David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a very important motion. Shadow minister Ted O'Brien is not present because he has had a baby. I wish him and his family all the best.

Industrial-scale renewable projects are being rolled out across the country in a reckless and haphazard manner, upsetting so many people, mainly electricity customers whose bills keep going up all the time. The last default market offer went up 20 to 30 per cent across the east coast market. Input tariffs for their solar panels are going down. Lots of large industrial companies, particularly in my electorate, want to expand, but they can't get enough energy. The network providers can't give them any more. Many other businesses have already offshored their businesses because the cost of electricity is too great.

This is due to increasing amounts of variable renewable energy on an industrial scale. People are only accepting it because the Minister for Climate Change and Energy keeps saying that renewables are the cheapest form of energy. He uses the levelised cost of energy to justify that. But just so you can be clear, Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon, the levelised cost of energy is not a good measure of the cost of electricity. It is a standalone cost at the bottom of a wind tower or at the bottom of a solar panel. It's not the cost of delivered electricity to your power plug. That is a complex, additional set of costs which goes up exponentially. Because renewable energies are so dilute and so variable, you have to overexpand across pristine bushland and pristine, high-quality farmland, and it's destroying the value of those lands. It's actually turning good grazing country into industrial parks. Offshore wind development at Port Stephens, Newcastle and up into the Myall lakes will put at risk huge fishing grounds, national marine parks and New South Wales state marine parks—all those environmental gems of Australia. There are Ramsar protected islands and wetlands. The birds and marine life that inhabit those areas will have almost 1,900 square kilometres of industrial wind farms that are uneconomical. They use huge material intensity. They only have a life of maybe 20 years unless you have an east coast low, when something that's 261 metres tall will probably get blown over and drift. All these extra costs are never mentioned. Levelised cost of energy is a poor measure. What you should have is the all-up, delivered cost of energy as your comparisons.

Now, the GenCost report is the generator of this information. The whole policy of the government relies on it. But the GenCost report and the subsequent integrated system plan that relies on it have been criticised. CSIRO and AEMO have both received extensive correspondence from well-known economists and power grid specialists, who have identified this, and they have been ignored. David Carland did a report for the Energy Policy Institute identifying what CSIRO calls 'sunk costs'. That money that's already been spent. Trust me: Snowy Hydro has partly been paid, but all the grids and the 15 gigawatts of extra storage haven't been paid for. Battery of the Nation hasn't been paid for. They're all the upfront costs of relying on so much renewable energy, let alone all the frequency control and auxiliary services.

In the wind farm off Port Stephens there's a $1 billion fishing industry. There's a blue-water economy with whale watching. There are 10,000 whales that migrate up and down the east coast of Australia. Their acoustics will be blown out of the water, literally, by all the acoustic testing and drilling. Renewable energy is cheap if you can get it, but all the grid costs, all the land-use costs and all the environmental destruction just get a leave pass.

We need to stop this madness now, maintain our coal plants and consider clean, zero-carbon, nuclear energy, which has none of those problems.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In essence, this motion begs the simple question: what on earth was the coalition doing for a decade in government and, frankly, what on earth is it doing now? Every item of complaint in this motion points directly to an absolute failure by the previous government to take responsibility for Australia's affordable, secure, zero-carbon energy future. In three terms and through three Prime Ministers they couldn't even achieve a national energy policy. Over the course of a decade, they saw the total amount of generation capacity in Australia actually go down. Over the course of a decade, they neglected to do anything about Australia's awful and dangerous level of liquid fuel insecurity.

The motion specifically asks about the integration of Snowy 2.0 and the Kurri Kurri system, both initiated by the coalition, and yet for a decade they did nothing to adapt and improve Australia's energy network for the inevitable transformation that would occur. Now they're back to playing a few of their old favourite games: climate change denialism, fearmongering when it comes to renewable energy and that old chestnut that we heard right at the end there, the fantasy that never arrives: so-called next-generation nuclear power.

This government is picking up the pieces in the aftermath of an extraordinary mess, and we're not going to be dragged down the low road of denialism, fearmongering and fantasy. In fewer than 18 months, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy has worked steadily to get Australia back on track at a time when our global and regional competitors are making rapid progress towards the necessary and inevitable energy transformation. The work we've already undertaken, which includes supporting investment in renewables, storage, wind power, hydrogen, a 21st-century upgrade of our energy grid and the delivery of Australia's first national EV strategy, is creating jobs. It's helping to stabilise power prices for households and businesses at a time of global energy shocks. It's supercharging the appetite for innovation and entrepreneurship that is key to our social and economic future.

We've already seen the effects of that good work. This is what AEMO had to say in April, inside the first year of the Albanese Labor government:

Renewable energy is driving down the wholesale cost of energy, setting new records for minimum demand for electricity from the grid and driving emissions to record lows …

The report also shows that new and recently commissioned grid-scale solar and wind units increased generation in the NEM this quarter by an average of 330 megawatts and 134 megawatts respectively, yielding a record quarterly average of 4,654 megawatts, which was 11 per cent higher than in quarter 1, 2022. That is what happens when you have a government that takes seriously its responsibility to work for and deliver for the Australian people—more power, more zero-emissions power and cheaper power.

When it comes to the CSIRO's GenCost analysis, it's interesting that, in the motion, the member for Fairfax makes no mention of nuclear power costs. He and I were part of the committee inquiry in 2019, as was the member for Lyne, that looked at the viability of a nuclear power industry in Australia, and the clearest evidence was that no economic case could be made for such an industry. In fact, Ziggy Switkowski, who'd conducted the same inquiry for the Howard government in 2006, said the case against nuclear had gotten stronger in the meantime. Coalition members of the inquiry took issue with the CSIRO GenCost assessment of the likely costs of yet-to-exist small modular reactors. The predictions in relation to the NuScale project in the US were cited as evidence that SMRs would soon deliver cheap electricity. On that basis alone, some coalition members were adamant that the GenCost numbers were wrong and perhaps represented some kind of technocratic bias. Well, how about some facts?

Back in 2019 NuScale claimed it would deliver a 720-megawatt plant in 2024 for $8 billion. Earlier this year the company provided a market update. The project's generation capacity has been reduced by a third. The latest estimate is for the project to come online in 2029 at a cost of $14 billion—in other words, a third less power, a five-year delay and double the cost. In relation to NuScale's brush with reality, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis observed:

… no one should fool themselves into believing this will be the last cost increase for the NuScale/UAMPS SMR.

The Albanese-Labor government will not be distracted by the ideological flim-flam from the nuclear white shoe brigade and their devotees in the coalition. We'll continue to take on the serious work of supporting Australia's shift towards cheaper and cleaner energy, ensuring we don't get left behind in terms of jobs, investment and innovation at a time of global energy transformation, while improving our energy security at the same time. That's what Australians voted for and that's what we are delivering.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Most Australians will be shocked at the discovery of the $60 billion black hole in the middle of the Albanese government's 2030 renewable energy plan! CSIRO's own chief economist acknowledges that all existing generation storage and transmission capacity up to 2030 is not factored into the costs. But those costs will have to be paid for by energy bill payers. Those so-called sunk costs will be very real to the families and businesses who will see them on their energy bills.

The GenCost study that Labor has relied on to cost its energy plan somehow magically neglects to include the massive costs of storage and transmission, including Snowy 2.0, the Kurri Kurri gas plant, significant integrated system plan transmission projects, the Tasmania Battery of the Nation and the Illawarra gas peaking plant. Also omitted are the enormous grid-wide costs of integrating homes into the new renewables network, including household batteries and solar panels. It beggars belief.

It needs to be said loud and clear that the government has been misleading Australians by misrepresenting the true cost of its energy plan. We cannot allow this dissembling to go on unchallenged. The government and the minister must come clean with the Australian people about how much they are going to have to pay in the mad rush to meet their 43 per cent emissions reduction target, their 82 per cent renewable energy target and the impact of the carbon tax by 2030.

The government must stop cooking the books and instead adopt the approach of the coalition. We advocate for an all-of-the-above strategy when it comes to energy. This approach acknowledges the necessity of considering a mix of different technologies, including renewables, to meet our energy needs.

Labor, on the other hand, have gone all-in on renewables only, and the energy users of this country will have to pay for it. The massive transmission networks they plan to build to deliver the renewable energy to market—including the hulking VNI West transmission route, right through the middle of my electorate of Mallee—are not included in their calculations, and yet reports cost AEMO's extended option 5A plan at a mere $11 billion during the construction phase alone. That will have to be paid for, again, through family energy bills. And that doesn't include the huge social, environmental and personal costs that communities in the path of the transmission lines and in the shadow of windfarms will have to pay. I have been consulting with countless people in the Mallee on these issues for months, and it's fair to say that most of them are distraught. They will see their prime agricultural land ripped up as transmission lines are bulldozed through. Prime wetlands will be destroyed, the environment irrevocably changed and endangered species threatened. And Labor's response to all of this is to plough on regardless, with little attempt to secure the social licence they promised to deliver. So often it is regional communities that pay the price for Labor's metrocentric policies.

If Labor weren't so ideologically blinkered, they might see the benefit of the all-of-the-above option that we in the coalition are advocating for. We need a properly balanced energy mix which includes robust baseload power delivery. We have already seen in Germany and elsewhere what happens when an energy grid is too heavily dependent on renewables—what happens when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing: the lights go out, that's what happens. That's why the Nationals have long been advocating for a proper review of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is used by more than 30 countries around the world, including the US, Canada and the UK. That's despite the fact that Labor keep talking about it, literally, as, 'There is nothing to see here,' with new projects and small modular reactors.

In Ontario, for example, nuclear comprises about 60 per set of its grid and energy bills are half the cost of Australia's. That surely tells us everything we need to know. I call on the Labor government to be honest with the Australian people about the true cost of their renewable energy plan, and I call on the minister to consider all available energy generation options. It is not fair that families and businesses, particularly in the regions, will have to fork out to pay for this ill-considered policy.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion by the member for Fairfax highlights, once again, the vacuum in energy policy that still exists amongst the coalition. As the member for Fremantle quite rightly pointed out, the opposition were in government for nearly a decade. They were in government at a time when we knew the country had to transition away from fossil fuels. They knew that there was a number of coal-fired power stations that were destined to close and they knew that we had to meet emissions reduction targets, and yet they could not land a single energy policy throughout all of that time. Indeed, we knew when they were in office that we were heading for energy price rises to the extent that just before the 2022 election—as we now know—there was a report given to them which outlined that energy prices would go on to rise. And yet they hid that from the public in order to try to camouflage the issue of energy prices as we went into the election.

When the Albanese government was elected and we did indeed start to look at what we could do to try and manage rising energy prices, we capped coal and gas prices. What did those on the other side do? They opposed those very initiatives which went straight to the heart of trying to put a lid on rising energy prices. Indeed, those initiatives have made a real difference. What we're seeing now is a coalition that is simply using this kind of motion as nothing more than a political campaign tool. They don't have any answer, and if members bothered to read this 11-part motion they'd see there is nothing within it that articulates what the coalition would do if they were in government. In fact, part 2, which is the only part that refers to any such thing, says that a complete assessment be done to determine 'the true optimum investment pathway for Australia's energy market' and that 'all of the above'—what is the above? There is nothing in the first nine parts of the motion they refer to—be considered as part of a future energy plan. It's all about the consideration with no specific proposal.

If you want to criticise Labor's proposals that we currently have before the Australian people, by all means do that. But at least have the decency to put up what the alternative is. We know from comments made by others that their response to date has simply been that we should look to small modular nuclear reactors. The reality is that throughout the world I understand that there are only two such reactors, one which is a demonstration unit in China and the other which is on a barge in Russia. In other words, if they were going to work and were the true alternative, why aren't they in use everywhere else? Even if they were the alternative, we know full well that they're a decade away. People need a response, and they need a policy right now. In fact, they needed it 10 years ago, when the coalition government first took office. They can't wait 10 years, and, if we did go down that path, the reality is that it would cost some 18 times more than the renewable energy pathway that the Albanese government is on.

Those figures don't come from some airy-fairy person, such as, again, the motion talks about. It talks about an independent analysis from a leading Australian energy economist. They don't name who that person or company doing the independent analysis is, which begs the question: why not? The response to the Albanese Labor government comes from a report done by AEMO and CSIRO. It's okay to rely on the true experts in this country when it suits the argument, but then, when it does not suit your argument, you dismiss them.

The Albanese Labor government is indeed getting on with trying to do something about the energy costs in this nation. We have the Rewiring the Nation project and plan that is already underway. We are encouraging and supporting renewable energy investments, as we heard today in question time from the Minister for the Environment and Water who outlined some of those major projects where investments are being made. We are also providing energy rebates to the most vulnerable. Fixing the energy crisis is a priority of this government. It is not going to be easy, especially when it has been neglected for nearly a decade, but this government is getting on with the job of doing just that.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.