Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, we have Senator Brown opposing that. He wants to have dairy farms, not forest plantations. The Natural Heritage Trust will see us plant over 400,000 hectares of forests. In Western Australia I and Kim Chance, the state Minister for Agriculture and Food, recently signed off on a $68 million investment to plant another 25 million trees there. So we have to do that.

However, Senator Chapman asked about the role of nuclear. Nuclear does have a role in the world. It has an important role in the world. Professor Socolow, from Princeton University, says that we will have to expand the amount of nuclear energy produced if we are to achieve climate change and beat the challenge of climate change. Yes, there are oppositions to Australia’s role in the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia. Mr Albanese has said the recent ballot for the presidency of the Labor Party was a referendum on nuclear power. It was a referendum where Senator Faulkner won and Mr Rann probably lost. The vote is in but it is the environment that has lost because, if we do not have nuclear power, if we do not have uranium from Australia replacing fossil fuel in other parts of the world, we will not solve the problem of the world’s greenhouse gases. The Labor Party are not serious about climate change because they have now defeated Mike Rann, who is actually serious about it, who cares about solar energy, who cares about wind power and who cares about ensuring uranium— (Time expired)