Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by thanking the member for Lyne for yet another opportunity to have a conversation about nuclear energy. I'd like to remind the member that he and his party had the last nine years of government to implement some sort of effective energy policy. They had 22 chances with their stop-start energy policies to implement some sort of effective change. And now we see that Australians are feeling the crunch of the havoc in energy markets that they caused.

But we come here today and see that the opposition's solution is to look at an energy source that is the most expensive and the slowest to implement. I mean, I just don't understand why we're still here, having yet another conversation about nuclear power. Maybe they think that if they talk about nuclear energy for long enough then they can distract the Australian people from their failed energy policies, that they can distract them from the fact that they dumped their emissions intensity scheme or that they dumped their clean energy target or that they dumped three versions of the National Energy Guarantee or that they dumped a prime minister over their energy policy failures.

But there's one thing we know that the Liberals and Nationals in this place cannot dump, and that is their unhealthy obsession with nuclear power. So I did a little bit of research. The member who just spoke mentioned that we should start a conversation about nuclear power. Well, I thought I'd see how long the Liberals and Nationals have been talking about nuclear power. How long have we had to hear about the little radioactive carrot that they dangle in front of their radioactive base every now and then? And, believe it or not, they've been having this conversation for 68 years. Hansard shows that Senator Spooner, in 1955, took to the dispatch box to praise nuclear energy. For 55 years they have been having this conversation, and we're here again today.

The Liberals and Nationals talk about putting nuclear reactors right across Australia, but we all know the real facts, and I'll say them again. Just as they were told back in 1955, nuclear energy for Australia just does not stack up. It's too expensive, it takes too long to build, and we have no plan to get rid of the radioactive waste. You should have seen the list of reasons, Deputy Speaker, that I typed up as to why nuclear energy isn't the solution. But I've got only five minutes, so I've reduced it down into a little speech, and the next time this comes up, those opposite may want to listen to the speech again, because the reasons will be the same.

Nuclear energy doesn't pass any reasonable economic test, and it certainly doesn't pass the pub test. It can't be introduced or maintained without a huge cost to taxpayers, and it is the most expensive form of energy today—more expensive than coal and gas and, of course, more expensive than renewable energy. Even the industry itself, in the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2020, said that nuclear, despite over half a century of industrial experience, continues to see costs rising. CSIRO and AEMO continue to produce report after report that has found that nuclear would be far and away the most expensive form of energy for Australia. Now they're talking about these small modular reactors, these silver bullets for nuclear energy. AEMO and CSIRO found that these reactors would cost $16,773 a kilowatt in capital costs—that's $5 billion per reactor—and that Australia would need 80 reactors. That's $400 billion for yet another Liberal energy folly.

Compare that to what this government is doing and what the world is doing: investing in renewable energy. Renewable energy is a proven technology with low cost, global momentum, investment desire and, importantly, near-immediate dispatchable power. Renewable energy is creating jobs in the cities and it's creating jobs in the regions. It's the cheapest form of energy available today, and it's only getting cheaper. And renewables can be built quickly, meaning we can transition from fossil fuels to emissions-free power generation quickly to help save our planet.

I'd hope that this motion would be the last time a member of the Liberals or Nationals brought up nuclear, but I know it won't be. They've been talking about it since 1955; they're talking about it in 2023. It's just a continuation of denial, delay and dysfunction. Australia has moved on; it's time to stop talking about nuclear.

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