported from China was found to contain traces of asbestos. The dangerous products had been circulating since at least 2020 — completely unchecked until a lab accidentally discovered the fibres.

And that’s not the only Chinese-linked disaster. Asbestos has also turned up in imported building materials — like fire doors in major university campuses — risking exposure and forcing rushed remediation plans even as federal and state authorities scramble for excuses.

This isn’t an isolated oversight. It’s systemic: Australia’s enforcement agencies are too underfunded, too bureaucratic, and too trusting of overseas suppliers to bother verifying anything before it crosses the border. And when something goes wrong — from industrial detritus like sunken turbine foundations to carcinogenic contaminants in classrooms — guess who gets left holding the bag?

Farmers with ruined land.
Parents with terrified kids.
Schools scrambling to cover up dangerous exposure.
Taxpayers stuck paying for cleanup.

Meanwhile, the corporate executives who sold the turbines and imported the materials will quietly move on to the next profitable venture, shrugging in boardrooms while regulators offer “concern” and “reviews.”

So yes, the chickens are home.

Concrete monsters rusting underground,
And poisoned toys sitting on classroom shelves —
two sides of a coin minted by cheap politics, questionable engineering, and an import pipeline that treats Australian safety as a suggestion rather than a law.

If “renewables” are such a miracle, why do they leave so much costly shit behind?
And if banning asbestos was so strict, why does Chinese asbestos still walk through our borders like a tourist?

It’s not incompetence.
It’s negligence, enabled by a system more interested in optics than outcomes.

The wind turbines are gone, but the legacy remains — buried in dirt and risk, courtesy of decisions made long ago and never revisited.

And as always, it’s the everyday Aussies who will pay for it.
The farmers.
The schools.
The children.

The rest are too busy taking selfies with windmills.

References

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