Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For those of us who came into this place wanting to address climate change and wanting to move off fossil fuels as quickly as possible and ensure we live in a more sustainable country, the last few weeks in this political debate have been thoroughly dispiriting. We have seen a return of the climate wars, which first got kicked off by the Leader of the Opposition, who decided that they would not set an emissions reduction target by 2030, potentially meaning that we will pull out of the Paris Agreement. It escalated last week when we finally found out about their nuclear energy plan.

I'm going to steal a line here from Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, who describes their nuclear energy plan as being 'legally impossible, technically improbable, economically irrational and environmentally irresponsible'. That line there best describes what we have been handed by the coalition when it comes to their nuclear energy policy. There are significant legal hurdles that we would need to clear. It is technically difficult given there isn't a nuclear energy industry in this country at the moment. It is economically irrational, because it would be totally funded by the government because there will be no private investment in nuclear energy, because they know that it is the most expensive form of energy. It is environmentally irresponsible because it pushes action on climate change to decades and decades down the track.

An antidote to this terrible policy and the return of the climate wars for me was to go to the smart energy expo, organised by a group of committed locals, the Climate Action Burwood Canada Bay group. They are led by Ken Enderby, Robin Smith, Rick Eyre and Steven Du. They organised this fantastic expo at MLC School in Burwood to provide local residents practical advice for how they can electrify their home and about electric vehicles. People got to go for test drives in electric vehicles. They talked to home energy exports about installing heat pumps and solar panels as well as to doctors about the health impacts of gas. I want to thank all the organisations that were there: the Climate Energy Finance Corporation, Rewiring Australia, Solar Citizens, Doctors for the Environment and a great organisation called ZapCat, a social enterprise trying to make it easier for people to electrify their homes. Also present was Asian Australians for Climate Solutions, who were there using induction cookers to make delicious dumplings.

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