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

I thank the terrific member for Newcastle for her question. Just a couple of weeks ago, she and I, along with the member for Paterson, had 600 Novocastrians calling for more renewable energy in the Hunter Valley.

We do reject plans for nuclear power stations in Australia because they're too slow, too expensive and too risky. We know they're too expensive because they're the most expensive form of power, as study after study has shown. We know they're too risky for Australia because it would put more pressure on ageing coal-fired power stations, which are ageing and less reliable as they break down more and more often, and that is risky for our power system. And we know they are too slow to build. They take decades to build, and almost every nuclear power plant under construction anywhere in the world over recent decades has experienced very significant blowouts in time as well as cost.

Sometimes nuclear power plants can blow out before they're even announced—they can blow out not just during construction, but in the announcement. The Leader of the Opposition was in Jamisontown on 21 March when he was asked when the opposition would announce their detailed plans for nuclear. He said, 'We'll have more to say about exact locations over the next couple of weeks.' He went on to say, 'We'll provide you with that detail over the next couple of weeks.' Now 'a couple' generally means two, but we'll give it a bit of leeway. That was nine weeks ago.

The Leader of the National Party weighed in. He made a very tough statement, the Leader of the National Party. He made it very clear: 'We are not going be bullied into putting this out on any timeline.' They are not going to be bullied into a time line that they announced. The shadow minister cleared it up. He said, 'People have got to know you're not trying to cover things up; you've just got to be really open.' I'm very glad to hear that.

They haven't announced their policy, but they briefed the Australian newspaper 16 times that their nuclear plan would be announced before the budget. We've got 3½ hours to go. I'll be waiting, watching the television for the alerts to come out from the Leader of the Opposition as they announce their plan. But if they don't announce the detailed plan today, they have another opportunity on Thursday night.

Thursday is the Leader of the Opposition's big chance to come before the Australian people and announce detailed plans with costings, with locations, with details, with fully modelled and costed policies and tell the electorates and their communities in Australia where these nuclear power plants will be. Thursday is the chance for the Leader of the Opposition to do what he hasn't done in any other budget reply or, to be fair, any other speech, press conference or interview, which is actually announce a detailed policy.

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