Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Some weeks ago the Prime Minister called for a debate within the broader electorate on nuclear energy. I think the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 presents the first opportunity for many members of parliament to actually make a contribution to the nuclear debate. I have listened to a lot of the people speaking to this particular amendment bill talking about various energy issues, even though they are slightly outside the scope of the bill, so I would like to take the opportunity to make a contribution in that vein if I may.

I listened with interest to the member for O’Connor’s speech earlier. He made some points about the generation of tidal power being used as a source of energy particularly in the Kimberley region. One comment of his that I thought was most appropriate was that using tidal energy, given the potential market for it from gas installations that are taking place, could in fact provide power equivalent to that from 2½ nuclear power plants. That gives us an insight, although we are not actually looking at this.

The Prime Minister and others in the parliament, mainly for objectives of short-term political gain through wedge politics, are looking at nuclear power as an issue that will help move the debate away from the problems that they confront with carbon emissions and emissions generally. But the member for O’Connor has given us this insight into some of the potential that is out there: the power of 2½ nuclear power plants—10 per cent of what the Prime Minister is talking about—could in fact be put in place by the use of the energy of natural forces, tidal forces.

I do not pretend to be an expert, but if we are looking at coming to grips with some of the global emission problems we need to note that there is no doubt about climate change. It has been recognised on the road to Damascus within the last month that climate change is a reality. It was not a few months ago, but apparently it is a reality now and I will accept that it is a reality. I think anybody that has seen Al Gore’s film would have thought three months ago that it was actually a cartoon. But what it says has now become somewhat of a reality or has been recognised as a reality in terms of global climate change, carbon emissions and the rest of it.

Even though the government has recognised that there is a global problem—the Prime Minister has recognised it, the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources has recognised it and the Treasurer has recognised it—that, in their view, the Kyoto protocol is not the way to go and that there are new and improved versions of how we get to utopian emission controls—and that involves clean-coal energy et cetera—I believe it is not addressing a number of issues.  To bung on the nuclear debate because they cannot think of anything better to do is not only an insult to the ingenuity of our scientists and research people but almost an abuse of future generations of Australians. There is no way that I as a member of parliament will support 25 nuclear power stations in Australia when we do not have to go down that road. The member for O’Connor spoke of one alternative. People have spoken about solar and wind energy, about energy from natural forces. The industry minister talks about geosequestration. There is clean coal technology and a whole range of other technologies. But, for some reason, all of a sudden, with recognition on the road to Damascus of climate change, we have the nuclear debate lumped into this debate about how we produce clean energy for the future.

I think we all understand what is happening—and if people do not then they should have a look at what is currently happening in England and in other parts of the world—that is, this amendment bill is about the storage of radioactive waste. The storage is for generations—for thousands of years, and for anybody in this parliament to suggest that that will be safe for thousands of years is an insult to our intelligence. More importantly, in my view, it takes a great risk with future generations of Australians who have not been born. We are in a position, because we are alive, to make decisions about the living conditions of others in thousands of years. I think we should take that more seriously than the short-term wedge politics that are now being played out with this nuclear debate and the political impacts it may have on the Labor Party, the Greens or whoever happens to be wandering past at this moment.

This is a very important issue and it is a debate where the truth should be told about the long-term safety of storage of radioactive waste. No-one can give an absolute guarantee that a substance that is dangerous for thousands of years can in fact be guaranteed to be in safe keeping. Even if carbon credits and emission payments in some way bring nuclear energy closer to being more cost competitive with clean coal, I do not think those decisions should be made just on an economic basis.

We have had the absurd debate in this place on renewable fuels, and the logic of the government is almost staggering. An arrangement has been put in place whereby in 2011 the production of ethanol and biodiesel, for instance, will be used as a source of taxation revenue for the government. For the Prime Minister and others to now be suggesting in one breath that we have to encourage renewable energy, we have to look at clean coal, we may even have to look at some way of structuring the market so that clean coal becomes dearer and nuclear energy suddenly becomes competitive, and then in another breath to be saying, ‘By the way, if you move into the renewable energy market and start producing ethanol and biodiesel in 2011 we will use you as a source of revenue for taxation purposes,’ is an absurd juxtaposition with respect to policy.

We have done similar things before in this parliament in terms of policy—I have mentioned this before—but I congratulate the Treasurer. Remember that superannuation was about encouraging people to save for their retirement. It was recognised that we were going to have an older population and that, if we did not save on the way through, a worthy policy objective would have to be put in place. As that was moving through the system Labor and Liberal governments decided to tax it—‘There’s a lump of money there, and these people are getting old and saving for their retirement; we’ll tax them on the way in, we’ll tax them while they’re there and we’ll tax them on the way out, and then we’ll also let all the superannuation brokers make a fortune on the way.’ That is an absurd message in terms of the original goal.

If we are really serious about renewable energies, why would we put in place a taxation regime in 2011 to tax them on their energy content? The government are comparing them to fossil fuels. If we are serious about renewable energy emission controls into the future and CO sequestration—all these sorts of things—the taxation regime should be turned around so that it actually encourages those people to do those things. We have this absurd position where we are doing the opposite.

Just to give you another example, yesterday in this parliament the member for McMillan asked the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources a question, aimed again at wedge politics—all very good stuff. I will repeat the question:

... I got this question for the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. Would the minister update the House on practical government initiatives to lower Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions?

And this is the minister who has suddenly recognised that climate change is upon us and that Al Gore’s movie was not a cartoon. The minister answered:

I acknowledge the hard work and support of the member for McMillan on our policies in relation to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. When it comes to practical measures and real results, there is no better example of those policies than the Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fund. Through this fund the federal government is now supporting five cutting-edge low-emission projects to the tune of $310 million. These projects cover a suite of technologies, from clean coal technology to renewable energy to coal seam methane—projects worth some $2 billion. On Friday, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage announced that the government would be supporting the world’s largest CO sequestration project. At its peak, this Gorgon project will be burying some three million tonnes per annum of CO every year off the coast of Western Australia.

That is new technology that the minister is talking about. He went on:

When this suite of technologies, demonstrated by the five projects, achieves its full potential, it is estimated that they could reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 50 million tonnes per year from 2030 …

What are we talking about nuclear energy for, when the minister, who had only a recent conversion, has been able to do that in a matter of weeks? Here we have to have this debate about 25 nuclear power plants because we want to have a little bit of a game with the Greens and the Labor Party. Much more important in my view—and, I think, in the view of the Australian public—is the longevity of the human race, not the longevity of the Liberal Party, the Greens or the Labor Party. I think we are all aware that the Independents will go on forever!

After a little bit of criticism of the Labor Party, the minister went on to say: ‘... while they ignore the opportunity to debate the potential for nuclear energy’. But the minister himself in the first part of his answer has given us the answer: we can ignore nuclear energy. We can achieve our Kyoto protocol emission controls through other areas. He has given us the answer. Then, at the bottom of his answer, he returns to the nuclear debate to create the wedge. I think it is pointless having this debate when we do not have to. If the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, within a period of weeks, can put in place these various funds—and I congratulate him: I think it is great and that more people should go to Damascus!—what can people, serious people like the member for O’Connor, do with tidal energy? What can we do with renewable fuels if we get serious about it?

The government has an MRET of 0.8 of one per cent of our petrol needs—350 million litres—by 2010. I think we are running at under 50 million litres now—and it is 2006, so 60 per cent of our time is gone. What could we do if we actually got serious about some of this rhetoric? There should be absolutely no need to talk about nuclear energy as an option when there are no guarantees that the waste can be protected for thousands of years and when we have solar energy, wind energy and renewable fuels that we have talked about earlier.

I was at a conference only last week in Canberra—the national carbon conference. A lot of the reason we are talking about nuclear energy again—other than the political reasons for doing it—is because of what we have done about carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Very few people have mentioned the potential in at least the short and medium term to store atmospheric carbon in perennial pastures and soils. We are here to talk about trees. Trees, in the short term at least, are emitters of carbon, then they start to take it up and, longer term, they emit again. With a combination of pastures and better land use management using what we in our region call no-till farming or conservation farming techniques, where you build up the organic humus matter in the soil, you can actually store carbon. Where is the research that is going on into that?

I asked the Prime Minister this question the other day: will he look at putting the farm sector on this carbon credits task force that he has put in place? Will he look at including the farmers in that debate? Because they could be part of the answer or the future research into perennial pastures and ways of building up organic matter or humus in the soil. That could be part of the answer. There are people who say it is not; there are scientists who say it is. There are trials in the United States at the moment where carbon credits are paid to farmers for sequestering carbon in their soils. I know there are problems with measuring, but these are the issues that we should be out there addressing. If there is a problem, let us solve it. If there is a question, let us answer it. But we seem to have gone past all of these natural options and straight to nuclear energy, because that is a short-term fix and we will not be here if there is a problem further down the track. I do not think that solves the problem at all.

I would ask the Prime Minister again to include the farm sector in the carbon credits task force, so that those people who are custodians of most of the land in Australia could be part of developing a market-driven structure so that we have cleaner energy and so that the emissions we produce are stored—some, as Minister Macfarlane says, well below the ocean or the earth; others may be stored in the top profile of the soil. We may change some of the land use management. We may have incentive payments that give carbon credits to the farm sector for storing carbon dioxide in the soil, as we are talking about doing in plantation forestry. There are many options out there.

In the renewable energy and renewable fuels debate, some government ministers quite often say that you cannot encourage ethanol and biodiesel because it would impact on the market. You cannot subsidise Australian production of ethanol from sugar or grain because it would be a blemish on the fuel market. What are they contemplating doing with clean coal emissions? They are penalising the coal producers in terms of carbon credits so that it will lift the price so that nuclear energy can become viable. If that is not impeding the market, I do not know what is. I would agree with that impediment being placed on the market, because it develops a situation where the polluter pays and where those who are removing the problem get the credit. The market is working. But you cannot have, on the one hand, this burning ambition to develop an artificial market to take care of the carbon dioxide problem and then, on the other hand, say we cannot have biofuels in this nation because that would be seen as a blemish on capitalism. That is an absurd suggestion. (Time expired)

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