Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

They've made their announcement on a nuclear power industry, and on day 1 of question time they no longer want to talk about it. That is where they have got to with their policy. You want to raise the question about safety? The entirety of the nuclear cycle forms part of the question of safety, so it is directly relevant in terms of the question that was asked by the honourable member. The fact of the matter is that we will not need to be disposing of a nuclear reactor until the early 2050s. They are proposing a nuclear industry which will be generating tonnes of high-level nuclear waste well before that if they want to make any impact for zero net emissions by 2050.

You can talk about a culture war between nuclear or non-nuclear. At the end of the day, the critical issue here is that what they are proposing is economic insanity. At a time when we have high energy bills, they are pursuing the single highest priced source of energy on the planet, and they are unable to tell us how much it will cost, when it will come to pass or even how much power it will produce.

See this speech in context