Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rose to speak in response to the motion of the member for Lyne regarding nuclear energy. First, a question: who wants a nuclear reactor in their electorate? I know I don't, and I strongly believe that sentiment will be echoed and supported by communities in my electorate of Pearce. To be able to provide power on the scale needed under the coalition's nuclear energy plan, we would need to build 80 small-scale nuclear reactors around Australia. That would amount to a cost of $402 billion, or 17 per cent of GDP, which is 30 times more than the government spent last year on transport and communications and over 10 times more than the amount spent on defence. Nuclear energy has been looked into numerous times in inquiry after inquiry, including the Switkowski report, which stated that nuclear reactors would need to be built close to population centres.

Across the world, energy prices are rising as a result of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. This is wreaking havoc on energy markets around the globe and pushing up electricity prices in Australia, yet the Liberals' and Nationals' answer is to have a chat about nuclear energy. Let me remind all that, during the nine years of the Liberal-National government, we had 22 stop-start energy policies. Australians are feeling the crunch, and yet Peter Dutton's solution is to look at the most expensive and slowest-to-implement energy. The CSIRO has written numerous reports—

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