With a planned capital spend of almost $3.5 billion, Westcoast Renewable Energy (WRE) wants to build 280 wind turbines at Tasmania’s west coast.

Each turbine will be up to 250 metres tall at the blade tip, across a 40,000-hectare tract of public land north and west of Zeehan. WRE said once operational, after a decade-long construction timeline, the wind farm would be capable of generating 2.8 gigawatts of power, more than the state-owned electricity generator Hydro Tasmania’s capacity.

The company claims the development would be an economic boon for Zeehan, with up to 350 jobs based in town during construction, and 90 ongoing positions.

In Zeehan, some residents are excited by that prospect, but wildlife foundations are critical of the use of public land for a wind farm it believes will threaten native wildlife. Bob Brown Foundation campaigner Scott Jordan said the project was “terrible”, and he questioned why public land would be allowed to be used for a large-scale private development.

The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) analysis, exclusively obtained by the ABC, found about $1.6 billion would be raised from age pensioners, with opponents arguing the cohort was “least able” to afford the changes.

Pensioners will be hit hard by the federal government’s controversial private health insurance rebate changes, with new analysis revealing about half of the $3 billion in forecast savings will be clawed back from those on lower incomes. The federal government is moving to wind back the rebate those aged 65 and over receive on their private health cover, banking about $3 billion to spend elsewhere in the aged care system.

Independent MP Monique Ryan, who commissioned the analysis, said the government’s move had proved to be “a cash grab aimed at older Australians on low and fixed incomes during a cost-of-living crisis”. She said the proposal could force many older Australians on low incomes to drop or downgrade their cover, pushing them onto already overburdened public health systems. However, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory are among the states and territories concerned by the proposal, fearing extra pressure on their public systems at a time of great demand.

The White Australia party is a “modern manifestation” of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement and would motivate hate crimes against sections of the country, the high court has heard.

The White Australia party, formerly known as the National Socialist Network (NSN), was designated as an illegal hate group in May after the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (Asio) passed on its recommendation to home affairs minister Tony Burke. It is challenging the ban at the high court over two days this week, with its lawyers arguing the law breaches the implied freedom of political communication and that handing the decision to Burke breaches the separation of powers, arguing the commonwealth does not have the power to ban political parties, and citing a major cold war-era high court ruling in 1951, which overturned a ban on the Communist party of Australia.

The commonwealth’s lawyer, Brendan Lim, told the court on Wednesday that the group sought to create a political party after anti-hate laws passed in the wake of the Bondi terror attack threatened to disband it. The hate group listing means that supporting, funding, training, recruiting and joining the group constitutes a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

But Barrister Shahed Sharify argued the law’s breach of implied freedom of political communication was “authoritarian in nature” and suggested it could be used to outlaw any political party where its members had threatened or engaged in a hate crime with the assistance of the organisation.