Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a hopeless motion that I rise to speak against. There are only two good things about this motion: one, it gives me another chance to outline the very real, necessary and beneficial steps that this government is taking to meet the climate crisis; and two, it portrays the incapacity of the coalition to understand, accept or act on the challenge before us.

There are many portfolio areas in which the coalition is not fit to govern, and I say that climate change is first among them.

The motion uses words like 'industrial scale', 'reckless' and 'untenable'. Industrial scale: there are a lot of things that are industrial scale, especially industries, and that includes renewable industries. This is good. Reckless: well, things are only reckless if they're not necessary. If you agree that they're necessary, then they can't be reckless; they're necessary. And then untenable: the only thing untenable in this debate is the coalition's position, or lack thereof, on climate change and energy policy.

This motion also mentions the EPBC process, and I hope that the member for Wide Bay will be a great supporter of the new EBPC Act, a real champion of the new federal EPA. If he is such a believer in environmental protection, we have to ask him: why did his party not take action on the Samuel review and strengthen the act while in government? I expect the member to be backing in the government's changes next year. Let's see what he does. In any event, the act will apply to the right projects to progress change for our climate.

So what has the government done thus far to meet the climate change challenge? We've enshrined Australia's emissions targets and legislation with the Climate Change Act of 2022. We've established a purposeful safeguard mechanism to ensure emissions reductions by our largest carbon emitters. We've rolled out six offshore wind zones across Australia to support the transition to 82 per cent renewable power by 2030. We've made record investments in renewables—solar, wind, green hydrogen, storage and transmission—through Rewiring the Nation, including capacity and research. We've launched Australia's first Electric Vehicle Strategy and are reviewing our fuel efficiency standards. And we're installing 400 community batteries around Australia to enable households to share in the generation of solar energy. And, yes, there is a lot more, but, of course, I only have five minutes to speak. But I want to give a shoutout to the expansion of capacity investment scheme. This is going to make an absolutely huge difference, and industry are welcoming the announcement by Minister Bowen.

The motion mentions nuclear power. Well, of course it does! But the member for Wide Bay should realise this is a mere pretence. Nuclear is much more expensive and dirty, and the small reactor technology isn't proven. Our top scientists recommend against it. The Liberal Party pretend to be interested in nuclear power for Australia even though they know it doesn't stack up because they want to curry favour with the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry pretend that they don't know it will never happen, perhaps trying to curry favour with investors—and I'll come back to the investors. These meetings that they're having must be wonderful, with everyone in the room pretending they're talking about something real and everyone knowing they aren't. They're a waste of everyone's time when we don't have time to waste.

In December last year the member for Fairfax launched his website Time To Talk Nuclear, and he said he paid for it, but then we learnt that the web domain was registered by Helixos Pty Ltd, a Sydney based consulting company whose clients include the US company NuScale Power. Perhaps they both paid for it. It's fishy. But, hey, there's more. Two weeks ago NuScale Power announced it was abandoning its plans to build a small nuclear reactor in Idaho due to—you guessed it!—rising costs. And just last year week we learnt that NuScale Power had been hit with—wait for it—an investor lawsuit over the deal. It's a house of cards. And it's a measure of the coalition's inability to truly grapple with climate change or with energy policy that they chose the member for Wide Bay and the member for Fairfax, with his single-minded, evidence-averse penchant for nuclear, to be the spokespeople in this particular area.

Labor sits in the only position that is tenable. We accept the science and we seek to act in a way that delivers the most benefit to reducing emissions while protecting the economy, looking after community concerns and, most importantly, protecting the environment, which is what this is all about. We seek to achieve the difficult and possible. The Greens criticise us from their comfortable position of never having to govern or make any serious or difficult decisions, and then we have the coalition—and I'm going to put this back on the member for Fairfax who simply— (Time expired)

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