Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I've always wondered why perfectly sane, well-educated individuals fall for this form of absolutism. I believe that the attraction is primarily aesthetic and that the experience is fun, because the world of a sort of quasi-conspiracy theory is very like the world of a game. The rage and fear and conviction that conspiracy theorists display are aestheticised versions of the real things. This perennial focus on the weather is a peculiar tension between philosophical monism and an alternative view. Tonight we've even heard of that quasi-religion—and it is a quasi-religion. They extol the virtue of believers. They talk about deniers. They have an absolute belief, without any version of thermodynamics or atmospheric science. It is a form and extension of a paranoia. We've heard tonight about disease, temperature, floods, fires—a great catastrophe, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—which are somehow to be avoided by the passage of a piece of legislation through this House. It is a fact that there is nothing of this legislation that will affect the climate—nothing at all. It is a form of virtue signalling. It is a form of—at its best—being a part of a global movement, but a global movement that the vast majority of the globe is not part of. What it will do is massive damage to our economy at a time when our nation should become as strong as possible, as quickly as possible. It will cost you money. Whether it's on a domestic front or on a global front, it is costing you money now. Your price of power is higher because of climate policy, whether you think of it as virtuous or not. You are poorer because of climate policy. You pay more for fuel because of climate policy. Prior to the war in Ukraine, there was a so-called wind drought in England, and the price of power went through the roof, multiple times above where it was. Hundreds of thousands of people were dropped off their power provider, because they said, 'We just can't do it anymore.' This was the outcome of a wind drought, and then came the war in Ukraine.

If you believe that fuel is too cheap, support this. If you believe the price of power is too cheap, support this. If you believe the price of food is too cheap, support this. If you want to take more money out of your wallet and send it to somebody else, support this. But remember: another person on the other side of the transaction is getting your money, make no mistake about that. People and companies are becoming exceptionally wealthy by reason of this process, make no mistake about that.

Make no mistake that every wind tower is basically fully imported. Make no mistake that every photovoltaic cell is not made in Australia; it's made overseas. Make no mistake that the overwhelming majority of the companies participating in this are foreign owned. Make no mistake about that. Make no mistake about the hundreds of thousands of acres of footprints that renewables take. Make no mistake about the divisive nature this now has in regional areas, where people, who are even family members, are pitted one against the other as they argue about the transmission lines that go across their country, that their places have been turned into an industrial landscape.

This will not happen in Warringah, so they can support it. It's not going to happen in Wentworth. It's not going to happen in urban areas; it happens in our seats. I tell you right now, if you want to create a coalition between the Greens, Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals, the way to do it is to propose a wind farm in their area, and you will do it.

They talk about renewables as the cheapest form of power. That is complete and utter garbage. Power is sold in five-minute blocks. If we were to come into this chamber and say, 'I'm only prepared for the power to stay on for five minutes', that would be an absurdity. For five minutes the wind's blowing, the power's on and it's very cheap. But after that it goes out and the lights go out. In five-minute blocks, I can make anything cheap. I can make a car that goes down a hill the cheapest car in Australia. I can say: it uses no fuel; it's green. Of course—it's running downhill. It's when it has to go up the other side that it creates a problem.

We should be selling power in 24-hour blocks. You provide the reliability to provide power for 24 hours and then you would see the real cost of renewables. They wouldn't be able to compete, not without substantial back-up, substantial pump hydro and substantial batteries. If every battery now in Europe was turned on to take the place of coal-fired power stations and nuclear, the power in Europe would stay on for less than two minutes. That is the absurdity and the quasi-religious nature of this argument, this absolute belief without question. The fact that you are derided and pilloried if you dare question, it is a very dangerous thing. Some very dangerous things have happened in history because of unquestioning belief.

Now, you may say, 'Well, how do we go into this process when it's unreasonable?' The only way we can sort of find a meeting ground is to get nuclear power. If you want zero emissions, you've got to get nuclear power. They say it's incredibly expensive. That is not the truth. In the recent reports, small modular reactors are vastly safer and exceptionally cheaper. They are made in factories. NewScale has recently received its approval through one of the hardest submission processes that you would ever get. They are made in factories. They are 20 metres long. They are three metre wide. They come in on the back of a truck. Yet we say we can't do it. We're repeating the mistake of sending our coal overseas and our iron ore overseas, but we resile from the fact that we're going to make motorcars in Australia and do the manufacturing in Australia.

Once more, we've resigned ourselves to being the dumb country. We're going to be the dumbos. We're going to export the rock because we don't believe in ourselves and we don't have the confidence in ourselves to produce the technologies. Why is it that every OECD country produces nuclear power except us? Are we the wise ones and they're all stupid?—you know: 'There goes my son. He's the only one in step.' Is this how it is? Why don't we grasp the issue and say: 'If this is what we're going to do—if we're going to export uranium—let's export the technology. Let's be the clever ones. Let's make it safe. Let's make it cheap. Let's have confidence in ourselves.' But we don't, and we should.

I believe the perspective of the community has changed. I've never been to a meeting yet where a majority of the people were not for nuclear power. They can't work out why we're not for nuclear power. If you say: 'Well, where are we going to put it?' that's a divisive issue. We could have an assessment of where people want it. Put it to them. Say to people: 'If you can see the power plant, you get your power for free. If you can see it, your power's free,' and then see what the response is.

Remember, we have one nuclear facility in Australia smack-bang in the geographical centre of our biggest city, and no-one has really got a concern about it. In recent years, they've sold spare blocks for a million dollars a pop. So I am going to be a bookend, I am going to be the sceptic, because I don't like this quasi-religion that has evolved about this. Politically, I even find it very dangerous. At other times in history, this quasi-religion, this absolute belief, this unquestioning adherence has done some very dangerous things. You need people to stand up and say: 'I'm going to question this,' because it's got to happen.

I say that this legislation is going to change nothing. It will make you poorer. You are going to pay for this. Every time you buy your fuel, you will pay for climate policy. Every time you buy your groceries, you will pay for climate policy. Every time you get your power bill, you most definitely will be paying for climate policy. And this legislation is going to make it worse. You are going to become poorer still. And because of this, the temperature of the globe will stay exactly where it is at the moment.

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