Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Paterson clearly wants a nuclear reactor in his electorate, so we have our first volunteer! The simple fact is that there are outstanding problems with nuclear energy. According to recent comments by former US Vice President Al Gore, the problems are not limited to the long-term waste storage issue and the vulnerable-to-terrorist-attack issue. Al Gore noted:

For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal—which is the real issue: coal—then we’d have to put them in so many places we’d run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale. And we’d run short of uranium, unless they went to a breeder cycle or something like it, which would increase the risk of weapons-grade material being available.

The increasing threat of terrorism means we should not be getting further into the nuclear fuel cycle. During the Cold War, we had to worry about states. Now we have to worry about states, organisations and individuals and the threats they potentially represent. Let us not overlook this morning’s important revelation that an interdepartmental committee—comprising people from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources and possibly other departments as well—is looking at the issue of nuclear energy for Australia. The committee is called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which is the same name given to the United States position that talks about nuclear leasing. Nuclear leasing is the concept of enriching uranium, building our own rods and sending them overseas—and then the waste comes back to the country of origin. Why are they doing this? Because even the nuclear industry’s greatest proponents know that the issues of proliferation and waste remain. I say we should not go down that road because there is no mandate to go down that road.

On 28 February 2003 the then minister for the environment, David Kemp, said the government had ‘taken a firm national decision not to develop nuclear power’. In July 2004, less than two years ago, the government released its energy white paper. On page 135, under the heading ‘Climate Change and Energy’, it states:

Use of uranium reserves raises cost, safety and waste disposal issues in power generation ... Australia is not contemplating the … use of nuclear power.

The government’s white paper was released in July 2004. Less than two years later, there is a secret interdepartmental committee to change that policy. The Prime Minister waited until he was on the other side of the world, in the safety of the Northern Hemisphere, to make his nuclear fantasy public. The Prime Minister’s nuclear fantasy is Australia’s nuclear nightmare. The government is now talking about the enrichment of uranium and nuclear leasing arrangements whereby Australia would become the world’s nuclear waste dump.

Labor do not believe we should go down that path. There will be no nuclear power in Australia under a Beazley government. The economics do not stack up. We have abundant sources of alternative energy, waste disposal issues are unresolved and there are important national security issues to be considered. For these reasons, we do not support nuclear power in Australia. We do have a plan to avoid dangerous climate change, as set out by Kim Beazley in the climate change blueprint in March this year.

With the challenge of climate change comes an opportunity to enhance our health, through cleaner air, and an opportunity to strengthen our competitiveness by transforming our economy to make it more efficient and more sustainable. Doing so means drawing on the ingenuity and innovation of all Australians. We need to be part of the global move to a carbon-constrained economy. The earlier we move, the more economic advantage we will get from that.

The government is deliberately frustrating the expansion of clean energy technologies that are already available, such as solar energy. Labor’s policy—which includes a national emissions trading system, the ratification of the Kyoto protocol and a climate change trigger in national environmental legislation—would promote the take-up of clean and renewable energy. Labor believe that, if we deliver the right price signals and provide the right incentives within a well-developed and supported regulatory framework, Australia can play a role in helping the world to avoid dangerous climate change.

When the mandatory renewable energy target program was first announced, the government’s stated intention was to increase the market share of renewable energy generation by two per cent. In his second reading speech on the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Bill 2000 on 14 August 2000, Senator Ian Campbell said:

Electricity retailers and other large electricity buyers will be legally required to source an additional 2% of their electricity from renewable or specified waste-product energy sources by 2010.

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And what else does this mean for Australia? It means jobs, particularly in regional areas.

However, in its design, the MRET became a gigawatt-hour target rather than a percentage of market share. By making the target gigawatt hours rather than a percentage of electricity generated, the target became a dead target. The result is that the market share of renewable energy in 2010 will be approximately 10.5 per cent—exactly the same as it was in 1997. The renewable energy industry is currently facing a significant downturn in project activity and investment. Without an increase in the MRET, Australia is at risk of ‘stranding’ industry capability, technology, skills and intellectual property. We saw that with the decision by Roaring 40s not to proceed with renewable energy projects in Tasmania and South Australia. By making the MRET target a dead target rather than a percentage of electricity generated, the government has ensured that the potentially huge and greenhouse-friendly renewable energy industry falls over. That is a loss for Australia.

All around the world, governments are putting in place policies to facilitate the growth of this industry. The future of United Kingdom wind power was brightened with the July 2003 approval of up to 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2010. In Spain, Denmark and Germany alone, the expansion of the renewable energy sector has created about a quarter of a million new jobs in the last few years.

The Prime Minister’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol has meant Australian companies such as Macquarie Bank are investing in massive renewable energy projects in Europe and Britain. According to Business Review Weekly, Australia is missing out on $3 billion worth of investment due to the inertia of the Howard government. If we are to grow our renewable energy industry effectively and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we need a regulatory framework that allows the market to operate with certainly. We need effective incentives to drive investment.

When our children look back, they will judge the Howard government very harshly for not taking stronger action to support clean energy and avoid dangerous climate change. The Howard government is fiddling while Australia burns. The Howard government continually shows it does not support renewable energy. The Howard government is taking Australia down the wrong path. A responsible government would have had initiatives in this budget to take stronger action to support clean energy and avoid dangerous climate change. The Howard government has once again shown that its own political interests are a far higher priority than providing a clean, healthy environment for our children, which would provide certainty in terms of Australia’s economic position as well as making sure that we have a sustainable environment.

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