James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to make a statement on the Annual climate change statement 2023 that the minister has delivered to the parliament. It is an opportunity to reflect on the great challenge that is before us of achieving a net zero situation in this country and on this planet by 2050.

Indeed, I take this opportunity to firstly express my deep appreciation to the member for Fairfax, our shadow minister for energy and climate change, for the depth of work that he has already done on and his exploration of the opportunity to embrace civilian nuclear energy generation for this country, Australia. Nuclear, as we know, of course, is a zero carbon emissions technology. It is also completely reliable and a source of baseload power. As someone who is from South Australia, I know a lot about what happens when you don't have reliable baseload power.

In the state of South Australia—in, as we would believe Australia to be, a First World country—in 2016, our entire electricity grid collapsed for four hours. In South Australia we'd just had, months earlier, our final coal station, the Northern Power Station at Port Augusta, close down, and South Australia was very much reliant on an interconnector with Victoria. When the system lost power, that interconnector triggered a safety mechanism, and the grid went down for the whole state of South Australia for a period of four hours. It was something that no-one could ever have believed would happen in a First World nation like Australia or a First World state like South Australia. It dramatically sharpened the minds of South Australians and their awareness of how important it is to have a reliable electricity system.

That's why I welcome and am very excited by the work of the shadow minister and our opposition leader, Peter Dutton as we in the coalition develop a policy position on embracing civilian nuclear generation as an option for the grid in this country. There's no debate about nuclear in South Australia—except from the Greens, I suppose. In South Australia, it's the position of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party that we welcome and are excited about the opportunity of the AUKUS submarine construction, which will be eight nuclear submarines built at the Osborne North shipyard in Adelaide, which means that eight nuclear reactors are coming into the bellies of submarines in metropolitan Adelaide. The moment this was announced as a prospect for South Australia, I concede the South Australian Labor Party were the first to absolutely embrace nuclear and nuclear generation to be domiciled in suburban Adelaide.

That is still the position of the South Australian Labor Premier. In fact, he has been even more fulsome in embracing the issue of nuclear and the opportunity of nuclear and standing up to Prime Minister Albanese on this issue and being very prepared to entertain civilian nuclear generation in the state of South Australia. I commend that position. I was on Q+A with him a few months ago, where he made the very clear point that, in his view, there was absolutely no safety risk with nuclear generation whatsoever. He said that to an audience that wasn't necessarily very supportive of his perspective on that. I commend him and contrast him with some of the scaremongering on the issue of nuclear. Frankly, I simply do not believe there is any credible path to achieving net zero by 2050 in this country without nuclear. It'll be hard enough with nuclear, but without nuclear we are proposing to be, effectively, the only nation on the planet with a credible pathway to net zero by 2050 that, according to this government, won't have nuclear in the mix of consideration.

It remind me of the fact that a lot of people get very confused about what getting to net zero means. They think, because there are a lot of slogans out there, that getting to net zero means net zero electricity generation. That is one of many complex parts of decarbonising the economy. The most challenging one for which there are no serious solutions, particularly without nuclear, is industrial production—industrial transformation. For example, steel is seven per cent of global emissions. If we get to zero-emission electricity, that is completely irrelevant to the production of steel. Blast furnaces don't run on 24-volt electricity. At the moment they run on metallurgical coal. To achieve the kind of industrial chemistry you would need in steel—this also applies for cement and a whole range of industrial processes that are, by some measures, about 30 per cent of emissions—you need heat that cannot be generated through electricity in any commercially viable way. That is the reality of the industrial chemistry. Nuclear is absolutely a potential heat source for certain types of industrial heat, and, if we're living in a world without steel and cement, others can explain that to the people out there on the street, because I don't think that's people's expectations. So we’re going to need to keep making steel. We're going to keep needing cement and a whole range of things that are currently produced through industrial processes that emit carbon and cannot be replaced by electricity, whether or not that is sourced from renewables. It's much like the transport sector, which has significant challenges in it that can't be overcome purely from zero emissions electricity. So nuclear has to be considered.

I also don't understand why those who don't believe in nuclear are so frightened of the debate on nuclear or of giving people the option of generating electricity from nuclear. Some say it's not economic. Well then, you have nothing to fear. If it's not economic then the private sector will determine that, and it won't invest in it. In this country, thanks to Paul Keating, we have a private national electricity market that is driven by investment decisions. But we have a moratorium on nuclear, a ban, that is legislated. It says that you're not even allowed to consider it. For those who would say that it's not economic, take away the moratorium, and your position that we shouldn't have nuclear will evidently be the right one when the financiers and those who look at business cases for these come along and say, 'The economics don't stack up.'

I'm very confident that, technologically, nuclear will change dramatically in the years and decades ahead. We are told by everyone in this debate that apparently every other technology, whether it's battery or these renewables, will make dramatic advances over the next few decades except nuclear. Apparently, that's the only one. There's no chance whatsoever that the way in which nuclear technology works today will transform and improve in the years and decades ahead, while left-wing governments around the world are pouring billions of dollars into research and development into nuclear at the same time.

So, as we reflect on this climate change statement and how difficult the challenge will be to get to net zero in 2050, it is fraudulent to say that you're committed to getting to that, but you would rule out a form of technology that could help you achieve it. We can have a debate on these things, but that's very different to saying: 'I'm not prepared to have a debate on it. We're going to make a certain type of technology illegal in this country and not considerate as part of bearing the burden of a very challenging and complex task that we're all committed to achieving by 2050.' So I reflect on the challenge that the statement presents, and I congratulate the shadow minister and the opposition leader for the leadership they are providing on this topic. I look forward to having this debate towards the next election. I certainly commend an agnostic approach, considering all and any options technologically for the very important task of achieving net zero by 2050.

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