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

I welcome the question from the Australian Labor Party on the nuclear industry report—I presume it refers to the Switkowski review report. The first part of the question seeks constitutional advice, and I suspect the best way to get that is not by asking the minister for the environment. However, the question refers to a number of very important issues about Australia’s future energy security and about emissions, because nuclear power is one of the technologies that the world is now turning to with significantly renewed enthusiasm.

I might say that at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change a few days ago in Nairobi I met with a significant number of countries, and most of them, if they are not already pursuing redevelopment of their nuclear power capacity, are certainly well down the path to expanding it. That is because those countries—and I think Mr Switkowski in his review refers to some 32 countries where nuclear power is already a part of their energy mix—know that in the future we will not be able to continue to generate energy the way we have in the past. They know that you will not be able to pump another trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and they know that nuclear power will be part of the mix for their countries. It is interesting to note that view even here in Australia: the press today refers to former prime ministers Hawke and Keating both having said that nuclear power will need to be part of the mix.

What we see from the Labor Party is a deeply entrenched position that says no to fossil fuels. They are very anti coal; they are very anti Australia’s traditional energy sources. They are also anti nuclear, but they have a very ‘let’s walk on both sides of the fence’ position on nuclear power. That is, they are going to have a debate at their conference next year on whether they can overturn the stupid policy of some 25 years standing that we are only allowed to have uranium from three mines. In other words, you can have good uranium if it is on the South Australian side of the border but bad uranium if it is from Western Australia. As was so eloquently described in, I think, the Advertiser newspaper this morning by one of their correspondents or opinion writers, Mr Beazley’s policy on nuclear power is akin to letting people grow oranges but not allowing them to be juiced. So, if Mr Beazley gets his way, we are going to have a silly 1970s policy overturned, to allow uranium mining and allow the rest of the world to use it to create low-emission power, which is what the world needs—it needs more power and lower emissions—yet the Labor Party is so constrained, so conflicted and, in typical Mr Beazley fashion, so used to walking both sides of the street—