Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The government's approach is twofold. Firstly, in the short term, senior ministers are working very closely together to ensure the impacts of the Russian invasion do not flow through to industries and businesses without government response and protection. That's how this side of the House works it through, carefully and methodically. We also continue with our medium-term plans to ensure that the cheapest form of renewable energy becomes a greater part of our grid. Nowhere benefits more from that program than the regions of Australia, including North Queensland. The regions will power our renewable Australia. They will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and lower power prices across Australia because we believe in investing in the regions.

Now, we know the opposition has a different view. We had a ministerial statement this morning. The shadow minister responded to me, and he talked about low-cost nuclear energy. Low-cost nuclear energy was their plan. They had their seminar last week—their 'uneconomic atomic frolic'—that was promoting nuclear energy. We know that AEMO and the CSIRO say that nuclear energy from small modular reactors will cost thousands of dollars a kilowatt.

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