Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Urquhart, for letting me go before you. You're going to love this, trust me. It's all about Premier Gutwein, and I know you're going to love it because I know you and I have those Spirits up our end.

The Tasmanian government had a bit of a whoopsy moment yesterday—would you believe it! After keeping us all waiting for eight months in Tasmania to hear what's happening with the new ships to replace the Spirits, they announced their decision to go back to square one and have them built oversees. You've got to hand it to the Tassie Liberals. It's not often that we see a government announce a major project, have a contract fall through and have to find a new shipbuilder, delay getting starting for eight months to consider its options, set up a task force that it completely ignores, backflip to the original plan and upset a world-class industry leader all in one go. How about that! COVID must be over. The pressure's on for the Libs.

Full credit to the Tasmanian government: it's not every day that you're able to claim the full bingo card of bureaucratic stuff-ups. You'd better be happy because, while you've been stuffing around, businesses and councils have been waiting to hear what's going to happen with jobs in their communities. New businesses have put off opening their doors while the owners wait to see if the new ships—and the tourists they're meant to bring—will ever actually arrive.

The Premier could run a review into the ships that doesn't include the input of the company that runs the ships. After eight months and spending more than a hundred thousand bucks—yes, a hundred thousand bucks—he's now decided he doesn't actually want to listen to what the review says. He's just going to do what the company planned to do in the first place. How about that! What's the point? Where's the sense in what has been going on in the last 12 months? There is absolutely none.

Now, I want to be clear: the instinct to try to build the ships in Australia was the right one. The Tasmanian government were probably trying to do the right thing here, and it does take time to do an honest job of finding out if it's possible to build them here in Australia. Fair is fair; I'll give the Premier that much. The heart was in the right place—no problems. But how do you set out to do the right thing and end up getting it so, so wrong and upsetting so many people? How did it take so long to figure out what to do? The indecision and toing and froing creates uncertainty for tourism businesses in Tasmania right when the industry is suffering the most—as if they haven't been through enough with COVID, and not to mention that they're about to get their JobKeeper cut off. Yay!

Instead of knowing the new ships will be coming next year, those businesses are now going to have to wait until the middle of 2023 for them to arrive. I have to say that I don't hold much hope of that happening either, given the way this has been playing out. There has been a whole year of lost opportunities for our struggling businesses and communities, and, once again, I'd just about put a whole month of my own wages on their not being done by 2023. They will not be done. In the meantime, it could cost our state's economy $350 million that we as a little state certainly do not have. We're not Western Australia with all those resources, I can tell you that much. How many cafe owners, family owned businesses, regional tourism operators, farmers and producers will miss out because the Premier couldn't make up his mind on this project?

If all of this weren't bad enough, here's the cherry on the top: the Tasmanian government has alienated a world-class industry leader right here in our very own backyard in Tasmania. Incat make world-class catamarans that are used across the globe and founder Bob Clifford employs 500 people in Tasmania. That's the kind of person we want to have stick around, not have them think they should bugger off overseas because they're not appreciated here, which, by the way, is exactly how he's feeling right now. The Tasmanian government say that they want to support Incat, even though they didn't back them on this project. Well, someone should probably grab a dictionary and teach them what 'support' means, because this is not support. This is not what 'support' means.

I was doubtful about this project the moment it was announced in 2017. It seemed like a cheap pre-election promise and nothing more. Four years on and it's pretty clear that the Tasmanian Liberals never really knew what they were doing with this one. Frankly, they've wasted a lot of time and taxpayers' money on it in the meantime. And that taxpayers' money is scarce is Tasmania. Let's hope they can get these negotiations with the overseas shipbuilder wrapped up by their deadline in 30 days. Once again, I reckon it'll need a magic wand and an absolute miracle, otherwise they'll be going back to the drawing board again, and I don't think that's going to be good, it being 12 months out from an election. If that happens, who knows, it will take another four years to get that underway. I think I speak for Tasmanian taxpayers when I say I hope it would not. But I can tell you it has wasted a lot of time and it is very disappointing. Something that should have been so simple has not been done and they've had more than enough time.

I now want to talk about nuclear power. Are the energy wars getting you down yet? I wouldn't blame you. I'm tired of them too. For as long as I've been up here, people in this chamber have been bickering about whether climate change exists and what we should do about it. Some of them reckon Australia should run 100 per cent off sun and wind. They want to see coal gone in a matter of years and they don't like gas, and don't you dare mention carbon capture and storage. Others see coal as the Holy Grail of the Australian economy, capable of keeping any number of regional workers in a decent job. For them, any move to wind back our reliance on coal is as welcome as a slap across the face. But once you leave the politics behind, the reality is that our coal-fired power stations are on the way out, and we have to be honest about that. The reality is that renewables aren't up to the task of replacing them yet, so we're going to have a gap. This is where we're at. While we're all here fighting over yet another Greens motion to lock people up for the crime of wanting to open a coalmine or yet another Nationals motion to start a raffle where the winner gets a free coalmining licence, there are workers out there who are wondering where they're going to go when their power station closes, and I think we're forgetting that. They're at the coalface, literally.

We saw it just this week when Energy Australia told us that they're pulling out of La Trobe Valley earlier than they had planned. Those workers don't need a motion; they need action, they need compromise, they need big ideas, they need jobs to go to. Here's something I've been thinking about: maybe Australia should look at investing in nuclear power. Nuclear energy has almost zero emissions, so it would help us meet our climate change goals. It's really efficient. One kilo of uranium gets out as much power as two million kilos of coal, and we have heaps of it here in Australia—what do you know! It's one of our resources; we have 28 per cent of it. Actually, Senator Patrick, I believe that 28 per cent of it is in your home state of South Australia. How about that? It would give those coal workers something to move into and open up new horizons for the mining industry in our country.

I know there are some drawbacks to this idea. Nuclear costs a pretty penny—although, to be sure, it's cheaper than building a whole new coal fired power station. But if I were to be honest, it's more expensive, but not by that much. It would also take us a while to be able to make the switch from coal to nuclear. If we were to start today, it would still take at least 20 years to replace all our coal fired power stations with nuclear reactors. Of course, the other thing people worry about is whether it's safe. We'd have to figure out where we'd put the waste and reactors, which would become important points for our national security. No-one wants to chance a nuclear meltdown. But, on these issues, Australia is well placed. We have the sort of country that makes storing waste much safer than it is in places where they get earthquakes, and that also means we're much less likely to see a meltdown caused by a natural disaster. At the moment nuclear power is banned by federal law, so we'd need to get changes through parliament to make it happen.

I'm not wedded to the idea, but I think it's worth talking about and we need to talk about it more. Maybe it's a way through the energy wars that would be a win-win for both sides. But we need to start talking about it. I'd like to know what you guys think. I've got a survey on my website, where you can tell me what you reckon. Jump online and tell me what you think, because we're not getting anywhere by not talking about it, so I really want you guys to start talking about nuclear. Like I said, when we've got 28 per cent of the world's uranium in South Australia, we're not using it but we're exporting it to other countries for them to use for probably not the right things but for nuclear weapons instead of power then we really need to start talking about this. This is not an evil thing. Nuclear power is in our own backyard. I've told you, I'm sick and tired of wasting our resources. Uranium is sitting in front of us, in our ground. Let's start using it, guys.