Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Newcastle for moving this motion. In this debate, I've heard my parliamentary colleagues discuss the many policies the Albanese Labor government have implemented to boost our renewable energy and battery storage capacity: policies that bring cheaper and cleaner forms of energy for Australian families and businesses now and into the future—a future made in Australia, with $22.7 billion that will cement Australia's place as a superpower in the renewable energy sector.

The member for Newcastle's motion does another thing: it provides us with some evidence of her powers of clairvoyance, predicting that, 687 days after the Leader of the Opposition's nuclear thought bubble, they would go in front of the media and announce some of the details of that policy. That was last week. They rewarded us for our patience with a pamphlet masquerading as a policy. It is around 4½ pages of detail double line spaced, roughly 2,000 words shallow, after all this time. You can even smell the crayon coming right off the page. It's left many with more questions than answers—answers the opposition either are withholding from the Australian people or haven't bothered to come up with yet. They are Australia's most expensive improv troupe. I am not quite sure which of the two possibilities is less terrifying. It is a document that mentions Labor eight times in their centrepiece policy. But it is a real policy because it's printed on real paper, using real ink and real staples! It's more fizzer than fission.

The Leader of the Opposition may have launched this 4½-page pamphlet flanked by his colleagues the member for Maranoa, the member for Farrer, the member for Hume and the member for Fairfax, but, perhaps as a curious design choice, none of the above were pictured on the cover, deciding against Tony Abbott's pre-election pamphlet design back in 2013. I think even they know that, if they'd had the gang of five pictured, it would have been taken even less seriously, because everyone knows they have no business being involved in a credible energy policy, especially after the 22 policy failures they've seen collectively from their time in office.

With the amount of time they've had to work on this, you can't even call it policy on the run, but it is certainly policy underdone. When the CSIRO released their GenCost report, outlining the absurdity of introducing nuclear power into Australia's energy mix for its suitability, cost and timeliness, basically throwing those opposite a lifeline to say that they had heard the experts out and gone back to the drawing board, they just doubled down. They disputed the CSIRO's modelling and said they knew better. What would scientists know anyway? Even if any number of the local communities around these proposed sites don't want a bar of their proposal, as Senator Davey rudely discovered last week, that won't matter either. Those opposite know better. What would they know?

Those opposite have, however, pointed to internal polling saying that everyone living around the proposed nuclear sites loves the idea. Much like their modelling, their costings and, effectively, everything else that would collectively amount to being an actual policy, it is either not there or purposely hidden from view. They would have you believe that their policy would end up with nuclear power plants being built and running as soon as 2035 and that there won't be any delays or costs blowouts in the build phase. They would have you believe that somehow these would be built at a world record speed, not even factoring in the cost blowouts when building a first-of-a-kind reactor in a country. I'm not sure which of those eight locations are going to be f-o-a-k-ed. If the community is not behind it, that's too bad. If the state government isn't behind it, that's too bad. If the owner of the site isn't behind it, that's too bad as well.

Ultimately, we all know that this isn't just some fever dream of 'Plutonium Pete' to bring nuclear power to Australia. This is about white-anting renewables and the multibillion-dollar industry that surrounds them here in Australia. That is what they do best. They wasted the best part of 10 years, destabilising the renewable energy sector from government, and now they are throwing a great, big, nuclear dead cat on the table, in an attempt to do the same from opposition.

Australia can't afford to lose more time when it comes to increasing our renewables capacity and rebuilding our renewables industry. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are being put at risk, because of the hubris of those opposite. Australia can't afford to lose out because of it. If you try to digest the magic pudding that is their nuclear energy policy, you'll see Australians will be picking up the tab and paying for this risky policy for decades.

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