Senate debates
Thursday, 14 June 2007
Questions without Notice
Nuclear Energy
2:56 pm
Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Senator Minchin. Does the minister recall saying in August 2005 that debate on nuclear power was a waste of time because the commercial and political realities meant it would never happen? Didn’t the minister also point out that it made no sense to adopt nuclear power because Australia still had an abundance of low-cost energy sources such as coal and gas? Given the minister’s view that nuclear power made no sense and was a waste of time, can he explain why the government is trying to drive Australia down the nuclear path? Have the minister’s views about nuclear power changed, or has he been ignored by the Prime Minister?
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am fascinated that there is so much interest from the ALP in what I may have said over the years. I think it was August 2005, some two years ago.
Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Conroy interjecting—
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Most of the things I say are eminently full of common sense. And it is certainly true that Australia should only adopt nuclear power as and when that becomes commercially viable. I think it is always risky and dangerous for a country like Australia, which has built its economic wealth and prosperity on low-cost energy, to become one of the most internationally competitive and successful economies in the world. It is a fundamental of Australia’s economic structure that much of our capacity and standard of living is built on our abundance of low-cost electricity, because of our fossil fuel endowment in coal and gas. The fact is that nuclear power costs anything up to two or three times the power that is produced by coal or gas. And Australia has benefited from the relatively cheap electricity we have been able to generate from coal or gas. So unless there is some intervention which results in the artificial, by virtue of the government intervention, rise in the cost of power produced by coal or gas—
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr President, they asked the question; I do not know whether they want listen to the answer.
Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! There is too much noise on my left.
Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Conroy interjecting—
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am endeavouring to answer the question but people like Senator Conroy keep psychobabbling along—
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
because they are not interested in my answer to Senator Webber’s question.
Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Conroy interjecting—
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Our position is that nuclear power should be on the table as an alternative energy source for Australia. My statements made in 2005 were perfectly accurate and correct at that time. At that time, in the absence of Australia putting any price on carbon, nuclear power was unlikely to be viable in the foreseeable future, given that electricity produced by nuclear power is so much more expensive.
Since that time, as senators will have noted, the government has decided, by observing what has occurred internationally and examining the failure of the European energy emissions trading scheme, that it will develop an emissions trading scheme of its own. That will involve a cap and trade system which will put a price on carbon. To the extent that we develop that emissions trading scheme and carbon pricing to the point where electricity from nuclear power becomes viable, then nuclear power should be on the table. The rather extraordinary position adopted by the Labor Party—which I think Senator Webber would herself find extraordinary—is that they are the ones saying that Australia must move immediately to put a price on carbon and they are the ones saying that we must cut emissions by some 60 per cent from 1990 levels in 2050, representing a massive difference in Australia’s energy mix. To then suggest that nuclear power—the only known baseload source of power that is emission free—cannot even be contemplated is an utterly idiotic position and speaks of the hollowness of the Labor Party’s position on the question of containing CO emissions. You cannot be serious about containing CO emissions in this country if you are not even prepared to contemplate the use of nuclear power in this country.
Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. To prove I often listen to the minister, does the minister also recall asking the question:
How on Earth could we reach consensus on a site for, and construction of, a nuclear power station and the site to store the ... waste it would produce.
Given the government’s obsession with nuclear power, can the minister indicate whether those issues have been resolved? If so, can the minister confirm the proposed sites for nuclear power stations and indicate where the waste will be stored?
Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Again Senator Webber points to this issue. It is going to be important to develop consensus on this issue, and this is where I find the Labor Party quite extraordinary. Mr Mike Rann, the Premier of South Australia, fought us all the way in our attempts to implement Simon Crean’s policy to have a national radioactive waste repository in the best place in Australia—the best place in Australia having been determined by scientific evidence as South Australia. He fought that all the way. But now he is the great champion of maximising uranium mining in this country, to his credit. We think Mr Rann did the right thing trying to persuade the troglodytes in the Labor Party and the extreme greenies in the Labor Party that uranium mining is important to this country. He is now the one championing Roxby Downs as a great uranium mine—and good luck to him. But he is the one, hypocritically, who opposed us all the way in our endeavours to implement Mr Simon Crean’s policy on the storage of radioactive waste. You people cannot be believed on anything.
Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.